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

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

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

Fascism was desired and supported by the bourgeoisie

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Allies' silence during the war

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

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

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

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

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

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

RN, 4/3/97

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

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

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

Germany undermines Dayton and challenges the USA

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

The German Balkan Offensive

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

What is at stake strategically in these conflicts?

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

German-American rivalry in Eastern Europe

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

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

The rise of Germany and the crisis of French European policy

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

Sharpening of military tensions

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

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

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

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

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

The Third World in the decadence of capitalism

Only a global analysis of the decadence of capitalism can enable us to understand the place and significance of the relative economic development of the south east Asian dragons and how they constitute an exception to the rule of massive deindustrialisation in the third world and to the general incapacity of the capitalist mode of production to develop the productive forces. The figures are very eloquent here: the third world only returned to the level of industrialisation per inhabitant it had in 1750 two centuries later, in 1960. Despite all the bourgeoisies triumphant talk about the dynamism of south east Asia and third world development, during the period of decadence the gap between the industrialised countries and the rest of the world has grown bigger and bigger: it has more than doubled, going from 1 to 3.4 in 1913 to 1 to 8.2 in 1990. Whereas during the ascendant phase of capitalism the population integrated into the productive process grew more rapidly than the population itself, today we are seeing a growing mass of workers being ejected from the system. The end of capitalisms progressive role can be measured, among other things, by its inability to develop one of its main productive forces: labour power. The small burst of industrialisation in the third world during the years 1960-70, which was vigorous enough in terms of growth rates, in no way overturned the overall situation. It was limited in time and space, it depended entirely on the mode of accumulation in the developed countries, and in the end proved very costly and pernicious for the third world itself. But apart from a few exceptions, mostly localised in south east Asia, most of the attempts to create a real industrial base failed. And no wonder, since the established industrial powers hardly wanted to see the generalisation of new competitors.[1] [6]
Without developing here on a question which we will have to return to on another occasion, we want to recall that the brunt of industrialisation in the third world has been concentrated in only five countries: Brazil and the four dragons.[2] [7] Together, these five countries supply nearly 80% of exports of manufactured goods from the third world, even though they make up only 6% of the latters population. Looking at the four dragons alone, the imbalance is even greater: in 1990 they supplied two thirds of exports of manufactured goods from the whole of the third world, but represent only 3% of its population. Limited in space, this development was also limited in time. The brief reversal of the general dynamic in the years 1967-77 (cf the table below) has again given way to an increase in the relative gap: the growth of production in the third world went back to a rate lower than that of the industrialised countries. Entire zones even stopped growing, since production per capita simply went into decline. The 1980s, real lost years for the third world, put a definite end to the illusions. The few exceptions which escaped this general evolution did not refute the overall tendency. The 1980s saw a quasi-stagnation in per capita production (0.7%) in the countries of the southern hemisphere

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

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

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

1. The sheer scale of military and economic support from the US amounted to a Marshall Plan for Asia. The growth that took place during the 1950-70 period was based on record-breaking levels of US aid (it was only surpassed, in relative terms, by the aid given to Israel, for similar strategic reasons). From 1945 to 1978, South Korea received some 13 billion dollars, or 600 per inhabitant, and Taiwan 5.6 billion, or 4.5 per inhabitant. Between 1953 and 1960, foreign aid contributed almost 90% of fixed capital in South Korea. The aid given by the USA reached 14% of GNP in 1957. In Taiwan between 1951 and 1965, American civil aid reached 6% of GNP and military aid 10%. In the 1950s, more than 80% of Korean imports and 95% of Taiwans trade deficit were financed by American aid. This aid ceased in 1964 for Taiwan and only in 1980 for Korea. But even then forms of natural aid continued. Cereals and other supplies were given to Korea as a reward for its voluntary restrictions on textile exports. American food surpluses helped keep wages low in these two countries. In south east Asia, aid was also relayed in other forms in the 1970s: through direct overseas investments (essentially American then Japanese) and above all by external debts (see the table below); then, for Korea and Taiwan, industrial exports were able to take up the torch.
2. Just as in Japan, agrarian reforms were imposed by American military governments, and this had profound consequences for the class structure of these countries and for the relative autonomy of the states. Thus in Korea, agrarian reform began in 1945 with the decision of the American military government to redistribute to former farmers and growers the lands previously controlled by the Japanese. Agrarian reform thus helped ensure political stability by suppressing any danger of peasant riots. In Taiwan the Americans demanded the agrarian reform drawn up by the Sino-American Commission for Rural Reconstruction. This was granted exceptional powers and its budget was in US hands.
3. Numerous institutional and social reforms were pushed through in order to sap the bases of the old regime and dynamise society. In contrast to the systematic support given to the land-owning bourgeoisie in other third world countries, and notably in Central and South America, American policy in south east Asia served to disintegrate such factions, thus getting rid of a political and economic obstacle to industrialisation. Thus, in 1959, the dismemberment of the big landed properties and their redistribution as small plots without any real compensation, was relatively equitable in South Korea[3] [8] and helped to destroy an hereditary class system (Yangban) founded on landed property.[4] [9]
4. But the USA did not restrict itself to supplying military, financial and technical aid to these countries; it also took charge of the whole management of the state and the economy. In the absence of real national bourgeoisies, the only social body capable of carrying out the modernisation that the USA wanted was the army. A highly effective form of state capitalism was installed in each of these countries. Economic growth was spurred on by a system which closely linked the public and private sectors through a quasi-military centralisation, but with the sanction of the market. In contrast to the east European version of state capitalism with its absurd bureaucratic excesses, these countries allied state centralisation with the sanction of the law of value. Numerous interventionist policies were carried out: the formation of industrial conglomerates, laws protecting the internal market, trade restrictions at the frontiers, a form of planning that was imperative but also incited further efforts, state management of the distribution of credit, the orientation of capital and resources towards the key sectors, the handing out of exclusive licenses, management monopolies etc. Thus in South Korea, it was thanks to a unique relationship with the chaebols (equivalent to the Japanese zaibatsus), great industrial conglomerates often founded through state aid or initiative,[5] [10] that the public authorities orientated economic development. In Taiwan, public enterprises supplied 80% of industrial production in the 1950s. This was a rate which easily matched that of the east European countries! After falling in the 1960s, this ratio increased again in the 1970s when the state took charge of the programme of building heavy industries.
   Far from being a counter-example, south east Asia is in fact a magnificent illustration of one of the fundamental characteristics of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production: the impossibility for the spontaneous development of an autonomous national bourgeoisie. In an era in which the bourgeoisie no longer has a progressive historical role, it is the state - which is in the hands of the army, the only structure that has any force and coherence in the third world - that takes on the role of society’s tutor, a tutor trained, installed and financed by the world’s leading power in the context of the inter-imperialist configuration after 1945. If all these circumstances had not come together, we can imagine, especially for South Korea and Taiwan, after their long decline under the Yin and the Manchus, that these countries would have ended up in the same impasse as the rest of the third world. This is what makes the four dragons (and Japan) examples which cannot be repeated. This is what provides the answer to the ridiculous claims of Internationalist Perspective about the capacities for local bourgeoisies to emerge on the peripheries with the ability to industrialise and compete with the old industrial countries.
5. To ensure the economic success of these Asian countries, the USA guaranteed that its market would be open to them. South Korea, but above all Taiwan, also benefited from the Japanese-American economic competition which has developed over the years, notably through the customs privileges granted in paragraph 807 of the US customs code, enabling components assembled or re-worked abroad to be re-exported to the US. This is why numerous American firms have relocated their assembly operations abroad in order to benefit from the lower wages and in doing so have blocked the flood of cheap Japanese imports into the US. Thus, towards the end of the 1960s, half of American imports took place under the cover of this paragraph 807, and for the most part they came from American enterprises in Mexico and Taiwan. But the Japanese have responded by doing the same thing in Taiwan. Furthermore, American support has extended as far as tolerating the protectionist measures that South Korea and Taiwan adopted to protect their industries from substitute imports, despite advice to the contrary from the IMF, the World Bank and the GATT. Later on, when these countries went over to industries geared towards export, it was the USA which directed and organised this change-over by dictating practically all of the necessary reforms.
6. Finally we should point out that this economic growth is above all the product of the ferocious exploitation of the working class in south east Asia and of an extreme militarisation of social life: low wages, long working hours, intense flexibility, permanent social control through tying the wage-earner to the company, military occupation of the factories in response to any social conflict, etc. This is without doubt one of the most savagely exploited fractions of the world proletariat: the workers have paid in flesh and blood for the economic miracle. South Korea has the highest rates of industrial accidents and work-related illnesses in the world. The south Korean women workers, whose wages are not even a half of their male colleagues, have been the bosses favourite sector, especially young single women who have some basic education. These facts explain the low rates of demographic growth, 1.4% per year, the source of which lies in the exploitation of women and not, as is claimed, in the high levels of development. In contrast to other third world countries, the dragons have not had to deal with a demographic explosion that has held back economic growth (4% growth alongside a demographic growth of 3% ensures 1% growth per inhabitant). Furthermore, the thirty years of growth in these countries have engendered a real ecological catastrophe which has to be added to the frightful living conditions.

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

The present difficulties in south east Asia

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

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

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

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

C Mel

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

IR89, 2nd Quarter 1997

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

We have already given an account, inseveral texts published in both the International Review and ourterritorial press [1] [18],of the crisis our organisation has recently had to confront, and which has beenexpressed, as the CWO’s article points out, by a number of resignations in oursection in France. The ICC has identified the causes of its organisationaldifficulties: the persistence within the organisation of the weight of thecircle spirit which resulted from the historical conditions within which ourorganisation was formed, after the longest and most profound period ofcounter-revolution in the history of the workers’ movement. The survival ofthis circle spirit led, in particular, to the formation of clans within theICC, which seriously undermined its organisational tissue. From the autumn of1993 onwards, the whole ICC undertook the struggle against its weaknesses, andin the spring of 1995, its 11th Congress was able to conclude thatthese had been largely overcome [2] [19].

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously, anyone who has read ourpress will be aware that the ICC has never attributed its internalorganisational difficulties to the action of parasitic elements. Either the CWOis deliberately lying (in which case we would ask them to tell us why), or elsethey have made a very mistaken reading of what we have written (in which casewe suggest they buy new glasses for their militants). At all events, such anaffirmation reveals a lamentable frivolity which is utterly regrettable inpolitical debate. This is why we will leave this kind of thing to one side,since we prefer to go to the heart of the disagreements between the ICC and theCWO (and the IBRP - the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party - ofwhich it is a component). More particularly, in this article we intend to takeup the idea that the ICC’s perspectives for the class struggle have beenrevealed to be bankrupt [3] [20].

Arethe ICC’s perspectives bankrupt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thisprediction was confirmed only three months later. In Belgium in September 1983,followed shortly afterwards by Holland, the workers of the public sectorentered massively into struggle [4] [21].These movements were not isolated events. In fact, within a few months, socialmovements affected most of the advanced countries: Germany, Britain, France,USA, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Japan [5] [22].Rarely has there been seen such international simultaneity of classconfrontations, at the same time as the bourgeoisie in all these countriesorganised an almost complete blackout on these movements. Obviously, thebourgeoisie did not just sit and watch, but organised a whole series ofcampaigns and manoeuvres, mostly underrtaken by the trades unions, designed to discouragethe workers, to disperse their struggles, and to imprison them in corporatistdead-ends. During 1985, this lead to a certain calming of workers’ struggles inthe main European countries, especially where the struggle had been at itshighest during the preceding years. At the same time, these manoeuvres couldnot help increasing still further the discredit affecting the unions in most ofthe advance countries, which was an important element in the development ofworking class consciousness, since the unions are its main enemies, with thefunction of sabotaging the struggle from the inside.

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

Obviously, the bourgeoisie reacted tothis combativity by setting in motion new manoeuvres. The aim was to creatediversions through widely publicised ideological campaigns on “Islamicterrorism”, on the “peace” between the great powers (signature of the SALTagreements on the reduction of nuclear weapons), on the aspiration of thepeoples to “freedom” and “democracy” (the international spectacle ofGorbachev’s “glasnost”), on ecology, on “humanitarian” interventions in theThird World, etc [6] [23].Above all, there were campaigns to overcome the growing discredit affecting theclassical unions by promoting new forms of unionism (“rank and file” or“fighting” unionism, etc). The most striking illustration of this bourgeoismanoeuvre (often undertaken by the leftist organisations, but also bytraditional unions and left-wing parties, whether Stalinist orsocial-democratic), was the formation of “coordinations” in twocountries where classical unionism was the most discredited: Italy (especiallyin the transport sector), and France (most of all in the important hospitalstrike of autumn 1988) [7] [24].One function of these organisations, which presented themselves as “coming fromthe rank-and-file” and “anti-union”, was to introduce the corporatist poisoninto the proletarian ranks, with the argument that the unions did not defendworkers’ interests because they were organised by branch of industry not bytrade.

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

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

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

The ICC had not foreseen this event(any more than the other organisations of the proletarian milieu, or thebourgeoisie’s “experts”). Nonetheless, by September 1989, two months before thefall of the Berlin Wall, it was one of the first to identify it [8] [25].Already, we described the collapse of the Eastern bloc as the biggestexpression to date of the decomposition of capitalist society, and in thissense we immediately declared that this event would create “Greaterdifficulties for the proletariat” [9] [26].In line with our previous analyses, we wrote: “The identification which issystematically established between Stalinism and communism, the lie repeated athousand times, and today being wielded more than ever, according to which theproletarian revolution can only end in disaster, will for a whole period gainan added impact within the ranks of the working class. We thus have to expect amomentary retreat in the consciousness of the proletariat (...) In particular,reformist ideology will weigh very heavily on the struggle in the period ahead,greatly facilitating the action of the unions.

Given the historic importance of theevents that are determining it, the present retreat of the proletariat -although it doesn’t call into question the historic course, the generalperspective of class confrontations - is going to be much deeper than the onewhich accompanied the defeat of 1981 in Poland” [10] [27].

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

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

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

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

Moreover, the bourgeoisie’s inabilityto give its own response to the crisis of its own system - imperialist war - atthe same time as the proletariat’s inability to put forward its ownrevolutionary perspective, tipped society into its phase of decomposition [11] [28],one of whose major expressions was precisely the collapse of the Stalinistregimes, which put off the possibility of a new World War.

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

Theblindness of the CWO and the IBRP

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

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

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

TheIBRP and the historic course

TheICC, and the International Review in particular, has already devoted anumber of polemics with the IBRP to the question of the historic course [12] [29].We will not go back here over everything we have written on these occasions tocriticise the IBRP’s lack of method in dealing with the question of thehistoric phase within which the workers’ struggles of our time are unfolding.Let us only say, in brief, that the IBRP rejects the very notion of a historiccourse, as it was developed during the 1930s notably by the Left Fraction ofthe Italian Communist Party. It is because the Fraction understood that thecourse towards war, and that towards class confrontations, are not parallel butmutually exclusive, that it was able to foresee, in a period of profoundcounter-revolution, the inevitability of World War II as soon as capitalismentered a new open economic crisis in 1929.

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

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

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

 - the militaryalliances are not yet sufficiently stable;

 - nuclearweapons are a dissuading factor for the bourgeoisie, because of the threat theyrepresent for humanity’s survival [13] [30].

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

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

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

One might suppose that even if theIBRP is incapable of giving a clear and coherent answer to the question of thehistoric course - since the question is apparently beyond its understanding [14] [31]- it can answer the one we have just posed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabienne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The party was made up of:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The drama of self-mutilation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dv

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From February to April

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

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

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

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

"For Bolshevism the first months of the revolution had been a period of bewilderment and vacillation. In the "manifesto" of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that "the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government" (...) They behaved not like representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy, which, having announced its principles, intended for an indefinite time to play the part of loyal opposition" (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol 1, chapter 15 [51] ).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.

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

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

Confiscation of all landed estates.

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

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

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

9) Party tasks:

a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;

b) alteration of the Party programme, mainly

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

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

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

c) Change of the Party's name

(10) A new International

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

The struggle to rearm the Party: Demonstrating the marxist method

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

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

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

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

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

Lenin's "anarchism"

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

In his Letters on Tactics [52], Lenin defended his theses from the first accusation as follows: "In my theses, I absolutely ensured myself against skipping over the peasant movement, which has not outlived itself, or the petty-bourgeois movement in general, against any playing at "seizure of power" by a workers' government, against any kind of Blanquist adventurism; for I pointedly referred to the experience of the Paris Commune. And this experience, as we know, and as Marx proved at length in 1871 and Engels in 1891, absolutely excludes Blanquism, absolutely ensures the direct, immediate and unquestionable rule of the majority and the activity of the masses only to the extent that the majority itself acts consciously.

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

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

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

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

The role of the party in the revolution

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

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

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

Thus wrote Rosa Luxemburg in her masterly analysis of the mass strike and the new conditions of the international class struggle (The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions [53]). And thus did Luxemburg, who had been one of Lenin's fiercest critics at the time of the 1903 split, converge with the most fundamental elements in the Bolshevik conception of the revolutionary party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos, Spring 1997.