While the pandemic and the ecological disaster rage, the economic crisis is hitting us with skyrocketing prices, rising unemployment and precariousness, and in this context, the capitalists are squeezing us even more fiercely. We see it in Cadiz, where in the metal workers' agreement they intend to eliminate two extra payments, a loss of 200 euros per month.
The Bay of Cadiz is a horrifying portrait of the capitalist crisis: more than 40% unemployment, numerous companies closed down, the closure of AIRBUS Puerto Real, the closure of Delphi[1] .., young people forced to emigrate to Norway and other, supposedly “better-off” countries.
Against this threat to the life and future of all workers, the metalworkers are fighting with a firmness and combativity that has not been seen for a long time.
This is not the only struggle. The public employees of Catalonia demonstrated massively against the intolerable abuse of interim employment (more than 300,000 state workers are precarious); there are struggles in the railways of Mallorca, in Vestas (in the province Coruña) against 115 dismissals; Unicaja against more than 600 dismissals; the metal workers of Alicante; the protests in different hospitals against the dismissal of the workers contracted by COVID.
These struggles coincide with struggles in other countries: in the USA, Iran, Italy, Korea etc[2].
We want to express our solidarity with the workers in Cadiz. Their struggle contributes to breaking passivity and resignation, it expresses indignation at the outrages of this system, all of which can encourage the first steps of a proletarian response to the crisis and the barbarism of capitalism.
Extend the fight against the trap of isolation
In the collective agreement negotiations the employers proposed “freezing wages in 2020 and 2021, eliminating two extra payments, increasing working hours, creating a new category below the level of workers’ qualifications and not negotiating the wage rate for dangerous and toxic jobs” [3] . This is a brutal attack against which the unions tried to lower the tension with two sterile days of struggle; however, in the face of the unrest and combativity, they have ended up calling an indefinite strike since 16 November, which has been followed massively and has spread to the Bay of Gibraltar.
On the 17th and 18th, radical trade unionism trapped the workers in traffic blockades which led to clashes with the police in a sterile “urban guerrilla warfare” which gives ammunition for the press, TV and social networks, slandering them as “terrorists”, etc. Thus El Mundo launched a hateful accusation against the workers: “Cancellation of surgeries, a birth in an ambulance... The metal workers’ strike prevents access to the hospital of La Línea for the carers and the sick” (17-11-21).
As demonstrated in Euzkalduna 1984, in Gijón 1985 and in previous struggles in Cadiz, such confrontations only serve to isolate those in the struggle, prevent other workers from joining and alienate the possible sympathies of the population. They reinforce capital and its state, and give it the means to unleash ferocious repression.
But the workers are looking for other means to be strong. On the 19th, a picket of more than 300 workers was formed to ask for the solidarity of the Navantia workers in San Fernando. On the 19th itself, demonstrations were organised in the working class neighbourhoods of Cadiz, Puerto Real and San Fernando. After a rally in front of the bosses’ headquarters, the workers went around the city, following an improvised route, explaining their demands to passers-by. On the 20th, there was a massive demonstration in the centre of Cadiz and rallies in the neighbourhoods to support the comrades.
We can only be strong if we extend the struggle to the other workers, if with demonstrations, pickets and assemblies, we organise THE EXTENSION OF THE STRUGGLE. The struggle is strong if it can break the barriers of the company, the sector, the city, if it can by forge the united struggle of the whole working class in the streets.
The struggle must be organised in assemblies.
From the beginning, the unions have monopolised the negotiations with the employers, through the mediation of the Consejo Andaluz de Relaciones Laborales (Andalusian Council of Labour Relations). We already know what these “negotiations” are: a parody where in the end they sign what capital wants. This has happened many times in Cadiz: in Delphi, the unions made the workers swallow the dismissals; the same happened in the different struggles in the shipyards or more recently in AIRBUS. Remembering these stabs in the back, on the 20th, a concentration of workers in front of the headquarters of the unions shouted “Where are they? The Comisiones and UGT [the two main national trade unions in Spain]. They are not to be seen.”
To be strong, the second necessity is that the struggle is led by the General Assembly of all the workers and that it organises elected and revocable committees to defend the demands, to promote actions of struggle etc.
Since the experiences of 1905 and 1917-23, the struggles where the working class has strength are organised by the workers themselves in General Assemblies open to the rest of the working class: unemployed, pensioners, precarious workers, etc. That was the experience of the Vigo metal workers in 2006[4] and of the Indignados movement in 2011[5].
Workers cannot leave the struggle in the hands of the unions. A statement from a Coordinadora de Trabajadores del Metal de Cádiz (Metalworkers' Coordinating Committee) said “the unions must advise us and represent us, NOT take decisions for us and in secret”. That’s not correct! What is their “advice”? To accept what the bosses ask for. And as for fighting back, their "mobilisation" consists of isolated acts of pressure without any force, or minority clashes with the police. They do not represent us, they represent capital and its state. “Making decisions for us and in secret” is exactly their function as an apparatus of capital!
The localist trap of “Save Cadiz”.
They want to enclose the struggle in a “citizens' movement” to “Save Cádiz”. It is true that industries are closing down, that one out of three young people has to emigrate. But this is what we see in all countries. Detroit, once the centre of the US car industry, is today a desert of iron and cement ruins. The same is happening in the Asturian mining industry. There are thousands of examples. It is not Cadiz that is sinking, it is world capitalism that is sinking in a process of economic crisis, ecological destruction, pandemics, wars, generalised barbarism.
“Save Cadiz” diverts the workers' struggle into a totally impotent localist terrain. For 40 years they have made us fight for “cargo for the Cadiz shipyards”, investments in the Bay etc. We can see the results! More and more unemployment, more precariousness, more need to emigrate.
The great danger for the struggle is that the solidarity that is beginning to manifest itself will be channelled into “Save Cadiz”. This locks us up in the bourgeois prison of localism and regionalism, which is the worst poison for workers' struggle. It divert us towards the capitalist objective of “economic development”, supposedly to “create jobs”, towards “unity” with the small businessmen who exploit us, the cops who beat us, the politicians who sell us out, the egotistical petty bourgeoisie.
They put the struggle in Cádiz in the same bag as the protests of transport entrepreneurs. Thus, Kichi, the “radical” mayor of Cadiz says: “We had to set fires so that Madrid would listen to us”. This is adulterating and falsifying the workers' struggle by turning it into a “movement of angry citizens" who “set fire” so that the “democratic authorities” listen to them.
No! The workers' struggle is not a selfish struggle for particular interests. As the Communist Manifesto says “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”. The struggle for demands is part of the historical movement of the working class to build a society dedicated to the full satisfaction of human needs.
For the struggle to go forward we must not look towards the “Bay of Cadiz”. We must look to the whole of the working class which is suffering the same as their brothers in Cadiz: inflation, precariousness, cuts in collective agreements, cuts in social benefits, chaos in the hospitals, the threat of the continuation of the Covid pandemic. But, reciprocally, the workers of the other regions must see in their comrades in Cadiz, THEIR FIGHT and join in solidarity with them by putting forward their own demands.
Contrary to democratic lies, today’s society is not a sum of citizens “equal before the law”. It is divided into classes: an exploiting minority that has everything and produces nothing and, facing it, the working class, the exploited majority that produces everything and has less and less. Only the struggle as a class can make the demands of the workers of Cadiz achievable, only the struggle as a class can open a future in the face of the crisis and the barbarism of capitalism.
International Communist Current, 21-11-21
[1] For our intervention in the workers’struggle at Delphi see: Delphi: the strength of the workers is solidarity [2]; Closure of Delphi: Only with mass struggle and solidarity will we be strong [3]
[2] Struggles in the United States, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea... Neither the pandemic nor the economic crisis have broken the combativity of the proletariat! [4]
[3] From a communiqué by the Coordinadora de Trabajadores del Metal de la Bahía de Cádiz (Bay of Cadiz Metal Workers' Coordinating Committee)
[4] Metalworkers’ strike in Vigo, Spain: the proletarian method of struggle [5]
[5] See: "2011: de la indignación a la esperanza [6]".
During our our French-language online public meeting in November 2021 on "the aggravation of the decomposition of capitalism, its dangers for humanity and the responsibility of the proletariat", several participants questioned the validity of the concept of the decomposition of capitalism, developed and defended by the ICC. Through this article, we wish to continue the debate by elaborating on our answers to the objections expressed during this meeting. Without repeating the content of the various interventions verbatim, the main criticisms formulated can be grouped into three points.
Without repeating the content of the various interventions verbatim, the main criticisms formulated can be grouped into three points:
First criticism: an innovation that is not in the marxist tradition. "Since the beginnings of Marxism, nobody before the ICC had developed such a theory of the decomposition of capitalism, neither the Communist League, nor the three Internationals, nor any other organisation, past or present, of the communist Left, and nobody other than the ICC adheres to it today. Why then this innovation in relation to marxism when the framework of the decadence of capitalism is sufficient to explain the present situation?”
Second criticism: an idealistic approach to history. "The ICC argues that the phase of decomposition is the result of a stalemate between the fundamental classes of society, understood as the impossibility for either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat to offer their own response to the historical crisis of capitalism: world war on one hand, world revolution on the other. From this perspective, the proletariat must be sufficiently conscious to prevent the bourgeoisie from unleashing world war, but insufficiently conscious to pose its own perspective of world revolution. The difficulties faced by the proletariat were compounded by the anti-communist campaign unleashed at the time of the collapse of Stalinism, leading to the sinking of capitalism in this phase of decomposition. But isn't giving such importance to subjective factors in the march of history an idealistic approach to history?”
Third criticism: a phenomenological approach coupled with a tautological vision. "The ICC begins by drawing up a list of disasters occurring in the world and uses this to develop its theory of the decomposition of capitalism by adopting a phenomenological approach; this results in a tautological vision of the current period, in which decomposition is explained by the events and the events are explained by decomposition, which in the end does not explain anything and does not allow for a comprehensive understanding of the situation”.
An innovation that is not in the marxist tradition?
Capitalism, both in its rise and in its decadence, has gone through different distinct historical phases. This is true, for example, of the imperialist phase, which presaged the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence. It was by relying firmly on the scientific method of marxism that the revolutionaries of the time, including Lenin and Luxemburg, were able to identify this new phase in the life of capitalism, even though the concept of imperialism had not been theorised by Marx and Engels.
Indeed, marxism, or the method of scientific socialism, must not be locked into an invariant dogma when it has to understand a reality that is always in movement. Moreover, Marx and Engels themselves always sought to develop, enrich, and even if necessary revise, positions that proved to be insufficient or outdated, as illustrated by their preface to the 1872 German reprint of the Communist Manifesto: "As the Manifesto itself declares, the practical application of these principles depends everywhere and always on the historical conditions of the moment [...] In the face of the immense progress of large-scale industry during the last twenty-five years and the parallel development of the party organisation of the working class; in the face of the practical experiences, first of the February revolution, then and above all of the Paris Commune, where, for the first time, the proletariat was able to hold political power in its hands for two months, this programme has lost its topicality in places”.
This was also Luxemburg's attitude when she fought against the position defended until then by the workers' movement on the national question: “As she said and demonstrated very clearly, to defend to the letter, in 1890, the support given by Marx to Polish independence in 1848, was not only to refuse to recognise that social reality had changed, but also to transform marxism itself, to turn a living method of investigating reality into a dried-up quasi-religious dogma.”[1] We can also mention all the critical work done by the Communist Left, from the 1920s onwards, on the new problems posed by the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the Communist International, notably on the question of the state in the transitional period and its relationship with the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The real "innovations" (if one may call them that) in relation to marxism are, on the other hand, represented both by the theory of the "invariance of Marxism since 1848", elaborated by Bordiga in the middle of the counter-revolution, taken up and carried forth by the Bordigists of the International Communist Party (ICP), and by the equivocal attitude of the Damenists of the Internationalist Communist Party (ICP) towards it, and even by the pure and simple rejection by the Bordigists of the notion of the decadence of capitalism, whereas this concept is present from the beginnings of historical materialism! [2] It is moreover these same "innovations" in relation to marxism that lead these currents of the Communist Left to reject as non-marxist the concept of the decomposition of capitalism.
An idealist approach to history?
At the time of the decadence of feudalism, the bourgeoisie, as the exploiting class with its own means of production and exchange, could rely essentially on its growing economic power in feudal society, on which the alienated consciousness of its class interests was based, to finally conquer political power. In the period of capitalist decadence, the proletariat, as an exploited class possessing nothing but its labour power, cannot count on and rely on any economic power in society; in order to conquer political power, it can only count on the development of its class consciousness and its organisational capacity, the maturation of which therefore constitutes an essential element of the relation of forces between the classes.
Since the objective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by communism are fulfilled with the entry of the capitalist mode of production into its period of decadence, the future of the world communist revolution depends exclusively on the subjective conditions, on the deep and wide maturation of the class consciousness of the proletariat. This is why it is essential for the bourgeoisie to constantly attack the consciousness of the working class.
This aspect is particularly illustrated by the events leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. In July 1914, the rival imperialist blocs were ready to confront each other militarily. The only uncertainty left for the bourgeoisie was the attitude of the working class towards the war. Will they allow themselves to be recruited, as cannon fodder no less, behind national flags? This uncertainty was lifted on 4 August 1914 with the betrayal of the opportunist wing of social democracy which definitively passed into the camp of the bourgeoisie by voting for war credits. This act of betrayal was received as a blow to the proletariat's head, leading to a decline of its class consciousness which was immediately exploited by the bourgeoisie to mobilise the proletarians for the first world imperialist war, with the precious help of the former organisations of the working class which had recently gone over to the class enemy: the social democratic parties and the trade unions.
Thus, it was the blow to the class consciousness of the proletariat that finally allowed the bourgeoisie to launch the First World War in 1914. It was also the weakness of that same class consciousness in the 1980s, compounded by the blow of the anti-communist campaigns that followed the collapse of Stalinism, that prevented the proletariat from putting forward its own historical perspective of world communist revolution and led to decadent capitalism’s entry into its phase of decomposition; in other words, the absence of a perspective for the working class is now tantamount to an absence of perspective for the whole of society. All this illustrates the centrality and determinant character of subjective factors in the period of decadence of capitalism for the future of humanity.
Thus, far from being an idealist approach to history, the importance given to subjective factors in the march of history constitutes a truly dialectical materialist approach to it. For Marx, as for all consistent materialists, class consciousness is a material force. The communist revolution is a revolution in which consciousness plays a central role: “Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals”[3]
A phenomenological approach coupled with a tautological vision?
Decadent feudal society was marked by the occurrence of elements or phenomena of decomposition, of which the atrocities and moral decay that marked the Thirty Years' War are a perfect illustration. That said, the sinking of feudalism into decadence went hand in hand with the development of capitalism, whose economic dynamism prevented society as a whole from sinking into a phase of decomposition.
The situation is quite different in decadent capitalist society. It does not see the growth of a new exploiting class whose growing economic power would be a counterweight to the inevitable sinking of society into decadence, nor does it see the development of a new mode of production to replace the old one. Why is this so?
Because the new society that must emerge from the ashes of the old society, communism, is the "real movement that abolishes the present state of things". Communism can only be erected on the basis of the destruction of the old capitalist relations of production. As long as this "movement which abolishes the present state of things" is not realised by the class which is the bearer of a new society, the elements of decomposition which accumulate and amplify as the period of decadence advances will not find any antagonistic force in society which can limit their expression. Without a mode of production capable of taking over from dying capitalism, society begins to rot on its feet.
Armed with this general framework for analysing the decadence of capitalism, we have observed the phenomena that have occurred since the 1980s. However, we have not observed them "in themselves" but by relying firmly on the scientific method of marxism. It was this approach, and not a phenomenological one, that allowed us to identify the break-up of the Eastern bloc as the dissolution of bloc politics, making the march of capitalism towards a new world conflict temporarily and materially impossible. Similarly, it was this framework that allowed us to analyse the collapse of Stalinism as a decisive moment in the evolution of the decomposition of capitalism, which had been advancing throughout the 1980s. The beginning of this new phase emphasised the proletariat’s crucial responsibility for the very future of humanity. In doing so, we adopted the same approach as that of the revolutionaries who faced the phenomenon of the First World War and identified it as marking the opening of an era of "wars and revolutions", where, as Lenin stated, "the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie" had given way to "the epoch of the reactionary bourgeoisie"; in other words, as ushering in the period of decadence of capitalism[4]
Contrary to the objections made to us, it is therefore not so much the accumulation of phenomena inseparable from decomposition which gives rise to our understanding of this ultimate phase in the life of capitalism but fundamentally a historical analysis of the relationship between the two basic classes of society. In this, our methodological starting point is in line with marxism, that of relying on the class struggle and its dynamics, on what constitutes the "motor of history" and not on simple "phenomena" accumulated by circumstances.
This approach also allowed us to understand that the decomposition of capitalism was "feeding itself". This is particularly the case for the phenomenon of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is both a product of the decomposition of capitalism (increased destruction of both the natural planetary environment and the health and medical research systems, generalised "every man for himself" within the world bourgeoisie culminating in the "war of the masks" and the "war of the vaccines") and also a factor in the acceleration of this same decomposition (further sinking into economic crisis, accelerated flight into debt, increased imperialist tensions)[5]. This approach to reality is therefore not tautological but adopts the methodological rigour of dialectical materialism.
We encourage readers to continue their reflection on this subject, in particular by reading our article on the marxist roots of the notion of decomposition, which appeared in the International Review n° 117. But also to write to us to continue the debate.
DM, 29.12.21
[1] International Review 157, The national question 100 years after the Easter Rising | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [7]
[2] Cf International Review 118, 1 - The theory of decadence lies at the heart of historical materialism, part i | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [8]
[3] Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 1846
[4] Cf International Review 121, 4 - The theory of decadence at the heart of historical materialism | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [9]
A comrade sent a letter to the ICC in which he asked “how I, you or anyone can support workers in the reformist struggles without supporting reforms?......How do you help workers in the immediate struggle for better work conditions (or something like protecting the NHS) while maintaining that only revolution would work? After-all, the SWP are nominally a communist party, so would claim likewise that revolution is the only intrinsic goal”
In our reply we try to explain that reforms are no longer possible in decadent capitalism. But even if the only remaining perspective is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, that must not lead us to the conclusion that the working class must abstain from the struggle for the defence of its daily living conditions. For it is only in and through these struggles that the working class forges the weapons of its future revolutionary struggle.
Therefore, the development of the struggle for better working and living conditions is as essential as the revolutionary struggle. For marxism, there is no proletarian struggle that is purely economic, purely demand-oriented; it is inextricably linked to the historic mission of the proletariat. Even the smallest proletarian strike carries within it the seeds of revolutionary struggle against the system. Whether it leads to improvements of the conditions of the workers or not, it is a vital precondition for the development of class consciousness and the emergence of a revolutionary offensive against capital.
Dear comrade
Thank you for your correspondence. You raise some important questions that are key to our understanding of the actual conditions facing the working class today, with the onslaught on its living and working conditions in the context of the crisis-ridden and deadly capitalist system, and with regard to what message revolutionaries should intervene with towards the class’s struggles to help it overcome the obstacles erected in its path by the agents of state capitalism, primordially the unions.
The working class has been in a permanent struggle for its working and living conditions throughout its existence, but it is only since the onset of capitalist decadence, from the beginning of the 20th century, that the perspective of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism has been a reality.
As we explained to you in our first reply, the bourgeoisie did previously play a progressive historical role in the overthrow of feudalism, and in this period of capitalist ascendance the working class allied itself with the progressive factions of the bourgeoisie and could, while retaining its autonomy, win long-lasting improvements, reforms, to its own conditions of existence. But at the end of the century, when capitalism had achieved domination over the whole planet, faced with an increasingly saturated world market and when world war was looming between the major bourgeoisies, this signified capitalism's impending historical bankruptcy. From this point on, all parts of the bourgeoisie became equally reactionary and any attempt to ally with them could only be counter-revolutionary. Political organisations that incorporated the defence of alliances with these bourgeois factions into their very being confirmed their own role as appendage of capital.
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement (…) never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat” (Manifesto of the Communist Party [11]). Thus, even in the ascendant period it was of the utmost importance not to lose sight of the revolutionary perspective and to distinguish the fight for reforms from the ideology of reformism. Rosa Luxemburg wrote a long and detailed critique of this abandonment of marxism entitled Reform or Revolution, which showed this was nothing other than a deluded capitulation and submission to and support for the ruling class.
But at the dawn of the 20th century, when the working class was no longer able to win any significant permanent reforms to its working conditions, the right wing of the workers' movement in the capitalist heartlands became ever more riddled with the bourgeois ideology of “reformism” and with illusions in parliamentarism and democratism, and the notion that capitalism could evolve and grow into socialism without the need for the violent struggle and revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class. This abandonment of marxism was definitely confirmed when the opportunist wing of German Social Democracy served the working class up to be sacrificed on the battlefields of World War I, before the class eventually recovered and unleashed a determined revolutionary struggle in the course of the war itself. The defeat of the revolutionary wave and the subsequent counter-revolution would culminate in second round of capitalist slaughter in World War II.
In the period of “reconstruction” after 1945 the bourgeoisie heralded a permanent renewal of the capitalist system, its capacity for new growth and its ability to improve the welfare of the working class. With the growth of state capitalism, it provided general improvements to the health, education, and general welfare of the working class. But these were not genuine reforms won by the working class but essential measures that the ruling class needed in order to improve its competivity on the world stage and so to defend its imperialist interests. This period of growth, known as the “post-war boom”, was short-lived and the permanent crisis of the system reared its head once more at the end of the 1960s.
In decadence the working class has consistently struggled against the attacks on its living and working conditions, both in the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary periods, but we do not consider such struggles “reformist”. They are simply the defensive struggles of the class in a situation where capitalism has less and less capacity to improve the working class’s living standards, other than temporarily, and only for the employer to immediately reverse any benefits won by making cut-backs to the numbers employed or removing other “fringe-benefits” that had existed, with a need to increase productivity and retain competitivity in the marketplace.
The NHS does not belong to the workers
Today, the Health Sector is one of the largest employers in most industrialised countries. In the British NHS, that you refer to, these workers’ struggles should not be seen as “protecting the NHS” in any way. It is a mistake to identify the health sector workers with the NHS itself. The recent struggles of NHS workers were not for the defence of or improvements to the NHS, but for improvements to their conditions of work. The NHS is their employer, it’s a state run industry funded by the government, and it squeezes the pay packets of its employees, just like any other capitalist business. “Reforms to the NHS” has long been a preoccupation of the parliamentary parties, not concerned with improving the conditions of the workers, but based on the need to improve productivity and reduce the financial burden on the capitalist state, so these workers’ struggles are not about “protecting the NHS”, but their own self-defence.
We can see that the NHS is a part of the capitalist state when we look at the government campaign around “Defend the NHS” that mobilised communities into weekly demonstrations of “solidarity with the NHS” and its overburdened staff (assembling and clapping in streets and gardens), allegedly to boost the morale of the hospital workers, but really to squeeze even more blood from the workforce and for them to continue to make sacrifices in a time of national crisis and emergency.
The British state had neglected to prepare for the pandemic and the NHS placed an overwhelming burden of demands and pressures on its employees in the fight to save lives of victims of the pandemic. A lot of their work colleagues were sacrificed through the lack of provision of any proper means of protection against the virus. The massive debt they were owed by the state would not be, could not be, repaid by the NHS state employer, and it was easy for the unions to disperse the militancy showed by these workers.
The SWP is a capitalist organisation
You also raise the question of how do we as communists support the struggles of the working class in this period and you ask us how we differentiate our intervention from that of the leftists like the SWP who, as you rightly say, intervene towards the workers in struggle supposedly advocating the struggle for communism, since they claim to be communists.
The SWP is a leftist organisation of the bourgeoisie. It might appear to defend a kind of “reformist” vision but this is a mystification, because in decadent capitalism there no longer exists a material basis for the struggle for reforms. The SWP programme is one of state capitalism, a vision central to the politics of the leftist groups today, despite their revolutionary rhetoric. Their alliances with other bourgeois organisations only confirm their role as an instrument of the bourgeois state (see the series of articles “The hidden legacy of the left of capital” on our website).
This means they work inside the unions and give critical support to the Labour Party. They provide no vision for developing the class struggle other than that recruiting members to support their activity and obstructing any capacity for the development of class consciousness. “Defend the NHS” is certainly part of their lexicon. For them the NHS is some great reform won by the working class, when it is in fact an expression of the growth of state capitalism in the period of decadence and a means for ensuring the capitalist system has a fit and healthy workforce.
For us, the intervention of revolutionaries has to begin from the needs of the working class as a whole. We don't consider the current struggles to be for nothing, to be seen as inconsequential. Despite the deterioration in the fabric of capitalist society in this period of its decomposition, the working class, its combat and self-defence against the attacks of the system, provides the only perspective for humanity to escape a total collapse into barbarism. It's not a case of saying to workers “only revolution will work”, but of showing that the daily struggles of the working class are the basis on which the revolutionary perspective can develop.
Revolutionaries call to the working class to unify its struggles across the various divisions imposed on it by the unions and the state, which is the only way to develop its struggles in a positive direction against the attacks, which are increasing and intensifying today. Through the extension of the struggles the class can begin to recover its class identity and its consciousness of its role as a revolutionary force in society, a class for communism. Despite the difficulties facing the working class, and revolutionaries, today, it remains for us to defend and publish the lessons and the history of class struggle, to help the class go beyond its defensive struggles and be able to extend and unify them and eventually politicise them so as to wage war on this bankrupt system.
Very fraternally,
Terry for the ICC
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/asamblea_metal_cadiz_-_copy.jpg
[2] https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200705/1917/delphi-la-fuerza-de-los-trabajadores-es-la-solidaridad
[3] https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/200702/1283/cierre-de-delphi-solo-con-la-lucha-masiva-y-solidaria-seremos-fuertes
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17091/struggles-united-states-iran-italy-korea-neither-pandemic-nor-economic-crisis-have
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/295_vigo
[6] https://es.internationalism.org/node/3349
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201609/14090/national-question-100-years-after-easter-rising
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/118_decadence_i.html
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/121_decadence
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16867/special-dossier-covid-19-real-killer-capitalism
[11] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf