In a number of countries, and particularly in France, the bourgeoisie is using the theme of “Negationism” against the development of working class struggle and consciousness (“Negationism” being the term used to describe the calling into question by certain writers, of the existence of the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps). We will return to this question in greater detail in a forthcoming issue of the International Review. Here, we will limit ourselves to describing a few elements of this campaign, by way of introducing the article which our comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) published on the same subject, in the June 1945 issue of L’Etincelle.

The idea that the gas-chambers never existed, and therefore that the Nazi régime did not try to exterminate certain European populations, and in particular the Jews, was publicised in particular by La Vieille Taupe, which saw itself as part of the “ultra-left” (not to be confused with the communist left, whence the former current borrowed some ideas and positions). For Vieille Taupe, and other groups of the same current, the existence of the gas chambers was a pure lie on the part of the Allied bourgeoisies, designed to reinforce their anti-fascist campaigns following World War II. By denouncing what they thought was a lie, these groups intended to unmask the anti-working class role of anti-fascist ideology. However, some elements amongst them were carried away by their “negationist” passion (or by other forces?) to the point where they collaborated with parts of the anti-semitic extreme right. These latter also considered the gas-chambers to be a mere invention - an invention of the “international Jewish lobby”. This was clearly a god-send for the “democratic” and “anti-fascist” fractions of the bourgeoisie, who gave a wide publicity to the “negationist” theses, in order to strengthen their own campaigns by condemning this attempt to “rehabilitate the Nazi régime”. But they did not stop there. The reference by the “left negationists” to the positions of the Communist Left denouncing anti-fascist ideology, and especially to the completely valid text published in the early 1960s by the International Communist Party on “Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi”, have recently served as a pretext for the supporters of bourgeois democracy (including some Trotskyists) to unleash a campaign denouncing the Communist Left, along the lines: “Far left, far right, same fight!”, or “As ever, the extremes meet”.

Like all the true groups of the Communist Left, the ICC has always refused to have anything to do with the meanderings of the “negationists”. Understating the barbarity of the Nazi régime, 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. This fact allows us to denounce all the more firmly today’s campaigns, which aim to discredit in the eyes of the working class the only current which really defends its interests and its revolutionary perspective: the Communist Left. It allows us to combat energetically the anti-fascist mystifications, which use the barbarity of Nazism the better to chain the workers to the system which produced it, and which will continue to engender barbarism without end: capitalism. The article below, published by our comrades of the GCF, is part of the same fight. When the article was written, in June 1945, the Allied bourgeoisie had not yet had the opportunity to deploy fully its propaganda based on the “death camps”. The Auschwitz camp in particular, which lay within the zone under Russian control, had not yet acquired the sinister fame that it has today. Nor had the “democratic” A-Bombs yet flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the service of “civilisation”. This did not hinder our comrades from denouncing the Allied criminals’ ideological use of Nazi crimes against the proletariat.

ICC

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L’Etincelle no.6, June 1945

Buchenwald, Maidaneck: Macabre Demagogy

The role of the SS, the Nazis, and their camp of industrialised death, was to exterminate in general all the opponents of the fascist régime, and above all the revolutionary militants who have always been in the forefront of the combat against the capitalist bourgeoisie, in whatever form: autocratic, monarchical, or “democratic”, whether led by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Leopold III, George V, Victor-Emmanuel, Churchill, Roosevelt, Daladier or De Gaulle.

When the Russian Revolution broke out in October 1917, the international bourgeoisie tried every possible and imaginable means to crush it; in 1919, they broke the German revolution with an unprecedentedly savage repression; they drowned in blood the insurrection of the Chinese proletariat. The same bourgeoisie financed fascist propaganda in Italy, then that of Hitler in Germany; the same bourgeoisie put into power in Germany the man they had appointed as the gendarme of Europe. And today, the vary same bourgeoisie is spending millions “to finance the creation of an exhibition on Hitler’s crimes”, with photos, and the public projection of films on “German atrocities”, while the victims of these atrocities continue to die, often without any medical attention, and those who escaped are returning home without the means to live.
It is the same bourgeoisie that paid for Germany’s rearmament, and then dragged the proletariat into the war with the anti-fascist ideology; that helped Hitler to power, and then used him to crush the German proletariat and then hurl it into the bloodiest war, the vilest butchery imaginable.
It is the very same bourgeoisie that today sends its representatives to kneel hypocritically, with their floral bouquets, on the tombs of the dead that they themselves caused, because it is incapable of running society, and because war is its only way of life.

We accuse the bourgeoisie!

We accuse it for the millions of deaths that it has caused and which are, alas, no more than an addition to an already too long list of the martyrs of “civilisation”, of a decomposing capitalist society.

It is not the Germans who are responsible for Hitler’s crimes. They were the first, in 1934, to pay for Hitler’s bourgeois repression with 450,000 deaths, and who continued to suffer this merciless repression even when it was exported abroad. Neither are the French, the British, the Americans, the Russians or the Chinese responsible for the horrors of a war they did not want, but which their rulers forced on them.
Millions of men and women died slowly in the Nazi concentration camps; they were savagely tortured and now their bodies are rotting somewhere. Millions died fighting in the war, or were struck down by a “liberating” bombardment. These millions of corpses, mutilated, amputated, torn apart, disfigured, buried in the ground or rotting in the open, these millions of dead, soldiers, women, old people, children, all cry out for vengeance. And they cry for vengeance, not against the German people, who are still paying, but against this infamous, hypocritical, and unscrupulous bourgeoisie, which did not pay for the war, but on the contrary profited from it. Today, their pigs’ faces stuffed with the fat of the land, they are teasing their still hungry slaves.

The only position for the proletariat, is not to respond to the demagogues’ calls to continue and heighten chauvinism through anti-fascist committees, but the class struggle in direct defence of their interests, their right to life: the struggle every day, every instant, until the destruction of this monstrous régime, capitalism.

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

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

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

The bourgeoisie's strategy against the revival of the struggle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

Elfe, 16 December 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The declassed: enemies of proletarian organisations

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

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

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

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

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

And the conclusion adds:

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

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

Bakunin himself was the embodiment of the declassed aristocrat.

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

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

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

The declassed in politics: a breeding ground for provocation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 18 puts forward how to live off the rich.

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

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

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

§20 certainly speaks for itself.

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

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

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

A terrible weapon against the workers' movement

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

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

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

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

The project of Bakuninism is Bakunin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bakunin seeks to win the ruling classes for his personal ambitions

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

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

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

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

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

The International comments on this as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

Disloyalty towards all classes, hatred of society

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The secret statutes of the Alliance declare:

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

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

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

The essence of political adventurism

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adventurism and the marxist movement

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

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

Kr

 

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Towards a radiant future, or Third World status?

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

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

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

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

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

Inflation (%)

Country	1990	1995
Bulgaria	22	62
Czech Republic	11	9
Hungary	29	28
Poland	586	28
Romania	5	32
Slovakia	11	10
Russia	6	190
Ukraine	4	375

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

Towards absolute pauperisation

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

Percentage of households living below the poverty line (estimate)

Country	1989	1990	1992	1995
Bulgaria	-	13.8		57.0
Czech	4.2		25.3
Republic
Hungary*	14.5		19.4
Poland	22.9		35.7
Romania	30.0		44.3
Slovakia	5.7			34.5

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

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

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

			87 as
Country	1987	1994	%94
Tajikistan	12.1	3.7	31%
Azerbaidjan	21.7	5.8	27%
Kirgiz Republic	13.5	6.7	50%
Armenia	26.5	8.3	31%
Uzbekistan	12.5	9.2	74%
Bolivia		9.3
Ukraine	20.4	10.1	50%
Kazakhstan	24.2	10.9	45%
Latvia	24.1	12.4	51%
Lithuania	33.8	12.7	38%
Romania	22.7	15.8	70%
Belarus	25.1	16.7	67%
Bulgaria	23.5	16.9	72%
Estonia	29.9	17.4	58%
Russia	30.6	17.8	58%
Tunisia		19.4
Hungary	28.9	23.5	81%
Slovenia	33.3	24.1	72%
Mexico		27.2
Czech Republic	44.1	34.4	78%

 

C.Mcl

Sources:

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zaire: America's offensive against French imperialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jos, 12/12/96

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, conditions were already not very favourable:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A split can only take place on the clearest possible basis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

False programmatic positions open the door to opportunism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bourgeoisie encouraged the breakup of the party

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dv

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reformist hydra raises its many heads

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

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

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

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

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

Engels’ errors and Luxemburg’s critique

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kautsky: error becomes orthodoxy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking over the capitalist economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

 

CDW