Faced with the growing anarchy of international relations since the Eastern bloc collapsed six years ago, the United States is once again applying strong pressure, as it did during the Gulf War, to reassert its threatened leadership and its role as policeman of the "New World Order". One of the most significant examples of this pressure is to be found in the Middle East, which remains a choice terrain for the maneuvers of the American bourgeoisie. The USA is using its grip on a regionally isolated Israeli state, and Arafat's situation of dependence, to accelerate the process of the pax americana, and strengthen its control over this vital strategic zone which is more than ever subject to upheaval.

In reality, the proliferation and growing size of these police operations are nothing but the expression of a headlong flight into the militarization of the entire capitalist system, and its plunge into the barbarism of war.

Reality has dealt a stunning blow to the myth that the war unleashed for four years on ex-Yugoslavia is merely a matter of inter-ethnic confrontations between local nationalist cliques.

The number of air strikes against Serb positions around Sarajevo and other "safe areas" (almost 3,500 sorties in twelve days of the operation known as "Deliberate Force") makes this operation NATO's biggest military engagement since its creation in 1949.

The great powers are the real culprits

For four years, the same powers have been playing their pawns against each other on the Yugoslav chess-board. We need only look at the composition of the "contact group" which pretends to be seeking a means to put an end to the conflict - the United States, Germany, Russia, Britain, and France - to see that it includes all the greatest imperialist powers of the planet (except Japan and China, which are too far from the theatre of operations) .

As we have already shown, "It was Germany, by pushing Slovenia and Croatia to declare their independence from the old Yugoslavia, which brought about the break-up of the country and played a primordial role in the unleashing of the war in 1991. In response to this thrust by German imperialism, the other four powers supported and encouraged the counter -offensive of the Belgrade government. This was the first phase of the war, a particularly murderous one (...) Under the cover of the UN, France and Britain then sent the biggest contingent of Blue Berets who, under the pretext of preventing further confrontations, systematically maintained the status quo in favor of the Serbian army. In 1992 the US government pronounced itself in favor of the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina and supported the Muslim sector of this province in a war against the Croatian army (still supported by Germany) and the Serbs (supported by Britain, France and Russia). In 1994, the Clinton administration managed to set up a confederation between Bosnia and Croatia, an agreement against Serbia; at the end of the year, under the guidance of ex-President Carter, the US obtained a truce between Bosnia and Serbia (...) But, despite the negotiations in which all the differences between the big powers came out, no agreement was reached. What could not be obtained through negotiation could thus only be won through military force. So what we are seeing today is the logical, premeditated follow-up to a war in which the great powers have played the preponderant role, although in an underhand way.

Contrary to what is hypocritically claimed by the great powers' governments, who present their increased involvement in the conflict as being aimed at limiting the violence of the new confrontations, the latter are in fact a direct product of their war-mongering activity.

The invasion of part of western Slavonia by Croatia, at the beginning of May, as well as the renewed fighting at various points along the 1,200 kilometer front between the Zaghreb government and the Krajina Serbs; the unleashing, at the same moment, of the Bosnian army's offensive around the Bihac pocket, in the region of the Serb corridor of Brcko, and also around Sarajevo, aimed at reducing the pressure of the Sarajevo siege - none of this took place separately from the will of the big powers, and still less against a unified wish for peace on the tatters' part. It is clear that these actions were undertaken with the agreement and initiative of the American and German governments"[1]. The reaction of the opposite camp is no less significant of the other powers' involvement.

In our previous issue (1), we developed at length the content and the meaning of the Franco-British maneuver, in collusion with the Serb forces, which led to the creation of the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), and the dispatch of troops from the two powers, under their national flags. This maneuver, by sabotaging the NATO forces, was a stinging rebuff for the imperialist power which claims to play the role of the world's policeman.

The United States needed to strike hard, in order to recover the situation to their benefit. To do so, they used the civilian population with the same cynicism as their opponents.

All these imperialist brigands are fighting each other, through the intermediary of Slav cliques. Each is defending its own sordid interests, at the direct expense of the population, which is transformed into permanent hostages and victims of their fighting.

The great powers are the real culprits in the massacres, and the exodus which since 1991 has thrown more than 4.5 million refugees, men, women and children, old and young, onto the road, pushed from one combat zone to the next. It is the great capitalist powers and their bloody imperialist rivalries which have encouraged the "mopping up" operations, the "ethnic cleansing" carried out on the ground by the rival nationalist cliques.

The American bourgeoisie has used the same disgusting methods. To cover the Croat offensive in Krajina, the US inundated the media with satellite photos of freshly dug earth, supposedly revealing the presence of mass graves resulting from the Serbian massacre at Srebrenica. The NATO counter-attack was justified by the horrifying pictures of the aftermath of the mortar attack on Sarajevo market. The pretext for a military response was as clear as day. And it is indeed unlikely that Karadzic should have been mad enough to invite heavy reprisals by shelling the Sarajevo market, leaving 37 dead and 100 injured. When we consider that the shells were fired from the front line separating the Serb and Bosnian armies (each of which laid the blame for the massacre on the other), we can presume that this was a "provocation" planned in advance. An operation on the scale of the NATO bombings cannot be improvised, and the attack on the market served US interests very conveniently. This would not be the first time that the world's greatest imperialist power organized such a show. We should remember, amongst other examples, that Lyndon Johnson used the pretext of a North Vietnamese attack on a US ship to start the war in Vietnam. It was only some years later that we learnt that nothing of the kind had happened, and that the whole operation had been set up by the Pentagon. The use of such pretexts to justify their actions proves the great powers' gangster methods.

For the United States, the pretentions of the French and British, their growing arrogance and bellicosity, were becoming more and more intolerable. It was necessary to respond with other maneuvers, to lay other traps, to demonstrate a superior imperialist capability, a real military supremacy.

After its failure to do anything but mark time for three years in Bosnia, the American bourgeoisie had to reassert its world leadership.

It was not possible for me world's greatest power, which had given its support to the Muslim fraction that turned out to be the weakest in the conflict, to be pushed aside in a vital conflict, on European soil. It was absolutely vital to reassert its hegemony.

However, the US was confronted with a major difficulty, which emphasizes the fundamental weakness of their situation in Yugoslavia. Their recourse to successive changes in tactics, supporting Serbia in 1991, then Bosnia in 1992 and Croatia in 1994 (on condition that the latter collaborate with the Bosnian army), demonstrates that they do not dispose of any reliable allies in the region.

Behind the Croat offensive, joint action by the United States and Germany

In the first phase, the United States found itself obliged to move to center stage of the imperialist game by using the stronger partner, Croatia, and abandoning its previous ally, Bosnia. The White House used the Croat-Muslim federation, and the latter's confederation with Croatia which it had supervised in the spring of 1994. Their role, and the Pentagon's logistical support, was determinant in ensuring the success of the Croat army's "blitzkrieg" in Krajina (notably thanks to the localization by satellite of Serb positions). The United States moreover were alone in welcoming the success of the Croat offensive. The Croat offensive was thus planned in advance masterfully organized and directed by both the German and the American bourgeoisies. Paradoxically, the American ruling class has accepted a "pact with the devil", by allying Itself temporarily with its most dangerous imperialist adversary, Germany, and assisting the interests which are the most directly antagonistic to its own.

Germany has given powerful assistance to the formation of a real Croat army (100,000 men occupied the Krajina), and has given discreet but constant and effective support, in particular through the delivery of heavy weapons from me ex-DDR, via Hungary. The reconquest of the Krajina is an undoubted success and advance for Germany. First and foremost, it allows the German bourgeoisie to take a big step towards its main strategic objective: .access to the Dalmatian ports on the Adriatic coast, which would give it a deep-water outlet to the Mediterranean. The liberation of the Krajina, and especially of Knin, has opened up for Croatia and its old German ally a rail and road crossroads, linking north and south Dalmatia. Like Croatia, the German bourgeoisie was particularly interested in the elimination of the Serb threat to the Bihac pocket, which locked up the whole Dalmatian coast.

This strategy, by inflicting their first defeat on the Serbs[2], was fundamentally directed against the French and British. The RRF has been humiliated and has been made to appear still more useless, in that it was busy creating an unnecessary narrow access route towards Sarajevo, while the Croat bulldozer was demolishing the Serb defences in Krajina. Stuck on Mount Igman, in the pseudo-defense of Sarajevo, the RRF is for the moment discredited both internationally, and with the Serbs themselves, which can only benefit another rival: the Russians who have shown themselves to be the best and most reliable ally in the Serbs' eyes.

The anti-Serb bombings conceal a struggle between the US and the other imperialist powers

In the next stage, the American bourgeoisie's scenario recalls the Gulf War. The intensive NATO bombardment of exclusively Serb positions reasserted American supremacy, and was addressed still more directly to all the other great powers.

In particular, it was necessary to put an end to all the military stratagems[3] and diplomatic maneuvering between the Serbs and the Anglo-French couple.

In fact, in this second part of the operation, the USA acted on its own account, and forced all the other imperialisms to submit to its will. German aircraft took part for the first time in a N ATO action, but it was without enthusiasm. Confronted with the American Lone Ranger's fait accompli, the German bourgeoisie could only follow in an action which did not serve its own plans. Similarly, Russia, which has been the Serbs' main ally, despite noisy objections and gestures like the appeal to the UN Security Council, appeared impotent to confront the NATO bombings, and caught in a situation which had been imposed on it.

The USA has succeeded in marking an important point. They have managed to reassert their imperialist supremacy with a crushing display of military superiority. They have shown once again that the strength of their diplomacy is based on force of arms. They have shown that they are the only ones able to impose a real negotiation because they were able to weigh in the bargaining with the threat of their armed force, backed up by an impressive arsenal.

This situation confirms the fact that in the logic of imperialism, the only real force is to be found on the military terrain. The policeman can only intervene by hitting harder than any of the other powers are able to.

Nonetheless, this offensive has come up against a number of obstacles, and the NATO strike force is only a pale shadow of the Gulf War.

- The air raids' effectiveness can only be limited, and has allowed the Serbian troops to bury most of their artillery without suffering too much damage. In modern war, air power is a decisive weapon, but it cannot win a war by itself. Armor and infantry remain vital.

- American strategy is itself limited: the USA has no interest in wiping out Serbian forces and making total war on them, inasmuch as they intend to preserve Serbian military power, to turn it later against Croatia as part of the more fundamental rivalry with Germany. Moreover, all-out war against Serbia would run the risk of poisoning relations with Russia, and compromising the privileged alliance with the Yeltsin government.

These limitations encourage sabotage by the "allies" who have been forced to join in the American raids. Their maneuvers appeared barely four days after the Geneva agreement, which should have been the jewel in the crown of American diplomatic skill.

On the one hand, the French bourgeoisie returned to the fore of those demanding an end to the NATO bombing raids, "to let the Serbs evacuate their heavy weapons", whereas the US ultimatum demanded exactly the opposite: a stop to the bombing on condition that heavy weapons were withdrawn from around Sarajevo. On the other hand, when the US wanted to turn up the pressure on the Bosnian Serbs by bombing Karadzic's HQ in Pale, it was UNPROFOR that put a spanner in the works, by hesitating and opposing the bombardment of "civilian targets"[6].

The Geneva agreement signed by the belligerents on 8th September, under the aegis of the American bourgeoisie and in the presence of all the Contact Group members, is not in the least a ''first step towards peace" , contrary to the claims of the American diplomat Holbrooke. It merely sets the seal on a temporary balance of forces which in fact is a further step in the barbarism whose appalling cost is borne by the local population. They are the ones paying the price of the operation in new massacres.

Just as they did during the Gulf War, the media have the nerve to talk to us about a clean war, about "surgical strikes". What vile lies! It will need months or years just to lift a corner of the veil being drawn over the horror for the population of these new massacres by the "democratic" and "civilized" nations.

In the confrontation, each great power feeds its warmongering propaganda over ex-Yugoslavia. In Germany, virulent anti-Serb campaigns are organized over the atrocities committed by the Chetnik partisans. In France, the campaign has a variable geometry depending on the camp being supported for the moment: one day, no opportunity is missed to recall the role of the Croat Ustachis alongside the Nazi troops during World War II, another they talk about the bloodthirsty madness of the Bosnian Serbs, while on yet another the Islamic fanaticism of the Bosnian muslim comes under fire.

Capitalism's plunge into decomposition

The present situation has become a real detonator, which runs the risk of touching off a real explosion in the Balkans.

With NATO's intervention, never has there been such an impressive accumulation and concentration of instruments of death on Yugoslav soil.

The new perspective is for a new direct confrontation between the Serb and Croat armies, not just between rag-tag militias.

The continuing military operations by the Bosnian, Croat, and Serb armies has already proved that the Geneva agreement and its consequences have only sharpened the tensions between the belligerents, who all tend to turn the new situation to their own benefit:

- while NATO's massive and deadly bombardments are aimed at reducing the ambitions of the Serbian forces, the latter will try to resist the reverse they have suffered, and will contest still more bitterly the fate of the enclaves of Sarajevo and Gorazde, and of the Brcko corridor;

- the Croatian nationalists have been encouraged by their recent military success, and pushed by Germany they can only reassert their aim of reconquering the rich territory of Eastern Slavonia, on the border with Serbia;

- the Bosnian forces will do everything they can not to be left out of the "peace plan", and will continue their offensive in the north of Bosnia, around the region of Banja Luka.

The influx of all kinds of refugees creates a major risk of dragging into the conflict not just other regions, especially Macedonia and Kosovo, but also other European nations from Albania to Romania and Hungary.

The situation threatens to snowball and involve more closely the great European powers, including neighbors of major strategic importance like Turkey and Italy[7].

France and Britain, which have been forced for the moment to play second fiddle, can only make more attempts to put a spanner in the works of the other protagonists, especially the United States[8].

A new step has been taken in the escalation of barbarism. Far from moving towards a settlement of the conflict, ex-Yugoslavia is heading for ever bloodier and more violent disorder, thanks to the "muscular" action of the great powers. All these elements confirm the preponderance and acceleration of "every man for himself", at work since the dissolution of the imperialist blocs, and at the same time they express an acceleration of the imperialist dynamic into military adventure.

The proliferation of all these military efforts is the pure product of capitalism's decomposition, like the metastases of a generalized cancer, gangrening society's weakest organs first, where the proletariat does not have the ability to oppose the most abject and hysterical nationalism. The bourgeoisie of the advanced countries is hoping to profit from the Yugoslav imbroglio, and from the humanitarian robes in which it cloaks its activity, to build an atmosphere of national unity. For the working class, it must be clear that it has no choice to make here, nor can it let itself by drawn onto this rotten terrain.

CB, 14th September 95

[1] See International Review, no.82, 3rd Quarter 1995, the article "The more the great powers talk of peace, the more they stir up war".

[2] Milosevic preferred to let the Croatian army take the Krajina without resistance, in order to try to bargain with the USA for the Gorazde enclave, and above all for the removal of economic sanctions against Serbia.

[3] Apart from the simulated "kidnapping" of UN soldiers and observers - an operation set up in June by France and Britain together with Serbia - the French bombing of the Serb capital Pale in July should be seen as a fake reprisal to mask the real action of the RRF, since we know that the bombardment was not directed against any strategic target, and caused no inconvenience to Serbia's military operations. On the contrary, it provided a pretext for the Serbian coup against the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves.

[4] The French and British appeared alongside Milosevic to try to exploit the divisions within the Bosnian Serb camp. Their open support for general Mladic against "president" Karadzic, and the pressure they put on the latter, was designed to show him that the real enemies of Serbia were no longer the Bosnians, but the Croats.

[5] It is instructive that it was a British paper - The Times - which revealed the existence of the famous Tudjman drawing dividing Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia, provoking fury in the Bosnian camp.

[6] As Le Monde put it on 14th September, with delicate euphemism: "The UN forces, essentially made up of French troops, have the impression that day after day, they are losing control over operations to NATO's benefit. True, the Atlantic Alliance is conducting air raids on targets jointly designated with the UN. But operational details are planned in the NATO bases in Italy and in the Pentagon. Last Sunday's use of Tomahawk missiles against Serb installations in Banja Luka [without any prior consultation with the UN or with any of the other governments associated in the raids. ed. note] has only strengthened these fears".

[7] It is particularly significant to see Italy demanding a greater share in the management of the Bosnian conflict, and refusing to host American F-117 stealth bombers in the NATO bases on its territory, to protest at being left out of the Contact Group and of NATO's deciding bodies.

[8] In the first place, to be capable of answering the American offensive at the necessary level, to avoid being thrown out of the region, the Franco-British couple can only be pushed further into the conflict, by reinforcing their military commitment.

IR 83, 4th Quarter 1995

100 years ago...

Friedrich Engels: A Great ‘Builder of Socialism’

"Friedrich Engels died in London on 5th August 1895. After the death of his friend Karl Marx (in 1883) (...) Marx and Engels were the first to show that the working class and its demands are the necessary product of the present economic system, which inevitably creates and organises the proletariat at the same time as the bourgeoisie; they showed that humanity will not be delivered from the ills which weigh on it today, by the well-intentioned efforts of generous hearted men, but by the class struggle of the organised proletariat. Marx and Engels were the first to explain, in their scientific works, that socialism is not a chimera, but the final and necessary result of the development of the productive forces of today's society".

With these lines, written a month after the death of Marx's companion, Lenin began a short biography of one of the best militants of the communist struggle.

An exemplary militant life

Born at Barmen in 1820, in what was then the Rhenish province of Prussia, Engels was an example of a militant devoted all his life to the struggle of the working class. He came from a family of industrialists, and could have lived in wealth and comfort without paying any attention to the political struggle. But like Marx, and many other young students revolted by the misery of the world in which they lived, while still young he acquired an exceptional political maturity, in contact with the workers' struggle in Britain, France, and then Germany. It was inevitable that the proletariat should attract a certain number of intellectual elements to its ranks, in this period when it was forming itself as a class, and developing its political struggle.

Engels was always modest about his individual trajectory, pointing out the important contribution of his friend Marx. Nonetheless, at the age of only 25, he acted as a forerunner. In England, he witnessed the catastrophic march of industrialisation and pauperism. He perceived both the promise and the weaknesses of the workers' movement in its beginnings (Chartism). He became aware that the "enigma of history" lay in this despised and unknown proletariat, he went to workers' meetings in Manchester where he saw them attacking Christianity, and laying claim to their right to control their own future.

In 1844, Engels wrote an article for the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (a review published in Paris by Arnold Ruge, a young democrat, and Marx, who at the time still stood on the terrain of the struggle for democracy against Prussian absolutism), a "Contribution to the critique of political economy". It was this text which opened Marx's eyes to the fundamental nature of the capitalist economy. His work on The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in 1845, was to become a reference book for a whole generation of revolutionaries. As Lenin wrote, Engels was thus the first to declare that the proletariat is "not only" a class that suffers, but that the shameful economic situation in which it suffers pushes it irresistibly forwards, and forces it to struggle for its final emancipation. Two years later, it was also Engels who drew up "The Principles of Communism", in the form of a questionnaire, which was to serve as a preliminary sketch for the composition of the world-famous Communist Manifesto, signed jointly by Marx and Engels.

In fact, most of Marx' and Engels' immense contribution to the workers' movement was the fruit of their mutual collaboration. They first really got to know each other in Paris during the summer of 1844. Henceforth, there began a joint work, which lasted all their lives, a rare mutual confidence which was based not just on an exceptional friendship, but on a shared conviction in the historic role of the proletariat and a constant struggle for the party spirit, to win over more and more elements to the revolutionary combat.

From the time they met, Marx and Engels together quickly went beyond their philosophical visions of the world, to devote themselves to this unprecedented historical event: the development of an exploited class, the proletariat, which was also a revolutionary class. A class all the more revolutionary in that it could acquire a clear "class consciousness", rid of the prejudices and self-mystifications that weighed on past revolutionary classes like the bourgeoisie. This common reflection produced two books: The Holy Family, published in 1844, and The German Ideology, which was written between 1844 and 1846 bit only published in the 20th century. In these books, Marx and Engels settled accounts with the philosophical conceptions of the "young Hegelians", their first comrades in struggle who had proved incapable of going beyond a bourgeois, or petty bourgeois vision of the world. At the same time, they set out a materialist and dialectical vision of history, which broke both with idealism (which considers that "the world is governed by ideas"), but also with vulgar materialism, which recognises no active role for consciousness. Marx and Engels considered that "when theory takes hold of the masses, then it becomes a material force". And the two friends, utterly convinced of this unity between being and consciousness, were never to separate the proletariat's theoretical from its practical combat, nor their own participation from either.

Contrary to the image which has often been given by the bourgeoisie, neither Marx nor Engels were ever "savants in an ivory tower", cut off from reality and the practical struggle. The Manifesto which they wrote in 1847 was in fact called the Manifesto of the Communist Party, and was to serve as the programme of the Communist League, an organisation which was preparing for the struggle that was brewing. In 1848, a series of bourgeois revolutions broke out across the European continent. Marx and Engels took part actively, in order to contribute to the emergence of conditions which would allow the political and economic development of the proletariat. Returning to Germany, they published a daily - the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which became an instrument of the struggle. More concretely still, Engels joined the revolutionary troops fighting in the state of Baden.

After the defeat of this European revolutionary wave, both Marx and Engels were pursued by the all police of Europe for their participation in the struggle, which forced them into exile in Britain. Marx settled for good in London, while Engels worked until 1870 in the family business in Manchester. Exile did not for a moment put an end to their participation in the class struggle. They continued their activity in the Communist League until 1852, when they announced its dissolution to prevent it degenerating as a result of the reflux in struggle.

In 1864, in the midst of an international recovery in workers' struggles, they took an active part in the formation of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA). Marx became a member of the IWA's General Council, to be joined in 1870 by Engels when he managed to escape from his job in Manchester. It was a crucial moment in the life of the IWA, and the two friends took part side by side in the struggles of the International: the Paris Commune of 1871, the solidarity with its refugees (on the General Council, it was Engels organised the material assistance given to the Communards who emigrated to London), and above all the defence of the IWA against the activities of Bakunin's Alliance for Socialist Democracy. In September 1872, Marx and Engels were present at the Hague Congress which blocked the way against the Alliance, and it was Engels who wrote most of the report, which the Congress had entrusted to the General Council, on the Bakuninists' intrigues.

The destruction of the Commune dealt a brutal blow to the European proletariat, and the IWA - the "old International" as Marx and Engels called it thereafter - died in 1876. Nonetheless, the two comrades did not retire from the political strugle. They followed closely the formation and development of socialist parties in most European countries, and Engels continued to do so energetically after Marx' death in 1883. They paid special attention to the movement developing in Germany, and which became a beacon for the international proletariat. They intervened against all the confusions that weighed on the party, as can be seen from the Critique of the Gotha Programme (written by Marx in 1875), and the Critique of the Erfurt Programme (by Engels in 1891).

Engels, like Marx, was thus above all a militant of the proletariat, and an active participant in its struggle.

At the end of his life, Engels confided that nothing in it had been so exciting as the struggle for militant propaganda, and he spoke especially of the pleasure of taking part in an illegal daily publication: the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1848, and then the Sozialdemokrat during the 1880s, when the party was subjected to the rigours of Bismarck's anti-socialist laws.

The collaboration between Marx and Engels was particularly fruitful. Even when they were separated, or when their organisations were dissolved, they continued to struggle, with comrades faithful like them to the vital work of the fraction during periods of reflux, keeping alive the minority's activity through a mass of correspondance.

It is thanks to this collaboration that we now have the major theoretical works of both Marx and Engels. Those written by Engels were in large part the result of his permanent exchange of ideas with Marx. This is the case with the Anti-Dhring (which was published in 1878, and proved an essential instrument in training socialist militants in Germany), and with Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), which sets forward with great precision the communist conception of the state that later revolutionaries were to take as a foundation (notably Lenin in State and Revolution). Even Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy, published after Marx' death, could not have been written without the two friends' joint reflection ever since their youth.

Likewise, without Engels' contribution Marx' great work Capital would never have seen the light of day. As we have seen, it was Engels in 1844 who first showed Marx the need to deal with the critique of political economy. Thereafter, every step forward, every hypothesis contained in Capital was the object of long correspondance: Engels, for example, was able to provide first hand information on the functioning of a capitalist enterprise in which he was directly involved. Engels' permanent encouragement and advice played a large part in getting the book's first part published in 1867. Finally, after Marx's death, it was Engels who worked to bring together a vast mass of rough notes for publication as books 2 and 3 of Capital (published in 1885 and 1894).

Engels' and the IInd International

Although Engels never claimed to be anything but second fiddle, he nonetheless left the proletariat a profound and very readable theoretical work. But also, and above all after Marx' death he made it possible for the "party spirit", a continuity of organisational principles and experience, to be transmitted right up to the IIIrd International.

Engels took part in the foundation of the Communist League in 1847, and then of the IWA in 1864. After the dissolution of the Ist International, Engels played an important part in maintaining its principles during the constitution of the IInd International to which he gave untiring and critical advice. He had considered the Internationa;'s foundation premature, but to combat the reappearance of intriguers like Lassalle, or the resurgence of anarchistic opportunism, he threw all his weight in the balance to defeat opportunism at the international founding congress in Paris in 1889. In fact, until the day he died Engels did his utmost to struggle against the opportunism which was raising its head again especially in the German social-democracy, against the influence of petty-bourgeois spinelessness, against the anarchist element which threatened to destroy all organisational life, and against the reformist wing, increasingly seduced by the siren song of bourgeois democracy.

At the end of the last century, the bourgeoisie tolerated the development of universal suffrage in Germany in particular, and the number of socialist deputies gave an impression of strength within the legal framework, to the opportunist and reformist elements within the party. Bourgeois historiography and the enemies of Marxism have used Engels' - partly justified - declarations against the outdated "barricade mentality" to give the impression that the old militant had also become a pacifist reformist [1] [3]. In particular, in 1895, his preface to Marx' texts on The class struggles in France has been used to show that Engels thought that the time for revolution was passed. It is true that this introduction contained formulations that were incorrect [2] [4], but the published text had precious little to do with the original. In fact, it was first cut by Kautsky to avoid legal problems, then expurgated by Wilhelm Liebknecht. Engels wrote to Kautsky to express his indignation at finding in Vorw„rts an extract of his introduction which made him "seem like a partisan of legality at all costs" (1st April, 1895). Two days later, he complained to Lafargue: "Liebknecht has just played my a fine trick. He has taken from my introduction to Marx's articles on Frnace 1848-50, everything that could serve to support his tactic of peace and non-violence at all costs, which it has pleased him to preach for a while now".

Despite Engels' many warnings, the IInd International's domination by the opportunism of Bernstein, Kautsky and Co was to lead to its breakup in 1914, in the storm of social-chauvinism. But this International was still an arena of revolutionary combat, contrary to the denials of our modern storytellers of the GCI variety [3] [5]. Its political gains, the internationalism asserted at its congresses (in particular at Stuttgart in 1907 and Basle in 1912), and its organisational principles (defence of centralisation, combat against intrigues and young climbers etc) were not lost for the left wing of Engels' International, since Lenin, Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Bordiga, amongst many others, were to raise anew the revolutionary standard that the old fighter had so fiercely defended to the end of his days.

Marx's daughter, Eleanor, paid a deserved homage to Engels the man and the militant: "There is only one thing that Engels never forgives: falseness. A man who is untrue to him, or worse still untrue to the party, can look for no pity from Engels. For him, these are unforgivable sins. Engels does not know any other sins... Engels, who is the most precise man in the world, who more than anyone has a lively sense of duty and above all discipline towards the party, is not in the least a puritan. Nobody has his ability to understand everything, and yet nobody forgives so easily our little weaknesses". As she wrote these lines, Eleanor did not know that Engels was dying. The socialist press of the day, when it published this letter, saluted the memory of the great man: "A man has died, who stayed in the background, when he could have been in the limelight. The idea, his idea, is upright, and alive everywhere, more alive than ever, defying all attacks, thanks to the weapons which, with Marx, he helped to arm it. We will no longer hear this valiant blacksmith's hammer ring on the anvil; the good workman has fallen; the hammer has dropped from his powerful hands to the ground, and will perhaps remain there a long time; but the weapons he forged are still there, solid and bright. Not many will be able to forge new ones, but what we can and must do, is not to let rust those he has left us; on this condition, there will win for us the victory for which they were made".

Mederic

With the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bourgeoisie has plumbed new depths of cynicism and mendacity. For this high point of barbarity was executed, not by some dictator or bloodcrazed madman, but by the very "virtuous" American democracy. To justify the monstrous crime, the whole world bourgeoisie has shamelessly repeated the lie peddled at the time that the atomic bomb was only used to shorten and limit the suffering caused by the continuation of the war with Japan. The American bourgeoisie even proposed to issue an anniversary stamp, inscribed: "atomic bombs accelerated the end of the war. August 1945". Even if this anniversary was a further opportunity to mark the growing opposition in Japan towards the US ex-godfather, the Japanese Prime Minister nonetheless made his own precious contribution to the lie about the necessity of the bomb, by presenting for the first time Japan's apologies for its crimes committed during World War II. Victors and vanquished thus came together to develop this disgusting campaign aimed at justifying one of history's greatest crimes.

The justification for Hiroshima and Nagasaki: a gross falsehood

In total, the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 claimed 522,000 victims. Many cancers of the lung and thyroid only became apparent during the 50s and 60s, and even today the effects of radiation still claim victims: cases of leukemia are ten times more frequent in Hiroshima than in the rest of Japan.

If we examine Japan's military situation when Germany capitulated, it is clear that the country was already completely defeated. Its air force, that vital weapon of World War II, had been reduced to a handful of aircraft, generally piloted by adolescents whose fanaticism was only matched by their inexperience. Both the navy and the merchant marine had been virtually wiped out. The anti-aircraft defences were so full of holes, that the US B29s were able to carry out thousands of raids throughout the spring of 1945, almost without losses. Churchill himself points this out in Volume 12 of his war memoirs.

A 1945 study by the US secret service, published by the New York Times in 1989, revealed that: "Realizing that the country was defeated, the Japanese emperor had decided by 20th June 1945, to end all hostilities and to start negotiations from 11th July onwards, with a view to bringing hostilities to an end" (Le Monde Diplomatique August 1990).

Truman was perfectly well aware of the situation. Nonetheless, once he was told of the success of the first experimental atomic test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945[1], he decided in the middle of the Potsdam Conference between himself, Churchill, and Stalin[2], to use the atomic weapon against Japanese towns. This decision had nothing to do with a desire to hasten the end of the war with Japan, as is testified by a conversation between Leo Szilard, one of the fathers of the bomb, and the US Secretary of State for War, J. Byrnes. When Szilard expressed concern at the dangers of using the atomic weapon, Byrnes replied that "he did not claim that it was necessary to use the bomb to win the war. His idea was that the possession and use of the bomb would make Russia more controllable" (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990).

And if any further argument were necessary, let us leave some of the most important US military leaders to speak for themselves. For Chief of General Staff Admiral Leahy, "The Japanese were already beaten and ready to capitulate. The use of this barbaric weapon made no material contribution to our fight against Japan" (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990). This opinion was also shared by Eisenhower.

The idea that the atomic bomb was used to force Japan to capitulate, and to stop the slaughter, has nothing to do with reality. It is a lie which has been constructed to meet the needs of the bourgeoisie's war propaganda, one of the greatest achievements of the massive brain-washing campaign needed to justify the greatest massacre in world history: the 1939/45 war.

We should emphasize that, whatever the hesitations or short-term view of certain members of the ruling class, faced with this terrifying weapon, Truman's decision was anything but that of a madman, or an isolated individual. On the contrary, it expressed the implacable logic of all imperialisms: death and destruction for humanity, so that one class, the bourgeoisie, should survive despite the historic crisis of its system of exploitation, and its own irreversible decadence.

The real objective of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs

Contrary to all the lies that have been peddled since 1945, about the supposed victory of a democracy synonymous with peace, World War II was barely over when the new front line of imperialist confrontation was being drawn. Just as the Treaty of Versailles contained inevitably within itself the seeds of another war, so Yalta already contained the split between the main victor of 1945, the USA, and its Russian challenger. Thanks to World War II, Russia had risen from being a minor economic power to a world ranking imperialism, which could not but threaten the American superpower. In spring 1945, the USSR was already using its military strength to carve out a bloc in Eastern Europe. Yalta did nothing but sanction the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist sharks. What one balance of forces could set up, another could undo. In the summer of 1945, the real problem facing the American state was thus not, as the schoolbooks tell us, how to make Japan capitulate as soon as possible, but how to confront and contain the imperialist drive of its "great Russian ally".

Winston Churchill, the real leader on the Allied side of World War II, was quick to understand that a new front was opening, and constantly to exhort the Americans to face up to it. He wrote in his memoirs: "The closer a war conducted by a coalition comes to its end, the more importance is taken by the political aspects. Above all, in Washington they should have seen further and wider (...) The destruction of Germany's military power had provoked a radical transformation of the relationship between Communist Russia and the Western democracies. They had lost that common enemy which was practically the only thing uniting them". He concluded that "Soviet Russia had become a mortal danger for the free world, that it was necessary without delay to create a new front to stop its forward march, and that this front should be as far East as possible" (Memoirs, Vol 12, May 1945). Nothing could be clearer. Churchill analyzed, very lucidly, the fact that a new war was already beginning while World War II had not yet come to an end.

In the spring of 1945, Churchill was already doing everything he could to oppose the advance of Russian armies into Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, etc). Doggedly, he sought to bring the new American president Truman around to his own opinion. The latter, after some hesitations[3] completely accepted Churchill's thesis that "the Soviet threat had already replaced the Nazi enemy" (Memoirs, Vol 12, May 1945).

It is not difficult to understand the complete and unanimous support that the Churchill government gave to Truman's decision to begin the atomic bombardment of Japanese cities. On 22nd July, 1945, Churchill wrote: "[with the bomb] we now have something in hand which will re-establish the equilibrium with the Russians. The secret of this explosive and the ability to use it will completely transform the diplomatic equilibrium, which had been adrift since the defeat of Germany". That this should cause the deaths, in atrocious suffering, of hundreds of thousands of human beings, left this "defender of the free world" and "savior of democracy" cold. When he heard the news of the Hiroshima explosion, he jumped for joy, and Lord Allenbrooke, one of Churchill's advisers, even wrote: "Churchill was enthusiastic, and already saw himself with the ability to eliminate all Russia's industrial major population centers" (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990). This is what was in the mind of this great defender of civilization and irreplaceable humanist values, at the end of five years of carnage that had left 50 million dead!

The nuclear holocaust which broke over Japan in August 1945, this terrifying expression of war's absolute barbarity in capitalist decadence, was thus not designed by the "clean" American democracy to limit the suffering caused by a continuation of the war with Japan, any more than it met a direct military need. Its real aim was to send a message of terror to the USSR, to force the latter to restrain its imperialist ambitions, and accept the conditions of the pax americana. To give the message greater strength, the American state dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, a town of minor importance at the military level, which wiped out the main working class district. This was also why Truman refused the suggestion of some of his advisers, that the explosion of a nuclear weapon over a sparsely populated region would be amply sufficient to force Japan to capitulate. No, in the murderous logic of imperialism, two cities had to be vitrified to intimidate Stalin, and to restrain the one-time Soviet ally's imperialist ambitions.

The lessons of these terrible events

What lessons should the working class draw from this terrible tragedy, and its revolting use by the bourgeoisie?

In the first place, there is nothing inevitable about the unleashing of capitalist barbarism. The scientific organization of such carnage was only possible because the proletariat had been beaten worldwide by the most terrible and implacable counter-revolution of its entire history. Broken by the stalinist and fascist terror, completely confused by the enormous lie identifying stalinism with communism, the working class allowed itself to be caught in the deadly trap of the defense of democracy, with the stalinists' active and indispensable complicity. This reduced it to a great mass of cannon-fodder completely at the mercy of the bourgeoisie. Today, whatever the proletariat's difficulty in deepening its struggle, the situation is quite different. In the great proletarian concentrations, this is not a time of union with the exploiters, but of the expansion and deepening of the class struggle.

Contrary to the bourgeoisie's endlessly repeated lie, which presents the 1939-45 imperialist war as one between the fascist and democratic "systems", the war's 50 million dead were victims of the capitalist system as a whole. Barbarity, crimes against humanity, were not the acts of fascism alone. Our famous "Allies", those self-proclaimed "defenders of civilization" gathered under the banner of "democracy", have hands as red with blood as do the Axis powers. The nuclear storm unleashed in August 1945 was particularly atrocious, but it was only one of many crimes perpetrated throughout the war by these "white knights of democracy"[4].

The horror of Hiroshima also opened a new period in capitalism's plunge into decadence. Henceforth, permanent war became capitalism's daily way of life. The Treaty of Versailles heralded the next world war; the bomb dropped on Hiroshima marked the real beginning of the "Cold War" between the USA and USSR, which was to spread bloodshed over the four comers of the earth for more than forty years. This is why, unlike the years after 1918, those that followed, 1945 saw no disarmament, but on the contrary a huge growth in arms spending amongst all the victors of the conflict (the USSR already had the atomic bomb in 1949). Within this framework, the entire economy, under the direction of state capitalism in its various forms, was run in the service of war. Also unlike the period at the end of World War I, state capitalism everywhere strengthened its totalitarian grip on the whole of society. Only the state could mobilize the gigantic resources necessary, in particular for the development of a nuclear arsenal. The Manhattan Project was thus only the first in a long and sinister series, leading to the most gigantic and insane arms race in history.

Far from heralding an era of peace, 1945 opened a period of barbarity, made still worse by the constant threat of nuclear vitrification of the entire planet. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki still haunt humanity's memory today, it is because they are such tragic symbols of how directly decadent capitalism threatens the very survival of the human species.

This terrible Damoclean sword, hanging over humanity's head, thus confers an enormous responsibility on the proletariat, the only force capable of real opposition to capitalism's military barbarity. Although the threat has temporarily retreated with the collapse of the Russian and American blocs, the responsibility is still there, and the proletariat cannot let its guard drop for an instant. Indeed, war has never been so evident as it is today, from Africa, to the territories of the ex-USSR, to the bloody conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, which has brought war to Europe for the first time since 1945[5].

And we need only look at the bourgeoisie's determination to justify the bombs of August 45, to understand that when Clinton declares" if we had to do it again, we would" (Liberation, 11th April1995), he is only expressing the opinion of all his class. Behind the hypocritical speeches about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, each state is doing everything it can either to obtain just such an arsenal, or to perfect its existing one. The research aimed at miniaturizing nuclear weapons, and so making their use easier and more commonplace, is accelerating. As Liberation put it: "The studies by Western general staffs based on the response "of the strong man to the madman" are reviving the idea of a limited, tactical use of nuclear weapons. After Hiroshima, their use became taboo. After the Cold War, the taboo has become uncertain" (5th August, 1995).

The horror of nuclear warfare is not something that belongs to a distant past. Quite the contrary: it is the future that decomposing capitalism has in store for humanity. If the proletariat lets it happens. Decomposition does not stop or diminish the omnipresence of war. The chaos and the law of "every man for himself" only makes its danger still more uncontrollable. The great imperialist powers are already stirring chaos to defend their own sordid interests, and we can be certain that if the working class fails to halt their criminal activity, they will not hesitate to use all the weapons at their disposal, from the fuel-air bombs used so extensively in the Gulf War, to nuclear and chemical weapons. Capitalist decomposition has only one perspective to offer: the destruction, bit by bit, of the planet and its inhabitants. The proletariat must not give an inch, either to the siren calls of pacifism, or to the defense of the democracy, in whose name the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated. On the contrary, it must remain firmly on its class terrain: the struggle against this system of death and destruction, capitalism.

Julien, 24/8/95

[1] To develop the atomic bomb, the US state mobilized all the resources of science and put them at the military's disposal. Two billion dollars were devoted to the Manhattan Project, set up by that great humanist Roosevelt. Every university in the country joined in. Directly or indirectly, all the greatest physicists from Einstein to Oppenheimer were involved, including six Nobel prizewinners. This gigantic mobilization of every scientific resource for war expresses a general characteristic of decadent capitalism. State capitalism, whether openly totalitarian or draped in the democratic flag, colonizes and militarizes the whole of science. Under the reign of capitalism, science lives and develops through and for war. This reality has not ceased to get worse since 1945.

[2] The essential aim of this conference, especially for Churchill who was its main instigator, was to make it clear to Stalin's USSR that it should restrain its imperialist ambitions, and that there were limits which should not be passed.

- an experience which the British bourgeoisie possessed in abundance. But it was also the expression of not particularly friendly feelings towards its British ally. The fact that Britain emerged seriously weakened from the war, and that its positions in Europe were threatened by the Russian bear, could only make her more docile in the face of the diktats which Uncle Sam was going to impose, without delay, even on its closest "friends". It is another example of the "frank and harmonious" relationships that reign among the imperialist sharks.

[4] See International Review no. 66, "Crimes of the great democracies".

[5] Immediately after 1945, the bourgeoisie presented the "Cold War" as a war between two different systems: democracy against communist totalitarianism. With this lie, it continued to confuse the working class, at the same time hiding the classical and sordid imperialist nature of the one-time "allies". a sense, they managed to pull off the same coup in 1989, proclaiming that peace would reign at last with the fall of "communism", From the Gulf to Yugoslavia, we have seen since then just what the promises of Bush, Gorbachev and Co were worth.

In the International Review No. 82, and in our territorial press in 12 countries, the ICC published articles on its 11th Congress. These articles informed the revolutionary milieu and the working class about the political struggle which has taken place in the ICC recently for the establishment of a really marxist functioning at all levels of our organizational life. At the center of this combat was the overcoming of what Lenin called the "circle spirit". This required in particular the liquidation of informal groupings based on personal loyalties and petty bourgeois individualism, what Rosa Luxemburg referred to as "tribes" or "clans".

The articles we published placed the present combat in continuity with that waged by the Marxists against the Bakuninists in the 1st International, by the Bolsheviks against Menshevism in the Russian party, but also by the ICC throughout its history. In particular, we affirmed the petty bourgeois anti-organizational basis of the different splits which have taken place in the history of the ICC, which were neither motivated nor justified by political divergences. They were the result of non-marxist, non-proletarian organizational behavior, of what Lenin called the anarchism of the intelligentsia and the literary bohemian.

A problem of the whole milieu

We did not report in our press on our internal debate out of exhibitionism, but because we are convinced that the problems we are confronting are not at all specific to the ICC. We are convinced that the ICC would not have been able to survive without the radical stamping out of the anarchism in organizational matters in our ranks. We see the same danger threatening the revolutionary milieu as a whole. The weight of the ideas and behavior of the petty bourgeoisie, its resistance to organizational discipline and collective principles, has affected all groups to a greater or lesser extent. The break in organic continuity with revolutionary organizations of the past through 50 years of counter revolution, the interruption of the living process of the passing on of priceless organizational experience from one generation of marxists to the next, has made the new generation of proletarian militants after 1968 particularly vulnerable to the inf1uence of the petty bourgeoisie in revolt (student and protest movements, etc).

Thus, our present struggle is not the internal affair of the ICC. The Congress articles are aimed at the defense of the entire proletarian milieu. They constitute an appeal to all serious marxist groupings to clarify on the proletarian concept of functioning, and to make known the lesson of their struggle with petty bourgeois disorganization. The revolutionary milieu as a whole needs to be much more vigilant towards the intrusion of modes of behavior foreign to the proletariat. It needs to consciously and openly organize its own defense.

The attack of parasitism against the revolutionary camp

"Salem or Waco would have been an appropriate venue for this particular congress. While it is tempting to lampoon or ridicule the monstrous proceedings of this congress-cum-kangaroo court, where, inter alia, Bakunin and Lassalle were denounced as "not necessarily" police spies and Martov characterized as an "anarchist ", the overwhelming emotion is of great sadness that a once so dynamic and positive organization should be reduced to this sorry state".

"In the best Stalinist tradition the ICC then proceeds to rewrite its history (just as it did after the 1985 split) to show that every major difference (...) has been caused not by militants with different opinions of a question but by the intrusion of alien ideologies into the body of the ICC".

"What the ICC cannot grasp is that it is their own monolithic practice that is the problem here. What happened at the 11th congress was surely simply the bureaucratic triumph of one clan over another, a jostling for control of the Central Organs, something that was widely predicted after the death of their founder member MC".

For the CBG, what took place at the ICC Congress must have been "two or more days of psychological battering. Readers who have any knowledge of the brainwashing techniques of religious sects will understand this process. Those who have read of the mental tortures inflicted on those who confessed to impossible "crimes" at the Moscow Show Trials will, likewise, suss what went on".

And here, the CBG quotes itself from 1982, after its members left the ICC:

"For every militant there will always be the question: How far can I go in this discussion before I am condemned as an alien force, a menace, a petty bourgeois? How far can I go before I am regarded with suspicion? How far before I am a police spy?".

These quotations speak for themselves.

They reveal better than anything else the true nature, not of the ICC but of the "CBG". Their message is clear: revolutionary organizations are like the mafia. "Power struggles" take place exactly as within the bourgeoisie.

It is not only the whole present day revolutionary milieu which is being attacked here. It is the entire history and all the traditions of the workers' movement which are being abused.

In reality, the lies and slanders of the CBG are perfectly in line with the campaign of the world bourgeoisie about the alleged death of communism and of marxism. At the center of this propaganda is the greatest lie in history: that the organizational rigor of Lenin and the Bolsheviks necessarily led to Stalinism. In the CBG's version of this propaganda, it is the Bolshevism of the ICC which "necessarily" leads to its alleged" Stalinism". Evidently, the CBG neither knows what the revolutionary milieu is, nor does it know what Stalinism is about.

What has provoked the petty bourgeois frenzy of the CBG is once again the resolute, unmistakable manner with which the ICC has affirmed its allegiance to the organizational approach of Lenin. We can assure all the parasitic elements: the more the bourgeoisie attacks the history of our class, the more proudly we will affirm our allegiance to Bolshevism.

By pouring garbage upon the proletarian vanguard, the CBG has demonstrated once again that it is not a part of the revolutionary milieu, but its opponent. The fact that the ICC has waged the most important organizational struggle in its history, does not interest it in the least.

In itself, there is nothing new in the fact that those revolutionaries who defend organizational rigor against the petty bourgeoisie are attacked, even denigrated. Marx became the object of a whole bourgeois campaign because of his resistance to Bakunin's Alliance. Lenin was personally insulted because of his stand against the Mensheviks in 1903: not only by the reformists and open opportunists, but even by comrades such as Trotsky. But nobody within the workers movement, not Trotsky and not even the reformists ever spoke of Marx or Lenin's struggle in the terms employed by the CBG. The difference is that the "polemic" of the CBG is clearly aimed at the destruction of the revolutionary milieu - not just the ICC.

The nature of parasitism

We will have to disappoint the CBG, who claim that the ICC deals with those who disagree with it by labeling them as police spies. Although the CBG "disagrees" with us, we consider them to be neither spies nor a bourgeois organization. People like the CBG do not have a bourgeois political platform. Programmatically, they even adhere to certain proletarian positions. They are against trade unions and support for "national liberation" struggles.

cease existence! But it is clear that in fact the real reason for publication was to attack the ICC Congress! Significantly, the number 16 does not attack the bourgeoisie; there is no defense of proletarian internationalism in face of the Balkan War, for instance. This is in line with the other 15 issues which were also mainly devoted to slandering proletarian groups. And we feel sure that despite their announced dissolution they will continue to do so. In fact the abandonment of the formal pretense of being a political group will allow them to concentrate even more exclusively on the "work" of denigrating the marxist camp.

The existence of groups which, while being neither mandated nor paid by the bourgeoisie, nevertheless voluntarily do part of the job of the ruling class, is a highly significant phenomenon. In the marxist movement we call such people parasites, bloodsuckers living on the backs of the revolutionary forces. They do not attack the marxist camp out of allegiance to capital, but out of a blind and impotent hatred for the mode of life of the working class, the collective and impersonal nature of its struggle. Such petty bourgeois and declassed elements are motivated by a spirit of vengeance towards a political movement which cannot afford to make concessions to their individualist needs, to their cravings for self-presentation, flattery and pompousness.

The trajectory of the "CBG"

In order to grasp the nature of this parasitism (which is not new in the workers movement), it is necessary to study its origins and development. The CBG can serve as a typical example. Its origins lie in the circle phase of the new generation of revolutionaries developing after 1968, giving rise to a small group of militants linked by a mixture of political and personal loyalties. The informal group in question broke with the Communist Workers Organization (CWO) and moved towards the ICC towards the end of the 1970s. In the discussions at that time we criticized the fact that they wanted to enter the ICC "as a group" rather than individually. This posed the danger that they might form an organization within the organization on a non-political, affinitary basis thus menacing proletarian organizational unity. We also condemned the fact that, on leaving the CWO, they had taken part of its material with them - a breach of revolutionary principles.

Inside the ICC, the group tried to maintain its informal separate identity, despite the fact that the pressure within an international centralized organization to submit each of its parts to the whole must have been much greater than within the CWO. However, the "autonomy" of the "friends" who later formed the CBG could survive due to the fact that within the ICC other such groupings, the leftovers of the circles out of which the ICC was formed, continued to exist. This was particularly the case for our British section, World Revolution, which the ex-CWO members joined, and which was divided through the existence of two already existing "clans". These clans quickly became the main obstacle to the application in practice of the statutes of the ICC in all of its parts.

When the ICC, around this time was infiltrated by an agent of the state, Chenier, a member of Mitterrand's French Socialist Party, who rejoined this party after his expulsion from the ICC, the British section thus became the main target of his manipulations. As a result of these manipulations, and with the uncovering of the agent Chenier by the organization, half of our British section left the ICC. None of them were expelled, contrary to the assertions of the CBG.

The ex-CWO elements, who also left at this moment, then formed the "CBG".

We can draw the following lessons:

- although they had no particular political positions distinguishing them from others, basically the same clique entered and left both the CWO and the ICC before becoming the "CBG". This reveals the unwillingness and incapacity of these people to integrate themselves into the workers' movement, to surrender their petty group identity to something greater than themselves.

- although they claim to have been expelled from the ICC, or that they could not remain within it because of its "inability to debate", in reality these people ran away from the political debates taking place in the organization. In the name of "fighting sectarianism" they turned their backs on the two most important communist organizations existing in Britain, the CWO and the ICC - despite the absence of any major political divergence. This is the way in which they "struggle against sectarianism".

The milieu should not be deceived by the empty phrases about "monolithism" and the ICC's supposed "fear of debate". The ICC stands in the tradition of the Italian Left, of Bilan which during the Spanish Civil War even refused to expel or split with the minority openly calling for participation in imperialist war - since political clarification must always precede any political separation.

- what the CBG objected to in the ICC was its rigorous proletarian method of debate, via polemic and polarization, where a spade is called a spade, and a petty bourgeois or opportunist stance is called by name. An atmosphere hardly congenial for circles and clans with their double language and false diplomacy, their personal loyalties and disloyalties. And certainly one which did not please the petty bourgeois cowards who ran away from political confrontation and withdrew from the life of the class.

- graver still, and for the second time, the future CBG participated in the theft of the material of the organization it was leaving. They justified this with the vision of the Marxist party as a stockholders company: whoever invests their time in the ICC has the right to take their share of its resources with them when they leave. Moreover they allowed themselves to determine what "share" they would entitle themselves to. It should go without saying that if such methods were to be accepted, they would mean the end of the very possibility of the existence of marxist organizations. Revolutionary principles are here replaced by the bourgeois law of the jungle:

- when the ICC set out to recover the stolen resources of the organization, these courageous "revolutionaries" threatened to call the police against us;

A blind and impotent hatred

It is this total resistance by petty bourgeois and declassed anarchist elements against their integration into and subordination to the great world historic mission of the proletariat, which despite sympathies for certain of its political positions leads to parasitism, to open hatred and political sabotage of the marxist movement.

The sordid and corrosive reality of the CBG itself gives the lie to its claims to have left the ICC "in order to be able to discuss". Here again, we will let the parasites speak for themselves. First of all their abandonment of any allegiance to the proletariat begins to be openly theoretized. "A very bleak vision of the nature of the period began to be articulated", they tell us; "elements within the CBG asked whether the class could now emerge at all?".

In face of the "difficult debate", here is how the CBG, this "anti-monolithic" giants, copes with "divergences": "We were ill-equipped to confront these questions. There was a more-or-less deafening silence in response to them (...) the debate didn't so much fizzle out as remain largely ignored. This was profoundly unhealthy for the organization. The CBG had prided itself on being open to any discussions within the revolutionary movement, but here it was in one of its own debates on a subject at the very heart of its existence plugging its ears and shutting its mouth".

It is therefore only logical that at the end of its crusade against the Marxist concept of organizational and methodological rigor as the prerequisite for any real debate, the CBG "discovers" that organisation itself blocks discussion: "In order to allow this debate to take place (...) we have decided to end the life of the CBG".

The organization as barrier to debate! Long live anarchism! Long live organizational liquidationism! Imagine the gratitude of the ruling class in face of the propagation of such "principles" in the name of "marxism"!

Parasitism: spearhead against the proletarian forces

Although the class domination of the bourgeoisie is, for the moment, certainly not threatened, the main aspects of the present world situation oblige it to be particularly vigilant in the defense of its interests. The inexorable deepening of its economic crisis, the sharpening of imperialist tensions, and the resistance of a generation of the working class which has not yet suffered a decisive defeat, contain the perspective of a dramatic destabilization of bourgeois society. All of this imposes on the bourgeoisie the world historic task of destroying the proletariat's revolutionary Marxist vanguard. As insignificant as the Marxist camp appears today, the ruling class is already obliged to make serious efforts to disrupt and weaken it.

At the time of the 1st International the bourgeoisie itself undertook the task of public denigration of proletarian revolutionaries. The entire bourgeois press slandered the International Workers' Association and its General Council, opposing to the alleged "dictatorial centralism" of Marx the allures of its own progressive and revolutionary past.

The bourgeoisie knows very well that the best and most thorough means of destroying the revolutionary camp is from within, by denigrating, demoralizing and dividing it. The parasites assume this task without even having to be asked. By presenting the marxist groups as Stalinist, as bourgeois sects dominated by power struggles, as the mirror image of the bourgeoisie itself, as historically insignificant, they support the offensive of capital against the proletariat. By destroying the reputation of the milieu, parasitism not only contributes to the political subversion of the proletarian forces today - it prepares the terrain for the politically effective repression of the marxist camp in the future. If the bourgeoisie stays in the background today in order to allow parasitism to do its dirty work today, it is with the intention of emerging from the shadows to decapitate the revolutionary vanguard tomorrow.

The incapacity of most of the revolutionary groups to recognize the real character of the parasitic groups is one of the greatest weaknesses of the milieu today. The ICC is determined to assume its responsibility in combatting this weakness. It is high time for the serious groups, for the milieu as a whole to organize its own defense against the most rotten elements of the vengeful petty bourgeoisie. Instead of opportunistically flirting with such groups, it is the responsibility of the milieu to wage a merciless and unrelenting struggle against political parasitism. The formation of the future class party, the success of the liberation struggle of the proletariat, will depend to a large extent on our capacity to wage this combat to the end.

Kr 01.09.95

IR83, 4th Quarter 1995

The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) has replied in International Communist Review no.13 to our polemical article "The IBRP's Conception of decadence in capitalism" which appeared in our International Review no.79. In International Review no.82 [15] we published the first part of this article, which demonstrated the negative implications of the IBRP's conception of imperialist war as a means for the devaluation of capital and the renewal of the cycles of accumulation. In this second part we are going to analyse the economic theory that sustains this conception: the theory of the tendential fall in the rate of profit.

1- The explanation of the historic crisis of capitalism in the Marxist movement

Bourgeois economists, ever since the classics (Smith, Ricardo, etc), have based themselves on two dogmas:

1. The worker is a free citizen who sells his labour power in exchange for a wage. The wage is his share of the social income from which the employer is also paid his profit.

2 Capitalism is an eternal system. Its crises are temporary and conjunctural, due to the disproportion between the different branches of production, disequilibrium in distribution or bad management. Nevertheless, in the long term, there is no problem with the realisation of commodities; production always finds a market, advancing the balance between supply (production) and demand (consumption).

Marx fought these dogmas of bourgeois economics to the day he died. He demonstrated that capitalism is not an eternal system: "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms-  with the property relations within  the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution" (Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, page 21, English edition, 1971). This period of the historic crisis, of the irreversible decadence of capitalism, opened up with the First World War. The survival of capitalism, following the defeat of the attempted world revolution by the proletariat between 1917-23, has cost humanity oceans of blood (hundreds of millions killed in imperialist wars between 1914-68, sweat (a brutal increase in the exploitation of the working class) and tears (the terror of unemployment, barbarity of every type, the dehumanisation of social relations).

However, this fundamental analysis, the common tradition of the Communist Left, is not explained in the same way in the present revolutionary political milieu: two theories exist for explaining the decadence of capitalism, the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and that which is called the "market theory" based essentially on the work of Rosa Luxemburg.

The IBRP adhere to the first theory while we prefer the second [1] [16]. In order for a polemic on both theories to be fruitful it is necessary to base it on an understanding of the evolution of the debate in the Marxist movement.

Marx lived in the period of the ascent of capitalism. Although the historic crisis of the system was not posed as dramatically as it is today, he was able to see in its periodic cyclical crises a manifestation of its contradictions and an announcement of the convulsions that would lead to ruin: "Marx pointed to two basic contradictions in the process of capitalist accumulation: two contradictions that lay at the root of the cyclical crises of growth capitalism went through in the nineteenth century, and which would, at a given moment, impel the communist revolution onto the agenda. These two contradictions are the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, given the inevitability of an ever higher organic composition of capital and the problem of overproduction, capital's innate disease of producing more than its market can absorb" ("Marxism and Crisis Theory" International Review no.13, page 27, our emphasis).

From this we can see that: "Though he developed a framework in which these two phenomena were intimately linked, Marx never completed his examination of capitalism, so that, in different writings, more or less emphasis is given to one or the other as the underlying cause of the crisis... It is the unfinished character of this crucial area of Marx's thought - something, as we have said, determined not merely by Marx's personal inability to finish Capital, but by the limitations of the historic period in which he was living" (idem. Page 27).

At the end of last century, the conditions of capitalism began to change: imperialism as a policy of robbery and confrontation between the powers developed in great strides. On the other hand, capitalism was expressing growing signs of illness (inflation, growth in exploitation) that contrasted strongly with a growth and prosperity, which had been uninterrupted since 1890. In this context there appeared inside the 2nd International an opportunist current that called into question the Marxist thesis of the collapse of capitalism and put forward a gradual transition to socialism through successive reforms of capitalism that would "alleviate these contradictions". The theoreticians of this current concentrated their artillery precisely against the second of the contradictions pointed out by Marx: the tendency to overproduction. Thus, Bernstein said: "Marx contradicts himself when he sees the ultimate cause of crises in the limitation of the consumption of the masses. In reality, Marx's theory about the crisis is not much different from the underconsumptionism of Rodbertus" [2] [17] (Bernstein: Theoretical Socialism and Social Democratic Practice).

In 1902, Tugan Baranovsky, a Russian revisionist, attacked Marx's theory of the crisis of capitalism denying that there could be a problem of the market and demonstrating that the crisis is due to "disproportionality" between different sectors.

Tugan Baranovsky went even further than his German revisionist colleagues (Bernstein, Schmidt, Vollmar, etc). He went back to the dogmas of bourgeois economics, concretely returning to the ideas of Say [3] [18] (openly criticised by Marx) based on the thesis that "capitalism doesn't have a problem of realisation beyond some temporary disturbances". There was a very firm response in the 2nd International on the part of Kautsky, who was then still in the ranks of the revolution: "Although capitalists increase their wealth and the number of exploited workers grows, they cannot themselves form a sufficient market for the capitalist produced commodities, as accumulation of capital and productivity grow even faster. They must find a market in those strata and nations which are still non-capitalist... this additional market hardly has the flexibility and ability to expand the capitalist process of production... This, in short, is the theory of crises which, as far as we can see, is generally accepted by ‘orthodox' Marxists and which was set up by Marx" (Quoted by Rosa Luxemburg in her book The Accumulation of Capital an Anti-critique, Modern Reader edition, 1972, page 79. The emphasis is Rosa Luxemburg's).

However, this polemic was radicalised when Rosa Luxemburg published her book The Accumulation of Capital. In this book, Rosa Luxemburg tried to explain the dizzy growth of imperialism and the increasingly profound crisis of capitalism. In the book she demonstrated that capitalism developed historically through expanding its relations of production based on wage labour into non-capitalist regions and sectors, that it would reach its historic limits when it had embraced the whole planet, and that it was already failing to find the new territories that were necessary for the expansion demanded by the growth of productivity of labour and the organic composition of capital: "Thus capitalism expands because of its mutual relationship with non-capitalist social strata and countries, accumulating at their expense and at the same time pushing them aside to take their place. The more capitalists participate in this hunt for areas of accumulation, the rarer the non-capitalist places still open to the expansion of capital become and the tougher the competition; its raids turn into a chain of economic and political catastrophes: world crises, wars, revolution" (Rosa Luxemburg: Anti-critique, page 60.)

Rosa Luxemburg's critics denied that capitalism has a problem of realisation, which is to say, they forget the contradiction of the system that Marx vigorously defended against the bourgeois economists and which constituted the base of "the crisis theory founded by Marx" as Kautsky had recalled some years before against the revisionist Tugan-Baranovsky.

Rosa Luxemburg's detractors set themselves up as the "orthodox and unconditional" defenders of Marx, and particularly, of his schemas of expanded reproduction put forward in Vol.2 of Capital. That is to say, they nullified Marx's thinking by exaggerating a passage from his work [4] [19]. Their arguments were very varied: Eckstein said there was no problem of realisation because in the tables of expanded reproduction Marx had explained "perfectly" that there was no part of production that could not be sold. Hilferding revived the theory of "disproportionality between sectors" saying that the crisis was due to the anarchy of production and that the tendency towards the concentration of capitalism reduced this anarchy and therefore the crisis. Finally, Bauer said that Rosa Luxemburg had pointed out a real problem but that this had a solution under capitalism: accumulation followed the growth of population.

During this period only one editor of a local socialist newspaper opposed the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall to that of Rosa Luxemburg's, thus: "...we are left with the somewhat oblique comfort provided by a little ‘expert' from the Dresdener Volkszeitung who, after thoroughly destroying my book, explains that capitalism will eventually collapse ‘because of the falling rate of profit'. One is not too sure exactly how the dear man envisages this: whether the capitalist class will at a certain point commit suicide in despair at the low rate of profit, or whether it will somehow declare that business is so bad that it is simply not worth the trouble, whereupon it will hand the key over to the proletariat? However that may be, this comfort is unfortunately dispelled by a single sentence by Marx, namely the statement that "large capitals will compensate for the fall in the rate by mass production". Thus there is still some time to pass before capitalism collapses because of the falling rate of profit, roughly until the sun burns out". (Rosa Luxemburg Anti-critique, page 76.).

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not take part in this polemic [5] [20]. Certainly, Lenin had fought the Populist theory of markets, an underconsumptionist theory in continuity with the errors of Sismondi. However, Lenin never denied the problem of the market: in his analysis of imperialism, despite placing the main emphasis on Hilferding's theory about the concentration in finance capital [6] [21], he did not forget that this took place under the pressure of the saturation of the world market. Thus, in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, responding to Kautsky, he emphasized that "It is the tendency to the annexation not only of the agrarian regions, but also the most industrial that precisely characterises imperialism, thus, the already completed division of the world demands it proceeds to a new division, to extend its hand towards all types of territory".

In the period of the degeneration of the 3rd International, Bukharin in his book Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, attacked the thesis of Rosa Luxemburg in the development of a theory that opened up the doors to the triumph of Stalinism: the theory of the "stabilization" of capitalism (which presupposed the revisionist thesis that the crisis could be overcome) and the "necessity" that the USSR "coexist" for a prolonged period with the capitalist system. Bukharin's fundamental critique of Rosa Luxemburg was that she was limited to giving a privileged place to the contradiction related to the market forgetting all the others, amongst them, the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall [7] [22].

At the end of the 20's and at the beginning of the 30's, "Paul Mattick of the American Council Communists took up Henryk Grossman's criticisms of Luxemburg and his contention that capitalism's permanent crisis emerges when the organic composition of capital reaches such a magnitude that there is less and less surplus value to fuel the process of accumulation. This basic idea - though further elaborated on a number of points - is today defended by revolutionary groups like the CWO, Battaglia Comunista and some of the groups emerging in Scandinavia". ("Marxism and Crisis Theory" in International Review no.13, page 28).

2. The theory of the crisis is not based uniquely on the tendency of the falling rate of profit

It must remain clear that the contradiction that capitalism suffers in respect of the realisation of surplus value plays a fundamental role in the Marxist theory of the crisis and that the revisionist tendencies attacked this thesis with particular rage. The IBRP claim the contrary. Thus, in their response they tell us that "For Marx the source of all real crises lay within the capitalist system itself, within the relationship between capitalists and workers. He sometimes expressed this as a crisis created by the limited capacity of the workers to consume the product of their own labours...He went on to add that this was not because of overproduction per se... And Marx goes on to explain that the crisis arises out of the falling rate of profit...The crises devalue capital and allow a new cycle of accumulation to begin" (The IBRP's response, pages 32-33). Their confidence is such that it permits them to add that, "The "schematic cycles of accumulation" in which we are happy to be imprisoned happens to be what Marx left us with" (The IBRP's response, page 32).

It is a deformation of Marx's thought to say that the historic crisis of capital is explained solely by the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. For three reasons:

1. Marx placed emphasis on the two contradictions

* He established that capitalist production has two parts, production properly speaking and its realisation. Put simply, the profit inherent in exploitation means nothing either to the individual capitalist nor to capitalism in its totality, if the commodities they produce are not sold: "The total mass of commodities, the total product, must be sold, both that portion which replaces constant capital and variable capital and that which represents surplus-value. If this does not happen, or happens only partly, or only at prices that are less than the price of production, then although the worker is certainly exploited, his exploitation is not realised as such for the capitalist". (Capital Vol.3, page 352, Penguin edition. Our emphasis).

* He demonstrated the vital importance of the market in the development of capitalism: "The market, therefore must be continually extended, so that its relationships and the conditions governing them assume ever more the form of a natural law... The internal contradiction seeks resolution by extending the external field of production" (idem, page 353). Further on, he asks: "How else could there be a lack of demand for those very goods that the mass of the people are short of, and how could it be that this demand has to be sought abroad, in distant markets, in order to pay the workers back home the average measure of the necessary means of subsistence? It is because it is only in this specific, capitalist context that the surplus product receives a form in which its proprietor can make it available for consumption as soon as it has been transformed back into capital for himself" (idem, page 366).

* He condemned without any hesitations Say's thesis that there was no problem of realisation in capitalism: "The conception... adopted by Ricardo from the tedious Say... that overproduction is not possible or at least that no general glut of the market is possible, is based on the proposition that products are exchanged against products, or as Mill puts it, on the ‘metaphysical equilibrium of sellers and buyers', and this led to the conclusion that demand is determined only by production." (Theories of Surplus Value Vol.2, page 493, Moscow edition).

* He insisted that permanent overproduction expressed the historical limits of capitalism: "...the mere admission that the market must expand with production is, on the other hand, an admission of the possibility of overproduction, for the market is limited externally in the geographical sense... it is then possible... that the limits of the market are not extended rapidly enough for production, or that new markets - new extensions of the market - may be rapidly outpaced by production, so that the expanded market becomes just as much a barrier as the narrower market was formerly" (idem, page 524-5).

2. Secondly, Marx established the whole of the causes that counteract the tendency of the rate of profit to fall: in Chapter XIV of Vol.3 of Capital he analysed six factors that counteract this tendency: more intense exploitation of labour, reduction of wages below their value, reduction in the cost of constant capital, the relative surplus population, foreign trade, the growth of share capital.

* He saw the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as an expression of the constant increase in the productivity of labour, a tendency that capitalism developed to a level never seen in previous modes of production: "With the progressive decline in variable capital in relation to constant capital, this tendency leads to a rising organic composition of the total capital, and the direct result of this is that the rate of surplus-value, with the level of exploitation of labour remaining the same or even rising, is expressed in a steadily falling general rate of profit... The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is thus simply the expression, peculiar to the capitalist mode of production, of the progressive development of the social productivity of labour" (Capital, Vol.3, pages 318-19. Emphasis in the original).

* Marx made clear that this is not an absolute law but a tendency that contained a whole series of counteracting forces (as shown above) that it gives rise to: "We have shown in general, therefore, how the same causes that bring about a fall in the general rate of profit provoke counter-effects that inhibit this fall, delay it and in part even paralyse it. These do not annul the law, but they weaken its effects. If this were not the case, it would not be the fall in the general rate of profit that was incomprehensible, but rather the relative slowness of this fall. The law operates therefore simply as a tendency, whose effect is decisive only under certain particular circumstances and over long periods" (idem, page 346).

* In relation to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall he posed the primordial importance of "foreign trade" and above all the continual search for new markets: "...this same foreign trade develops the capitalist mode of production at home, and hence promotes a decline in variable capital as against constant, though it also produces overproduction in relation to the foreign country, so that it again has the opposite effect in the further course of development" (idem, page 346).

3. Finally, contrary to what the comrades think, Marx did not see the devaluation of capital as the only means that capitalism has for overcoming the crisis, he also insisted about the other means: the conquest of new markets: "How does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones" (The Communist Manifesto, in The Revolutions of 1848, page 73, Penguin Books). "Capitalist production being a transitory economical phase, is full of internal contradictions which develop and become evident in proportion as it develops. This tendency to destroy its own market at the same time as it creates it, is one of them. Another is the "hopeless situation" to which it leads, and which is developed sooner in a country without a foreign market, like Russia, than in countries which more or less are capable of competing on the open world market. This situation without an apparent issue finds its issue, for the latter countries, in commercial convulsions, in the forcible opening of new markets. But even then the cul-de-sac stares one in the face. Look at England. The last new market which could bring on a temporary revival of prosperity by its being thrown open to English commerce, is China" (Engels to Danielson, 1892. Letters on Capital, page 274, New Park).

3. The problem of accumulation

However, the comrades give us another "weighty" argument: "As we have pointed out before, this theory [they are referring to that of Rosa Luxemburg] makes nonsense of Capital since Marx carried out his analysis assuming a closed capitalist system that was already devoid of "third buyers" (and yet he still found a crisis mechanism)" (The IBRP's response, page 33).

It is quite true that Marx pointed out that; "To bring foreign trade into an analysis of the value of the product annually reproduced can therefore only confuse things, without supplying any new factor either to the problem or to its solution" (Capital Vol.2, page 546, Penguin edition). It is true that Marx, in the final chapter of Vol.2, in trying to understand the mechanism of capitalism's expanded reproduction, says that it is necessary to omit "exterior elements", that it is necessary to assume that there are only capitalists and workers, and on this basis he elaborates the tables of capital's expanded reproduction. These famous tables have served as the revisionists' "bible" in order "to demonstrate" that "Marx's illustrations in the second volume of Capital were a sufficient and exhaustive explanation of accumulation; the models there proved quite conclusively that capital could grow excellently, and production could expand, if there was no other mode of production in the world than the capitalist one; it was its own market, and only my complete inability to understand the ABC of Marx's models could persuade me to see the problem here" (Rosa Luxemburg: Anti-critique, page 62.).

It is absurd to pretend that the explanation of the crisis of capitalism is contained within the famous tables of reproduction. The centre of Rosa Luxemburg's critique is precisely the assumption on which this is based: "...the realisation of surplus value for the purposes of accumulation is an impossible task for a society which consists solely of workers and capitalists" (Luxemburg. The Accumulation of Capital, page 350. Monthly Review Press). With this as a starting point, she demonstrates its inconsistency: "...if and in so far as, the capitalists do not themselves consume their products but ‘practise abstinence', i.e. accumulate, for whose sake do they produce? Even less can the maintenance of an ever larger army of workers be the ultimate purpose of the continuous accumulation of capital. From the capitalist point of view, the consumption of the workers is a consequence of accumulation, it is never its object... Who, then, realises the permanently increasing surplus value? The diagram answers: the capitalists themselves and they alone [8] [23]. - And what do they do with this increasing surplus value? - The diagram replies: They use it for an ever greater expansion of their production. These capitalists are thus fanatical supporters of an expansion of production for production's sake. They see to it that ever more machines are built for the sake of building - with their help - ever more new machines. Yet the upshot of all this is not accumulation of capital but an increasing production of producer goods to no purpose whatever. Indeed one must be as reckless as Tugan Baranovsky, and rejoice as much in paradoxical statements, to assume that this untiring merry-go-round in thin air could be a faithful reflection in theory of capitalist reality, a true deduction from Marx's doctrine" (idem, page 335).

Therefore, she concludes that: "The whole of Marx's work, volume 3 particularly, contains a most elaborate and lucid exposition of his general views regarding the typical course of capitalist accumulation. If we once fully understand this interpretation, the deficiencies of the diagram at the end of volume 2 are immediately evident. If we examine critically the diagram of enlarged reproduction in the light of Marx's theory, we find various contradictions between the two." (idem, page 335)

For its historical development, capitalism depended on a surrounding pre-capitalist milieu with which to establish a relationship. This comprised three indissoluble elements: trade (the acquisition of raw materials and the exchange of manufactured goods), destruction of these social forms (the annihilation of the natural subsistence economy, separation of the peasants and artisans from their means of labour) and integration into capitalist production (the development of wage labour and all the capitalist institutions).

This relationship of trade-destruction-integration spans the long process of the formation of the capitalist system (the 16th - 18th centuries), summit (the 19th century) and decadence (the 20th century) and constituted a vital necessity for the whole of the relations of production: "The interrelations of accumulating capital and non-capitalist forms of production extend over values as well as over material conditions, for constant capital, variable capital and surplus value alike. The non-capitalist mode of production is the given historical setting for this process. Since the accumulation of capital becomes impossible in all points without non-capitalist surroundings, we cannot gain a true picture of it by assuming the exclusive and absolute domination of the capitalist mode of production" (idem, page 365).

For Battaglia Comunista this historic process that unfolds at the level of the world market is nothing but the reflection of a much more profound process: "Although we may start with the market, and the contradictions which appear there (production-distribution, imbalance between supply and demand), we must return to the mechanisms governing accumulation to get a more correct vision of the problem. As a productive - distributive unity, capital demands that we consider what happens on the market as a consequence of the ripening of contradictions lying at the base of the relations of production, and not the reverse. It is the economic cycle and the necessity for the valorisation of capital which condition the market. Only by starting with the contradictory laws which rule the process of accumulation is it possible to explain the ‘laws of the market'"

(2nd Conference of groups of the Communist Left, volume 1 preparatory texts, page 10).

The realisation of surplus value, the famous "salto mortale of the commodity" as Marx called it, constitutes the "surface" of the phenomena, the "sounding box" of the contradictions of accumulation. This vision with its airs of "profundity" contains nothing else than profound idealism: the "laws of the market" are the "external" result of the "internal" laws of the process of accumulation. This is not the view of Marx, for whom the two moments of capitalist production (production and realisation) are not the reflection one of the other, but two inseparable parts of the global unity that is the historical evolution of capitalism: "...the commodity enters the sphere of circulation not just as a particular use-value, eg, a ton of iron, but as a use-value with a definite price... The price while on the one hand indicating the amount of labour-time contained in the iron, namely its value, at the same time signifies the pious wish to convert the iron into gold... If this transformation fails to take place then the iron ceases to be not only a commodity but also a product; since it is a commodity only because it is not a use-value for its owner, that is to say his labour is only really labour if it is useful labour for others, and it is useful for him only if it is abstract general labour. It is therefore the task of the iron or its owner to find that location in the world of commodities where iron attracts gold. But if the sale actually takes place, as we assume in this analysis of simple circulation, then this difficulty, the salto mortale of the commodity, is surmounted" (Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Chapter 2, Page 88, Moscow edition).

Any attempt to separate production from realisation impedes the understanding of the historical movement of capitalism which led to its summit (the formation of the world market) and its historical crisis (chronic saturation of the world market): "... the capitalists are compelled to exploit the already existing gigantic means of production on a larger scale...as the mass of production, and consequently the need for extended markets, grows, the world market becomes more and more contracted, fewer and fewer new markets remain available for exploitation, since every preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited" (Marx and Engels: Wage Labour and Capital. Selected Works, page 93, Moscow edition). Only in the framework of this unity is it possible to coherently integrate the tendency for the continual increase of the productivity of labour: "Capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production. It consists in living labour serving accumulated labour as a means for maintaining and multiplying the exchange value of the latter" (idem, page 81).

When Lenin studied the development of capitalism in Russia he used the same method: "What is important is that capitalism cannot exist and develop without constantly expanding the sphere of its domination, without colonising new countries and drawing old non-capitalist countries into the whirlpool of world economy. And this feature of capitalism has been and continues to be manifested with tremendous force in post-Reform Russia" (Lenin: "The Development of Capitalism in Russia". Collected Works Vol 3, page 594).

4.- The historical limits of capitalism

The comrades of the IBRP think, however, that Rosa Luxemburg insisted on looking for "external" causes to the crisis of capitalism: "Initially Luxemburg supported the idea that the cause of crises was to be found in the value relations inherent in the capitalist mode of production itself...But in the fight against revisionism inside German Social Democracy seems to have led her in 1913 to search for another economic theory with which to counter the revisionist assertion that the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was no longer valid. In The Accumulation of Capital she concluded that there was "a flaw in Marx's analysis" and she decided that the cause of capitalist crisis lay outside capitalist relations". (The IBRP's response, page 33).

The revisionists throw in Rosa Luxemburg's face the accusation that she was posing a problem that didn't exist, according to them, Marx's tables of expanded reproduction had "demonstrated" that all surplus value was realised within capitalism. The comrades of the IBRP don't appeal to these tables but their method amounts to the same thing: for them Marx with his schemas of the cycles of accumulation has given the solution. Capital goes on producing and developing until the rate of profit falls and production is blocked which then brings about the tendency to "objectively" resolve itself through a massive depreciation of capital. After this depreciation, the rate of profit is restored and the process begins again and thus successively. It is true that the comrades admit that historically this evolution is much more complicated due to the growth in the organic composition of capital and the tendency to the concentration and centralisation of capital: that in the 20th century this process of concentration, means that the necessary devaluations of capital cannot be limited to strictly economic means (closure of factories and laying off workers) but requires the enormous destruction of world war (see the first part of this article).

This explanation is, in the majority of cases, a description of the conjunctural movements of capitalism but does not allow an understanding of the global, historical movement of capitalism. It provides us with a very unreliable thermometer (we have explained, following Marx, the counteracting causes of the law) for the convolutions and progress of capitalism but it doesn't allow us to understand, nor even begin to pose, the reason, the profound cause for the illness. With the additional burden of decadence (see our articles in International Review, nos. 79 & 82) accumulation is profoundly blocked and its mechanisms (including therefore the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) have been altered and perverted by massive state intervention.

The comrades remind us that for Marx the causes of the crisis are internal to capitalism.

Do the comrades want something "more internal" to capitalism than the imperious necessity to constantly expand production beyond the limits of the market? Capitalism's aim is not the satisfaction of the needs of consumption (unlike feudalism whose aim was the consumption of the nobles and priests). Neither is it a system of simple production of commodities (such methods could be seen in Antiquity or up to a certain point in the 14th-15th centuries). Its aim of production is a constantly increasing surplus value arising from value relations based on wage labour. This demands that it permanently searches for new markets: why? In order to establish a régime of simple exchange of commodities? For robbery and the taking of slaves? No, although these methods have accompanied the development of capitalism, they don't constitute its internal essence, which resides in the necessity to increasingly extend its relations of production based on wage labour: "Sadly for itself, capital cannot do business with its non-capitalist clients without ruining them. Whether it sells them consumer goods or means of production, it automatically destroys the precarious equilibrium of any pre-capitalist (and therefore less productive) economy. Introducing cheap clothes, building railways, installing a factory, are enough to destroy the whole of pre-capitalist economic organisation. Capital likes it pre-capitalist clients just as the ogre ‘likes' children: it eats them. The workers of a pre-capitalist economy who have the ‘misfortune to have had dealings with the capitalists' know that sooner or later, he will end up, at best proletarianised and at worst - and this has become more and more frequent since capitalism's slide into decadence - reduced to misery and bankruptcy" (Critique of Bukharin, part 2 in International Review no 30)

In the ascendant period, in the 19th century, this problem of realisation appeared to be secondary given that capitalism constantly found new pre-capitalist areas which to integrate into its network and therefore to sell its commodities to. However, the problem of realisation has become decisive in the 20th century where the pre-capitalist territories have increasingly become less significant in relation to the needs of expansion. Therefore we say that Rosa Luxemburg's theory: "... provides an explanation for the historically concrete conditions determining the onset of the permanent crisis of the system: the more capitalism integrated the remaining non-capitalist areas of the economy into itself, the more it created a world in its own image, the less it could constantly extend the market and find new outlets for the realisation of that portion of surplus value which could be realised neither by the capitalists nor the proletariat. The inability of the system to go on expanding in the old way brought about the new epoch of imperialism and inter-imperialist wars, signalling the end of capitalism's progressive historical mission and threatening humanity with a relapse into barbarism" ("Communism is not a nice idea but a material necessity" part VII in International Review no.76, page 24).

We do not deny the tendency of the rate of profit to fall: we see it working as part of capitalism's historical evolution. This is affected by a whole series of contradictions; the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation, between the incessant growth in the productivity of labour and the decreasing portion of living labour, the already mentioned tendency of the rate of profit to fall... However, these contradictions could be a stimulant to the development of capitalism as far as it had the possibility of extending its system of production on the world scale. When capitalism reached its historical limits, these stimulating contradictions, were converted into heavy chains, into factors that accelerated the difficulties and convulsions of the system.

5 - The growth of production in the decadence of capitalism

The comrades of the IBRP make a really startling objection: "If the markets were already saturated in 1913, if all pre-capitalist outlets had been exhausted no new ones could be re-recreated (short of a trip to Mars). If capitalism goes beyond the level of growth of the previous cycle how could it possibly do it in Luxemburg theory?" (The IBRP's response, page 33).

While our polemical article in International Review no.79 made clear the nature and composition of the "economic growth" experienced after World War 2, the comrades criticise us in their response by saying that there had been a "real economic growth of capitalism in decadence" and faced with our defence of Rosa Luxemburg's positions they go on: "We have already seen how the ICC resolve the dilemma - by empirically denying that there has been real growth"(idem, page 33).

We can't repeat here an analysis of the nature of the "growth" since 1945. We invite comrades to read the article "Understanding the decadence of capitalism (part VI)" in International Review no.56, which makes clear that as regards: "...the rates of growth in the period following 1945 (the highest in capitalism's history)...we will demonstrate that this momentary upsurge is the product of a doped growth, which is nothing other than the desperate struggle of a system in its death-throes. The means that have been used to achieve it (massive debts, state intervention, growing military production, unproductive expenditure, etc) are wearing out, opening the way to an unprecedented crisis." What we want to deal with is something fundamental to marxism: the quantitative growth of production does not necessarily signify the development of capitalism.

The chronic, unending, problem that capitalism has in decadence is the absence of the new markets that are demanded by the increases in production due to the constant growth of labour productivity and the organic composition of capital. This constant increase aggravates still more the problem of the already increasing overproduction of accumulated labour (constant capital) in relation to living labour (variable capital, the workers' means of life).

The whole history of the survival of capitalism in the 20th century after the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave, is of a desperate effort to manipulate the law of value, through debt, hyper-inflation of unproductive costs and the monstrous development of armaments in order to alleviate the chronic absence of new markets. And history shows that these efforts have done nothing but aggravate the problems and stoke up decadent capitalism's tendencies towards self-destruction: the aggravation of the chronic crisis of capitalism accentuating the permanent tendencies to imperialist war, to generalised destruction (see the first part of this article in International Review no.82).

In reality this "fabulous" growth of production that dazzles the comrades so much illustrates the insuperable contradiction imposed on capitalism by its tendency to the unlimited development of production beyond the market's capacity of absorption. These figures, far from undermining Rosa Luxemburg's theories fully confirm them. When we see the uncontrolled and runaway growth of debt, without comparison in human history, when we see the existence of structural and permanent inflation, when we see that since the abandoning of the Gold Standard capitalism has recklessly eliminated any guaranteed backing for money (presently Fort Knox only covers 3% of the dollars circulating in the United States), when one recognises the massive intervention by the state in order to shore up the economic edifice (and this for more than 50 years) any minimally serious Marxist has to reject this "fabulous growth" as a bluff and conclude that it is a question of doped and fraudulent growth.

The comrades, instead of confronting this reality, prefer speculating about the "new realities" of capitalism. Thus, in their response they put forward: "The restructuring (and, dare we say it, growth) of the working class, the tendency for capitalist states to be economically dwarfed by the volume of world trade and the amount of capital which is controlled by world financial institutions (which is now at least four times the budget of all the states put together) have produced a further extension of the world economy of Bukharin and Luxemburg's day into a globalised economy." (The IBRP's reply, page 35).

When there are 820 million unemployed in the world (figures from ILO, December 1994), the comrades talk about the growth of the working class! When there is an irreversible growth in temporary work, the comrades, like modern Don Quixotes, see the windmills of the "growth" and "reconstruction" of the working class. When capitalism draws ever closure to a financial crisis of incalculable proportions, the comrades merrily speculate about the "global economy" and "capital controlled by the financial institutions". Once more, in their dreams they see their Dulcinea del Toboso of the "world economy" whose prosaic reality consists of the desperate efforts of these - "increasingly childlike" - states to control the scale of speculation provoked precisely by the saturation of the markets; these giants constituted by the "capital controlled by the financial institutions" are balloons monstrously inflated by the very speculation that could unleash a catastrophe upon the world economy.

The comrades announce: "All of the above has to be subjected to a rigorous Marxist analysis which takes time to develop" (the IBRP's reply, page 35). Isn't it more appropriate for the militant work of the Communist Left for the comrades to dedicate their time to explaining the phenomena that demonstrate the paralysis and mortal illness of accumulation throughout capitalist decadence? Marx said the mistake was not in the answer but in the question itself. Posing such questions as the "global economy" and the "restructuring of the working class" is to sink into the quicksand of revisionism, while there are "other questions" such as the nature of mass unemployment, indebtedness, that help to confront the fundamental problems in the understanding of capitalist decadence.

6 - Militant conclusions

In the first part of this article we insisted on what united us with the comrades of the IBRP: the intransigent defence of the Marxist position on the decadence of capitalism, the bedrock of the necessity of the Communist Revolution. It is fundamental to defend, coherently understand, and take the implications of this position to the end. As we explained in "Marxism and Crisis Theory" (International Review no.13) it is possible to defend the position on the decadence of capitalism without fully sharing our theory of the crisis based on Rosa Luxemburg's analysis [9] [24]. However, such a posture contains the danger of not coherently holding this position, of "holding it together with tape". The militant sense of our polemic is precisely this: the comrades' inconsistencies and deviations lead them to weakening the class position on the decadence of capitalism.

With its innate and sectarian rejection of Rosa Luxemburg's (and Marx's) thesis on the question of the markets, the comrades' analysis opens the door to the revisionist ideas of Tugan-Baranovsky, et al: "Cycles of accumulation are inherent to capitalism and they explain why, at different moments, capitalist production and capitalist growth can be higher or lower than in the preceding periods" (the IBRP's reply, page 31). With this they take up an old affirmation made by BC during the International Conferences of the Groups of the Communist Left: "The market is not a physical entity existing outside the capitalist system of production, which puts the brakes on the productive system once it is filled in; on the contrary, it is an economic reality within the system and outside it which dilates and contracts following the contradictory course of the process of accumulation" (2nd Conference of the Groups of the Communist Left, Preparatory Texts, page 13).

Do the comrades understand that this "method" enters fully into Say's world where, outside of conjunctural disproportionalities, "All that is produced is consumed and all that is consumed is produced"? Do the comrades comprehend that with this analysis all that happens is they go back to the merry-go-round of "proving" that the market: "dilates or contracts according to the rhythm of accumulation" and that this explains absolutely nothing about the historical evolution of capitalist accumulation? Don't the comrades see that they are falling into the very same errors that Marx criticised: "The metaphysical equilibrium of purchases and sales is confined to the fact that every purchase is a sale and every sale a purchase, but this is poor comfort to the possessors of commodities who unable to make a sale cannot accordingly make a purchase either" (Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, page 97).

This door that the comrades leave ajar to revisionist theories explains the propensity they have to lose themselves in sterile and absurd speculations about the "reconstruction of the working class" or the "global economy". They should also be aware of a tendency to allow themselves to be pulled in by the siren calls of the bourgeoisie: first there was the "technological revolution". Then the fabulous markets of the East, later there was the "business" of the Yugoslavian war. Certainly, the comrades corrected these absurdities under the weight of the ICC's criticism and the crushing evidence of facts. This demonstrates their responsibility and their firm links with the Communist Left. But will the comrades agree with us that these errors demonstrate that their position on the decadence of capitalism is not sufficiently consistent, that it's a patchwork, and that they have to establish themselves on much firmer ground.

The comrades concur with the revisionist adversaries of Rosa Luxemburg in their refusal to take the problem of realisation seriously, but radically diverge from them by rejecting their vision of the tendency to the amelioration of the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, and with full justice, the comrades see that each crisis phase of the cycle of accumulation means a much greater and more profound aggravation of capitalism's contradictions. The problem lies precisely in the periods in which, according to them, capitalist accumulation is fully restored. Confronted with these periods, while only considering the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and refusing to see the chronic saturation of the market, the comrades forget or relativise the revolutionary position on the decadence of capitalism.

Adalen 16.6.95.

[1] [25] We have developed our position in numerous articles in our International Review: we want to point out "Marxism and Crisis Theory" (no.13), "Economic Theories and the Struggle for Socialism" (no.16), "Crisis Theory from Marx to the CI" (no.22), "Critique of Bukharin" (nos 29 & 30) part VII of the series "Communism is not a nice idea but a material necessity" (no.76). The comrades in their response say that the ICC has not continued its critique of their positions announced in the article " Marxism and Crisis Theory" International Review no.13. The simple enumeration of the previous list of articles makes clear that this is a mistake.

[2] [26] Rodbertus was a bourgeois socialist from the middle of the last century who formulated his "law" of the diminishing share of wages. According to him the crisis of capitalism was due to this law and due to this he proposed state intervention in order to increase wages as a remedy to the crisis. The revisionists in the 2nd International accused Marx of having given into Rodbertus' thesis, calling him an "underconsumptionist" and later repeating the same accusation against Rosa Luxemburg.

Today, many trade unionists and also certain leftist currents of capital are unrecognised followers of Rodbertus, affirming that capitalism is primarily interested in improving the workers living as a way of overcome its crises.

[3] [27] Say was a bourgeois economist from the beginning of the 19th century who in his apologia for capitalism insisted that there is not a problem of the market since, according to him, "production creates its own market". Such a theory is equivalent to proposing capitalism as an eternal system without any possibility of crises beyond temporary convulsions provoked by "bad management" or by "disproportion between different productive sectors". Thus we can see that the bourgeosie's present messages about the "recovery" are nothing new!

[4] [28] This technique of opportunism has long been  adopted by Stalinism and Social Democracy and other forces of the left of capital (particularly the leftists) who brazenly use this or that passage of Lenin, Marx, etc, in order to endorse  positions that had nothing to do with them.

[5] [29] It is important to point out that in this polemic unleashed by Rosa Luxemburg's book, Pannekoek, who was neither an opportunist nor a revionist in that epoch but who on the contrary was on the left wing of the 2nd International, was against Rosa Luxemberg's thesis.

[6] [30] We have explained many times that Lenin, faced with the problem of the First World War and particularly in his book Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, correctly defended the revolutionary position on the historic crisis of capitalism (which he called the crisis of decomposition and parasitism of capital) and the necessity of the world proletarian revolution. This is the essential. However, he did support Hilferding's erroneous theories on finance capital and the "concentration of capital", which particularly in the hands of his epigones, weakened the force and coherence of his position against imperialism. See out critique in International Review no.19 "On Imperialism".

[7] [31] For a critique of Bukharin see International Review no 29 & 30, the article "To go beyond capitalism: Abolish the wage system".

[8] [32] In Capital Vol.3 Marx points out that "to say that it is only possible for the capitalists to exchange and consume their commodities amongst themselves is to completely forget that it is a question of the realisation of capital, not of its consumption" (Section 3, Chapter XV).

[9] [33] The Platform of the ICC says that comrades can defend the explanation of the crisis based on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

This third article devoted to the revolutionary struggle in Germany between 1918 and 1919[1] deals with one of the most difficult questions of the proletarian struggle: the preconditions for, and timing of the insurrection. Although negative, the German experience is a rich vein of lessons for the revolutionary struggle to come.

The premature insurrection

When it made its insurrection in November 1918 the working class forced the bourgeoisie in Germany to end the war. In order to sabotage the radicalization of the movement and prevent a repeat of the "Russian events" the capitalist class used the SPD[2] within the struggles as a spearhead against the working class. Thanks to a particularly effective policy of sabotage the SPD, with the help of the unions, did all it could to sap the strength of the workers' councils.

In the face of the explosive development of the movement with soldiers' mutinying everywhere and going over to the side of the insurrectionary workers, the bourgeoisie could not possibly envisage an immediate policy of repression. It had first to act politically against the working class and then go on to obtain a military victory. We went over the details of the political sabotage it carried out in International Review no. 82.

However the preparations for military action were made from the very beginning. It was not the right wing parties of the bourgeoisie which organized this repression but rather the one that still passed for "the great party of the proletariat", the SPD, and it did so in tight collaboration with the army. It was these famous "democrats" who went into action as capitalism's last line of defense. They were the ones who turned out to be the most effective rampart of capital. The SPD began by systematically setting up commando units as the companies of regular troops infected by the "virus of the workers' struggles" were less and less inclined to follow the bourgeois government. These companies of volunteers, privileged with special pay, would act as auxiliaries for the repression.

The military provocations of 6th & 24th December 1918

Confronted with these provocations from the government, the revolutionaries did not push for an immediate insurrection but called for the massive mobilization of the workers. The Spartakists made the analysis that the conditions were not yet ripe for the overthrow of the bourgeois government, particularly in so far as the capacities of the working class were concerned[3].

The bourgeoisie did not give way however. It continued to push for the disarmament of the proletariat which was still armed in Berlin and it made preparations to deliver it up to the decisive blow.

The SPD calls for death to the Communists

In order to set the population against the class movement, the SPD became the mouth piece of a shameful and powerful campaign of slander against the revolutionaries and even went so far as to call for death to the Spartakists in particular: "You want peace? Then you must all see to it that the tyranny of Spartakus' people is stopped! You want freedom? Then get the armed loafers of Liebknecht out of harm's way! You want famine? Then follow Liebknecht! You want to become the slaves of the Entente? Liebknecht will see to it! Down with the anarchist dictatorship of Spartakus! Only violence can oppose the brutal violence of this band of criminals!" (Leaflet of the municipal council of Greater Berlin, 29th December 1918).

"The shameful actions of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg sully the revolution and put all its gains in danger. The masses must not tolerate for one minute more that these tyrants and their partisans paralyze the republic in this way. (...) It is by means of lies, slander and violence that they overturn and knock down every obstacle that dares oppose them.

We made the revolution to end the war! Spartakus wants a new revolution to start a new war" (leaflet of the SPD, January 1919).

At the end of December the Spartakus group left the USPD and joined with the IKD[5] to form the KPD. And so the working class possessed a Communist Party that was born in the heat of the movement and which was the target of attacks from the SPD, the main defender of capital.

For the KPD the activity of as large a number as possible of the working masses was indispensable if this tactic of capital was to be opposed. "After the initial phase of the revolution, that of the essentially political struggle, there opens up a phase of strengthened, intensified and mainly economic struggle." (R. Luxemburg at the founding Congress of the KPD). The SPD government "won't approach the lively flames of the economic class struggle." (Ibid). That is why capital, with the SPD at its head, did all it could to prevent any extension of the struggles on this terrain by provoking premature armed uprisings of the workers and then repressing them. They needed to weaken the movement at its center, Berlin, in the early days in order to then go on to attack the rest of the working class.

The trap of the premature insurrection in Berlin

In January the bourgeoisie reorganized its troops stationed in Berlin. In all they had more than 80,000 soldiers throughout the city, of which 10,000 were storm troops. At the beginning of the month they launched another provocation against the workers in order to disperse them militarily. On 4th January the prefect of police in Berlin, Eichhorn, who had been nominated by the workers in November, was relieved of his functions by the bourgeois government. This was seen as an attack by the working class. In the evening of 4th January the "revolutionary men of confidence"[6] held a meeting which Liebknecht and Pieck attended in the name of the newly formed KPD. A "Provisional Revolutionary Committee", which was based on the "delegates" circle, was formed. But at the same time the executive Committee of the Berlin councils (Vollzugsrat) and the central committee (Zentralrat) nominated by the national congress of councils - both nominated by the SPD - continued to exist and to act within the class.

The Committee for revolutionary action called for a protest gathering for Sunday 5th January. About 150,000 workers attended following a demonstration in front of the prefecture of police. On the evening of 5th January some of the demonstrators occupied the offices of the SPD paper, Vorwaerts, and other publishing houses. These actions were probably incited by agent provocateurs; at any rate they took place without the knowledge or approval of the committee.

But the conditions were not ripe for overthrowing the government and the KPD made this clear in a leaflet they put out at the beginning of January:

"If the Berlin workers dissolve the National Assembly today, if they throw the Ebert-Scheidemanns in prison while the workers of the Ruhr, Upper Silesia and the agricultural workers on the lands east of the Elba remain calm, tomorrow the capitalists will be able to starve out Berlin. The offensive of the working class against the bourgeoisie, the battle for the workers' and soldiers' councils to take power must be the work of all working people throughout the Reich. Only the struggle of the workers of town and country, everywhere and permanently, accelerating and growing until it becomes a powerful wave that spreads resoundingly over the whole of Germany, only a wave initiated by the victims of exploitation and oppression and covering the whole country can explode the capitalist government, disperse the National Assembly and build on the ruins the power of the working class which will lead the proletariat to complete victory in the ultimate struggle against the bourgeoisie. (...)

Workers, male and female, soldiers and sailors! Call assemblies everywhere and make it clear to the masses that the National Assembly is a bluff. In every workshop, in every military unit, in every town take a look at and check whether your workers' and soldiers' council has really been elected, whether it doesn't contain representatives of the capitalist system, traitors to the working class such as Scheidemann's men, or inconsistent and oscillating elements such as the Independents. Convince the workers and get them to elect the Communists. (...) Where you are in the majority in the workers' councils get these workers' councils to immediately establish relations with the other workers' councils in the area. (...) If this program is realized (...) the German republic of councils together with the Russian workers' republic of councils will draw the workers of England, France, Italy to the flag of the revolution ..." It follows from this analysis that the KPD saw clearly that the overthrow of the capitalist class was not yet immediately possible and that the insurrection wasn't yet on the agenda.

The action committee distributed a leaflet calling for insurrection with the slogan: "Fight for the power of the revolutionary proletariat! Down with the Ebert-Scheidemann government!"

The mass of demonstrating workers awaited directions in the streets while their leaders were disabled. Although the proletarian leadership held back, hesitated, had no plan of action, the SPD-led government for its part rapidly got over the shock caused by this initial workers' offensive. Help came to rally round it on all sides. The SPD called for strikes and supporting demonstrations in favor of the government. A bitter and perfidious campaign was launched against the communists: "Where Spartakus reigns all freedom and safety of the individual is abolished. The most serious danger threatens the German people and particularly the German working class. We will not let ourselves be terrorized any longer by these wild criminals. Order must finally be restored in Berlin and the peaceful establishment of a new revolutionary Germany must be guaranteed. We call upon you to stop work in protest at the brutality of the Spartakist gangs and to immediately assemble in front of the government building of the Reich." (...)

"We must not rest until order had been restored in Berlin and until the enjoyment of the revolutionary gains has been guaranteed for the whole of the German people. Down with the murderers and criminals! Long live the socialist republic!" (Executive committee of the SPD, 6th January 1919).

The work cell of the Berlin students wrote:

"Citizens, leave off your torpor and side with the socialist majority!" (Leaflet of 7/8th January 1919).

For his part Noske cynically declared on 11th January:

"The government of the Reich has transferred the command of the republican soldiers to me. So a worker is at the head of the forces of the socialist Republic. You know me, me and my history in the Party. I guarantee that blood will not be spilled senselessly. I want to heal, not to destroy. Working class unity must be forged against Spartakus so that democracy and socialism will not founder."

The SPD and its accomplices were thus preparing to massacre the revolutionaries of the KPD in the name of the revolution and the proletariat's interests. With the basest duplicity, it called on councils to stand behind the government in acting against what it called "armed gangs". The SPD even supplied a military section, which received weapons from the barracks, and Noske was placed at the head of the forces of repression with the words: "We need a bloodhound, I will not draw back from such a responsibility".

By 6th January, isolated skirmishes were taking place. While the government massed its troops around Berlin, on the evening of the 6th the Executive of the Berlin councils was in session. Dominated by the SPD and the USPD, it proposed to the Committee for Revolutionary Action that there should be negotiations between the "revolutionary men of confidence" and the government, for whose overthrow the Revolutionary Committee had just been calling. The Executive played the "conciliator", by proposing to reconcile the irreconcilable. This attitude confused the workers, and especially the soldiers who were already hesitant. The sailors thus decided to adopt a policy of "neutrality". In a situation of direct class confrontation, any indecision can rapidly lead the working class to lose confidence in its own capacities, and to adopt a suspicious attitude towards its own political organizations. By playing this card, the SPD helped to weaken the proletariat dramatically. At the same time, it used agents provocateurs (as was proven later) to push the workers into a confrontation. The latter thus forcibly occupied the offices of several newspapers on 7th January.

Faced with this situation, the KPD leadership, unlike the Revolutionary Action Committee, had a very clear position: based on the analysis of the situation made at its founding Congress, it considered the insurrection to be premature.

On 8th January, Die Rote Fahne wrote: "Today, we must proceed to the reelection of the workers' and soldiers' councils, to take back the Executive of the Berlin councils under the slogan: get rid of Ebert and his henchmen! Today, we must draw the lessons of the experiences of the last eight weeks in the workers' and soldiers' councils, and elect councils which correspond to the conceptions, aims, and aspirations of the masses. In a word, we have to beat Ebert and Scheidemann in the very foundations of the revolution: the workers' and soldiers' councils. Then, and only then, will the masses of Berlin and throughout the Reich have in the workers' and soldiers' councils real revolutionary organs which will give them, in all the decisive moments, real leaders, real centers for action, for struggle, and for victory".

The Spartakists thus called on the workers first and foremost to strengthen the councils by developing the struggle on their own class terrain, in the factories, and by getting rid of Ebert, Scheidemann, and Co. By intensifying their pressure through the councils, they could give the movement a new impetus, and then launch into the battle for the seizure of political power.

On the same day, Luxemburg and Jogisches violently criticized the slogan of immediate overthrow of the government put forward by the Action Committee, but also and above all the fact that the latter had shown itself, by its hesitant and even capitulationist attitude, incapable of directing the class movement. In particular, they reproached Liebknecht for acting on his own authority, letting himself be carried away by his enthusiasm and impatience, instead of referring to the Party leadership, and basing himself on the KPD's program and analyses.

This situation shows that it was neither the program nor the political analyses that were lacking, but the Party's ability, as an organization, to fulfill its role as the proletariat's political leadership. Founded only a few days before, the KPD had not the influence in the class, much less the solidity and organizational cohesion of the Bolshevik party one year earlier in Russia. The Communist Party's immaturity in Germany was at the heart of the dispersal in its ranks, which was to weigh heavily and dramatically in the events that followed.

In the night of the 8th/9th January, the government troops went on the attack. The Action Committee, which had still not correctly analyzed the balance of forces, called for action against the government: "General strike! To arms! There is no choice! We must fight to the last man!". Many workers answered the call, but once again they waited in vain for precise instructions from the Committee. In fact, nothing was done to organize the masses, to push for fraternization between the revolutionary workers and the troops ... And so the government's troops entered Berlin, and for several days engaged in violent street fighting with armed workers. Many were killed or wounded in scattered confrontations in different parts of the city. On 13th January, the USPD declared the general strike at an end, and on 15th January Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were assassinated by the thugs of the Social-democrat led regime! The SPD' s criminal campaign to "Kill Liebknecht!" thus ended in a success for the bourgeoisie. The KPD was deprived of its most important leaders.

Whereas the newly founded KPD had correctly analyzed the balance of forces, and warned against a premature insurrection, the Action Committee dominated by the "revolutionary men of confidence" had a false appreciation of the situation. To talk of a "Spartakus week" is a falsification of history. On the contrary, the Spartakists had taken position against hasty action. Proof of this, a contrario, was given by Liebknecht's and Pieck's breaking Party discipline. This bloody defeat was caused by the overhasty attitude of the "revolutionary men of confidence", burning with impatience but lacking in thought. The KPD did not have the strength to hold the movement back, as the Bolsheviks had done in July 1917. In the words of Ernst, the new social-democratic chief of police who replaced the ousted Eichorn: "Any success for the Spartakus people was out of the question from the start, since by our preparations we had forced them to strike prematurely. Their cards were uncovered sooner than they wished, and that is why we were able to combat them".

Following this military success, the bourgeoisie immediately understood that it should build on its advantage. It launched a bloody wave of repression, in which thousands of Berlin workers and communists were assassinated, tortured, and thrown into prison. The murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were no exception, but reveal the bourgeoisie's vile determination to eliminate its mortal enemies: the revolutionaries.

On 19th January, "democracy" triumphed: elections were held for the National Assembly. Under the pressure of the workers' struggles, the government in the meantime had transferred its sittings to Weimar. The Weimar Republic was thus established on the corpses of thousands of workers.

Is the insurrection a party affair?

On this question of the insurrection, the KPD clearly based itself on Marxist positions, and in particular on what Engels had written after the experience of the struggles of 1848:

"Insurrection is an art. It is an equation whose data is more than uncertain, and whose values can change at any moment; the enemy's forces have in their favor all the advantages of organization, discipline and authority; as soon as it becomes impossible to oppose them from a position of strong superiority, then one is beaten and annihilated. Secondly, once one has taken the road of insurrection, it is necessary to act with the greatest determination, and go onto the offensive. The defensive is the death of any armed insurrection; it is lost before even getting a chance to measure itself against the enemy. Take your opponent by surprise, while his strength is still dispersed; make sure to win new victories every day, however small; hold on to the moral supremacy that the movement's first victory has won you; attract the hesitant elements who always follow the impetus of the strongest, and take the safest side; force your enemies to retreat even before they have been able to gather their forces against you ..." (Revolution and counter-revolution in Germany).

The Spartakists adopted the same approach to insurrection as Lenin in April 1917:

"To succeed, the insurrection must be based not on a plot, not on a party, but on the vanguard class. This is the first point. The insurrection must be based on the revolutionary élan of the people. That is the second point. The insurrection must appear at a turning point in the history of the rising revolution, where the activity of the people's vanguard is at its strongest, where hesitation is strong in the ranks of the enemy, and weak among the friends of the revolution. That is the third point. These are the three conditions which distinguish marxism from blanquism, in its way of posing the question of insurrection" (Letter to the RSDLP Central Committee, September 1917).

What was the concrete situation in January 1919, with regard to this fundamental question?

Insurrection is based on the revolutionary élan of the masses

At its founding Congress, the KPD held that the class was not yet ripe for insurrection. After the movement initially dominated by the soldiers, a new impetus based on the factories, mass assemblies, and demonstrations was vital. This was a precondition for the class to gain, through its movement greater strength and greater self-confidence. It was a condition for the revolution to be more than the affair of just a minority, or of a few desperate or impatient elements, but on the contrary to be based on the revolutionary élan of the great majority of workers.

Moreover in January the workers' councils did not exercise a real dual power, in that the SPD has succeeded in sabotaging them from within. As we showed in the previous Issue, the councils' National Congress held in mid-December had been a victory for the bourgeoisie, and unfortunately nothing new had come to stimulate the councils since then. The KPD's appreciation of the class movement and the balance of forces were perfectly lucid and realistic.

Some think that it is the party that takes power. But then, we would have to explain how a revolutionary organization, no matter how strong, could do so when the great majority of the working class has not yet sufficiently developed its class consciousness, is hesitant and oscillating, and has not yet been able to create workers' councils with enough strength to oppose the bourgeois regime. Such a position completely misunderstands the fundamental characteristics of the proletarian revolution, and of the insurrection, which Lenin was the first to point out: "the insurrection must be based, not on a plot, not on a party, but on the vanguard class". Even in October 1917, the Bolsheviks were particularly concerned that it should be the Petrograd Soviet that took power, not the Bolshevik Party.

The proletarian insurrection cannot be "decreed from on high". On the contrary, it is a conscious action of the masses, which must first develop their initiative, and achieve a mastery of their own struggles. Only on this basis will the directives and orientations given by the councils and the party be followed.

The proletarian insurrection cannot be a putsch, as the bourgeois ideologues try to make us believe. It is the work of the entire working class. To shake off capitalism's yoke, the will of a few, even the class' clearest and most determined elements, is not enough: "the insurgent proletariat can only count on its numbers, its cohesion, its cadres, and its general staff" (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, "The Art of Insurrection").

In January the working class in Germany had not yet reached this level of maturity.

The role of the communists is central

The KPD was aware that its main responsibility was to push for the strengthening of the working class, and in particular for the development of its consciousness in the same way as Lenin had done previously in Russia, in the April Theses:

"This seems to be "nothing more" than propaganda work, but in reality it is most practical revolutionary work; for there is no advancing a revolution that has come to a standstill that has choked itself with phrases, and that keeps "marking time", not because of external obstacles, not because of the violence of the bourgeoisie (...), but because of the unreasoning trust of the people.

Only by overcoming this unreasoning trust (...) can we set ourselves free from the prevailing orgy of revolutionary phrase-mongering and really stimulate the consciousness both of the proletariat and of the mass in general, as well as their bold and determined initiative (...)" (Lenin, "The tasks of the proletariat in our revolution", April 1917).

When boiling point has been reached, the party must "at the opportune moment, catch the mounting insurrection", to allow the class to launch the insurrection at the right moment. The proletariat must feel that "it has above it a clear-sighted, firm and audacious leadership", in the form of a party (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, "The Art of Insurrection").

But unlike the Bolsheviks in July 1917, in January 1919 the KPD did not have enough weight to have a decisive effect on the course of the struggle. It was not enough for the party's position to be correct: it had to have a wide influence in the class. And this could not be developed by the premature insurrection in Berlin, still less by the bloody defeat that followed. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie succeeded in dramatically weakening the revolutionary vanguard by eliminating its best militants, but also by banning its main weapon of intervention in the class: Die Rote Fahne. In a situation where the widest possible intervention by the party was crucial, the KPD found itself deprived of its press for weeks at a time.

The drama of dispersed struggles

During these same weeks, the proletariat confronted capital in several countries. Whereas in Russia, the counter-revolutionary White troops strengthened their onslaught on the workers' power, the end of the war brought a certain calm to the social front in the "victorious countries". In Britain and France, there were a series of strikes, but the struggle did not take on the same radical orientation as it had in Russia and Germany. The struggles in Germany and central Europe thus remained relatively isolated from those in the other European industrial centers. In March, the Hungarian workers set up a Soviet Republic, which was quickly and bloodily crushed by counter-revolutionary troops, thanks once again to the skillful work of the local social-democracy.

In Berlin, after defeating the workers' insurrection the bourgeoisie set out to dissolve the soldiers' councils, and build an army ready for civil war. It also worked systematically to disarm the proletariat. But workers' combativity continued to break out all over the country. During the months that followed, the struggle's center of gravity was to shift through Germany. Extremely violent confrontations between proletariat and bourgeoisie took place in almost all the major towns, but unfortunately isolated from each other.

Bremen in January...

On 10th January, in solidarity with the Berlin workers, the Bremen workers' and soldiers' council proclaimed the creation of the Soviet Republic. It decided to evict the members of the SPD, to arm the workers, and to disarm counter-revolutionary elements. It appointed a council government, responsible to it. On 4th February, the Reich government gathered troops around Bremen and went on the offensive. The rebel town remained isolated, and fell on the same day.

The Ruhr in February...

In the Ruhr, the biggest working class concentration, expressions of combativity had broken out since the end of the war. Already prior to the war, in 1912 there had been a long wave of strikes. In July 1916, January 1917, January 1918, and August 1918, the workers launched large movements of struggle against the war. In November 1918, the workers' and soldiers' councils were mostly under the influence of the SPD. January and February saw the outbreak of many wildcat strikes. The striking miners went to neighboring pits to enlarge and unify the movement. There were often violent confrontations between the workers in struggle, and the councils still dominated by members of the SPD. The KPD intervened:

"The seizure of power by the proletariat, and the creation of socialism, presupposes that the great majority of the proletariat has the will to exercise the dictatorship. We do not think that that moment has yet arrived. We think that the development of the next weeks and months will cause to ripen within the whole proletariat, the conviction that its salvation can only lie in its dictatorship. The Ebert-Schiedemann government is seeking out the slightest opportunity to stifle this development in blood. As in Berlin, as in Bremen, it will try to strangle each revolutionary outbreak in isolation, in order to avoid the general revolution. The proletariat has the duty to make these provocations fail, by avoiding armed uprisings which would offer itself to the executioners as a willing sacrifice. It is far more important, right up to the moment of the seizure of power, to raise the revolutionary masses' energy to the highest point by demonstrations, meetings, propaganda, agitation and organization, to win over a greater and greater number of the masses, and to prepare minds for the time to come. Above all, it is necessary to push for the re-election of the councils under the slogan:

The Ebert-Scheidemanns out of the councils!

Get rid of the executioners!"

(Call by the KPD Centrale for the reelection of the workers' councils, 3rd February).

On 6th February, 109 council delegates met to demand the socialization of the means of production. Behind this demand, lay the workers' increasing realization that control of the means of production could not remain in the hands of capital. But as long as the proletariat did not hold political power, as long as it had not overthrown the bourgeois government, this demand could turn against it. Without political power, all the measures of socialization are not only a deception, but a means for the ruling class to stifle the struggle. The SPD thus promised a law providing for "participation" and a pseudo-control by the working class over the state. "The workers' councils are constitutionally recognized as the representation of economic interests and participation, and are anchored in the Constitution. Their election and prerogatives will be regulated by a special law to take effect immediately".

It was planned that the councils should be transformed into "enterprise committees" (Betribrate), and that their function should be to take part in the economic process through joint management. The prime aim of this proposal was to adulterate the councils, and to integrate them into the state. They were thus no longer organs of dual power against the bourgeois state, but on the contrary served to regulate capitalist production. Moreover, this mystification maintained the illusion of an immediate transformation of the economy "in one's own factory", and the workers were thus easily enclosed in a local and specific struggle, instead of engaging in a movement of extension and unification of the combat. This tactic, used for the first time by the German bourgeoisie, was illustrated in several factory occupations. In the struggles in Italy during 1919-20, it was again put to very successful use by the ruling class.

From 10th February, the troops responsible for the bloodbaths in Bremen and Berlin were marching on the Ruhr. The workers' and soldiers' councils throughout the Ruhr valley decided on a general strike, and called for armed struggle against the Freikorps. Everywhere, came the slogan "Out of the factories!" There were many armed confrontations, all of which went along similar lines. So angry were the workers, that SPD offices were often attacked, as on 22nd February in Mulheim-Ruhr where a social-democrat meeting was machine-gunned. There were thousands of workers under arms in Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, Bochum, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Wuppertal, Mulheim-Ruhr and Dusseldorf. But just as in Berlin, the movement's organization was sadly lacking. There was no united leadership to orientate the working class' strength, while the capitalist state, with the SPD at its head, acted with organization and centralization.

Central Germany in February and March

At the end of February, just as the movement in the Ruhr was being crushed by the army, the proletariat in central Germany entered the scene. Whereas the movement in the Ruhr was limited to the workers in the iron and coal industries, here it involved the workers in every industry, including transportation. Workers joined the movement in almost every factory and large town.

On 24th February, the general strike was declared. The workers' and soldiers' councils immediately called on the Berlin workers to unify the movement. Once again, the KPD warned against any hasty action: "As long as the revolution has no central organs of action, we must oppose the action of organizing councils, which develop locally in a thousand places" (leaflet from the KPD Zentrum). It was time to strengthen the pressure from the factories, to intensify the economic struggle, and to renew the councils. There was no slogan for the overthrow of the government.

Here again, thanks to an agreement on socialization, the bourgeoisie succeeded in breaking the movement. And once again, there was united action between the SPD and the army: "For all military operations (...) it is helpful to make contact with the leading members of the SPD who are faithful to the government" (Marcker, military leader of the repression in central Germany). The bourgeoisie's thugs continued the repression into May, as the strike wave had spilled over into Saxony, Thuringia, and Anhalt.

Berlin, once again, in March...

The SPD declared itself opposed to such a slogan. Once again, it set out to sabotage the movement politically, but also as we have seen, by repression. When the Berlin workers went on strike at the beginning of March, the executive council made up of delegates from the SPD and USPD took the leadership of the strike. The KPD refused to join it: "To accept the representatives of this policy into the strike committee means the betrayal of the general strike and the revolution".

Like the socialists, stalinists, and other representatives of the left of capital today, the SPD succeeded in taking over the strike committee thanks to credulity on the part of some workers, but above all thanks to all kinds of maneuvers, tricks and double-dealing. It was to avoid having their hands tied that the Spartakists refused at this point to sit alongside the executioners of the working class.

The SPD was able to print its paper, whereas the government had banned Die Rote Fahne. The counter-revolutionaries were thus free to develop their disgusting propaganda, while the revolutionaries were reduced to silence. Before it was banned, Die Rote Fahne warned the workers: "Stop work! For the moment, stay in the factories. Gather in the factories. Convince those who hesitate. Don't let yourselves be drawn into useless fighting, which Noske is only waiting for to start a new bloodletting".

In fact, the bourgeoisie was quick to use its agent provocateurs to start looting, which was used as the official excuse for bringing in the army. First and foremost, Noske's troops destroyed the printing presses of Die Rote Fahne. The KPD's leading members were thrown in jail. Leo Jogisches was shot. It was precisely because it had warned the working class against the bourgeoisie's provocations that it became the immediate target for the counter -revolutionary troops.

The general strike was broken in central Germany by 6th March, and in Berlin the 8th. In Saxony, Baden, and Bavaria important struggles took place during these same weeks, but the different movements never managed to link up between themselves.

The Bavarian Soviet Republic in April 1919

In Bavaria too, the working class entered the struggle. On 7th April, the SPD and USPD, hoping "to win back the favor of the masses by a pseudo-revolutionary action" as the revolutionary Levine put it, proclaimed the Republic of Councils. Just as in January in Berlin, the KPD saw that the balance of forces was not favorable to the workers, and took position against the creation of the Republic. Nonetheless, the Bavarian communists called the workers to elect a "truly revolutionary council", with a view to setting up a real communist Soviet Republic. By 13th April, Eugen Levine found himself at the head of a new government which took energetic economic, political, and military measures against the bourgeoisie. Despite these measures, this initiative was a serious error on the part of the Bavarian revolutionaries, who acted against the Party's orientations and analyses. Completely isolated from the rest of Germany, the movement had to confront a huge bourgeois counter-offensive. Munich was starved out, and 100,000 troops massed around the city. On 27th April, the Munich Executive Council was overthrown, and bloody repression struck again: thousands of workers were killed in the fighting, or executed; the communists were hunted down, and Levine condemned to death.

***

Today's proletarian generations can scarcely imagine the power of a wave of almost simultaneous struggles in the great centers of capitalism, and the pressure that this put on the ruling class.

Through its revolutionary movement in Germany, the working class proved against one of the world's most experienced ruling classes, that it is capable of establishing a balance of forces which could have overthrown capitalism. This experience shows that the revolutionary movement at the beginning of the century was not something reserved for the proletariat of "backward countries" like Russia, but involved masses of workers in most industrially developed country of its day.

But the development of the revolutionary wave from January to April 1919 suffered from dispersion. Concentrated and united, its forces would have been enough to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie. But they were scattered, and the government was thus able to confront and annihilate them one by one. Already in January, in Berlin, the government had succeeded in breaking the back of the revolution.

Richard Muller, one of the "revolutionary men of confidence", who showed themselves so hesitant for so long, could not help observing: "If the repression against the January struggles in Berlin had not happened, then the movement would have been able to gather a greater impetus elsewhere in the spring, and the question of power would have been posed more precisely, in all its implications. But the military provocation cut the ground from under the feet of the movement. The January action provided the arguments for the campaigns of calumny, harassment, and the creation of an atmosphere of civil war".

Without this defeat, the Berlin proletariat would have been able to support the struggles which developed in other parts of Germany. This weakening of the revolution's central battalion allowed the forces of capital to go on the offensive, and to draw the workers all over the country into premature and dispersed military confrontations. The working class, in fact, had not succeeded in establishing a broad, united, and centralized movement. It had been unable to impose a dual power throughout the country, by strengthening and centralizing the councils. Only by creating such a balance of forces would it have been possible to launch an insurrection that demanded the greatest conviction and coordination. And this dynamic cannot develop without the clear and determined intervention of a political party inside the movement. This is how the proletariat can emerge victorious from its historic struggle.

The revolution's defeat in Germany during the early months of 1919 was not solely due to the skill of the local ruling class. It was also the result of a concerted action by the international capitalist class.

While the working class in Germany was engaging in scattered struggles, in March the Hungarian workers rose in a revolutionary confrontation with capital.

The Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Hungary on21st March 1919, only to be crushed by counter-revolutionary troops in the summer.

The international capitalist class stood united behind the German bourgeoisie. For four years, the different bourgeoisies had done their best to destroy each other, and yet they stood united against the working class. Lenin showed clearly that "everything was done to come to an understanding with the German conciliators in order to stifle the German revolution" (Report by the Central Committee to the 9th Congress of the RCP). There is a lesson that the working class must remember: whenever it puts capitalism in danger, it will have to confront, not a divided ruling class, but the internationally united forces of capital.

But, if the proletariat had taken power in Germany, the capitalist front would have been driven in, and the Russian revolution would not have been left isolated.

When the IIIrd International was founded in Moscow in March 1919, as the struggles were developing in Germany, this perspective seemed to all the communists to be within their grasp. But the workers' defeat in Germany began the decline of the international revolutionary wave, and in particular that of the Russian revolution. It was the action of the bourgeoisie, with the SPD as its bridgehead, which made possible the isolation, then the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution, and then the birth of Stalinism.

DV

[1] See the two previous issues of this Review: "The revolutionaries in Germany during World War I" and "The beginning of the revolution".

[2] The German Social-Democratic Party, was the largest socialist party in the world before 1914, when its leadership, headed by its parliamentary group and trades union leaders, betrayed all the party's internationalist commitments and joined ranks, bags and baggage, with the national bourgeoisie as a recruiting sergeant for the imperialist bloodbath.

[3] In 1980 the CWO demonstrated to what an irresponsible attitude a revolutionary organization without clear analyses can be led. At the time of the mass struggles in Poland they called for the revolution immediately ("Revolution now").

[4] German Independent Socialist Party, a "centrist" split from the SPD, which rejected the latter' s most openly bourgeois aspects, but without taking the clearly revolutionary positions of the internationalist communists, The Spartakus League joined the USPD in 1917, with a view to spreading its influence amongst the workers, increasingly disgusted by the policy of the SPD.

[5] German Internationalist Communists, known as German Internationalist Socialists prior to 23rd November 1918, when they decided, in Bremen, to replace the word Socialist by Communist. They were less numerous and influential than the Spartakus group, whose revolutionary internationalism they shared. They were members of the Zimmerwald Left, and closely linked to the international Communist Left, in particular the Dutch Left (Pannekoek and Gorter were among their theoreticians before the war), and the Russian (Radek worked in their ranks). Their rejection of the unions and parliamentarism was in the majority at the KPD's founding Congress, against the position of Rosa Luxemburg.

[6] The "revolutionary men of confidence" (Revolutionnare Obleate) were originally made up largely of union delegates elected in the factories, but who had broken with the social-chauvinist union leaderships. They were the direct product of the working class' resistance to the war, and to the treason of the unions and workers' parties. Sadly, their revolt against the union leadership made them suspicious of any idea of centralization, and led them to develop a too Iocalist, or even "factoryist" viewpoint. They were always uneasy when confronted with questions of general politics, and often an easy prey for the policies of the USPD.