Buchenwald, Maidaneck: Macabre Demagogy

We accuse the bourgeoisie!

In our article "The proletariat must not underestimate its class enemy" in International Review 86, we said in our conclusion:

"Thus, it is indeed on a world scale that the bourgeoisie is carrying out its strategy against the working class. History has taught us that all the conflicts of interest between national bourgeoisies - commercial rivalries, imperialist antagonisms -fade away when it comes to confronting the only force in society that represents a mortal danger to the ruling class, the proletariat. The bourgeoisie elaborates its plans against the latter in a coordinated and concerted manner.

Today, faced with the workers' struggles that are brewing, the ruling class has to resort to a thousand traps in order to try to sabotage them, exhaust them, and defeat them, to prevent them leading to a growth of consciousness in the working class about the ultimate perspective of its struggle: the communist revolution".

The bourgeoisie's strategy against the revival of the struggle

In order to face up to this menacing reality, full of peril for its system, the bourgeoisie, particularly in the main European countries, has come up with all kinds of manoeuvres in order both to sabotage the struggle and to strengthen its main anti-working class weapons.

This revival of struggles has alerted the bourgeoisie all the more because in its first stages it brought back to life the demons that it thought it had buried after 1989. Thus in 1992, the workers of Italy forcefully expressed, in mass demonstrations, their continuing suspicion of the unions. This was a reminder to the rest of their class of something that it had become increasingly conscious of during the 1980s - the fact that the unions are not workers' organisations, and that behind their proletarian masks and language, they are ardent defenders of the interests of capital. Furthermore, in the strikes in the mines that shook the Ruhr in 1993, the German workers not only ignored and even rejected the proposals of the unions (which had not been their usual attitude up until then) but also sought, through street demonstrations, to express their class unity beyond sectors and workplaces, linking up as well with their unemployed class comrades.

Thus, two fundamental tendencies that had appeared and developed during the struggles of the 80s:

- growing distrust of the unions, a tendency to break out of their grip more and more;

- a dynamic towards a wider unity, expressing the proletariat's self-confidence and its growing ability to take charge of its own struggles; appeared once again as soon as the working class returned to the path of struggle, and this in spite of the major reflux it had been through.

This is why, since then; the bourgeoisie has, on an international level, been developing a whole strategy whose central objective has been to restore the credibility of the unions. The spearhead of this strategy was the vast manoeuvre it carried out in France at the end of 1995, through the strikes in the public sector.

Through this manoeuvre the ruling class has responded both to what had appeared violently in Italy (the workers' overflowing and rejection of the bourgeoisie's organs of control), and to what the working class had expressed in the miners'· struggle in the Ruhr (the tendency towards unification, which is key to the workers' capacity to see themselves as a class, to wage an autonomous struggle, and to develop their self-confidence). The year 1995 thus ended with an indisputable victory for the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, a victory which allowed it to erase momentarily the main lessons of the struggles of the 80s.

The bourgeoisie then did everything it could to extend this victory to other countries, to other fractions of the proletariat. Initially and almost simultaneously, it reproduced exactly the same manoeuvre in Belgium: on the one hand, a government which adopted the Juppe method, acting with arrogance and brutality to inflict particularly violent, indeed provocative, attacks on working class living conditions; on the other hand, unions which rediscovered their militancy and called for a massive, united response, pulling in a number of branches within the public sector. As in France, a pseudo-retreat by the government completed the manoeuvre and sanctioned the victory of the bourgeoisie, with the unions as the main beneficiaries.

In the spring of 1996, it was the turn of the German ruling class, using virtually the same methods to attack the workers and reinforce the unions. The difference with what had gone on in France and Belgium was mainly situated at the level of the problem that needed resolving. In Germany, the bourgeoisie's aim was not so much to restore to the unions their lost credit, but to improve their image: faced with the inevitable perspective of a development of workers' struggles, the traditional image of the unions as organs of consensus, specialists in ordered negotiations, was no longer sufficient. New paint was needed to portray them as unions of struggle. This is what they began to do when their main leaders declared their sympathy with the French strikers in December 1995. They then took this further with the struggles and demonstrations which they called and organised in the spring of1996. Now they were intransigent in the defence of workers interests. They have also tried to refine this image in the different mobilisations they have orchestrated since then.

During the greater part of this year, in most European countries, the bourgeoisie has been doing everything it could to prepare for the unavoidable class confrontations of the future. It has been organising all kinds of mobilisations in order to strengthen its unions and to enlarge the influence of trade unionism within the working class. The return in force of the big union federations has been accompanied, especially in France and Italy, by a development of rank-and-file unionist organisations like the SUD (Syndicat Unitaire Democratique) and the FSI (Federation des Syndicats Independents), the COBAS (rank-and-file committees), etc. These organisations, animated by the leftists, have the role of providing critical but indispensable support to the union federations, in order to make sure that the whole of the workers' terrain is covered, to keep control of workers who are beginning to go outside the classical union structures, and, in the final analysis, to draw them back towards these same unions. In the 1980s, the working class had already confronted organisations of this type: the coordinations. Then, however, the latter presented themselves as being anti-union and their job was to do the dirty work that the unions were finding harder and harder to do because they had been so deeply discredited. Today the rank-and-file or fighting unions, which are direct emanations of the big federations (often through splits) have the essential aim of reinforcing and widening the influence of trade unionism and not of feigning opposition to the latter (this is not required in the present situation).

Despite proliferating obstacles, the revival of workers' struggle goes on

For over a year, parallel to all these manoeuvres, the bourgeoisie has been deploying a whole series of ideological campaigns against the working class. Attacking the consciousness of the proletariat is a primary and constant objective of the ruling class.

In the last few years, it has spared no effort at this level. We have dealt with this at length in our press, in particular the massive ideological campaigns that present the collapse of Stalinism as the death of communism and even as the end of the class struggle. At the same time the bourgeoisie has trumpeted the historic victory of capitalism, even if this second lie has been a bit harder to market, given the difficulty of hiding the daily barbarity of its system. It is in this framework that, for over a year now, the bourgeoisie has been increasing its campaigns around the theme of defending democracy.

This is what it has been doing when, with a great fanfare from the media, it tries to mobilise people against the rise of fascism in Europe. This is also what it has been doing, in the last few months, through its crusade against revisionism. Through the latter, it is trying, on the one hand, to whitewash the democratic camp of the monstrous massacres which it, along with the fascist camp, perpetrated during the World War II; at the same time, it is attacking the only real defenders of proletarian internationalism, the revolutionary groups who come out of the communist left, trying to present them as secret accomplices of the extreme right of capital. Finally, it has also been doing this by organising big mobilisations aimed at improving the democratic system, at making it more humane, at overcoming its weaknesses. The workers of Belgium have just been through this via the deafening campaign around the Dutroux affair, in which they were pushed into demanding a cleaner judiciary, a judiciary for the people in monster demonstrations (300,000 at the Brussels demo of 20th October), side by side with bourgeois democrats of all stripes. For several years the workers of Italy have had a similar treatment with the mani politi ("clean hands") campaign.

By stepping up its ideological barrages in this way, the bourgeoisie is obviously trying to derail the process of reflection going on in the working class, to turn it away from its class concerns. This was illustrated very clearly in Belgium, where the campaign around Dutroux made it possible to a great extent to distract the workers from the draconian austerity measures announced by the government for 1997. This was of great benefit to the bourgeoisie, which managed to push through its anti-working class attacks, put off a confrontation with the working class, and thus gain time in order to set up new obstacles and traps.

But this manoeuvre by the ruling class in Belgium, which involved strikes and walk -outs in a number of workplaces - instigated by the unions and the leftists - in which workers' demands were effaced by calls for a cleaner judiciary, had another objective: that of taking the proletariat onto a bourgeois terrain. The bourgeoisie is not only trying to derail the workers' consciousness, but also their rising combativity.

This evolution in the attitude of the bourgeoisie is rich with lessons and enables us to understand:

- first, that workers' combativity is on the rise and is spreading, in contrast to the situation at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996. In fact it was the workers' weakness at this level which the bourgeoisie exploited in launching its preventive manoeuvre. It was this weakness which allowed the unions to return in force and to organise big unitary struggles without fear of being overrun;

- secondly, that the manoeuvre initiated in France and taken up in several European countries, despite its success on certain levels (notably in strengthening the unions) is revealing its own limits. If it led to a certain exhaustion amongst the workers, particularly in France where it was carried out on a bigger scale, it has not put things off for very long, it has not prevented the deepening of discontent, which is now beginning to express itself again. Similarly the famous retreats by the Juppe and other governments are now being shown up for what they were: mystifications. To all intents and purposes, the anti-working class measures which the workers were called out to oppose have gone through. As for the much-vaunted victory obtained thanks to the unions, this is more and more felt as a painful memory by the workers who have a bad taste in their mouths, a feeling that they have been had.

Because it is conscious of this situation, the bourgeoisie has somewhat modified its strategy:

On the one hand, the unions are tending more and more to limit the breadth of their mobilisations when they are based around class demands, as we saw in France on 17th October and even more so during the week of action from 12th to 16th November; and as for the trade union unity which the big federations were glorifying yesterday, this is now giving way to a policy of division between the different unions, in order to disperse the anger and militancy which are ripening in a dangerous manner.

In the case of Spain, to take another example, the divisive tactic of the unions is not for the moment taking the form of quarrels between the different federations. Here, nearly all the unions, with the exception of the radical CNT, called for a campaign of mobilisation (march on Madrid on 23rd November, general strike in the public sector on 11th November) against the wage freeze for state employees announced for 1997 by the right wing government (the same unions did nothing when this policy was regularly carried out by the Socialist party). In this episode, the unity proclaimed by the unions, which was a necessity if they were to have any credibility, was really a cover for the division between the workers in the public sector and those in the private sector, a division completed by the use of partial walk-outs, on different days, and separated into different provinces and regions in order to reinforce regionalist mystifications.

At the same time, the bourgeoisie is not just using its permanent ideological campaigns to muddy the workers consciousness. Through these campaigns it is trying to derail the proletariat from its class terrain, to divert its rising combativity (which it has not managed to smother)into bourgeois demands and interclassist mobilisations. This is what it did in Belgium and Italy with the call to clean up the judiciary. This is also what it did in Spain by calling on the workers to mobilise against the terrorist actions of the ETA.

*****

Contrary to what certain resentful and more or less ill-disposed elements claim, the ICC is not at all underestimating the present efforts of the working class to develop its resistance against the repeated and increasingly violent and massive attacks being mounted by the ruling class. Still less do we have an attitude of disdain towards these efforts. On the contrary: our insistence on exposing the various traps that the bourgeoisie is laying, apart from being a fundamental responsibility of revolutionaries worthy of their names, is above all based on an analysis of the present period, which since 1992 has been characterised by the revival of workers' struggles. For us, the manoeuvre of 1995-6, orchestrated at an international level, was nothing but an attempt by the ruling class to respond to this revival. And its present policy of multiplying obstacles is proof that it knows that the proletarian danger is still present and indeed is on the rise. When we point to this reality, we do so without giving in to euphoria (to do so would be to disarm ourselves in the most stupid manner), without underestimating the enemy, and without denying the difficulties and even the partial retreats and defeats of our class.

Elfe, 16 December 1996

In the first three parts of this series of articles, we have seen how Bakuninism, supported and manipulated by the ruling classes, and by a whole network of political parasites, conducted a hidden struggle against the First International, In particular, this struggle was directed against the establishment of truly proletarian principles and rules of functioning within the International. Whereas the statutes of the International Workers' Association, defending a unitary, collective, centralised, transparent, disciplined mode of functioning, represented a qualitative leap beyond the previous sectarian, hierarchical, conspirational phase of the workers' movement, Bakunin's Alliance mobilised all the non-proletarian elements who did not want to accept this great step forward. With the defeat of the Paris Commune and the international reflux of the class struggle after 1871, the bourgeoisie redoubled its efforts to destroy the International, and above all to discredit the Marxist vision of a workers' party and its organisational principles which was increasingly establishing itself. Thus, before disbanding, the International staged an open and decisive confrontation with Bakuninism at its Hague Congress in 1872. Realising that an International cannot continue to exist in the face of a major defeat of the world proletariat, the major concern of the Marxists at the Hague Congress was that the political and organisational principles it had defended against Bakuninism could be passed on to future generations of revolutionaries, and serve as the basis for future Internationals. This was also why the revelations of the Hague Congress about Bakunin's conspiracy inside and against the International were published and thus made available to the whole working class.

Perhaps the most important single lesson of the struggle against Bakunin's Alliance which the First International has passed on to us, is on the danger which declassed elements in general, and political adventurism in particular, represent for communist organisations. At the same time, it is precisely this lesson which has been most completely ignored or underestimated by many groups of the present revolutionary milieu. This is why the last part of our series on the struggle against Bakuninism is devoted to this question.

The historic importance of the First International's analysis of Bakunin

Why did the First International not decide to treat its struggle against Bakuninism as a purely internal affair, of no concern to those outside the organisation? Why did it insist so much on the lessons of this struggle being passed on for the future? At the basis of the Marxist organisational concept is the conviction that revolutionary communist organisations are a product of the proletariat. Historically speaking, they have been given a mandate by the working class. As such, they have a responsibility to justify their actions to the class as a whole, in particular to other political organisations and expressions of the class: to the proletarian milieu. This is a mandate not only for the present, but towards history itself. In the same way, it is the responsibility of future generations of revolutionaries to accept the mandate passed on by history, to learn from and judge the struggles of their predecessors.

This is why the last great struggle of the First International was devoted to revealing to the world proletariat and to history the plot organised by Bakunin and his followers against the workers' party. And this is why it is the responsibility of Marxist organisations today to draw these lessons of the past, in order to be armed in the struggle against present day Bakuninism, present day political adventurism.

Understanding the historical danger which the lessons drawn by the First International represented for its own class interests, the bourgeoisie, in reply to the revelations of the Hague Congress, did everything in its power to discredit this effort. The bourgeois press, and bourgeois politicians declared that the fight against Bakuninism was not a struggle of principle, but a sordid power struggle within the International. Thus, Marx was alleged to have eliminated his rival Bakunin through a campaign of lies. In other words, the bourgeoisie tried to convince the working class that its organisations function in exactly the same way, and are thus no better than those of the exploiters. The fact that the vast majority of the International supported Marx was put down to the "triumph of the spirit of authoritarianism" within its ranks, and to the alleged tendency of its members to see the enemies of the Association lurking everywhere. The Bakuninists and the Lassalleans spread rumours that Marx himself was an agent of Bismarck.

As we know, these are exactly the same accusations which are raised by the bourgeoisie, by political parasitism against the ICC today.

Such denigrations on the part of the bourgeoisie, spread by political parasitism, inevitably accompany every proletarian organisational fight. Much more serious and dangerous is when such denigrations find a certain echo within the revolutionary camp itself. This was the case with Franz Mehring's biography of Marx. In this book Mehring, who belonged to the determined left wing of the Second International, declared that the pamphlet of the Hague Congress on the Alliance was "inexcusable" and "unworthy of the International". In his book, Mehring defended not only Bakunin, but also Lassalle and Schweitzer against the accusations made by Marx and the Marxists. The main accusation made by Mehring against Marx was that he had abandoned the Marxist method in his writings against Bakunin. Whereas in all his other works, Marx had always departed from a materialist class analysis of events, in his analysis of Bakunin's Alliance he tried, according to Mehring, to explain the problem through the personality and actions of a small number of individuals, the leaders of the Alliance. In other words, instead of a class analysis, he accused Marx of falling into a personalised, conspirational vision. Trapped within this vision, Marx was, still according to Mehring, obliged to greatly exaggerate the faults and the sabotage of Bakunin, but also of the leaders of Lassalleanism in Germany[1].

In fact, by refusing "on principle" to examine the material which Marx and Engels presented on Bakunin, Mehring declared:

"What has lent their other polemical writings their peculiar attraction and lasting value, the desire for new insights brought to light by the negative critique, is completely missing in this work" (Mehring: Karl Marx).

Here again, it is the same critique which has been made inside the revolutionary milieu today against the ICC. In answering these critiques, we will now demonstrate that the position of Marx against Bakunin was indeed based on a materialist class analysis. This was the analysis of political adventurism and the role of the declassed. It is this crucially important "new insight" of "lasting value" which Mehring[2], and with him the majority of present day revolutionary groups, have completely overseen or misunderstood.

The declassed: enemies of proletarian organisations

Contrary to what Mehring believed, the First International did indeed provide a class analysis of the origins and social basis of Bakunin's Alliance.

"Its founders and the representatives of the workers' organisations of the Old and New Worlds who at International Congresses sanctioned the General Rules of the Association, forgot that the very scope of its programme would allow the declassed elements to worm their way in and establish, at its very heart, secret organisations whose efforts, instead of being directed against the bourgeoisie and the existing governments, would be turned against the International itself. Such has been the case with the Alliance of Socialist Democracy" ("Report on the Alliance published by the Hague Congress, Introduction". Quoted from Minutes and Documents of the Hague Congress P. 505).

The conclusion to the same document summarises the main aspects of Bakunin's political programme in four points, two of which again emphasise the decisive role of the declassed.

"1. All the depravities in which the life of declassed persons ejected from the upper strata of society must inevitably become involved are proclaimed to be so many ultra-revolutionary virtues" (...)

"4. The economic and political struggle of the workers for their emancipation is replaced by the universal pan-destructive acts of heroes of the underworld - this latest incarnation of revolution. In a word, one must let loose the street hooligans suppressed by the workers themselves in "the revolutions on the Western classical model" and thus place gratuitously at the disposal of the reactionaries a well-disciplined gang of agents provocateurs" (Minutes and Documents p611).

And the conclusion adds:

"The resolutions adopted by the Hague Congress against the Alliance were therefore merely a matter of duty; the Congress could not allow the International, that great creation of the proletariat, to fall into nets spread by the riff-raff of the ruling classes" (p611-612). The report is signed by the members of the Congress Commission investigating the Alliance: Dupont, Engels, Frankel, Le Moussu, Marx, Seraillier.

In other words, the social basis of the Alliance consisted of the riff-raff of the ruling classes, the declasses, attempting to mobilise the riff-raff of the working class, the lumpen-proletariat, for its intrigues against communist organisations.

Bakunin himself was the embodiment of the declassed aristocrat.

"...having acquired in his youth all the vices of the imperial officers of the past (he was an officer), he applied to the revolution all the evil instincts of his tartar and lordly origin. This type of Tartar lord is well known. It was a true unfettering of evil passions: beating, thrashing and torturing their serfs, raping women, being drunk from one morning to the next, inventing with a barbaric refinement all the forms of the most abject profanation of human nature and dignity - such was the life, agitated and revolutionary, of those lords. Well, did not the Tartar Horostratus lord apply to the revolution, for want of feudal serfs, all his base instincts, all the evil passions of his brethren" (Report of Utin to the Hague Congress. M + D, p 448).

It is this attraction of the scum of the upper and of the lower classes for each other which explains the fascination of Bakunin, the declassed aristocrat, for the criminal milieu and the lumpen-proletariat. The "theoretician" Bakunin needs the criminal energies of the underworld, of the lumpen-proletariat, to carry out his programme. This role was assumed by Nechayev in Russia, who put into practice what Bakunin preached, manipulating and blackmailing the members of his Committee and executing those who tried to leave it. Bakunin did not hesitate to theorise this alliance of the declassed "great man" and the criminal.

"Brigandage is one of the most honourable forms of the Russian people's life. The brigand is a hero, a protector, a people's avenger, the irreconcilable enemy of the state, and of all social and civil order established by the state, a fighter to the death against the whole civilisation of the civil servants, the nobles, the priests and the crown ... He who fails to understand brigandage understands nothing of Russian popular history. He who is not in sympathy with it, cannot be in sympathy with Russian popular life, and has no heart for the measureless, ago-long sufferings of the people; he belongs to the enemy camp, among the supporters of the state (Bakunin: The Setting of the Revolutionary Question, quoted in the Report on the Alliance, M+D p573).

The declassed in politics: a breeding ground for provocation

The main motive for such declassed elements to enter politics is not identification with the cause of the working class or a passion for its goal of communism, but a burning hatred and spirit of revenge of the uprooted against society. In his "Revolutionary Catechism" Bakunin thus declares.

"He is not a revolutionary if he holds on to anything whatever in this world. He must not hesitate before the destruction of any position, tie or man belonging to this world. He must hate everything and everybody equally" (From the Documents of the Hague Congress P.601).

Lacking any ties of loyalty to any class of society, and believing in no social perspective except their own advancement, the declassed pseudo-revolutionary is not animated by the goal of a future, more progressive form of society, but by a nihilistic wish to destroy.

"While not recognising any other activity but that of destruction, we acknowledge that the forms in which it manifests itself may be extremely varied: poison, dagger, noose, etc. The revolution sanctifies all without distinction" (Bakunin: The Principles of Revolution. M + D p 575).  

It should go without saying that such a mentality, such a social environment is a veritable breeding ground for political provocation. If the provocateurs, police informers and political adventurers, these most dangerous enemies of proletarian organisations, are employed by the ruling classes, they are nevertheless spontaneously produced by the process of declassment constantly going on above all under capitalism. A few brief extracts from Bakunin's "Revolutionary Catechism" will suffice to illustrate this point.

§10 advises the "true militant" to exploit his comrades.

"Each comrade should have at hand several revolutionaries from the second and third rank, that is, from those who have not been fully initiated. He must consider them as part of the general revolutionary capital placed at his disposal. He must expand his share of the capital economically and try to extract from it as much profit as possible".

§ 18 puts forward how to live off the rich.

"We must exploit them in every way possible, outwit them, confuse them, and, whenever possible, by possessing ourselves of their filthy secrets, make them our slaves. In this way, their power, connections, influence and wealth will become an inexhaustible treasure and an invaluable help in various enterprises."

§19 proposes the infiltration of the liberals and other parties.

"We can conspire with these on their own programme, putting up an appearance of following them blindly. We must get them into our hands, seize their secrets, compromise them completely, so that retreat becomes impossible for them, and make use of them to cause trouble within the state".

§20 certainly speaks for itself.

"The fifth category consists of doctrinaires, conspirators, revolutionaries, all those who babble at meetings and on paper. They must be constantly encouraged and inveigled into practical and dangerous demonstrations which will have the effect of eliminating the majority, while making true revolutionaries out of some ".

§21 "The sixth category is very important - the women, who must be divided into three classes: first useless women without spirit or heart, who must be exploited in the same way as the third and fourth categories of men; second, fervent, devoted and capable women, who are nevertheless not with us because they have not yet arrived at a practical and phrase less revolutionary awareness; they must be used like the fifth category of men; finally, women who are entirely with us, that is to say, who have been fully initiated and who have accepted our programme in its entirety. We must treat them as the most valuable of our treasures, for without their help we can do nothing" (M+D p600-602).

What is striking is the similarity between the methods expounded by Bakunin, and those employed by present day religious sects, which in general, although dominated by the state, are usually founded around declassed adventurers. As we have seen in the previous articles, Bakunin's organisational model was freemasonry, the precursor of the modem phenomenon of religious sects.

A terrible weapon against the workers' movement

The activities of declassed political adventurers are particularly dangerous for the workers' movement. Proletarian revolutionary organisations can only exist and function properly on the base of a profound mutual trust between the militants and between the groups of the communist milieu. The success of political parasitism in general, and of adventurers in particular, depends on the contrary precisely on the capacity to undermine mutual trust, destroying the political principles of behaviour upon which they are based.

In a letter to Nechayev, dated June 1870, Bakunin clearly reveals his intentions regarding the International.

"Those societies whose goals are close to our own, will have to be made to unite with us or at least submit to us, without even noticing this. In doing this, the unreliable elements have to be removed from their midst. Those societies hostile or harmful to us must be destroyed. Finally, the government has to be removed. All of this cannot be achieved by the truth alone. It won't work without tricks, cleverness and lies".

One has to recognise that the struggle which has broken out in the midst of the International is none other than between two secret societies". In the German language edition there is a footnote of the anarchist historian Max Nettlau, a passionate admirer of Bakunin, admitting that these accusations against Marx are completely untrue (Bakunin: Gott und der Staat ... p216-218). See also Bakunin's anti-semitic Rapports personnels avec Marx, where Marxism is presented as part of a Jewish conspiracy allegedly linked to the Rothschild family, and which we refer to in our article "Marxism against Freemasonry", International Review 87.

The project of Bakuninism is Bakunin

The methods employed by Bakunin were those of the declassed rabble. But what goal did they serve?

The sole political concern of Bakunin was: Bakunin. He entered the workers' movement in pursuit of his own personal project.

The International was very clear about this. The first major text of the General Council on the Alliance, the internal circular on the Alleged Splits in the International already declares Bakunin's goal to be that of "replacing the General Council with his own personal dictatorship". The Congress report on the Alliance develops on this theme.

"The International was already firmly established when Mikhail Bakunin took it into his head to play the part of the proletariats emancipator (...) In order to win recognition for himself as head of the International, he had to present himself as head of another army whose absolute devotion to him was to be insured by a secret organisation. And having openly planted his society in the International, he counted on extending its ramifications into all sections and on taking over absolute control by this means" (M + D pp509, 511).

This personal project existed long before Bakunin thought of joining the International. When Bakunin escaped from Siberia and came to London in 1861, he drew a negative balance sheet of his first attempt to establish himself in western European revolutionary circles - during the revolutions of 1848-49.

"It is bad to be active in a foreign land. I experienced this in the revolutionary years: neither in France nor in Germany was I able to gain a foothold. And so, while preserving all my ardent sympathy of former years for the progressive movement of the whole world, in order not to waste the rest of my life I must henceforth limit my direct activity to Russia, Poland and the Slavs" (Bakunin: To the Russian Polish and All Slav Friends, M+D p615):

Here, Bakunin's motive for his change of orientation is clearly not the good of the cause, but the question of "gaining a foothold": the first characteristic of political adventurers.

Bakunin seeks to win the ruling classes for his personal ambitions

This text is also known as Bakunin's Pan-Slavic Manifesto.

"They say that Emperor Nicholas himself, not long before his death, when preparing to declare war on Austria, wanted to call all the Austrian and Turkish Slavs, Magyars and Italians to a general uprising. He had stirred up against himself an eastern storm and, to defend himself against it; he wanted to transform himself from a despotic emperor into a revolutionary emperor" (M+D p616).

In his pamphlet The People's Cause from 1862, on the role of the contemporary tsar Alexander II of Russia, Bakunin declares that it is "he alone who could accomplish in Russia the most serious and most beneficial revolution without shedding a drop of blood. He can still do so now. (...) To stop the movement of the people who are wakening up after a thousand years of sleep is impossible. But if the tsar were to put himself firmly and boldly at the head of the movement, his power for the good and the glory of Russia would be unlimited" (M+D pp619-620).

Continuing in this vein, Bakunin calls on the tsar to invade Western Europe.

"It is time for the Germans to go to Germany. If the tsar had realised that henceforth he must be the head not of an enforced centralisation but of a free federation of free peoples, then, relying on a solid and regenerated force, allying himself with Poland and the Ukraine, breaking all the detested German alliances, and boldly raising the pan-Slav banner, he would become the saviour of the Slav world" (M+D p622).

The International comments on this as follows.

"Pan-Slavism is an invention of the St. Petersburg cabinet and has no other goal but to extend Russia's frontiers further west and south. But since one dare not announce to the Austrian, Prussian and Turkish Slavs that their destiny is to be absorbed into the great Russian Empire, one represents Russia to them as the power which will deliver them from the foreign yoke and which will reunite them in a great free federation" (M+D p616).

Bakunin hoped to persuade the tsar to give his internal policy a revolutionary-democratic tinge by convoking a national assembly, thus allowing Bakunin to organise the Polish and other radical and émigré movements in the west as Russia's ultra-left Trojan horse in Western Europe.

"Unfortunately, the tsar did not deem it appropriate to convoke the national assembly for which Bakunin, in this pamphlet, was already proposing his candidature. He gained nothing out of his electoral manifesto and his genuflexions before Romanov. Humiliatingly deceived in his frank confidence, he had no alternative but to throw himself into pan-destructive anarchy" (The Alliance and the IWA p625).

Having been disappointed by tsarism, but unwavering in pursuit of his personal leadership over the European revolutionary movements, Bakunin gravitated towards freemasonry in the mid-1860s in Italy, himself founding various secret societies (see part 1 of this series). Using these methods, Bakunin infiltrated first the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom, which he tried to unite with the International "on equal terms" under his own leadership (see part 2). When this also failed, he infiltrated and attempted to take over the International itself, above all via his secret Alliance. For this project, entailing the destruction of the world wide political organisation of the working class, Bakunin finally won the whole-hearted support of the ruling classes:

"The whole of the liberal and police press openly sided with them [the Alliance]; in their personal defamation of the General Council they were backed by self-styled reformers from all countries" (The Alliance and the IWA. M + D P.535).

Disloyalty towards all classes, hatred of society

Although seeking their support, Bakunin was never simply an agent of tsarism, freemasonry, the Peace League, or the western police press. As a true declasse Bakunin felt no more sense of loyalty to the ruling than to the exploited classes of society. On the contrary, his ambition was to manipulate and deceive the working and the ruling classes alike, in order to realise his personal ambitions and take revenge on society as a whole. This is why the ruling classes, perfectly aware of this fact, used Bakunin whenever it suited them, but never trusted him, and were delighted to abandon him to his fate as soon as his usefulness had expired. Thus, as soon as Bakunin had been publicly exposed by the International, his political career was finished.

Bakunin felt a genuine, burning hatred against the ruling feudal and capitalist classes. But since he hated the working class even more, and generally despised the exploited, he saw revolution or social change as the task of a small but determined elite of unscrupulous declasses under his own personal leadership. This vision of social transformation was necessarily a fantastic, mystical absurdity, since it did not emanate from any class soundly rooted in social reality, but from the vengeful fantasy of an outsider.

Above all, Bakunin like all political adventurers believed in changing society, not via the class struggle, but via the manipulative skills of the revolutionary brotherhood.

"A real revolution does not need individuals standing at the head of the crowd and commanding it, but men hidden invisibly among the crowd and forming an invisible link between one crowd and another, and thus invisibly giving one and the same direction, one spirit and character to the movement. This is the sole purpose of bringing in a secret preparatory organisation and only to this extent is it necessary" (Bakunin: Principles of Revolution, M+D p574).

Such a vision was not new, but was cultivated inside the "Illuminati" wing of freemasonry since the time of the French Revolution, and which later became specialised in infiltrating the workers' movement. Bakunin shared the same adventurist idea of political, and above all of total, anarchic personal "liberation" through a machiavellian policy of infiltration, in which the different classes of society are played off against each other.

This is why the political project of the Alliance was to infiltrate and take over not only the International, but also the organisations of the ruling class.

Thus, 14 of Bakunin's revolutionary catechism tells us: "A revolutionary must penetrate everywhere, into the upper and the middle classes alike, into the merchant's shop, into the church, into the aristocratic palace, into the bureaucratic, military and literary world, into the Third Department [secret police] and even into the imperial palace" (M+D p601).

The secret statutes of the Alliance declare:

"All the international brethren know one another. No political secret must ever exist among them. None may take part in any secret society whatsoever without the definite consent of his committee, and in case of need, should the latter demand it, without that of the Central Committee. And he may take part only on condition that he discloses to them all secrets that could interest them, directly or indirectly" .

The Hague Congress Commission report comments on this passage as follows:

"The Pietris and the Stiebers only use inferior or lost people as informers; but by sending their false brethren into secret societies to betray secrets of the latter, the Alliance imposes the role of spy on the very men who, according to its plan, should take control of the ‘world revolution'":

The essence of political adventurism

Whereas the revolutionary joins the workers' movement in order to help it fulfil its historic mission, the adventurist joins it in order to make the workers' movement serve his own "historic" mission. This is what sharply distinguishes the adventurer from the proletarian revolutionary. The adventurer is no more a revolutionary than the careerist or the petty bourgeois reformer. The difference is that the adventurer has an insight into the historic importance of the workers' movement. But he relates to this in a completely parasitic manner.

The adventurer is in general a declasse. There are many such people within bourgeois society, with great ambitions, and with an extremely high estimation of their own abilities, but who are unable to fulfil their high flying ambitions within the ruling class. Full of bitterness and cynicism, such people often slide towards the lumpen-proletariat, living a bohemian or criminal existence. Others prove an ideal work force for the state as informers and agents provocateurs. But among this declassed magma, there are a few exceptional individuals with the political talent to recognise that the workers' movement can give them a second chance. They can try to use it as a springboard to fame and importance, and thus take revenge on the ruling class, which in reality is the object of their efforts and ambitions. Such people are constantly resentful of the failure of society at large to recognise their alleged genius. At the same time they are fascinated, not by marxism or the workers' movement, but by the power of the ruling class and its methods of manipulation.

The behaviour of the adventurer is conditioned by the fact that he does not share the goal of the movement he has joined. Evidently he must hide his real, personal project from the movement as a whole. Only his closest disciples can be allowed even an idea of his real attitude towards the movement.

As we have seen in the case of Bakunin, there is an inherent tendency for political adventurers to collaborate in secret with the ruling classes. In reality, such collaboration belongs to the very essence of adventurism. How else is the adventurer supposed to achieve his "historic role"? How else is he to prove himself to the class from whom he feels rejected or ignored? In fact, it is only the bourgeoisie which can bestow the admiration and recognition which the adventurer seeks, and which the workers are not going to give him.

But as Marx and Engels realised, the political adventurer is not less, but more dangerous to proletarian organisations than common police agents. This is why agents uncovered within the International were quickly expelled and denounced, without any major disruptions to its work, whereas the uncovering of Bakunin's activities cost several years and threatened the very existence of the organisation. It is not difficult for communists to understand that a police informer is their enemy. The adventurer, on the contrary, to the extent that he has been working on his own account, will always be defended by petty bourgeois sentimentalism, as in the sad case of Mehring.

History shows how dangerous this sentimentalism is. Whereas the likes of Bakunin and Lassalle, or the "National Bolsheviks" around Laufenberg and Wolltheim at the end of World War I in Hamburg, made secret deals with the ruling class against the workers' movement, many other "great" adventurists joined the bourgeoisie: Parvus, Mussolini, Pilsudski, Stalin and others.

Adventurism and the marxist movement

Long before the foundation of the First International, the marxist movement had developed a full scale analysis of political adventurism as a phenomenon inside the ruling class. This analysis was made above all in relation to Louis Bonaparte, the "emperor" of France in the 1850s/60s. In the struggle against Bakunin, marxism developed all the essential elements of such a phenomenon within the workers' movement, without however using that terminology. In the German workers' movement, the concept of adventurism was developed in the struggle against the Lassallean leader Schweitzer, who in collaboration with Bismarck worked towards maintaining the split within the workers' party. In the 1880s, Engels and other marxists denounced the political adventurism of the leadership of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, and compared their behaviour to that of the Bakuninists. From that time on, this conception began to be appropriated by the workers' movement as a whole, despite the existence of an opportunist resistance to it. In the Trotskyist movement before the Second World War it still remained an important tool of the defence of the organisation, being correctly applied to the case of Molinier and others.

Today, in the phase of capitalism's decomposition, and the unprecedented acceleration of the process of declassment and lumpenisation, and in face of the offensive of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary milieu, particularly via parasitism, its a matter of life and death to restore and defend the marxist conception of adventurism, and to renew the struggle against it.

Kr

[1] Mehring's discrediting of the Marxists struggle against Bakuninism and Lassalleanism was to have devastating effects on the workers' movement for decades to come. Not only did it lead to a partial rehabilitation of political adventurers such as Bakunin or Lassalle. Above all, it allowed the opportunist wing of social democracy before 1914 to banish into oblivion the lessons of the great struggles for the defence of the revolutionary organisations fought in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a decisive element in the opportunist strategy to isolate the Bolsheviks within the Second International, whose struggle against Menshevism stood in this great tradition. The Third International also suffered from this legacy of Mehring. Thus, in 1921, an article by Stoecker "Concerning Bakuninism" bases itself on Mehring's critique of Marx in order to justify the most dangerous and adventurist aspects of the March 1921 action of the KPD in Germany.

[2] In the last years of his life, during World War I, Mehring became one of the most passionate defenders of the Bolsheviks within the German Left, thus revising, at least implicitly, his previous critique of Marx on organisational questions.

As the Stalinist regimes collapsed, the bourgeoisie conducted a vast ideological campaign against the working class on the "superiority of capitalism" and the "impossibility of communism". It announced the arrival of a "New World Order": the end of armed blocs, falling arms spending, and the opening of new markets in Eastern Europe were going to lead to an era of peace and prosperity. Since then, the famous "peace dividend" has become massacres and ever-bloodier conflicts, while the hope of "prosperity" has been transformed into a deepening crisis and a severer austerity than ever. As for the "new markets" in the East, here too reality has revealed the truth: during the 1990s, these countries' economic and social collapse has given the lie to the bourgeoisie's campaign.

The collapse of Stalinism: an expression of capitalism's historical bankruptcy

Democrats and Stalinists always agreed in identifying Stalinism with communism, in order to make the working class believe that the Eastern regimes were communist. This made it possible for the bourgeoisie to identify the collapse of Stalinism with the death of communism, and the bankruptcy of marxism. In reality, communism means the end of the exploitation of man by man, the end of wage labour and the division of society into opposing classes; it is the realm of abundance, where "the government of men is replaced by the administration of things" , and it is only possible on a world scale. The totalitarian state, generalised scarcity, the rule of the commodity and wage labour and the consequent workers' revolts, all bore witness to the utterly capitalist and exploitative nature of these countries' regimes. In fact, the Stalinist form of state capitalism was the heir, not of the October revolution, but of the counter-revolution that drowned it in blood. It foundered in the complete ruin of forms of capitalist economy that it had built in the so-called "socialist" countries. It was not communism that collapsed in the East, but a particularly fragile and militarized variety of state capitalism.

The internal collapse of an imperialist bloc, under the weight of the crisis and its own contradictions, without firing a shot, is a situation without precedent in the history of capitalism. The disappearance of an imperialist bloc as a result of the crisis, rather than of military defeat or revolution, is due to capitalism's entry into its terminal phase: the phase of decomposition. This phase is characterised by a situation where the two fundamental classes in society are confronting each other, without either being able to impose its own response to capitalism's insuperable contradictions: all-out war for the bourgeoisie, the development of a dynamic leading to revolution for the proletariat. The contradictions of a crisis-ridden capitalism are only getting worse, and meanwhile the bourgeoisie's inability to offer society the least perspective for society, and the proletariat's difficulty in openly asserting its own, can only lead to phenomenon of general decomposition, where society is rotting on its feet. These new and unprecedented historic conditions - society's temporary blockage - explain why the effects of the capitalist crisis have been (and will be) have been so extensive and devastating.

The fall in production since 1989 in the East European countries has been the worst ever recorded in capitalism's history, far worse than the great crisis of the 1930s, or the beginning of the second world imperialist conflict. In most of these countries, production fell more than the 30 % experienced by the USA between 1929 and 1933. After 1989, production fell by 40 % in Russia, and by almost 60% in ex-Soviet Republics like Ukraine, Kazakhstan, or Lithuania, far worse than during the USSR's rout following the German invasion in 1942 (-25%). In Romania, production fell by 30 %, in Poland and Hungary by 20 %. This gigantic destruction of productive forces, the brutal and sudden decline in the living conditions of whole sectors of the world population, is above all the product of the capitalist system's world historic crisis. Such phenomena, whose importance and extent are analogous with the decadence of previous social forms, are unparalleled in their violence. They give us the measure of what a social system in its last throes can do: reduce tens, even hundreds of millions of human beings into utter poverty from one day to the next.

Towards a radiant future, or Third World status?

After such a drop in production, such a decline in living conditions for a large part of the planet, it is somewhat indecent to talk about positive growth. When you start from zero, growth is mathematically infinite! In fact, the lower the starting point, the higher the growth rate: an increase of one from a starting point of two (building one extra truck, for example) corresponds to a growth rate of 50 %, whereas an increase of 10 from a base of 100 gives a weaker growth rate of 10%. Keeping things in proportion, in this context the positive growth rates do not mean much.

Any talk of a "radiant future" is a sinister swindle. Whether at the level of the evolution of production, income, or the capitalist system's general dynamic, everything indicates that all these regions are moving towards Third World status. The massive use of credit and budget deficits, as in the case of German reunification, or the brutal and widespread impoverishment in other countries, provide no solid basis for any improvement in the economic and social situation.

The example of German reunification is significant in many respects. The German bourgeoisie had to assume a reunification that was forced on it politically, and to have recourse to exceptional methods to avoid being submerged by an exodus of the East German population, and a powerful wave of social discontent. In fact, this reunification was only possible thanks to a massive transfer of capital from West to East to finance investment and social programmes: about DM200 billion per year, the equivalent of 7% of West German GDP - but 60% of East Germany's. The reintegration of the GDR into the great German family is presented to us as an example of successful transition: in 1994, growth rates in the ex-GDR had risen to almost 20 %!

which has grown from 43 % of GDP in 1989, to 55 % in 1994: an increase of 12 percentage points in five years. This strategy of increasing the national debt in order to support the economy has only succeeded in putting the problem off for later: a certain economic activity has been maintained in the East, the infrastructure has been modernized, the transfer of revenue has allowed consumer goods to be purchased from Western manufacturers. However, this support for the Eastern economy has been concentrated above all on the building and public works sector in order to renew the infrastructure, which is an essential strategic objective for the German bourgeoisie. But in reality, this sector is unable to fuel a lasting take-off for the East German economy. Hardly were the torches extinguished after the celebration of the 7th anniversary of Reunification, than a sombre perspective presented itself: the source of activity in the building industry is running out with the progressive reduction in the massive transfers of funds from West to East under the pressure of financial austerity, while the faltering new industries will have difficulty surviving in a period of general recession and worldwide market saturation. In fact, since 1993 the German state has presented the working class with the bill for reunification, first with a heavy increase in taxes, followed by an implacable austerity programme: increased working hours in the public sector, closures, brutal increases in the prices of public services, massive reductions in civil service personnel.

Given the strategic importance for Germany of stabilising the ex-GDR, the situation there can still keep up appearances. However, if we look a little further afield, and ignore all the mystifying speeches, the economic and social situation in all the other East European countries remains catastrophic. With the exception of Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, the countries whose growth rates have returned to the black - and we have seen just how much importance we should attach to such figures - are once again stagnating or in decline. Growth in Albania has fallen to 6 % in 1995 from 11 % in 1993, in Bulgaria (3 %) and Armenia (7 %) it has flattened out since last year, growth has fallen in Hungary from 2.5% in 1994 to 2% in 1996, in Poland from 7% in 1995 to 6% in 1996, in Slovakia from 7 % in 1995 to 6 % in 1996, , in Romania from 7% in 1995 to 4% in 1996, in the Baltic countries from 5 % in 1994 to 3.2% in 1996. Other economic indicators are no better. True, hyper-inflation has been throttled, but only thanks to prescriptions worthy of Third World countries. Drastic austerity plans, redundancies, and swathes cut through the state's social budget have reduced inflation to levels considered "acceptable", though still very higher, and for most countries still higher than they were five years previously.

Inflation (%)

More and more economic behaviour in these regions reveals features characteristic of the Third World. Almost all economic activity is orientated towards short-term profit, capital is either placed abroad or engaged in mainly speculative enterprises, with only a marginal involvement in the productive sector. When the situation is so bad that "legal" profit no longer suffices, criminal income grows. Despite being widely underestimated, they are thought to represent 5% of Russia's GDP, which is a large increase on the 1 % of 1993, and are well above the world average of 2 %.

Towards absolute pauperisation

Equally typical of under-developed countries is the spectacular growth of the informal economy and private consumption, to make up somewhat for the drastic decline in official income. This can be observed in the gap between the enormous fall in wage income, and the lesser fall in consumption. The latter is kept up on the one hand by the 5-15 % of the population which has benefited from the "transition", and on the other, increasingly, by non-monetary goods (private agricultural activity). Thus in Bulgaria, where real wages fell by 42 % in 1991 and by 15% in 1993, we can see that the proportion of official income as part of family income has fallen by 10 % in 2 years (from 44.8% in 1990 to 35.3% in 1992), while the proportion of non-monetary agricultural revenue has increased by 16% (from 21.3 % t037.3 %). To survive, workers in these countries must find extra income to supplement more and more meagre wages, paid for work which is more and more difficult, and in worsening conditions. The result is an explosion in the pauperisation of the vast majority of the population. UNICEF has established a poverty line corresponding to a level 40-50 % below the real average wage of 1989 (before the "reforms"). The data needs no comment! The number of households living in poverty has been multiplied by 2 to 6 times. More than half Bulgaria's households live below the poverty line, 44 % in Romania, and a third in Slovakia and Poland.

Percentage of households living below the poverty line (estimate)

The table on the following page illustrates how East European countries have plummeted to the level of the Third World, and makes it possible to evaluate the decline in their populations' living conditions: the figures in the second column indicate the average purchasing power relative to that of the USA ( = 100) in 1994, while the third column expresses the 1994 figure as a percentage of that for 1987. The calculation still under -estimates the real deterioration in working-class living conditions, since it measures the evolution of average purchasing power. However, it gives an idea of how far the decline has gone - a decline which has been all the more painful in that the starting point was already very low: in many of the ex-USSR's republics, living standards were already three times lower than in the USA; in Russia, they were almost two times lower, and 30% lower in the other countries. When we compare the present levels of Eastern European countries with others, we can see that they really are part of the Third World: Russia (17.8) has been reduced to the rank of a country like Tunisia (19.4) or Algeria, even below that of Brazil (21). Most of the ex -Soviet Republics are at the same level as Bolivia (9.3), or at best, of Mexico (27.2). How vain is all the talk of the perspective of development and the "radiant future"!

As the reality becomes better known, the last hopes and theories for a possible improvement in the situation are falling to pieces. The facts speak for themselves: it is impossible for these countries' economies to recover. There is no more hope for the countries of the ex-Eastern bloc than there has been during the last 100 years for the countries of the Third World. Neither a reform of the old order, nor the "liberal" variant of Western capitalism, which is nothing less than a much more sophisticated version of state capitalism, can offer a solution. It is the whole capitalist system worldwide which is in crisis. The lack of markets, austerity, etc is not unique to a ruined Eastern Europe, or an agonizing Third World. These mechanisms lie at the heart of the most developed capitalism, and strike at every country in the world.

Estimate of GNP per inhabitant, expressed in equivalent purchasing power (USA = 100)

C.Mcl

Sources:

- L 'economie mondiale en 1997, CEPII, Editions La Decouverte, collection Reperes no 200.

- "Transition economique a l'Est", La documentation francaise no 5023

- Rapport sur le developpement dans le monde 1996: "De l'economie planifiee a l'economie de marche", World Bank

From the endless civil war between Afghan factions sponsored by the various imperialist powers, to the lowering tensions that are intensifying in ex-Yugoslavia despite the pax Americana of the Dayton accords, recent events fully confirm the validity of this framework.

Here, we will deal more specifically with the situation in the Middle East and around the Great Lakes, inasmuch as they are a particularly striking illustration of how these rivalries are spreading chaos and decomposition to ever greater areas of the planet.

The Middle East: "Every man for himself" and the crisis of American leadership

The election of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was already a serious upset for the USA, in a region of immense strategic importance which for years has been an exclusively American sphere of influence. It showed, even in a country as dependent as Israel on the US, how centrifugal forces and the desire for political independence are gaining the upper hand over any policy of regional stabilisation, even one enforced by the world gendarme.

Since then, repeated provocation by the Netanyahu government has led to armed confrontations between Jewish settlers and the police forces of the new Palestinian Authority, as well as dozens of deaths in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli government has been given the pretext for hardening its position in all the negotiations to the point where, in the name of the threat to national security, it has even called into question the meagre accords signed by Peres and Arafat in Oslo. Meanwhile, the same tendency to "every man for himself' triumphed in the Arab capitals. Israel's "hereditary enemies", starting with Syria and the Palestinians, reached a reconciliation, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia, solid US allies until then, increased their open contestation of American imperialism. That Egypt, the partner of the historic Camp David agreement, should refuse to take part in Clinton's damage-limitation summit in Washington speaks volumes for the USA's increasing loss of control over the situation in the Middle East. These events threaten to destroy a grip on the region which the US has carefully nurtured during the last 20 years.

The decline of American influence can only be mirrored by a rise of its imperialist rivals, whose ambitions grow in inverse proportion to the US' difficulties. The great beneficiary of recent events in the Middle East is undoubtedly France, which has immediately undertaken to gather together all the region's malcontents by posing as the spokesman for anti-American and anti-Israeli feeling, as we saw from Chirac's spectacular tour in October. Everywhere he went, he promoted the idea of a "partnership in the peace process", clearly indicating France's intention to stoke the flames and to sabotage Washington's policy by every means possible. Far from encouraging "peace", this is an open call for the holy alliance of Arab states against the common enemy, both Israeli and ... American - in other words an encouragement of war and chaos.

Its leadership shaken on the international scene, the world's greatest power must counter-attack: and it is less and less able to do so "peacefully", as the warning shot represented by the missile attacks on Iraq has shown (see International Review no.87). In fact, the US intends both to show its determination to keep its position as the world's military master, and to sow discord among the European powers by playing on their divergent interests. It is thus no surprise that today its blows are aimed first and foremost at French imperialism, which has the pretention to lead an anti-American crusade[1].

Zaire: America's offensive against French imperialism

Having helped the pro-American Rwandan Popular Front to power in 1994, the USA has continued to advance its pawns throughout the Great Lakes region. First, they have consolidated the RPF's power through increased economic and military aid. Then, they continued their tactic of encircling the French positions by putting maximum pressure on Burundi after Buyoya's pro-French coup d'Etat, through the embargo imposed by all the surrounding pro-American anglophone countries. This tactic has born fruit, since the Buyoya regime had no qualms about joining Rwanda and Uganda in the anti-French alliance as soon as the first confrontations began in Kivu. Finally, the US used the pretext of skirmishes provoked by the regroupment of one-time (Hutu) Rwandan Army forces under French auspices in the refugee camps on the frontier between Rwanda and Zaire, to carry the war into Zaire itself by fomenting the "revolt" of the Kivu Banyamulenge, with the success we have seen.

Washington's offensive has effectively succeeded in isolating French imperialism, and weakening more and more its position. France is forced to rely on Mobutu's Zaire, which is in a ruinous condition politically, economically, and militarily. During the confrontation between Eastern and Western blocs, Zaire was a key link in the Western bloc's anti-Soviet defence. Today, it is one of the world's most fragile strategic regions, and a prey to the most advanced decomposition. And the USA has exploited Zaire's reigning chaos, aggravated by Mobutu's illness and the resulting internecine struggles, and the disintegration of its army, to strengthen its strategic operations in the region. French imperialism, which had intended to use the Franco-African summit of Ouagadougou - where Uganda and Tanzania had been invited for the first time - to put pressure on Rwanda through its proposal of a conference on the Great Lakes region, has thus been caught out.

Rejected and denounced by Rwanda and the Zairean rebels, who had been the victims of its imperialist activity, France had to give in and call for an American intervention, within which it hoped to find a place. The American bourgeoisie was quick to exploit its situation of strength, and oblige the French to surrender completely. It delayed intentionally, declaring its willingness to intervene provided that this was a "humanitarian" not a military operation, that there should be no interference in a "local conflict" (all the more happy to avoid interference, since its own henchmen had the upper hand!), and cynically pointing out the "the United States are not the Salvation Army"! The White House even gave itself the pleasure of blaming French imperialism for the chaos engulfing the Great Lakes region. A campaign was developed on the arms sales by several countries to Rwanda during the genocide of 1994, which implicated above all the French state, and turned the spotlight on its sordid role there. The Big Boss was thus able to highlight the shabby greed of a French government which" has supported decadent regimes" and "is no longer able to impose itself" on Africa (declarations by Daniel Simpson, the US ambassador in Kinshasa), and which only calls the "international community" to the rescue to defend its own private imperialist interests.

French imperialism has thus had to abandon its positions, in the face of an offensive minutely planned by the strategists of the Pentagon. It has been pushed out of East Africa, and reduced to a seriously weakened position in the West. This situation can only sharpen existing rivalries: the French will try to react, as we have already seen in their attempt to recuperate Burundi during the Franco-African summit by calling for a raising of the embargo directed against the latter, while the chaos around the Great Lakes is already spreading to Zaire, already seriously gangrened by its general social decomposition. Zaire's strategic position in the heart of Africa, its immense size, and its mineral wealth, all make it a choice target for imperialist appetites. The perspective of its collapse as a result of the military conflict that has spread into the country, brings with it the threat of a new explosion of chaos, not just in Zaire itself but also among its neighbours, especially to the North (Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan), and in nearby countries like Gabon and the Cameroons, which all belong to the French sphere of influence. All this gives us some idea of the alarm that afflicts the French bourgeoisie as to the durability of its African profits. And this new advance of imperialist chaos cannot but aggravate and spread still further the dreadful misery and barbarism that already reigns over most of the African continent.

It is thus strikingly clear that all the imperialist sharks' hypocritical calls for "humanitarian help" and "peace" only serve as a cover for new military expeditions, and so the worsening of chaos and barbarism. With monstrous cynicism, all the national bourgeoisies cry crocodile tears over the tragic fate of the local populations and refugees, while the latter are reduced to the state of impotent hostages used as weapons in the imperialist rivalries between the great powers. This whole enormous spectacle is laid before us with the complicity - whether conscious or not - of the "non-governmental organisations", the humanitarian associations like. Oxfam and Medecins sans Frontieres, which have themselves pleaded for military intervention.

for starting the massacres of 1994. Behind the alibi of a military intervention to "stop the genocide", they provoked a mass exodus of populations, and encouraged the creation of the precarious refugee camps. Since then they have profited from the degeneration of the situation, which is presented today as inevitable, to hatch new and bloody intrigues.

Far from "rebuilding order and peace", all these imperialist gangsters are only increasing chaos, as they escalate their rivalries and carry out their underhand tricks. They are an expression of a moribund capitalism, which can only hurl into barbarism ever vaster areas of the planet, and drag more and more of the world's population into massacres, forced migration, famine, and the epidemics that feed on the slaughter.

Jos, 12/12/96

[1] We have pointed out in many texts that in the final instance, Germany is the USA's main imperialist rival, and the only power which might eventually lead a bloc opposed to that of the world's greatest power. However, and this is one of the characteristics of today's chaos, we are still far from such an "organisation" of imperialist antagonisms. This leaves room for all sorts of situations where "second fiddles" like France can try to play their own game.

In our last article, we saw how the KPD was founded in Germany, at the end of December 1918, in the heat of the struggle. Although the Spartakists had conducted a magnificent work of propaganda against the war, and had intervened determinedly and' with great clarity in the revolutionary movement itself, the KPD was not yet a solid party. The organisation had just begun to be built, its warp and weft was still very loose. At its founding congress, the party was still marked by a great heterogeneity. Different positions confronted each other, not just on the questions of work within the unions and participation in parliament, but also, worse still, on the organisational question. And on this question, the marxist wing around Luxemburg and Jogisches was in a minority.

The experience of this "incomplete" party shows that it is not enough to proclaim the party for it to exist and act as one. A party worthy of the name must possess a solid organisational structure, based on a single conception of organisational unity in both its function and its functioning.

The KPD's immaturity at this level made it unable truly to fulfil its role towards the working class.             

For the German working class - and consequently for the world proletariat - it was a tragedy that during this decisive post-war period, it could not rely in its struggle on the effective support of a party.   

1919: After the repression, the KPD absent from the scene

While the bourgeoisie put into operation its provocation against the workers, as anger and a desire to "have it out" with the enemy spread within the working class, one of the KPD' s most prominent figures, Karl Liebknecht, plunged into the struggle alongside the "revolutionary men of confidence" , against the decisions and warnings of his own party.

Not only did the working class as a whole suffer a tragic defeat, the blows of repression hit the revolutionary militants especially hard. Not only Liebknecht and Luxemburg, but many others with them were murdered, like Leo Jogisches assassinated in March 1919. The KPD was thus decapitated.

It is no accident that it was precisely the marxist wing around Luxemburg and Jogisches which found itself the target for repression. This wing had always watched over the party's cohesion, and could be seen to be most resolute in defence of the organisation.

For months afterwards, with brief interruptions, the KPD was then forced to go underground. From February to March, and then again from May to December, it proved impossible to publish Die Rote Fahne. In the wave of strikes between February and April (see International Review no 83), it was thus unable to play the determining role that it should have done. Its voice was all but stifled by Capital.

If the KPD had been sufficiently strong, disciplined and influential to unmask the bourgeoisie's provocation during the week in January, and to prevent the workers from falling into the trap, the movement would surely have ended very differently.        

The working class thus paid a heavy price for the weaknesses of a party, which then became the target for the most brutal repression. Everywhere, the communists were hunted down. Communications were lost several times between what was left of the Zentrale and the party districts. It was noted, during the national conference of 29th March 1919 that "the local organisations are submerged with agents provocateurs".            

"As far as the union question is concerned, the conference thinks that the slogan "Out of the unions!" is for the moment misplaced (...) Unionist agitation which spreads confusion must be fought not be measures of coercion but by the systematic clarification of differences of conception and tactics" (KPD Zentrale, national conference of 29/03/1919). It was important, on programmatic questions, to start by getting to the bottom of disagreements through discussion.

During a national conference held on 14th/15th June in Berlin, the KPD adopted statutes which asserted the necessity for a strictly centralised party. And although the party took position clearly against unionism, it recommended that no measures be taken against party members who belonged to unions.

During the conference of August 1919, it was decided to appoint a delegate for each of the 22 party districts, without taking account of their size. By contrast, each member of the Zentrale had one vote. No way of nominating delegates had been settled on at the founding congress in January 1918, nor had the question of centralisation been clarified. In August 1919, the Zentrale was over-represented in votes, while the influence and opinion of the local sections was limited. There was thus a danger that the ZentraIe would tend to become autonomous, which increased the suspicions that already existed towards it. However, position of both the Zentrale and of Levi (who had meanwhile been elected to lead it) in favour of work in the unions and parliament, failed to gain the upper hand, since most of the delegates inclined towards the positions of the Left.

As we have shown (see International Review no 83), the numerous waves of struggle which shook the whole of Germany during the first half of 1919, and where the KPD's voice was barely heard, caused large numbers of workers to abandon the unions. The workers felt that the unions, as the classic organs for defence of economic demands, could no longer fulfil their function of defending workers' interests, since they had imposed national unity with the bourgeoisie during the war, and now in this revolutionary situation, once again stood alongside the latter. At the same time, there was no longer the same effervescence as there had been in November and December 1918, when the workers had united in the workers' councils and put in question the bourgeois state. In this situation, many workers created "factory organisations", which were supposed to regroup all the combative workers in "Unionen" (we use the German expression here, to distinguish these new organisations from the traditional trades unions). Like political parties, the "Unionen" adopted platforms aimed at the overthrow of the capitalist system. Many workers came to the conclusion that the "Unionen" should be the sole place of regroupment for proletarian forces, and that the party should dissolve itself within them. During this period, anarcho-syndicalist and council communist ideas gained a wide audience. More than 100,000 workers joined the "Unionen". In August 1919, the General Workers' Union (Allgemeine Arbeiters Union, or AAU) was founded in Essen.

At the same time, the end of the war brought with it a rapid deterioration in working class living conditions. During the war, the workers had been subjected to famine and slaughter; the winter of 1918-19 had completely exhausted them; now they had to pay the price of German imperialism's defeat in the war. The signature of the Versailles Treaty in the summer of 1919 imposed on German capital - but above all on the country's workers - the payment of war reparations.

October 1919 and the 2nd Congress of the KPD: from political confusion to organisational dispersal

The KPD's 2nd Congress took place in Heidelberg, within this context of a reflux in the workers' struggles after the defeats of the first half of 1919. The first points on the agenda were the political situation and the report on administration. The analysis of the political situation dealt mainly with the economic and imperialist questions, and especially with the position of Germany. Almost nothing was said about the balance of class forces at the international level. The weakening of the party, to the point of crisis, seemed to have supplanted the analysis of the state of the class struggle internationally. Moreover, when the priority should have been given to the regroupment of all revolutionary forces, the Zentrale began by putting forward its "Theses on communist principles and tactics" - some of which were to have serious consequences for the party and open the way to numerous splits - and trying to impose them on the Congress.

The Theses stressed that "the revolution is a political struggle by the proletarian masses for political power. This struggle is conducted using every available political and economic means (...) The KPD cannot renounce by principle any political method, in the service of the preparation of these great struggles. Participation in elections must be taken into account as one of these means". Later on, they deal with the question of communists' work in the unions, so as "not to isolate ourselves from the masses".

This work in the unions and in parliament was posed as a question, not of principle but of tactics.

On the organisational level, the Theses rightly rejected federalism, and emphasised the necessity for the most rigorous centralisation.

But the last point closed the door on any discussion, by declaring that "the members of the party who do not share these conceptions of the party's nature, organisation and action, must leave the party".

But it was on the organisational question that the KPD was most deeply divided. At its founding Congress, it was no more than a gathering to the left of the USPD, divided into several wings, especially on the organisation question. The marxist wing around Luxemburg and Jogisches, which defended the organisation's unity and centralisation most determinedly, had to confront all those who either underestimated the organisation's necessity, or else viewed it with suspicion, even outright hostility.

This is why the first challenge for the party's 2nd Congress was to get to grips with the defence and construction of the organisation.

However, conditions were already not very favourable:

- The life of the organisation was under severe attack from the activity of the bourgeoisie. Repression and the conditions of illegality made it impossible to conduct a widespread discussion throughout the local sections on programmatic and organisational questions. The discussion at the Congress was thus not as well-prepared as it should have been.

- The Zentrale elected at the founding Congress had been decimated: three of its original nine members (Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Jogisches) had been assassinated; Mehring was dead, and three others were on the run and so unable to take part. Only Levi, Pieck, Thalheimer and Lange were left.

At the same time, councilist and anarcho-syndicalist ideas were gaining strength. Supporters of the Unionen called for the party to dissolve itself into the Unionen, others wanted it to stand back from struggles for economic demands. Ideas like "the party of leaders" or "the dictatorship of the leaders" began to spread, showing that anti-organisational tendencies were gaining ground.

From the outset, the attitude of the Zentrale sharpened divisions and prepared the exclusion of the real majority.

Moreover, the Zentrale should have followed the example of the debates going on in almost all the communist parties on the parliamentary and union questions, and presented its Theses as a contribution to the discussion, as a means to continued clarification, not as a way of stifling and expelling from the party all those who held a different position. The final point in the Theses, requiring the exclusion of all those with disagreements, reflects and incorrect, monolithic, organisational conception, in contradiction with that of the marxist wing which had regrouped around Luxemburg and Jogisches, and which had always called for the widest possible discussion throughout the organisation.

Whereas the Zentrale elected at the founding Congress adopted a correct political viewpoint, where existing disagreements, even on such fundamental questions as the unions and participation in the elections, were not seen as reasons for splits or exclusions, the one elected at the 2nd Congress contributed, on the basis of a false conception of the organisation, to a fatal disintegration of the party.

The delegates who represented the majority position from the founding Congress were aware of this danger, and asked to be able to consult their respective sections, and "not to take the decision to split in haste".

But the Zentrale demanded an immediate decision. Thirty-one delegates voted in favour of the Theses, eighteen against. The latter, who mostly represented the party's biggest districts numerically, and who were almost all members of the old ISD/IKD, were henceforth considered as excluded.

A split can only take place on the clearest possible basis

To deal responsibly with a discussion on divergent positions, it is necessary that each position should be presented and debated widely and without restrictions. Moreover, in his attack against the marxist wing, Levi amalgamated all the differences, and used the weapon of deformation pure and simple.

In fact, the most diverse positions were present in the Congress. Otto Ruhle, for example, took position the most openly against work in parliament and the unions, but on the basis of a councilist argument. He violently opposed the so-called "politics of the leaders".

The Bremen delegates were also resolutely opposed to any work in the unions or parliament, but did not reject the party, quite the reverse. At the Congress however, they failed to defend their positions either clearly or energetically, thus leaving the terrain free for the destructive manoeuvring of adventurers like Wolftheim and Laufenberg, as well as to the federalists and supporters of the Unionen.

General confusion reigned. The different viewpoints did not appear clearly. Especially on the organisational question, where there should have been a clear break between partisans and opponents of the party, everything was mixed up.

The rejection of the unions and parliamentary activity cannot be put on the same level as the position that rejects the party as a matter of principle. Sadly, Levi did the opposite, when he described all those opposed to work in the unions or parliament as enemies of the party. He managed to deform completely their positions, and to falsify what was really at stake in the situation.

There were differing reactions to this way of proceeding by the Zentrale. Only Laufenberg, Wolffheim, and two other delegates, considered a split inevitable, and accepted it that very evening by declaring the foundation of a new party. Earlier, Laufenberg and Wolffheim had sown suspicion towards the Zentrale on the pretext of gaps in the financial report. This dubious manoeuvre was aimed at avoiding any open debate on the organisation question.

The attitude of the Bremen delegates, by contrast, was a responsible one. They did not want to let themselves be excluded. They returned the following morning to continue their work as delegates. But the Zentrale had moved the meeting to a secret location, in order to keep out the minority. It thus got rid of a large part of the organisation, not only by fiddling the election of delegates, but by forcibly excluding them from the Congress.

The Congress was shot through with false views on organisation. Levi's Zentrale had a monolithic conception, which left no room for minority positions in the party. With the exception of the Bremen delegates, who despite their disagreements fought to remain in the organisation the opposition shared this monolithic conception, inasmuch as it would have excluded the Zentrale had it been able to. Both sides rushed into the split on the most confused basis possible. That wing of the party which represented marxism on organisational issues did not succeed in imposing its viewpoint.

There was thus created amongst German communists a tradition which was to be constantly repeated: each divergence led to a split.

False programmatic positions open the door to opportunism

As we have already shown above, the Theses, which still only considered work within parliament or the unions from an essentially tactical standpoint, expressed a difficulty that was widespread throughout the communist movement: how to draw the lessons of capitalism's decadence, and to recognise that it had created new conditions, which made the old means of struggle inadequate.

Parliament and the unions had become cogs in the state apparatus. The Left had perceived this process, rather than understanding it theoretically.

By contrast, the tactical orientation adopted by the KPD leadership, based on a confused view of these questions, became a part of the opportunist slope down which the party slid, and on the pretext of "not cutting itself off from the masses" pushed it into more and more concessions towards those who had betrayed the proletariat. This slippery slope also led to the attempt to reach an understanding with the centrist USPD in order to become a "mass party". Unfortunately, by excluding en masse all those who disagreed with the leadership's orientation, the KPD drove from its ranks many faithful party militants, and so deprived itself of the antiseptic of criticism which alone could have stopped the opportunist gangrene.

At the bottom of this tragedy lay a failure to understand the organisational question and its importance. One essential lesson that we must draw from this today is that any split or exclusion is something whose consequences are too heavy for it to be undertaken lightly. Such a decision can only be reached after a profound and conclusive clarification. That is why this fundamental political understanding must figure clearly in the statutes of any organisation.

The Communist International itself, although it supported Levi on the union and parliamentary questions, insisted that the debate should be continued, and refused to accept any splits caused by these disagreements. During the Heidelberg Congress, the KPD leadership had acted on its own authority, without taking account of the International's opinion.

The Bremen militants reacted to their exclusion by creating an "Information Bureau" for the whole opposition, in order to maintain contacts between left communist militants in Germany. They correctly understood the work of a fraction. To avoid the break-up of the party, they tried to reach a compromise on the most important litigious points of the organisation's policy (the union and parliamentary questions), and struggled to maintain the unity of the KPD. With this aim in mind, the Information Bureau issued the following appeal, on 23rd December 1919:

"1) Convocation of a new national conference at the end of January.

2) Admission of all districts that belonged to the KPD before the 3rd National Conference, whether or not they recognise the Theses.

3) The Theses, and other proposals, to be submitted for discussion immediately with the National Conference in view.

4) Until the convocation of the new Conference, the Zentrale is required to refrain from any splitting activity" (Kommunistische Arbeiter Zeitung no 197).

By proposing amendments to the Theses for the 3rd Congress, and by demanding their reintegration into the party, the Bremen militants worked as a true fraction. On the organisational level, their proposed amendments aimed at strengthening the position of the party's local groups vis-a-vis the Zentrale, while on the union and parliamentary questions they made concessions to the Zentrale's Theses. The Zentrale, by contrast, continued to work for a split by setting up new local groups in those districts whose delegates had been excluded (Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Berlin and Dresden).

During the 3rd Congress (25th/26th February 1920), the bloodletting that had taken place was clearly apparent. In October 1919, the KPD still had more than 100,000 members; now it only had about 40,000. Moreover, the decision of the October 1919 Congress had created such confusion that it was still unclear whether or not the Bremen militants still belonged to the KPD. The exclusion was made definitive only at the 3rd Congress, although it had already taken effect in October 1919.

The bourgeoisie encouraged the breakup of the party

After the Kapp putsch, which had just broken out, during a national conference of the opposition held on 14th March 1920, the Bremen Information Bureau declared that it could not take the responsibility of forming a new communist party, and dissolved itself. At the end of March, after the 3rd Congress, the Bremen militants returned to the KPD.

By contrast, immediately after their exclusion, the Hamburg delegates Wolftheim and Laufenberg announced the formation of a new party. This approach had nothing in common with marxism on the organisational question. Their whole attitude, after their exclusion, revealed their deliberately destructive behaviour towards revolutionary organisations. From that moment on, they developed openly and frenetically their "national-Bolshevik" position. During the war, they had already carried out propaganda for a "revolutionary people's war". Unlike the Spartakists, they did not adopt an internationalist position, but called for the working class' subordination to the army "in order to put an end to the domination of Anglo-American capital". They even accused the Spartakists of having encouraged the army's disintegration, and thus of "stabbing it in the back". These attacks were in perfect unison with those of the extreme right after the Treaty of Versailles. Whereas during 1919, Wolffheim and Laufenberg had adopted a radical cover by agitating against the unions, after their exclusion from the KPD they brought their "national-Bolshevik" attitude to the fore. Their politics encountered no great echo among the Hamburg workers. But these two individuals manoeuvred adroitly, and published their views as a supplement to the Kommunistische Arbeiter Zeitung, without the party's agreement. The more isolated they became from the KPD, the more openly they launched anti-Semitic attacks on Levi, as a "Jew" and "a British agent". It emerged later that Wolffheim was the secretary of the officer Lettow-Vorbeck, and he was denounced as a police agent-provocateur. He was thus not acting on his own initiative, and his activity was consciously and systematically aimed at the destruction of the party, with the support of "circles" working in the shadows.

For the opposition, the tragedy was its failure to differentiate itself from these individuals either in time, or with enough determination. As a result, more and more militants no longer attended party meetings, and withdrew from militant life, disgusted by the activity of Laufenberg and Wolffheim (see the proceedings of the KPD 3rd Congress, p.23).

Moreover, the bourgeoisie sought to make the most of the defeats it had inflicted on the proletariat during 1919, by developing an offensive in the spring of 1920. On 13th March, troops led by Kapp and Luttwitz launched a military attack to "restore order". Although the SPD government was the apparent target, the putsch was clearly aimed against the working class. Faced with the choice of counter-attacking, or being subjected to a bloody repression, workers in almost every town rose up in resistance. They had no other alternative but to defend themselves. The movement was strongest in the Ruhr, where a "Red Army" was created.

The army's action completely disorientated the Zentrale. Although at first it supported the workers' counter-attack, when the forces of Capital proposed an SPDIUSPD coalition government to "save democracy", it viewed this as a "lesser evil", even to the point of offering its "loyal opposition".

The effervescence in the working class, and this attitude of the KPD, provided those who had been excluded the pretext for founding a new party.

Dv

[1] "Above all, as far as the question of non-participation in elections is concerned, you enormously overestimate the implications of this decision. Our defeat [ie the future Zentrale's defeat on this question in the voting at the Congress] was nothing but the victory of a rather puerile extremism, in fermentation, and without nuances (...) Do not forget that a good number of Spartakists belong to a new generation, on which the stultifying traditions of the "old" party do not weigh, and we have to accept this with its light and its shade. We all unanimously decided not to make a big fuss about this and not to rake it as a tragedy" (Rosa Luxemburg, Letter to Clara Zetkin, 11th January 1919).

At the end of the last article in this series, we looked at the principle danger posed to the social democratic parties operating at the zenith of capitalism’s historical development: the divorce between the fight for immediate reforms and the overall goal of communism. The growing success of these parties both in winning ever increasing numbers of workers to their cause, and in extracting concessions from the bourgeoisie through the parliamentary and trade union struggles, was accompanied, and indeed partly contributed to, the development of the ideologies of reformism - the limitation of the workers’ party to the immediate defence and improvement of proletarian living conditions - and of gradualism, the notion that capitalism could be abolished through an entirely peaceful process of social evolution. On the other hand, the reaction against this reformist threat by certain revolutionary currents was a retreat into sectarian or utopian misconceptions which saw little or no connection between the defensive struggle of the working class and its ultimate revolutionary aims.

 The following article, which completes a first volume of studies dealing with the development of the communist programme in the period of capitalism’s ascendancy, looks in more detail at how the perspective of the communist revolution became obscured during this period, focusing on the key issue of the conquest of power by the proletariat, and on the key country of Germany, which boasted the largest social democratic party in the world.

On a number of occasions in this series, we have shown that the fight against that form of opportunism known as reformism was a constant element in the marxist struggle for a revolutionary programme and for an organisation to defend it. This was particularly the case with the German party, formed in 1875 as the result of a fusion between the Lassallean and marxist fractions of the workers’ movement. In that same year, Marx had written The Critique of the Gotha Programme (see International Review 79) to combat the concessions made by the marxists to the Lassalleans. A central theme of the Critique was the defence of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the Lassallean idea of a People’s State, which actually covered this tendency’s penchant to accommodate itself to the existing Bismarkian state.

In writing the Critique, Marx had the benefit of the experience of the Paris Commune, which had shone a bright light on the problem of how the proletariat would assume political power: not by the peaceful conquest of the old state, but through its destruction, and the establishment of new organs of power directly controlled by the workers in arms.

This did not mean that from 1871 onwards, the marxist current had attained some finished clarity on this question. Since the inception of this current, the struggle for universal suffrage, for working class representation in parliament, had been a key focus of the organised workers’ movement - this after all had been the goal of what Marx termed the first working class political party, the Chartists in Britain. And having fought for universal suffrage against the resistance of the bourgeoisie, who at that time saw it as a threat to their rule, it was only too understandable that revolutionaries themselves should entertain the notion that the working class, being the majority of the population, could come to power via parliamentary institutions. Thus, at the Hague Congress of the International in 1872, Marx made a speech in which he was still prepared to consider the possibility that in countries with more democratic constitutions, such as Britain, America and Holland, the working class “may attain their goal by peaceful means”.

Nevertheless, Marx quickly added that “in most continental countries the lever of revolution will have to be force; a resort to force will be necessary one day in order to set up the rule of labour”. Furthermore, as Engels argued in his introduction to Volume One of Capital, even if the workers did come to power via parliament, they would almost certainly have to deal with a slaveholders’ rebellion which would again require the lever of force. In Germany during the period of the Anti-Socialist Laws introduced by Bismark in 1878, a revolutionary view of the conquest of power prevailed over the seductions of social pacifism. We have already demonstrated at length the radical conception of socialism contained in Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism (see International Reviews 83, 85 and 86). In 1881, in an article in Der Sozialdemokrat (6th April 1881), Karl Kautsky was defending the need “to demolish the bourgeois state and to create the state anew” (cited in Massimo Salvadori, Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880-1938, London 1979, p 22). Ten years later, in 1891, Engels wrote his introduction to The Civil War in France, which ends with an unambiguous message to all the non-revolutionary elements who had begun to infiltrate the party:

“Of late the Social Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. In that same year, he caused a rumpus in the SPD by finally publishing the Critique of the Gotha Programme, which Marx and Engels had decided not to publish in 1875. The party was about to adopt a new programme (which was to be known as the Erfurt Programme), and Engels wanted to make sure that the new document would finally be free of any lingering Lassallean influences [1].

The reformist hydra raises its many heads

Engels’ concerns in 1891 show that an opportunist, philistine wing was already taking root in the party (indeed had been there from the beginning). But if the revolutionary current, and the conditions of illegality imposed by the Anti-Socialist laws, kept this wing at bay during the 1880s, it was to grow increasingly influential and brazen in the ensuing decade. The first major expression of this was the campaign in  the early 1890s  led by Vollmar and the Bavarian branch of the SPD, demanding a practical policy on the agricultural question which amounted to a policy of state socialism - that is, an appeal to the Junker state to introduce legislation on behalf of the peasantry. The state socialists were in favour of  voting for credits in state legislatures when these appeared to benefit the peasantry, and in general their appeal to the peasantry compromised the proletarian class character of the party. This rebellion from the right was defeated, not least through the vigorous polemics of Karl Kautsky. But by 1896 Edward Bernstein had published his revisionist theses, openly rejecting the marxist theory of crisis and calling on the party to abandon its pretensions and declare itself as a “democratic party of social reform”. His articles were first published in Die Neue Zeit, the party’s theoretical review; later on they were published in a book whose English title is Evolutionary Socialism. For Bernstein, capitalist society could grow peacefully and gradually towards socialism, so what need was there either for the violent disruptions of revolution, or for a party advocating the intensification of the class struggle?

Shortly after this came the Millerand case in France: for the first time, a socialist deputy entered a capitalist cabinet.

This is not the place for a profound analysis of the reasons for the growth of reformism during this period. There were a number of factors acting at the same time: the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Laws enabled the SPD to enter the legal arena, and it grew rapidly in numbers and influence - but working within the norms of bourgeois legality also nourished illusions in the degree to which the working class could use these norms to its advantage. This period also saw an influx into the party of petty bourgeois intellectuals who had a certain natural inclination towards ideas about reconciling the warring classes of capitalist society. We could also talk about the national limitations of a movement which, while founded on the principles of proletarian internationalism, was still largely federated into national parties - an open door to opportunist adaptation to the needs of the nation state. Finally, the death of Engels in 1895 also emboldened those - including Bernstein, who had been one of Engels’ closest associates - who wanted to dilute the revolutionary essence of marxism. All these factors played their part. But fundamentally, reformism was the product of the pressures emanating from bourgeois society in a period of impressive economic growth and prosperity in which the perspective of capitalist collapse and the proletarian revolution seemed to be receding into a remote horizon. In sum the social democracy was gradually being transformed from an organ geared essentially towards a revolutionary future to one fixed on the present, on the gaining of immediate improvements in working class living standards. The fact that such improvements were still possible could make it seem increasingly reasonable that socialism could come about almost by stealth, through the accumulation of improvements and the gradual democratisation of bourgeois society. Bernstein was not altogether wrong when he said that his ideas were just an acknowledgement of what the party really was.

But he was wrong in arguing that this was all the party was or could be. This was proved by the fact that his attempts to overthrow marxism were vigorously opposed by the revolutionary currents who had the temerity to insist that a proletarian party, however much it had to fight for the immediate defence of working class interests, could only retain its proletarian character if it actively pursued the revolutionary destiny of that class. Luxemburg’s reply to Bernstein (Social Reform or Revolution) is justly recognised as the best of all the polemics aroused by Bernstein’s assault on marxism. But at this stage she was by no means alone: all the major figures in the party, not least Kautsky and Bebel, made their own contributions to the fight to preserve the party from the revisionist danger.

On the surface, these responses put the revisionists to flight: the rejection of Bernstein’s theses was confirmed by the whole party at the 1903 Dresden conference. But as history would show so tragically in 1914, the forces acting on social democracy were stronger than the clearest congress resolutions. And one measure of their strength was the fact that the revolutionaries themselves, even the clearest of them, were not immune to the democratic illusions being peddled by the reformists. In their replies to the latter, the marxists made many errors which constituted so many chinks in the armour of the proletarian party, chinks through which opportunism could spread its insidious influence.

Engels’ errors and Luxemburg’s critique

In 1895, Engels published in the SPD paper Vorwarts an introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles In France, the latter’s celebrated analysis of the events of 1848. In this article, Engels quite correctly argues that the days when revolutions could be made by minorities of the exploited class, using only the methods of the street fight and the barricade, were over, and that the future conquest of power could only be the work of a conscious, massively organised working class. This did not mean that Engels considered streetfighting and barricades would be ruled out as part of a wider revolutionary strategy, but these precisions were suppressed by the editors of Vorwarts, as Engels angrily protested in a letter to Kautsky: “To  my astonishment I see today in Vorwarts an extract from my Introduction, printed without my knowledge and trimmed in such a way as to make me appear a peace-loving worshipper of legality at any price” (Engels, Selected Correspondence, p461).

The trick played on Engels worked well: his letter of protest was not published until 1924, and by that time the opportunists had made full use of the Introduction to present Engels as their political mentor. Others, usually elements who like to think of themselves as rabid revolutionaries, have used the same article to justify their theory that Engels became an old reformist in later life, and that there is a real gulf between the views of Marx and Engels on this as on many other points.

But leaving aside the opportunists’ doctoring of the text, a problem remains. This was recognised by no less a revolutionary than Rosa Luxemburg in the last speech of her life, a passionate intervention at the founding congress of the KPD in 1918. It is true that at this stage Luxemburg did not know that the opportunists had distorted Engels’ words. But still, she found certain important weaknesses in the articles which, in her characteristic style, she did not hesitate to subject to a detailed marxist critique.

The problem posed to Rosa Luxemburg was this: the new Communist Party was being founded at a moment of immediate revolutionary possibility. The revolution was on the streets; the army was disintegrating; workers and soldiers councils were mushrooming throughout the country; and the official marxism of the social democratic party, which still had enormous influence within the class despite the role that its opportunist leadership had played during the war, was calling on the authority of Engels to justify the counter-revolutionary use of parliamentary democracy as an antidote to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As we have said, Engels had not been wrong to argue that the old 48 tactics of the more or less disorganised street fight could no longer be the proletariat’s road to power. He showed that it was impossible for a determined minority of proletarians to take on the modern armies of the ruling class; indeed, the bourgeoisie was only too willing to provoke such skirmishes in order to justify massive repression against the whole working class (in fact this was precisely the tactic it used against the German revolution a few weeks after the KPD Congress, pushing the workers of Berlin into a premature uprising that led to the decapitation of the revolutionary forces, including Luxemburg herself). Consequently, he insisted “a future street fight can therefore only be victorious when this unfavourable situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly, it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These however, may then well prefer, as in the whole Great French Revolution on 4th September and 31st October 1870, in Paris, the open attack to the passive barricade tactics” (Introduction to The Class Struggles in France). In a sense, this is precisely what the Russian revolution did achieve: by building itself up as an irresistible, organised force, the proletariat was able to topple the bourgeois state with a well timed and relatively bloodless insurrection in October 1917.

The real problem is the manner in which Engels envisaged this process. Rosa Luxemburg had in front of her eyes the living example of the Russian revolution and its counter-part in Germany, where the proletariat had developed its self-organisation through the process of the mass strike and the formation of soviets. These were forms of action and organisation that not only corresponded to the new epoch of wars and revolutions, but also, in a deeper sense, expressed the underlying nature of the proletariat as a class which can only assert its revolutionary power by bursting asunder the routines and institutions of class society. The fatal flaw in Engels’ argument in 1895 was the emphasis he placed on the proletariat building up its forces through the use of parliamentary institutions - ie, through organisms specific to the very bourgeois society it had to destroy. Here Luxemburg points to what Engels did say and was quite aware of its inadequacies.

“After summing up the changes which had occurred in the intervening period, Engels turned to consider the immediate tasks of the German Social Democratic Party. As Marx had predicted, he wrote, the war of 1870-71 and the fall of the Commune shifted the center of gravity of the European labour movement from France to Germany. Many years had naturally to elapse before France could recover from the bloodletting of May 1871. In Germany, on the other hand, manufacturing industry was developing by leaps and bounds, in the forcing-house atmosphere produced by the influx of French billions. Even more rapid and more enduring was the growth of social democracy. Thanks to the agreement in virtue of which the German workers have been able to avail themselves of the universal (male) suffrage introduced in 1866, the astounding growth of the party has been demonstrated to all the world by the testimony of figures whose significance no one can deny.

Thereupon followed the famous enumeration, showing the growth of the party vote in election after election until the figures swelled to millions. From this progress Engels drew the following conclusion: The successful employment of the parliamentary vote entailed the acceptance of an entirely new tactic by the proletariat, and this new method has undergone rapid development. It has been realised that the political institutions in which the dominion of the bourgeoisie is incorporated offer a fulcrum whereby the proletariat can work for the overthrow of these very political institutions. The social democrats have participated in the elections to the various diets, to municipal councils, and to industrial courts. Wherever the proletariat could secure an effective voice, the occupation of these electoral strongholds by the bourgeoisie has been contested. Consequently, the bourgeoisie and the government have become much more alarmed at the constitutional than at the unconstitutional activities of the workers, dreading the results of elections far more than they dread the results of rebellion.”

Luxemburg, while understanding Engels’ rejection of the old streetfighting tactics, makes no bones about the dangers inherent in this approach.

“Two important conclusions were drawn from this reasoning. In the first place, the parliamentary struggle was counterposed to direct revolutionary action by the proletariat, and the former was indicated as the only practical way of carrying on the class struggle. Parliamentarism, and nothing but parliamentarism, was the logical sequel of this criticism. Secondly, the whole military machine, the most powerful organisation of the class state, the entire body of proletarians in uniform, was declared on a priori grounds to be absolutely inaccessible to socialist influences. When Engels’ preface declares that, owing to the modern development of gigantic armies, it is positively insane to suppose that proletarians can ever stand up against soldiers armed with machine guns and equipped with all the other latest technical devices, the assertion is obviously based upon the assumption that anyone who becomes a soldier, becomes thereby once and for all one of the props of the ruling class”.

The experience of the revolutionary wave had quite definitively refuted Engels’ scenario: far from being alarmed at the  use of constitutional action by the proletariat, the bourgeoisie had understood that parliamentary democracy was their most reliable bulwark against the power of the workers councils; all the activities of the social democratic traitors (led by the eminent parliamentarians who had been among the most susceptible to bourgeois influences) had been geared towards persuading the workers to subordinate their own class organs, the councils, to the supposedly more representative national assembly. And both the Russian and German revolutions had clearly demonstrated the capacity of the working class, through its determined revolutionary action and propaganda, to disintegrate the armies of the bourgeoisie and win the mass of soldiers over to the side of the revolution.

Thus Luxemburg had no hesitation in describing Engels’ approach as a blunder. But she did not therefore conclude that Engels had ceased to be a revolutionary. She was convinced that he would have recognised his error in the light of later experience: “Those who know the works of Marx and Engels, those who are familiarly acquainted with the genuinely revolutionary spirit that inspired all their teachings and all their writings, will feel positively certain that Engels would have been one of the first to protest against the debauch of parliamentarism, against the frittering away of the energies of the labour movement, which was characteristic of Germany during the decades before the war.

Luxemburg goes on to offer a framework for understanding the mistake that Engels had made: Seventy years ago, to those who reviewed the errors and illusions of 1848, it seemed as if the proletariat still had an interminable distance to traverse before it could hope to realise socialism... such a belief, too, can be read in every line of the preface which Engels wrote in 1895". In other words, Engels was writing in a period when the direct struggle for revolution was not yet on the agenda; the collapse of capitalist society had not yet become the tangible reality it was in 1918. In such circumstances, it was not possible for the workers’ movement to develop a totally lucid view of its road to power. In particular, the necessary division, enshrined in the Erfurt Programme, between the minimum programme of economic and political reforms, and the maximum programme of socialism, contained within it the danger that the latter would be subordinated to the former; likewise that the use of parliament, which had been a viable tactic in the struggle for reforms, would become an end in itself.

Luxemburg shows that even Engels had not been immune from confusion on this point. But she also recognised that the real problem lay with the political currents who actively embodied the dangers facing the social democratic parties in this period - with the opportunists and those who covered for them in the party leadership. It was the latter in particular that had consciously manipulated Engels to achieve a result very far from his intentions: “I must remind you of the well-known fact the preface in question was written by Engels under strong pressure on the part of the parliamentary group. At that date in Germany, during the early nineties after the Anti-Socialist law had been annulled, there was a strong movement towards the left, the movement of those who wished to save the party from becoming completely absorbed in the parliamentary struggle. Bebel and his associates wished for convincing arguments, backed up by Engels’ great authority; they wished for an utterance which would help them to keep a tight hand upon the revolutionary elements”. As we said at the beginning: the fight for a revolutionary programme is always a fight against opportunism within the ranks of the proletariat; by the same token, opportunism is always ready to pounce on the least lapse in vigilance and concentration by the revolutionaries, and to use their errors for their own purposes.

Kautsky: error becomes orthodoxy

“After Engels’ death in 1895, in the theoretical field the leadership of the party passed into the hands of Kautsky. The upshot of this change was that at every annual congress the energetic protests of the left wing against a purely parliamentarist policy, its urgent warnings against the sterility and the danger of such a policy, were stigmatised as anarchism, anarchising socialism, or at least anti-marxism. What passed officially for marxism became a cloak for all possible kinds of opportunism, for persistent shirking of the revolutionary class struggle, for every conceivable half-measure. Thus the German social democracy, and the labour movement, the trade union movement as well, were condemned to pine away within the framework of capitalist society. No longer did German socialists and trade unionists make any serious attempt to overthrow capitalist institutions or put the capitalist machine out of gear” (Luxemburg, speech to the founding congress of the KPD).

We are not of that modernist school of thought which likes to present Karl Kautsky as the source of everything that was wrong with the social democratic parties. It is certainly true that his name is often associated with profound theoretical falsities - such as his theory of socialist consciousness as the product of the intellectuals, or his concept of ultra-imperialism. And indeed, to use Lenin’s own term, Kautsky finally became a renegade from marxism, above all because of his repudiation of the October revolution. Such associations sometimes make it hard to remember that Kautsky was indeed a marxist before he became a renegade. Like Bebel, he had defended the continuity of marxism at a number of crucial moments in the life of the party. But like Bebel, like so many others of his generation, his understanding of marxism was later revealed as suffering from a number of significant weaknesses, which in turn reflected more widespread weaknesses in the movement as a whole. In Kautsky’s case, it was above all his fate to become the champion of an approach which, instead of subjecting the contingent errors of the past revolutionary movement to a searching critique in the light of changing material conditions, froze these errors into an unchallengable orthodoxy.

As we have seen, Kautsky often took up swords against the revisionist right in the party: hence, his reputation as a stalwart of orthodox marxism. But if we look a little deeper into the manner in which he waged the battle against revisionism, we will also see why this orthodoxy was in reality a form of centrism - a manner of conciliating with opportunism; and this was the case long before Kautsky openly avowed the label of centrist as a description of his half way house between what he saw as the excesses of right and left. Kautsky’s hesitations in taking up an intransigent fight against revisionism were initially exposed at the very beginning of the furore over Bernstein’s articles, when his personal friendship with the latter made him dither for some time before answering him politically. But Kautsky’s tendency to conciliate with reformism went deeper than this, as Lenin noted in The State and Revolution:

“Of immeasurably greater significance [than Kautsky’s hesitations about taking up the fight against Bernstein], however, is the fact that, in his very controversy with the opportunists, in his formulation of the question and his manner of treating it, we can now see, as we study the history of Kautsky’s latest betrayal of marxism, his systematic deviation towards opportunism precisely on the question of the state” (Chapter VI, 2: “Kautsky’s controversy with the opportunists”). One of the works that Lenin chose to illustrate these deviations was one whose form is that of a thorough-going rebuttal of revisionism, but whose real content reveals his increasing tendency to accommodate himself with it. This is his book The Social Revolution, published in 1902.

In this book, Kautsky offers some very sound marxist arguments against the main revisions put forward by Bernstein and his followers. Against their argument (which has such a familiar ring these days) that the growth of the middle classes was leading towards a softening of class antagonisms, so that the conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat could be sorted out inside the framework of capitalist society, Kautsky responded by insisting, as Marx had done, that the exploitation of the working class was growing in intensity, that the capitalist state was becoming more and not less oppressive, and that this was exacerbating rather than attenuating class antagonisms: “the more that the ruling classes support themselves with the state machinery and misuse this for the purposes of exploitation and oppression, just so more must the bitterness of the proletariat against them increase, class hatred grow, and the efforts to conquer the machinery of state increase in intensity” (The Social Revolution, Chicago, 1916, p 36-7).

Likewise, Kautsky refuted the argument that the growth of democratic institutions was making the social revolution unnecessary, that “by the exercise of democratic rights upon existing grounds the capitalist society is gradually and without any shock growing into socialism. Consequently the revolutionary conquest of political power by the proletariat is unnecessary, and the efforts towards it is directly hurtful, since they can operate in no other way than to disturb this slowly but surely advancing process” (ibid, p66). Kautsky argues that this was an illusion because while it was true that the number of socialist representatives in parliament was increasing, “simultaneously therewith the bourgeois democracy falls to pieces” (p75); “the Parliament which was formerly the means of pressing the government forward upon the road to progress becomes ever more and more the means to nullify the little progress that conditions compel the government to make. In the degree that the class which rules through parliamentarism is rendered superfluous and indeed injurious, the Parliamentary machinery loses its significance” (p78-9). Here was a real insight into the conditions that would more and more develop as capitalism moved into its epoch of decadence: the decline of parliament even as a forum of intra-bourgeois conflict (which the workers’ party could sometimes exploit to its own advantage), its conversion into a mere fig-leaf covering an increasingly bureaucratic and militaristic state machine. Kautsky even recognised that, given the stultification of the bourgeoisie’s democratic bodies, the strike weapon - up to and including the mass political strike, whose outline had already been glimpsed in France and Belgium - “will play a great role in the revolutionary battles of the future” (p 90).

And yet Kautsky was never able to take these arguments to their logical conclusion. If bourgeois parliamentarism was in decline, if the workers were developing new forms of action such as the mass strike, these were all signs of the approach of a new revolutionary epoch in which the focus of the class struggle was moving decisively away from the parliamentary arena and back to the specific class terrain of the proletariat - to the factories and the streets. Indeed, far from seeing the revolutionary implications of the decline of parliamentarism, Kautsky drew from it the most conservative of conclusions: that the proletariat’s mission was to salvage and revive this dying bourgeois democracy: “Parliamentarism becomes ever more senile and helpless, and can only be reawakened to new youth and strength when it, together with the total governmental power, is conquered by the rising proletariat and turned to serve its purpose. Parliamentarism, far from making a revolution useless and superfluous, is itself in need of a revolution in order to vivify it” (p 79-80).

These views were not - as in the case of Engels - in contradiction with numerous other, and far clearer statements. They express a consistent thread in Kautsky’s thought, going back at least to his comments on the Erfurt Programme in the early 90s and going forward to his well-known work The Road to Power in 1910. This latter work scandalised the open reformists with its bold affirmation that “the revolutionary era is beginning”, but it maintained the same conservative view on the seizure of power. Commenting on both these works in his State and Revolution, Lenin was especially struck by the fact that nowhere in these books does Kautsky defend the classic marxist affirmation about the need to demolish the bourgeois state machine and replace it with a Commune state:

“Throughout the pamphlet [The Social Revolution] the author speaks of the winning of state power - and no more; that is, he has chosen a formula which makes a concession to the opportunists, inasmuch as it admits the possibility of seizing power without destroying the state machine. The very thing which Marx in 1872 declared to be obsolete in the programme of the Communist Manifesto, is revived by Kautsky in 1902” (ibid).

With Kautsky, and thus with the official marxism of the Second International, parliamentarism had become an immutable dogma.

Taking over the capitalist economy

The increasing tendency for the social democratic party to present itself as a candidate for government office, for taking over the reins of the bourgeois state, was to have profound implications for its economic programme as well; logically, the latter appeared more and more not as a programme for the destruction of capital, for uprooting the foundations of capitalist production, but as a series of  realistic proposals for taking over the bourgeois economy and managing it on behalf of the proletariat. It was no accident that the growth of this vision, which contrasts quite sharply with the ideas of socialist transformation defended in previous decades by the likes of Engels, Bebel and Morris (see the articles in this series in International Reviews 83, 85 and 86), coincided with the first expressions of state capitalism, which accompanied the rise of imperialism and militarism. It is true that Kautsky criticised the state socialist deviation advocated by the likes of Vollmar, but his criticisms did not go to the root of the matter. Kautsky’s polemic opposed programmes which called on the existing bourgeois or absolutist governments to introduce socialist measures such as the nationalisation of the land. But it failed to see that a programme of statification introduced by a social democratic government would also remain inside the boundaries of capitalism.

Thus, in The Social Revolution, we are told that “the political domination of the proletariat and the continuation of the capitalist system of production are irreconcileable” (p113). But the passages that follow this bold statement give a truer flavour of Kautsky’s vision of the socialist transformation: “The question then arises as to what purchasers are at the command of capitalists when they wish to sell their undertakings. A portion of the factories, mines, etc could be sold directly to the labourers who are working them, and could be henceforth  operated co-operatively; another portion could be sold to co-operatives of distribution, and still another to the communities or to the states. It is clear, however, that capital would find its most extensive and generous purchaser in the States or municipalities, and for this very reason the majority of industries would pass into the possession of the States and municipalities. That the Social Democrats when they came into control would strive consciously for this solution is well recognised” (ibid, p 113-114). Kautsky then goes on to explain that the industries most ripe for nationalisation are those where trustification is the most highly developed, and that “the socialisation (as one may designate for short the transference to national, municipal and co-operative possession) will carry with it the socialisation of the great part of the money capital. When a factory or piece of landed property is nationalised, its debts will also be nationalised, and private debts will become public debts. In the case of a corporation, the stockholders will become holders of government bonds” (p116-117).

From passages like these we can see that in Kautsky’s socialist transformation all the essential categories of capital remain: the means of production are sold to the workers or the state, money capital is centralised in government hands, the private trusts give way to national and municipal trusts, and so on. Elsewhere in the same work, Kautsky argues explicitly for the retention of the wage labour relationship by a proletarian regime:

“I speak here of the wages of labour. What, it will be said, will there be wages in the new society? Shall we not have abolished wage labour and money? How then can one speak of the wages of labour? These objections would be sound if the social revolution proposed to immediately abolish money. I maintain that this would be impossible. Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism a that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labour, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination. As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is found” (p 129).

It is of course true that wage labour cannot be abolished overnight. But it is equally false to argue, as Kautsky does in this and related passages, that wages and money are neutral forms that can be retained under socialism until such time as the increase in production leads to abundance for all. On the basis of wage labour and commodity production, increasing production will be a euphemism for the accumulation of capital, and the accumulation of capital, whether directed by the state or private hands, necessarily means the deprivation and exploitation of the producers. This is why Marx, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, argued that the proletarian dictatorship would have to make immediate inroads into the whole logic of accumulation, replacing wages and money with the system of labour time vouchers.

Elsewhere Kautsky insists that these socialist wages are fundamentally different from capitalist wages because under the new system labour power is no longer a commodity - the assumption being that once the means of production have become state property, there is no longer any market for labour power. This argument - which was often used by the various apologists of the Stalinist model to prove that the USSR and its offspring could not be capitalist - has a fundamental flaw: it ignores the reality of the world market, which makes each national economy a competing capitalist unit irrespective of the degree to which market mechanisms have been suppressed internally.

It is true, as we have noted before in this series, that Marx himself made statements which imply that socialist production could exist inside the boundaries of a nation state. The  problem is that the ideas developed by official social democracy in the early part of the 20th century - in contrast to the resolutely internationalist approach assumed by Marx - were more and more seen as part of a practical programme for each nation taken separately. This national vision of socialism even began to be enshrined programmatically. We thus find the following formulation in another work by Kautsky from the same period, The Socialist Republic [2]:

“a community able to satisfy its wants and embracing all industries requisite thereto must have dimensions very different from those of the Socialist colonies that were planned at the commencement of our century. Among the social organisations in existence today, there is but one that has the requisite dimensions, that can be used as the requisite field, for the establishment and development of the Socialist or Co-operative Commonwealth, and that is: the Nation” (p11).

But perhaps the most significant thing about Kautsky’s vision of the socialist transformation is the degree to which everything takes place in a legal, orderly fashion. He spends several pages of The Social Revolution arguing that it will be far better to compensate the capitalists, to buy them out, than simply to confiscate their property. Although his writings about the revolutionary process allow for the use of strikes and other actions by the workers themselves, his overriding concern seems to be that the revolution should not frighten the capitalists too much. One of Kautsky’s reformist opponents at the 1903 Dresden congress, Kollo, put his finger on the problem quite astutely, when he observed that Kautsky wanted a social revolution without violence. But neither the overthrow of the political power of the capitalist class, nor the economic expropriation of the expropriators, can take place without the unruly, violent, but uniquely creative irruption of the masses onto the stage of history.

***

We repeat, it is not a question of demonising Kautsky. He was the expression of a deeper process - the opportunist gangrene of the social democratic parties, their gradual incorporation into bourgeois society, and the difficulties that the marxists had in understanding and combating this danger. Certainly, on the problem of parliamentarism, perfect clarity was nowhere to be found in the period we have studied. In Reform or Revolution, for example, Luxemburg makes a very telling attack on Bernstein’s parliamentary illusions, but even she leaves open certain loopholes on the question (in particular, when she fails to recognise the  very blunder in Engels’ Introduction to the Class Struggles in France which she castigated in 1918). Another instructive case is that of William Morris. In the 1880s, Morris made a number of insightful warnings against the corrupting power of parliament; but these perceptions were undermined by his tendency towards purism, an inability to understand the necessity for socialists to intervene in the daily struggle of the class and  - in that epoch - to use elections and parliament as one focus for this struggle. Like many of the left wing critics of parliamentarism at this time, Morris was thus highly susceptible to the timeless anti-parliamentary attitudes of the anarchists. And, towards the end of his life, in reaction to the havoc that anarchism had wrought on his efforts to build a revolutionary organisation, Morris himself tended towards the growing infatuation with the parliamentary road to power.

What was missing during those years was the real movement of the class. It was above all the earthquake of 1905 in Russia which enabled the best elements in the workers’ movement to discern the true contours of the proletarian revolution and move beyond the outmoded and erroneous conceptions that had hitherto clouded their vision. Kautsky’s real crime would then be to fight tooth and nail against these clarifications, presenting himself more and more openly as a centrist whose real bete noir was not the revisionist right but the revolutionary left, as embodied in figures like Luxemburg and Pannekoek. But that is another part of the story.  

CDW

The ideological campaign which is trying to identify the political positions adopted by the Communist Left against World War II, with those of "negationism" (ie the calling into question of the Nazi extermination of the Jews: see "Anti-fascism justifies barbarism" in International Review 88) has two aims in view. The first is to discredit the Communist Left in the eyes of the working class, as the only political current which refused to succumb to the "Sacred Union" during the Second World War. Only the Communist Left denounced the war as an inter-imperialist war like that of 1914-18 - just as Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg had done with World War I - by showing that the war's supposed specificity as a conflict between the two systems of fascism and democracy was nothing but a shameless lie designed to enrol the workers in a gigantic bloodbath. The second objective belongs to the ideological offensive aimed at making the workers believe that despite its imperfections, bourgeois democracy is the only system possible, and that they should therefore mobilise to defend it, as they are asked to through a whole series of political-media campaigns, from the "mani politi" operation in Italy and the "Dutroux affair" in Belgium, through all the row over Le Pen and his electoral success in France. In this offensive, the role of the denunciation of negationism is to present fascism as "absolute evil", and thus absolve capitalism as a whole from responsibility for the Holocaust.

Once again, we declare vigorously that the Communist Left has nothing whatever to do with the "negationist" movement, which brings together the traditional far right and the "ultra-left" (a term which is completely foreign to the Communist Left: see International Review no.88). For us, there has never been any question of denying or minimising the terrifying reality of the Nazi extermination camp. As we said in the previous issue of this Review: "Understating the barbarity of the Nazi regime, even under the pretext of denouncing the anti-fascist mystification, comes down in the end to diminishing the barbarism of the decadent capitalist system, of which Nazism was merely one expression". The denunciation of anti-fascism as an instrument for enrolling the proletariat in history's most terrible inter-imperialist carnage, and as a means to hide the real culprit responsible for all these horrors - capitalism as a whole - has never meant the slightest concession in denouncing fascism, whose first victims were proletarian militants. The essence of proletarian internationalism - which the Communist Left has always intransigently defended, in direct line from the true marxist tradition, and so against all those who have betrayed it and trampled it underfoot, the Trotskyists to the fore - has always been to denounce all camps, and to show that they are all equally responsible for the abominable suffering inflicted on humanity by all imperialist wars.

In previous issues of this Review we have shown that the barbarity of the "democratic camp" during World War II was fully equal to that of fascism, both in its horror and in the cynicism with which its crimes against humanity were perpetrated: crimes like the fire-storm bombardment of Dresden and Hamburg, or the nuclear destruction unleashed on an already defeated Japan. In this article, we will demonstrate the Allies' conscious complicity in the Nazi regime's genocide by remaining silent about the concentration camps, despite the fact that they were perfectly aware of their existence and their function.

Fascism was desired and supported by the bourgeoisie

Before demonstrating the Allies' complicity in the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the concentration camps, it is worth recalling that fascism's appearance - which has always been presented by all wings of capital, from the "classical" right to the extreme left, as a monstrous historical accident, the product of the deranged minds of Hitler or Mussolini - is indeed the organic product of capitalism in its decadent phase, and of the defeat suffered by the proletariat in the revolutionary wave that followed World War I.

The idea that the ruling class did not know of the Nazi Party's real intentions, that in some sense it was taken for a ride, does not hold up for an instant in the face of historical facts. The Nazi Party has its roots in two factors which determined the whole history of the 1930s: on the one hand, the crushing of the German revolution, which opened the way to the triumph of the counter-revolution world-wide, and on the other the defeat of German imperialism in World War I. From the outset, the objectives of the Nazi Party were to complete the crushing of the proletariat, on the basis of the terrible bloodletting already carried out by the social-democratic SPD of Noske and Scheidemann, in order to rebuild the military strength of German imperialism. These objectives were shared by the whole German bourgeoisie, whatever their real disagreements as to the methods to use, or the best moment to set them in motion. The SA militia which Hitler used during his rise to power were the direct descendants of the Freikorps which assassinated Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and thousands of communists and working class militants. Most of the SA leaders began their careers in these same Freikorps, which were the "white guard" used by the SPD to crush the revolution in blood, with the support of the thoroughly democratic victorious powers, which disarmed the German army, but nonetheless made sure that the counter-revolutionary militia always had enough weapons to do their dirty work. Fascism was only able to develop and prosper on the basis of the physical and ideological defeat inflicted on the proletariat by the left of capital, which had been the only force capable of holding back and then vanquishing the revolutionary wave which swept over Germany in 1918-19. This was perfectly understood by the German General Staff, which gave the SPD carte blanche to deal a decisive blow against the developing revolutionary movement, in January 1919. And if Hitler's attempted Munich putsch in 1925 did not meet with support, this was because the most lucid sectors of the ruling classes did not yet consider the time appropriate. It was necessary first to complete the defeat of the proletariat, by using the democratic mystification to the hilt via the Weimar Republic, which despite having the junker Hindenburg as president still kept a radical veneer thanks to the participation in successive governments of ministers from the so-called "Socialist" Party.

But as soon as the proletarian threat had been removed definitively, the ruling class - in its most "classical" form let us remember, through the ruling groups of German capitalism: the Krupps, Thyssen, AG Farben - supported the Nazi Party with all its strength in its march towards power. Henceforth, Hitler's desire to reunite all the forces necessary for the restoration of German imperialism's military power corresponded perfectly to the needs of German capital. Defeated and despoiled by its imperialist rivals after World War I, Germany had no choice but to try to recover lost ground in a new war. Its determination to do so, far from being the product of any supposed German aggressivity, some kind of congenital deformation which found its means of expression in fascism, was nothing other than the strict expression of the unbending laws of imperialism in capitalist decadence. In a world market entirely shared out between the great powers, those that arrived late at the imperialist table lost out in the division of the imperialist cake, and had no option but to try to carve themselves a bigger slice by war. The German proletariat's physical defeat on the one hand, Germany's status as a defeated and despoiled imperialist power on the other, made fascism the most adequate means for Germany to prepare for the next world slaughter, contrary to those countries which had been victorious in war, and whose proletariat had not been physically crushed. State capitalism was being strengthened everywhere, including in the "democratic" countries. Fascism, as a particularly brutal form of state capitalism, made it possible to centralise and concentrate all capital in the hands of the state, and to orientate the entire economy towards preparation for war. Hitler this came to power as democratically as you please, that is to say with the complete support of the German bourgeoisie. In effect, once the proletarian menace had been thrust aside for good, the ruling class no longer needed to worry about maintaining the whole democratic arsenal, thus following in Italy's footsteps.

Racism and anti-Semitism: products of the whole of decadent capitalism

"Yes perhaps" we will be told, "but aren't you ignoring fascism's visceral anti-Semitism, which distinguishes it from all the other fractions and parties of the bourgeoisie, and the fact that it is precisely this particular characteristic which provoked the holocaust?". This idea is defended by the Trotskyists in particular. While formally they recognise the responsibility of capitalism and the bourgeoisie in general in the birth of fascism, it is only to add that fascism is nonetheless worse than bourgeois democracy - as the Holocaust proves, and that faced with this ideology of genocide we cannot hesitate for a moment: we must choose our camp, the camp of democracy and the Allies. Along with their defence of the USSR it is this argument which served to justify their betrayal of proletarian internationalism and their passage into the bourgeois camp during World War II. It is thus perfectly logical that in France today, we find the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire and its leader Alain Krivine, with the discreet but real support of Lutte Ouvriere, at the head of the anti-fascist and "anti-negationist" crusade, defending the notion of fascism as the "absolute evil", and so qualitatively different from all the other expressions of capitalist barbarism that the working class should take the lead in fighting for the defence and even the revitalisation of democracy.

Because the proletariat - the only force capable of opposing the nationalism that oozes from every pore of rotting bourgeois society - had been beaten both physically and ideologically, Nazism was able, with the consent of the ruling class, to use the racism endemic within the petty bourgeoisie to make racism and anti-Semitism the official ideology of the regime. However monstrous and irrational the anti-Semitism professed and practised by the Nazi regime cannot be explained merely by the madness and perversity - however real - of its leaders. As the PCI pamphlet Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi very correctly emphasises, the extermination of the Jews "did not take place at just any time, but in the midst of a crisis and imperialist war. It must thus be explained from within this gigantic enterprise of destruction. This fact clarifies the problem: we no longer have to explain the "destructive nihilism" of the Nazis, but why this destruction was concentrated in part on the Jews". To explain why the Jewish population, although not alone, was first singled out as the object of general hatred, and then exterminated en masse by Nazism, we have to take account of two factors: the demands of the German war effort; and the role of the petty bourgeoisie during this sinister period. The latter had been reduced to ruin by the violence of the economic crisis in Germany, and was falling massively into the lumpen-proletariat. Without the proletariat to act as an antidote, the desperate petty bourgeoisie gave free rein to all its most reactionary prejudices, characteristic of a class with no future, and plunged, like a mad dog, into the racism and anti-Semitism propagated by the fascist formations. These pointed to the Jew as par excellence the nationless cosmopolitan "sucking the blood of the people", and the scapegoat for the poverty of the petty-bourgeoisie, in order to rally this class to it. Most of fascism's first shock troops did indeed come from a petty bourgeoisie sinking into declassed status. But this designation of the Jew as enemy number one had another function: it allowed German capitalism, thanks to the expropriation of the often important funds held by Jewish families; to gather discreetly the funds needed to rearm German imperialism, especially in the beginning, without attracting the attention of the victors of the First World War. At first, the concentration camps had the same function: the provision of a free labour force, entirely dedicated to the preparation of the war.

The Allies' silence during the war

Is this silence to be explained by the latent anti -Semitism of certain Allied leaders, as some post-war Jewish historians have maintained? Anti-Semitism is certainly not restricted to fascist regimes - we may recall Patton's declaration quoted above, or again Stalin's well-known anti-Semitism - but this is not the real reason behind the silence of the Allies, some of whose leaders were either Jews themselves, or close to Jewish organisations (Roosevelt for example). No, the real reason behind this remarkable discretion lies in the laws that regulate the capitalist system, whether its rule be covered by the banner of democracy or of totalitarianism. As in the enemy camp, all the Allies' resources were mobilised for the war. No useless mouths, everybody must be occupied, either at the front or in the production of armaments. The arrival en masse of populations from the camps, of children and old people who could not be sent to the front or the factory, of sick and exhausted men and women who could not be immediately integrated into the war effort, would only have disorganised the latter. So the frontiers were closed, and such immigration prevented by every means possible. In 1943 - in other words at a time when the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie was perfectly aware of the reality of the camps - Anthony Eden, minister of His Most Gracious and Democratic Britannic Majesty decided at Churchill's request that "no ship of the United Nations can be affected to transfer the refugees to Europe", while Roosevelt added that "transporting so many people would disorganise the war effort" (Churchill, Memoirs, Vol 10). These are the real and sordid reasons that led these accredited anti-fascists and democrats to remain silent about what was happening in Dachau, Buchenwald, and others of sinister memory! The humanitarian considerations that were supposed to drive the anti-fascist camp, united against fascist barbarism, had no place in their sordid capitalist interests and the demands of the war machine.

The direct complicity of the "democratic camp" in the Holocaust

The Allies did not merely remain silent during the war about the genocide perpetrated in the camps. Their abject cynicism went much further than that. First, while they never hesitated an instant to deluge German cities with bombs, they refused to make the slightest military effort against the camps. By the beginning of 1944, the railways leading to Auschwitz were within easy range of Allied aviation, but although two escapees from the camp provided a detailed description of its functioning and topography, the Allies did nothing. Then, "Hungarian and Slovak Jewish leaders begged the Allies to act when the deportation of Hungarian Jews began. They all proposed the same target: the railway junction of Kosice-Pressow. It is true that the Germans could have repaired the tracks fairly quickly. But this argument does not hold good for the destruction of the Birkenau ovens, which would undoubtedly have slowed the extermination machine. Nothing was done. In the end, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that not even the minimum was tried, that it was drowned in the bad faith of the generals and diplomats" (Le Monde, 27th September 1996).

However, contrary to the laments of this bourgeois paper, the "democratic camp" was not an accomplice to Holocaust merely out of "bad faith" or bureaucratic sloth. As we will see, this complicity was wholly conscious. At first, the deportation camps were essentially labour camps, where the German bourgeoisie could benefit from a cheap labour force entirely at its mercy, directed entirely to the war effort. Although the extermination camps existed already, at the time they were more the exception than the rule. But after its first serious military reversals, especially against the terrible war machine set in motion by the USA, German imperialism could no longer properly feed its own troops and population. The Nazi regime thus decided to rid itself of the excess population in the camps, and from then on the gas-ovens spread their sinister shadow everywhere. The abomination of the executioners carefully gathering their victims' teeth, hair, and finger-nails to feed the German war machine, was the fruit of an imperialism at bay, retreating on every front, and plumbing the depths of the irrationality of imperialist war. But although the Nazi regime and its underlings perpetrated the Holocaust without a qualm, it brought little benefit to German capital, desperately trying to gather together the wherewithal to resist the Allies' inexorable advance. In this context, there were several attempts - in general conducted directly by the SS - to make some profit out of these hundreds of thousands, even millions of prisoners, by selling them to, or exchanging them with the Allies.

The most famous episode of this sinister bargaining was the approach made to Joel Brand, the leader of a semi-clandestine organisation of Hungarian Jews, whose story has been told in the book by A. Weissberg, cited in the pamphlet on Auschwitz, the Great Alibi. He was taken to Budapest to meet the SS officer in charge of the Jewish question, Adolf Eichmann, who instructed him to negotiate with the British and American governments for the liberation of a million Jews, in exchange for 10,000 trucks, but making it clear that he was ready to accept less, or even different goods. To demonstrate their good faith, and the seriousness of their proposal, the SS even proposed to release 100,000 Jews as soon as Brand obtained an agreement in principle, without asking anything in exchange. During his journey, Brand made the acquaintance of British prisons in the Middle East, and after many delays which, far from being accidents were deliberately put in his way by the Allied governments to avoid an official meeting, he was finally able to discuss the proposal with Lord Moyne, the British government's representative in the Middle East. There was nothing personal in the latter's utter refusal of Eichmann's proposal: he was merely following the instructions of the British cabinet. Nor was it a moral refusal to bow to a revolting blackmail. There is no room left for doubt when we read Brand's own account of the discussion: "I begged him to give me at least a written agreement, even if he failed to keep to it, which would at least save 100,000 lives. Moyne then asked what would be the total number. I replied that Eichmann had spoken of a million. "But how can you imagine such a thing Mr Brand? What would I do with a million Jews? Where would I put them? Who would take them in?". In desperation, I said that if the earth no longer had room for us, there was nothing left for us but to let ourselves be exterminated", As Auschwitz or the Great Alibi so rightly says of this glorious episode of World War II, "unfortunately, while the supply was there, the demand was not! Not just the Jews, but even the SS had been taken in by the Allies' humanitarian propaganda! The Allies did not want these million Jews! Not for 10,000 trucks, not for 5,000, not even for nothing".

Some recent historiography has tried to show that this refusal was due above all to Stalin's veto. This is just another attempt to hide the direct complicity of the "great democracies" in the Holocaust, revealed in the misadventure of the naive Brand, whose veracity nobody seriously contests. Suffice to say in reply that during the war, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were in the habit of being dictated to by Stalin, while on this particular point they were on the same wave-length as the "little father of the peoples , demonstrating the same brutality and cynicism throughout the war. The thoroughly democratic Roosevelt refused other, similar attempts by the Nazis for example when at the end of 1944 they tried to sell Jews to the "Organisation of American Jews", demonstrating their good faith by deporting 2000 Jews to Switzerland, as is detailed by Y. Bauer in his book Jews for Sale (published by Liana Levi).

RN, 4/3/97

No recent event has more dramatically illustrated the world wide sharpening of imperialist tensions than the arrival of 3000 German combat troops in Bosnia. Under the guise of helping to maintain the "peace settlement" for Bosnia imposed by the USA· at Dayton, the German army, like that of its French, British or American rivals, is being sent into the crisis zone in order to defend the imperialist interests of its own national bourgeoisie.

No other event more clearly confirms the rise of German imperialism since its national reunification. For the first: time since World War II, the German bourgeoisie is sending its armed forces abroad with a mandate to wage war. In so doing, it is demonstratively throwing aside the shackles which were imposed on it after its defeat in two world wars. For half a century, the bourgeoisie of the two German states which emerged after 1945 were not granted the right of military intervention abroad in pursuit of their own imperialist interests. Any exception to this general rule imposed by NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east would be decided, not in Bonn or East Berlin, but in Washington or Moscow. In reality, the only involvement of German troops in military action abroad in the entire post-1945 period was that of East Germany in the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the USSR and the Warsaw Pact in 1968.

Today Germany is united and emerging as Europe's leading power. The eastern and western blocs no longer exist. In a world racked, not only by growing military tensions, but by global chaos and the struggle of each against all, German imperialism no longer needs permission in order to back up its foreign policy with force of arms. Today, the German government is able to impose its military presence in the Balkans, whether the other great powers like it or not. This growing capacity underlines above all the decline of the hegemony of the only remaining world superpower, the USA. Since the USA's capacity to lay down the law to the government in Bonn was the lynchpin of its domination over two thirds of the globe after World War II, the very presence of the Bundeswehr in Bosnia today demonstrates to the world the extent to which this American domination has been undermined.

Germany undermines Dayton and challenges the USA

But the participation of Bonn in the NATO IFOR2 mission in Bosnia, where it jointly controls one of the three implementation zones along with France, is a challenge to the USA and the European powers nor only at the global historical level. It is also an indispensable move in the concrete defence of crucial German imperialist interests in the region itself. The most important of these German interests is the long term acquisition of a Mediterranean naval base via the harbours of its historical ally Croatia. It was the Kohl government which triggered off the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the whole chain reaction of bloody conflicts in that country, by aggressively pushing for the independence of Croatia and Slovenia at the beginning of the 1990s. Although Bonn, not least through massive arms supplies to Croatia, was able to achieve this goal, one third of the territory of its Croatian ally remained occupied by Serb forces, practically cutting off the north of the country from the strategic Dalmatian ports in the south. At the beginning of the Balkan wars, Germany was still able to advance strongly through background support for Croatia, without having to engage its own troops. But when war broke out in neighbouring Bosnia, the main European rivals of Germany, especially Britain and France under the disguise of the UN, and then the USA under the umbrella of NATO, proceeded to pursue their interests in the region through a direct military presence. This presence could be all the more effective since Germany itself was militarily and politically not yet prepared to follow suit. It was above all the military engagement of the USA which in the past two years began to weaken the position of Germany. The military victories of Croatia against the pro-British and pro-French Serbs in the Krajina and in Bosnia, which overcame the division of that country linking the Dalmatian ports to the capital Zagreb, were gained thanks to the support, not of Germany but of America. The Dayton agreement, imposed by the US in the wake of its military strikes in Bosnia, thus confirmed the imperious necessity for Germany in turn to defend its interests in the region hrough its own armed forces. The stationing of German sanitary and logistic forces in Croatia last year, outside the battle zone and without a combat mandate, was a first step towards the present "peace- keeping" force in Bosnia itself. Upon their arrival in Bosnia, these German units, heavily armed and equipped with a combat mandate, were openly greeted as allies by the Bosnian Croats, who immediately adopted a more aggressive attitude towards the Bosnian Muslims, making life difficult for the French and Spanish troops in the divided city of Mostar. And the Croatian government in Zagreb rewarded the arrival of the Bundeswehr by deciding to replace the old Boeings of Croatian Airlines with new Airbus planes mainly built in Germany. Justifying this decision, the Croatian foreign ministry declared: "we owe our national independence to America, but our future lies in Europe, on the basis of our friendship to the German and the Bavarian governments."

The German Balkan Offensive

We are presently witnessing a German counter-offensive in ex-Yugoslavia and the Balkans aimed at reversing the German losses through the Dayton process, and at profiting from the American difficulties in the Middle East to extend German influence in south-eastern Europe and central Asia. The arrival of German troops in Bosnia, far from being an isolated "peace-keeping" event, is part of an extremely aggressive imperialist expansion towards the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Caucasus. The central pivot of this policy is the collaboration with Turkey. The defeat of Russian imperialism in Chechnya, and the weakening of its position in the whole of the Caucasus, is not least the fruit of this German-Turkish collaboration. Today, Germany is strongly supporting the rapprochement policy of the Erbakan government in Ankara towards Iran, another traditional German ally. And it has clearly taken the side of Turkey in its conflict with Greece. Foreign Minister Kinkel told the press December 7 in Bonn: "Turkey is for Germany the key country for our relations to the Islamic world ... How can you blame Turkey for orienting itself more strongly towards its Islamic neighbours, since Turkey hasn't gained even a penny from the customs union with the EU due to the blocking policy of Greece?" It is in response to this German-Turkish alignment that Russia could promise to deliver rockets to the Greek Cypriots, without encountering strong disapproval from Washington. Here, there is a massive build-up of arms and tensions at the junction between Europe and Asia.

What is at stake strategically in these conflicts?

In the same year Friedrich Naumann, another famous theoretician of German imperialism, wrote. "Germany must throw its whole weight behind securing this route, upon which depends its link to Turkey. We have experienced in war the damage which can be caused when the Serbs acquire part of this route. This was the reason for Mackensen's army crossing the Danube. Everything which lies on the Bagdad railway line, lies on the route Hamburg-Suer, which we cannot permit to be blocked by anyone. What is the good of the Bagdad or the Anatolian railway, if we cannot use them without English permission?"

German-American rivalry in Eastern Europe

Although the United States and Germany, via their Bosnian and Croatian pawns in Yugoslavia, recently made a tactical alliance to push back the Serbs, and although Washington and Bonn have worked together to limit the development of chaos in Russia, they have become the main rivals in the fight for domination of Eastern Europe. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russian imperialism has rapidly lost even the last remnants of its previous influence over the former Warsaw Pact countries. Although the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union are justified by the western bourgeois media with the need to protect Eastern Europe from a possible Russian aggression, in reality they are part of the race between Germany via the EU and the US via NATO to replace the Muscovite with their own imperialist domination. During the first half of the 1990s Germany was able to build up a more or less strong influence in all ex-Warsaw Pact countries except the Czech Republic. At the centre of this German expansion was its alliance with Poland, which has a strong military component. In fact, under the guise of helping to seal off the Polish eastern frontier from illegal migrants heading for Germany, Bonn has begun to equip and even finance important parts of the Polish military apparatus. Indeed the Polish government has warmly greeted the deployment of German troops in Bosnia, and has promised to participate with the Bundeswehr in future operations abroad. The fact that a country like Poland allies itself with the economic giant Germany rather than the US military superpower reveals how little Warsaw fears a Russian military invasion. In reality, the Polish bourgeoisie, far from being on the defensive, hopes to share the spoils of the German expansion at the expense of Russia.

It's precisely because the US lost so much ground to Germany in Eastern Europe over recent years, that it is now pressing so impatiently for the eastern expansion of NATO. But in doing this, it is jeopardising its privileged relations with Russia, which are so important for Washington precisely because the exhausted Russian bear is the only other country to possess a gigantic nuclear arsenal. Presently, German diplomacy is doing all in its power to widen the Russian-American breach, by offering a series of concessions to Moscow at Washington's expense. One of these proposed concessions was that no NATO (i.e. U.S.) troops or nuclear weapons should be stationed in the new NATO member countries. The German defence minister Ruhe even proposed including the territory of ex-East Germany in this category. This would amount to creating, for the first time since 1945, a no-go area for American troops in the German Federal Republic: a possible first step to making U.S. forces eventually leave altogether. One understands the rage of the political establishment in Washington, which has started producing human rights reports placing Germany on the same level as Iran or North Korea because of its treatment of the American Scientology sect.

The rise of Germany and the crisis of French European policy

There are several reasons for the recent distancing between Paris and London, one being the punishment handed out by the United States especially to Britain. But from the French point of view, the alliance with Britain has failed in one of its most important goals: preventing the rise of Germany. German troops in the Balkans, and the German entente with Poland, traditionally an ally of France, are the best proofs of this. In response, France is not realigning itself with Germany, but changing its tactics in combatting it. The new tactic, that of embracing ones enemy in order to hold it back, is demonstrated in Bosnia, where the German forces, if they cannot be excluded, are at least under French leadership. This tactic may work for a time, since Germany is not yet able to play a more independent military role. But in the long term it is also doomed to failure.

Sharpening of military tensions

This whole development reveals the bloody logic of militarism in this century, in the decadent phase of capitalism. Through the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Germany, thanks to its economic and political strength, and its geographical situation, became Europe's leading power almost overnight. But even such a power can only effectively defend its interests if it is able to enforce them militarily. Since capitalism can no longer conquer sufficient markets for a real expansion of the system, each imperialist power can only assert itself at the expense of others. In this framework, which in this century has already led to two world wars, it is brute force which in the final instance decides the status of bourgeois states. The events in Yugoslavia have confirmed this lesson. Unless it has its troops in the region, German imperialism will lose out there, despite all its other strengths. It is this compulsion of a declining system which today is heating up military tensions around the world, dictating the militarist course of the German and all other bourgeois states.

But this bloody course, with all the impoverishment and suffering it imposes on the working class, and the light it will shed on the reality of the system, will in the long term sharpen the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. At the historic level, the development of German imperialist expansions can be a considerable factor in the return of the German proletariat to the head of the revolutionary class struggle of the international proletariat.

[1] All the quotations from the geostrategists of the "Alldeutsche Verein" have been taken from the documentation "Europastrategien des deutschen Kapitals 1900-1945".

The recent strikes and economic difficulties in South Korea have overturned one of the bourgeoisies arguments in its ideological campaign to refute marxism. Disappointed by the end of the Japanese “miracle”, the bourgeoisie seized on the considerable growth rates of the “Asian dragons” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) and the rise of new “tigers” (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia). Wasnt their prosperity the “proof” that underdeveloped countries can quickly emerge out of poverty, and that the credit for these successes lies with capitalism and its market laws? And how many times have we been shown striking workers who carry on with their work while wearing an armband to mark their discontent? The “devotion to the interests of the company”, the “legendary discipline” of the south east Asian workers has been presented to us by the bourgeoisie and its media as one of the secrets of the economic success of these countries and as the living proof of the emptiness of the marxist theory that class conflict is inevitable.

With the collapse of the eastern bloc and the demise of Stalinism, which has been falsely presented as the end of communism, the whole bourgeoisie announced the triumph of the “market economy” and promised a new era of prosperity. But the brutal realities of the crisis, austerity measures and mass redundancies on a scale not seen for 25 years, are there to contradict these triumphant speeches and to disperse the ideological fog of these phony promises about a future of “prosperity”. More than ever, the bourgeoisie urgently needs models of success in order to keep its myths alive and hide the historic bankruptcy of its system. It has to do all it can to prevent the proletariat, its mortal enemy, from becoming aware of the real roots of the crisis, from understanding that capitalism has no other future than one which drags humanity into growing impoverishment and into increasingly murderous military conflicts. This is why, after the more and more evident exposure of its German and Japanese models, the ideological pimps of the bourgeoisie have been promoting the south east Asian examples as new poles of growth. This is one of the new mystifications in vogue today.

The Third World in the decadence of capitalism

Only a global analysis of the decadence of capitalism can enable us to understand the place and significance of the relative economic development of the south east Asian dragons and how they constitute an exception to the rule of massive deindustrialisation in the third world and to the general incapacity of the capitalist mode of production to develop the productive forces. The figures are very eloquent here: the third world only returned to the level of industrialisation per inhabitant it had in 1750 two centuries later, in 1960. Despite all the bourgeoisies triumphant talk about the dynamism of south east Asia and third world development, during the period of decadence the gap between the industrialised countries and the rest of the world has grown bigger and bigger: it has more than doubled, going from 1 to 3.4 in 1913 to 1 to 8.2 in 1990. Whereas during the ascendant phase of capitalism the population integrated into the productive process grew more rapidly than the population itself, today we are seeing a growing mass of workers being ejected from the system. The end of capitalisms progressive role can be measured, among other things, by its inability to develop one of its main productive forces: labour power. The small burst of industrialisation in the third world during the years 1960-70, which was vigorous enough in terms of growth rates, in no way overturned the overall situation. It was limited in time and space, it depended entirely on the mode of accumulation in the developed countries, and in the end proved very costly and pernicious for the third world itself. But apart from a few exceptions, mostly localised in south east Asia, most of the attempts to create a real industrial base failed. And no wonder, since the established industrial powers hardly wanted to see the generalisation of new competitors.[1] [31]
Without developing here on a question which we will have to return to on another occasion, we want to recall that the brunt of industrialisation in the third world has been concentrated in only five countries: Brazil and the four dragons.[2] [32] Together, these five countries supply nearly 80% of exports of manufactured goods from the third world, even though they make up only 6% of the latters population. Looking at the four dragons alone, the imbalance is even greater: in 1990 they supplied two thirds of exports of manufactured goods from the whole of the third world, but represent only 3% of its population. Limited in space, this development was also limited in time. The brief reversal of the general dynamic in the years 1967-77 (cf the table below) has again given way to an increase in the relative gap: the growth of production in the third world went back to a rate lower than that of the industrialised countries. Entire zones even stopped growing, since production per capita simply went into decline. The 1980s, real lost years for the third world, put a definite end to the illusions. The few exceptions which escaped this general evolution did not refute the overall tendency. The 1980s saw a quasi-stagnation in per capita production (0.7%) in the countries of the southern hemisphere

Why was there a development in South-East Asia after the Second World War?

Its only in the general context described above that we can pose the question of the cause, scale and nature of the growth that took place in south east Asia. First of all, we must exclude Japan from the growth figures in this region: Japan was the only country in the region which went through an industrial revolution in the 19th century and freed itself from any major direct or even indirect colonial domination. This country, which went through its capitalist transformation via the Meiji revolution of 1867, has to be seen as one of the economic powers that emerged during the ascendant period of capitalism.

The south east Asian exception can only be understood in the context of the deadly struggle between the two military blocs (NATO and the Warsaw Pact) which came out of the second imperialist world war. Contained in Europe in the immediate post-war period, the expansion of the eastern bloc was displaced towards Asia. The USSRs support for the Maoist bourgeois faction which came to power in 1949, plus the war in Korea, led the USA to develop a policy aimed at blocking the expansion of its imperialist rival in this part of the globe. Aware that economic and social poverty was one of the main arguments used by the pro-Soviet nationalist factions who came to power in certain Asian countries, the USA created zones on the very borders of China (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan) which could serve as outposts of western prosperity. The priority for the USA was to establish a cordon sanitaire against the advances of the Soviet bloc in Asia. Contrary to its policies in the rest of the world, the USA was to use an impressive arsenal of measures to sap the objective bases of social discontent in these countries. Thus, whereas almost everywhere in the world America had violently opposed agrarian and institutional reforms and had supported the most retrograde factions of the ruling bourgeoisies, it promoted revolutionary economic and social policies in the four Asian countries we have mentioned. These policies were completely determined by its geostrategic interests in the region. South Korea, for example, did not have any particular economic strong points. Lacking in raw materials, and with most of its industrial base limited to the north, the country was drained dry at the end of the war: production had fallen by 44% and employment by 59%. Sources of fresh capital, intermediate means of production, technical competence and managerial capacities were virtually non-existent. Only the imperatives of the cold war pushed the USA to support South Korea to the hilt. Against the stupid assertions about the formidable self-development of south east Asia, the growth of the ‘dragons’ was the pure product of American imperialist interests in the context of the cold war. There is no doubt that without the massive aid of the US from the beginning and for long years afterwards, these countries, and particularly South Korea and Taiwan, would not have survived as national states.

1. The sheer scale of military and economic support from the US amounted to a Marshall Plan for Asia. The growth that took place during the 1950-70 period was based on record-breaking levels of US aid (it was only surpassed, in relative terms, by the aid given to Israel, for similar strategic reasons). From 1945 to 1978, South Korea received some 13 billion dollars, or 600 per inhabitant, and Taiwan 5.6 billion, or 4.5 per inhabitant. Between 1953 and 1960, foreign aid contributed almost 90% of fixed capital in South Korea. The aid given by the USA reached 14% of GNP in 1957. In Taiwan between 1951 and 1965, American civil aid reached 6% of GNP and military aid 10%. In the 1950s, more than 80% of Korean imports and 95% of Taiwans trade deficit were financed by American aid. This aid ceased in 1964 for Taiwan and only in 1980 for Korea. But even then forms of natural aid continued. Cereals and other supplies were given to Korea as a reward for its voluntary restrictions on textile exports. American food surpluses helped keep wages low in these two countries. In south east Asia, aid was also relayed in other forms in the 1970s: through direct overseas investments (essentially American then Japanese) and above all by external debts (see the table below); then, for Korea and Taiwan, industrial exports were able to take up the torch.
2. Just as in Japan, agrarian reforms were imposed by American military governments, and this had profound consequences for the class structure of these countries and for the relative autonomy of the states. Thus in Korea, agrarian reform began in 1945 with the decision of the American military government to redistribute to former farmers and growers the lands previously controlled by the Japanese. Agrarian reform thus helped ensure political stability by suppressing any danger of peasant riots. In Taiwan the Americans demanded the agrarian reform drawn up by the Sino-American Commission for Rural Reconstruction. This was granted exceptional powers and its budget was in US hands.
3. Numerous institutional and social reforms were pushed through in order to sap the bases of the old regime and dynamise society. In contrast to the systematic support given to the land-owning bourgeoisie in other third world countries, and notably in Central and South America, American policy in south east Asia served to disintegrate such factions, thus getting rid of a political and economic obstacle to industrialisation. Thus, in 1959, the dismemberment of the big landed properties and their redistribution as small plots without any real compensation, was relatively equitable in South Korea[3] [33] and helped to destroy an hereditary class system (Yangban) founded on landed property.[4] [34]
4. But the USA did not restrict itself to supplying military, financial and technical aid to these countries; it also took charge of the whole management of the state and the economy. In the absence of real national bourgeoisies, the only social body capable of carrying out the modernisation that the USA wanted was the army. A highly effective form of state capitalism was installed in each of these countries. Economic growth was spurred on by a system which closely linked the public and private sectors through a quasi-military centralisation, but with the sanction of the market. In contrast to the east European version of state capitalism with its absurd bureaucratic excesses, these countries allied state centralisation with the sanction of the law of value. Numerous interventionist policies were carried out: the formation of industrial conglomerates, laws protecting the internal market, trade restrictions at the frontiers, a form of planning that was imperative but also incited further efforts, state management of the distribution of credit, the orientation of capital and resources towards the key sectors, the handing out of exclusive licenses, management monopolies etc. Thus in South Korea, it was thanks to a unique relationship with the chaebols (equivalent to the Japanese zaibatsus), great industrial conglomerates often founded through state aid or initiative,[5] [35] that the public authorities orientated economic development. In Taiwan, public enterprises supplied 80% of industrial production in the 1950s. This was a rate which easily matched that of the east European countries! After falling in the 1960s, this ratio increased again in the 1970s when the state took charge of the programme of building heavy industries.
   Far from being a counter-example, south east Asia is in fact a magnificent illustration of one of the fundamental characteristics of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production: the impossibility for the spontaneous development of an autonomous national bourgeoisie. In an era in which the bourgeoisie no longer has a progressive historical role, it is the state - which is in the hands of the army, the only structure that has any force and coherence in the third world - that takes on the role of society’s tutor, a tutor trained, installed and financed by the world’s leading power in the context of the inter-imperialist configuration after 1945. If all these circumstances had not come together, we can imagine, especially for South Korea and Taiwan, after their long decline under the Yin and the Manchus, that these countries would have ended up in the same impasse as the rest of the third world. This is what makes the four dragons (and Japan) examples which cannot be repeated. This is what provides the answer to the ridiculous claims of Internationalist Perspective about the capacities for local bourgeoisies to emerge on the peripheries with the ability to industrialise and compete with the old industrial countries.
5. To ensure the economic success of these Asian countries, the USA guaranteed that its market would be open to them. South Korea, but above all Taiwan, also benefited from the Japanese-American economic competition which has developed over the years, notably through the customs privileges granted in paragraph 807 of the US customs code, enabling components assembled or re-worked abroad to be re-exported to the US. This is why numerous American firms have relocated their assembly operations abroad in order to benefit from the lower wages and in doing so have blocked the flood of cheap Japanese imports into the US. Thus, towards the end of the 1960s, half of American imports took place under the cover of this paragraph 807, and for the most part they came from American enterprises in Mexico and Taiwan. But the Japanese have responded by doing the same thing in Taiwan. Furthermore, American support has extended as far as tolerating the protectionist measures that South Korea and Taiwan adopted to protect their industries from substitute imports, despite advice to the contrary from the IMF, the World Bank and the GATT. Later on, when these countries went over to industries geared towards export, it was the USA which directed and organised this change-over by dictating practically all of the necessary reforms.
6. Finally we should point out that this economic growth is above all the product of the ferocious exploitation of the working class in south east Asia and of an extreme militarisation of social life: low wages, long working hours, intense flexibility, permanent social control through tying the wage-earner to the company, military occupation of the factories in response to any social conflict, etc. This is without doubt one of the most savagely exploited fractions of the world proletariat: the workers have paid in flesh and blood for the economic miracle. South Korea has the highest rates of industrial accidents and work-related illnesses in the world. The south Korean women workers, whose wages are not even a half of their male colleagues, have been the bosses favourite sector, especially young single women who have some basic education. These facts explain the low rates of demographic growth, 1.4% per year, the source of which lies in the exploitation of women and not, as is claimed, in the high levels of development. In contrast to other third world countries, the dragons have not had to deal with a demographic explosion that has held back economic growth (4% growth alongside a demographic growth of 3% ensures 1% growth per inhabitant). Furthermore, the thirty years of growth in these countries have engendered a real ecological catastrophe which has to be added to the frightful living conditions.

Contrary to the great claims of bourgeois propaganda about the dynamism of capitalism and the possibility for new arrivals on the world market to industrialise and compete with the older powers, the development of south east Asia is no mystery. Japan and the four dragons were chosen by the USA to revitalise eastern Asia and to form a barrier against its Chinese and Russian rivals. These military or one party states enjoyed a breathing space after the second world war that was available to very few others. This development, bracketed in time and space, confirms the thesis that the decadence of the capitalist mode of production is characterised by inter-imperialist conflicts, by a deadly economic struggle over a saturated world market and thus by the overwhelming weight of militarism and the war economy.

The present difficulties in south east Asia

Certainly, this bracket has marked a kind of success, which no doubt went beyond America’s post-war predictions; to some extent it has even backfired against its instigator at the economic level. But this situation can only be temporary. Despite the delay, just like Japan, these islands of prosperity in south east Asia are set on a course towards recession. The present difficulties in these countries shows that this region of the world is no exception. They are gradually entering into a zone of economic turbulence. The recent economic problems and social conflicts are trebly illustrative. To begin with, they show that the crisis of capitalism is indeed world-wide and that, even if has to some extent spared certain geographical areas for a while, it is now hitting every country in the world, though still to varying degrees. Exceptions are becoming increasingly rare and the crisis is making all situations more and more homogeneous. This is a first blow struck against the myth of the so-called south east Asian model. Secondly, the strikes in Korea are a striking refutation of all the claims about the integration of the Korean workers, which aim to divide the world proletariat. They show the international unity of interests of the working class, against the myths of an Asian working class that is entirely subservient to a higher national interest. Finally, the crisis and the social conflicts are undermining another myth, the myth of an economic solution inside of capitalism.

Today, with the saturation of the world market and the economic difficulties of the US itself, the period in which the dragons could profit from the opening up of the US market is now over. The tolerated conquest of the American market by the dragons after the war had as its corollary a growing dependence on American policies. Thus, South Korea - and the situation is analogous for Taiwan - is a very outgoing country and thus highly dependent on the world market (in 1987, its exports accounted for 40% of GNP), and above all on the American market (in the same year the US market absorbed 40% of South Koreas exports). Overnight, the South Korean economy could enter violently into recession as a result of a slow-down in world trade, a major shift in exchange rates or protectionist measures. This dependence is all the greater, and all the more threatening of economic failure, in that it is the falling trade surplus with the US that has to finance the growing trade deficit in equipment and technology with Japan - goods that are needed to ensure the competivity of Korean capital. Here a new obstacle appears: since the success of the dragons is based on technology which has proven its worth but which is produced at low cost, these countries, in their efforts to negotiate the turn-around to a higher value production, have to pile up their debts and thus fall into technological dependence on Japan which is more and more controlling the economy of the whole region.

Furthermore, the continuation of the success of the two decades after the war was to a large extent possible thanks to the old recipes of public deficits and debts (see tables above) which have strongly fueled inflation.

As with other third world success stories, growth since the onset of the crisis is a balloon puffed up by debt and could burst at any moment. The big investors are well aware of this: Among the reasons the richest industrial countries have been so anxious to double the IMFs emergency credit lines to 850 billions is that a new Mexico-style crisis is feared, this time in the Far East. The upsurge in the Pacific economies has stimulated enormous private sector capital flows, which have been substituted for domestic saving, leading to an unstable financial situation. The question has been which Asian tiger would be the first to fall (Guardian, 16.10.96). Every time the crumbling of one myth threatens to expose the failure of the whole capitalist system, the bourgeoisie conjures up new ones. A few years ago it was the German and Japanese miracles; then, after the collapse of the eastern bloc, the bright new tomorrow offered by the new markets in eastern Europe and Russia. Today the dragons are in vogue. But the recent and future difficulties in the region show and will show to the working class that these little emperors are also naked, tearing a little bit more of the veil behind which the bourgeoisie tries to hide the bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production.

C Mel

Sources: Aseniero Georges, Le contexte transnational du developpment de la Coree du Sud et du Taiwan, an article published in Mondialisation et Accumulation. LHarmattan, 1993; Bairoch Paul, Le Tiers-Monde dans limpasse, Gallimard 1992; Myths et paradoxes de lhistoire economique, La Decouverte, 1994; Banque Mondiale, annual Rapport sur le developpment dans le monde; Coutros and Husson; Le Destin du Tiers Monde, Nathan, 1993; Chung H Lee, La Transformation economic de la Coree du Sud, OECD, 1995; Dumont and Paquet, Taiwan, le Prix de la Reussite, La Decouverte, 1987; Lorot and Schwob, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Coree du Sud, les Nouveaux Conquerants?, Hatier 1987; PNUD Rapport mondial sur le developpment humain, Economica, 1992

IR89, 2nd Quarter 1997

Inn°5 of Revolutionary Perspectives, the organ of the Communist Workers’Organisation (CWO), we find an article entitled “Sects, Lies, and the LostPerspective of the ICC”, which is intended as a response to our article “ARudderless Policy of Regroupment”, published in the International Reviewn°87 (this text itself being a reply to a letter from the CWO published in thesame issue of the Review). The CWO’s article deals with many questions,notably the method by which communist organisations should be built, to whichwe will return in a later issue of this Review. In this article we willlargely limit ourselves to one aspect of the CWO’s polemic: the idea that theICC is in crisis because of its mistakes in analysing the historic course.

We have already given an account, inseveral texts published in both the International Review and ourterritorial press [1] [43],of the crisis our organisation has recently had to confront, and which has beenexpressed, as the CWO’s article points out, by a number of resignations in oursection in France. The ICC has identified the causes of its organisationaldifficulties: the persistence within the organisation of the weight of thecircle spirit which resulted from the historical conditions within which ourorganisation was formed, after the longest and most profound period ofcounter-revolution in the history of the workers’ movement. The survival ofthis circle spirit led, in particular, to the formation of clans within theICC, which seriously undermined its organisational tissue. From the autumn of1993 onwards, the whole ICC undertook the struggle against its weaknesses, andin the spring of 1995, its 11th Congress was able to conclude thatthese had been largely overcome [2] [44].

The CWO gives a different explanationfor the ICC’s organisational difficulties:

“(...)the current crisis of the ICC is (...) the result (...) of politicaldemoralisation. The real reason for this is that the perspectives on which theICC was founded have now finally collapsed in the face of a reality which theICC has spent years trying to ignore. In fact what we said about the earliersplit in 1981 applies to the current crisis:

“The causes of the present crisishave been building up for a number of years and can be found in the group’sbasic positions. The ICC argues that the economic crisis is “here” in all itscontradictions and has been so for over twelve years. They see revolutionaryconsciousness as springing directly and spontaneously from workers in struggleagainst the effects of this crisis. It is not therefore surprising, that evenwhen the crisis has not produced the level of class struggle predicted by theICC, that this should lead to splits in the organisation” (Workers’ Voice n°5).

“Since then the situation of theworking class has worsened and it has been thrown on the defensive. Instead ofrecognising this, throughout the 1980s the ICC proclaimed that we were goingthrough the “years of truth” leading to ever greater class confrontations (...)The obvious contradiction between the ICC perspectives and capitalist realitywould have provoked the current crisis even earlier if it had not been for thecollapse of Stalinism. This unique historical phenomenon has completely shiftedthe debate about the course of history since the pause following such a majorupheaval has postponed the  bourgeoisie’sdrive to war and equally allows the working class greater time to regroupitself before the further attacks of capital make large-scale social conflicton an international scale once again necessary. It also allowed the ICC achance to wriggle out of the consequences of the “years of truth” perspectives.However, it has not solved the problem posed by their origins. For them, May1968 ended the counter-revolution and opened up the period when the workingclass would play out its historic role. Almost thirty years later (ie more thanone generation!) where has that class confrontation gone? “This was thequestion we posed to the ICC in 1981, and this is still one of the albatrossesaround its neck.

“The ICC knows this, so in order toprevent further demoralisation it has had to turn to that age-old device -scapegoating. The ICC is not content to deal with its current crisis as onestemming from its own political failures. Instead it has tried, not for thefirst time, to turn reality on its head and is insisting that the problems itfaces are due to outside “parasitical” elements who are undermining themorganisationally” (Revolutionary Perspectives n°5).

Obviously, anyone who has read ourpress will be aware that the ICC has never attributed its internalorganisational difficulties to the action of parasitic elements. Either the CWOis deliberately lying (in which case we would ask them to tell us why), or elsethey have made a very mistaken reading of what we have written (in which casewe suggest they buy new glasses for their militants). At all events, such anaffirmation reveals a lamentable frivolity which is utterly regrettable inpolitical debate. This is why we will leave this kind of thing to one side,since we prefer to go to the heart of the disagreements between the ICC and theCWO (and the IBRP - the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party - ofwhich it is a component). More particularly, in this article we intend to takeup the idea that the ICC’s perspectives for the class struggle have beenrevealed to be bankrupt [3] [45].

Arethe ICC’s perspectives bankrupt?

Tojudge whether or not the perspective that we traced for the 1980s was correct,we need to go back to what we wrote on the eve of the new decade.

“As long as it seemed as thoughthe crisis could have a solution the bourgeoisie lulled the exploited withillusory promises: accept austerity today and everything will be bettertomorrow (...) But today this language does not work anymore (...) Since thepromise of a “better tomorrow” does not fool anyone anymore, the ruling classhas changed its tune. The opposite is starting to be trumpeted now: the worstis ahead of us and there is nothing we can do, “the others are to blame”, thereis no way out (...)

“As the bourgeoisie loses its ownillusions it is increasingly forced to speak clearly to the working class aboutthe future(...)

“If the bourgeoisie has nothing butgeneralised war to give humanity as its future, the class struggles developingtoday prove that the proletariat is not ready to give the bourgeoisie free rein.The working class has another future to propose, a future of communism, wherethere will be no wars, no exploitation.

“In the decade beginning today, thehistorical alternative will be decided: either the proletariat will continueits offensive, continue to paralyse the murderous arm of capitalism and gatherits forces to destroy the system, or else it will let itself be trapped, wornout, demoralised by speeches and repression and then the way will be open for anew holocaust which risks the elimination of all human society.

“If the 70s were years of illusionboth for the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; because the reality of the worldwill be revealed in its true colours, because the future of humanity will be inlarge part decided, the 80s will be the years of truth” (InternationalReview n°20, “The 80s, Years of Truth”).

As the CWO says, we maintained thisanalysis throughout the 1980s, and each Congress that we held during thisperiod was an occasion for the ICC to reaffirm its validity.

“On the eve of the 1980s, weanalysed the decade that was beginning as “the years of truth” (...)After the first third of this period, we can say that this analysis has beenfully confirmed: never since the 1930s has the impasse of the capitalisteconomy stood revealed so clearly; never, since the last World War, has thebourgeoisie deployed such military arsenals, or mobilised such resources forthe production of the means of destruction; never since the 1920s has theproletariat undertaken struggles of the extent of those which shook Poland andthe whole ruling class in 1980-81" (“Resolution on the InternationalSituation” from the ICC’s Vth Congress, 2nd July 1983, International Reviewn°35).

However, during this Congress, wepointed out that the proletariat had just suffered a serious defeat,concretised in particular by the state of emergency in Poland:

“Whereas the years 1978-80 weremarked by a worldwide recovery in workers’ struggles (American miners’ strike,Rotterdam dockers, British steelworkers, engineering workers in Germany andBrazil, the confrontations of Longwy-Denain in France, mass strikes in Poland),1981 and 1982 were marked by a clear reflux in these struggles; this phenomenonwas particularly evident in the most “classic” of capitalist countries, GreatBritain, where the year 1981 saw the lowest number of strikes since World WarII, whereas in 1979 they had reached the highest quantitative level in history,with 29 million strike days lost. The declaration of the state of emergency inPoland, and the violent repression which has fallen on the workers in thiscountry did not come like lightning out of a blue sky. The coup d’étatof December 1981, the most striking point of the workers’ defeat after theformidable struggles of summer 1980, were part of a defeat of the entireproletariat (...)

However serious the defeat sufferedduring these last years by the working class, it does not call into questionthe historic course, inasmuch as:

 - it is not thedecisive battalions of the world proletariat which were in the front line ofthe confrontation;

 - the crisiswhich is now in full swing in the capitalist metropoles will force theproletariat in these metropoles to express reserves of combativity which havenot been drawn on decisively up till now”.

Thisprediction was confirmed only three months later. In Belgium in September 1983,followed shortly afterwards by Holland, the workers of the public sectorentered massively into struggle [4] [46].These movements were not isolated events. In fact, within a few months, socialmovements affected most of the advanced countries: Germany, Britain, France,USA, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Japan [5] [47].Rarely has there been seen such international simultaneity of classconfrontations, at the same time as the bourgeoisie in all these countriesorganised an almost complete blackout on these movements. Obviously, thebourgeoisie did not just sit and watch, but organised a whole series ofcampaigns and manoeuvres, mostly underrtaken by the trades unions, designed to discouragethe workers, to disperse their struggles, and to imprison them in corporatistdead-ends. During 1985, this lead to a certain calming of workers’ struggles inthe main European countries, especially where the struggle had been at itshighest during the preceding years. At the same time, these manoeuvres couldnot help increasing still further the discredit affecting the unions in most ofthe advance countries, which was an important element in the development ofworking class consciousness, since the unions are its main enemies, with thefunction of sabotaging the struggle from the inside.

“For all these reasons, thepresent development of distrust for the unions is an essential element in thebalance of forces between the classes and thus of the whole historic situation.However, this distrust is itself partly responsible for the reduction in thenumber of struggles in different countries, particularly where the unions havebeen most discredited (as in France following the accidental arrival in powerof the Left in 1981). When the workers have for decades clung to the illusionthat they can only wage the struggle in the framework of the trade unions andwith their support, the loss of confidence in these organs leads them to resortto passivity in answer to the so-called “calls for struggle” coming from theunions” (“Resolution on the International Situation” adopted by the ICC’sVIth Congress, in International Review n°44). The large-scale strikesthat took place in two major countries marked by a low level of combativity in1985, France (especially the rail workers’ strike in December 1986) and Italy(notably in the education sector, but also on the railways), were proof thatthe wave of struggles begun in Belgium 1983 was continuing. This reality wasdemonstrated powerfully in Belgium by a six-week movement of struggles(April-May 1986), the biggest since World War II, involving both public andprivate sectors, as well as the unemployed, paralysing the country’s economiclife and forcing the government to retreat on a whole series of attacks it hadprepared. During the same period (1986-87), there were important movements inthe Scandinavian countries (Finland and Norway at the beginning of 1986, Swedenin the autumn), in the United States (summer 1986), in Brazil (1.5 millionstrikers en October 1986, massive strikes during April-May 1987), in Greece (2million on strike in January 1987), in Yugoslavia (spring 1987), in Spain(spring 1987), in Mexico, in South Africa, etc. It is also worth noting thespontaneous strike, outside the trades unions, by 140,000 British Telecomworkers at the end of January 1987.

Obviously, the bourgeoisie reacted tothis combativity by setting in motion new manoeuvres. The aim was to creatediversions through widely publicised ideological campaigns on “Islamicterrorism”, on the “peace” between the great powers (signature of the SALTagreements on the reduction of nuclear weapons), on the aspiration of thepeoples to “freedom” and “democracy” (the international spectacle ofGorbachev’s “glasnost”), on ecology, on “humanitarian” interventions in theThird World, etc [6] [48].Above all, there were campaigns to overcome the growing discredit affecting theclassical unions by promoting new forms of unionism (“rank and file” or“fighting” unionism, etc). The most striking illustration of this bourgeoismanoeuvre (often undertaken by the leftist organisations, but also bytraditional unions and left-wing parties, whether Stalinist orsocial-democratic), was the formation of “coordinations” in twocountries where classical unionism was the most discredited: Italy (especiallyin the transport sector), and France (most of all in the important hospitalstrike of autumn 1988) [7] [49].One function of these organisations, which presented themselves as “coming fromthe rank-and-file” and “anti-union”, was to introduce the corporatist poisoninto the proletarian ranks, with the argument that the unions did not defendworkers’ interests because they were organised by branch of industry not bytrade.

These manoeuvres had a certainimpact, which we pointed out at the time: “This capacity of the bourgeoisieto manoeuvre has up till now held back the tendencies towards extension andunification contained in the present wave of struggle” (“Resolution on theInternational Situation”, adopted at the ICC’s VIIIth Congress and published inInternational Review n°59). Amongst the causes of the difficultiesencountered by the working class, we pointed out: “the weight of thesurrounding ideological decomposition upon which, more and more, thebourgeoisie will base its manoeuvres to reinforce atomisation, “every man forhimself”, to undermine the growing confidence of the working class in its ownstrength and in the future its combat implies” (ibid.).

Nonetheless, we also noted that while“the phenomenon of decomposition is a real weight in the present period andwill continue to be so for some time to come” and “that it constitutes avery serious danger that the class will have to face up to (...) thisobservation should in no way be a source of demoralisation or scepticism”since “Throughout the 80s, despite this negative weight of decomposition,which has been systematically exploited by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat hasstill been able to push forward its struggles in response to the aggravation ofthe crisis” (“Presentation of the Resolution on the InternationalSituation”, in International Review n°59).

Here then is the analysis that wemade of the state of the class struggle, a few months before one of the biggestevents of the post-war period: the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Europeand the USSR.

The ICC had not foreseen this event(any more than the other organisations of the proletarian milieu, or thebourgeoisie’s “experts”). Nonetheless, by September 1989, two months before thefall of the Berlin Wall, it was one of the first to identify it [8] [50].Already, we described the collapse of the Eastern bloc as the biggestexpression to date of the decomposition of capitalist society, and in thissense we immediately declared that this event would create “Greaterdifficulties for the proletariat” [9] [51].In line with our previous analyses, we wrote: “The identification which issystematically established between Stalinism and communism, the lie repeated athousand times, and today being wielded more than ever, according to which theproletarian revolution can only end in disaster, will for a whole period gainan added impact within the ranks of the working class. We thus have to expect amomentary retreat in the consciousness of the proletariat (...) In particular,reformist ideology will weigh very heavily on the struggle in the period ahead,greatly facilitating the action of the unions.

Given the historic importance of theevents that are determining it, the present retreat of the proletariat -although it doesn’t call into question the historic course, the generalperspective of class confrontations - is going to be much deeper than the onewhich accompanied the defeat of 1981 in Poland” [10] [52].

It is really frivolous for the CWO toassert that the collapse of Stalinism “allowed the ICC a chance to wriggleout of the consequences of the “years of truth” perspectives”. We did notdeclare that the events of 1989 would cause a retreat for the working classmerely to try to hide the supposed collapse of our perspective on thedevelopment of the class struggle during the 1980s. As we have shown above, wedid not produce this idea like a rabbit out of a hat, but in perfect coherencewith our analytical framework. While the 1980s thus drew to a close with aserious defeat for the working class, this did not mean that the ICC’s analysisof the historic period was incorrect, as the CWO claims.

In the first place, one can hardlyput forward such an idea on the basis of an event foreseen by nobody (although,once it had happened, marxism makes it possible to explain it). After all, hadrevolutionaries in the 19th century foreseen one of its most important events,the Paris Commune of 1870? Did Lenin foresee what would happen a few weekslater in the revolution of February 1917 - which was to be the prelude to theOctober Revolution - when he said to young Swiss workers: “We older people,may not see the decisive struggles of the imminent revolution” (“Report onthe 1905 Revolution”, January 1917)?. At all events, it is up to marxists toreact rapidly to unforeseen events, and immediately to draw out their lessonsand consequences. This is what Marx did even before the Commune’s defeat (in TheCivil War in France). It was what Lenin did as soon as news arrived of theFebruary revolution (Letters from Afar, and the April Theses).For ourselves, we set out the upheavals that events in the East would provoke,from the standpoint both of imperialist tensions and the class struggle, in thesummer of 1989.

This being said, even the unforeseenupheavals of 1989 did not call into question our analysis at the end of 1979: “becausethe future of humanity will be in large part decided, the 80s will be the yearsof truth”.

It was indeed during this period thata good part of the historic perspective was played out. At the beginning of the1980s, the bourgeoisie - especially in the West - at the same time as itsmassive development of arms production, had undertaken enormous campaigns aimedat subjecting the proletarians to the capitalist boot in order to enrol them inworld war. To do so, it tried to profit from the crushing defeat of the Polishworkers in 1981 which apart from creating a great disorientation amongstworkers in the West, provided the pretext for accusing the “Evil Empire”(according to Reagan’s expression). The wave of struggles which began in 1983foiled this objective. The working class was no more ready than in the 1970s tolet itself be enrolled in a new World War.

Moreover, the bourgeoisie’s inabilityto give its own response to the crisis of its own system - imperialist war - atthe same time as the proletariat’s inability to put forward its ownrevolutionary perspective, tipped society into its phase of decomposition [11] [53],one of whose major expressions was precisely the collapse of the Stalinistregimes, which put off the possibility of a new World War.

Finally, the 1980s ended, with the collapseof the Eastern bloc and all its consequences, with an unexpected andunprecedented demonstration of the truth of decadent capitalism: anindescribable chaos, and a nameless barbarism which can only get worse witheach passing day.

Theblindness of the CWO and the IBRP

Aswe can see, the CWO’s idea of the “bankruptcy of the ICC’s perspectives”does not stand up to a reminder of the facts and of our own analyses. And ifthere is one organisation which was really blind to what was going on duringthe 1980s, it is not the ICC but the CWO (and the IBRP) itself: an organisationwhich described the struggles of this period in the following terms:

“... by 1976 the ruling class, atfirst using the unions and social-democracy was able once again to restoresocial peace. It was a social peace punctuated by great struggles of theworking class (Poland 1980-81, the Belgian dockers in 1983 and the Britishminers’ strike in 1984-85). However, there was no international wave of strikeslike that of 1968-74, and all of these movements ended with the working classretreating still further in the face of the capitalist onslaught”(“Perspectives of the CWO”, adopted by the organisation’s AGM in December 1996and published in Revolutionary Perspectives n°5).

This is a staggering assertion. Togive just a few examples, the CWO only remembers the dockers’ strike in Belgium1983, forgetting that which involved the entire public sector. For the CWO, thestruggles of spring 1986 in the same country (which were even more important,involving a million workers mobilised for more than a month, in a country withless than 10 million inhabitants) simply do not exist. The strikes in the Dutchpublic sector in the autumn of 1983, the biggest since 1903, have also passedthem completely by. One might suppose that the CWO’s blindness springs from thefact that neither it, nor Battaglia Comunista, the other organisation in theIBRP, has any presence in these countries, and that they were, like the vastmajority of the world proletariat, victims of the international black-outorganised by the bourgeois media to hide the social movements taking place. Buteven if this is the case, it is no excuse: a revolutionary organisation cannotbe satisfied, to analyse the situation of the class struggle, with reading thepapers in the country where it is present. It can use information reported bythe press of other revolutionary organisations, for example our own, which gaveample coverage to these events. But this is precisely the problem: it is notthe ICC which is confronted with “The obvious contradiction between the[its] perspectives and capitalist reality”; it is not the ICC which “hasspent years trying to ignore” reality, to mask the mistakes in itsperspective, as the CWO claims: it is the CWO itself. The best proof: when theCWO talks about the “great struggles of the working class” which “punctuatedsocial peace” in Britain, it only refers to the miners’ strike of 1984-85,completely ignoring the formidable mobilisation of 1979, which were the biggestfor more than half a century. Similarly, it makes no reference to the importantmovement of 1987 in Italy, in the education sector, despite the fact thatBattaglia Comunista, the CWO’s sister organisation, found itself in the frontline there. How are we to explain the CWO’s inability to see, or even to try tosee this reality? The CWO gives the answer itself (attributing the problem tothe ICC): because this reality disproves its own perspectives. And inparticular, neither the CWO nor the IBRP have ever understood the question ofthe course of history.

TheIBRP and the historic course

TheICC, and the International Review in particular, has already devoted anumber of polemics with the IBRP to the question of the historic course [12] [54].We will not go back here over everything we have written on these occasions tocriticise the IBRP’s lack of method in dealing with the question of thehistoric phase within which the workers’ struggles of our time are unfolding.Let us only say, in brief, that the IBRP rejects the very notion of a historiccourse, as it was developed during the 1930s notably by the Left Fraction ofthe Italian Communist Party. It is because the Fraction understood that thecourse towards war, and that towards class confrontations, are not parallel butmutually exclusive, that it was able to foresee, in a period of profoundcounter-revolution, the inevitability of World War II as soon as capitalismentered a new open economic crisis in 1929.

For the IBRP, “the cycle ofaccumulation which began with World War II is approaching its end. The post-warboom has long since given way to the global economic crisis. Once again, thequestion of proletarian revolution or imperialist war is placed on the historicagenda” (IBRP Platform, 1994, our translation). At the same time, itrecognises today (though this was not the case at the time), that therewas  “a massive international workers’response to the onset of the capitalist crisis at the end of the 60s and thebeginning of the 70s” (“Perspectives of the CWO, RevolutionaryPerspectives n°5). However, the IBRP has always refused to accept that ifcapitalism did not plunge into a new imperialist war at the end of the 1960s,this was essentially due to the fact that the response of the working class tothe first attacks of the crisis showed that unlike the 1930s, it was not readyto let itself be enrolled in a new holocaust. So, in answer to the question: “whyhas world war not yet broken out?”, despite the fact that “at theobjective level, all the conditions are present for the outbreak of a newgeneralised war”, Battaglia Communista’s theoretical review Prometeon°11 (December 1987) begins by asserting that “it is clear that no war couldever be undertaken without the proletariat and all the labouring classes beingready both for combat and for war production. It is obvious that, without aconsenting and controlled proletariat, no war would be possible. It is equallyobvious that a proletariat in the midst of a recovery in the class strugglewould demonstrate the emergence of a clear counter-tendency: that of theantithesis of war; that of the march towards the socialist revolution”.This is exactly how the ICC poses the problem. But it is precisely this methodthat is criticised in another article published in Battaglia Comunistan°83 (March 1987), and reprinted in the IBRP’s English Communist Review n°5under the title “The ICC and the “Historic Course”: a Mistaken Method”.In this article, we read, amongst other things, that “the form of the war,its technical means, its tempo, its characteristics in relation to thepopulation as a whole, has greatly changed since 1939. More precisely, wartoday has less need for consensus or working class passivity than the wars ofyesterday (...) involvement in the actions of war is possible without theagreement of the proletariat”. Understand who can. Or rather, we understandthat the IBRP doesn’t know what it’s talking about. At al events, coherence isnot its prime concern.

Moreover, we find a demonstration ofthis incoherence in the way that the IBRP reacted to the crisis that was tolead to the Gulf War in 1991. In the English version of an appeal adopted onthis occasion by the IBRP (the Italian version is different!), we can read: “Wehave to fight [our “own” state’s] war plans and preparations (...)All attempts to send further forces must be opposed by strikes at ports andairports for example (...) we call on the British North Sea oil workers to stepup their struggle and prevent the bosses from increasing production. Thisstrike must be extended to include all oil workers, and extended to otherworkers” (Workers’ Voice n°53). If “(...) involvement in theactions of war is possible without the agreement of the proletariat”, thenwhat is the point of this kind of appeal? Could the CWO explain it to us?

To return to the article in Prometeon°11, which begins by posing the question in the same terms as the ICC, wecan read: “The tendency towards war is advancing rapidly, but by contrastthe level of class confrontations is far below that necessary to repulse theheavy attacks launched against the international proletariat”. For the IBRPthen, it is not the class struggle which provides the answer to the questionthat it has itself posed: “why has world war not yet broken out?” Theanswer it gives is twofold:

 - the militaryalliances are not yet sufficiently stable;

 - nuclearweapons are a dissuading factor for the bourgeoisie, because of the threat theyrepresent for humanity’s survival [13] [55].

Weanswered these “arguments” at length in International Review n°54. Wewill restrict ourselves here to recalling that the second of them is anincredible concession for marxists to make to the bourgeoisie’s campaignsaround nuclear weapons as the guarantors of world peace. As for the first, itwas refuted by the IBRP itself, when it wrote, at the outbreak of the Gulf War,that “the Third World War began on 17th January” (Battaglia Comunista,January 1991), just as the military alliances that had dominated the planet formore than half a century disappeared. It should also be pointed out that theIBRP later went back on this analysis of the imminence of war. For example,today the CWO’s “Perspectives” tell us that “a full-scale war between theleading imperialist powers has been postponed”. The problem is that theIBRP has the unfortunate habit of producing contradictory analyses. Of course,this makes them immune to the criticism they have made of the ICC: that ofmaintaining the same analysis throughout the 1980s. But it is surely not a signof the IBRP’s superior method or perspectives.

The CWO will probably accuse us oftelling lies again, as they do liberally throughout their polemical article.Perhaps they will open up their great “dialectical” umbrella, to tell us thatnothing they (or the IBRP) has said is contradictory. The “dialectic” puts upwith a lot from the IBRP: in the marxist method, it has never meant saying onething and its opposite at the same time.

“Falsification!” the CWO willcry. Let us then give a second example, not on a secondary or circumstantialquestion (where contradictions are more easily pardonable), but on a vital one:has the counter-revolution which struck the working class after the defeat ofthe first revolutionary wave come to an end?

One might suppose that even if theIBRP is incapable of giving a clear and coherent answer to the question of thehistoric course - since the question is apparently beyond its understanding [14] [56]- it can answer the one we have just posed.

Such a response, which is vital, isto be found neither in the IBRP’s 1994 Platform, nor in the CWO’s 1996“Perspectives”, where it should certainly have had a place. This being said, wecan find answers in other texts:

 - in thearticle in Revolutionary Perspectives n°5, quoted above, the CWO seemsto say that the counter-revolution is not yet ended, since they reject theICC’s idea that “May 1968 ended the counter-revolution”;

 - thisassertion seems to be in continuity with the Theses adopted by BattagliaCommunista’s 5th Congress in 1982 (see Prometeo n°7), even if things arenot said so clearly: “if the proletariat today, confronted with the gravityof the crisis and subjected to the repeated blows of bourgeois attacks, has notyet shown itself capable of responding, this simply means that the long work ofthe world counter-revolution is still active in workers’ minds”.

Ifwe stick to these two texts, then we could say that the IBRP’s thinking has acertain consistency: the proletariat has not emerged from thecounter-revolution. The problem is, that in 1987 we could read in the articleon the “Historic Course” from Communist Review n°5 that “thecounter-revolutionary period following the defeat from within of the OctoberRevolution has ended” and that “there are no lack of signs of a revivalof class struggle and we do not fail to point them out”.

Thus, even on so simple a question,the IBRP has not one but several positions. If we try to summarisewhat comes out of the different texts published by the IBRP’s memberorganisations, we can formulate its analysis as follows:

 - “themovements which developed in France in 1968, in Italy in 1969, then in a numberof other countries, are essentially revolts of the petty-bourgeoisie”(Battaglia Communista’s position at the time), but they are nonetheless “amassive international workers’ response to the onset of the capitalist crisis”(the CWO in December 1996);

 - “that thelong work of the world counter-revolution is still active in workers’ minds”(Battaglia Comunista in 1982), however “the counter-revolutionary periodfollowing the defeat from within of the October Revolution has ended”(Battaglia in 1987), which does not alter the fact that the present period isundoubtedly “a continuation of the capitalist domination which has reigned,only sporadically contested, since the end of the revolutionary wave whichfollowed the First World War” (the CWO in 1988, in a letter to the CBG andpublished in the latter’s Bulletin n°13);

 - “by 1976 [andto this day] the ruling class (...) were once again able to restore socialpeace” (the CWO, December 1996), whereas “these struggles [the 1987Cobas movement in the Italian education sector and the strikes in Britain ofthe same year] confirm the beginning of a period marked by the accentuationof class conflicts” (Battaglia Comunista n°3, March 1988).

Obviously,we might consider that these different contradictory positions correspond todivergences between the CWO and Battaglia Comunista. But we can absolutely notsay such a thing since this is a “slander” of the ICC, which is invitedto “shut up” when it puts forward such an idea (see “Sects, Lies and theLost Perspective of the ICC”). Since there is no disagreement between the twoorganisations, then we can only conclude that these contradictory positionscohabit in the heads of each IBRP militant. We thought as much, but it is kindof the CWO to confirm it.

Seriously though, don’t all thesecontradictions give the IBRP comrades some pause for thought? In other matters,the comrades are capable of thinking clearly. How do they end up in such a messwhen they try to develop their analyses of the period? Is it not because theirframework is inadequate, and because in the name of the “dialectic” it leavesbehind marxist rigour to founder in empiricism and immediatism, as we havealready shown in previous polemics?

There is another cause behind theIBRP’s difficulties in grasping clearly and coherently the present state of theclass struggle: a confused analysis of the union question, which for exampleleaves it unable to understand the importance of the phenomenon of theincreasing discredit of the unions, that continued throughout the 1980s.

For the moment, we can already answerthe CWO: the ICC did not go through the crisis of which we have spoken in ourpress because of our analyses on the present historic period and on the levelof class struggle. Contrary to what the CWO - who has given us the samediagnostic since 1981 - may think, there are other factors in a crisis in arevolutionary organisation, and especially organisational questions. This wasdemonstrated, amongst many other examples, by the crisis of the RSDLP after its2nd Congress in 1903. However, we permit ourselves to give the CWO (and theIBRP) a fraternal warning: if an incorrect analysis of the historic situationis for them the only, or even the main, factor of crisis (perhaps this is thecase in their own experience), then they need to be particularly careful, sincewith the mountain of incoherence contained in the own analyses, they are inserious danger.

This is certainly not our wish. Oursincerest wish would be for the CWO and the IBRP to break once and for all withtheir empiricism and immediatism, and take up the best traditions of theCommunist Left and Marxism.

Fabienne.

In the previous article, we saw how the KPD, its best elements assassinated and the whole party subject to repression, was unable to play the role it should have done, and how incorrect organisational conceptions were to lead to disaster, including the exclusion of the majority of the Party! So it was in an atmosphere of political confusion, and a seething general situation that the KAPD was born.

On the 4th and 5th April 1920, three weeks after the beginning of the Kapp putsch, and the wave of struggles that it provoked in response throughout Germany, opposition delegates met to bring a new party into the world: the Workers' Communist Party of Germany (the Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, or KAPD).

Their intention was to found, at last, a "party of revolutionary action", with enough strength to oppose the opportunist direction taken by the KPD.

The KPD's mistakes during the Kapp putsch had serious consequences. Nonetheless, they did not, at the time, justify the formation of a new party. The KAPD's founders were far from having exhausted all the possibilities of fraction work open to them, and so a new party was created in haste, partly out of "frustration", partly almost from a fit of anger.

Most of the delegates came from Berlin, and a few other towns. They represented about 20,000 members.

Just like the KPD at its foundation, the new KAPD's membership was very mixed. It was more like a gathering of opposition and excluded members from the KPD[1].

The party was made up of:

- the Berlin tendency, led by intellectuals like Schroder, Schwab, and Reichenbach, all from the milieu of the Socialist Students, and by workers like Emil Sachs, Adam Scharrer, and Jan Appel, all excellent organisers. They considered the Unionen as no more than a dependent branch of the Party; they rejected all forms of revolutionary syndicalism or anarchistic federalism. This tendency represented the marxist wing within the KAPD;

- the national-Bolshevik tendency around Wolffheim and Laufenberg, mainly centred on Hamburg. Although Wolffheim and Laufenberg did not take part in the KAPD's formation, they joined in order to infiltrate it.

Weaknesses on the organisational question lead to the disappearance of the organisation

This article does not intend to examine closely the KAPD's political positions (see our book on the Dutch Left for a detailed examination of this subject). Despite its theoretical weaknesses, the KAPD provided a historically precious contribution on the parliamentary and union questions. It was a pioneer in understanding the reasons which make it impossible to work in any way within the trades unions in the period of capitalist decadence; which have transformed the unions themselves into organs of the bourgeois state. It did the same in explaining the impossibility of using parliament in the workers' interests, since it had become nothing more than a weapon against the working class.

On the role of the party, the KAPD was the first to develop a clear viewpoint on the question of substitutionism. Unlike the majority of the Communist International, it recognised that in this new period, mass parties are no longer possible:

"7. The historic form for regrouping those proletarians who are the most conscious, the clearest, and the most ready for action, is the Party. (...) The Communist Party must be a programmatic, organised and disciplined whole with a unified will. It must be the head and the arm of the revolution. (...)

9. (...) In particular, it should never allow its membership to grow faster than it can be integrated by the solid communist core" (the KAPD's "Theses on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution", published in Proletarier no. 7, July 1921).

If we highlight first these programmatic contributions from the KAPD, it is because despite its fatal weaknesses, which we will consider here, it belongs to the heritage of the Communist Left. But the history of the KAPD was to show that programmatic clarity on key questions is not enough. Without a sufficiently clear understanding of the organisational question, programmatic clarity alone is no guarantee of an organisation's survival. The determining factor is not just the ability to adopt a solid programmatic basis, but above all the ability to build the organisation, to defend it, and to give it the strength to fulfil its historic role. Otherwise, it runs the risk of being torn apart by the action of false organisational conceptions, and of failing to stand up to the vicissitudes of the class struggle.

At the KAPD's founding congress, one of the first points on the agenda was the party's declaration of its immediate adherence to the Communist International, without having first asked for admission. Although its aim, right from the start, was to join the international movement, the central concern expressed in the discussion was to conduct "the struggle against the Spartakusbund within the Illrd International". In a discussion with representatives of the KPD, it declared: "We consider the Spartakusbund's reformist tactic to be in contradiction with the principles of the lllrd International, and we will work for the Spartakusbund's exclusion from the International" (from the Proceedings of the founding congress, quoted by Bock, p207). During this discussion, the same idea appeared again and again, like a leitmotiv: "We refuse to merge with the Spartakusbund, and we will fight against it to the bitter end (...) Our position towards the Spartakusbund is clear and simple: we think that those leaders who have been compromised should be excluded from the front of the proletarian struggle, to leave the way open for the masses to march together following the maxima list programme. It is decided that a delegation of two comrades will be formed to present an oral report to the Executive Committee of the IIIrd International" (ibid).

The political struggle against the Spartakusbund's opportunist positions was certainly vital, but this hostile attitude towards the KPD was a complete distortion of priorities. Instead of pushing towards a clarification within the KPD, with the aim of creating the conditions for unification, the predominant attitude was sectarian, irresponsible, and destructive for both organisations. This attitude was pushed especially by the national-Bolshevik tendency from Hamburg.

The KAPD's acceptance of the national-Bolshevik tendency within its ranks, right from the outset, was a disaster. This current was anti-proletarian. Its presence within the KAPD alone, was enough to reduce the latter's credibility severely in the eyes of the CI[2].

Jan Appel and Franz Jung were named as delegates to the CI's Second Congress, which met in July 1920[3].

In the discussions with the CI's Executive Committee (ECCI), where they put forward the KAPD viewpoint, they assured the Committee that both the national- Bolshevik current around Wolftheim and Laufenberg, and Ruhle's "anti-party" tendency would be excluded from the KAPD. There was a violent confrontation between viewpoints of the ECCI and the KAPD on the parliamentary and union questions. Lenin had just completed his pamphlet on Leftism, an Infantile Disorder of Communism. In Germany, the party had received no news of its delegates because of the blockade, and decided to send a second delegation made up of Otto Ruhle and Merges. They could not have done worse.

Ruhle, in fact, represented a federalist minority which wanted to dissolve the communist party into the system of Unionen. This minority refused any kind of centralisation; implicitly, it also rejected the very existence of the International. After their journey through Russia, where they were shocked by the consequences of the civil war (Russia had been attacked by 21 armies) and could see nothing but "a regime in a state of siege", they decided, without referring to the party, to return, convinced that "the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party is the springboard for the appearance of a new soviet bourgeoisie". Despite the pressing requests of Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, and Bukharin, who gave them a consultative voice and urged them to take part in the Congress, they refused. The ECCI went so far as to offer them voting seats in the Congress: "When we were already in Petrograd on the way back, the Executive sent us another invitation to the Congress, with the declaration that the KAPD would be accorded voting seats, even though it fulfilled none of the draconian conditions in the Open Letter to the KAPD, and had not promised to do so".

As a result, the CI's second Congress took place without hearing the critical voice of the KAPD delegates. The damaging influence of opportunism within the CI could thus make itself felt all the more easily. Work within the unions was made one of the 21 conditions for admission to the CI, as an imperative, without the KAPD's resistance to this opportunist turn being felt at the Congress.

Moreover, those critical of this evolution by the CI were unable to unite during the Congress. Because of this damaging behaviour by the KAPD delegates, there was no international unity or common action. The opportunity for fruitful international fraction work was lost.

On the delegates' return, the current grouped around Ruhle was expelled for its conceptions and behaviour hostile to the organisation. Not only did the councilists reject the proletariat s political organisation, denying the particular role that the party must play in the process of the development of the proletariat's class consciousness (see the KAPD's "Theses on the Party"), they also joined the bourgeois chorus slandering the Russian revolution. Instead of drawing the lessons of the Russian revolution's difficulties, they rejected it, describing it as a double revolution (both proletarian and bourgeois, or even petty-bourgeois). In doing so, they signed their own political death warrant. The councilists not only did damage by denying the party's role in the development of class consciousness, they also hastened the dissolution of the revolutionary camp, and strengthened the general hostility to organisation. After their disintegration and dispersal, they were unable to make any political contribution. This current exists to this day, surviving mainly in Holland (although its ideology has spread widely beyond the Netherlands) .

During the KAPD's first ordinary Congress in August 1920, its Central Committee decided that the party should aim, not to combat the IIIrd International, but to fight for the triumph of the KAPD's views within it. This attitude was almost identical to that of the Italian Left, but was to change later. But the vision of an "opposition" within the CI, rather than an international fraction made it impossible to develop an international platform of the Communist Left.

In November 1920, after the KAPD's 2nd Congress, a third delegation (including Gorter, Schroder, and Rasch) left for Moscow. The CI reproached the KAPD with being responsible for the existence of two communist organisations (the KAPD and the KPD) within the same country, and demanded that it put an end to this anomaly. For the CI, the exclusion of Ruhle and the national-Bolsheviks around Wolffheim and Laufenberg opened the way for the reunification of the two currents and allowed a regroupment with the left wing of the USPD. While the KPD and the KAPD both vehemently rejected the merger of their two parties, the KAPD rejected on principle any regroupment with the left wing of the USPD. Despite this refusal to adopt the CI's position, the KAPD was given the status of a party sympathising with the IIIrd International, with a consultative vote (1).

Nonetheless, at the CI's 3rd Congress (26th July to 13th August 1921), the KAPD delegation once again criticised the CI's positions. In numerous interventions, it confronted the CI's opportunist turn with courage and determination. But the attempt to build a left fraction during the Congress failed, because none of those - from Mexico, Britain, Belgium, Italy and the USA - who criticised the CI were ready to carry out the tasks of an international fraction. Only the Dutch KAP and the militants from Bulgaria supported the KAPD's position. In the end, the CI confronted the KAPD with an ultimatum: either merge with the VKPD within three months, or face exclusion from the International.

Like the KPD, which a year before had silenced the critical voices within its own ranks, the CI's error was to have serious consequences. Opportunism within the CI had one less obstacle in its path.

The KAPD delegation refused to take an immediate decision, without referring back to the Party.

The KAPD found itself confronted with a difficult and painful decision (which it shared with the whole left communist current):

- it could merge with the VKPD, and so aided the development of opportunism;

- or it could form an external fraction of the International, with a view to reconquering the CI and even the German VKPD, hoping that other important fractions would form simultaneously;

- or it could work in the perspective that the conditions would ripen for the formation of a new International;

- or finally, it could proclaim, completely artificially, the formation of a IVth International.

From 21st July onwards, the KAPD leadership allowed itself to be drawn into a series of hasty decisions. Despite the opposition of delegates from Eastern Saxony and Hanover, and despite the abstention of the largest district (Greater Berlin), the party leadership pushed through the adoption of a resolution breaking with the IIIrd International. This decision was taken outside the framework of a Party Congress: even more serious was the decision to work towards "the construction of a workers' communist International".

The KAPD's extraordinary congress (11th -14th September 1921) unanimously proclaimed the immediate departure from the CI as a sympathising party.

At the same time, it considered all the CI's sections as being definitively lost: the emergence of revolutionary fractions from within the International was no longer considered a possibility. It deformed reality by considering the CI's different parties as nothing but "political auxiliaries" in the service of "Russian capital". In its haste, not only did the KAPD underestimate the potential international opposition to the development of opportunism within the CI, it also undermined the principles governing relations between revolutionary parties. This sectarian attitude was a foretaste of that adopted later by other proletarian organisations. The enemy seemed to be, not Capital, but the other groups, whose revolutionary nature was denied.

The drama of self-mutilation

Once excluded from the CI, another weakness was to weigh heavily on the KAPD. During its conferences, not only had it failed to evaluate the balance of class forces internationally, it had more or less restricted itself to the analysis of the situation in Germany, and to underlining the particular responsibility of the German working class. Nobody was ready to acknowledge that the international revolutionary tide was ebbing. Instead of drawing the lessons of the reflux, and redefining new tasks for the period, it declared that the "the situation is more than ripe for revolution". This did not stop a majority of its members, especially the young militants who had joined the movement after the war, from drifting away from the party. As we will show in another article, the party reacted by confronting the situation artificially by developing a tendency towards putschism, and individual actions.

Instead of recognising the ebb of the class struggle and working patiently as a fraction outside the International, the KAPD aspired to found a Communist Workers' International (KAI). The Berlin and Bremerhaven sections opposed the project, but remained in the minority.

At the same time, during the winter of 1921-22, the wing grouped around Schroder began to reject the necessity of economic struggle. In the period of "capitalism's mortal crisis", these were seen as opportunist; only political struggles posing the question of power should be supported. In other words, the party could only fulfil its function in revolutionary periods. This was a new variant on the councilist conception!

In March 1922, by manipulating the voting procedures, Schroder succeeded in winning a majority for his tendency which did not in fact reflect the real balance of forces within the party. The Greater Berlin district - numerically the largest - responded by excluding Sachs, Schroder, and Goldstein from the party for their "damaging behaviour towards the party and their unbridled personal ambition". Schroder, who belonged to the "official" majority, replied by excluding the Berlin district, and moved to Essen, where he formed the "Essen tendency". Henceforth, there were two KAPDs and two newspapers with the same name. A period of personal accusations and slanders began. Instead of trying to draw the lessons of the break with the KPD during the 1919 Heidelberg Congress, and of the exclusion from the CI, it was as if a continuity in the fiascos was being sought after! The concept of the party became no more than a label adopted by each of the splits, none of which could boast more than a few hundred militants at best.

The height of organisational suicide was reached by the Essen tendency's formation between 2nd and 6th April 1922, of the Communist Workers' International (KAI).

The birth of the KAPD itself in April 1920 had been over-hasty, without the possibilities of fraction work outside the KPD being exhausted. Now it was decided, just after leaving the CI and after an irresponsible split had caused the appearance of two tendencies, one in Essen and one in Berlin, to found, in haste and from nothing, a new International! This was a purely artificial creation, as if founding an organisation were merely a matter of will. It was a completely irresponsible attitude, which led to a new fiasco.

The Essen tendency split in its turn, to produce the Kommunistischer Ratebund (Council Communist League). In 1925, part of this tendency (Schroder, Reichenbach) returned to the SPD, while the rest left politics altogether.

As for the Berlin tendency, it survived a little longer. In 1926, it turned towards the left wing of the KPD. At this point, it had between 1500 and 2000 members, and most of the local groups (especially in the Ruhr) had disappeared. However, it grew again (to about 6000 members) by regrouping with the Entschiedene Linke (the "Determined Left", excluded from the KPD).

Following another split in 1928, the KAPD became less and less important.

What this whole trajectory shows us, is that the German Left Communists had incorrect organisational conceptions which were to prove fatal to them. Their organisational approach was a disaster for the working class.

After their exclusion from the CI and the farce of the creation of the KAI, they were incapable of carrying out any worthwhile fraction work. This fundamental task was taken in hand by the Italian Left. It was to prove impossible to draw the lessons of the revolutionary wave, and to defend them, unless the organisation could be kept alive. And it was precisely the German Left's deeply mistaken ideas on the organisational question which led them to failure and eventually to disappearance: True, bourgeois repression did everything it could (first with the social-democracy, then the stalinists and fascists) to exterminate the Left Communists. But it was their inability to defend and build the organisation, which contributed fundamentally to their destruction and political death. The counter-revolution triumphed utterly. This is why it is vital for revolutionaries today to draw the lessons of the German Left's organisational experience, and to assimilate them, to prevent the same fiasco from every being repeated.

The KPD's wrong organisational notions accelerate its decline into opportunism

After 1919, the KPD had excluded all its opposition, and found itself caught in the devastating downward spiral of opportunism.

In particular, it began to work within the trades unions and within parliament. Presented as purely "tactical" during the second Congress in October 1919, this task rapidly became "strategic".

Finding that the revolutionary wave was no longer spreading, and was even on the retreat, the KPD tried to "go to" those "backward" workers, "full of illusions" , who were still in the unions, by building "united fronts" in the factories. In December 1920, the party merged with the centrist USPD, in the hope of gaining greater influence by creating a mass party. Thanks to a few successes in the parliamentary elections, the KPD came to believe more and more in its own illusions, imagining that "the more votes we win in the elections, the greater our influence in the working class". It ended up by requiring Party militants to become union members.

This opportunist decline accelerated still further when the Party opened the door to nationalism. While it rightly booted the national-Bolsheviks out the door in 1919, from 1920-21 onwards, it let nationalist elements back in through the window.

Its attitude to the KAPD was adamant. When the International admitted the latter with a consultative vote in November 1920, the KPD on the contrary urged its exclusion.

After the struggles of 1923, with the rise of Stalinism in Russia, the process which was to make the KPD a spokesman for the Russian state accelerated. During the 1920s, the KPD became one of Moscow's most faithful disciples. While on the one hand, the majority of the KAPD rejected the entire Russian experience, on the other the KPD completely lost any critical sense! Its false notions of organisation had definitively weakened its internal forces of opposition to the development of opportunism.

"The German Revolution": a history of the party's weakness

It is clear that the German working class lacked a sufficiently strong party at its side. It is understandable that during the first phase of struggle (November/December 1918), the influence of the Spartakists was relatively weak, and the newly founded KPD's inability to prevent the provocation by the bourgeoisie was a serious setback. Throughout 1919, the working class paid the price of the party's weaknesses. In the wave of struggles that unfolded in different parts of the country after 1919, the KPD still did not have a determining influence. Its influence was further reduced by the splits in the party after October 1919. In March 1920, when the working class reacted massively against the Kapp putsch, once again the KPD failed to live up to the occasion.

Once we have emphasised the tragedy for the working class of the party's weakness, we might be tempted to say that we had finally found the cause of the revolution's defeat in Germany.

It is certainly true that we must not repeat the mistakes made by revolutionaries at the time, especially on the organisational level. However, these are not enough in themselves to explain the failure of the revolution in Germany.

It has often been said that the Bolshevik Party around Lenin provides the example of how a revolution can be led to victory, whereas Germany provides the counter-example of revolutionaries' weakness. But this does not explain everything, as Lenin was indeed the first to insist: "While it was easy to overcome the degenerate clique of Rasputins and Romanovs, it is infinitely more difficult to struggle against the powerful and organised gang of German imperialists, whether crowned or not" (Lenin, Speech to the First Russian Navy Congress, 22 November 1917).

"For us, it was easier to begin the revolution, but it is extremely difficult to continue and complete it. And the revolution confronts enormous difficulties in a country as industrialised as Germany, in a country with such a well organised bourgeoisie" (Lenin, Speech at the Conference of Moscow Factory Committees, 23rd July 1918).

In particular, by bringing the war to an end, under the pressure of the working class, the bourgeoisie removed an important factor in the radicalisation of the struggle. Once the war was over, despite their magnificent combativity, their growing pressure in the factories, their initiative and organisation within the workers' councils, the workers came up against highly elaborate sabotage on the part of the counter-revolutionary forces, with at their centre the SPD and the unions.

The lesson for today is obvious: faced with a bourgeoisie as skilful as the German one - and we can be sure that in the next revolution, the entire ruling class will demonstrate at least the same capacities, and will unite to combat the working class threat by every means possible - revolutionary organisations will be unable to fulfil their duty unless they are themselves solid and organised internationally.

The precondition for the construction of the party is a long-term programmatic clarification, and above all the elaboration of solid organisational principles. The German experience is clear: lack of clarity on the marxist way of functioning inevitably condemns the organisation to disappear.

The failure of German revolutionaries to build a real party during World War I had disastrous consequences. Not only did the party itself disintegrate and collapse, but during the counter-revolution, and even by the end of the 1920s, there were hardly any organised revolutionaries left to make their voices heard. The silence of the graveyard reigned over Germany for more than 40 years. When the proletariat raised its head again in 1968, it was lacking this revolutionary voice. One of the most important tasks in preparing the future proletarian revolution is to build up the organisation. If this is not done, the defeat of the revolution is already certain.

This is why the struggle for the construction of the organisation lies at the heart of the preparation for the revolution of tomorrow.

Dv

[1] The whole question of the KAPD and its evolution is dealt with in detail in our book on the Dutch Left.

[2] They were not excluded from the KAPD until after the return of their delegation at the end of the summer of 1920. Their membership of the KAPD shows just how disparate it really was at the moment of its formation, and that it was more a gathering than a party built on a solid organisational and programmatic basis.

[3] At the time, it was impossible to reach Moscow by land, because of the blockade imposed by the armies of the "democratic" powers, and the civil war. Only by taking a ship, and persuading the sailors to mutiny against their captain, did Franz Jung and Jan Appel succeed, after many adventures, in making their way through the blockade imposed by the counter-revolutionary armies, and reaching the port of Murmansk at the end of April, whence they made their way to Moscow.

Nothing enrages an exploiting class more than an uprising of the exploited. The revolts of the slaves under the Roman Empire, of the peasants under feudalism, were always repressed with the most disgusting cruelty. The rebellion of the working class against capitalism, however, is an even greater affront to the ruling class of thus system, since it clearly and rationally holds aloft the banner of a new, communist, society, a society that actually corresponds to historical possibility and necessity. For the capitalist class, therefore, it is not enough merely to repress the revolutionary attempts of the working class, to drown them in blood - although the capitalist counter-revolution is certainly the bloodiest in history. It is also necessary to ridicule the idea that the working class is the bearer of a new social order, to show the utter futility of the communist project. For this, an arsenal of lies and distortions is required alongside the arsenal of material weapons. Hence, the necessity, for capital, of maintaining for most of the twentieth century, the greatest lie in history: the lie that Stalinism equals communism.

The collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, and of the USSR two years later, while depriving the bourgeoisie of a living "example" of this lie, in fact greatly reinforced its effects, making it possible to unleash a gigantic campaign about the definite failure of communism, of marxism, and even the obsolescence of the very idea of the class struggle. The profoundly damaging effects of this campaign on the consciousness of the world proletariat have been examined many times in the columns of this Review, and we will not elaborate on this point any further here. What is important to emphasise is that, even though the impact of these campaigns has diminished over the past few years - especially because the bourgeoisie's promises about the new world order of peace and prosperity that was supposed to follow the demise of Stalinism have proved to be no more than hot air - they are so fundamental to the bourgeoisie's apparatus of ideological control that it will not neglect any opportunity to give them new life and influence. We have now entered the year of the 80th anniversary of the Russian revolution, and there is no doubt that we are going to see many new twists to this theme. But one thing that is certain: the bourgeoisie's hatred and contempt for the proletarian revolution that began in Russia in 1917, its efforts to deform and denature its memory, will be focused above all on the political organisation that embodied the spirit of that vast insurrectionary movement: the Bolshevik party. This should not surprise us: from the days of the Communist League and the First International, the bourgeoisie has always been willing to "forgive" the majority of the poor workers duped by the plots and schemes of the revolutionary minorities. But the latter are invariably seen as the very incarnation of evil. And for capital, none have been so evil as the Bolsheviks, who after all managed to "mislead" the simple workers longer and further than any other revolutionary party in history.

This is not the place to look at all the latest books, articles and documentaries which are currently being devoted to the Russian revolution. Suffice it to say that the most publicised - for example Pipes The Unknown Lenin: from the Soviet Archives, and the work of the former KGB archivist Volkogonov, who claims access to hitherto inaccessible files dating back to 1917 - have had a very precise theme: to show that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were a gang of power hungry fanatics who did all they needed to do to usurp the democratic gains of the February revolution, and plunge Russia and the world into one of the most disastrously failed experiments in history. Naturally, these gentlemen have proved with minute attention to detail how the Stalinist terror was merely the continuation and fulfilment of the Leninist terror. The subtitle of the German edition of Volkogonov's work on Lenin, Utopia and Terror, sums up the bourgeoisie's approach very well: the revolution degenerated into terror precisely because it tried to impose a utopian ideal, communism, which is really antithetical to human nature.

An important element in this anti-Bolshevik inquisition is the idea that Bolshevism, for all its talk of marxism and world revolution, was above all an expression of Russian backwardness. This motif is not new: it was one of the favourite tunes of the "renegade Kautsky" in the aftermath of the October insurrection. But it has subsequently acquired considerable academic respectability. One of the best researched studies of the leaders of the Russian revolution - Bertram Wolfe's Three Who Made a Revolution, written during the 1950s - develops this idea with particular regard to Lenin. In this view, Lenin's view of the proletarian political organisation as a "narrow" body made up of convinced revolutionaries owes more to the conspiratorial and secretive conceptions of the Narodniks and of Bakunin than to Marx. Such historians often contrast this with the more "sophisticated", "European” and "democratic" conceptions of the Mensheviks. And of course, since the form of the revolutionary organisation is closely connected to the form of the revolution itself, the democratic Menshevik organisation could have given us a democratic Russia, while the dictatorial Bolshevik form gave us a dictatorial Russia.

It is not only the official spokesmen of the bourgeoisie who peddle such ideas. They are also sold, in a slightly different wrapping, by anarchists of every stripe, who specialise in the "we told you so" approach to the Russian revolution. We knew all along that Bolshevism was nasty and would end in tears - all that talk about the party, the transitional state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, where else could it lead? But anarchism has a habit of perpetually renewing itself and can be a lot more subtle than that. A good example of this is the kind of stuff being put about by a parasitic breed of anarchism that calls itself (among other things) the London Psychogeographical Society. The LPA have heartily endorsed the ICC's argument that Bakuninism, for all its talk of liberty and equality, its criticisms of marxist "authoritarianism", was in fact based on a profoundly hierarchical and even esoteric vision closely allied to freemasonry. For the LPA, however, this is only the hors d'oeuvres: the main dish is that the Bolshevik conception of organisation is the true continuator of Bakuninism and thus of freemasonry. The circle is complete: the "communists" of the LPA regurgitate the leftovers of cold war professors.

The challenge posed by all these slanders against Bolshevism is considerable, and could not be answered in the context of a single article. For example, to make a critical appraisal of the "Leninist" conception of organisation, to refute the prejudice that the latter was no more than a new version of Narodnikism or Bakuninism, would require a series of articles in itself. Our aim in this article is rather more precise. It is to examine a particular episode in the events of the Russian revolution - the April Theses announced by Lenin on his return to Russia in 1917. Not simply because 80 years ago to the month is a timely moment to do so, but above all because this short, sharp document provides us with an excellent starting point for refuting all the lies about the Bolshevik party, and for reaffirming the most essential thing about it: that this party was not a product of Russian barbarism, of a distorted anarcho-terrorism, or of the unmitigated lust for power of its leaders. Bolshevism was a product first and foremost of the world proletariat. Inseparably bound to the entire marxist tradition, it was not the seed of a new form of exploitation and oppression, but the vanguard of a movement to do away with all exploitation and oppression.

From February to April

Towards the end of February 1917, the workers of Petrograd launched massive strikes against the intolerable living conditions inflicted by the imperialist war. The slogans of the movement rapidly became political, with workers calling for an end to the war and the overthrow of the autocracy. In days the strike had spread to other towns and cities, and as the workers took up arms and fraternised with the soldiers, the mass strike assumed the character of an uprising.

Repeating the experience of 1905, the workers centralised the struggle through soviets of workers' deputies, elected by factory assemblies and revocable at any moment. In contrast to 1905, the soldiers and peasants began to follow this example on a broad scale.

The ruling class, recognising that the days of the autocracy were numbered, rid themselves of the Czar, and called upon the parties of liberalism and the "left", in particular those once-proletarian elements who had recently passed into the bourgeois camp by supporting the war, to form a Provisional Government with the avowed aim of steering Russia towards a system of parliamentary democracy. In reality, a situation of dual power had arisen, since the workers and soldiers only really trusted the soviets, and the bourgeois Provisional Government was not yet in a strong enough position to ignore them, and still less to disband them. But this profound class divide was partially obscured by the fog of democratic euphoria which descended on the country after the February revolt. With the Czar out of the way and people enjoying unheard-of liberty, everyone seemed to be in favour of the "Revolution" - including Russia's democratic allies who hoped that it would enable Russia to participate more effectively in the war effort. Thus the Provisional Government presented itself as the guardian of the revolution; the soviets were politically dominated by the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were doing all they could to reduce them to mere ciphers of the newly installed bourgeois regime. In short, the whole impetus of the mass strike and the uprising - which in truth was a manifestation of a more universal revolutionary movement brewing in all the main capitalist countries as a result of the war - was being diverted towards capitalist ends.

Where were the Bolsheviks in this situation, so full of danger and promise? They were in almost complete disarray:

"For Bolshevism the first months of the revolution had been a period of bewilderment and vacillation. In the "manifesto" of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that "the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government" (...) They behaved not like representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy, which, having announced its principles, intended for an indefinite time to play the part of loyal opposition" (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol 1, chapter 15 [75] ).

When Stalin and Kamenev took the helm of the party in March, they moved it even further to the right. Stalin developed a theory about the complementary roles of the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Worse, the party's official organ, Pravda, openly adopted a "defencist" position on the war: "Our slogan is not the meaningless "down with war". Our slogan is pressure upon the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it (...) to make an attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations (...) and until then every man remains at his fighting post" (quoted in Trotsky, p 275).

Trotsky recounts how many elements in the party felt deep disquiet and even anger over this opportunist drift in the party, but were not armed programmatically to answer the leadership's position, since it appeared to be based on a perspective that had been developed by Lenin himself and which had been the official view of the party for over a decade: the perspective, that is, of the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants". The essence of this theory had been that although economically speaking the nature of the revolution developing in Russia was bourgeois, the Russian bourgeoisie itself was too weak to carry out its own revolution, and so the capitalist modernisation of Russia would have to be assumed by the proletariat and poorer sections of the peasantry. This position stood half way between that of the Mensheviks - who claimed to be "orthodox" marxists and thus argued that the task of the proletariat was to give critical support to the bourgeoisie against absolutism until such time as Russia was ripe for socialism - and that of Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution", developed after the events of 1905, had insisted that the working class would be propelled to power in the coming revolution, and would be forced to push beyond the bourgeois stage of the revolution to the socialist stage, but could only do this if the Russian revolution coincided with, or sparked off, a socialist revolution in the industrialised countries.

In truth, Lenin's theory had at best been a product if an ambiguous period, in which it was increasingly obvious that the Russian bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary force, but in which it was not yet clear that the period of international socialist revolution had arrived. Nevertheless, the superiority of Trotsky's thesis was precisely based on the fact that it departed from an international, rather than a purely Russian framework; and Lenin himself, despite his many acute disagreements with Trotsky at that time, had on several occasions after the 1905 events veered towards the notion of permanent revolution.

In practise, the idea of the "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants" proved to be without substance; the "orthodox Leninists" who went on repeating the formula in 1917 used it as a cover for sliding towards Menshevism pure and simple. Kamenev argued forcefully that since the bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution was not yet completed, it was necessary to give critical support to the Provisional Government: this hardly conformed to Lenin's original conception, which insisted that the bourgeoisie would inevitably compromise with the autocracy. There were even serious moves towards the reunification of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

Thus, the Bolshevik party, disarmed programmatically, was being drawn towards compromise and betrayal. The future of the revolution hung in the balance when Lenin returned from exile.

In his History of the Russian Revolution (Vol. 1, Ch. 15), Trotsky gives us a graphic description of Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station in Petrograd, April 3, 1917. The Petrograd Soviet, still dominated by the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, organised a huge welcoming party and festooned Lenin with flowers. In the name of the Soviet, Chkeidze greeted Lenin with these words:

"Comrade Lenin (...) we welcome you Russia (...) but we consider that the chief task of the revolutionary democracy at present is to defend our revolution against every kind of attack both from within and from without (...) We hope that you will join us in striving towards this goal".

Lenin's reply was not addressed to the leaders of the welcoming committee, but to the hundreds of workers and soldiers who had thronged the station:

"Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the international proletarian army.. The hour is not far when, at the summons of our comrade Karl Liebknecht, the people will turn their weapons against their capitalist exploiters (...) The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!" (op cit, p 280-281).

Thus did the spoilsport Lenin pour cold water on the democratic carnival from the very moment of his arrival. That night Lenin elaborated his position in a two hour speech which further dismayed all the good democrats and sentimental socialists who wanted the revolution to go no further than it had done in February, who had applauded the workers' mass strikes when they had chased away the Czar and allowed the Provisional Government to assume power, but dreaded any further class polarisation. The next day, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin expounded what became known as his April Theses, which are short enough to reproduce in full here:

“1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperial war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to "revolutionary defencism" is permissible.

The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and in word; c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution - which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie - to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.

This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedented large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.

3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.

4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkeidze, Tsereteli, Steklov, etc.), who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in a minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

5) Not a parliamentary republic - to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step - but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.

The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies and for the public account.

7) The immediate amalgamation of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies

8) It is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

9) Party tasks:

a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;

b) alteration of the Party programme, mainly

(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war

(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a "commune state";

(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme

c) Change of the Party's name

(10) A new International

We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social chauvinists and against the "Center"."

The struggle to rearm the Party: Demonstrating the marxist method

Zalezhski, a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee at the time, summed up the reaction to Lenin's theses both inside the party and throughout the movement: "Lenin's theses produced the effect of an exploding bomb" (Trotsky, p 295). The initial reaction was disbelief and a rain of anathemas on Lenin's head: Lenin had been too long in exile, had lost touch with Russian reality. His perspectives on the nature of the revolution had fallen into "Trotskyism". As for his idea about the soviets taking power, he had reverted to Blanquism, adventurism, anarchism. A former member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, at that time outside the party, Goldernberg, put it thus: "For many years the place of Bakunin has remained vacant in the Russian revolution, now it is occupied by Lenin” (Trotsky, p 294). For Kamenev, Lenin's approach would prevent the Bolsheviks from acting as a party of the masses, reducing its role to that of a "group of communist propagandists".

This was not the first time that "old Bolsheviks" had clung on to outworn formulae in the name of Leninism. In 1905, the initial Bolshevik reaction to the appearance of the soviets had been based on a mechanical interpretation of Lenin's criticisms of spontaneism in What is To be Done; the leadership had thus called on the Petrograd Soviet either to subordinate itself to the party or dissolve. Lenin himself roundly rejected this attitude, being one of the first to grasp the revolutionary significance of the soviet as an organ of proletarian political power, and insisted that the question wasn't "soviet or party" but both the soviets and the party, since their roles were complementary. Now, once again, Lenin had to give these "Leninists" a lesson in the marxist method, to demonstrate that marxism is the very opposite of a dead dogma; it is a living scientific theory which must constantly be verified in the laboratory of social movements. The April Theses were the epitome of marxism's capacity to discard, adapt, modify or enrich previous positions in the light of the experience of the class struggle: "For the present, it is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity. "Theory, my friend is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life"" (Lenin, Letters on Tactics, April 8-13, 1917 - the quotation is from Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust). And in the same letter Lenin berates "those "old Bolsheviks who more than once already have played a regrettable role in the history of our Party by reiterating formulas senselessly learned by rote instead of studying the specific features of the new and living reality".

For Lenin, the "democratic dictatorship" had already been realised in the soviets of workers' and peasants' deputies and as such it had already become an antiquated formula. The essential task for the Bolsheviks was now to push forward the proletarian dynamic within this broader social movement, which was oriented towards the formation of a Commune-state in Russia as the first outpost of the world socialist revolution. One might take issue with Lenin's effort to save the honour of the old formula, but the essential element in his approach is that he was able to see the future of the movement, and thus the need to break the mould of outworn theories.

The marxist method is not only dialectical and dynamic; it is also global, ie it places every particular question within an international and historical framework. And this is what above all enabled Lenin to grasp the real direction of events. From 1914 onwards, the Bolsheviks, with Lenin to the fore, had defended the most consistent internationalist position against the imperialist war, seeing it as the proof of the decay of world capitalism and thus of the opening of the epoch of world proletarian revolution. This was the foundation-stone of the slogan "turn the imperialist war into a civil war", which Lenin had defended against all varieties of chauvinism and pacifism. Holding fast to this analysis, Lenin was not for a moment taken in by the idea that the accession to power of the Provisional Government changed the imperialist character of the war, and he spared no barbs on the Bolsheviks who had fallen into this error: "Pravda demands of the government that it renounces annexations. To demand from the government of capitalists that it renounces anexations is nonsense, flagrant mockery" (cited by Trotsky, p 290).

The intransigent reaffirmation of the internationalist position on the war was in the first place a necessity if the opportunist slide in the party was to be halted. But it was also the starting point for theoretically liquidating the formula of democratic dictatorship and all the Menshevik apologies for supporting the bourgeoisie. To the argument that backward Russia was not yet ripe for socialism, Lenin argued as a true internationalist, acknowledging in Thesis 8 that "it is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism". Russia, in itself, was not ripe for socialism but the imperialist war had demonstrated that world capitalism as a whole was indeed overripe. Hence Lenin's greeting to the workers at the Finland station: the Russian workers, by taking power, would be acting as the advance guard of the international proletarian army. Hence also the call for a new International at the end of the theses. And for Lenin, as for all the authentic internationalists of the day, the world revolution was not a pious hope but a concrete perspective growing out of the international proletarian revolt against the war - strikes in Britain and Germany, political demonstrations, mutinies and fraternisation in the armed forces of several countries, and of course the mounting revolutionary tide in Russia itself. This perspective, embryonic at that moment, was to be fully confirmed after the October insurrection by the extension of the revolutionary wave to Italy, Hungary, Austria and above all Germany.

Lenin's "anarchism"

The defenders of marxist "orthodoxy" accused Lenin of Blanquism and Bakuninism on the question of the seizure of power and on the nature of the post-revolutionary state. Blanquism because he was supposedly in favour of a coup d'Etat by a minority - either by the Bolsheviks acting alone, or even by the industrial working class as whole, acting without regard to the peasant majority. Bakuninism because the theses' rejection of a parliamentary republic was a concession to the anti-political prejudices of the anarchists and syndicalists.

In his Letters on Tactics [76], Lenin defended his theses from the first accusation as follows: "In my theses, I absolutely ensured myself against skipping over the peasant movement, which has not outlived itself, or the petty-bourgeois movement in general, against any playing at "seizure of power" by a workers' government, against any kind of Blanquist adventurism; for I pointedly referred to the experience of the Paris Commune. And this experience, as we know, and as Marx proved at length in 1871 and Engels in 1891, absolutely excludes Blanquism, absolutely ensures the direct, immediate and unquestionable rule of the majority and the activity of the masses only to the extent that the majority itself acts consciously.

In the theses, I very definitely reduced the question to one of a struggle for influence within the Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. To leave no shadow of doubt on this score, I twice emphasised in the theses the need for patient and persistent "explanatory" work "adapted to the practical needs of the masses"."

As for reverting to an anarchist position on the state, Lenin pointed out in April, as he was to do in greater depth in his State and Revolution, that the "orthodox" marxists, with figures like Kautsky and Plekhanov at their head, had buried the real teachings of Marx and Engels on the state under a dung-heap of parliamentarism. The experience of the Commune had shown that the task of the proletariat in the revolution was not to take over the old state but to demolish it from top to bottom; that the new instrument of proletarian rule, the Commune-state, would be based not on the principle of parliamentary representation, which in the end was only a facade hiding the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but on direct delegation and revocability from below, on the armed and self-organised masses. By throwing up the soviets, the experience of 1905, and of the newly emerging revolution of 1917, not only confirmed this perspective, but took it a stage further. Whereas the Commune had been a "popular" body in which all the oppressed classes of society were equally represented, the soviets were a higher form, because they made it possible for the proletariat to organise autonomously within the movement of the masses in general. The soviets, taken as a whole, would thus constitute a new state: one qualitatively different from the old bourgeois state but a state all the same - and here Lenin carefully distinguishes himself from the anarchists:

"Anarchism denies the need for a state and state power in the period of transition from the rule of the bourgeoisie to the rule of the proletariat, whereas I, with a precision that precludes any possibility of misinterpretation, advocate the need for a state in this period, although in accordance with Marx, and the lessons of the Paris Commune, I advocate not the usual parliamentary bourgeois state, but a state without a standing army, without police opposed to the people, without any officialdom placed above the people.

“When Mr Plekhanov, in his newspaper Yedinstvo, shouts with all his might that this is anarchism, he is merely giving further proof of his break with marxism" (Lenin, Letters on Tactics)

The role of the party in the revolution

The charge that Lenin was planning a Blanquist coup is inseparable from the idea that he was seeking power for his party alone. This was to become a central theme of all subsequent bourgeois propaganda about the October revolution: that it was no more than a coup d'Etat carried out by the Bolsheviks. We cannot deal here with all the varieties and nuances of this thesis here. Trotsky provides one of the best answers in his History of the Russian Revolution, when he shows that it was not the party, but the soviets which took the power in October (see also our articles on the Russian revolution in IRs 71 and 72). But one of the guiding threads of this notion is the argument that Lenin's view of the party as a tightly-knit and highly centralised organisation led inexorably to this minority putsch in 1917 and, by extension, to the Red Terror and finally to Stalinism.

Again, this is a story that goes back to the original split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and this isn't the place to go over this key episode in any detail. Suffice it to say that ever since that time, Lenin's conception of the revolutionary organisation has been described as Jacobin, elitist, militaristic, even terroristic. Marxist authorities as respected as Luxemburg and Trotsky have been cited in support of this view. For our part, we don't deny that Lenin's views on the organisation question, both in that period and in subsequent ones, contain much that is erroneous (for example his adoption in 1902 of Kautsky's thesis about class consciousness coming from the outside, although he later repudiated this; certain of his conceptions about the internal regime of the party, about the relationship between the party and the state, etc). But unlike the Mensheviks of that time, and their numerous anarchist, social democrat, and councilist successors, we don't take these errors as our starting point, any more than we begin an analysis of the Paris Commune or the Russian revolution by insisting on the mistakes - even the fatal ones - that they made. The real starting point is that Lenin's lifelong struggle to construct a revolutionary organisation is a historic acquisition of the workers' movement, and has left revolutionaries today with an indispensable basis for understanding both how a revolutionary organisation should function internally, and what its role within the class as a whole must be.

With regard to the latter point, and against many superficial analyses, the "narrow" Bolshevik conception of organisation, which Lenin counter-posed to the "broader" Menshevik conception, was not simply the reflection of the conditions imposed by Czarist repression. Just as the mass strikes and revolutionary uprisings of 1905 were not the last echoes of the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century, but showed the near future of the international class struggle in the dawning epoch of capitalist decadence, so the Bolshevik conception of a party of committed revolutionaries, crystal clear in its programme and functioning on a centralised basis, was an anticipation of the role and structure required for the party by the conditions of capitalist decadence, of the epoch of proletarian revolution. It may be the case, as many anti-Bolsheviks have claimed, that the Mensheviks were looking to the west for their model of organisation, but they were also looking backwards, back to the old social democratic model of a mass party which embodies the class, organises the class, and represents the class, particularly through the electoral process. And against all the claims that it was the Bolsheviks who were stuck in archaic Russian conditions, harking back to the model of the conspiratorial society, they in reality were the ones who were looking forward, forward to a period of massive revolutionary turbulence which could not be organised, planned or encapsulated by the party but which nevertheless made the party's role more vital than ever. "If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of the parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples" movement arising with elemental energy (...) .it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but first and foremost in the political leadership of the whole movement"

Thus wrote Rosa Luxemburg in her masterly analysis of the mass strike and the new conditions of the international class struggle (The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions [77]). And thus did Luxemburg, who had been one of Lenin's fiercest critics at the time of the 1903 split, converge with the most fundamental elements in the Bolshevik conception of the revolutionary party.

These elements are set out with the utmost clarity in the April Theses, which as we have already seen reject any notion of "imposing" the revolution from above: "As long as we are in a minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience". This work of "patient, systematic and persistent explanation" was precisely what was meant by giving political leadership in a revolutionary period. There could be no question of passing to the phase of insurrection until the revolutionary positions of the Bolsheviks had won over the soviets - and indeed, before that could happen, the revolutionary positions of Lenin had to win over the Bolshevik party, and this required a hard and uncompromising struggle from the moment Lenin arrived in Russia.

"We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses" (Lenin's second speech on his arrival in Petrograd, cited in Trotsky, p 293). In the initial phase of the revolution, the working class was surrendering power to the bourgeoisie, a fact which should not surprise any marxist "for we have always known and repeatedly pointed out that the bourgeoisie maintains itself in power not only by force but also by virtue of the lack of class consciousness and organisation, the routinism and downtrodden state of the masses" (Letters on Tactics). Thus the foremost task of the Bolsheviks was to push forward the class consciousness and organisation of the working masses.

This role did not satisfy the "old Bolsheviks", who had more "practical" plans. They wanted to take part in the existing "bourgeois revolution" and they wanted the Bolshevik party to have massive influence in the movement as it then was. In Kamenev's words, they were horrified at the thought of the party standing on the sidelines with its "pure" positions, reduced to the role of a "group of communist propagandists".

Lenin had no difficulty exposing this trick - had not the chauvinists thrown the same arguments at the internationalists at the start of the war, that they were staying in touch with the consciousness of the masses, while the Bolsheviks and Spartacists were no more than marginal sects? It must have been particularly galling to hear the same arguments from a Bolshevik comrade. But this did not blunt the sharpness of Lenin's reply:

"Comrade Kamenev counter poses to a "party of the masses" a "group of propagandists". But the "masses" have now succumbed to the craze of "revolutionary" defencism. Is it not more becoming for internationalists at this moment to show that they can resist "mass" intoxication rather than "wish to remain" with the masses, i.e. to succumb to the general epidemic? Have we not seen how in all the belligerent countries of Europe the chauvinists tried to justify themselves on the grounds that they wished to "remain with the masses"? Must we not be able to remain for a time in a minority against the "mass" intoxication? Is it not the work of the propagandists at the present moment that forms the key point for disentangling the proletarian line from the defencist and petty bourgeois "mass" intoxication? It was this fusion of the masses, proletarian and non-proletarian, regardless of class difference, that formed one of the conditions for the defencist epidemic. To speak contemptuously of a "group of propagandists" advocating a proletarian line does not seem to be very becoming" (Letters on Tactics).

This approach, this willingness to go against the tide and be in a minority defending clear and definite class principles, had nothing to do with purism or sectarianism. On the contrary it was based on an understanding of the real movement going on in the class there and then, on a capacity to give voice and direction to the most radical elements within the proletariat.

Trotsky shows how, both in winning the party round to his positions, and then in fighting for the "proletarian line" within the class as a whole, Lenin looked for support from these elements: "against the old Bolsheviks Lenin found support in another layer of the party, already tempered, but more fresh and more closely united with the masses. In the February revolution, as we know, the worker-Bolsheviks played the decisive role. They thought it self-evident that the class which had won the victory should seize the power. These same workers protested stormily against the course of Kamenev and Stalin, and the Vyborg district even threatened the "leaders" with expulsion from the party. The same thing was to be observed in the provinces. Almost everywhere there were left Bolsheviks accused of maximalism, even anarchism. These worker-Bolsheviks only lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. But they were ready to respond to the first clear call. It was on this stratum of workers, decisively risen to their feet during the upward years of 1912-14, that Lenin was now banking" (op cit, Chapter XVI, p 306).

This too was an expression of Lenin's grasp of the marxist method, which by looking beyond surface appearances is able to discern the real dynamic of a social movement. A contrario, in the early twenties, when Lenin himself reverted to the argument about "remaining with the masses" in order to justify the United Front and organisational fusion with centrist parties, it was a sign that the party was losing its grip on the marxist method and sliding into opportunism. But this in turn was a result of the isolation of the revolution and the Bolsheviks' fusion with the Soviet state. In the high tide of the revolution in Russia, the Lenin of the April Theses was neither an isolated prophet nor a demiurge standing above the vulgar masses, but the clearest voice of the most revolutionary trend within the proletariat; a voice which was, with unerring accuracy, indicating the path that led to the October insurrection.

Amos, Spring 1997.

From the beginning of the first series of these articles, we argued against the cliché that 'communism is a nice idea, but it could never work' by affirming, with Marx, that communism is not at all reducible to a 'nice idea', but is organically contained in the class struggle of the proletariat. Communism is not an abstract utopia dreamed up by a few well-intentioned visionaries; it is a movement given birth by the very conditions of present day society. And yet, that first series was very much a study of the 'ideas' of communists during the ascendant period of capitalism - an examination of how their conception of the future society and the way to achieve it developed during the course of the 19th century, before the communist revolution was on the immediate historical agenda.

We make no apology for this. Communism is the movement of the whole proletariat, of the working class as a historic and international social force. But the history of the proletariat is also the history of its organisations; and the clarification of the goals of the movement is the specific task of the proletariat's political minorities, its parties and fractions. Contrary to the fantasies of councilism and anarchism, there is no communist movement without communist organisations. Neither is there any conflict of interest between the two. Throughout the first series we showed how the work of clarifying the means and goals of the movement was carried out by the marxists of the Communist League and the First and Second Internationals; but this work was always done in the closest connection to the movement of the masses, by participating in, and drawing the lessons from, such epochal historical events as the revolutions of 1848 or the Paris Commune of 1871 in this second series we will be looking at the evolution of the communist project in the period of capitalism's decadence: that is to say, the period when communism has become more than the overall perspective of the workers' struggle - when it has become a veritable necessity since capitalist relations of production have entered into definitive and permanent conflict with the productive forces they have set in motion. Put more simply, the decadence of capitalism has faced humanity with the choice between communism or a relapse into barbarism. We will have occasion to look more deeply into the meaning of this phrase as this series progresses. For the moment we simply want to say that, no less than in the first series, the articles that will deal with capitalism's decadent period cannot pretend to provide a 'history' of all the momentous events of the 20th century that have served to elucidate the means and goals of communism. Perhaps even more so than in the first series, we will have to restrict ourselves to the way that the communists analysed and understood these events.

We only have to look at the 1917 Russian revolution to realise why this has to be: to write a new history even of the first few months of this event would be entirely beyond our means. But this should in no way diminish the importance of our study: on the contrary, we will find that nearly all the advances that the revolutionary movement of the 20th century has made in its understanding of the road to communism derive from its interaction with this irreplaceable experience of the working class. Even if the ICC's International Review has already devoted many of its pages to the lessons of the Russian revolution and the international revolutionary wave that it instigated, there is still much to be said about the way these lessons were drawn out and elaborated by the communist organisations of this era.

Marxists generally reckon that the onset of the epoch of capitalist decadence was marked by the outbreak of the first imperialist world war in 1914. Nevertheless, we ended the first series and begin the second, with the 'first' Russian revolution - with the events of 1905, which occurred during a kind of watershed between the two epochs. As we shall see, the ambiguous nature of this period led to many ambiguities in the workers' movement about the significance of these events. But what emerged most clearly, in the clearest fractions of the movement, was that 1905 in Russia marked the emergence of new forms of struggle and organisation that corresponded to the needs of the onrushing period of capitalist decline. If, as we showed in the last article of the first series, the previous decade had witnessed a strong tendency in the workers' movement to lose sight of the road to revolution - particularly through the growth of reformist and parliamentary illusions in the movement - 1905 was the lightning flash which illuminated the road for all those who wanted to see it.

Luxemburg and the mass strike debate

At first sight, the 1905 revolution in Russia was indeed a bolt from the blue. Reformist ideas had seized hold of the workers' movement because capitalism appeared to be enjoying a halcyon period in which things could only get better and better for the workers, so long as they stuck with the legal methods of trade unionism and parliamentarism. The days of revolutionary heroism, of street fighting and barricades, had seemed to be a thing of the past, and even those who professed marxist 'orthodoxy', such as Karl Kautsky, insisted that the best way for the workers to make the revolution was through winning a parliamentary majority. Suddenly, in January 1905, the bloody repression of a peaceful demonstration led by a priest and police agent, Father Gapon, ignited a massive wave of strikes throughout the Tsar's immense empire, and opened up a whole year of ferment, culminating in new mass strikes in October, which saw the formation of the St Petersburg Soviet, and the armed uprising of December.

In truth, these events had not sprung from nowhere. The wretched living and working conditions of the Russian workers, which had been the subject of their humble petition to the Tsar on that first 'Bloody Sunday', had been made even more intolerable by Russia's war with Japan in 1904 - a war which fully expressed the sharpening of global inter-imperialist tensions that was to reach its paroxysm in 1914. Furthermore, the magnificent combativity of the Russian workers was also no isolated phenomenon, either historically or geographically: the strike movement in Russia had been gathering pace since the 1890s, while the spectre of the mass strike had already raised its head in advanced Europe itself: in Belgium and Sweden in 1902, Holland in 1903, and Italy in 1904.

Even before 1905, therefore, the workers' movement had been traversed by an animated debate about the 'general strike' in the Second international, the marxists had fought against the anarchist and syndicalist mythology which had portrayed the general strike as an apocalyptic event that could be ushered in at any moment, and which could get rid of capitalism without any need for the working class to battle for political power. But as the practical experience of the class turned the debate away from such abstractions to the concrete question of the mass strike, i.e. to a real, evolving strike movement as opposed to a once and for all, universal work stoppage decreed in advance, the protagonists in the debate changed. From now on, the question of the mass strike was to be one of the main bones of contention between the reformist right and the revolutionary left within the workers' movement and the social democratic parties in particular. As with the previous round of this debate (over Bernstein's 'revisionist' theories in the late 1890s), the movement in Germany was to be at the centre of the controversy.

The reformists, and above all the trade union leaders, could only see the mass strike as a force for anarchy, one which threatened to undermine the years of patient labour which had built up the membership and funds of the trade unions, and a substantial parliamentary presence for the party. The trade union bureaucrats, specialists in negotiation with the bourgeoisie, feared that the kind of massive and spontaneous outbursts that had occurred in Russia would only end in massive repression and the loss of all the painfully acquired gains of the previous decades. To be sure, they took care not to openly denounce the movement in Russia. Instead they sought to limit its field of application. They granted that the mass strike was an understandable product of Russia's backward and despotic regime. But it was hardly necessary in a country like Germany, where trade unions and workers' parties had a recognised legal existence. If some kind of general strike became necessary in western Europe, it would only be as a limited, defensive exercise designed to safeguard existing democratic rights from a reactionary onslaught. And above all, any such operation had to be prepared in advance and tightly controlled by the existing workers' organisations, in order to curb any threat of 'anarchy'.

Officially, the leadership of the SDP distanced itself from these conservative reactions. At the 1905 Jena congress, Bebel put forward a resolution which appeared to mark a victory for the left against the reformists, since it hailed the importance of the mass strike. In fact, Bebel's resolution was a classic manifestation of centrism, since it reduced the mass strike to the purely defensive sphere. The duplicity of the leadership was proved a few months later, in February 1906, when it made a secret deal with the unions to block any effective propaganda for the mass strike in Germany.

For the left, on the other hand, the movement in Russia had a universal and historical significance, bringing a breath of fresh air to the musty atmosphere of trade unionism and 'nothing but' parliamentarism which had dominated the party for so long. The left's efforts to understand the implications of the mass strikes in Russia were crystallised above all in the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, who had already led the combat against Bernstein' s revisionism, and who had been directly involved in the 1905 events through her membership of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian empire. In her justly famous pamphlet The Mass Strike, the Party and the Trade Unions, she displayed a profound mastery of the marxist method, which, being armed with a historical and global theoretical framework, is able to discern the flowers of the future in the seeds of the present. Just as Marx had been able to predict the general future of world capitalism by studying its pioneering forms in Britain, or proclaim the revolutionary potential of the proletariat by looking at a movement as seemingly ineffectual as that of the Silesian weavers, so Luxemburg was able to show that the proletarian movement in 'backward' Russia in 1905 exhibited the essential characteristics of the class struggle in a historic period that was only just beginning to open up - the period of world capitalism's decline.

The opportunists entrenched in the union bureaucracy, and their more or less open supporters in the party, were swift to brand those marxists who sought to draw out the real implications of the mass strike movement in Russia as being "revolutionary romanticists", and above all as anarchists reviving the old millennial vision of the general strike. It was true that there were semi-anarchist elements in the SDP - in particular the so-called 'lokalisten' who called for a 'social general strike' - and, as Luxemburg herself wrote, the mass strikes in Russia appeared at first sight "to have become the experimental field for the heroic deeds of anarchism" (Mass Strike, part I). But in reality, Luxemburg showed, not only had the anarchists been almost completely absent from the movement: the latter's methods and aims actually constituted "the historical liquidation of anarchism ". Not merely because the Russian workers had proved, contrary to the apoliticism advocated by the anarchists, that the mass strike could be an instrument in the struggle for democratic political gains (this, after all, was nearing its end as a realisable component of the workers' movement). But first and foremost because the actual form and motion of the mass strike had dealt a decisive blow both to the anarchists and the union bureaucrats, who, for all their differences, had in common the false notion that the general strike was something that could be turned on or off at will, regardless of historic conditions and the real evolution of the class struggle. Against this, Luxemburg insisted that the mass strike was a "historical and not an artificial product”, that it is not "artificially made, not 'decided' at random, not 'propagated', but it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from actual conditions with historical inevitability. It is not therefore by abstract speculations on the possibility or impossibility, the utility or the injuriousness of the mass strike, but only by an examination of those factors and social conditions out of which the mass strike grows in the present phase of the class struggle - in other words, it is not by subjective criticism of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is desirable, but only by objective investigation of the sources of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is historically inevitable, that the problem can be grasped or even discussed" (ibid., part II).

And when Luxemburg talks about the "present phase of the class struggle", she is not referring to a passing moment, but to a new historical epoch. With striking foresight, she argues that "the present Russian revolution stands at a point of the historical path which is already over the summit, which is on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society" (ibid., part VII). In other words, the mass strike in Russia presaged the conditions that would become universal in the approaching epoch of capitalist decline. The fact that it had appeared with such sharpness in 'backward' Russia strengthened rather than weakened this thesis, since the delayed but very rapid development of capitalism in Russia had given birth to a highly concentrated proletariat confronting an omnipresent police apparatus that virtually forbade it to organise, and thus gave it no choice but to organise in and through the struggle - a reality that would be imposed on all workers in the decadent epoch, in which the state capitalist bourgeoisie cannot tolerate any permanent mass workers' organisations and systematically destroys or recuperates all previous efforts to organise on such a scale.

The period of capitalist decadence is the period of the proletarian revolution: consequently, the 1905 revolution in Russia "appears not so much as the last successor of the old bourgeois revolutions as the forerunner of the new series of proletarian revolutions of the west. The most backward country of all, just because it has been so unpardonably late with its bourgeois revolution, shows ways and methods of further class struggle to the proletariat of Germany and the most advanced capitalist countries" (ibid.). These "ways and methods" are precisely those of the mass strike, which as Luxemburg says, is "the method of motion of the proletarian mass, the phenomenal form of the proletarian struggle in the revolution" (ibid., part IV). In sum, the movement in Russia showed workers everywhere how their revolution could become a reality.

Characteristics of the class struggle in the new epoch

What precisely was this "method of motion" of the class struggle in the new period?

First, the tendency of the struggle to break out spontaneously, without pre-planning, without prior collection of funds to sustain a long siege against the bosses. Luxemburg recalls the "trivial" issues at the Putilov works which sparked off the January strike; in his 1905, Trotsky says that the October strike wave began as a dispute over pay for punctuation marks amongst the typesetters of Moscow. Such developments are possible because the immediate causes of the mass strike are entirely secondary in comparison to what lies behind them: the profound accumulation of discontent in the proletariat faced with a capitalist regime less and less able to grant any concessions and compelled to make increasing inroads on whatever acquisitions they may have previously won.

The trade union bureaucrats, of course, could hardly imagine any large-scale workers' struggle not planned and controlled from the safety of their offices; and if spontaneous movements did flare up in front of their eyes, they could only see them as being ineffectual because disorganised. But Luxemburg replied that in the newly-emerging conditions of the class struggle, spontaneity was not the negation of organisation, but its most viable premise: "The rigid, mechanical-bureaucratic conception cannot conceive of the struggle save as the product of organisation at a certain stage of its strength. On the contrary the living, dialectical explanation makes the organisation arise as a product of the struggle. We have already seen a grandiose example of this phenomenon in Russia, where a proletariat almost wholly unorganised created a comprehensive network of organisational appendages in a year and a half of stormy revolutionary struggle" (ibid., part VI).

Contrary to many of Luxemburg' s critics, such a view is not 'spontaneist', since the organisations referred to here are the immediate and general organs of the workers, not the political party or fraction whose existence and programme, rather than being tied to the immediate movement of the class, correspond above all to its historical, depth dimension. As we shall see, Luxemburg in no way denied the necessity for the proletarian political party to intervene in the mass strike. But what this view of organisation does lucidly express is the end of a whole era in which the unitary organisations of the class could exist on a permanent basis outside phases of open combat against capital.

The explosive, spontaneous nature of the struggle in the new conditions is directly connected to the very essence of the mass strike - the tendency of struggles to extend very rapidly, to wider and wider layers of workers. Describing the spread of the January strikes, she writes "there was no predetermined plan, no organised action, because the appeals of the parties could scarcely keep pace with the spontaneous risings of the masses; the leaders had scarcely time to formulate the watchwords of the onrushing crowd of the proletariat" (ibid., part III). Since the discontent within the class is already general, it becomes eminently possible for the movement to extend through the direct action of the striking workers, calling out their comrades in other factories and sectors around demands that reflect their common grievances.

Finally, against those in the unions and the party who insisted on the "purely political mass strike", on the mass strike being no more than a defensive weapon of protest against infringements on the workers' democratic rights, Luxemburg demonstrated the living inter-action between the economic and political aspects of the mass strike:

" ... the movement as a whole does not proceed from the economic to the political struggle, nor even the reverse. Every great political mass action, after it has attained its political highest point, breaks up into a mass of economic strikes. And that applies not only to each of the great mass strikes, but also to the revolution as a whole. With the spreading, clarifying and involution of the political struggle, the economic struggle not only does not recede, but extends, organises and becomes involved in equal measure. Between the two there is the most complete reciprocal action ....

... In a word: the economic struggle is the transmitter from one political centre to another; the political struggle is the periodic fertilisation of the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continually change places; and thus the economic and the political factor in the period of the mass strike, now widely removed, completely separated or even mutually exclusive, as the theoretical plan would have them, merely form the two interlacing sides of the proletarian class struggle in Russia. And their unity is precisely the mass strike" (ibid., part IV). And here "political" does not simply mean for Luxemburg the defence of democratic freedoms, but above all the offensive struggle for power, for as she adds in the very next passage, "the mass strike is inseparable from revolution". Capitalism in decline is a system unable to offer and long-term improvements in the workers' living conditions; indeed, all it can offer is repression and impoverishment. Thus the very conditions that give rise to the mass strike also compel the workers to pose the question of revolution. And more than this: since it forms the basis for the polarisation of bourgeois society into two great camps, since it inevitably brings the workers up against the full force of the capitalist state, the mass strike cannot help but raise the necessity to overthrow the old state power:

"Today, when the working classes are being enlightened in the course of the revolutionary struggle, when they must marshal their forces and lead themselves, and when the revolution is directed as much against the old state power as against capitalist exploitation, the mass strike appears as the natural means of recruiting the widest proletarian layers for the struggle, as well as being at the same time a means of undermining and overthrowing the old state power and of stemming capitalist exploitation" (ibid., part VII).

Here Luxemburg addresses the problem posed by the opportunists in the party, who based their 'nothing but' parliamentarism on the correct observation that a modem state power could no longer be overthrown by the old tactics of barricades and street fighting alone (and, in the last article in this series, we saw how even Engels had given succor to the opportunists on this point). The opportunists believed that the result of this would be that "the class struggle would shrink to an exclusively parliamentary contest and that street fighting would simply be done away with". But, as Luxemburg goes on to argue, "history has found the solution in a deeper and finer fashion: in the advent of revolutionary mass strikes, which, of course, in no way replace brutal street fights or render them unnecessary, but which reduce them to a moment in the long period of political struggle ... " (ibid.). Thus, armed insurrection is affirmed as the culmination of the organising, educating work of the mass strike - a perspective richly confirmed by the events of February to October 1917.

In this passage, Luxemburg mentions David and Bemstein as the spokesmen for the opportunist trend in the party. But Luxemburg's insistence that the revolution would not only be a violent act of overthrow, but that it would be the crowning point of a mass movement on the specific terrain of the proletariat - the point of production and the streets - was in essence also a total rejection of the 'orthodox' conceptions defended by Kautsky, who at that stage was seen as being on the left of the party, but whose notion of revolution, as we showed in the article in this series in International Review (IR) 88, was also completely caught up in the parliamentary maze. As we shall see later on, Kautsky's real opposition to Luxemburg's revolutionary analysis of the mass strike was to become clearer after her pamphlet was written. But Luxemburg had already pointed the way out of the parliamentary maze by showing that the mass strike was the embryo of the proletarian revolution.

We have said that Luxemburg's work on the mass strike in no way eliminated the need for the proletarian party. In fact, in the epoch of revolution, a revolutionary party becomes all the more crucial, as the Bolsheviks were to show in Russia. But to the development of new conditions and new methods of the class struggle, there corresponds a new role for the revolutionary vanguard, and Luxemburg was one of the first to affirm this. The conception of the party as a mass organisation which regroups, encompasses and commands the class, which had increasingly dominated the social democracy, was historically laid to rest by the mass strike. The experience of the latter had shown that the party cannot regroup the majority of the class, nor can it take in hand the organisational details of a movement as enormous and fluid as a mass strike. Hence Luxemburg's conclusion:

"In this way we arrive at the same conclusions in Germany in relation to the peculiar tasks of direction, in relation to the role of social democracy in mass strikes, as in our analysis of events in Russia. If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a people's movement arising with elementary energy from the culmination of class antagonisms and the political situation ... it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but, first and foremost, in the political leadership of the whole movement" (ibid., part VI).

The depth of Luxemburg's analysis of the mass strike in Russia provided a comprehensive rebuttal of all those who sought to deny its historical and international significance. As a true revolutionary, Luxemburg had shown that that the storms from the east completely overturned not only the old conceptions of the class struggle in general, but even demanded a radical reappraisal of the role of the party itself Little wonder that she disturbed the sleep of the conservatives who dominated the union and party bureaucracies!

The Soviets, organs of proletarian power

The Bordigist idea that the revolutionary programme has been 'invariant' since 1848 is clearly refuted by the events of 1905. The methods and organisational forms of the mass strike - in particular the soviets or workers' councils - were not the result of some pre-established schema but sprang from the creative capacities of the class in movement. The soviets were not exnihilo creations, for such things do not exist in nature. They were the natural successor to previous forms of working class organisation, in particular the Paris Commune. But they also represented a higher form of organisation corresponding to the needs of the struggle in the new epoch.

Equally contradicted by the reality of 1905 is another strand of the 'invariance' thesis: that the 'red thread' of revolutionary clarity in the twentieth century runs through a single current of the workers' movement (i.e., the Italian left). As we shall see, the clarity that did emerge amongst revolutionaries concerning the events of 1905 was unmistakably a synthesis of the different contributions made by the revolutionaries of the time. Thus, while Luxemburg's insight into the dynamics of the mass strike, into the general characteristics of the class struggle in the new period, was second to none, The Mass Strike text contains a surprisingly limited understanding of the real organisational acquisitions of the movement. She had certainly uncovered a profound truth in showing that the organisations of the mass strike were the product rather than the producer of the movement, but the organ that was more than anything else the emanation of the mass strike, the Soviet, gets no more than a passing mention; when she talks about the new organisations born out of the struggle, she is referring first and foremost to the trade unions: " ... while the guardians of the German trade unions for the most part fear that the organisations will fall in pieces in a revolutionary whirlwind like rare porcelain, the Russian revolution shows us the exactly opposite picture; from the whirlwind and the storm, out of the fire and glow of the mass strike and the street fighting rise again, like Venus from the foam, fresh, young, powerful, buoyant trade unions" (ibid., part III).

It is true that, in this twilight period, the trade unions had not yet been fully integrated into the bourgeois order, even if the bureaucratisation against which Luxemburg was polemicising was already an expression of this tendency. But the fact remains that the emergence of the soviets pointed to the historical demise of the trade union form of organisation. As a method of workers' defence, the latter was entirely bound up with the preceding epoch when it had indeed been possible for workers' struggles to be planned in advance and waged on a sector by sector basis, since the bosses had not yet unified themselves through the state, and workers' pressure on one enterprise or sector did not automatically provoke the class wide solidarity of the ruling class against their struggle. But now the conditions for "fresh, young, powerful, buoyant trade unions" were fast disappearing, since new conditions demanded new forms of class organisation.

The revolutionary significance of the soviets was understood most clearly by the revolutionaries in Russia, and by none more clearly than Trotsky, who had played such a central role in the St Petersburg Soviet. In his book 1905, written soon after the events, Trotsky provides a classic definition of the soviet which clearly links its form to its function in the revolutionary struggle:

"What was the Soviet of Workers' Deputies? The Soviet came into being as a response to an objective need - a need born of the course of events. It was an organisation which was authoritative and yet had no traditions, which could immediately involve a scattered mass of hundreds of thousands of people while having virtually no organisational machinery; which united the revolutionary currents within the proletariat, which was capable of initiative and spontaneous self-control - and most important of all, which could be brought out from underground within twenty-four hours ... In order to have authority in the eyes of the masses on the very day it came into being, such an organisation had to be based on the broadest representation. How was this to be achieved? The answer came of its own accord. Since the production process was the sole link between the proletarian masses who, in the organisational sense, were still quite inexperienced, representation had to be adapted to the factories and plants" (Chapter 8, 'The Soviet of Workers' Deputies', p 104-5, London 1971).

Here Trotsky fills in the gap left by Luxemburg by showing that it was the Soviet, not the unions, which was the organisational form appropriate to the mass strike, to the essence of the proletarian struggle in the new revolutionary period. Born spontaneously, out the creative initiative of the workers in movement, it embodied the necessary passage from spontaneity to self-organisation. The permanent existence and sectional form of the trade unions were suited only to the methods of struggle of the preceding period. The soviet form of organisation, by contrast, expressed perfectly the needs of a situation where the struggle "tends to develop no longer on a vertical level (by trade and industrial branches) but on a horizontal level (geographically), uniting all its different aspects (economic and political, local and general) ... (thus) the form of organisation which it engenders can only have the function of unifying the proletariat beyond professional sectors" ('1905 Revolution: Fundamental Lessons for the Proletariat', IR 43, autumn 1985).

As we have already seen, the political dimension of the mass strike is not restricted to the defensive level, but inevitably implies the offensive - the proletarian struggle for power. Here again, Trotsky saw more clearly than anyone that the Soviet's ultimate destiny was to be a direct organ of revolutionary power. As the mass movement became more organised and unified, it was inevitably obliged to go beyond the 'negative' tasks of paralysing the productive apparatus and assume the more 'positive' ones of ensuring the production and distribution of essential supplies, of disseminating information and propaganda, of guaranteeing a new revolutionary order - all of which uncovered the real nature of the Soviet as an organ capable of reorganising society:

"The Soviet organised the working masses, directed the political strikes and demonstrations, armed the workers, and protected the population against pogroms. Similar work was done by other revolutionary organisations before the Soviet came into existence, concurrently with it, and after it. Yet this did not endow them with the influence that was concentrated in the hands of the Soviet. The secret of this influence lay in the fact that the Soviet grew as the natural organ of the proletariat in its immediate struggle for power as determined by the actual course of events. The name of 'workers' government' which the workers themselves on the one hand, and the reactionary press on the other, gave to the Soviet was an expression of the fact that the Soviet really was a workers' government in embryo" (ibid., chap 22, p 251, 'Summing Up'), This conception of the real meaning of the soviets was, as we shall see, intimately linked to Trotsky's view that it was essentially the proletarian revolution that was on the historical agenda in Russia.

Lenin, though forced to observe the initial phases of the movement from exile, also grasped the key role of the soviets. Only three years beforehand, in writing What Is To Be Done?, a book whose whole heart is to stress the indispensable role of the revolutionary party, he had warned against the way that the economist current had made a fetish out of the immediate spontaneity of the struggle. But now, in the turmoil of the mass strike, Lenin found himself having to correct those 'super-Leninists' who were turning this polemic into a rigid dogma. Distrusting the Soviet as a non-party organ that had indeed emerged spontaneously out of the struggle, these Bolsheviks delivered it with an absurd ultimatum: adopt the Bolshevik programme or dissolve. Marx had warned against this kind of attitude - 'here is the truth, down on your knees' - even before the Communist Manifesto had been written, and Lenin saw straight away that if the Bolsheviks persisted in this line they would be completely marginalised from the real movement. This was Lenin's response:

"It seems to me that Comrade Radin is wrong in raising the question ... : the Soviet of Workers' Deputies or the Party? I think that it is wrong to put the question this way and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Party. The only question - and a highly important one - is how to divide, and how to combine, the tasks of the Soviet and those of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. I think it would be inadvisable for the Soviet to adhere wholly to one party ..

The Soviet of Workers' Deputies came into being through the general strike, in connection with the strike, and for its aims. Who led the strike and brought it to a victorious close? The whole proletariat, which includes non-Social Democrats ... Should this struggle be conducted only by the Social Democrats or only under the Social Democratic banner? I do not think so.. The Soviet of Workers' Deputies, as an organisation representing all occupations, should strive to include deputies from all industrial, professional and office workers, domestic servants, farm labourers, etc. .... As for the Social Democrats, we shall do our best ... to use the struggle we are waging jointly with our fellow proletarians, irrespective of their views, for the tireless, steadfast advocacy of the consistent, the only truly proletarian world outlook, marxism. To propagate it, to carry on this propaganda and agitation work, we shall by all means preserve, strengthen and expand our completely independent, consistently principled class party of the class conscious proletariat ... " ('Our Task and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies', Complete Works Vol. 10. p 19-21).

Along with Trotsky, who also stressed this distinction between the party as an organisation "within the proletariat" and the Soviet as the organisation "of the proletariat" (1905, p251), Lenin was able to see that the party did not have the task of regrouping or organising the whole proletariat, but of intervening in the class and its unitary organs to provide a clear political leadership - a view which actually tends to converge with Luxemburg's conception adumbrated earlier on. Moreover, in the light of the experience of 1905, which bore such eloquent witness to the revolutionary capacities of the working class, Lenin was to 'bend the stick back' and correct some of the exaggerations contained in What Is To be Done", in particular the notion, first developed by Kautsky, that socialist consciousness has to be 'imported' into the proletariat by the party, or rather by the socialist intellectuals. But this reaffirmation of Marx's thesis that communist consciousness necessarily emanates from the communist class, the proletariat, in no way diminished Lenin's conviction in the indispensable role of the party. Since the working class as a whole, even when it is moving in a revolutionary direction, still has to confront the enormous power of bourgeois ideology, the organisation of the most class conscious proletarians has to be present in the workers' ranks, combating all hesitations and illusions and clarifying the immediate and long term goals of the movement.

We cannot go much further into this issue here. It would take a whole series of articles to expound the Bolshevik theory of organisation, and in particular to defend it from the widespread slander, common to Mensheviks, anarchists, councilists and innumerable parasites, that Lenin's 'narrow' conception of the party was a product of Russian backwardness, a throw-back to Narodnik or Bakuninist conceptions. What we will say here is this: just as the 1905 revolution itself was not the last in a series of bourgeois revolutions, but the forerunner of the proletarian revolutions gestating in the womb of world capitalism, so the '1903', Bolshevik conception of the party was not rooted in the past. It was in fact a break with the past, with the legalistic, parliamentarian conception of the 'mass party' that had come to dominate the social democratic movement. The events of 1917 were to confirm in the most concrete manner possible that Lenin's 'party of a new type' was precisely the type of party that corresponded to the needs of the class struggle in the epoch ofthe proletarian revolution.

If there were weaknesses in Lenin's grasp of the 1905 movement, they lay essentially in his approach to the problem of perspectives. We shall develop on this shortly, but Lenin's view that the 1905 revolution was at 'root a bourgeois revolution in which the leading role had fallen to the proletariat prevented him from reaching the same degree of clarity as Trotsky concerning the historical significance of the soviets. Certainly he was able to see that they should not remain as purely defensive organs, that they should see themselves as organs of revolutionary power: "I think that politically the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of a provisional revolutionary government. I think the Soviet should proclaim itself the provisional revolutionary government of the whole of Russia" (Lenin, op cit). But in Lenin's conception of the 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry', this government was not the dictatorship of the proletariat carrying out the socialist revolution. It was carrying out a bourgeois revolution and therefore had to incorporate all those classes and strata who were involved in the fight against Tsarism. Trotsky saw the strength of the Soviet precisely in the fact that "it did not allow its class nature to be dissolved in revolutionary democracy: it was and remained the organised expression of the class will of the proletariat' (Trotsky, op cit., p 251). Lenin on the other hand, called for the Soviet to dilute its class composition by broadening its representation to the soldiers, the peasants and the "revolutionary bourgeois intelligentsia" ('Our Tasks ... ')., and by assuming the tasks of a 'democratic' revolution. In order to understand these differences, it is necessary to look a little deeper into the question that lay behind them: the nature of the revolution in Russia.

Nature and perspectives of the coming revolution

The 1903 split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was focused on the question of organisation. But the 1905 revolution revealed that the differences on organisation were also connected to other, more general programmatic issues: in this case, above all, the nature of and perspectives for the revolution in Russia.

The Mensheviks, claiming to be the 'orthodox' interpreters of Marx on this question, argued that Russia was still awaiting its 1789. In this belated bourgeois revolution, inevitable if Russian capitalism was to break its absolutist fetters and build the material bases for socialism, the task of the proletariat and its party was to act as a force of independent opposition, supporting the bourgeoisie against Tsarism but refusing to participate in government in order to be free to criticise it from the left. In this view, the leading class of the bourgeois revolution could only be the bourgeoisie, albeit its most forward looking and liberal fractions.

The Bolsheviks, with Lenin to the fore agreed that the nature of the revolution could only be bourgeois, and rejected as anarchist the idea that it could immediately assume a socialist character. But their analysis of the way that capitalism was developing in Russia (especially its dependence on foreign capital and the Russian state bureaucracy) convinced them that the Russian bourgeoisie was too submissive to the Tsarist apparatus, too flabby and indecisive to carry through its own revolution. In addition, the historical experience of the 1848 revolutions in Europe taught that this indecisiveness would be even more marked given that any revolutionary upheaval would unleash the 'threat from below', i.e. the movement of the proletariat. In these circumstances, the Bolsheviks insisted that the bourgeoisie would betray the struggle against absolutism, which could only be taken to a successful conclusion through an armed popular uprising in which the leading role would be played by the working class. This uprising would install a 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry'; and, much to the scandal of the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks declared that they would be willing to participate in the provisional revolutionary government that would be the instrument of this 'democratic dictatorship', returning to opposition once the main acquisitions of the bourgeois revolution had been pushed through.

The third position was that of Trotsky - the 'revolution in permanence', a phrase adopted from Marx's writings about the revolutions of 1848. Trotsky agreed with the Bolsheviks that revolution still had bourgeois-democratic tasks to complete, and that the bourgeoisie would be incapable of achieving such tasks as these. But he rejected the idea that the proletariat, once embarked upon the revolutionary road, would or could impose a "self-limitation" on its struggle. The class interests of the proletariat would compel it not only to take power into its own hands, but also to 'telescope' bourgeois-democratic into proletarian tasks - to inaugurate socialist political and economic measures. But such an evolution could not be limited to the national arena alone:

"Self-limitation' by a workers' government would mean nothing other than the betrayal of the interests of the unemployed and strikers - more, of the whole proletariat - in the name of the establishment of a republic. The revolutionary authorities will be confronted with the objective problems of socialism, but the solution of these problems will, at a certain stage, be prevented by the country's economic backwardness. There is no way out from this contradiction within the framework of a national revolution.

The workers' government will from the start be faced with the task of uniting its forces with those of the socialist proletariat of Western Europe. Only in this way will its temporary revolutionary hegemony become the prologue to a socialist dictatorship. Thus permanent revolution will become, for the Russia proletariat, a matter of class self-preservation" (Trotsky, 1905, p317 'Our Differences').

The notion of the 'permanent revolution', as we have noted before in this series, is not without its own ambiguities, and these have been duly exploited by those who have forged Trotsky's copyright, the latter-day Trotskyists. But at the time it was put forward, as an attempt to understand the transition to a new period in capitalism's history, Trotsky's position had an immense advantage over the two previously mentioned theories: it approached the problem from the international, rather than the Russian context. In this Trotsky rather than the Mensheviks was really the heir of Marx, since the latter, in reflecting on the possibility of Russia 'by-passing' the capitalist stage had also insisted that this would only be possible in the context of an international socialist revolution (see IR 81. 'Past and Future Communism'). Subsequent developments had shown that Russia could not escape the ordeal of capitalism. But contrary to the schematic dogma of the Mensheviks, who ponderously argued that each country had to patiently 'build the foundations of socialism in its own national confines, the internationalist Trotsky was moving towards the view that the conditions for the realisation of socialism - capitalism's 'rotten ripeness' or decadence - emerged as a global reality long before each country could go through the full gamut of capitalist development. The events of 1905 had amply demonstrated that the highly concentrated and combative urban proletariat was already the only truly revolutionary force in Russian society; and the events of 1917 were soon to confirm that a revolutionary proletariat could only embark upon a proletarian revolution.

The Lenin of 1917, as shown in the article on the April Theses in IR 89, was himself able to jettison the luggage of the 'democratic dictatorship' even when many 'Old Bolsheviks' were clinging to it for dear life. In this respect, it is certainly no accident that in the period around 1905 Lenin himself had also veered towards the 'permanent revolution' thesis, declaring in an article written in September 1905:

"From the democratic revolution we shall at once , according to the degree of our strength, the strength of the class conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass over to the socialist revolution. We stand for permanent revolution. We shall not stop half-way" (Complete Works, Vol. 8, p236-7, 'Social democracy's attitude towards the peasant movement'. Later Stalinist translations changed the word 'permanent to 'uninterrupted' in order to protect Lenin from any Trotskyist virus, but the meaning is clear). If Lenin continued to have hesitations about Trotsky's position, this was a result of the ambiguities of the period: until the war of 1914, it was not yet clear that the system as a whole had entered its epoch of decay, thus defmitively placing the world communist revolution on the agenda of history. The war, and the gigantic movement of the proletariat that began in February 1917, removed his last doubts.

The Menshevik position also revealed its inner secrets in 1917: in an epoch of proletarian revolution, 'critical opposition' to the bourgeoisie becomes first capitulation to the bourgeoisie, then enrolment in its counter-revolutionary forces. And indeed, in 1917 even the Bolshevik position of 'democratic dictatorship' was threatening to lead the party in the same direction, until Lenin's return from exile and the victorious fight to rearm the party. But Trotsky's reflections on the 1905 revolution also played a crucial part in that fight. Without them. Lenin may not have been able to forge the theoretical weapons he needed to elaborate the April Theses and point the way to the October insurrection.

Kautsky, Pannekoek, and the State

The 1905 revolution ended in a defeat for the working class. The armed uprising of December, isolated and crushed, led neither to a proletarian dictatorship nor a democratic republic, but to a decade of Tsarist reaction which caused the temporary dispersal and disorientation of the workers movement. But this was not a defeat of world-historic proportions. By the second decade of the new century, there were clear signs of a proletarian resurgence, even in Russia. But the focus of the mass strike debate had shifted back to Germany. Indeed, it took on a new urgency and directness here, because the deteriorating economic situation had provoked massive strike movements among the German workers themselves - sometimes around economic demands as such, but also, in Prussia, around the question of suffrage reform. There was also the growing threat of war, which prompted the workers' movement to consider the mass strike as a form of action against militarism. These developments gave rise to a bitter polemic within the German party, pitting Kautsky, the Pope of marxist orthodoxy (in fact, the leader of the centrist current in the party), against the principal theoreticians of the left, fust Luxemburg, then Pannekoek.

With the social democratic right increasingly revealing its outright opposition to any mass action by the working class, Kautsky's argument was that mass strikes in the advanced countries should at best be restricted to the defensive level, that the best strategy for the working class was that of the gradual, essentially legalistic "war of attrition" with parliament and elections as the key instruments .for the transfer of power to the proletariat. But this merely proved that his self-professed "centrist" position was in reality a cover for the openly opportunist wing of the party. Replying in two articles published in Neue Zeit in 1910, 'Attrition or Struggle?' and 'Theory and Practice', Luxemburg reaffirmed the arguments that she had defended in The Mass Strike, rebutting Kautsky's view that the mass strike in Russia was a product of Russian backwardness and opposing the "attrition" strategy by showing the intimate and inevitable connection between the mass strike and the revolution.

But as our book The Dutch Left points out, there was an important weakness in Luxemburg's argument. "In reality, very often in this debate, Rosa Luxemburg remained on the terrain chosen by Kautsky and the SPD leadership. She called for mass strikes as a means to achieve universal suffrage and put forward the 'transitional' mobilising slogan of the struggle for the Republic. On this level, Kautsky was able to reply that 'to want to inaugurate an electoral struggle
through a mass strike is absurd'” (p67, French edition). And as the book goes on to show, it was the Dutch marxist Anton Pannekoek, who was living in Germany during this period, who was able to take this debate a vital step forward.

Already, in 1909, in his text on the 'Tactical Divergences in the Workers Movement', which was directed at the revisionist and anarchist deviations in the movement, Pannekoek had shown a profound grasp of the marxist method, defending positions on parliament and trade unionism which, while clearly rejecting any timeless anarchist moralising, can be seen in hindsight to contain the seeds of the principled rejection of parliamentarism and trade unionism elaborated by the German and Dutch communist left after the war. In his polemic with Kautsky, conducted in Neue Zeit in 1912 with the texts 'Mass Action and Revolution' and Marxist Theory and Revolutionary Tactics , Pannekoek took these insights further. Among the most important contributions contained in these texts are Pannekoek's diagnosis of Kautsky s centrism,(referred to as "passive radicalism in the second text); his defence of the mass strike as the form of class struggle appropriate to the newly emerging imperialist epoch; his insistence on the capacity of the proletariat to develop new forms of unitary self-organisation in the course of the struggle1 and his view of the party as an active minority whose task was to provide political programmatic leadership to the movement rather than to organise or control it from above. But most important of all was his argument about the ultimate direction the mass strike would have to assume, which led him to reassert, against Kautsky's legalism and parliamentary fetishism, the fundamental marxist thesis on the attitude of the proletariat towards the bourgeois state in the revolutionary confrontation. In a passage quoted approvingly by Lenin in State and Revolution, Pannekoek wrote:

"The struggle of the proletariat is not merely a struggle against the bourgeoisie for state power, but a struggle against state power ... The content of this revolution is the destruction and dissolution of the instruments of power of the bourgeoisie. The struggle will cease only when, as a result of it, the state organisation is completely destroyed. The organisation of the majority will then have demonstrated its superiority by destroying the organisation of the ruling minority"(Collected Works, Vol. 25, p 488. The passage is from 'Mass Action and Revolution').

And Lenin, despite seeing certain defects in Pannekoek's formulation, ardently defends them as being founded on marxism, contrary to Kautsky's charge that they represent a reversion to anarchism.: "in this controversy, it is not Kautsky but Pannekoek who represents marxism, for it was Marx who taught that the proletariat cannot simply win state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, but must smash this apparatus, must break it and replace it by a new one" (State and Revolution, Collected Works, p 489).

For us, the defects in Pannekoek's presentation lie at two levels: first, that he did not sufficiently ground his argument in the writings of Marx and Engels on the question of the state, particularly their conclusions about the Paris Commune. This made it easier for Kautsky to smear his position with the accusation of anarchism. And second, that Pannekoek remains vague about the form of the new organs of proletarian power: like Luxemburg, he had not yet grasped the historic significance of the soviet form - something he would certainly make up for in the period following the Russian revolution! But this merely provides further proof that the clarification of the communist programme is a process which integrates and synthesises the best contributions of the international proletarian movement. Luxemburg's analysis of the mass strike was 'crowned' by Trotsky's appreciation of the soviets and the proletarian revolutionary perspective he drew out of the events of 1905; Pannekoek's insights into the question of the state were taken up by Lenin in 1917, who was able to show not only that the proletarian revolution must indeed destroy the existing capitalist state, but that the specific organs for the accomplishment of this task, the "finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat' were the soviets or workers' councils. Lenin's achievement in this field, largely summarised in his book The State and Revolution, will be the axis of the next chapter in this series.

CDW

In the previous issue of this Review, we answered the polemic in Revolutionary Perspectives no.5 (publication of the Communist Workers' Organisation, CWO) entitled "Sects, Lies, and the Lost Perspectives of the ICC". We were unable, for lack of space, to deal with every question opened up by the CWO, and so limited ourselves to answering one of them: the idea that the ICC's perspective for the present historic period has completely collapsed. We pointed out that the CWO's assertions were based essentially on a profound incomprehens ion of our actual positions, and above all on their own utter lack of any analytical framework for the present period. Moreover, this lack of framework is proudly upheld by the CWO and the IBRP (International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party) to which it is affiliated, because they consider it impossible for revolutionary organisations to identify the dominant tendency in the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat: either a course towards increasing confrontations between the two classes, or towards imperialist war. In fact, the IBRP's refusal to acknowledge both the possibility and the necessity for revolutionaries to identify the nature of the historic course, springs from the conditions in which the other organisation of the IBRP - the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt, also known as Battaglia Comunista, BC) - was formed at the end of World War II. And in no.15 of the their English-language theoretical review (Internationalist Communist), the IBRP publish a polemic titled "The political roots of the ICC's organisational malaise", where they return to the question of the origins of both ICC and PCInt. This is the main issue we will take up in this response to their polemic.

The IBRP's polemic deals with the same subject as the article in RP no.5: the causes of the organisational difficulties that the ICC has confronted recently. The great weakness of both texts, is that nowhere do they mention the analysis that the ICC itself has made of these difficulties1: for the IBRP, they can spring only from weaknesses either in our programme, or in our understanding of the present world situation. These questions can certainly be a source of problems for a communist organisation. But the whole history of the workers' movement demonstrates that questions to do with the organisation's structure and functioning are political questions in their own right, and that weaknesses in this domain have consequences still more serious - even dramatic - on the life of revolutionary groups. Need we remind the comrades of the IBRP - who after all claim to uphold the positions of Lenin - of the example of the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903, when the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks took place precisely on the organisation question (and not at all on programmatic issues, or the analysis of the situation). In fact, when we look more closely, the IBRP's present inability to give an analysis of the nature of the historic course derives in large part from its political mistakes on the organisation question, more particularly on the relationship between class and party. We can see this again in the article published in IC. Lest the comrades of the IBRP accuse us of falsifying their positions, let us quote at length from their article:

"The ICC was formed in 1975 but its history goes back to the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) a tiny group formed during the Second World War by the same individual ("Marc '') who would found the ICC in the Seventies. The GCF was fundamentally based on the rejection of the formation of the Internationalist Communist Party in Italy by the IBRP's ancestors in the period after 1942.

The GCF argued that the Internationalist Communist Party was not an advance on the old Fraction of the Communist Left which had gone into exile in France during the Mussolini dictatorship. The GCF called on the members of the fraction not to join the new Party that was being formed by revolutionaries like Onorato Damen, released from jail with the collapse of Mussolini's regime. It argued that the counter-revolution which had faced the workers since their defeats in the 1920s still continued, and that therefore there was no possibility of creating a revolutionary party in the 1940s. After Italian fascism collapsed in 1943 and the Italian state became a battleground between the two imperialist fronts, the vast majority of the exiled Italian fraction rallied to join the Internationalist Communist Party (pClnt) with the expectation that workers' unrest would not only be limited to Northern Italy as the war drew to a close. The GCF's opposition was of no significance at the time but it was the first example of the consequences of the abstract reasoning which is one of the methodological hallmarks of the ICC today. Today the 1CC will say that no revolution came out of World War ll, ergo the GCF were right. But this ignores the fact that the PCInt was the most successful creation of the revolutionary working class since the Russian Revolution and that, despite the half a century of further capitalist domination, it continues to exist and is growing today.

The GCF, on the other hand, took their "logical" abstractions a stage further. They argued that since the counter-revolution was still dominant then proletarian revolution was not on the agenda. If this was the case then a further imperialist war must be coming! The result was that the leadership took itself off to South America and the GCF collapsed during the Korean War. The ICC have always been somewhat embarrassed by this revelation of their ancestors' powers of understanding "the course of history ". However, their response has always been to brazen it out. Instead of admitting that the PCInt got both their perspectives and their conception of organisation right all along, when the ex-GCF returned to a remarkably unscathed Europe in the mid-1960s, they sought to denigrate the PCInt as "sclerotic ", "opportunist ", and told the world that they were "Bordigist " (a charge which they could only sustain on the basis of the ignorance of the new young generation of revolutionaries. It was a charge they were subsequently forced publicly to retract). However, even after this admission was forced out of them they had not finished with their policy of denigrating possible "rivals" (to quote the ICC themselves) and now they tried to maintain that the PCInt had "worked in the partisans" (ie supported the bourgeois forces seeking to establish a democratic Italian state). This was a disgusting and cowardly slander. In fact PCInt militants had been murdered directly on the orders of Palmiro Togliatti (General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party) for attempting to undermine that Stalinist control of the working class by winning support away from the partisans".

This passage on the respective histories of the ICC and the IDRP deserves an answer in depth, notably through historical fact. However, to clarify the debate, we have to start by correcting some of these accusations, which indicate either bad faith, or an alarming ignorance on the part of the article's author.

Some corrections and precisions

First, let us take the question of the partisans which provokes such indignation amongst the comrades of the IBRP, to the point where they even accuse us of "slander" and "cowardice". We have indeed said that the PCInt "worked in the partisan movement". But this is hardly a slander - it is simply the truth. Did the PCInt send some of its cadres and militants into the partisans' ranks, yes or no? This is not something that can be hidden. Moreover, the PCInt claims this policy as its own, unless it has changed position since comrade Damen wrote in autumn 1976, in the name of the PCInt's Executive, that "the Party has nothing to be ashamed of”, and recalling "those revolutionary militants who worked to penetrate the ranks of the partisans in order to spread the principles and the tactics of the revolutionary movement, and who paid for this commitment with their lives"2. By contrast, we have never pretended that this policy consisted of "supporting the bourgeois forces seeking to establish a democratic Italian state". We have dealt with this question several times in our press3 and we will return to it in the second part of this article, but although we have been pitiless in our critique of the errors committed by the PCInt at its formation, we have never treated it in the same way as the Trotskyists, still less the Stalinists. The comrades would do better to quote the passages that make them so angry. In the meantime, we think it better that they should keep their indignation to themselves. Their insults likewise.

Another point that we should correct, concerns the GCF's analysis of the historic period at the beginning of the 1950s, which led to the departure of some of its members from Europe. The IBRP is wrong to think that the ICC is embarrassed by the question, and that it replies by "brazening it out". In the obituary article on comrade Marc (International Review no.66), we wrote: "We can find this analysis in the article on "The Evolution of Capitalism and the New Perspective ", published in Internationalisme no.45 (and reprinted in the International Review no.21). The text was drawn up by Marc in 1952, and constituted, in a sense, the GCF's political testament.

In June 1952, Marc left France for Venezuela. This departure followed a political decision by the GCF: the Korean War had convinced them that a Third World War between the Russian and American blocs was both inevitable and imminent (as the text in question says). Such a war would ravage Europe, and was likely to destroy completely the few communist groups which had survived World War II. The GCF's decision to send some of its militants to "safety" outside Europe had nothing to do with their personal security (...) but with a concern for the survival of the organisation itself However, the departure of its most experienced militant was to prove fatal for the GCF; despite their constant correspondence with Marc, the 'elements who had remained in France were unable to keep the organisation alive in a period of profound counter-revolution. For reasons which we have not space to deal with here, World War III did not happen. It is clear that this error of analysis cost the life of the GCF (and of all the mistakes Marc made during his life as a militant, it was probably this one which had the most serious consequences)".

Moreover, when we first republished the text mentioned above (in 1974, in Revolution Internationale's Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion no.8, the predecessor to the International Review), we clearly stated:

"Internationalisme was right to analyse the period following World War II as a continuation of the period of reaction and reflux in the proletarian class struggle (...) It was right, too, to declare that the end of the war did not mean the end of capitalism's decadence, that all the contradictions that had pushed capitalism to war continued, and would push the world inexorably towards new wars. But Internationalisme did not see, or did not pay enough attention to, the possible phase of "reconstruction" in the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction-crisis. It was for this reason, and in this context of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR of the time, that Internationalisme thought that the resurgence of the proletariat would be possible only in and following a Third War”.

As we can see, the ICC has never tried to "brazen out" this question, nor has it been too "embarrassed" to talk about the mistakes of the GCF (even when the IBRP was not yet there to remind us). That said, the IBRP demonstrates once again that it has not understood our analysis of the historic course. The GCF's mistake lay not in an incorrect evaluation of the balance of class forces, but in an under-estimation of the respite that reconstruction would give to the capitalist economy, and which would allow it for two decades to escape the open crisis, and so to attenuate somewhat the tensions between the two blocs. These tensions remained contained within the framework of local wars (Korea, Middle East, Vietnam, etc.). If the World War did not break out at the beginning of the 50s, it was not thanks to the proletariat (which was paralysed and controlled by the left wing of capital), but because the war was not yet a necessity for capitalism.

Having made these corrections, we have to return to an "argument" which seems dear to the IBRP (since it has already been used in the polemic in RP no.5): the "tiny" size of the GCF. In reality, the reference to the GCF's "tiny" size is a reference back to "the most successful creation of the revolutionary working class since the Russian Revolution", in other words the PCInt, which at the time had several thousand members. Is this supposed to be the IBRP's proof that the reason for the PCInt's "greater success" was that its own positions were more correct than those of the GCF?

If that is the case, then the argument is thin indeed. However, leaving aside the poverty of the argument, the IBRP's approach brings up some fundamental questions, which are precisely where some of the most profound disagreements between our organisations lie. To deal with them, we need to return to the history of the Italian communist left. For the GCF was not just a "tiny" group, it was also the real political continuity with the same political current where the PCInt and the IBRP have their origins.

Some milestones in the history of the Italian Left

In our book The Italian Communist Left, the ICC has put forward a history of this current. Here, we can only sketch a few important aspects of this history.

The Italian Left emerged around Amadeo Bordiga and the Naples Federation as the "Abstentionist" Fraction within the Italian Socialist Party. The Left was responsible for founding the Italian Communist Party at the Livorno Congress of 1921, and held the leadership of the Party until 1925. At the same time as other left currents within the Communist International (such as the Dutch and German lefts), and well before Trotsky.'s Left Opposition, it fought the opportunist direction that the International was taking. In particular, unlike Trotskyism which claims complete adherence to the Cl's first four Congresses, the Italian Left rejected certain positions adopted by the 3rd and 4th Congress, especially the tactic of the "United Front". On some aspects, notably on the state capitalist nature of the USSR or the definitively bourgeois nature of the trades unions, the positions of the Dutch and German Lefts were at first much more correct than those of the Italians. However the Italian Left's contribution to the workers' movement was to prove much more fruitful thanks to its better understanding on two essential questions:

• the ebb and defeat of the revolutionary wave;

• the nature of the tasks of revolutionary organisations in such a situation.

In particular, while they were aware of the need to call into question political positions which had been contradicted by historical experience, the Italian Left moved forward with great caution, which allowed them to avoid "throwing the baby out with the bath water", unlike the Dutch Left which finally concluded that October 1917 had been a bourgeois revolution, and by rejecting the necessity of the revolutionary party. This did not prevent the Italian Left from adopting some of the positions which the German and Dutch Lefts had worked out previously. Increasing repression by the Mussolini regime, especially after the emergency laws of 1926, forced most of the militants of the Italian Communist Left into exile. It was thus abroad, mainly in France and Belgium, that the current continued an organised activity. In February 1928, in the Parisian suburb of Pantin, there was founded the Left Fraction of the Italian Communist Party. It tried to take part in the efforts at discussion and regroupment of various Left currents that had been excluded from a degenerating International, and whose best-known member was Trotsky. The Fraction hoped especially to publish a common discussion review with the different currents. But after being excluded from Trotsky's International Left Opposition, the Fraction determined in 1933 to publish its own review Bilan in French, at the same time as it continued to publish Prometeo in Italian.

This is not the place to look at the whole evolution of the Fraction's positions. We will limit ourselves to one, which lay at its foundations: the relationship between party and fraction.

This position had been worked out little by little during the 1920s and the beginning of the 30s, when the Fraction had to decide what should be its policy towards the degenerating Communist Parties.

We can summarise the main lines of this position as follows. The Left Fraction is formed as the proletarian party is degenerating under the influence of opportunism, in other words its penetration by bourgeois ideology. It is the responsibility of the minority, which upholds the revolutionary programme, to conduct an organised struggle for its victory within the party. Either the Fraction succeeds, its principles triumph, and the party is saved, or the party continues to degenerate and ends up passing arms and baggage into the bourgeois camp. The moment where the proletarian party passes into the bourgeois camp is not easy to determine. However, one of the most important signs of this passage is the fact that no proletarian political life any longer appears within the party. It is the responsibility of the Left Fraction to continue the fight within the party as long as there remains any hope of redressing it: this is why, during the late 1920s and early '30s, the left currents did not leave the parties of the IC, but were excluded, often by means of sordid manoeuvres. That being said, once a proletanan party has passed over to the bourgeois camp, no return is possible. The proletariat must then produce a new party, to return to the road towards revolution, and the role of the Fraction is to be a "bridge" between the old party gone over to the enemy and the future party, for which it must build a programmatic foundation, and whose skeleton it must become. The fact that once the party has passed over into the bourgeois camp, there can no longer exist any proletarian life within it means that it is both useless and dangerous for revolutionaries to undertake "entryism", which has always been one of Trotskyism's "tactics", and which the Fraction always rejected. Attempts to maintain a proletarian life within a bourgeois party, in other words one which is sterile as far as class positions are concerned, has never had any result other than to accelerate the opportunist degeneration of those organisations which have attempted it, without redressing the party in the slightest. As for any "recruitment" gained by such methods, it has always been particularly confused, and gangrened by opportunism, and has never been able to form a vanguard for the working class.

In fact, one of the fundamental differences between the Italian Fraction and Trotskyism was that when it came to regrouping revolutionary forces, the Fraction always put forward the need for the greatest clarity and programmatic rigour, although being open to discussion with all the other currents that had committed themselves to struggle against the degeneration of the Cl. The Trotskyist current, by contrast, tried to form organisations in haste, without any serious discussion or decantation of political positions beforehand, relying essentially on agreements between "personalities" and the authority of Trotsky as one of the most important leaders of the 1917 revolution, and of the early Cl.

Another question where the Fraction and Trotskyism disagreed, was the right moment for the formation of a new party. For Trotsky and his comrades, the question of founding a new party was put on the agenda as soon as the old parties had been lost for the proletariat. For the Fraction, the question was very clear:

"The transformation of the Fraction into a party is conditioned by two elements, that are closely linked4:

1) The elaboration, by the Fraction, of the new political positions which will be able to give a solid framework to the proletariat's struggle for the revolution, in its new and more advanced phase (...).

2) The overthrow of the present system of class relationships (...) with the outbreak of revolutionary movements which will allow the Fraction to regain the leadership of the struggle with a view to insurrection" (“Towards the 2-3/4 International?" in Bilan no. 1, 1933).

For revolutionaries to determine correctly their responsibilities at a given moment, it is vital for them to identify clearly the balance of class forces, and the direction in which it is moving. One of the Fraction's great merits was precisely its ability to identify the nature of the historic course during the 1930s: because the counter-revolution weighed heavily on the whole working class, the general crisis of capitalism could only lead to a new world war.

The full importance of this analysis became clear with the outbreak of the war in Spain. Whereas most of the organisations that belonged to the left of the Communist Parties saw in the Spanish events a revolutionary recovery of the world proletariat, the Fraction understood that despite the combativity and courage of the Spanish proletariat, it had been trapped by the anti-fascist ideology promoted by all the organisations with any influence within it (the anarchist CGT, the socialist UGT, as well as the Communist and Socialist parties, and the POUM, a left socialist party which took part in the bourgeois government of the Barcelona "Generalitat"), and was destined to serve as cannon-fodder in a confrontation between the "democratic' and "fascist" sections of the bourgeoisie which would be a prelude to the inevitable world war. At the time, a minority formed within the Fraction, which considered that the situation in Spain remained "objectively revolutionary". Defying all organisational discipline, and refusing the debate proposed by the majority, this minority joined up in the POUM's anti-fascist brigades5 and even wrote in the POUM's press. The Fraction was obliged to recognise that the minority had split. The latter, on their return from Spain at the end of 19366, joined Union Communiste, a left split from Trotskyism in the early 1930s, which was to rejoin the latter describing the events in Spain as "revolutionary", and calling for "critical anti-fascism".

Along with a number of communists from the Dutch Left, the Italian Fraction was thus the only organisation to maintain an intransigent class position against the imperialist war developing in Spain7. Unfortunately, at the end of 1937 Vercesi. who was the Fraction's leading figure and theoretician, began to develop a new theory that the various military confrontations of the latter half of the 1930s were not preparations for a new generalised imperialist slaughter, but "local wars" aimed at keeping the growing proletarian menace at bay by massacring workers. According to this theory, the world was thus on the eve of a new revolutionary wave, and world war was no longer a possibility, since the war economy was supposed to overcome the capitalist crisis of itself Only a minority of the Fraction - our comrade Marc among them - managed to avoid being dragged down this slippery slope, which turned out to be a sort of posthumous revenge for the minority of 1936. The majority decided to stop publishing Bilan and the replace it with October (whose name matched the "new perspective"), which was to be the organ of the International Bureau of Left Fractions (Belgian and Italian) and published in three languages. In fact, instead of "doing more" as the "new perspective" demanded, the Fraction proved unable to maintain its previous rhythm: unlike Bilan, October appeared irregularly, and in French only; many militants, confused by this calling into question of the Fractions positions, became demoralised or resigned.

The Italian Left during World War II and the formation of the GCF

When World War II broke out, the Fraction was disjointed. Its rout was less the result of repression, first by the democratic police and then by the Gestapo (several militants, including Mitchell, the leading figure of the Belgian Fraction, died in the camps), as of political disorientation and lack of preparation for a world war which had been supposed not to happen. Vercesi proclaimed that with the war, the proletariat had become "socially non-existent", that any Fraction work was therefore a waste of time, and that the Fractions should be dissolved (the decision that was taken by the international Bureau), which helped to paralyse the Fraction still further. Notwithstanding, the Marseille nucleus, made up of militants who had opposed Vercesi's revisionist ideas before the war, went on working patiently to rebuild the Fraction - a task that was made all the more difficult by repression and straitened circumstances. Sections were reestablished in Lyon, Toulon, and Paris. Contact was renewed with Belgium. By 1941, the "reconstituted" Italian Fraction was able to hold annual Conferences, to elect an Executive Commission, and publish an international Discussion Bulletin. In parallel, in 1942 the French nucleus of the Communist Left was formed on the basis of the Italian Fraction's positions, and with a view to building a French Fraction. Marc, now a member of the Italian Fraction's EC, joined the French group8. When in 1942-43 the great workers' strikes began, that were to lead to the fall of Mussolini and his replacement by the pro-Allied Admiral Badoglio (strikes which were to have an echo among Italian workers in Germany, supported by strikes of German workers), the Fraction considered, in line with the position it had always held, that "the course towards the transformation of the Fraction into the Party is open in Italy". The Conference of August 1943 decided to renew contact with Italy, and asked its militants to prepare to return as soon as possible. However, the return proved impossible, partly for material reasons and partly because Vercesi and a part of the Belgian Fraction remained hostile to the move, on the grounds that events in Italy did not call into question "the social non-existence of the proletariat". At its May 1944 Conference, the Fraction condemned Vercesi's theories. Vercesi had further to fall, however. In September 1944, he took part, in the name of the Fraction and in company with Pieri, another of its members, in the Brussels "Coalizione antifascista", alongside the Christian Democrat, "Communist", Republican, Socialist and Liberal parties. This unholy alliance published the newspaper L'Italia di Domani, in whose columns are to be found appeals for financial subscriptions to help the Allied war effort. When the Fraction became aware of these facts, its EC expelled Vercesi on 20th January 1945. This did not prevent the latter from continuing his work both in the Coalizione and as president of the Croce Rossa9.

The Fraction continued to work, in difficult conditions, to propagandise against the anti-fascist hysteria and to denounce the imperialist war. Now, it had at its side the French Nucleus, which held its first congress as the French Fraction of the Communist Left - December 1944. The two Fractions distributed leaflets and flyposted calls for fraternisation between the proletarians in uniform of the two imperialist camps. However, when they learnt at the Conference of May 1945 of the formation in Italy of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista, including prestigious figures as Amadeo Bordiga and Onorato Damen, the majority of the Fraction decided that it should dissolve, and in its members enter the PCInt on an individual basis. This called into question the very basis of the Fraction's whole approach since its formation in 1928. Marc, who was a member of the Fraction's EC and had been the leading figure in its work during the war, opposed the decision. His approach was not formalist, but political: he considered that the Fraction be maintained until they had ascertained the positions of the new party which were not known in detail, and determined whether they conformed to those of the Fraction10. Rather than be an accomplice to the suicide of the Fraction, he resigned from the EC and left the Congress, after making a declaration to explain his attitude. The Fraction (despite no longer being supposed to exist) excluded him as "politically unworthy", and refused to recognise the FFGC, whose leading figure Marc was. A few months later, two members of the FFGC met Vercesi - who had declared for the formation of the PCInt - and split, to form a "FFGC no. 2", with the support of the latter. To avoid any confusion, the FFGC took the name of Gauche Communiste de France (GCF), while still claiming to represent the political continuity of the Fraction. The "FFGC no. 2" found itself "strengthened" by the entry of the members of the minority excluded from the Fraction in 1936, and of Chaze - the leading figure of Union Communiste. This did not stop the PCInt and the Belgian Fraction from recognising it as "the only representative in France of the Communist Left".

In 1946, the "tiny" GCF stopped publication of its agitational press L'Etincelle ("The Spark '), considering that the perspective of a historic recovery in class struggle which had been put forward in 1943 had proven invalid. By contrast, between 1945 and 1952 it published 46 issues of its theoretical review Internationalisme, that dealt with all the questions confronting the workers' movement at the end of World War II, and clarifying the programmatic foundations for e formation of Internacionalismo in 1964 in Venezuela, Revolution Internationale in 1968 in France, and the International Communist Current in 1975.

In the second part of this article, we will return to the formation of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista, the inspiration for the IBRP and according to its own words “the most successful creation of the revolutionary working class since the Russian revolution”.

Fabieane

The extreme right goes onto the offensive, democracy inflicts a defeat on the working class

In International Review 83 we showed how in 1919 the working class, following the failure of the January uprising, went through a series of heavy defeats owing to the fragmentation of its struggles. The ruling class in Germany unleashed the most violent repression against the workers.

1919 was the zenith of the world revolutionary wave. While the working class m Russia remained isolated in the face of an assault organised by the democratic states, the German bourgeoisie went onto the offensive with the aim of finishing off a proletariat which had been terribly weakened by its recent defeats.

The working class forced to pay for the defeat of German imperialism

After the disaster of the war, even though the economy was in ruins, the ruling class tried to exploit the situation by piling the weight of its defeat on the shoulders of the working class. Between 1913 and 1920, agricultural and industrial production in Germany had fallen by more than 50%. On top of this, a third of the production that remained had to be delivered to the victorious powers. In many branches of the economy, production continued to collapse. Prices rose dizzily and the cost of living index went from 100 in 1913 to 1,100 in 1920. After the hardships suffered by the working class during the war, "peacetime" famine was on the agenda. Malnutrition continued to spread. The anarchy and chaos of capitalist production, impoverishment and hunger reigned over the workers everywhere.

The bourgeoisie uses the Treaty of Versailles to divide the working class

Simultaneously, the victorious powers of the West extracted a heavy price from the defeated German bourgeoisie. However there were considerable differences of interest between the victors. While the USA had an interest in Germany acting as a counter-weight to Britain, and thus opposed any attempt to tear Germany to pieces, France wanted Germany to be weakened for as long as possible on the territorial, military and economic level, and even favoured the dismemberment of the country. The Treaty of Versailles of 28th June 1919 stipulated that the German army would be reduced in stages from 400,000 on 10th April 1920, then to 200,000 on 20th July 1920. The new Republican army, the Reichswehr, was only allowed to keep 4,000 of its 24,000 officers. The Reichswehr saw these decisions as a deadly threat and opposed them by all means possible. All the bourgeois parties - from the SPD to the centre and the extreme right - were united, in the interests of the national capital, in rejecting the Treaty of Versailles. They only yielded to it under the constraint of the victorious powers. However, the world bourgeoisie profited from the Versailles Treaty in that it deepened the divisions which had already existed during the war between the workers of the victorious powers and those of the defeated powers.

Meanwhile, an important faction of the army, feeling directly threatened by the Treaty, immediately began to organise resistance against its application. This faction aimed at stirring up a new conflict with the victorious powers. This perspective demanded that the bourgeoisie very quickly impose a new and decisive defeat on the working class.

But for the moment there was no question of the army coming to power as far as the main forces of German capital were concerned. At the head of the bourgeois state, the SPD had already given proof of its considerable capacities. Since 1914, it had succeeded in muzzling the proletariat And in the winter of 1918-19, it had very efficiently organised the sabotage and repression of the revolutionary struggle. German capital did not need the army to maintain its rule. It could still rely on the dictatorship of the Weimar Republic. Police troops under the orders of the SPD had fired on a massive demonstration in front of the Reichstag on 13th January 1920, where 42 demonstrators were killed. During the strikes in the Ruhr at the end of February, the "democratic government” threatened revolutionaries with the death penalty.

This is why, when in February 1920 parts of the army put their putschist aspirations into practice, they were only supported by a few factions of capital.These were above all from the agrarian east, since they had a particular interest in reconquering the eastern regions lost during the war.

The Kapp Putsch: the extreme right goes onto the offensive ...

The preparations for this putsch were an open secret within the bourgeoisie. But initially the government did nothing about the putschists, On 13th March 1920, a marine brigade under the command of General von Luttwitz entered Berlin, surrounded the seat of the Ebert government and proclaimed its overthrow. When Ebert rallied generals von Seekt and Schleicher to his side in reply to the putsch, the army hesitated, because, as the Supreme Commander of the General Staff declared: "the Reichswehr cannot accept any fratricidal war'of Reichswehr against Reichswehr".

The government then fled, first to Dresden, then to Stuttgart. Kapp then declared that the Social Democratic government was out of office but made no arrests. Before its flight to Stuttgart, the government, supported by the trade unions, launched an appeal for a strike and once again showed the duplicity it was capable of in acting against the working class:

"Fight by all means at your disposal for the maintenance of the Republic. Forget all your differences. There is only one way to oppose the dictatorship of Wilhelm II:

• the total paralysis of the whole economy;

• all arms must be given up;

• no proletarian must cooperate with the military dictatorship;

• general strike all along the line. Proletarians unite. Down with the counter-revolution.

The Social Democratic members of the government: Ebert, Bauer, Noske The Directing Committee of the SPD"

The unions and the SPD thus intervened immediately to protect the bourgeois Republic - even if on this occasion they used pro-worker language1.

Kapp proclaimed the dissolution of the National Assembly, announced the holding of elections and threatened any striking worker with the death penalty.

The armed response of the working class

The indignation of the workers was gigantic. They understood immediately and clearly that this was a direct attack on their class. Everywhere a violent response developed. Naturally, it was not a question of defending the Scheidemann government From Wasserkante in eastern Prussia, through to central Germany, Berlin, BadWurtemburg, Bavaria and the Ruhr, in all the big towns, there were demonstrations; in all the industrial centres the workers went on strike and raided police stations in order to arm themselves; in the factories they held general assemblies to decide on the struggle to be waged. In most of the big cities putschist troops opened fire on demonstrating workers. On 13th and 14th March 1920, dozens of workers were shot down.

In the industrial centres, workers formed action committees, workers' councils and executive councils. The proletarian masses descended onto the streets. Not since November 1918 had there been such a massive mobilisation of the working class. Everywhere their anger against militarism exploded.

On the 13 March, the day the Kapp troops entered Berlin, the KDP Zentrale took a wait-and-see attitude. In its first statement of position, it was not in favour of a general strike:

“The proletariat will not lift a finger for the democratic republic ... The working class, which only yesterday was disarmed and repressed by the Eberts and Noskes ... is for the moment incapable of acting. The working class will take on the struggle against the military dictatorship in the circumstances and with the means that seem suitable to it. These circumstances are not yet present"

However, the KPD Zentrale was mistaken. The workers themselves did not want to wait, on the contrary, in the space of a few days more and more of them were joining the movement. Everywhere the slogans were: "Arm the workers! Down with the putschistsl".

Whereas in 1919, throughout Germany, the working class had struggled in a fragmented way, the putsch provoked a simultaneous mobilisation in many places. However, apart from in the Ruhr, there was hardly any contact made between the different centres of struggle. Throughout the country, there was a spontaneous response but without any real centralised organisation.

The Ruhr, the most important concentration of the working class, was the "Kappists" main target. This is why it was the centre of the workers' response. Starting with Munster, the Kappists attempted to encircle the workers of the Ruhr. The latter were the only ones to unify their struggle at the level of several towns, to give the strike a centralised leadership. Strike committees were formed everywhere.

Armed units, numbering up to 80,000 workers, were set up. This was the most important military mobilisation in the history of the workers' movement, apart from Russia. Although this resistance was not centralised on the military level, the armed workers managed to stop the advance of Kapp's troops. In town after town the putschists were defeated. The working class had not achieved such a success in 1919, during the various revolutionary uprisings. On 20 March 1920, the army was forced to retreat completely from the Ruhr. Already on 17th March, Kapp had been compelled to resign unconditionally. His putsch had hardly lasted for 100 hours. As in the events of the previous year, the main foci of the workers' resistance were Saxony, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich2. But the most powerful reaction was in the Ruhr.

Whereas in Germany as a whole the movement ebbed considerably after Kapp's resignation and the failure of the putsch, in the Ruhr this did not put an end to the movement. Many workers saw this as an opportunity to take the struggle forward.

The limits of the workers' response

Although a very broad workers' front had developed with the speed of lightening against the bloody putschists, it was obvious that the question of overthrowing the bourgeoisie was not yet on the agenda. For the majority of workers the issue was one of thwarting an armed aggression. At this point, it was not clear how to follow up the workers' initial success.

Apart from the workers of the Ruhr, those in other regions advanced hardly any demands that could have given the class movement a further dimension. As long as the workers' energy was directed against the putsch, there was a homogeneous orientation among the workers. But once the putschist troops had been defeated, the movement began to mark time and lacked a clear objective. Repelling a military attack in one region, which was the immediate issue facing the workers, does not necessarily create the conditions for overthrowing the capitalist class.

In various places, the anarcho-syndicalists tried to carry out the socialisation of production. This expressed the illusion that kicking out the extreme right was enough to open the door to socialism. A whole series of "commissions" were created by the workers with the aim of putting their demands to the bourgeois state. All this was presented as the first measures on the road to socialism, as the first steps towards dual power. In reality, these conceptions were signs of an impatience which was distracting the workers from the most urgent tasks. The illusion that it is enough to establish a favourable balance of forces in one region is a grave danger to the working class, because the question of power can only be posed, first of all, at the level of a whole country, and in reality only at an international level. This is why it is so important to combat petty bourgeois impatience and the demands for "everything, now".

While the workers mobilised themselves immediately on the military level against the putsch, the impulse and force of their movement did not come fundamentally from the factories. Without this - i.e. without the initiative from the masses exercising their pressure in the streets but also expressing themselves in general assemblies where they can discuss the situation and take decisions collectively - the movement cannot really go forward. This process demands that the workers take direct control of the extension and direction of the movement, but it also requires a development of consciousness in depth, since this alone makes it possible to unmask the enemies of the proletariat.

This is why the arming of the workers and a determined military response are not sufficient. The working class has to set in motion its principal strength: the development of its consciousness and its organisation. In this perspective, the workers' councils occupy a central place. However, the workers' councils and action committees which reappeared spontaneously in this movement were too weakly developed to serve as a rallying point and spearhead of the combat.

Moreover, from the beginning, the SPD undertook a whole series of manoeuvres to sabotage the councils. While the KPD focused its whole intervention on the need to re-elect the workers' councils, in order to reinforce the workers' initiative, the SPD managed to block these efforts.

The SPD and the unions: spearhead of the workers' defeat

In the Ruhr many representatives of the SPD sat in the action committees and the central strike committee. As in the period from November 1918 to the end of 1919, this party sabotaged the movement both from the inside and the outside, and once the workers had been decisively weakened, it brought to bear all the means of repression at its disposal.

Following Kapp's resignation on March 17, the withdrawal of the troops from the Ruhr on 20 March and the Ebert-Bauer government's return from "exile", the latter, alongside the army, was able to reorganise all the bourgeois forces.

Once again the SPD and the unions came to the aid of capital. Using the worst kind of demagogy and scarcely veiled threats, Ebert and Scheidemann immediately called for a return to work:

"Kapp and Luttwitz have been put out of business, but the sedition of the Junkers continues to threaten the German popular state. The combat against them must continue until they submit unconditionally. In this great aim, we must all the more solidly and deeply strengthen the Republican front. The general strike, if it goes on any longer, will not only threaten those who have been guilty of high treason, but also our own front. We need coal and bread to carry on the fight against the former powers. This is why we must halt the peoples' strike, but remain in a permanent state of alert".

At the same time, the SPD made a show of granting political concessions, in order to isolate the most combative and conscious elements from the rest of the movement. Thus it promised "more democracy" in the factories, in order to give the workers "a decisive influence in the elaboration of the new regime and the social and economic constitution"; it also promised the purging from the administration of all those who had sympathised with the putschists. But above all, the unions did everything to ensure that an agreement would be signed. The Bielefeld agreement promised concessions which in reality were aimed at holding back the movement so that the repression could then be organised.

At the same time the threat of "foreign intervention" was once again raised: the workers were told that spreading their struggles would result in an attack on Germany by foreign troops, especially those of the USA, and in the blocking of desperately needed food supplies from Holland.

Thus the unions and the SPD prepared the conditions and put in place all the means necessary for the repression of the working class. The same SPD whose ministers had a few days before, on 13th March, been calling for a general strike against the putschists, now took back the reins and carried out the repression. Although negotiations for a cease-fire were underway and the government appeared to be making "concessions" to the working class, the general mobilisation of the Reichswehr was already taking place. A large number of workers had the fatal illusion that the government troops sent by the "democratic" Weimar Republic would not carry out any action against the workers. This is what the Berlin-Kopenick defence committee promised when it called on the workers' militias to cease the struggle. But as soon as troops loyal to the government entered Berlin, councils of war were set up whose ferocity easily matched that of the Freikorps the year before. Anyone found in possession of a weapon was immediately executed. Thousands of workers were tortured and shot, innumerable women were raped. In the Ruhr alone it is estimated that 1000 workers were murdered. What Kapp's thugs had failed, the butchers of the democratic state succeeded admirably.

Since World War I, all bourgeois parties have been mortal enemies of the working class

Since the capitalist system entered its period of decadence, the proletariat has had to constantly relearn the fact that there are no factions of the ruling class less reactionary than any others, or less hostile to the working class. On the contrary, the forces of the left of capital, as proved by the example of the SPD, are all the more devious and dangerous in their attacks on the working class. In decadent capitalism there are no progressive factions of the bourgeoisie that the working class can support.

The proletariat paid a heavy price for its illusions in Social Democracy. In crushing the workers' response to the Kapp putsch, the SPD showed all its duplicity and proved that it was acting in the service of capital.

It began by presenting itself as the most radical representative of the workers. In doing so it succeeded in mystifying not only the workers in general, but also their political parties. Although at a general level the KPD warned the working class loudly and clearly about the SPD, denouncing the bourgeois character of its politics, at the local level it often fell victim to its tricks. Thus, in various towns, the KPD signed joint appeals for the general strike with the SPD.

For example, in Frankfurt, the SPD, the USPD and the KPD declared jointly that "We must enter into struggle now not to protect the bourgeois Republic, but to establish the power of the proletariat. Leave the factories and offices right away!".

In Wuppertal, the district leaderships of the three parties published this appeal:

"The unified struggle must be waged with the/oil owing aims:

1. The conquest of political power by the dictatorship of the proletariat, up until the consolidation of socialism by the council system.

2. The immediate socialisation of the economic enterprises sufficiently large to serve this end.

To attain these aims, the signatory parties (USPD, KPD, SPD) call (or a determined general strike on Monday 15 March".

The fact that the KPD and the USPD did not denounce the real role of the SPD, but lent their support to the illusion that you could form a united front with a party that had betrayed the working class and had its hands covered in workers' blood was to have disastrous consequences.

Once again the SPD was pulling all the strings and was preparing to repress the working class. After the defeat of the putschists, with Ebert at the head of the government, it appointed a new Commander to the Reichswehr - von Seekt, a general who had already acquired a solid reputation as a butcher of the working class. Right away, the army stirred up hatred against the workers: "although the right wing putschists have left the stage in defeat, left wing putschism is again raising its head. We will use our weapons against putsches of all kinds". Thus the workers who had fought the putschists were denounced as the real putschists. "Don't be led astray by Bolshevik and Spartacist lies. Stay united and strong. Form a front against Bolshevism which wants to destroy everything".

Under the orders of the SPD, the Reichswehr carried out a real bloodbath. It was the "democratic" army which marched against the working class, long after the "Kappists" had been put to flight!

The weaknesses of revolutionaries are fatal for the whole working class

While the working class was heroically fighting the attacks of the army and was trying to find a direction for its struggles, the revolutionaries were lagging behind the movement. The absence of a strong communist party was one of the decisive reasons for this new reverse for the proletarian revolution in Germany.

As we showed in the article in IRs 88 and 89, the KPD found itself gravely weakened by the exclusion of the opposition at the Heidelberg Congress. In March 1920, the KPD only had a few hundred militants in Berlin, the majority of its members having been excluded. On top of this, the party was traumatised by its weaknesses during the bloody week of January 1919, when it had proved unable to act in a unified way to expose the trap set by the bourgeoisie and to prevent the working class from falling into it.

This is why on the 13 March 1920, the KPD developed a false analysis of the balance of forces between the classes, thinking that it was too soon for a fightback. It was clear that the working class was facing an offensive by the bourgeoisie and could not choose the moment to struggle. But its determination to resist was extremely important. In this situation, the party was perfectly correct to put forward the following orientation:

"Immediate assemblies in all factories to elect workers' councils. Immediate meeting of councils in higher assemblies which must take charge of the direction of the struggles and the next measures to carry out. Immediate meeting of the councils in a Central Congress of councils. Within the workers' councils, the communists fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the Republic of councils" (15th March 1920).

But after the SPD regained control of the reins of government, the KPD Zentrale declared, on 21st March 1920:

"For the ultimate conquest of the proletarian masses to the cause of communism, a state of affairs in which political liberty can be used without any limits and in which bourgeois democracy does not appear as the dictatorship of capital is of the highest importance for things to go in the direction of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The KPD sees the formation of a socialist government that excludes any capitalist bourgeois party as a favourable basis for the action of the proletarian masses and the process of maturation necessary for exerting the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Towards the government it adopts an attitude of loyal opposition as long as it does not threaten the guarantees that ensure the working class its freedom of political action, and as long as it combats the bourgeois counter-revolution by all the means at its disposal and does not prevent the social and organisational strengthening of the working class".

What was the KPD hoping for in promising to be a "loyal opposition" to the SPD? Was this not the same SPD which during the war and at the beginning of the revolutionary wave had done everything it could to mystify the working class, to tie it to the state? Was this not the same SPD which had coldly organised the repression of the workers?

By adopting this attitude the KPD Zentrale left itself wide open to the manoeuvres of the SPD.

When the vanguard of the working class falls into an error of this scale, it is not surprising that the masses' illusions in the SPD should have been reinforced. The catastrophic policy of the "United Front from below" as applied in March 1920 by the KPD Zentrale would unfortunately be taken up straight away by the whole Communist International. The KPD had taken a first tragic step.

For the militants excluded from the KPD, thIS new error by the Centrale was the motive for pushing them to found the KAPD in Berlin shortly afterwards, at the beginning of April 1920.

Once again the working class in Germany had fought heroically against capital. And this despite the fact that the international wave of struggles was well in retreat. But once again it was deprived of decisive action by the party. The errors and hesitations of the revolutionaries in Germany were a very clear demonstration of the grim consequences of a lack of clarity on the part of the political organisation of the proletariat.

The. confrontation provoked by the bourgeoisie through the Kapp putsch ended in a new and grave reverse for the proletariat in Germany. Despite the formidable courage and determination with which the workers hurled themselves into the fray, they once again paid heavily for their persistent illusions.in the SPD and bourgeois democracy. Handicapped politically by the chronic weaknesses of its political organisations, abused by the underhand policies and speeches of Social Democracy, they were. defeated and finally exposed to the bullets not so much of the extreme right but of the very "democratic" Reichswehr under the orders of the SPD government.

But above all this new defeat of the proletariat in Germany was a crucial blow against the worldwide revolutionary wave, leaving Soviet Russia more and more isolated.

DV

The 12th Congress of the ICC, which was held in April 1997, marked a fundamental step in the life of our international organisation. This congress concluded a period of nearly four years of debate on the question of the way the organisation functions, four years of struggle to recover its unity and cohesion. The perspectives adopted by the congress put it thus: "The ICC has completed its convalescence and at this 12th International Congress it is able to give itself the perspective of returning to a balance between all its activities, of assuming all the tasks for which the proletariat has engendered it as part of the proletarian political milieu". (Resolution on activities from the 12th Congress).

The defence of the organisation

Since the end of 1993, while maintaining its regular activities of analysing the international situation and intervening through its press, the priority of the ICC has been the task of defending the organisation against the attacks on its organizational integrity, both from the inside, and the outside via an unprecedented offensive of political parasitism.

This combat, which has nothing to do with a sudden relapse into 'paranoia' by the ICC, contrary to the complacent insinuations of political parasitism, but also of certain groups and elements of the proletarian political milieu, has gone through several phases.

First of all there was a critical examination, done without any concessions, of all aspects of our organisational life that revealed an insufficient grasp of the marxist conception of the revolutionary organisation, and a penetration of behaviour alien to this conception. During this phase the ICC was obliged to uncover the pernicious role of 'clans' within the organisation. A vestige of the conditions in which the ICC was formed and grew up, the phase of circles and small groups, these informal groupings of militants based around friendship and other ties, instead of being subsumed into the organisation as an international, centralised unity, persisted to the point where they represented an insidious, parallel form of functioning within the organisation. In the general framework of an understanding of the necessity for a permanent struggle against the circle spirit and for the party spirit, the 11th International Congress, in 1995, highlighted the devastating role of one clan in particular, which had extended its influence into several territorial sections and the international central organ. After a long internal inquiry, the congress unmasked the main animator of this clan, the individual JJ who had carried out a systematic policy of sabotage, through all kinds of secret manoeuvres, including the formation of a network of 'initiates' into esotericism within the organisation. The delegations and participants at the 11th Congress unanimously pronounced the exclusion of this individual.

The 11th International Congress enabled us to throw light on the internal malfunctioning of the organisation. By systematically discussing all the mechanisms of this malfunctioning, by exposing the different kinds of anti-organisational behaviour, by critically re-examining the history of the ICC, but also by reappropriating the lessons of the history of the workers' movement in organisational matters, the ICC was able to conclude that it had overcome the main danger to its existence and had restored marxist principles on the organisation question.

However it was not yet time to end the debate and the fight on the organisation question. This is why the activities report for the 12th International Congress presented the organisation with a balance sheet of its "convalescence". After the 11th congress, the ICC was the target of a whole series of attacks. On the one hand, the individual JJ, immediately after the 11th Congress, went onto a new offensive, by exerting a considerable amount of pressure on his 'friends' who had remained inside the organisation and on . militants who were still undecided about the validity of the ICC's orientation. On the other hand, and in conjunction with this, "this new offensive was immediately relayed onto the outside through the redoubled attacks on the ICC by parasitism on an international scale" (ibid). The ICC thus faced a second phase of its struggle on the organisation question: it was no longer just a matter of resolving problems of internal functioning, but of "going from the fight for the defence of the organisation internally to defending it on the outside ... by responding to all the aspects of a concerted attack by the bourgeoisie aimed at the ICC and the communist left as a whole" (ibid).

The 12th Congress drew a positive balance-sheet of this phase. Contrary to the rumours and denigrations about the 'crisis' and 'haemorrhaging of militants' going on in the ICC, this policy not only made it possible to consolidate the return to a solid and collective internal functioning, and to integrate new militants on this basis, but was also a considerable factor in tightening the organisation's links with elements looking for revolutionary positions, with our contacts and sympathisers.

It might seem surprising that an international revolutionary organisation which has already been around for 20 years should have been obliged to devote so much time to the defence of the organisation. But this is only astonishing for those who believe that this question is secondary or derives mechanically from programmatic political positions. In reality, the question of organisation is not only a political question in its own right, but is the one that, more than any other, conditions the very existence of the organisation in the accomplishment of all its daily tasks. It demands from revolutionaries a permanent vigilance towards, and combat against, all aspects of the power of the bourgeoisie, whether we are talking about direct repression or indirect ideological pressure. This combat for the defence of the revolutionary organisation against the bourgeoisie has been a constant feature of the history of the workers' movement It was waged by Marx and Engels within the First International against the petty bourgeois influences conveyed by anarchism and against the intrigues of Bakuninism; by Rosa Luxemburg against the influence of the bourgeoisie on German social democracy and against reformism within the IInd International; by Lenin against the circle spirit within the Russian, Social Democratic Labour Party and for a centralised, organised, disciplined party; by the communist left against the degeneration of the Illrd International, in particular the defence of fraction work by the Italian communist left.

This is a combat the ICC itself has waged since it was formed in the 1970s, by fighting for the regroupment of revolutionaries, by defending the concept of a unified and centralised international organisation, against all the anti-organizational conceptions which held sway over the movement which arose out of the resurgence of the class struggle and the rediscovery of revolutionary positions at the time. In the 1980s, the ICC still had to struggle against academic conceptions and the influence of 'councilism'. In the period we are going through today, the whole ideology of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in decomposition sustains an atmosphere of denigration of the very idea of communism, of revolutionary organisation and of militant commitment Through its incessant ideological campaigns the bourgeoisie continues to proclaim the 'death of communism', and is now even directly attacking the heritage of the communist left by presenting this current as an example of fascist-type 'extremism' or as a constellation of tiny fanatical sects. This is why the defence of the marxist conception of the communist organisation has to be a constant preoccupation of the groups of the communist left.

"The ICC has won a battle. It has won not without hardships, the battle against the danger of the destruction of the organisation from within. However, it has not won the war. Because our war is the class war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a fight to the death which can leave no respite to the weak communist vanguard of which the ICC is the main component. In this sense, in drawing out the perspectives (or our activity, while they have to be considered in the light of what the organisation has been able to accomplish in these last two years - and more generally, since its formation - we can only measure the acquisitions of our combat and the real state of our forces in relation to what is at stake in the general struggle of the working class, and within that, in relation to the necessity to construct the world party, indispensable weapon of the revolutionary struggle" (ibid).

The proletarian political milieu

The 12th Congress thus reaffirmed the ICC's insistence that there exists a 'proletarian political milieu'. Contrary to conceptions which exist within this milieu, mainly among the 'Bordigist' heirs of the Italian communist left, the ICC does not consider itself to be the only communist organisation, still less to be 'the party'. But the ICC does defend the absolute necessity for the construction of a world party, which is indispensable to the revolutionary struggle as the most advanced expression of, and most active factor in, the proletariat's coming to consciousness. For the ICC, the long term task of building the party must have as its starting point the organisations of the present histories I period, the organisations which have survived from the left currents of the IIIrd International and the new groups which arise on class positions out of the heat of the proletarian struggle. The formation of the party will not be the spontaneous product of a class movement that will automatically line up with the 'historic party', by recognising its 'invariant programme', as in the Bordigist conception. Neither will it be the result of an unprincipled agglomeration based on mutual concessions and the opportunism of organisations who are ready to make deals about their positions. It will be the result of a conscious activity by revolutionary organisations, carried out today on the basis of the conception that the proletarian political milieu (or what the Internationalist Communist Party - Battaglia Comunista -calls the "internationalist camp") "is an expression of the life of the class, of the process through which it becomes conscious of itself (Resolution on the proletarian political milieu, the swamp and parasitism from the 12th ICC Congress). The 12th Congress thus reaffirmed that the ICC's policy of systematic confrontation with the positions of other organisations of the proletarian milieu must never lose sight of the fact that the aim is not in itself the denunciation of errors but clarification in front of the working class:

"Our ultimate goal is to move towards the political unification of our class and of the revolutionaries, a unification expressed in the construction of the party and the development of consciousness within the class. In this process, political clarification is the essential element and this has always guided the ICC's policy towards the proletarian political milieu. Even when a split in a group of the proletarian milieu becomes inevitable owing to the invasion of bourgeois currents, it is important that such a split is the fruit of a process of clarification, so that it can serve the interests of the working class and not of the bourgeoisie" (ibid).

The 12th Congress also went back over the notion of 'parasitism' which it has deepened ID the past few years. It insisted on the necessity to make a clear demarcation between the proletarian political milieu and this nebula of groups, publications and individuals which, while more or less claiming to be part of the revolutionary milieu, show by their political positions or their activity towards this milieu that their real function is to spread confusion, and in the final analysis to do the bourgeoisie's work against the proletarian political milieu.

"Parasitism is not part of the proletarian political milieu. The notion of parasitism is not an ICC innovation. It belongs to the history of the workers' movement. In no sense does parasitism express the efforts of the class to become conscious. On the contrary it constitutes an attempt to abort these efforts. In this sense its activity completes the work of the bourgeois forces whose role is to sabotage the intervention of revolutionary organisations within the class.

What animates the activity and determines the existence of parasitic groups or individuals is not the defence of the class principles of the proletariat, the clarification of political positions, but, at best, the spirit of the sect, of the 'circle of friends', the assertion of individualism and of individuality towards the proletarian political milieu. In this sense what characterises modern parasitism is not the defence of a programmatic platform but essentially a political attitude towards the revolutionary organisations" (ibid).

In this sense the 12th congress concluded that one of the priorities for our activities is "the defence of the proletarian political milieu (which includes our sympathisers and contacts) against the destructive offensive of the bourgeoisie and the activities of parasitism" (ibid).

The international situation and the perspectives for the class struggle

The 12th congress also spent a long time discussing the international situation - the acceleration of the economic crisis, the aggravation of imperialist tensions and the development of the class struggle. This discussion was particularly important given the development of chaos in all domains today, the result of the decomposition of capitalist society, and given the confusions spread by the bourgeoisie in order to hide the bankruptcy of its system. This confusion has even made it difficult for revolutionary groups to adhere to a marxist analytical framework and to draw out the perspectives for the development of the class struggle.

At the level of the economic crisis, the 12th Congress reaffirmed the necessity to base itself on the fundamental insights of marxism in order to deal with all the mystifying discourse of the bourgeoisie. We cannot limit ourselves to an empirical observation of the 'economic figures' which are being more and more falsified by the 'specialists' in bourgeois economy. We have to situate our examination of the crisis in the framework of the marxist theory of the collapse of capitalism. "Revolutionary marxists cannot predict the precise form or the rhythm of the growing collapse of the capitalist mode of production. but it is their task to proclaim and demonstrate that the system has reached an absolute impasse, to denounce all the lies and myths about the 'light at the end of the tunnel''' (Resolution on the international situation, 12th ICC Congress).

At the level of imperialist tensions, the 12th Congress took up the task of analysing the characteristics of today's chaos, of the freefor-all between the great imperialist powers that is being disguised behind the pretext of 'humanitarian' and 'peacekeeping' interventions, and which is dragging more and more regions of the planet into military barbarism. "... The tendency towards 'every man for himself predominated over the tendency towards the reconstitution of stable alliances that could prefigure future imperialist blocs, and this was to multiply and aggravate military confrontations" (ibid).

Finally, it was the perspectives for the class struggle which was the object of the most important discussion during this congress. The working class today is in a difficult situation, where it is being subjected to the full force of extremely brutal attacks on its living conditions, and this in the context of a situation of ideological disarray which it has not left behind and which the bourgeoisie tries to reinforce through its media campaigns and all sorts of manoeuvres. "For the ruling class, which is fully aware that its growing attacks on the working class. will provoke widescale reactions, it is vital to get in the first blow at a time when combativity is still at an embryonic stage and where the echoes of the collapse of the 'socialist' regimes still weigh very heavily on the workers' consciousness. The aim is to 'wet the powder' and to reinforce to the maximum its arsenal of trade unionist and democratic mystifications" (ibid).

This situation has important implications for the intervention of the organisation. It is important not to deceive ourselves when we consider the situation. The serious obstacles that the bourgeoisie has mounted against the development of the class struggle does not mean that the proletariat is in a state of defeat similar to the one it was in during the 1930s.

"The campaigns of the 30s:

- were situated in a context of a historic defeat for the proletariat, of an undisputed victory for the counter-revolution;

- had as their main object the mobilisation of the proletariat for the coming world war

- had a real trump card at their disposal - the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany - and were thus very real, massive and clearly aimed.

By contrast, today's campaigns:

- are situated in a context in which the proletariat has overcome the counter-revolution, has not been through a massive defeat which has put into question the historic course towards class confrontations;

- have as their main aim that of sabotaging a rising tide of consciousness and combativity within the working class;

- do not have a single target but are obliged to call on disparate and sometimes circumstantial themes (terrorism, the 'fascist danger', paedophile networks, corruption of the legal system, etc) , which tends to limit their impact both in time and place" (ibid).

Neither IS It a question of falling into euphoria, of the kind encouraged in response to the 'strike movement' in France in December 1995. This preventative manoeuvre by the bourgeoisie led quite a few to believe that the road to major working class mobilisations was open and to seriously underestunate the current difficulties of the working class. "Only a significant advance in the consciousness of the working class would enable the latter to push away such mystifications. And this advance could only be the result of a massive development of workers' struggles which put into question, as had begun to be the case in the mid-80s, the most important instruments of the bourgeoisie within the workers' ranks, the trade unions and trade unionism" (ibid).

In this context, the 12th Congress made one of its priorities for the activities of the organisation "intervention in the development of the class struggle ...

The perspective for our intervention will in general not be one of active, direct participation in a situation where the class struggle is on the rise and is clearly escaping the grip of the unions and affirming itself on its own terrain; of agitation aimed at pushing forward the workers' efforts to extend the struggle and take it into their own hands.

In general our intervention in the class struggle, while continuing to put forward the historical perspective of the proletariat (the defence of communism against the campaigns of the bourgeoisie) will have as its main task the patient and obstinate work of explaining and denouncing the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, of the unions and rank and file unionism, against the growing discontent and militancy of the working class. Such an intervention will as often as not have to be undertaken 'against the stream', against the tendency to fall into the traps posed by the divisive and corporatist 'radicalism' of the trade unions" ("Resolution on Activities").

In tracing the perspectives for the years ahead, this congress carried out important work of which this account has only given a brief sketch. Our readers and sympathisers will be able to find a more developed account in International Review 90, while their implications will be developed in future interventions and issues of our press.

ICC

Resolution on the International Situation

1) The widespread lies disseminated when the Stalinist regimes collapsed at the turning point of the 80s and 90s, lies about the "definite failure of marxism", are not new. Exactly one century ago, the left of the Second International, with Rosa Luxemburg at its head, had to fight against the revisionist theses which claimed that Marx was completely wrong when he announced that capitalism was doomed to failure. The decades that followed, with the first world war and then the great depression of the 30s which came after a brief period of reconstruction, gave the bourgeoisie little opportunity to hammer home that message. On the other hand, the two decades of "prosperity" after the second world war allowed a new blossoming of "theories" which "once and for all" buried marxism and its prediction of the collapse of capitalism: such theories were also common in various "radical" milieu. These songs of self-satisfaction went rather quiet with the return of the open crisis at the end of the 1960s, but the slow pace of the latter, punctuated by periods of "recovery" like the one that American and British capitalism have been going through, has enabled the propaganda of the bourgeoisie to hide from the great majority of workers the reality and scope of the impasse facing the capitalist mode of production today. This is why it is so important for revolutionaries, for marxists, to permanently denounce all the bourgeois lies about capitalism's ability to "come out of the crisis", and in particular to expose all the "arguments" used to "demonstrate" this ability.

• In the mid-70s, faced with the obviousness of the crisis, the "experts" began to look into all the possible explanations that would allow the bourgeoisie to reassure itself about the rosy prospects of Its system. Incapable of envisioning its ultimate demise, the ruling class needed, not only to mystify the exploited, but for its own use as well to explain the growing difficulties of the world economy by pointing to circumstantial causes, and so avoid confronting the real causes. One after another the following explanations had their moment of glory:

• the "oil crisis", following the Yom Kippur war of 73 (an explanation which "forgets" that the open crisis went back six years earlier, and that the oil price nses merely accentuated a deterioration which had already expressed itself in the recessions of 67 and 71);

• the excesses of the neo-Keynsian policies carried out since the end of the war, and which have led to to galloping inflation. Conclusion: we need "less state";

• the excesses of "Reaganomics" in the 80s which provoked an unprecedented rise in unemployment in the main countries.

Fundamentally, the bourgeoisie had to cling to the idea that there was a way out, that with proper management the world economy could return to the splendour of the post-war boom. It was simply a question of finding the lost secret of "prosperity".

2) For a long time, the economic performances of Japan and Germany, at a time when other countries were getting stuck in the mud, were supposed to demonstrate capitalism's ability to "overcome its crisis": "if every country was as virtuous as the two main losers of the second world war, everything would be fine" - this was the credo of many of capitalism's appointed apologists. Today, Japan and Germany have become "sick men". Having found it extremely difficult to return to the fabulous growth rates it had enjoyed in the past, Japan has recently been placed alongside Brazil and Mexico in category D in the index of countries most at risk because of the accumulation of debt by the state, by companies and by individuals (amounting to more than two and a half years of national production). As for Germany, it now has the highest rates of unemployment in the European Union and is at present unable to fulfil1 the "Maastricht criteria" indispensable for setting up the "single currency". It has finally become clear that the alleged "virtue" of these countries in the past simply hid the same head-long flight into debt which has characterised capitalism for decades. In reality, the present difficulties of the two countries which were "top of the form" in the 70s and 80s are an illustration of the impossibility of capitalism continuing indefinitely this cheating of Its own laws, which was the main basis for the reconstruction after the second world war and which has allowed it up till now to avoid a collapse similar to that of the 1930s: in short, the systematic resort to credit.

3) At the time she was denouncing the revisionists' "theories", Rosa Luxemburg was already obliged to demolish their idea that credit would allow capitalism to overcome its crises. While credit was undoubtedly a stimulant to the development of this system, from the point of view both of the circulation and the concentration of capital, it was never able to substitute itself for a real market as the soil for capitalist expansion. Borrowing for the future makes it possible to accelerate the production and sale of commodities but sooner or later it has to be repaid. And this repayment is only possible if exchange takes place on the market - something which does not flow automatically from production, as Marx systematically demonstrated against the bourgeois economists. At the end of the day, far from enabling capitalism to overcome its crises, credit merely extends their force and graviity, as Rosa Luxemburg showed by applying marxism. Today the theses of the marxist left against revisionism at the end of the last century remain fundamentally valid. No more than before can credit enlarge solvent markets. However, faced with the definitive saturation of the latter (whereas last century there was still the possibility of conquering new markets), credit has become the indispensable condition for absorbing commodities, substituting itself for the real market.

4) This reality was already illustrated in the aftermath of the second world war when the Marshall Plan, apart from its strategic function in the constitution of the American bloc, allowed the USA to create an outlet for its industries. The resulting reconstruction of the European and Japanese economies had by the 1960s made the latter rivals of the American economy, signaling the return of the open crisis of world capitalism. Since then, it has been mainly through the use of credit, of growing debt, that the world economy has managed to avoid a brutal depression like the one m the 30s. In this way the recession of 1974 was put off until the beginning of the 80s thanks to the enormous debts run up by the third world, leading to the debt cnsis of the early 80s which coincided with a new recession even more serious than the one in 74. This new world recession was in turn only overcome by the dizzying trade deficit of the USA whose mounting external debt vied with that of the third world. Parallel to this, the budget deficits of the advanced countries exploded, stimulating demand but plunging states into veritable bankruptcy (these state debts represented between 50 and 130% according to the country). Furthermore it is for this reason that open recession, which is expressed by negative. growth rates for the country's production, IS by no means the only indicator of the gravity of the crisis. In nearly all countries the annual budget deficit of the state (not counting that of local administrations) is higher than the growth of production. This means that if the budget was balanced (which would be the only way to stabilise the accumulated state debts) all these countries would be in open recession. The largest part of these debts will obviously never get repaid, and have thus been accompanied by periodic and increasingly serious financial crashes, veritable earthquakes for the world economy (1980, 1987), which are more than ever on the agenda today.

5) When we recall these facts it makes it possible to put paid to the speeches about the current "health" of the British and American economies which are contrasted with the poor performance of their competitors. In the first place, we have to insist on the relative nature of these "successes". Thus, the very notable fall in the rate of unemployment in the UK owes a great deal, according to none other than the Bank of England itself, to the statistical suppression of those unemployed who have given up looking for a job (the way of calculating the unemployment figures has changed 33 times since 1979). Having said this, these successes are to a large extent based on an improvement in the competivity of these economies on the international arena, which in turn is largely based on the weakness of their currencies: keeping the pound Stirling out of the European Monetary Snake has up till now proved to be a good move. In other words, this "success" is based on the deterioration of competing economies. This is a fact that has been partly hidden by the worldwide synchronisation of periods of recession and of "recovery" which we have experienced up till now: the relative improvement of the economy of one country does not take place thanks to the improvement of its "partners" but basically through their deterioration, since "partners" are essentially competitors. With the disappearance of the American bloc resulting from the collapse of its Russian rival at the end of the 80s, the previous coordination (eg through the G7) of their economic policies - a by no means negligible factor in slowing down the crisis - has given way to an increasingly frantic "every man for himself'. In such a situation, the world's leading power has the privilege of being able to impose its diktats in the sphere of commerce to the benefit of its own national economy. This to a considerable extent is what explains the current "success" of American capital.

This said, not only does the current performance of the Anglo-Saxon economies not point to a possible improvement for the world economy as a whole, it itself is not going to last very long. As tributaries of the world market, which cannot overcome its total saturation, these economies will inevitably come up against this saturation. Above all, no country has been able to resolve the problem of generalised debt (even if the budget deficits of the USA have been slightly reduced in the last period). The best proof of this is the fear haunting the principal economic authorities (such as the president of the US Federal Bank) that the present "growth" will lead to an "overheating" of the economy and a return of inflation. In reality, behind this fear of overheating is the recognition that today's "growth" is based on exorbitant debts which will inevitably resuit in a catastrophic swing of the pendulum. The extremely fragile basis of the current success of the American economy has been demonstrated once again by the panic on Wall Street and other stock exchanges when the Fed announced, at the end of March 97, a minimal increase in interest rates.

6) Among the lies which have been spread far and wide by the ruling class to buttress belief in the viability of its system, a special place has been given to the example of the South East Asian countries, the "dragons" (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) and the "tigers" (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia) whose current growth rates (sometimes in double figures) are the envy of the western bourgeoisies. These examples are supposed to demonstrate that capitalism today can both develop the backward countries and escape the fall or stagnation of growth. In reality, the "economic miracle" of the majority of these countries (particularly South Korea and Taiwan) is by no means fortuitous: it is the consequence of the equivalent of the Marshall Plan set up during the cold war by the USA in order to contain the advance of the Russian bloc in the region (massive injection of capital amounting to as much as 15% of GNP, directly taking charge of the national economy, notably by relying on the military apparatus to make up for the quasi-absence of a national bourgeoisie and to overcome the resistance of financial sectors, etc). As such, these examples can in no way be generalised across the whole third world, the greater part of which continues to slide into a nameless catastrophe. Furthermore, the debts of most of these countries, both external and at state level, has reached considerable levels, which subjects them to the same dangers as all the other countries. Finally, while the very low cost of labour power in these countries has been highly attractive to many western enterprises, the fact that they are now becoming commercial rivals to the advanced countries exposes them to the risk that the latter will put up barriers to their exports. Though they have up till now represented an exception, like their big Japanese neighbour, these countries cannot indefinitely escape the contradictions of the world economy which have transformed other "success stories" into a nightmare, as in the case of Mexico. It is for all these reasons that, alongside the eulogies about these countries, the international experts and the financial institutions are already taking measures to limit the financial risks they represent. And the measures aimed at making the work force more "flexible", which were at the origin of the recent strikes in Korea, show that the native bourgeoisie is itself conscious that the best of the meal has already been eaten. As The Guardian wrote on 16.10.96: "The question has been which Asian tiger would be the first to fall".

7) The case of China, which some portray as the world power of the next century, is also no exception to the rule. The bourgeoisie of this country has up till now made a successful transition towards the classic forms of capitalism, unlike those of eastern Europe which with a few exceptions are in a total mess, utterly refuting all the blather about the "great prospects" for these countries following the downfall of Stalinism. This said, the country remains considerably underdeveloped, with the greater part of the economy, as in all Stalinist regimes, being smothered under the weight of the bureaucracy and military expenditure. On the authorities' own admission, the public sector is overall in deficit and hundreds of thousands of workers are owed months of wages. And even if the private sector is more dynamic, it cannot overcome the weight of the state sector and in any case remains particularly dependent on the fluctuations of the world market. Finally, the "formidable dynamism" of the Chinese economy cannot hide the fact that, even if it were to maintain its current growth rates, it envisages having 250 million unemployed by the end of the century.

8) Whichever way you look at it, so long as you can resist the siren-songs of the apologists for the capitalist mode of production and rely on the teachings of marxism, the perspective for the world economy can only be one of increasing catastrophe. The so-called "success" of certain economies at the moment (the Anglo-Saxon and South East Asian countries) in no way represents the future for capitalism as a whole. It is no more than an optical illusion which cannot hide the catastrophe for very long. By the same token, all the talk of "globalisation", which is supposed to open up an era of free, expanding trade, is just a cover for the unprecedented intensification of the trade war. In this context, conglomerations of countries like the European Union represent no more than a fortress against competition from other countries. Thus the world economy, balancing precariously on a mountain of debts which will never be repaid, will more and more be subjected to the convulsions of "every man for himself” which has always characterised capitalism but which in the period of decomposition has assumed a new quality. Revolutionary marxists cannot predict the precise forms or the rhythm of the growing collapse of the capitalist mode of production. But it is their task to proclaim and demonstrate that the system has reached an absolute impasse, to denounce all the lies and myths about the "light at the end of the tunnel".

9) Even more than in the economic sphere, the chaos that characterises the period of decomposition exerts its effects on the political relations between states. At the time when the eastern bloc collapsed, ending the system of alliances that emerged from the second world war, the ICC pointed out:

• that, even if this was not realisable in the immediate, this situation put on the agenda the formation of new blocs, one led by the USA, the other by Germany;

• that, in the immediate, it would unleash all the conflicts which the "Yalta order" had kept in a framework "acceptable" to the world's two gendarmes.

Initially, the tendency towards the constitution of a new bloc around Germany, which was in the dynamic of reunification, took some significant steps forward. But very soon the tendency towards "every man for himself” predominated over the tendency towards the reconstitution of stable alliances that could prefigure future imperialist blocs, and this was to multiply and aggravate military confrontations. The most significant example of this was Yugoslavia, whose break-up was facilitated by the antagonistic imperialist interests of the big European states, Germany, Britain and France. The conflict in Yugoslavia created a gulf between the two great allies of the European Community, Germany and France and resulted in a spectacular rapprochement between France and Britain and the end of the alliance between Britain and the US, which had been the most solid and durable of the 20th century. Since then, this tendency towards "every man for himself", towards chaos in the relations between states, with its succession of circumstantial and ephemeral alliances, has not been called into question. Quite the contrary.

10) Thus, in the recent period we have seen a number of changes in the alliances formed previously:

• significant loosening of ties between France and Britain, illustrated in particular by the latter's refusal to support France's demands, such as the reelection of Boutros-Ghali to the head of the UN or the appointment of a European to the command of the southern branch of NATO forces in Europe;

• a new rapprochement of the links between France and Germany, concretised in particular by the latter's support for these same demands by France;

• shelving of the conflicts between the US and Britain, which among other things was expressed in Britain's support for Uncle Sam on the same questions.

In fact. one of the characteristics of this evolution of alliances is linked to the fact that only the US and Germany have, and can have, a coherent long term policy: the first, one of preserving its leadership, the second, one of developing its own leadership in a part of the world. The other powers are obliged to follow a more circumstantial policy aimed largely at countering the policies of the first two. In particular, since the end of the division of the world into two blocs, the USA has been faced with a permanent challenge to its authority by its former allies.

11) The most spectacular expression of this crisis of authority for the world's gendarme has been the break in its historic alliance with Britain, on the latter's initiative, from 94 onwards. It was also concretised by the long-standing powerlessness of the USA on one of the major terrains of imperialist confrontation, ex- Yugoslavia, which lasted until .the summer of 95. More recently, in September 96, it was expressed by the almost unanimously hostile reaction towards the US cruise missile attack on Iraq, whereas the US had succeeded in obtaining the support of the same countries for Operation Desert Storm. Among other examples of this contesting of American leadership we can mention:

• the general protest against the Helms Burton Law which reinforces the embargo against Cuba, whose "great leader" was then received by the Vatican with pomp and ceremony, and for the first time ever;

• more generally, the loss of a monopoly of control over the situation in the Middle East, a crucial zone if ever there was one. This has been illustrated in particular by the return in force of France, which imposed itself as the joint supervisor in settling the conflict between Israel and Lebanon at the end of 95, and which has confirmed its success in the region with the warm welcome Saudi Arabia gave Chirac;

• the recent invitation to several European leaders (including, once again, Chirac, who launched an appeal for independence from the USA) by a number of South American states, which confirms that the US no longer has undisputed control of this region.

12) This said, the recent period has been marked, as noted a year ago by the 12th congress ofthe ICC's section in France, by a massive counter-offensive from the US. This counter-offensive has been concretised in particular by America's return in force in ex-Yugoslavia in the summer of 95 under the cover of IFOR, which took the place of UNPROFOR, the latter having for several years been the instrument for the intervention of the French-British tandem. The best proof of America's success was the signing of the Dayton accord in the US, the "peace treaty" over Bosnia. Since then, the new advance of US power has made further gains. In particular, it has managed to inflict on the country which has defied it most openly, France, a very serious reverse in its own "hunting ground" of Africa. After eliminating French influence in Rwanda, it is now France's main bastion on the continent, Zaire, which is about to slip out of its hands with the collapse of the Mobutu regime under the blows of the Kabila "rebellion" which has received massive support from Rwanda and Uganda, ie the US. This is a particularly severe punishment for France (aimed at crowning other set-backs the USA has inflicted on issues like the succession to Boutros-Ghali and the command of NATO's southern flank), and it is intended to serve as an example for all other countries tempted to imitate the latter's stance of permanent defiance.

13) It is to a large extent because it understands the risk it was running by following in the footsteps of the adventurist policies of France (which regularly pursues objectives that are beyond its real capacities), that the British bourgeoisie has recently taken a certain distance from its French consort. This rift has been greatly facilitated by the action of the USA and Germany both of whom can only look askance at the alliance contracted between Britain and France over the Yugoslav question. Thus the American bombing of Iraq in September 96 had the immense advantage of driving a wedge between French and British diplomacy, with the first supporting Saddam Hussein as best it could, and the second counting, like the US, on the downfall of his regime. Similarly, Germany has not missed any chance to undermine Angle-French solidarity by playing on points of disagreement between them, in particular that of the European Union and the single currency (there were three Franco-German summits on this question in December 96). It is thus in this framework that we can understand the new evolution of alliances in the recent period. In fact, the attitude of Germany and the US confirms what we said at the last ICC congress: "In such a situation of instability, it is easier for each power to create difficulties for its rivals, to sabotage alliances which run counter to its interests, than to develop its own solid alliances and ensure a stable control of its own spheres" (Resolution on the international situation, point 11). However, it is necessary to show that there are important differences both in the methods used and the results obtained by these two powers.

14) The result of Germany's international policy is very far from being limited to detaching France from Britain and getting it to renew its previous alliance, though these efforts have been concretised in the recent period by important military agreements, both on the ground, through the formation of a joint corps in Bosnia, and through the signing of military cooperation agreements (accord of9 December for a "common concept in the area of security and defence"). In reality we are seeing at the present time a significant advance of German imperialism, which can be seen notably through:

• the fact that within the new alliance between France and Germany, the latter finds itself in a much more favourable rapport de force than in the 1990-1994 period (France having to a large extent been forced to go back to its old love affair owing to Britain's infidelity).

• an extension of its traditional sphere of influence in eastern Europe, in particular through the development of an alliance with Poland;

• the strengthening of its influence in Turkey (whose new government led by the Islamist Erkaban is more favourable to the German alliance than the previous one), which provides a bridge into the Caucasus (where it supports the nationalist movements pitted against Russia) and into Iran, with whom Turkey has signed important agreements;

• the deployment for the first time since the second world war of combat units outside its frontiers, and this in a zone as critical as the Balkans, with the expeditionary corps in Bosnia in the framework of IFOR (which has allowed its minister of defence to declare that "Germany will play an important role in the new society”).

15) At the same time, in company with France, Germany is exerting a lot of diplomatic pressure in Russia, whose main creditor is Germany and which has not drawn any decisive advantages from its alliance with the US.

Thus Germany is clearly establishing itself as the main imperialist rival of the US. However, it must be noted that up till now it has succeeded in advancing its pawns without exposing itself to reprisals from the American mammoth, in particular by systematically avoiding defying it openly in the manner of France. The policy of the German eagle (which for the moment has managed to keep its talons hidden) is showing itself to be much more effective than that of the French cock. This is the consequence both of the limitations still imposed on it by its status as a defeated power in the second world war (even though its present policies are obviously aimed at leaving this status behind) and of its confidence as the only power which has the possibility of eventually heading a new imperialist bloc. This is also a result of the fact that up till now Germany has been able to advance its positions without the direct use of military force (even if it provided significant military aid to its Croat ally in the war against Serbia). But the historic first represented by the presence of its expeditionary corps in Bosnia has not only broken a taboo but also indicates the direction in which it will go more and more in order to maintain and develop its positions. Thus, in the longer term, Germany will be making its contribution to the bloody conflicts and massacres ravaging the world today not only by delegation (as was the case with Croatia, and to a lesser extent in the Caucasus) but in a much more direct manner.

16) As regards the international policy of the USA, the widespread use of armed force has not only been one of its methods for a long time, but is now the main instrument in the defence of its imperialist interests, as the ICC has shown since 1990, even before the Gulf war. The USA is faced with a world dominated by "every man for himself”, where its former vassals are trying to withdraw as much as possible from the tight grip of the world cop, which they had to put up with as long as the threat from the rival bloc existed. In this situation, the only decisive way the US can impose its authority is to resort to the area in which they have a crushing superiority over all other states: military force. But in doing so, the US is caught in a contradiction:

• on the one hand, if it gives up using or extending the use of its military superiority, this will only encourage the countries contesting its authority to contest even more;

• on the other hand, when it does use brute force, even, and especially when this momentarily obliges its opponents to rein in their ambitions towards independence, this only pushes the latter to seize on the least occasion to get their revenge and squirm away from America's grasp.

The assertion of its military superiority by a superpower works in a very different way depending on whether the world is divided into blocs, as before 1989, or whether there are no blocs. In the first place, the assertion of this superiority tends to reinforce the vassals' confidence in their leader, in its ability to defend them, and is thus an element of cohesion around the leader. In the second case, the display of force by the only remaining superpower has the opposite ultimate result of aggravating "every man for himself' even more as long as there is no other power that can compete with it at the same level. This is why the success of the present US counter-offensive cannot be considered to be definitive, to have overcome its crisis of leadership. Brute force, manoeuvres aimed at destabilising its rivals (as in Zaire today), with their procession of tragic consequences, will thus continue to be used by this power, serving to accentuate the bloody chaos into which capitalism is sinking.

17) This chaos has still relatively spared the Far East and South East Asia. But it is important to stress the accumulation of explosive material in this part of the world:

the intensified efforts to arm themselves by the two main powers, China and Japan;

• the latter's intention to break out of the American control inherited from the second world war;

• the more openly "contestationist" policy of China (the latter somewhat playing the role that France plays in the west, whereas Japan's diplomacy is much more similar to that of Germany's);

• the threat of political destabilisation, particularly after the death of Deng; the existence of a multitude of "disputes" between states (Taiwan and China the two Koreas, China and Vietnam, India and Pakistan, etc).

Just as it cannot escape the economic crisis, there is no way that this region can escape the imperialist convulsions that assail the world today accentuating the world-wide chaos into which capitalist society is plunging.

18) This generalised chaos, with its train of bloody conflicts, massacres famines, and more generally, the decomposition which invades all areas of society and which in the long run threatens to destroy it, is the result of the total impasse which capitalist society has reached. But at the same time, this impasse, with the permanent and increasingly brutal attacks that it provokes against the class that produces the essentials of social wealth, obliges the latter to react and thus raises the perspective of a revolutionary upsurge. Since the end of the 1960s, the world proletariat has proved that it has not been willing to submit passively to the attacks of capital, and the struggles it has waged since the first effects of the crisis have shown that it has emerged from the terrible counter-revolution which descended on it after the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. However, it has not developed its struggles in a continuous manner, but in an uneven way, with advances and retreats. Between 1968 and 1989, the class struggle went through three successive waves of combats (1968-74, 1978-81, 1983-89), in the course of which the working masses, despite defeats, hesitations, regressions, acquired a growing experience which led them in particular to more and more reject the trade union prison. However, this progressive advance of the working class towards becoming aware of the means and goals of its combat was brutally interrupted at the end of the 80s:

"This struggle, which revived with great power at the end of the 1960s, putting an end to the most terrible counter-revolution the working class has ever known, went into a major retreat with the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, the ideological campaigns which accompanied them, and all the events which followed (Gulf war, war in Yugoslavia). The working class suffered this reflux at the level both of its combativity and its consciousness, without this putting the historic course towards class confrontations into question, as the ICC already affirmed at the time" (Resolution on the international situation, XIth Congress of the ICC).

19) From autumn 1992, with the big workers' mobilisations in Italy, the proletariat has been back on the path of struggle. But this is a path sown with obstacles and difficulties. At the time of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the autumn of 89, when it announced that this event would result in a reflux in consciousness, the ICC made it clear that "reformist ideology will weigh very heavily on struggles in the period ahead, greatly favouring the action of the trade unions" (Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the eastern countries, IR 60). And indeed in the past period we have seen the unions make a powerful comeback, the result of a very elaborate strategy on the part of the whole bourgeoisie. The first aim of this strategy has been to take advantage of the disarray provoked in the class by the events of 89-91, in order to restore as much credit as possible to the union machines, whose image had taken such a battering in the 80s. The clearest illustration of this political offensive by the bourgeoisie was the maneouvre carried out by the different sectors of the bourgeoisie in the autumn of 95 in France. Thanks to a skillful division of labour between the right in power, which launched a whole avalanche of provocative attacks on workers' living conditions, and the trade unions, who presented themselves as the best defenders of the working class, putting forward proletarian methods of struggle such as extension across sectors and the running of the movement by general assemblies, the entire bourgeois class restored to the unions a degree of popularity they had not enjoyed for over a decade. The premeditated, systematic, and international character of this manoeuvre was revealed by the huge publicity given to the strikes at the end of 95 in all countries, whereas most of the movements in the 80s had been subject to an almost total black-out. It was further confirmed by the manoeuvre developed in Belgium during the same period, which was virtually a copy of the first one. Similarly, the reference to the strikes in France in the autumn of 95 was widely used during the manoeuvre set up in Germany in the spring of 96, which culminated with the immense march on Bonn on June 10. The latter manoeuvre was aimed at providing the unions, who were seen mainly as specialists in negotiations and deals with the bosses, with a much more militant image, so that in the future they would be better placed to control the social struggles which could not fail to arise in response to an unprecedented intensification of economic attacks on the working class. Thus the analysis that the ICC put forward at its 11th Congress was clearly confirmed: “...the present manoeuvres of the unions have also, and above all, a preventative aim: that of strengthening their hold on the workers before the latter display much more militancy, which will necessarily result from their growing anger faced with the increasingly brutal attacks demanded by the crisis" (Resolution on the international situation, point 17). And the result of these manoeuvres, which have supplemented the disarray provoked by the events of 89-91, enabled us to say at the 12th Congress of our section in France: "... in the main capitalist countries, the working class has been brought back to a situation which is comparable to that of the 1970s as far as its relation to unions and unionism is concerned: a situation where the class, in general, struggled within the unions, followed their instructions and their slogans, and in the final analysis, left things up to them. In this sense, the bourgeoisie has temporarily succeeded in wiping out from working class consciousness the lessons learned during the 80s, following the repeated experience of confrontation with the unions" (Resolution on the international situation, point 12, lR 86).

20)The political offensive of the bourgeoisie against the working class is very far from being restricted to restoring credibility to the union machinery. The ruling class uses the different manifestations of the decomposition of society (the rise of xenophobia, conflicts between bourgeois cliques, etc) in order to turn them back against the working class. We have thus seen in several European countries the use of campaigns aimed at diverting the workers or even derailing their anger and discontent onto a terrain completely alien to the proletariat:

• the use made of the xenophobic feelings exploited by the extreme right (Le Pen in France, Heider in Austria) in order to mount campaigns about the 'danger of fascism';

• in Spain, campaigns against ETA terrorism in which workers are asked to solidarise with their bosses;

• the use of in-fighting between the police and judicial apparatuses in order to mount campaigns in favour of a 'clean' state and judiciary in countries like Italy ('clean hands' operation) and particularly in Belgium (the Dutroux affair).

• The latter country has in the past period served as a kind of laboratory for a whole gamut of mystifications against the working class. This could be seen in a series of steps;

• the carbon-copy of the manoeuvre by the French bourgeoisie in the autumn of 95;

• then, the development of a manoeuvre very similar to that of the German bourgeoisie in spring 96;

• from the summer of 96, the stageing of the Dutroux affair which was opportunely 'discovered' at a very good moment (even though all the elements were already known to the judiciary long before this), in order to create, with the help of an unprecedented media barrage, a veritable psychosis among working class families, at a time when economic attacks were raining down on them: at the same time, this strategem helped to divert the workers' anger onto the interclassist terrain of fighting for a judiciary 'at the people's service', especially at the time of the 'White March' of20 October;

• via the 'Multicoloured March' of 2 February organised on the occasion of the closure of the Clabecq foundry, a new boost was given to the interclassist mystification of a 'popular justice', of an 'economy in the service of the citizens', a mystification reinforced by the promotion of a 'fighting', 'rank and file' unionism around the very media-friendly figure of D'Orazio;

• finally, a new layer of democratic lies following the announcement at the beginning of March of the closure of Renault at Vilvorde (a closure which had been condemned by the courts), pitting a 'social Europe' against the 'Europe of the capitalists'.

The immense international media coverage of all these manoeuvres once again proves that they were not just for domestic
consumption but were part of a concerted plan by the bourgeoisie in all countries. For the ruling class, which is fully aware that its growing attacks on the working class will provoke widescale reactions, it is vital to get in the first blow at a time when combativity is still at an embryonic stage and where the echoes of the collapse of the 'socialist' regimes still weigh very heavy on the workers' consciousness. The aim is to 'wet the powder' and to reinforce to the maximum its arsenal of trade unionist and democratic mystifications.

21) The undeniable disarray in which the working class presently finds itself has given the bourgeoisie a certain margin of manoeuvre as regards its internal political strategems. As the ICC already noted at the beginning of 1990: "This is why, in particular, we have to update the lCC's analysis of the 'left in opposition '. This was a necessary card for the bourgeoisie at the end of 70s and throughout the 80s due to the class' general dynamic towards increasingly determined and conscious combats, and its growing rejection of democratic, electoral, and trade union mystifications. The difficulties some countries encountered in setting it up (in France for example) in no way alter the fact that this was the lynchpin of the bourgeoisie's strategy against the working class, illustrated by the right-wing governments in the USA, Germany, and Britain. By contrast, the class' present reflux means that for a while this strategy will no longer be a priority for the bourgeoisie. This does not necessarily mean that these countries will see the left return to government: as we have said on several occasions ... this is only absolutely necessary in periods of war or revolution. By contrast, we should not be surprised if it does happen, nor should we put it down to 'accident' or to a 'specific weakness' of the bourgeoisie in these countries' (IR 61). This is why the Italian bourgeoisie was able, largely due to reasons of international policy, to call on a centre-left team in spring 96, one dominated by the old Communist Party (the PSD) and for quite some time supported on the extreme left by 'Rifondazione Comunista'. For the same reason, the probable victory of the British Labour Party in May 97 should not be seen as a source of difficulties for the bourgeoisie in this country (which in any case has taken care to put an end to the organic link between the party and the union apparatus so that the latter can oppose a Labour government if necessary). Having said this, it is important to underline the fact that the ruling class is not going to return to the themes of the 70s when the 'left alternative' with its programme of 'social' measures, even of nationalisations, was put forward in order to break the elan of the wave of struggles which had begun in 1968, by derailing discontent and militancy onto the election dead-end. If left parties (whose economic prgramme in any case is increasingly hard to distinguish from that of the right) get into government, this will essentially be 'by default', the result of difficulties experienced by the right, and not as a way of
mobilising the workers, whose illusions in the 'health of capitalism', which they might have had in the 70s, have been undermined by the crisis.

In this context, it is also necessary to mark the very sharp difference between the ideological campaigns being used today, and those used against the working class in the 1930s. There is a point shared by these two kinds of campaigns: they are all based around the theme of the 'defence of democracy'. However, the campaigns of the 30s:

• were situated in a context of a historic defeat for the proletariat, of an undisputed victory for the counter-revolution;

• had as their main object the mobilisation of the proletariat for the coming world war;

• had a real trump card at their disposal, the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany, and were thus very real, massive and clearly aimed.

By contrast, today's campaigns:

• are situated in a context in which the proletariat has overcome the counter-revolution, has not been through a massive defeat which has put into question the historic course towards class confrontations;

• have as their main aim that of sabotaging a rising tide of consciousness and combativity within the working class;

• do not have a single target but are obliged to call on disparate and sometimes circumstantial themes (terrorism, the 'fascist danger', paedophile networks, corruption of the legal system, etc), which tends to limit their impact both in time and place.

It is for these reasons that while the campaigns at the end of the 30s succeeded in mobilising the working masses behind them in a permanent way, those of today:

• either succeed in mobilising workers on a massive scale (the case of the 'White March' in Bruxelles on 20 October), but only for a limited period (this is why the Belgian bourgeoisie resorted to other manoeuvres afterwards);

• or, if they are deployed in a permanent way (the case of the anti-Front National campaigns in France), they don't manage to mobilise the workers and serve mainly as a diversion.

This said, it is important not to underestimate the danger of these kinds of campaigns to the extent that the effects of the general and growing decomposition of bourgeois society permanently provide the ruling class with new themes. Only a significant advance in the consciousness of the working class would enable the latter to push away such mystifications. And this advance could only be the result of a massive development of workers' struggles which put into question, as had begun to be the case in the mid-80s, the most important instruments of the bourgeoisie within the workers' ranks: the trade unions and trade unionism.

22) This questioning of the unions, which will be accompanied by the tendency for workers to take direct control of their struggles and of their extension through general assemblies and elected and revocable strike committees, will necessarily come about through a whole process of confrontation with the sabotage of the unions. This is a process that will inevitably develop in the future because of the growth of workers' militancy in response to the increasingly brutal attacks unleashed by capitalism. Already, the tendency for this militancy to develop means that the bourgeoisie, for fear of being outflanked, cannot launch huge manoeuvres 'a la francaise' of 95-96 aimed at restoring union credibility on a massive scale. However, the latter have still not really been unmasked even if, during the last period, they have started to make more frequent use of their 'classic' methods of action such as the division between public and private sectors (as in the demonstrations on 11 December 96 in Spain), or the advocacy of corporatism. The most spectacular example of the latter tactic was the strike launched on the announcement of the closure of the Renault factory at Vilvorder, where we saw the unions of the different countries where this company's factories are located promoting a 'Eurostrike' of Renault workers. But the fact that this rotten manoeuvre by the unions was not seen through, and even allowed the unions to increase their prestige somewhat, while at the same time propagating the mystification of a 'social Europe', proves that we are today in a kind of transition period between the one in which the unions were regaining their credibility, and one in which they will be exposed and discredited more and more. One of the characteristics of this period is the revival of the themes of 'fighting' trade unionism, in which the 'rank and file' are supposed to be able to push the union leaderships to be more radical (example of the Clabecq foundry, or the miners last March in Germany), or where there is supposed to be a 'union base' which can 'really' defend the workers' interests despite the 'sell-out of the leaders' (a notable example being the dockers' strike in the UK).

23)Thus, the working class still has a long way to go on the road towards its emancipation, a road that the bourgeoisie will try systematically to lay with all sorts of traps, as we have already seen in the last period. The breadth of the manoeuvres set up by the bourgeoisie shows just how conscious it is of the dangers posed to it by the present situation of world capitalism. Engels once wrote that the working class wages its struggle on three levels - economic, political, and ideological. The present strategy of the bourgeoisie; which is also aimed against revolutionary organisations (the campaigns on the so-called 'revisionism' of the communist left) is proof that it also is quite aware of this. It is up to revolutionaries not only to identify and denounce all the traps laid by the ruling class and its organs, notably the trade unions, but also, against all the falsifications which have been bred in the past period, to point out the real perspective of the communist revolution as the ultimate goal of the present combats of the proletariat. It is only if its communist minority fully assumes its role that the working class will be able to develop the strength and the consciousness to attain this goal. 

Some of our readers may have come across a text which has been circulating for a few weeks entitled "Prise de position sur l'evolution recente du CCI”. This text, by Raoul Victor (RV), a long-standing militant who broke with the ICC just over a year ago, is a charge-sheet against our organisation. It is prompted by the following considerations: "(...) it is impossible to remain silent in the face of the ICC's extremely serious accusations against one of its long-standing militants, and of the dangerous degeneration of one of the main organisations of the proletarian political milieu".

Given the gravity of such accusations, whose lengthy "proof” is full of lies and distortions while at the same time pretending to give a coherent theoretical and political explanation for the ICC's "degeneration", we have decided to publish this text in full, with our reply, in the form of a pamphlet. We therefore refer our readers to this pamphlet for a detailed response to what we consider a veritable declaration of war on the ICC. It is all the more important that we respond in detail and at length to such a "manifesto", inasmuch as its accusations have an appearance of legitimacy, coming as they do from an experienced militant who claims to explain what has led him to "take his distance from an organisation to whose construction he has devoted more than 30 years of his life". RV is obviously trying to lend some credibility to his thesis of the ICC's "degeneration" by suggesting that there is an analogy between Stalinism and the "persecution" that he has suffered in the organisation. In this brief notice, we simply want to make a few remarks on this text, which is a striking contribution to the present campaign by groups and elements of the parasitic milieu to denounce the ICC1, and more generally to an offensive aimed at discrediting the proletarian political milieu and distorting the heritage of the internationalist Left Communist current2.

As RV says himself, when he "broke with the ICC”, he put forward "ONE essential reason": the fact that during the period preceding this "break", the organisation considered that his positions in the debate within the organisation were dictated by an attitude that made him the "spokesman" for JJ3. On reading his text, we would say the same - in spades. JJ has, with good reason, carefully avoided trying to defend himself against the ICC's supposedly slanderous and false accusations against him, he has succeeded in delegating his ''friends'', RV foremost amongst them, to "shed light" on the "affair", and to denounce the ICC in public. JJ could have no better advocate than RV, a "founding member" of the ICC, a comrade whose reputation for honesty, probity, and militant commitment has spread far beyond the ICC. Having taken him under his influence for years, JJ knew full well that RV would move heaven and earth to formulate the "theoretical and political" reasons to whitewash him. Whether he likes it or not, our ex-comrade RV has proven with his text that he has become JJ's "parrot". His text is essentially an unconditional defence of JJ. RV serves up the "arguments" of JJ and those close to him on the justification for his anti-organisational behaviour, his passion and proselytising for esotericism, the supposed "abandonment by the ICC of one of its fundamental conceptions in favour of a "Lenintst" conception better adapted to the spirit of the sect".

To justify JJ's efforts to spread esoteric ideas, for example, RV adopts the "argument" of JJ (who has always refused to take position clearly on the incompatibility between marxism and any esoteric theory), that "marxism claims neither to have explained everything, nor to exclude all other forms of knowledge". He maintains a complete silence on the mysticism implied by such enthusiasm, which is completely foreign to marxism, not to mention the total condemnation of such "theories" by the workers' movement, especially the left, throughout its history. And once RV has brushed aside the antagonism between marxism and esoteric theory, he can reduce to mere "maladroitness" JJ's half-hidden proselytism within the organisation. He concludes that this is nothing but a "paranoid fable of the ICC”. We should nonetheless remember that during the ICC's 11th Congress, RV voted for the resolution excluding JJ, on the grounds that this element's behaviour had been "unworthy of a communist militant". RV today, under the pressure of JJ, is a turncoat who offers his approval to the behaviour that he himself condemned yesterday.

To defend JJ against the "ICC's very serious attacks against one of its long-standing militants", RV abruptly reveals, in introducing his text, the ICC's hypothesis that JJ may have been a state agent infiltrated into the organisation. We have published this hypothesis neither in the notice in our press on JJ's exclusion, nor in our external interventions on the question. Still less have we made any mention of the concrete facts which led us to such a grave hypothesis. For two years, we have urged JJ to appeal to a jury of honour made up from organisations of the proletarian political milieu, so that they could judge his case and pronounce on the accusations levelled against him; JJ himself has done his utmost to prevent any possibility that such a jury of honour might take place4 We have given our dossier on the JJ case to organisations and to certain individuals within the milieu, asking them for their opinion as to how the ICC had conducted its enquiry, and on some of its conclusions. We have offered to show the dossier to JJ himself - a proposal to which he has made no reply. RV gives not a jot for such precautions. He simply spreads out to public view the most serious aspect of the JJ dossier! Such an attitude says much about the dilapidated state of RV's "political reflection", but the lie that accompanies this attitude says still more. RV presents JJ's passion for esotericism as the basis for the ICC's "fabricating" this hypothesis. Certainly an adherence to and propaganda for Masonic ideology and behaviour do not belong in the workers' movement, and are part of the arsenal of the bourgeoisie. But this was not the only element in the case. We should also point out that within the ICC, JJ engaged in a whole series of manoeuvres, manipulations, and destructive behaviour. Above all, there is the known fact that a person in JJ's immediate entourage has worked, and may still work, for the state services that specialise in the political domain - a fact which JJ kept quiet about for 20 years. RV has nothing to say about this "detail". RV tried from the outset to throw the most disgusting suspicion on the ICC's attitude, by encouraging the rumour spread by some that "the ICC denounces state agents as soon as a disagreement appears"5. Faced with such irresponsibility, the ICC has no choice but to make the whole JJ dossier public, including its most delicate aspects. This we will do in the weeks to come, so that our readers may judge for themselves the validity of the ICC's behaviour in this affair.

RV has chosen to join the camp of those who denounce the ICC and its supposed "paranoia": "this adjective "paranoiac”, which the ICC has so methodically managed to have bestowed on it by all those who have been in contact with it and its press in recent times, and have not fallen for its diseased view of the world". Obviously, it never occurs to RV that not "all those who have been in contact" with the ICC have necessarily found that the ICC is "paranoiac". But perhaps they have "fallen for its diseased view of the world"? This theme of "paranoia", put forward by JJ, is one of the text's most developed aspects, and its recurrent theme, like a litany. A few samples: "a completely crazy conception of the organisation", "collective paranoia", "the wind of madness", "the diseased swelling of insane imaginations", "all this lunatic inquisition", etc. RV even delivers a lesson in psychiatry to puff up his "analysis" by describing very didactically all the attributes of "paranoia". As a worthy disciple of JJ, RV has perhaps become a subtle psychologist, and serves us up the lessons he has learned in the dictionary on the meaning of the words "paranoia" or "sect". At all events, he has become a wretched marxist. He makes a travesty of the facts; he sweeps aside with disdain the theoretical and political arguments of the ICC; he ignores the entire experience of the workers' movement on the organisation question, and takes his arguments from the most banal anti-Leninism; he redefines the proletarian political milieu; he revises the analysis of the present historical period, etc. We will refute RV's "theoretical arguments" in future issues of the International Review.

Where is the militant who defended in writing and in speech the proletarian nature of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik party during the years when the ICC regrouped and formed in the 1970s at a time when so many groups still indulged one way or another in an infantile rejection of October 1917, Lenin, and the Bolshevik Party, in the name of the rejection of Stalinism? Disappeared. Where is the unshakeable militant, who declared - in his own terms - that "a crane wouldn't get him out of the organisation"? Gone away. RV has sold his soul to JJ, who has to all appearances become his mental inspiration.

ICC

The July Days of 1917 are one of the most important moments, not only in the Russian Revolution, but in the whole history of the workers' movement. In the space of three days, from July 3rd to July 5th, one of the mightiest ever confrontations between bourgeoisie and proletariat, despite ending in a defeat for the working class, opened the road to the seizure of power four months later in October 1917. On July 3rd, the workers and soldiers of Petrograd rose massively and spontaneously, calling for all power to be transferred to the workers' councils, the soviets. On July 4th an armed demonstration with half a million participants besieged the leadership of the soviet, calling for it to take power, but returned home peacefully in the evening, following an appeal by the Bolsheviks. On July 5th, counter-revolutionary troops took over the Russian capital, and began to hunt down the Bolsheviks and repress the most advanced workers. But by avoiding a premature struggle for power, the proletariat maintained its revolutionary forces intact. As a result, the working class was able to draw all the lessons of these events, and in particular to understand the counter-revolutionary character of bourgeois democracy and of the new left wing of capital: the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who had betrayed the cause of the workers and poor peasants and gone over to the counter-revolution. At no other moment of the Russian Revolution was the danger of a decisive defeat of the proletariat, and the decimation of the Bolshevik party, so acute as during those dramatic 72 hours. At no other moment did the profound confidence of the leading battalions of the proletariat in its class party, in the communist vanguard, prove more important.

80 years later, in face of the bourgeois lies about the "death of communism", and in particular its denigration of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism, the defence of the true lessons of the July Days and of the whole proletarian revolution is one of the main responsibilities of revolutionaries. According to the lies of the bourgeoisie, the Russian Revolution was a "popular" struggle for a bourgeois parliamentary republic, the "freest country in the world" until the Bolsheviks, "inventing" the "demagogic" slogan of "all power to the soviets" imposed through a "putsch" its "barbaric dictatorship" over the great majority of the working population. However, even the briefest objective look at the events of July 1917 will show as clear as daylight that the Bolsheviks were on the side of the working class, that it was bourgeois democracy which was on the side of barbarism, putschism, and the dictatorship of a tiny minority over the working people.

A cynical provocation by the bourgeoisie, and a trap set for the Bolsheviks

The July Days of 1917 were from the outset a provocation by the bourgeoisie, with the aim of decapitating the proletariat by crushing the revolution in Petrograd, and eliminating the Bolshevik party before the revolutionary process in Russia as a whole became ripe for the seizure of power by the workers.

The revolutionary upsurge of February 1917, leading to the replacement of the Tsar by a "bourgeois democratic" provisional government, and to the establishment of the workers' councils (soviets) as a rival, proletarian centre of power, was first and foremost the product of the struggle of the workers against the imperialist world war begun in 1914. But the provisional government, as well as the majority parties in the soviets, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (SRs), against the will of the proletariat, committed themselves to continue the war, and to the imperialist robber programme of Russian capitalism. In this way, not only in Russia but in all countries comprising the Entente, the coalition against Germany, a new pseudo-revolutionary legitimacy had been lent to the war, to the greatest crime in human history. Between February and July 1917 several million soldiers, including the flower of the international working class, were killed or wounded to settle the question: which of the main capitalist imperialist gangsters should rule the world? Although many Russian workers initially fell for the lies of the new leaders that it was necessary to continue the war "in order to achieve a just peace without annexations once and for all", now coming as they did from the mouths of alleged "democrats" and "socialists", by June 1917 the proletariat had resumed the revolutionary struggle against the imperialist slaughter with redoubled energy. During the gigantic demonstration of June 18th in Petrograd, the internationalist slogans of the Bolsheviks won over a majority for the first time. By the beginning of July, the biggest and bloodiest Russian military offensive since the "triumph of democracy" was ending in a fiasco, the German army breaking through the front at several points. It was the most critical moment for Russian militarism since the beginning of the "Great War". But although the news of the offensive's failure had already reached the capital, fanning the revolutionary flames, it had not yet penetrated to the rest of the gigantic country. Out of this desperate situation the idea was born of provoking a premature revolt in Petrograd, crushing the workers and the Bolsheviks there, and then blaming the collapse of the military offensive on the "stab in the back" delivered from behind the front by the capital.

The objective situation was not unfavourable to such a plan. Although the main workers' sectors in Petrograd were already going over to the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and SRs still had a majority position in the soviets, and were still dominant in the provinces. Within the working class as a whole, even in Petrograd, there remained strong illusions about the capacity of the Mensheviks and SRs to serve in some way the cause of revolution. Despite the radicalisation of the soldiers, mostly peasants in uniform, a considerable number of important regiments were still loyal to the Provisional Government. The forces of counter-revolution, after a phase of disorientation and disorganisation after the "February Revolution", were now at the zenith of their reconstitution. And the bourgeoisie had a trick card up its sleeve: forged documents and testimonies claiming to prove that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were paid agents of the German Kaiser.

This plan represented above all a trap, a dilemma for the Bolshevik party. If the party put itself at the head of a premature insurrection in the capital, it would discredit itself in the eyes of the Russian proletariat, appearing as the representative of an irresponsibly adventurist policy, and to the backward sectors even as the helper of German imperialism. But if it disowned the mass movement it would dangerously isolate itself from the class, leaving the workers to their fate. The bourgeoisie hoped that however the party decided, its decision would spell its doom.

The counter-revolutionary, Black-Hundred, anti-Semitic mob funded by "Western democracy"

Were the anti-Bolshevik forces the fine democrats and defenders of the "freedom of the people" alleged by bourgeois propaganda? They were led by the Kadets ([1] [89]), the party of big industry and the great landlords; by the officers’ committee representing about 100,000 commanders preparing a military putsch; by the soviet of the counter-revolutionary Cossack troops; by the secret police; and by the anti-Semitic "Black Hundred" mob. "Those are the circles stirring up pogroms, shooting at demonstrators etc." as Lenin wrote. ([2] [90])

But the July provocation was a blow against the maturing world revolution, struck not only by the Russian, but by the world bourgeoisie in the form of the government of Russia's war allies. In this treacherous attempt at an early drowning of a still unripe revolution in blood, we can recognise the handwriting of the old democratic bourgeoisie: the French with its long and bloody tradition of such provocations (1791, 1848, 1870), and the British with its incomparable political experience and intelligence. In fact, in view of the Russian bourgeoisie's increasing difficulties in effectively combating the revolution and maintaining the war effort, Russia's Western allies had already become the main force, not only financing the Russian front, but advising and funding the counter-revolution. The Provisional Committee of the State Duma (parliament) "supplied a legal covering for the counter-revolutionary work, which was broadly financed by the banks and by the embassies of the Entente" as Trotsky recalled ([3] [91]).

"Petrograd was swarming with secret and semi-secret officer organisations enjoying lofty protection and generous support. In a confidential report made by the Menshevik, Lieber, almost a month before the July Days, it was asserted that the officer-conspirators were in touch with Buchanan. Yes, and how could the diplomats of the Entente help trying to promote the speedy establishment of a strong power in Russia?" ([4] [92]).

It was not the Bolsheviks, but the bourgeoisie which allied itself with foreign governments against the Russian proletariat.

The political provocations of the blood-thirsty bourgeoisie

At the beginning of July, three incidents arranged by the bourgeoisie were enough to trigger off a revolt in the capital

1. The Kadet party withdrew its four ministers from the Provisional government. Since the Mensheviks and SR's had until then justified their refusal of "all power to the soviets" with the need to collaborate, outside the workers' councils, with the Kadets as representatives of the "democratic bourgeoisie", this snubbing of the coalition was bound to provoke renewed demands for immediate soviet power among workers and soldiers.

"To imagine that the Kadets may not have foreseen the effect of this act of open sabotage of the Soviet would be decidedly to underestimate Miliukov. The leader of liberalism was obviously trying to drag the Compromisers into a difficult situation from which they could make a way out only with bayonets. In those days Miliukov firmly believed that the situation could only be saved with a bold blood-letting" ([5] [93]).

2. The humiliation of the Provisional Government by the Entente, aimed at obliging it to confront the revolution with arms or be dropped by its allies:

"Behind the scenes the threads of all this were in the hands of the embassies and governments of the Entente. At an inter-allied conference in London the western friends ‘forgot’ to invite the Russian ambassador (...) This mockery of the ambassador of the Provisional Government and the demonstrative exit of the Kadets from the government - both events happening on the 2nd of July - had the same purpose: to bring the Compromisers to their knees" ([6] [94]).

The Menshevik and SR parties, still in the process of joining the bourgeoisie, inexperienced in their role, full of hesitations and petty bourgeois vacillations, and still with small proletarian-internationalist oppositions within their ranks, were not initiated into the counter-revolutionary plot, but manoeuvred into the role designated to them by their senior bourgeois leaders.

3. The threat to immediately transfer combative revolutionary regiments from the capital straight to the front. In fact, the explosion of the class struggle in response to these provocations was initiated, not by the workers but the soldiers, and politically incited not by the Bolsheviks but by the anarchists.

"In general the soldiers were more impatient than the workers - both because they were directly threatened with a transfer to the front, and because it was much harder for them to understand considerations of political strategy. Moreover, each one had his own rifle; and ever since February the soldier had been inclined to over-estimate the independent power of a rifle" ([7] [95]).

The soldiers immediately undertook to win the workers for their action. At the Putilov Works, the biggest Russian workers’ concentration, they made their most decisive breakthrough.

"About ten thousand men assembled. To shouts of encouragement, the machine-gunners told how they had received an order to go to the front on the 4th of July, but they had decided ‘to go not to the German front, against the German proletariat, but against their own capitalist ministers’. Feeling ran high. ‘Come on, let’s get moving’ cried the workers" ([8] [96]).

Within hours, the proletariat of the whole city had risen, armed itself and come together around the slogan "all power to the soviets", the slogan of the masses themselves.

The Bolsheviks avoid the trap and lead the proletariat around it

On the afternoon of July 3rd, delegates from the machine-gun regiments arrived to win the support of the city conference of the Bolsheviks, and were shocked to learn that the party was speaking out against the action. The arguments given by the party - that the bourgeoisie wanted to provoke Petrograd in order to blame it for the fiasco on the front, that the moment was not ripe for armed insurrection, and that the best moment for a more immediate major action would be when the collapse on the front was known to all - show that the Bolsheviks immediately grasped the meaning and danger of the events. In fact, already since the June 18th demonstration the Bolsheviks had been publicly warning against a premature action.

Bourgeois historians have recognised the remarkable political intelligence of the party at that moment. Indeed, the Bolshevik party was imbued with the conviction that it is imperative to study the nature, strategy and tactics of the class enemy to be able to respond and intervene correctly at each moment. It was steeped in the marxist understanding that the revolutionary seizure of power is a form of art or science, where an insurrection at an inopportune point and the failure to seize power at the correct moment are both equally fatal.

But as correct as the analysis of the party was, to have stopped here would have meant falling for the trap of the bourgeoisie. The first decisive turning point during the July Days came the same night, when the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the party decided to legitimise the movement and put itself at its head, but in order to assure its "peaceful and organised character". As opposed to the spontaneous and chaotic events of the previous day, the gigantic demonstrations of July 4th betrayed the "ordering hand of the party". The Bolsheviks knew that the goal the masses had set themselves, of obliging the Menshevik and SR leadership of the soviet to take power in the name of the workers’ councils, was an impossibility. The Mensheviks and SRs, presented today by the bourgeoisie as the real defenders of soviet democracy, were already integrating themselves into the counter-revolution and waiting for an opportunity to have done with the workers' councils. The dilemma of the situation, the still insufficient consciousness of the mass of the proletariat, was concretised in the famous story of an enraged worker waving his fist under the chin of one of the "revolutionary" ministers shouting "Take power, son of a bitch, when we give it to you". In reality, the ministers and soviet misleaders were playing for time until regiments loyal to the government arrived.

By now the workers were realising for themselves the difficulties of transferring all power to the soviets as long as the traitors and compromisers held the leading influence within it. Because the class had not yet found the method of transforming the soviets from within, it was trying vainly to impose its armed will upon them from without.

The second decisive turning point came with the address by Bolshevik speakers to tens of thousands of Putilov and other workers on July 4th, at the end of a day of mass demonstrations, which Zinoviev began with a joke to ease the tension, and which ended with an appeal to return home peacefully - an appeal that the workers followed. The moment of revolution had not yet arrived, but it was coming. Never was the truth of Lenin's old saying more dramatically proven: patience and humour are indispensable qualities for revolutionaries.

The Bolsheviks' ability to lead the proletariat around the trap of the bourgeoisie was not only due to their political intelligence. What was decisive was above all the profound confidence of the party in the proletariat and in marxism, allowing it to fully base itself on the force and method which represents the future of humanity, and thus avoid the impatience of the petty bourgeoisie. Decisive too was the profound confidence which the Russian proletariat had developed in its class party, allowing the party to remain with and even lead the class although all sides knew it shared neither its immediate goals nor its illusions. The bourgeoisie failed in its aim to drive a wedge between party and class, a wedge which would have meant the certain defeat of the Russian Revolution.

"It was the absolute duty of the proletarian party to remain with the masses, and to attempt to give the justified actions of these masses as much as possible a peaceful and organised character, not standing aloof, washing its hands in innocence like Pilate for the pedantic reason that the masses were not organised to the last man, and that excesses took place in its movement" ([9] [97]).

The pogroms and slanders of the counter-revolution

Early in the morning of July 5th, government troops began to arrive in the capital. The work began of hunting down the Bolsheviks, depriving them of their meagre publishing resources, disarming and terrorising workers, inciting pogroms against the Jews. The saviours of civilisation from "Bolshevik barbarism" resorted to two main provocations to mobilise troops against the workers.

1) The campaign of lies that the Bolsheviks were German agents.

"The soldiers sat gloomily in their barracks waiting. Only in the afternoon of July 4 did the authorities at last discover an effective means of influencing them. They showed (..) documents demonstrating as plain as 2+2=4 that Lenin was a German spy. That moved them. The news flew around the regiments. (...) The mood of the neutral battalions changed" ([10] [98]).

In particular a political parasite called Alexinski, a renegade Bolshevik who had once helped to form an "ultra-left" opposition against Lenin, but having failed to fulfil his ambitions had become a declared enemy of workers' parties, was an instrument in this campaign. As a result, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders were obliged to go into hiding, while Trotsky and others were arrested. "The internationalists behind bars - that is what Mr. Kerensky and Co. need" declared Lenin ([11] [99]).

The bourgeoisie has not changed. 80 years after, they are conducting a similar campaign with the same "logic" against the communist left. Then: since the Bolsheviks refuse to support the Entente, they must be on the German side! Now: since the Communist Left refused to support the "antifascist" imperialist camp in World War II, they and their successors today must have been on the German side. "Democratic" state campaigns prepare future pogroms.

Revolutionaries today, who often underestimate the significance of such campaigns against them, still have much to learn from the example of the Bolsheviks after the July days, who moved heaven and earth in defence of their reputation within the working class. Trotsky later called July 1917 "the month of the most gigantic slander in human history", but even this pales in comparison with the present day slander that Communism equals Stalinism.

Another way of attacking the reputation of revolutionaries, as old as the method of public denigration, and normally used in combination with it, is the encouragement by the state of non-proletarian and anti-proletarian elements who like to present themselves as revolutionaries.

"Provocation undoubtedly played a certain role in the events at the front as well as on the streets of Petrograd. After the February revolution the government had thrown over into the active army a large number of former gendarmes and policemen. None of them of course wanted to fight. They were more afraid of the Russian soldiers than of the Germans. In order to get their past forgotten, they would stimulate the most extreme moods of the army, incite the soldiers against the officers, come out loudly against discipline, and often openly give themselves out for Bolsheviks. Bound naturally together as accomplices, they created a kind of special Brotherhood of Cowardice and Villainy. Through them would penetrate and quickly spread through the army the most fantastic rumours, in which ultra-revolutionism was combined with Black Hundredism. In critical hours these creatures would give the first signals for panic. The press more than once referred to this demoralising work of the police and gendarmes. No less frequent references of this kind are to be found in the secret documents of the army itself. But the high command remained silent, preferring to identify the Black Hundred provocateurs with the Bolsheviks" ([12] [100]).

2. Snipers fired at troops arriving in the city, who were then told the Bolsheviks were behind the shooting.

"The deliberate madness of this shooting clearly disturbed the workers. It was clear that experienced provocateurs were greeting the soldiers with lead with a view to anti-Bolshevik inoculation. The workers were eager to explain this to the arriving troops, but they were denied access to them. For the first time since the February days the junker or officer stood between the worker and soldier" ([13] [101]).

Being forced to work in semi-illegality after the July Days, the Bolsheviks also had to fight against the democratic illusions of those within their ranks who wanted their leaders to go up for trial before a counter-revolutionary court to answer charges of being German agents. Recognising another trap being laid for the party, Lenin wrote:

"A military dictatorship is at work. It is ridiculous to even speak of a court case. What we are dealing with here is not at all a "court case", but an episode of civil war" ([14] [102]).

If the Party survived the period of repression which followed the July Days, it was not least because of its tradition of constant vigilance in the defence of the organisation against all the attempts of the state to destroy it. It should be noted for instance, that the police agent Malinovsky, who before the war managed to become the member of the central committee of the party directly responsible for the security of the organisation, would probably have been the man in charge of hiding Lenin, Zinoviev etc. after the July Days, had he not been unmasked by the vigilance of the organisation beforehand (despite the blindness of Lenin himself!). Without such vigilance, the result would most probably have been the liquidation of the most experienced party leaders. In January-February 1919, when Luxemburg. Liebknecht, Jogisches and other veterans of the young KPD were murdered by the German bourgeoisie, it seems that the authorities may have been tipped off by a "high-ranking" police agent within the party.

Balance-sheet of the July Days

The July Days revealed once again the gigantic revolutionary energy of the proletariat, its struggle against the fraud of bourgeois democracy, and the fact that the working class alone is a factor against imperialist war in the face of the decadence of capitalism. Not "democracy or dictatorship" but the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, socialism or barbarism, that is the alternative facing humanity which the July Days posed, without yet being able to answer. But what the July Days above all illustrated is the indispensable role of the proletarian class party. No wonder that the bourgeoisie is today "celebrating" the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution with renewed manoeuvres and slanders against the contemporary revolutionary milieu.

July 1917 also showed that overcoming illusions in the renegade ex-workers' parties on the left of capital is vital if the proletariat is to seize power. This was the central illusion of the class during the July Days. But this experience was in itself decisive. The July Days definitively clarified, not only for the working class and the Bolsheviks, but for the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries themselves, that the latter's organisations had irrevocably joined the counter-revolution. As Lenin wrote at the beginning of September:

"In Petrograd at the time we were not even physically in a position to take power, and had it been physically possible to take it, it would not have been possible to hold onto it politically, since Tsereteli and Co. had not yet sunk to supporting the hangmen. That's why, at the time, from the 3rd to the 5th of July in Petrograd, the slogan of taking power was wrong. At that time even the Bolsheviks still lacked the conscious determination - nor could that have been otherwise - to treat Tsereteli and Co. as counter-revolutionaries. At the time neither the soldiers nor the workers possessed the experience which the month of July gave them" ([15] [103]).

Already in mid-July Lenin had clearly drawn this lesson:

"After the 4th of July the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, hand in hand with the monarchists and Black Hundreds, engulfed the petty bourgeois Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, after having intimidated them, placing the real state power (...) in the hands of a military clique, who shot those who refused orders on the front, and struck down the Bolsheviks in Petrograd" ([16] [104]).

But the key lesson of July was the political leadership of the party. The bourgeoisie has often employed the tactic of provoking premature confrontations. Whether 1848 and 1870 in France, or 1919 and 1921 in Germany, in each case the result has been a bloody repression of the proletariat. If the Russian Revolution is the only major example where the working class has been able to avoid such a trap and bloody defeat, then this was above all because the Bolshevik class party was able to fulfil its decisive vanguard role. In steering the class away from such a defeat, the Bolsheviks saved from their perversion by opportunism the deeply revolutionary lessons of Engels' famous 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggle in France, especially his warning:

"And there is only one means through which the continuous swelling of the ranks of the socialist armies in Germany can be set back for some time: a large scale confrontation with the military, a blood-letting like 1871 in Paris" ([17] [105]).

Trotsky summarised the balance sheet of the action of the party as follows:

"Had the Bolshevik Party, stubbornly clinging to a doctrinaire appraisal of the July movement as ‘untimely’ and  turned its back on the masses, the semi-insurrection would inevitably have fallen under the scattered and uncoordinated leadership of anarchists, of adventurers, of accidental expressers of the indignation of the masses, and would have expired in bloody and fruitless convulsions. On the other hand, if the party, after taking its place at the head of the machine-gunners and Putilov men, had renounced its own appraisal of the situation as a whole, and glided down the road to a decisive fight, the insurrection would indubitably have taken a bold scope. The workers and soldiers under the leadership of the Bolsheviks would have conquered the power - but only to prepare the subsequent shipwreck of the revolution. The question of power on a national scale would not have been decided, as it was in February, by a victory in Petrograd. The provinces would not have caught up to the capital. The front would not have understood or accepted the revolution. The railroads and the telegraphs would have served the Compromisers against the Bolsheviks. Kerensky and headquarters would have created a government for the front and the provinces. Petrograd would have been blockaded. Disintegration would have begun within its walls. The government would have been able to send considerable masses of soldiers against Petrograd. The insurrection would have ended, in those circumstances, with the tragedy of a Petrograd Commune. At the July forking of historic roads, the interference of the Bolshevik Party eliminated both fatally dangerous variants - both that in the likeness of the July Days of 1848, and that of the Paris Commune of 1871. Thanks to the party's taking its place boldly at the head of the movement, it was able to stop the masses at the moment when the demonstration began to turn into an armed test of strength. The blow struck at the masses and the party in July was very considerable, but it was not a decisive blow (..) It fully preserved its fighting cadres, and these cadres had learned much" ([18] [106]).

History proved Lenin right when he wrote:

"A new phase begins. The victory of the counter-revolution sparks off disappointment among the masses concerning the parties of the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and clears the way for the transition of the masses to the politics of supporting the revolutionary proletariat" ([19] [107]).

 Krespel

[1] [108] So-called from the initials - KD - of their party, the Constitutional Democrats.

[2] [109] Lenin: Where is the Power and where is the Counter-Revolution?

[3] [110] Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, Page 517.

[4] [111] Trotsky: History P.551. Buchanan was a British diplomat in Petrograd.

[5] [112] Trotsky: History P. 525.

[6] [113] Trotsky: History P. 624.

[7] [114] Trotsky: History P. 520.

[8] [115] Trotsky: History P. 528.

[9] [116] Lenin: On Constitutional Illusions.

[10] [117] Trotsky: History P.561.

[11] [118] Lenin: Should the Bolshevik leaders stand trial?

[12] [119] Trotsky: History P. 585. A very similar role was played by ex-gendarmes, criminal elements and other lumpen proletarians among the "Spartacus soldiers" and "revolutionary invalids" during the German revolution, particularly during the tragic "Spartacus Week" in Berlin, January 1919, and proved even more catastrophic.

[13] [120] Trotsky: History P. 568.

[14] [121] Lenin: Should the Bolshevik leaders stand trial?

[15] [122] Lenin: Rumours about a Conspiracy.

[16] [123] Lenin: On Slogans.

[17] [124] Engels: Introduction to the 1895 edition of Class Struggles in France.

[18] [125] Trotsky: History. P. 593-94.

[19] [126] Lenin: On Constitutional Illusions.

If there is one struggle that marxist revolutionaries worthy of the name have always fought to the bitter end, even in the most difficult conditions, it is to save their organisation - whether Party or International - from the grip of opportunism, and to prevent it from falling into degeneration, or worse still into betrayal.

This was the method of Marx and Engels in the First International. It was the method of the "lefts" in the Second International. We should remember that Rosa Luxembtirg, Karl Liebknecht and the Spartakists1 took rime to decide on their break with the old party, whether the German Social-Democracy or with the USPD. At best, they hoped to overthrow the opportunist leadership by winning over the majority in the party. At worst, once there was no longer any hope of reconquering the party, they hoped to take as many militants with them when they split. They went on fighting as long as the smallest spark of life remained in the party, and they could still win over the best elements. This has always been the method, the only method, of marxist revolutionaries. Moreover, historical experience has shown that the "lefts, rather than split, have usually resisted to the point where they were themselves excluded by the old party2. Trotsky, for example, spent more than six years of struggle within the Bolsehvik Party before eventually being excluded.

The combat of the "lefts" within the Third International is especially revealing, inasmuch as it was fought during the most terrible period of the workers' movement: that of the longest and most terrible counter-revolution in history, which began at the end of the 1920s. And yet, it was in the midst of this counter-revolutionary situation, this powerful ebb in the workers' movement, that the militants on the left of the Communist International were to undertake an unforgettable struggle. Some amongst them thought it lost from the outset, but this did not daunt them, or prevent them from going into combat3. And so, while there remained the slightest hope of redressing the party and the Cl, they considered it their duty to try to save what they could from the grip of a triumphant Stalinism. Today, this struggle is at best minimised and at worst completely forgotten by those elements who leave their organisation at the first disagreement, or because of their "wounded honour". This attitude is an offence to the working class, and clearly expresses the contempt of the petty bourgeois for the hard struggle of generations of workers and revolutionaries, sometimes at the cost of their lives, which these gentlemen consider perhaps to be beneath their notice.

The Italian Left not only put tins method into practice, it enriched it politically and theoretically. On the basis of this heritage, the ICC has developed the question on several occasions, and has shown when and how it can happen that the party betrays the class4. An organisation's positions on imperialist war and proletarian revolution allow us to determine whether or not it has irrevocably betrayed the class. As long as the organisation's treason is not yet evident, as long as the party has not passed, arms and baggage, into the enemy camp, the role of true revolutionaries is to fight, tooth and nail, to keep it within the proletarian camp. This is what the left did in the CI, in the most difficult conditions of utterly triumphant counter-revolution.

This policy is still valid today. It is all the easier to undertake today, in a course towards class confrontations, in an altogether easier situation for the struggle of the proletariat and of revolutionaries. In the present historic context, where neither revolution nor world war are on the agenda, it is much less likely that a proletarian organisation would betray5. Any conscious and consistent revolutionary should therefore apply the same method if he thinks his own organisation is degenerating: in other words, he should fight within the organisation to redress it. There should be no question of adopting a petty bourgeois attitude of trying to "save one's own soul", which is the tendency of some armchair revolutionaries whose individualist or contestationist tendencies readily attract them to the sirens of political parasitism. This is why, all those who leave their organisation, accusing it of all manner of faults, and without having fought the fight out to the bitter end - as in the case of RV for example6 - are irresponsible, and deserve to be treated like poor little unprincipled petty bourgeois.

The long struggle of the left in the Communist International

The crisis in the communist movement emerged into the broad light of day during 1923. A few events demonstrated this: after the Third Congress of the Cl, will revealed the growing weight of opportunism, and after repression was unleashed in Russia on Kronstadt, while strikes developed notably in Petrograd and Moscow. At the same time, the Workers' Opposition was created within the Russian Communist Party.

Trotsky summed up the general feeling when he declared that "The fundamental reason for the crisis of the October Revolution lay in the delay of the world revolution"7. And indeed, the delay in the world revolution weighed heavily on the entire workers' movement. The latter was also disoriented by the state capitalist measures taken in Russia under the NEP (New Economic Policy). The latest defeats suffered by the proletariat in Germany put off still further any hope of an extension of the revolution in Europe. Revolutionaries, Lenin among them8, began to doubt the outcome. In I 923, the Russian revolution was being strangled economically by a capitalism that dominated the planet. On this level, the situation of the USSR was catastrophic, and the problem posed to the leadership was whether the NEP should be maintained in its entirety or corrected through help to industry.

The beginning of Trotsky's struggle

Trotsky began his fight9 within the CPSU Politburo, where a majority wanted to maintain the status quo. He disagreed on the question of the economic situation in Russia, and on the CPSU's internal organisation. The divergence was kept within the Politburo, to avoid breaking party unity. It was only made public in the autumn of 1923, in Trotsky's book The New Course10.

Other expressions of opposition also appeared:

- A letter of 15th October 1923, addressed to the Politburo and signed by 46 well-known personalities, including left and opposition communists (Piatakov and Preobrazhensky, but also Ossinski, Sapronov, Smirnov, etc). They called for the convocation of a special conference to take the measures demanded by the situation, without waiting for the Congress;

- The creation of the Democratic Centralism group by Sapronov, Smirnov, and others;

- The reactivation of the Workers' Opposition with Shliapnikov;

- The creation of the Workers' Group of Miasnikov, Kuznezov and others (see the "Manifeste du groupe ouvrier du PCUS", February 1923, published in Invariance no.6, 1975).

At the same time, Bordiga, writing from prison, made his first serious criticism of the CI, in particular on the question of the "United Front", in his "Manifesto to all the comrades of the PCI". On the basis of this disagreement, he asked to be relieved of all his functions as a leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), so as not to have to defend positions with which he disagreed11.

Like Trotsky, Bordiga's attitude was cautious, with a view to developing a more effective political struggle. Two years later, he explained the key to his method in a letter to Korsch (26th October 1926): "Zinoviev and Trotsky are men with a great sense of realism; they have understood that we must still suffer the blows without going onto the offensive". This is how revolutionaries act: with patience. They are capable of conducting a long struggle to arrive at their goal. They know how to suffer blows, to advance cautiously, and above all to work, to draw tile lessons for the future struggles of the working class.

This attitude is a million miles removed from that of the "Sunday revolutionaries”, greedy for any immediate success, or of our "armchair revolutionaries", interested only in "saving their own souls", like an RV who has run away from his responsibilities while complaining all the time that the ICC during the latest internal debates in which he took part has subjected him to a fate worse than Stalin inflicted on the left opposition! Quite apart from its slanderous nature, such an accusation would be laughable were it not so serious. And nobody who knows anything about the left Opposition and its tragic end will believe such a fairytale for an instant.

The crisis of 1925-26

The period that followed the CI's Fifth Congress was characterised by:

- The continued "Bolshevisation" of the CPs, and what has been called the "turn to the right" of the CI. The aim of Stalin and his henchmen was to eliminate the leadership of the French and German parties in particular, in other words those of Treint and Ruth Fischer, which had been Zinoviev's spearhead at the 5th Congress, and which were not prepared to make the turn to the right.

- The "stabilisation'' of capitalism, which for the CI's leadership meant that an "adaptation" was necessary. The report on political activity of the Central Committee to the 14th Congress of the CPSU (December 1925) states: "What we took at one time for a brief pause, has been transformed into a whole period".

Outside the debates of the Congress, the most important event for the workers' movement was the disintegration, at the end of 1925, of the triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, which had led the International and the CPSU since Lenin had been forced to give up political activity. Why did this happen? In fact, the triumvirate's existence was tied to the struggle against Trotsky. Once the latter, and the first opposition movement had been reduced to silence, Stalin no longer needed the "old Bolsheviks" around Zinoviev and Kamenev to take control of the Russian state and party, and of the International. The situation of "stabilisation" gave him the opportunity to change tack.

Although opposing Stalin internal Soviet policy, Zinoviev had expressed the same view on world policy: "The first difficulty lies in the adjournment of the world revolution. At the beginning of the October Revolution, we were convinced that the workers of other countries would come to our rescue in a matter of months, or at worst, of years. Today, sadly, the adjournment of the world revolution is an established fact, it is certain that the partial stabilisation of capitalism represents a whole epoch, and that this presents us with a new, much greater and more complex, series of difficulties".

However, while the leadership of the party and the Cl recognised this "stabilisation"; at the same tune they declared that the vision and policies of the Fifth Congress had been correct. They made a political turn-around without saying so openly.

While Trotsky remained silent, the "Italian Left" adopted a more political attitude by continuing the struggle openly. Bordiga raised the Russian question, and the "Trotsky question" in an article in L'Unita.

The left of the PCI created the "Entente Committee" in order to oppose the "Bolshevisation" of the party (March-April 1925). Bordiga did not join the committee immediately, in order to avoid being expelled from the party by the Gramsci leadership. Only in June did he come round to the views of Damen, Fortichiari, and Repossi. The committee, however, was only a means of organisation, not a real fraction. In the end, the "left" was' forced to dissolve the committee to avoid being excluded from the party, despite holding a majority within it.

In Russia, spring 1926 saw the creation of the Unified Opposition around the first opposition of Trotsky, joined by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Krupskaya, with a view to preparing the 15th Congress of the CPSU.

Stalin's repression increased, striking tins time at the new opposition:

- Serebriakov and Preobrazhensky12 were expelled from the Party;

- others (like Miasnikov, of the Workers' Group) were imprisoned, or on the point of being imprisoned (eg Fichelev, director of the national printing works);

- some of the foremost combatants of the Civil War were thrown out of the army (such as Grunstein, the director of the aviation school, and the Ukrainian Okhotnikov):

- throughout the country, in the Urals, Moscow, Leningrad, the GPU had decapitated the Opposition's local organisation by expelling its leaders from the Party.

Then, in October 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Central Committee of the CPSU.

After 1927, the struggle continues

The capitulation of Zinoviev and his supporters did not prevent the Russian left from continuing the struggle. Neither insults, nor threats, nor expulsion from the Party, could stop these true militants of the working class.

"Exclusion from the Party deprives us of our rights as members of the Party, but it cannot relieve us of the obligations undertaken by each one of us when we entered the Communist Party. Although we have been excluded from the Party, we will nonetheless remain faithful to its programme, its traditions, its banner. We will continue to work to strengthen the Communist Party, and its influence in the working class"13.

Rakovsky gives us here a remarkable lesson in revolutionary politics. This is the marxist method, our method. Revolutionaries never leave their organisations unless they are excluded, and even then they continue the fight to redress the organisation.

During the years that followed, the members of the opposition did everything they could to return to the Party. They were in fact convinced that their exclusion would only be temporary.

In January 1928, however, the deportations began. These were extremely severe, since the deportees were guaranteed no means of subsistence in their assigned residence. Insults and worse descended on the families who remained in Moscow, often losing their right to an apartment. Trotsky left for Alma Ata, followed 48 hours later by Rakovsky's departure for Astrakhan. Still the struggle continued, as the Opposition organised in exile.

Despite a succession of new blows, the members of the opposition and their most notable representative, Rakovsky, continued an untiring struggle despite successive capitulations and Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR.

During this period, the GPU cunningly circulated rumours that Stalin would at last implement the policy of the Opposition. This immediately started to break up the Opposition, a process in which Radek seems to have played the part of provocateur14. The weakest gave up. The Stalinists in power were able to detect the waverers, and to determine the best moment either to strike them down or bring them to capitulate.

Faced with these new difficulties, in August 1929 Rakovsky drew up a declaration: "We appeal to the Central Committee (...) asking it to help us return to the Party by releasing the Bolshevik-Leninists (...) and by recalling Trotsky from exile (…) We are entirely ready to give up fraction methods of struggle and to submit to the statutes of the Party, which guarantee every member the right to defend his communist opinions".

This declaration had no chance of being accepted, firstly because it called for Trotsky's return from exile, but also because it was drawn up in such a way as to reveal Stalin's duplicity and responsibility in the whole business. It achieved its aim. and broke the wave of panic in the ranks of the Opposition. The capitulations stopped.

Despite traps, harassment, and assassinations, Rakovsky and the Opposition centre continued the organised struggle until 1934. Most of them continued their resistance in the camps15.

When Rakovsky abandoned the fight, it was not in the same shameful way as Zinoviev and his followers, for example. Bilan, for one, declared clearly: "Comrade Trotsky (...) has published a note where, after declaring that this is not an ideological and political surrender, he writes: "We have repeated many times that the only path to a restoration of the CP in the USSR is the international one. The case of Rakovsky confirms this in a negative, but striking manner". We express our solidarity with this evaluation (...) of the Rakovsky case, since his last act has nothing to do with the shameful surrender of Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others ...".

An international struggle

The struggle also unfolded at a world level, with the creation of an international left opposition following Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR in 1929.

The CI's 6th Plenum (February-March, 1926) saw Bordiga's last appearance at a meeting of the International. In his speech, he declared: "It is desirable that a left resistance should be formed internationally, against suck dangers from the right; but I must say quite openly that this healthy, useful, and necessary reaction cannot and must not appear in the form of manoeuvre and intrigue, or rumours spread in the corridors".

From 1927 onwards, the struggle of the Italian Left was to continue in exile, in France and Belgium, Those militants who had been unable to leave Italy were in prison, or like Bordiga assigned to residence in the islands. The Left fought on within the communist parties and the CI, despite the fact that many of its militants had been expelled. Its basic aim was to intervene within these organisations, in order to correct an avoidable course towards degeneration. "The communist parties are organs where we must struggle to combat opportunism. We are convinced that the situation will force the leadership to reintegrate us as an organised fraction, unless it should lead to the complete eclipse of the communist parties. We consider this extremely unlikely, but in this case also we will still be able to fulfil our duty as communists"16.

This vision reveals the difference between Trotsky and the Italian Left. In April 1928. the latter constituted a fraction, in response to the resolution of the 9th extended plenum of the CI (9th to 25th February, 1928), which decided that it was not possible to remain a member of the CI while supporting the positions of Trotsky. From that moment, the members of the Italian Left could no longer remain as members of the International, and found themselves obliged to form a fraction.

In its founding resolution, the Fraction assigned itself the following tasks:

"1) the reintegration of all those expelled from the International who support the Communist Manifesto and accept the Theses of the 2nd World Congress;

2) the convocation of the 6th World Congress under the chairmanship of Leon Trotsky;

3) putting on the agenda of the 6th World Congress the expulsion of all those elements who declare their solidarity with the resolutions of the 15th Congress of the CPSU17"18.

Thus, while the Russian Opposition hoped to be reintegrated into the Party, the Italian Left aimed above all to survive as a fraction within the CPs and the International, because it thought that their regeneration now depended on the work as a fraction. "By fraction, we understood the organism which develops the cadres who will ensure the continuity of the revolutionary struggle, and which is called to become the protagonist of the future proletarian victory (...) Against us, [the Opposition] declared that we should not have asserted the necessity of the formation of cadres: since the key to events is to be found in the hands of the centrists, and not of the fractions"19.

Today, this policy of repeated demands to reintegrate the CI (which the Italian Left only abandoned after 1928) might seem incorrect, since it failed to halt the degeneration of the communist parties and the International. But without it, the opposition would have been outside the Cl and its isolation even worse. The members of the opposition would have been cut off from the mass of communist militants, and would no longer have been able to influence their evolution20. It was this method, which the Italian Left was to theorise later, which made it possible to maintain the link with the workers' movement, and to transmit the Left's acquisitions to today's Communist Left, of which the ICC is a part.

By contrast, the isolationist policy of a group like Reveil Communiste21 for example, was to prove catastrophic, and the group did not survive it. It was unable to give birth to an organised current. Above all, it confirmed the classic method and principle of the workers' movement: you do not split lightly from a proletarian organisation; nor without having first exhausted all possibilities and used every means, to clarify tile political divergences, and to convince a maximum of healthy elements.

The lessons drawn by the Italian Left

We have not sketched this broad historical tableau for the pleasure of playing the historian, but to draw the necessary lessons for the workers' movement and our class today. This lengthy exegesis teaches us that "the history of the workers' movement is the history of its organisations" as Lenin said. Today, it is the fashion to split, without any principles, from an organisation for trivial, and to create a new one on the same programmatic foundations. Without having subjected the organisation's programme and practice to a searching critique, it is declared to be degenerating. A brief reminder of the history of the Third International shows us what should be the true attitude of revolutionaries. Unless we have the pretension that revolutionary organisations are unnecessary, or that an individual can discover, all by himself, everything that the organisations of the past have bequeathed to us. We have no such pretension. Without the theoretical and political work of the Italian Left, neither the ICC nor the other groups of the Communist Left (the IBRP and the various PC Is) would exist today.

Obviously, if we identify with the attitude of the Opposition and the Italian Left, we do not do so entirely with the conceptions of the Opposition and of Trotsky.

By contrast, we agree with these ideas put forward by Bilan at the beginning of the 1930s:

"It is perfectly true that the role of the fractions is above all one of educating cadres through lived events, and thanks to a rigorous confrontation of the meaning of these events (...) Without the work of the fractions, the Russian Revolution would have been impossible. Without the fractions, Lenin himself would have remained a bookworm, and would not have become a revolutionary leader.

The fractions are thus the only historical places where the proletariat continues to work for its class organisation. From 1928 to this day, comrade Trotsky has completely neglected this work of construction of the fractions, and consequently has failed to contribute to creating the real conditions for the mass movement"22.

Similarly, we also agree with what the Italian Left had to say about the loss of political organisations during a period of historical reflux of the proletariat (in their case a course towards war during the 1930s), which is not, of course, the case today:

"The death of the Communist International springs from the extinction of its junction: the CI's death knell was rung by the victory of fascism in Germany; this event has historically exhausted its junction, and has demonstrated the ftrst positive result of the centrist policy.

The victory of fascism in Germany means that events are moving in the opposite direction to the revolution, towards world war.

“The Party does not cease to exist, even after the death of the International. The Party does not die, it betrays"23.

All those who, today, declare their agreement with the positions and principles of the Italian Left, and who accuse an organisation of degeneration, have the duty and responsibility to do everything to halt this dynamic and stop it turning to betrayal, as the comrades of Bilan did before them.

But the Italian Left, in criticising Trotsky, also criticised all those unprincipled individuals (or those who did not want to recognise the course of history), who could only think of building new organisations outside those that existed already, or - as we see with the development of parasitism today - of destroying those that they had just left:

"Similarly, as far as the foundation of new parties is concerned [here the Italian Left was thinking of Trotsky, who in 1933 proposed the formation of new parties], the sportsmen of the "great action", instead of building the organisation for political action (...), have made a lot of noise on the necessity for losing not an instant in setting to work (...).

It is obvious that demagogy and ephemeral success are on the side of sport, and not of revolutionary work"24.

We would remind all these fine gentlemen, these new "sportsmen", these irresponsible founders of new sects, these righters of wrongs and of parties who thunder their denunciation of the existing proletarian organisations, of the patient revolutionary work of the Opposition, and above all of the Italian Left during the 1920s and 1930s, to save their organisations and prepare the cadres for the future party, rather than quitting their organisation to "save" themselves.

OR

"Even more than in the economic sphere, the chaos that characterises the period of decomposition exerts its effects on the political relations between states. At the time when the eastern bloc collapsed, ending the system of alliances that emerged from the second world war, the ICC pointed out:

- that, even if this was not realisable in the immediate, this situation put on the agenda the formation of new blocs, one led by the USA, the other by Germany;

- that, in the immediate, it would unleash all the conflicts which the "Yalta order" had kept in a framework "acceptable" to the world's two gendarmes.

Since then, this tendency towards "every man for himself", towards chaos in the relations between states, with its succession of circumstantial and ephemeral alliances, has not been called into question. Quite the contrary. Very soon the tendency towards "every man for himself" predominated over the tendency towards the reconstitution of stable alliances that could prefigure future imperialist blocs, and this was to multiply and aggravate military confrontations" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 12th congress of the ICC, published in International Review no.90).

This is how the ICC, at its 12th congress, defined its vision of the world situation at the imperialist level, a vision which has been illustrated and confirmed on numerous occasions in recent months. The growing instability of the capitalist world has been expressed in particular through a multiplication of murderous conflicts all over the planet. This aggravation of capitalist barbarism is above all the work of the very same great powers who never stop promising us a world of "peace and prosperity" but whose increasingly acute and open rivalries are costing humanity more and more dearly in terms of death, poverty and terror.

Because" since the end of the division of the world into two blocs, the USA has been faced with a permanent challenge to its authority by its former allies" (ibid), it has had to wage a "massive counter-offensive" against the latter and against their imperialist interests in the past period, notably in ex-Yugoslavia and Africa. Despite this, its former allies continue to defy the US, even in its private hunting grounds like the Middle East and Latin America. We cannot deal here with all the parts of the world which are suffering the effects of the tendency towards "every man for himself” and the exacerbation of imperialist rivalries between the great powers. We will only look at a few situations which clearly illustrate this analysis and which have latterly seen some significant developments.

Black Africa: French interests under fire

In the resolution quoted above, we asserted that the world's leading power "has managed to inflict on the country which has defied it most openly, France, a very serious reverse in its own "hunting ground" of Africa". This assertion was based on the evident fact that "after eliminating French influence in Rwanda, it is now France's main bastion on the continent, Zaire, which is about to slip from its grasp with the collapse of the Mobutu regime under the blows of the Kabila "rebellion ", which has received massive support from Rwanda and Uganda, ie from the US".

Since then, the Kabila's hordes have ejected the Mobutu clique and taken over in Kinshasa. In this victory, and in particular in the monstrous massacres of civilian populations which accompanied it, the direct and active role played by the American state, notably through the numerous "advisers" it put at Kabila's disposal, is today an open secret. Yesterday it was French imperialism which armed and advised the Hutu gangs who were responsible for the massacres in Rwanda, in order to destabilise the pro-US Kigali regime; today Washington is doing the same against French interests, through Kabila's Tutsi "rebels".

Zaire has thus passed exclusively into the hands of the US. France has lost an essential pawn, which signifies its complete eviction from the region of the "great lakes".

Moreover, this situation has rapidly led to a chain-reaction of instability in nearby countries which are still under French influence. The authority and credibility of France has suffered a major blow in the region and the US is trying to draw maximum profit from this. Thus, for several weeks, Congo-Brazzaville has been ravaged by the war between the last two presidents, even though both of them were creatures of France. The various efforts to mediate by Paris have met with no success. In the Central African Republic, a country which is now falling into a state of bloody chaos, this same impotence is being revealed. Thus, despite two very muscular military interventions and the creation of an "African Intervention Force" under its control, French imperialism still hasn't managed to impose order in the region. Even more serious is the fact that the Central African president Ange Patasse, another creature of France, is now threatening to run after American aid, an act of defiance towards his current patron. This loss of credit is now starting to spread throughout black Africa, including France's most faithful pawns. More generally, French influence is waning all over the continent, as can be seen for example by the recent annual summit of the Organisation of African Unity, where the two major French initiatives were rejected:

- one concerning the recognition of the new power in Kinshasa, which Paris wanted to delay and submit to various conditions. Under the pressure of the US and its African allies, Kabila has not only won immediate recognition but also economic support in order to "reconstruct the country";

- another concerning the nomination of a new leadership of the OAU: France's candidate was abandoned by his "friends" and had to withdraw his candidature before the vote.

French imperialism is currently suffering a series of reverses at the hands of the USA, and this is a decline of historic proportions in what was once its backyard. "This is a particularly severe punishment for France (...) and it is intended to serve as an example for all the other countries tempted to imitate the latter's stance of permanent defiance"(ibid).

However, despite its decline, French imperialism still has cards to play to defend its interests and reply to the American offensive. To this end it has begun a strategic redeployment of its military forces in Africa. If on this level, as on many others, France is a long way from equality with Washington, this in no way means that it will simply fold its arms. At the very least, it is certain that it will make a real nuisance of itself in order to create difficulties for American policy. The African populations have not sacrificed the last of their blood in the interests of rival capitalist gangsters.

Algeria: behind the massacres, the great powers' sordid interests

Algeria is another country hit by the full force of world capitalism's decomposition, another battleground for the ferocious rivalries of the great powers. For over five years this country has been sinking into an ever more barbaric and bloody chaos. The endless reprisals and massacres of the civilian population, the innumerable outrages which have now reached the country's capital, keep Algeria in a daily state of horror. Since 1992, the beginning of what the media hypocritically call "the Algerian crisis", there is no doubt that the figure of 100,000 killed has been exceeded. If ever a population, and thus a proletariat, has been taken hostage in a war between bourgeois cliques, it's the population of Algeria. It is clear today that those who carry out the daily assassinations, those who are responsible for the death of all these thousands of men, women and children, are the armed bands in the pay of the different warring camps:

- on the one hand, the Islamists, whose hardest and most fanatical faction is the GIA, recruit their forces from a decomposed youth deprived of any future (owing to the dramatic economic situation in Algeria which has thrown the majority of the population into unemployment, poverty and hunger), and then pushes them into the most profound criminality. Al Wasat, the journal of the Saudi bourgeoisie which comes out in London, recognises that "this youth was at first a motor used by the FIS to scare all those who stood in the way of its march to power", but is now more and more escaping its control;

- the Algerian state itself, which is more and more clearly being exposed as being implicated in many of the massacres it attributes to the "Islamic terrorists". The testimonies gathered after the massacre in Rais, a suburb of Algiers (between 200 and 300 deaths) at the end of August are proof, if proof were needed, that the Zeroual regime is anything but innocent: "This lasted from 22.30 to 02.30. The butchers took all the time they needed (...) No help arrived. The security forces were, however, very close by. The first to arrive this morning were the firemen" (quoted in Le Monde). It is clear today that a good part of the carnage perpetrated in Algeria is the work either of the state security forces or the "self defence militias" armed and controlled by these forces. Contrary to what the regime would have us believe, these militias do not have the job of "ensuring the safety of the villages"; they are a means for the state to patrol the population, eliminate opponents and impose order through terror. Faced with this frightful situation, "world opinion", ie that of the big western powers, has begun to express its "emotion".

Thus, when the general secretary of the UN Kofi Annan tried to encourage "tolerance and dialogue" and called for "an urgent solution", Washington, which claimed to be "horrified" by the massacres, immediately gave him its support. The French state, while also manifesting its great compassion, stressed that it" could not interfere in Algeria's affairs". The hypocrisy exhibited by the great powers is staggering but it is less and less capable of masking their responsibility for the horror that has descended on this country. Through various bourgeois Algerian factions, France and the US have been waging a ruthless war since the disappearance of the great imperialist blocs. The stakes in this sordid game is for Paris to keep Algeria in its sphere and for Washington to take it over, or at least to undermine its rival's influence. In this battle, the first blood was scored by American imperialism which secretly supported the development of the Islamist FIS, to the point where, in 1992, it had reached the portals of power. And it was the veritable coup d'etat carried out by the Algiers regime, with the support of its French patron, which warded off this danger, since it went against the interests not only of the bourgeois factions in power but also of the French. Since then the measures taken by tile Algerian state, in particular the banning of the FIS, the hunting down and imprisonment of many of its militants and leaders has led to a reduction in the latter's influence. But while these measures were successful at this level, they are also responsible for the current chaos. They have pushed factions of tile FIS into illegality, guerrilla war and terrorist actions. Today, the frequent and abominable atrocities carried out by the Islamists have discredited them. We can therefore say that the Zeroual regime has achieved its aims and also that French imperialism has managed to resist tile offensive of tile world's leading power and maintain its interests in Algeria. The cost of this "success" is being paid for by the blood of the population. And there will be more to pay. When the US spoke recently about giving all their support to tile "personal efforts" of Kofi Annan, this was an announcement that they are not prepared to give up their interests; this is why Chirac immediately responded by denouncing in advance" any policy of interference in Algerian affairs", making it quite clear that he will defend his backyard tooth and nail.

Middle East: growing difficulties for the Pax Americana

While second-rank imperialisms like France have a hard time conserving their authority in their traditional spheres of influence, and are even suffering setbacks under the hammer blows of the USA, the latter are themselves not spared from problems in applying their policies, even in their own traditional hunting grounds like the Middle East. Since the Gulf War the Americans have maintained an almost exclusive control over this region, but it is now experiencing a growing instability which is calling the "Pax Americana" into question. In our resolution quoted above, we had already underlined a certain number of examples of the increasing challenge to American leadership by some of its vassals in this region, in particular "the almost unanimously hostile reaction towards the US cruise missile attack on Iraq" in the autumn of 1996, even from hitherto "loyal" states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Another significant example was "the coming to power in Israel of the right, which has since done everything it could to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians, which had been one of the great successes of American diplomacy". The situation which has developed since then has strikingly confirmed this analysis. From last March onwards, the "peace process" has been going backwards, with the ending of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations due to the Netanyahu government's continued policy of colonising the occupied territories. Since then, tension has mounted more and more. In the summer it was raised by a number of murderous suicide bombings, in the center of Jerusalem. Attributed to Hamas, they gave the Israeli state the opportunity to reinforce its repression of the Palestinian population and to impose a blockade on the "autonomous territories". In addition, a series of raids by the Israeli army have been launched against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon, leading to more death and destruction. Faced with this rapid deterioration of the situation, the White House dispatched its two principal emissaries, Dennis Ross and Madeleine Albright, one after the other, but without great success. The latter even recognised that she had not found "the best method for keeping the peace process on the rails". And indeed, despite strong pressure from Washington, Netanyahu has remained deaf and is continuing his aggressive policy towards the Palestinians, which is putting into question Arafat's authority and thus his ability to control his own forces. As for the Arab countries, more and more of them have been expressing their displeasure at American policies, accusing the US of sacrificing their interests for Israel's benefit. Among those currently standing up to the US boss is Syria, which is beginning to develop economic and military relations with Tehran and has even re-opened its borders with Iraq. At the same time, what would have been inconceivable not long ago, is happening today; Saudi Arabia the Americans' "most faithful ally" but also the country which up till now has been most opposed to the "regime of tile Mullahs", is renewing its links with Iran. These new attitudes towards Iran and Iraq, two of the main targets of American policy in recent years, can only be seen as acts of defiance, even a slap in the face for Washington.

In this context of sharpening difficulties for their transatlantic rival, the European bourgeoisies are throwing oil on the fire. Our resolution already underlined this point by asserting that the challenge to US leadership is confirmed "more generally [by] the loss of a monopoly of control over the situation in the Middle East, a crucial zone if ever there was one. This has been illustrated in particular by the return in force of France, which imposed itself as the joint supervisor in settling the conflict between Israel and Lebanon ...”. Thus, during the summer, we have seen the European union shadowing Dennis Ross and creating difficulties for US diplomacy. Its "special envoy" proposed the setting up of a "permanent security committee" to enable Israel and the PLO to "collaborate in a permanent rather than intermittent way". More recently, the French minister of foreign affairs, H Vedrine, blew a little bit more on the flames by calling Netanyahu's policies "catastrophic", which was an irnplici t attack on US policy. He also declared loud and clear that "the peace process has been shattered" and "has no perspective". This is to say the least an encouragement to the Palestinians, and all the Arab countries, to turn away from the US and their Pax Americana.

"This is why the success of the present US counter-offensive cannot be considered to be definitive, to have overcome its crisis of leadership". And even if "brute force, manoeuvres aimed at destabilising its rivals (as in mire today), with their procession of tragic consequences, will thus continue to be used by this power" (ibid), its rivals have by no means exhausted their capacity to undermine the USA's hegemony.

Today, no imperialism, not even the strongest, is free from the destabilising actions of its rivals. The old exclusive hunting grounds are tending to disappear. There are no more "protected" zones on the planet. More than ever, the world is being subjected to unbridled competition and the rule of "every man for himself”. And this will only widen and deepen the bloody chaos into which capitalism is sinking.

Elfe 20. 9. 97

In the last issue of the International Review, we published the first part of an article replying to the polemic "Political roots of the ICC's organisational malaise" which appeared in Internationalist Communist Review no. 15, the English language review of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, which comprises the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) and the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt). In this first part, after rectifying a certain number of the IBRP's assertions which bore witness to a lack of acquaintance with our positions, we went back over the history of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, the political current from which both the IBRP and the ICC claim descent. In particular, we showed that the ancestor of the ICC, the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) was much more than a "tiny group" as the IBRP puts it: in reality, it was the real political heir of the Italian Fraction, having based its constitution on the latter's acquisitions. It was precisely these acquisitions which the PCInt left to one side or simply rejected when it was formed in 1943, and even more so at its first congress in 1945. This is what we aim to show in this second part of the article.

For communists, the study of the history of the workers' movement and its organisations has nothing in common with academic curiosity. On the contrary, it is an indispensable means for them to found their programme. on a solid basis, to orient themselves in the current situation and to trace clear perspectives for the future. In particular, examining the past experiences of the working class makes it possible to verify the validity of the positions defended by previous organisations of the class and to draw the lesson from them. Revolutionaries of one epoch do not sit in judgement on their forebears. But they must be capable of drawing out what is still valid in the positions they defended, and at the same time recognising their errors, just as they must be able to recognise the moment when a position which was correct in a certain historical context has become obsolete in changed historical conditions. Otherwise they will have great difficulty in assuming their responsibilities, condemned as they would be to repeating the errors of the past or holding on to anachronistic positions.

Such an approach is ABC for a revolutionary organisation. If we look at their article. the IBRP shares this approach and we consider it very positive that this organisation should, among other aspects, raise the question of its own historical origins (or rather the origins of the PCInt) and of the origins of the ICC. It seems to us that understanding the differences between our two organisations must begin by examining their respective histories. It is for this reason that our response to the IBRP's polemic will focus on this question. We began to do this in the first part of this article with regard to the Italian Fraction and the GCF. Now we will go into the history of the PCInt.

In fact, one of the important points to be established is the following: can we consider, as the IBRP puts it, that "the PCInt was the most successful creation of the revolutionary working class since the Russian revolution"1? If this were the case, we would have to see the actions of the PCInt as exemplary and as the main source of inspiration for communists today and tomorrow. The question posed is this: how do we measure the success of a revolutionary organisation? The response can only be: to the extent that it carries out the tasks that fall to it in the historical period in which it is operating. In this sense, the criteria of "success" to be selected are in themselves significant of the way in which you conceive the role and responsibility of the vanguard organisation of the proletariat.

The criteria for the "success" of a revolutionary organisation

A revolutionary organisation is the expression of, and an active factor in, the process by which the proletariat develops its class consciousness and so undertakes its historic mission of overthrowing capitalism and creating communism. In this sense, such an organisation is an indispensable instrument of the proletariat at that moment of historical leap represented by the communist revolution. When the revolutionary organisation is confronted with this particular situation as was the case with the Communist Parties between 1917 and the beginning of the I 920s, the decisive criterion for evaluating its activity is its capacity to rally around itself, and around the communist programme it defends, the great mass of the workers who are the subject of the revolution. In this sense, we can say that the Bolshevik party fully accomplished its task in 1917 (not only vis-a-vis the revolution in Russia but also the world revolution, since it was also the Bolshevik party that was the main inspiration behind the formation of the Communist International in 1919). From February to October 1917, its ability to link up with the masses in the midst of the revolutionary ferment. to put forward, at each moment in the maturation of the revolution, the most suitable slogans, to act with the greatest intransigence against all the sirens of opportunism - all these were undoubtedly vital factors in its "success".

This said, the role of the communist organisation is not limited to revolutionary periods. If this were the case, such organisations would only have existed in the 1917-23 period, and we would have to question the meaning of the existence of the IBRP and the ICC today. It is clear that outside directly revolutionary periods, communist organisations have the role of preparing the revolution. i.e. contributing in the best possible way to the development of the essential precondition for the revolution: the coming to consciousness of the whole proletariat about its historic goals and the means to attain them. This means, in the first place, that the permanent function of communist organisations (which is thus also their function in revolutionary periods) is to define the proletarian programme in the clearest and most coherent manner. In the second place, and directly connected to the first function, it means politically and organisationally preparing the party will eh will have to be at the head of the proletariat at the moment of revolution. Finally. it means a permanent intervention in the class, according to the means at the organisation's disposal in order to win to communist positions those elements who are trying to break with the ideology and organisations of the bourgeoisie.

To return to "the most successful creation of the working class since the Russian revolution", i.e., according to the IBRP, the PCInt, the question has to be posed: what kind of "success" are we talking about here?

Did it play a decisive role in the action of the proletariat during a revolutionary period, or at least a period of intense proletarian activity?

Did it make vital contributions to the elaboration of the communist programme, in the manner, for example, of the Italian Fraction of the Communist left, from which it claims descent?

Did it lay the solid organisational bases for the formation of the future world communist party, the vanguard of the proletarian revolution to come?

We will begin by responding to this last question. In a letter from the ICC to the PCInt dated 9.6.80, just after the failure of the third conference of the communist left, we wrote:

"How do you explain (...) that your organisation, which was already in existence prior to the revival of the class in 1968, was unable to profit from this revival and extend itself on the international level, whereas ours, practically non-existent in 1968, has since then greatly increased its forces and implanted itself in ten countries?"

The question we posed then remains valid today. Since then, the PCIint has managed to extend itself internationally by forming the IBRP in company with the CWO (which has taken up its essential positions and analyses)2. But we have to recognise that the balance sheet of the PCInt, after more than half a century of existence, is very modest. The ICC has always pointed out and deplored the extreme numerical weakness and limited impact of communist organisations in the present period, and this includes our own. We are not among those who bluff their way around claiming to be the real "general staff” of the proletariat. We leave it to other groups to play at being the "real Napoleon". But having said this, if we base ourselves on the criterion of "success" under examination here, the "tiny GCF", even if it ceased to exist in 1952, comes off far better than the PCInt. With sections or nuclei in 13 countries, 11 regular territorial publications in 7 different languages (including the ones most widely used in the industrialised countries: English, German, Spanish and French), a quarterly theoretical journal in three languages, the ICC, which was formed around the positions and political analyses of the GCF, is today without doubt not only the largest and most extensive political organisation of the Communist Left, but also and above all the one which has known the most positive dynamic of development in the last quarter of a century. The IBRP may well consider that the "success" of the heirs of the GCF, if we compare it with those of the PCInt, is proof of the weakness of the working class. When the combats and consciousness of the latter are more developed, it will surely recognise the positions and slogans of the PCInt and regroup much more massively around it than today. At any rate it's a comforting thought.

In reality, when the IBRP evokes the fabulous "success" of the PCInt, it can't be talking about its capacity to lay down the future organisational bases of the world party (except by taking refuge in speculation about what the IBRP could be in the future). We are thus led to examine another criterion: did the PCInt in 1945-6 (ie, when it adopted its first platform) make a vital contribution to the elaboration of the communist programme?

Here we will not survey all the positions contained in this platform, which certainly contains some excellent things. We will only look at a few programmatic points, already extremely important at that time, on which we do not find a great deal of clarity in the platform. We refer to the nature of the USSR, of so-called "national and colonial liberation struggles", and the union question.

The present platform of the IBRP is clear on the capitalist nature of the society that existed in Russia up till 1990, on the role of the unions as instruments for the preservation of bourgeois order that can in no way be "reconquered" by the proletariat, and on the counter-revolutionary nature of national struggles. However, this clarity is not to be found in the platform of 1945 where the USSR is still defined as a "proletarian state", where the working class is called on to support certain national and colonial struggles and where the unions are still seen as organisations which the proletariat can "reconquer", notably through the creation, under the guidance of the PCInt, of minorities under their leadership3.
During that same period, the GCF had already put into question the old analysis of the Italian Left on the proletarian nature of the unions and had understood that the working class could no longer reconquer these organs. Similarly, the analysis of the capitalist nature of the USSR had already been elaborated during the war by the Italian Fraction reconstituted around the nucleus in Marseilles. Finally, the counter-revolutionary nature of national struggles, the fact that they were no more than moments in the imperialist conflict between the great powers, had already been established by the Fraction during the 1930s. This is why we maintain today what the GCF said to the PCInt in 1946, and which so angers the IBRP. As the latter put it: "The GCF argued that the Internationalist Communist Party was not an advance on the old Fraction of the Communist Left, which had gone into exile in France during the Mussolini dictatorship" (ICR no. 15). On the level of programmatic clarity, the facts speak for themselves4.

Thus, we can't consider that the programmatic positions of the PCInt in 1945 were part of its "success" because a good part of them had to be revised later on, notably in 1952 at the time of the congress which saw the split with the Bordiga tendency, and even later than that. If the IBRP will allow us a little irony, we could say that some of its present positions are more inspired by the GCF than by the PCInt of 1945. So where does the "great success" of this organisation reside? All that remains is the numerical force and the impact it had at a certain moment in history.

It is quite true that between 1945 and 1947, the PCInt had nearly 3000 members and a significant number of workers identified with it. Does this mean that this organisation was able to play a significant role in historical events and direct them towards the proletarian revolution, even if this wasn't the final result? Obviously, we cannot reproach the PCInt with having failed in its responsibilities in the face of a revolutionary situation, because such a situation did not exist in 1945. But this is precisely where the shoe pinches. As the IBRP's article says, the PCInt had "the expectation that workers' unrest would not only be limited to northern Italy as the war drew to a close". In fact, the PCInt was constituted in 1943 on the basis of the resurgence of workers' militancy in the northern Italy, seeing these struggles as the first of a new revolutionary wave that would arise out of the war as had been the case at the end of the first world war. History has refuted this perspective. But in 1943, it was perfectly legitimate to put it forward5. After all, the Communist International and most of the Communist Parties, including the Italian party, had been formed when the revolutionary wave that had begun in 1917 was already on the decline following the tragic crushing of the German proletariat in January 1919. But the revolutionaries of the time were not yet aware of this (and one of the great merits of the Italian Left was precisely to have been among the first currents to have realised that the balance of forces between proletariat and bourgeoisie had been overturned). However, when the conference of late 1945 and early 1946 was being held, the war was already over and the proletarian reactions it had engendered after 1943 had been strangled at birth thanks to a systematic preventive policy on the part of the bourgeoisie6. Despite that, the PCInt did not call into question its previous policies (even if some voices were raised at the conference, noting that the bourgeoisie's grip on the working class had been strengthened). What had been a perfectly understandable error in 1943 was already much less excusable in 1945. However, the PCInt continued along the same path and never questioned the validity of its formation in 1943.

But the most serious thing for the PCInt was not in their error of appreciating the historic period and their difficulty in recognising this error. Much more catastrophic was the way the PCInt developed and the positions it was led to take up, above all because it was trying to "adapt" to the illusions of a working class in retreat.

The formation of the PCInt

When it was formed in 1943, the PCInt declared itself to be tile heir to tile political positions elaborated by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. Moreover, while its main animator, Onorato Damen, one of the leaders of the Left in the 1920s, had remained in Italy since 1924 (most of the time in Mussolini's prisons, from which he was freed during the events of 1942-43)7, it counted in its ranks a certain number of militants of the Fraction who had returned to Italy at the beginning of the war. And indeed, in the first clandestine issues of Prometeo (which had taken on the traditional name of the paper of the Left in the 1920s and of the Italian Fraction in the 30s), published from November 1943, we can find very clear denunciations of the imperialist war, of anti-fascism and of the "partisan" movements8. However, after 1944, the PCInt oriented itself towards agitation among the partisan groups; in June it published a manifesto which called for "the transformation of the partisan groups which are composed of proletarian elements with a healthy class consciousness into organs of proletarian self-defence, ready to intervene in the revolutionary struggle for power". In August 1944, Prometeo no. 15 went even further in such compromises: "The communist elements sincerely believe in the necessity to struggle against Nazi-fascism and think that once this object has been thrown down, they will be able to march towards the conquest of power and the overthrow of capitalism". This was a revival of me idea which had served as a basis for all those who, during the course of the war in Spain, such as the anarchists and Trotskyists, had called on the workers to "first win the victory against fascism, and then make the revolution". It was the argument of those who had betrayed the cause of the proletariat and lined up under the flags of one of the imperialist camps. This was not the case with the PCInt because it remained strongly impregnated by the tradition of the Left of the Communist Party which, faced with the rise of fascism at the beginning of the I 920s, had distinguished itself by its class intransigence. All the same, the appearance of such arguments in the PCInt press showed how far things had gone. Furthermore, following the example of the minority of the Fraction who in 1936 had joined the POUM's anti-fascist militias in Spain, a certain number of the PCInt's militants entered into the partisan groups. But if the minority in the Fraction had broken organisational discipline, this was not the case at all for the militants of the PCInt: they were simply applying the directives of the Party9.

By all the evidence, the will to regroup a maximum number of workers in and around the Party, at a time when the latter were succumbing en masse to "partisanism", led the PCInt to take its distance from the intransigence which it had originally displayed against anti-fascism and the partisans. This is not a "slander" by the ICC in continuity with the "slanders" of the GCF. This penchant for recruiting new militants without too much concern for the firmness of their internationalist convictions was noted by comrade Danielis, who held a post of responsibility in the Turin Federation in 1945 and who was an old member of the Fraction: "One thing must be clear for everyone: the Party has suffered gravely from a facile extension of its political influence - the result of an equally facile activism - on a purely superficial level. I must recount a personal experience which will serve as a warning against the danger of the Party exerting a facile influence on certain strata of the masses, which is an automatic consequence of the equally facile theoretical formation of its cadres (...) One might think that no member of the Party would have accepted the directions of the 'Committee of National Liberation '. Now, on the morning of 25 April (day of the 'Liberation' of Turin) the whole Turin Federation was in arms, insisting on participating in the crowning of six years of massacre, and some comrades from the provinces - still under military discipline - came to Turin to take part in the manhunt (...) The Party no longer existed; it had liquidated itself (Proceedings of the PCInt Congress in Florence, May 1948). By all the evidence, Danielis was also a "slanderer".

Seriously, if words have any meaning, the politics of the PCInt which allowed it to have such a big "success" in 1945 were nothing more than opportunist. Do we need other examples? We can cite this letter dated February 10, 1945 addressed by the PCIn's "Agitation Committee" "to the agitation committees of parties with a proletarian direction and union movements in the enterprises in order to give the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat a unity of directives and organisation (...) To this end, we propose a gathering qf these diverse committees to put forward a common plan" (Prometeo, April 1945)10. The "parties with a proletarian direction" mentioned here are, in particular, the Socialist and Stalinist parties. However surprising this may appear today, it is absolutely true. When we recalled these facts in International Review no. 32, the PCInt replied: "was the document 'Appeal of the Agitation Committee of the PCInt', published in the April 45 issue, an error? Agreed. It was the last attempt of the Italian left to apply the tactic of the "United Front from below" advocated by the CP of Italy in its polemic with the CI in 1921-23. As such, we put it in the category of 'venial sins' because our comrades were able to eliminate it both on the political and theoreticallevel with a clarity which today leaves us quite certain in front of anyone on this point" (Battaglia Comunista no. 3, February 1983).To which we replied: "We can only admire the delicacy and refinement with which BC fixes up its own self-image. If a proposal for a united front with the Stalinist and social democratic butchers is just a 'venial sin', what else could the PCInt have done in 1945 for it to fall into a really serious mistake (...) join the govemment?" (IR34)11). In any case it is clear that in 1944, the politics of the PCInt represented a real step backwards compared to those of the Fraction. And what a step! The Fraction had for some time made an in-depth critique of the tactic of the united front and since 1935 it had not been calling the Stalinist party a "party of proletarian direction", not to mention social democracy whose bourgeois nature had been recognised since the 1920s.

This opportunist policy of the PCInt can be found again in the "openness" and lack of rigour it showed at the end of the war in its efforts to expand. The ambiguities of the PCInt formed in the north of the country were nothing compared to those of the groups in the south who were admitted into the Party at the end of the war. For example, the "Frazione di sinistra dei comunisti e socialisti" formed in Naples around Bordiga and Pistone: right up to the beginning of 1945 this group practised entryism in the Stalinist PCI in the hope of redressing it. It was particularly vague on the question of the USSR. The PCInt also opened its doors to elements from the POC (Communist Workers' Party) which for a certain period had constituted the Italian section of the Trotskyist Fourth International.

We should also recall that Vercesi, who during the war had concluded that there was nothing to be done and who, at the end of the war, had participated in the 'Coalizione Antifascista' in Brussels12, also joined the new party without the latter demanding that he condemn his anti-fascist deviation. On this point O. Damen wrote to the ICC on behalf of the PCInt in autumn 1976: "The Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the PCInt when it was founded, held onto its own bastardised positions until the Party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead wood of Bordigism". To which we replied: "what an elegant way of putting it! He - Vercesi - thought he had to joint? And the Party - what did the Party think of this? Or is the Party a bridge club which anyone can join?" (IR no. 8). It should be noted that in this letter Damen was frank enough to recognise that in 1945 the Party had not yet made the "sacrifices that clarity demanded" since this was only done later, in 1952. We can only note this affirmation which contradicts all the fables about the "great clarity" which presided over the foundation of tile PCInt because this represented, according to the IBRP, a "step forward" from the Fraction13.

The PCInt was no more scrupulous about the members of the minority of the Fraction who, in 1936, had enrolled in the anti-fascist militias in Spain and who had then joined Union Communiste14. These elements were able to integrate into the Party without having to make the slightest criticism of their past errors. On this question, O. Damen wrote in the same letter:

"Concerning the comrades who, during the war in Spain, decided to abandon the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left and to throw themselves into an adventure which took them outside class positions: let us remember that the events in Spain, which simply confirmed the positions of the Fraction, taught a lesson to these comrades and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left". To which we replied: "There was no question of these elements going back to the Communist Left until the Fraction was dissolved and its militants integrated into the PCInt (at the end of 1945). It was never a question of a 'lesson' being learned, or of these militants rejecting their old position and condemning their participation in the anti-fascist war in Spain" (ibid). If the IBRP considers that this is a new "slander" by the ICC, let them show us the documents which prove it. And as we continued: "It was simply that the euphoria and confusion of setting up the party 'with Bordiga' inspired these comrades (...) to join the Party ... The Party in Italy did not ask these comrades to account for their past activities. This was not because of ignorance (...) It was because it was a time to forget 'old quarrels': the reconstitution of the Party wiped the slate clean. A Party which was not very clear about the effect of the Partisan movement on its own militants wasn't likely to have a very rigorous attitude towards what the minority had been doing some years before. Thus it 'naturally' opened its doors to these comrades ... " (ibid).

In fact the only organisation which didn't find favour in tile PCInt's eyes, and with which it didn't want to have any relations, was the GCF, precisely because it continued to base itself on the same rigour and intransigence which had characterised the Fraction in the 1930s. And it's true that the Fraction of that period would only have condemned the mish-mash upon which the PCInt was formed. In fact it was quite similar to the practices of Trotskyism, for which the Fraction had the harshest words to say.

In the 1920s, the Communist Left had opposed tile opportunist orientation of the Communist International from its Third Congress, particularly tile aim of "going to the masses" at a time when tile revolutionary wave was in reflux. This had involved fusion with the centrist currents that had come out of tile Socialist Parties (the Independents in Germany, the "Terzini' in Italy, Cachin-Frossard in France, etc) and the policy of the "United Front" with the SPs. This method of "broad regroupment" employed by the CI to set up Communist Parties was opposed by Bordiga and the Left, who put forward the method of "selection" based on a rigourous and intransigent defence of principles. The CI's policies had tragic consequences, with the isolation and ultimate exclusion of the Left, and the invasion of the parties by opportunist elements who would be the best vectors of degeneration.

At the beginning of tile 1930s, the Italian Left, faithful to its policy of the 1920s, had fought within the International Left Opposition in order to impose the same rigour faced with the opportunist policies of Trotsky, for whom an acceptance of the first four congresses of the CI, and above all of his own manoeuvering tactics were much more important criteria for regroupment than the combats that had been fought within the CI against its degeneration. With such policies, the healthiest elements seeking to construct an international current of the Communist Left were either corrupted, or discouraged, or condemned to isolation. Based on such fragile foundations, the Trotskyist current went through crisis after crisis before passing wholesale into the bourgeois camp during the second world war. For its part, the Italian Left's intransigent position had resulted in its exclusion from the Left Opposition in 1933, with Trotsky betting on a phantom "New Italian Opposition" (NOI) , made up of elements who, at the head the PCI as late as 1930, had voted for the expulsion of Bordiga from the Party.

In 1945, anxious to beef up its membership as much as possible, the PCInt, which claimed to be the heir of the Left, was actually not taking up the politics of the latter towards the CI and Trotskyism, but the very politics that the Left had fought against: a "broad" assemblage based on programmatic ambiguities, regroupment - without asking for any "accounts" - on the basis of militants and "personalities"15 who had opposed the positions of the Fraction during the war in Spain and the world war, an opportunist policy which flattered the workers' illusions in the partisans and in parties which had gone over to the enemy, etc. And to make this assemblage as complete as possible, the GCF had to be excluded from the international left communist current, precisely because it was most loyal to the struggle of the Fraction. At the same time, the only group recognised as a representative of the Communist Left in France was the French Fraction of the Communist Left, mark II (FFGC). It should be recalled that this group was made up of three young elements who had split from the GCF in May 1945, members of the ex-minority of the Fraction excluded during the war in Spain, and members of the ex-Union Communiste which had fallen into anti-fascism at the same time16. Is there not a certain similarity between this and Trotsky's policy towards the Fraction and the NOI?

Marx wrote that "history always repeats itself, the ftrst time as tragedy, the second time as farce", There's a bit of this in the not very glorious episode of the formation of the PCInt. Unfortunately, the events that followed were to show that this repetition by the PCInt in 1945 of the policies fought by the Left in the 20s and 30s had rather dramatic consequences.

The consequences of the PCInt's opportunist approach

When we read the proceedings of the conference of the PCInt, end 1945-beginning 1946, we can only be struck by the heterogeneity which reigned there.

On the analysis of the historical period, which was an essential question, the main leaders were in conflict. Damen continued to defend the "official position" :

"The new course of the history of the proletarian struggle is open. Our Party has the task of orienting this struggle in the direction which will make it possible, during the next, inevitable crisis, for the war and its artisans to be destroyed in time and definitively, by the proletarian revolution" ("Report on the international situation and the perspectives", p 12).

But certain voices noted, without saying it openly, that tile conditions were not favourable for the formation of the party:

" ... what dominates today is the 'fightto-the-end' ideology of the CLN and the partisan movement, and this is why the conditions for the victorious affirmation of the proletarian class are not present. Consequently we can only qualify the present moment as reactionary" (Vercesi, The party and international problems", p 14).

"In concluding this political balance-sheet, it is necessary to ask ourselves if we have to go forward with a policy of enlarging our influence, or whether the situation above all imposes on us, in an atmosphere that is still poisoned, the need to safeguard the fundamental bases of our political and ideological delimitation, to strengthen the cadres ideologically, to immunise them against the bacilli one breathes in the current ambiance, and thus to prepare them for the new political positions that will present themselves tomorrow. In my opinion, it is in the second direction that the activity of the Party has to be oriented in all areas" (Maffi, "Political-organisational relations for northern Italy").

In other words, Maffi advocates the classic work of a fraction.

On the parliamentary question, we can see the same heterogeneity:

"This is why. under a democratic regime, we will use all the concessions we can, to the extent that this situation does not damage the interests (if the revolutionary struggle. We remain irreducibly anti-parliamentarian; but the sense of the concrete which animates our politics makes us reject any abstentionist position determined in advance" (O. Damen, ibid, p 12).

"Maffi, going over the conclusions arrived at by the Party. asked whether the problem of electoral abstentionism should be posed in its old form (participating or not in elections according to whether the situation was moving towards a revolutionary explosion), or whether, on the contrary, in an ambiance corrupted by electoral illusions, it would be better to take up a clearly anti-electoral position, even at the price of isolation. Not to hang on to the concessions made to us by the bourgeoisie (concessions which are not expressions of its weakness but of its strength) but to attach ourselves to the real process of the class struggle and of our Left tradition" (ibid, p 12).

Do we have to point out that Bordiga's left current in the Italian Socialist party during the first world war was known as the "Abstentionist Fraction"?

Again, on the union question, the reporter Luciano Stefanini argued, against the position that was finally adopted:

"The political line of the Party towards the union question is not yet sufficiently clear. On the one hand we recognise the unions' dependency on the capitalist state; on the other hand, we invite the workers to struggle within them and to conquer them from within in order to take them onto class positions. But this possibility is excluded by the capitalist evolution that we mentioned above, the present-day union cannot change its physiognomy as a state organ the slogan of new mass organisations is not valid today, but the Party has the duty of predicting the course of events and indicating to the workers what kind of organs, arising from the evolution of the situation, will be needed as the unitary guide for the proletariat under the direction of the Party. The pretension to obtaining positions of command in the present union organisms in order to transform them must be definitively liquidated". (p18-19).

After this conference, the GCF wrote:

"The new party is not a political unity but a conglomeration. an addition of currents and tendencies which cannot fail to appear and to confront each other. The present armistice can only be very provisional. The elimination of one or other current is inevitable. Sooner or later a political and organisational definition will impose itself" (lnternationalisme no. 7, February 1946).

After a period of intensive recruitment, the definition began to take place. From the end of 1946, the disquiet provoked in the PCInt by its participation in elections (many militants could not forget the abstentionist tradition of the Left) led the Party leadership to publish a statement in the press entitled "Our strength", which called for discipline. After the euphoria of the Turin Conference, many discouraged militants left the Party. A certain number of elements split in order to take part in the formation of the Trotskyist pal, proof that they had no place in an organisation of the Communist Left. Many militants were excluded without the divergences emerging clearly, at least in the public press. One of the main federations split to form the “Autonomous Turin Federation". In 1948, at the Florence Congress, the Party had already lost half its members and its press half its readers. As for the "armistice" of 1946, it was transformed into an "armed peace" which the leaders tried not to disturb, glossing over the main divergences. Thus Maffi said that he "abstained from raising such and such a problem because I knew that this discussion would poison the Party". This did not however prevent the Congress from radically questioning the position on the unions adopted two and a half years before (the position of 1945, which was supposed to represent such shining clarity!). This armed peace finally led to an open confrontation (especially after Bordiga joined the Parry in 1949), leading to the 1952 split between the Damen tendency and the one animated by Bordiga and Maffi which would be the origin of the Programma Comunista current.

As for the “sister organizations” which the PCInt was counting out to constitute an International Bureau of the Communist Left, their outcome is less enviable. The Belgian Fraction ceased publishing L'Intemationaliste in 1949 and disappeared soon afterwards; the French fraction Mark II went through a two-year eclipse, with most of its members leaving, before reappearing Group of the International Communist Left, which was attached to the Bordigist current17.

The "greatest success since Russian revolution" was thus short-lived. And when the IBRP, to support its arguments about this "success", tells us that the PCInt, "despite half a century of further capitalist domination, continues to exist and is growing today", it forgets to point out that the present-day PCInt, in terms of membership and audience within the working class, doesn't have a lot to do with what it was at the end of the last war. Without dwelling on comparisons, we can say that the size of this organisation today is roughly the same as the direct heir of the "tiny GCF", the French section of the ICC. And we do indeed want to believe that the PCInt is " growing today". The ICC has also found in the recent period that there is a greater interest in the positions of the Communist Left, which has expressed itself in particular by a certain number of new members. This said, we do not think that the present growth of the PCInt will allow it to go back quickly to the membership it had in 1945-6.

Thus this great "success" reached the not very glorious situation in which an organisation which went on calling itself a "Party" was actually compelled to play the role of a fraction. What's more serious is that today the IBRP does not draw the lessons from this experience, and above all does not put into question the opportunist method which is one of the reasons that the "glorious success" of 1945 prefigured the "unsuccess" that was to follow18.

This uncritical attitude towards the opportunist deviations of the PCInt at its origins makes us fear that the IBRP, when the class movement is more developed than this today, will be tempted to resort to the same opportunist expedients that we have pointed out. The fact that the IBRP's main "criterion of success" for a proletarian organisation is the number of members and the impact it has at a given moment, leaving aside programmatic rigour and the capacity to lay the bases for a long term work, reveals the immediatist approach it has on the organisation question. And we know that immediatism is the antechamber to opportunism. We can also point to some other, more immediate consequences of the PCInt's inability to criticise its origins.