In the previous issue of the International Review, we underlined the importance of the new decade, which we called the "years of truth." In particular we emphasized that the bourgeoisie was taking a qualitative step forward in its preparations for a new world war:
"In a sense the seventies were the years of illusion... For years now the bourgeoisie has been grasping at straws trying to prove that the crisis can have a solution... Today the bourgeoisie has abandoned this illusion... (it has discovered in a muffled but painful way that there is no solution to the crisis. Recognizing the impasse, there is nothing left but a leap in the dark. And for the bourgeoisie a leap in the dark is war..
Today, with the total failure of the economy, the bourgeoisie is slowly realizing its true situation and is acting on it. On the one hand it is arming to the teeth... But armaments are not the only field of its activity... the bourgeoisie has also undertaken a massive campaign to create an atmosphere of war-psychosis in order to prepare public opinion for its increasingly war-like projects". (‘The 80's: years of truth')
Following the barrage provoked by the seizure of hostages in Iran, we emphasized the intensification of the ideological campaign, especially in the USA:
"While one of America's objectives in the present crisis is to strengthen the international cohesion of its bloc, another, even more important objective is to whip up a war-psychosis... A torrent of war hysteria like this hasn't been seen for a long time... Faced with a population that has traditionally not been favorable to the idea of foreign intervention... and which has been markedly cool towards adventures of this kind since the Vietnam war, the ‘barbarous' acts of the ‘Islamic Republic' have been an excellent theme for the war campaigns of the American bourgeoisie. Khomeini has found the Shah to be an excellent bugbear to use for reforging the unity of the nation. Carter -- whether, as it would seem, he deliberately provoked the present crisis by letting the Shah into the States, or whether he's merely using the situation, has found Khomeini to be an equally useful bugbear in his efforts to reinforce national unity at home and get the American population used to the idea of foreign intervention, even if this doesn't happen in Iran." (Behind the Iran-US crisis, the ideological campaigns).
A few days after we wrote these lines, the events in Afghanistan and their aftermath confirmed this analysis. On the one hand they highlighted the profound aggravation of inter-imperialist tensions; on the other hand, they allowed the western bloc to intensify its ideological campaign. But while the war-like campaign around the events in Afghanistan were a continuation of the one whipped up over Iran, the events that took place in these two countries were not of the same nature and didn't have the same function in the context of inter-imperialist rivalries.
The Iranian events did not directly threaten the imperialist interests of the USA, despite the difficulties it's had to face since the fall of the Shah and the wave of anti-Americanism which has swept the country. This was confirmed when Russian troops entered Afghanistan and Bani Sadr announced that Iran would be sending military aid to the Afghan guerillas. In contrast, the intervention of the Russian armed forces really was an attack on US strategic interests, inasmuch as it:
This is why we cannot see this intervention merely as an operation of Russian domestic policy, as some have claimed, aimed simply at preserving order within its own bloc or its own frontiers against the threat posed by the Islamic agitation. The real issues are much more serious and have meant that the Russians are prepared to pay the price of the murderous resistance of the Afghan guerillas. In reality, the ‘pacification of the feudal rebels' was above all a pretext enabling the USSR to improve a military-strategic position that has been continuously deteriorating over the last few years. Taking advantage of the decomposition of the political situation in Iran, which used to have the mission of acting as the US gendarme in the region, the USSR took the risk of a grave international crisis in order to transform Afghanistan into a military base. This is why the ideological barrage in the Western bloc, especially in America, over the Afghanistan events was not simply hot air, as it was over the Iran episode. Even if it was part of the ideological campaign that had already got going, it expressed a real concern of the US bloc about the Russian advance, and thus constituted a real aggravation of inter-imperialist tensions, one more step towards a new world war.
However, despite the gravity for the US bloc of the massive installation of Russian troops in Afghanistan, the American bloc wasn't able to do anything to stop it. Today it's trying to make up for and utilize this partial set-back by a deafening intensification of its war-like campaigns, so that, when necessary, it will be able to send in its expeditionary corps without fear of internal dissent. Carter's official decisions to set up an expeditionary force of 110,000 men and to re-register young people for an eventual mobilization -- decisions taken when the campaign was reaching its paroxysm-- are a clear expression of this policy. The unfolding of the events in Iran and Afghanistan leads to the following conclusion: everything happened as though the USA foresaw the Russian intervention in Afghanistan (its ‘experts' and observation satellites have some uses after all!) and consciously provoked the seizure of hostages in Tehran by letting the Shah into the States when they knew what reaction this would stir up. This allowed them to let the situation in Iran decompose even further, in order to isolate the extremist elements and force the ‘moderates' to take things in hand in favor of the US (the ‘anti-Russian' turn of events being guaranteed by the USSR's intervention against a brother Islamic country . This is what Bani Sadr is trying to do now).
What's more, the events in Iran allowed the campaign to be mounted in two stages:
But even if we have to guard against too Machiavellian a view in the analysis of political events -- the bourgeoisie always being at the mercy of imponderable elements -- and even if the whole operation wasn't planned with such precision, it's important to point out the breadth of the present ideological campaign. This was in no way improvised and had been in preparation for many months, notably since the sudden and showy ‘discovery' of Russian troops in Cuba -- troops which had already been there for years.
And everything indicates that the USA and its bloc are not prepared to abandon this campaign, that they have decided to make maximum use of the present situation in order to tighten their ideological grip on the population and achieve the ‘national solidarity' which is so precious and so necessary in all wars. Thus the embargo on grain and the boycott of the Olympic Games are not so much directly aimed at putting pressure on the USSR (which can buy what it wants from elsewhere and can live without the Olympic Games) as at keeping up this war-like tension, at ideologically mobilizing the population of its own bloc.
Even though the role of revolutionaries isn't to make a choice between the imperialist blocs, even if it's not up to them, as Bordiga and his followers once did, to say that one is ‘More dangerous' than the other, and to ‘consider preferable the defeat of the stronger' (sic:), they must still denounce the lies and dangerous ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie, especially their most mystifying elements, as they did between the wars on the question of ‘anti-fascism'.
Today one of the battle-cries of the US bloc is its alleged military ‘weakness' vis-a-vis a USSR which is becoming better armed and more and more ‘aggressive'. In reality, the military ‘superiority' of the Russian bloc is a pure lie, a creation of propaganda, The authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which can hardly be suspected of pro-Russian sympathies, dealt with this question in its 1979 report, calling it a "particularly successful propaganda exercise" on the part of the Western countries. It's true that armaments expenditure in the USSR and its bloc have continued to grow over the last few years: in 1958, Russian expenditure on arms made up 20.3% of the world total. In 1978, it was up to 25.5%. But even at the latter date they were still slightly less than the USA's share: 25.6%. On the other hand, the total expenses of NATO in 1978 made up 42.8% of the world total, as against the Warsaw Pact's 28.6% (figures from SIPRI).
Although these figures are significant, they have to be completed by the following facts:
Thus:
The American bloc's enormous superiority also applies to classical armaments: is it by accident that Israel, using American arms, has always won its wars against the Arab countries armed by the USSR? That, in 1973, Israel stopped the 2,000 Syrian tanks bound for Faifa after they'd moved only 10 km -- the same tanks with which the Warsaw Pact is equipped and which have been presented as the threat to Western Europe; Or are we to believe that Jehova is stronger than Allah?
In reality, the crushing military superiority of the western camp doesn't have any mysterious origins. As Engels said a long time ago, military superiority is always an expression of economic superiority. And the economic superiority of the West is equally crushing.
For example:
And if we include the gross production of the other important countries of the Western bloc we arrive at 6200 billion, whereas the Eastern bloc is more or less made up of the Warsaw Pact countries. It's hardly worth counting Vietnam's 8.9 billion or Ethiopia's 3.6.
Another fact: among the twelve economically most powerful countries in the world, only two belong to the Eastern bloc: USSR (no.3) and Poland (no.12). All the others are entirely integrated into the Western bloc.
It is precisely because of this enormous economic weakness that the USSR appears to be the ‘aggressive' power in most local conflicts. As was the case with Germany in 1914 and 1939, it's the country which has come off worst in the dividing up of an already limited imperialist cake which tends to put the whole division into question.
This is a constant reality in the decadent period of capitalism. It expresses both the ineluctable character of imperialist war and its absurdity even from the bourgeois economic standpoint (not to mention its absurdity for humanity).
Last century, when capitalism was in the ascendant, wars could have a real rationality, especially colonial wars. Certain countries could throw themselves into a war with the guarantee that this would pay off on the economic level (new markets, raw materials, etc). In contrast to this, the wars of the 20th century are expressions of the impasse in which capitalism finds itself. Since the world is entirely divided up between the major imperialist powers, wars can no longer lead to the conquest of new markets, and thus to a new field of expansion for capitalism. They simply result in a redivision of the existing markets. This isn't accompanied by the possibility of a great new development of the productive forces, but, on the contrary, by the massive destruction of the productive forces, because such wars
Thus, imperialist wars appear as a pure aberration for the whole of capitalism, and this absurdity is, among other things, expressed by the fact that it's the very bloc that's condemned to ‘lose' -- because it's weaker economically -- which is forced to push hardest for a war (if it makes sense at all to talk of losers and victors in today's conditions!) This ‘suicidal' behavior on the part of the eventual loser isn't the result of its leaders going mad. It's an expression of the inevitable character of war under decadent capitalism, of an ineluctable juggernaut which is completely out of the control of the ruling classes and their governments. The march towards suicide by the so-called ‘aggressive' powers simply expresses the fact that the whole of capitalism is marching towards suicide.
The fact that, in general, the most ‘belligerent' imperialism loses the war, gives a semblance of credibility to all the post-war masquerades about ‘reparations', trials of ‘war criminals', of those who are ‘responsible' for the holocaust (as if all the governments, all the bourgeois parties, all the military leaders weren't criminals, weren't responsible for the orgy of murder, for the massacre and destruction of imperialist wars). Through these masquerades, the victorious imperialism can cover up its attempts to cash in on its own military expenditure, and to install in the defeated countries a ruling political team which corresponds to its interests.
All is fair in bourgeois propaganda: the deaths at Auschwitz are used to justify the deaths in Dresden and Hiroshima; the deaths in Vietnam are used to justify those in Afghanistan; past massacres are used to prepare future massacres. Similarly, the arms expenditures (real or exaggerated) and the imperialist maneuvers of the ‘enemy' bloc are used to justify the military expenditures, the resulting austerity and the imperialist maneuvers of one's ‘own' bloc -- to prepare the ‘national solidarity' needed for the next holocaust.
Just as revolutionaries have to denounce the mystifications which accompany the imperialist policies of the Eastern bloc, notably the myth of ‘national liberation' (something we've always done in our press), so they also have to unmask the hypocrisy of the ideological campaigns of the Western bloc.
In no.20 of the IR, we dealt at length with the main features of the present ideological offensive of the bourgeoisies of the American bloc in preparation for imperialist war: the creation of a war-psychosis aimed at demoralizing the population, at making them accept with fatalism and resignation the perspective of a new world war. We have just been examining another aspect of this offensive: the development of an ‘anti-Russian' feeling, through such things as the lies about levels of armaments, campaigns about ‘human rights' and the boycott of the Olympics. This is still an incomplete list of the methods being used by the bourgeoisie of the Western countries to prepare the population, and above all the exploited class, for the ‘supreme sacrifice'. We must add a campaign that is less noisy but more insidious and dangerous: the one aimed more specifically at the working class.
The first type of campaign has mainly been carried out by the right and centre parties of the bourgeoisie, whose language consists in calling on ‘all the citizens' to realize a ‘national unity' in the face of the dangers threatening the ‘country' or ‘civilization'. Behind the creation of an ‘anti-Russian' phobia which completes the first kind of campaign, you will find the same parties, to which should be joined the social democratic parties whose arguments are more nuanced and less hysterical, but who won't pass up an opportunity to denounce Stalinism and the violation of human rights in the east. Obviously, the ‘Communist' parties don't participate directly in this variety of ideological campaign: despite the fact that some of them have been obliged to condemn certain actions by the USSR in order to pacify the bourgeoisie and ‘public opinion' in their respective countries.
On the other hand, there is one aspect of the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie which is common to both parties whose specific function is to contain the working class -- the SPs and CPs. The language of the left of capital is presented as the opposite of the language of the right: in fact it is complementary. This language consists of a denunciation of the alarmist campaigns of the right, of an assertion that there is no real danger of war at present. In some countries, like France, we've even seen the left declaring unanimously that the alarmist campaign of the right has the aim of diverting the attention of the workers and imposing additional austerity on them. The language of the left is obviously connected to the fact that, at the present time, they have been compelled to carry out their capitalist function in opposition, the better to sabotage the workers struggles from within. Since they're not in government, they don't have the job of creating ‘national unity' around the leaders of the country[1]; their task is to radicalize their language in order to win the confidence of the workers, so that they can lead the class into a dead-end and wear out its combativity.
But this isn't the only reason why the left parties are sticking to their soothing words. Their language has the aim of filling in the gaps left by the ideological campaign of the right. The right is more and more emphasizing a partial truth: that war is inevitable (obviously without making it clear that such a fatality exists only in the framework of capitalism). The aim of this is to demoralize the whole population, to make it accept with resignation the sacrifices of today in order to prepare for the still greater sacrifices of the future. But this half-truth has the inconvenient feature of being a recognition that capitalist society is now in a total impasse. In certain sectors of the population, above all the proletariat, the class which is best equipped to put the whole system into question, this propaganda runs the risk of having the opposite effect to what was intended. It could help the workers to see the necessity for a massive confrontation against capitalism, in order to stay its criminal hand and destroy it. The soothing words of the left allow capital to run the whole gamut of mystifications, to plug up any gaps which might let the working class develop its consciousness.
Already the left and right have divided up the work concerning the economic crisis: the right saying that the crisis was world-wide, that nothing could be done about it, that austerity was the only resort; and the left replying; that the crisis was the result of bad policies, of the wicked doings of the monopolies, and that you could overcome the crisis by applying policies which really corresponded to the interests of the nation and of the workers. Thus, the right was already calling for resignation, for accepting austerity without resistance, while the left got down to the job of derailing working class discontent into the electoral dead-end of the ‘left alternative' (the Labor government in Britain, the union of the left in France, the historic compromise in Italy, etc...)
This division of labor between the right and the left, aimed at subordinating the whole of society, and above all the working class, to the needs of capital, is nothing new. It was put to use during the ideological preparations for the First World War. On the one hand, the right wing of capital was shouting the loudest about patriotism and openly calling for war against the ‘hereditary enemy', on the other hand, the opportunists and reformists who were helping to push the parties of the II International into the carp of capital, while attacking the chauvinist hysteria, continuously minimized the dangers of war. The left of the International (notably Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg) was insisting that imperialist war was an inevitability within the logic of capitalism, that the workers had to mobilize themselves on a massive scale to prevent capitalism from having a free hand and to prepare for the destruction of the system. The right, on the other hand, whose influence was growing, was developing a whole theory about the possibility of a ‘peaceful' capitalism, able to resolve conflicts between nations through ‘arbitration'. As long as the working class was mobilized, notably through mass demonstrations in response to the various conflicts which broke out at the beginning of the century (Franco-German confrontations over Morocco, conflicts in the Balkans, invasion of the Tripolitaine by Italy, etc...); as long as the left had a preponderant influence within the International (special notions against war at the Congresses of 1907 and 1910, Extraordinary Congress in 1912 on the same question) , the bourgeoisie could not allow these conflicts to degenerate into a generalized war. It wasn't until the working class, lulled by the speeches of the opportunists, ceased to mobilize itself against the threat of war (between 1912 and 1914) that capitalism could unleash a generalized war following an incident that was seemingly trivial in relation to previous ones (the Sarajevo assassination).
Thus the ideological preparation for world war wasn't simply a matter of chauvinist, war-like hysteria. It was also made up of the soothing, pacifist sermons disseminate by the political forces who had most influence on the working class. These sermons helped to demobilize the class, to make it lose sight of what was really at stake, to tie it hand and feet and deliver it over to the bourgeois governments and the whole war hysteria; in sum, it served to prevent the class from playing its role as the only force that could prevent world war. The mobilization for imperialist war demands the demobilization of the proletariat from its class terrain.
We can clearly affirm that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and its aftermath express and accentuate the acceleration of the drive towards generalized imperialist war, capital's only solution of its crisis. Should we therefore question the analysis that the ICC has put forward since it was formed, concerning the historic course, our conclusion that what is on the agenda is not a generalized imperialist confrontation, but massive confrontations between the working class and the bourgeoisie?
The answer is no. In fact, the determination with which the bourgeoisie is going about the ideological preparations for war itself indicates that the subjective conditions for such an outcome to the capitalist crisis have not been met. For some, if world war hasn't yet broken out, it's because the objective conditions -- economic situation, military preparations, etc. don't yet exist. This is the thesis defended, for example, by the International Communist Party (Programme Communiste). In reality, if we compare the present situation to the one existing in 1939 or 1914, we can see that, from the standpoint of the gravity of the crisis, the level of armaments, and the strengthening military alliances within each bloc, the conditions for a new world war are even more ripe today. The only missing factor -- although a decisive one -- is the proletariat's adherence to bourgeois ideals, its discipline and submission towards the needs of the national capital. This adherence, discipline and submission did exist in 1939, following the most terrible defeat in the history of the working class; a defeat that was all the more terrible because at the end of the first world war, the proletariat had risen to its greatest heights, a defeat that was both physical and ideological, a long list of massacres and mystifications, especially about the so-called socialist nature of Russia; a procession of defeats presented as victories. These were similar to the conditions which existed in 1914, although the defeat of the working class then was much less profound than it was in 1939, and this allowed for the resurgence of 1917-18. The 1914 defeat was essentially on the ideological level. It took the form of the opportunist gangrene which more and more infected the IInd International, culminating in 1914 with the treason of most of its parties. When they went over to the enemy, these parties, as well as the trade unions, were able to hand the proletariat over to the imperialist appetites of the bourgeoisie, dragging; it into ‘national defense' and ‘the defense of civilizations' - precisely because these organizations still retained the hearts and minds of the working class. And this mobilization of the proletariat behind national capital was facilitated by the fact that, with the exception of Russia, there was no important development of the class struggle just prior to 1914, and that the economic crisis had not had time to really deepen before it had broken out in war. The situation is very different today. The mystifications which were used to mobilize the class for World War II, notably anti-fascism and the myth of socialism in Russia, have long since lost their old force. It's the same with the belief in the unending progress of ‘civilization' and ‘democracy' which existed in 1914, but which after over half a century of decadence have been replaced by a general disgust for the system. Similarly the parties of the left, which betrayed the working class a long time ago, no longer have the same impact on the class as they had in 1914 or the 1930's. Furthermore, capitalism's deepening slide into the crisis since the mid-sixties has provoked a historical resurgence of the class struggle. Thus, instead of announcing to the proletariat that the game is up, that, whatever it does, it can't prevent the outbreak of a new holocaust, it's the task of revolutionaries to indicate to their class that the historical situation is still in its hands, that it depends on its struggles whether or not humanity will go down under a deluge of thermonuclear bombs.
However, this situation is not fixed in a definitive manner. If today the road is not open to the bourgeois solution to the crisis, that shouldn't lead us to believe that nothing can change this situation, that the historic course cannot be reversed. In reality, what could be called the ‘normal' course of capitalist society is towards war. The resistance of the working class, which can put this course into question, appears as a sort of ‘anomaly', as something running ‘against the stream', of the organic processes of the capitalist world. This is why, when we look at the eight decades of this century, we can find hardly more than two during which the balance of forces was sufficiently in the proletariat's favor for it to have been able to bar the way to imperialist war (1905-12, 1917-23, 1968-80).
For the moment, the potential combativity of the class, which began to manifest itself after 1968, has not been destroyed. But it is necessary to be vigilant, and the events in Afghanistan are a reminder of this necessity. This is because:
This vigilance which the working class must keep up, and which revolutionaries must contribute to as much as possible, involves the clearest possible understanding of what's at stake in the present situation and in the struggles it's engaged in today. The contribution to this made by revolutionaries can't consist of the assertion that nothing can be done about the threat of imperialist war. If they did this they would become auxiliaries to the campaign of demoralization being waged by the right. Neither can they go around saying that there is no real danger of an imperialist war, of a reversal of the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. If they did, their ‘contribution' would simply add grist to the mills of the left. If revolutionaries are going to be able to denounce both the campaigns of the right and of the left, they can't do this simply by affirming the opposite of what either of them say. No! We must be able to throw the bourgeoisie's various arguments back into its face:
In both cases, this is ample reason not for resigning ourselves, but for launching ourselves into a resistance against austerity, the prelude to the struggle to destroy the system. In its coming struggles the working class must develop a clear understanding of what's at stake, of the fact that today's struggle isn't simply a blow-for-blow resistance against the growing attacks of capital, but that it is the only rampart against the threat of imperialist war, that it is the indispensable preparation for the only way out for humanity: the communist revolution. Such an understanding of what's really at stake is a precondition not only for the immediate effectiveness of the struggle, but also for its capacity to serve as a real preparation for the decisive confrontations that lie ahead.
On the other hand, any struggle which is restricted to a purely economic or defensive level will be defeated all the more easily, both in an immediate sense and as part of a much broader struggle. When this happens the workers are deprived of that vital weapon, the generalization of the struggle, which is based on an awareness that the class war is a social, not a professional phenomenon. Similarly, if they lack any broader perspectives, immediate defeats will be a factor of demoralization instead of fruitful experiences that assist the development of class consciousness.
If the new wave of class struggle that is now underway is to avoid being worn out by the maneuvers of the left and the unions -- which would leave a free rein to the war-like ‘solution' to the crisis -- if it is to be a real step towards the revolutionary offensive for the overthrow of capitalism it must contain the following three inter-linked characteristics:
FM
[1] Where the left is still in government, its attitude isn't clear. In Belgium we've even seen the Socialist foreign minister making alarmist speeches, while his equally Socialist colleague, the minister of social affairs, was saying the opposite.
In this third part of the series, we are going to deal with one of the most important theoretical foundations of the Dutch Left. From its origin at the beginning of this century, the Dutch Left gave an interpretation of historical materialism which became a characteristic mark of the ‘Dutch Marxist school' (Anton Pannekoek, Hermann Gorter, H. Roland-Holst). This interpretation of Marxist method is often called ‘spontaneism'. We will show in this article why the term is inappropriate. Gorter and Pannekoeks' position on the role of spontaneity allowed the Dutch Left to understand the changes imposed on the class struggle with the onset of capitalist decadence. At the same time, we can see certain weaknesses in Pannekoek which today's ‘councilists' have pushed to their most absurd conclusions.
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Marxism made a decisive contribution to socialist theory in that unlike the utopian socialists, it did not depart from arbitrary or dogmatic presuppositions. Marxist theory in fact departs from "real individuals, their acts and the material conditions in which they live, those they find and at the same time those they bring about by their own acts" (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology). Let us recall the formulation on historical materialism in the ‘Preface to a Contribution of Political Economy' by Marx:
"In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or -- what is merely a legal expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological, forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such an epoch of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces cf production and the relations of production. A social order never perishes before all the productive forces for which it is broadly sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the womb of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it can solve, since closer examination will also show that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the process of formation. In broad outline, the Asian, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as progressive epochs of the socio-economic order. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production -- antagonistic not in the sense of an individual antagonism but of an antagonism growing out of the social conditions of existence of the individuals; but the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for the solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society therefore closes with this social formation."
One can distinguish two fundamental aspects of historical materialism that are indissolubly linked:
It is from the antagonism between the productive forces and the relations of production that we can deduce the objective necessity for a communist society. Marxist theory, for which being determines consciousness, also allows one to understand how the workers subjectively act in the process of revolution. The ‘Dutch Marxist school' always put the emphasis on this subjective factor, on the relationship between being and consciousness, on the relation between infrastructure and superstructure. Rosa Luxemburg was just as keen to clarify the question of class consciousness. In 1904 she opposed Lenin, who defended Kautsky's position that consciousness was brought from outside in the class struggle and was not a product of the struggle itself. For Rosa Luxemburg, faced with the bureaucratization of German Social Democracy, this question was of central importance. By basing herself on the history of the workers' movement in Russia, she showed that only the creative initiative of the large proletarian masses could lead to victory.
"In general, the tactical policy of the social democracy is not something that may be ‘invented'. It is the product of a series of great creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way forward. The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the historic process comes before the subjective logic of the human beings who participate in the historic process." (Rosa Luxemburg, Organizational Question of Social Democracy)
Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch Left defended this position on the role of spontaneity for the masses which has nothing to do with the spontaneist position of today's ‘councilists'. ‘Spontaneism' completely neglects the task of the most conscious elements in the class: that consciousness once arisen from the experience of struggle becomes the point of departure for future struggles. The spontaneists and the councilists embrace proletarian experience only to reject it later.
The ‘Dutch Marxist school', on the contrary, deepened the positions defended by Rosa Luxemburg on the role of spontaneity in the development of class consciousness. Gorter, Pannekoek and Roland-Holst found in the work of Joseph Dietzgen, a first generation social democrat, a development of Marx's basic conception that being determines consciousness. They wrote many articles on Dietzgen's positions and Gorter translated his most important work The Essence of Human Intellectual Work[1] into Dutch.
The Dutch Left thought it was necessary to stress the subjective aspects of historical materialism because:
"The great revolutions in modes of production (from feudalism to capitalism, from capitalism to socialism) happen because new necessities transform the mind of man and produce a will; when this will is translated into acts, man changes society in order to respond to new needs." (Pannekoek, ‘Marxism as Action', in Lichstrahlen, no.6, 1915)
These lines were written at the time when the productive forces had clearly entered into contradiction with capitalist relations of production; World War I had demonstrated the decadence of capitalism in the most horrible manner. Social Democracy had been shown incapable of adapting itself to the needs of the proletariat in the period of decadence, in the epoch of wars and social revolutions.
"Today, the hour has come to underline the other aspect, neglected by Marxism up to now, because the workers' movement must reorient itself, it must liberate itself from the narrowness and passivity of the past period in order to overcome its crisis." (Ibid)
However, while stressing the subjective aspect of Marxism, Pannekoek neglected the objective aspect of historical materialism. The contradictions, which were clearly present in the economic base of society in the period of capitalist decadence, were neglected, denied, put aside for the future (later on we will look at Pannekoek's critique of different crisis theories and the effects of his critique on today's councilist epigones). Pannekoek feared that certain of the crisis theories could lead the working class to passively wait for an ‘automatic' collapse of the capitalist system. In the article of 1915 quoted above, Pannekoek pointed out that Marxism has two aspects: "man is the product of circumstances, but he also transforms the circumstances". According to Pannekoek, these two aspects are: "... equally correct and important; it is only by their close relationship that they form a coherent theory. But of course in different circumstances one or other of these two aspects prevail" (Ibid). Thus in the difficult period of the anti-socialist laws of 1878, 1890, when Bismarck put Social Democracy outside the law, the idea was to let the circumstances mature. The strongly fatalistic turn taken by historical materialism during those years was, according to Pannekoek, deliberately maintained in the years preceding World War I. Kautsky said that a true Marxist was one who let circumstances mature. The need for new methods of struggle threatened the routine habits of the leaders of the party. Pannekoek was right when he stressed the need to put the emphasis on the subjective element in historical materialism, but in doing this he underestimated the objective evolution of capitalism. The proletariat must act consciously, pose new problems, raise them and resolve them in the experience of struggle. Of course, but why? What are these new problems? Why are they raised? Why the need for a new society, for communism? Can capitalism still develop? What can it offer humanity?
Pannekoek doesn't provide the answers, not even insufficient or false ones. He didn't see clearly that the objective change in capitalism, its decadence, posed the necessity for the mass activity of the proletariat. In the progressive development of capitalism the objective of class struggle was in general limited; thus the struggles for reforms led by the unions and parliamentary socialists were adequate in the preceding period, but were no longer appropriate in the period of decadence.
The answers to the questions posed above are found in Marxist theories of crisis. By seeking to determine the objective laws of capitalism's development, these theories have tried to evaluate if the crises which have taken place are the crises of growth of an ascendant mode of production in its prosperous period, or if, on the contrary, these crises are expressions of a system in decline which must be consciously replaced by a new revolutionary class.
On the basis of crisis theories we can draw certain important programmatic consequences, even if it remains true that consciousness of the necessity to accelerate the evolution of capitalism through struggle is never the product of ‘purely economic' arguments. Crisis theories clarify the process of class struggle. But at the same time, this clarification is an important need of the struggle. A theory of crisis provides revolutionaries with precious arguments against bourgeois ideology in their task of stimulating class consciousness which develops through and in the struggle. With theories of crisis, the working class could understand, for example, that Proudhonist ideas of self-management do not in fact abolish wage slavery. The Marxist theory of crisis combatted reformist illusions by showing that reforms meant nothing more than a relative amelioration in the situation of the working class which at the same time pushed capitalist development towards its final decadence. Today a Marxist theory of crisis shows the working class that the struggle to defend its living standards can no longer be a struggle for reforms when capitalism can no longer offer lasting improvements.
The fundamental unity of these two aspects of historical materialism, the objective and the subjective, appears very clearly in the work of Rosa Luxemburg. She doesn't simply put the accent on the role of the spontaneity of the masses in the development of new methods of struggle, she also shows why these new tactics are necessary. In a course given at the central school of the party in 1907, she pointed out that "the strongest unions are completely impotent" against the consequences that technical progress has on wages:
"The struggle against a relative fall in wages is no longer a struggle within the context of a commodity economy but is becoming a revolutionary attack against the very existence of this economy; it is the socialist movement of the proletariat. Hence the sympathies of the capitalist class for the unions (even though previously it had struggled furiously against them) because as the socialist struggle begins, so the unions will turn against socialism." (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Introduction to Political Economy', ed. Antropos, 1970, p.248)
In the Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxemburg traces the historic limits of capitalist production in the development of the world market. In the Communist Manifesto, we already find the idea that cyclical crises, which for Marx and Engels were an expression of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, could only be surmounted by the conquest of new markets, by the creation of the world market. In the German Ideology they call this creation of the world market "a universal interdependence, this first natural form of the historical world co-operation of individuals", a precondition for the world revolution which will lead to the "control and conscious management of those forces which, though born of the interaction of men have until now dazzled and dominated them". In Capital, Marx explicitly says:
"In our description of how production relations are converted into entities and rendered independent in relation to the agents of production, we leave aside the manner in which the interrelations, due to the world-market, its conjunctures, movements of market-prices, periods of credit, industrial and commercial cycles, alternations of prosperity and crisis, appear to them as overwhelming natural laws that irresistibly enforce their will over them, and confront them as blind necessity. We leave this aside because the actual movement of competition belongs beyond our scope, and we need present only the inner organization of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average, as it were." (Marx, Capital, vol.3, part vii, chap.48)
This plan to simply describe the internal organization of capitalism was justified because capitalism, after the troubled revolutionary years of 1848-49, had entered into a long period of prosperity. Marx and Engels concluded "a new revolution is only possible as a result of a new crisis. But it is as certain as the crisis itself". Marx seemed to take account of the fact that the period of social revolution hadn't yet started and that capitalism was still in its period of progressive development. Capital demystifies the contemporary bourgeois ideology which tried to mask the division of society into classes and to present capitalism as an eternally progressive system.
Clearly Rosa Luxemburg could not be satisfied with Marx's plan. She saw in the mass movements and in imperialism the beginning of the end of the progressive era of capitalism. Her study of the Accumulation of Capital enabled her to write in the Program of the Communist Party of Germany after World War I and in the midst of the German revolution:
"The World War confronted society with a choice of two alternatives; either the continued existence of capitalism, with its consequent new wars and inevitable and speedy destruction due to chaos and anarchy, or the abolition of capitalist exploitation.
With the end of the World War the class rule of the capitalists lost its right to existence. It is no longer capable of leading society out of the terrible economic chaos which the imperialist orgy has left in its wake. (...) Only the worldwide proletarian revolution can establish order in place of this anarchy." (Rosa Luxemburg, What Does Spartacus Want?)
With the onset of the period of decadence, all revolutionaries felt the need to develop a theory of crisis in order to show the consequences of decadence on the class struggle: Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemburg and Gorter (cf his pamphlet entitled Imperialism, World War and Social Democracy, 1915, and quoted in the first part of this series of articles). Pannekoek, who more than others, had grasped the political implications of the change in capitalism, remained firmly opposed to economic theories which sought to deduce changes in the methods of proletarian struggle from objective causes. As we will see, his criticism of theories of crisis unhappily contributed very little to the development of class consciousness.
After the reflux in the revolutionary struggle, the KAPD turned its attention towards developing a theory of the ‘mortal crisis of capitalism'.
After years of almost total silence, Pannekoek once more entered into the discussions going on within the Dutch Left. In 1927, under the pseudonym of Karl Horner, he published an article in Proletarier (organ of the Berlin tendency of the KAPD) called ‘Principle and Tactic' (July/ August 1927). Refuting the theory of the ‘mortal crisis of capitalism', Pannekoek defined the question of the crisis in a new way:
"What are the consequences for the development of revolution? Once more the question of the ‘mortal crisis' comes to the fore, now clearly posed: are we faced with an economic depression of such length that the reaction to it by the proletariat will become permanent and lead to revolution? It is true that the KAPD shares the position that capitalism can no longer return to a phase of prosperity and has reached a final crisis that can no longer be resolved. Because this question is very important for the tactics of the KAPD, it requires a very profound examination."
Pannekoek quite rightly remarked that the ‘mortal crisis of capitalism' goes back to the Accumulation of Capital by Rosa Luxemburg, but he also said that this theory leads to conclusions which are not drawn in the Accumulation of Capital because "the book was published some years before the war" (sic!). Then Pannekoek returned to his critique of the Accumulation of Capital published in 1913 and in one of the first issues of Proletarier. In these criticisms, Pannekoek went into details about the schemas of capitalist reproduction that are found in Capital, vol. 2. We will not enter here into the debate on how Rosa Luxemburg and others have interpreted Marx's schema. The essential question is that the schema must be corrected, as we said above, a question never taken up by Pannekoek. Pannekoek warned against the position which said that capitalism had reached a final crisis because he thought that would lead to the adoption of short term tactics. He thought that a new period of prosperity could not be excluded.
To argue this position, he showed that new discoveries of gold could possibly stimulate demand again and insisted that the emergence of East Asia was an independent factor in capitalist production. To the extent that Pannekoek illustrated the question of gold and East Asia by referring to capitalism in the nineteenth century, he not only defended the possibility of an economic recovery (as the theory of the mortal crisis had posed the problem), but he even denied that capitalism had entered a new phase different from the phase of ascendancy and prosperity which the nineteenth century had been a part of. The recovery of capitalist production which effectively took place in the mid-thirties wasn't the result of discoveries of gold[2] but of a discovery which had the same outcome!
It wasn't the discovery of new resources of gold which got the economy moving, but the discovery of the stimulating role of the state in the economy through inflation. But from 1933 to the war this hardly stimulated any demand in the means of production and consumption as the Keynesian ideology of state intervention claims, but mostly in the means of destruction: war material, what a wonderful prosperity! In the same way, the appearance of East Asia as an independent factor in capitalist production, took the form of Japanese imperialism and the Berlin/Rome/Tokyo axis.
The ‘new period of capitalist economic prosperity' predicted by Pannekoek, cannot be compared with the conjunctural movements of prosperity and commercial crises of the nineteenth century. The so-called ‘prosperity' of the war economy of the mid-thirties was only an essential moment in the cycle of crisis, war, reconstruction, crisis etc, characteristic of the historic period of the decadence of capitalism. But, nevertheless, Pannekoek put his finger on the question when he said that any eventual prosperity must lead to a more violent crisis, which would provoke revolution again.
In the second part of this article we saw how Pannekoek showed that from the beginning the ‘Unions' were not unitary organizations and that it was preferable to abandon the ‘Unions' for the party. Also, the question of knowing whether the ‘Unions' must organize or support wage struggles wasn't the right question in his eyes. More interesting for him was the question of knowing whether or not revolutionaries must intervene in the wage struggles, and if so, how? In spite of all the confusions on the tasks of the ‘Unions', we find in a text of the Essen Tendency of the KAPD/AAUD on the ‘mortal crisis of capitalism' some very valuable arguments on the imperious need to transform wage struggles into struggles for the destruction of capitalism:
"Where the bourgeoisie's offensive of reducing workers' wages and living conditions leads to a purely economic struggle by the affected group of workers, this struggle almost without exception ends up in a victory for the bosses and a defeat for the workers. The reason for the defeat of workers in such struggles, despite tenacious and powerful strikes, lies once more in the reality of the mortal crisis of capitalism (...). The outcome of these defensive struggles for wages in the period of capitalism's mortal crisis is a bitter but irreversible proof that the struggle for better wages and conditions for workers in the present phase of mortal crisis is a pure utopia; and consequently the unions, as well,(whose only historic task was to take care of the selling of labor power to the bourgeoisie) with all their aims, their means of struggle and their forms of organization, have, because of the historic process, become completely anachronistic and are therefore counter-revolutionary structures. The trade unions know that with the collapse of the capitalist economic system their vital role as sellers of proletarian labor power will be over as will be the basis for that exchange. As a result, they try to conserve capitalism's conditions of existence, which are at the same time their own conditions of existence, by trading proletarian labor power for the lowest price." (Proletarier, 1922)
Pannekoek paid close attention to this economic argument. Pannekoek's article ‘Principle and Tactic' had such a success in the organizations of the Dutch and German communist lefts in the late 1920s that some tendencies started to see a contradiction between discussing crisis theories and discussing class consciousness. Some tendencies completely denied any need for a theoretical elaboration of the crisis. But they all stuck to the position on ‘the crisis of capitalism' and the ‘decadence of capitalism' formulated in the KAPD's program of 1920, from which they had all originated. This was also the case with the Group of Communist Internationalists (GIC) to which, from 1926, Pannekoek regularly contributed. The GIC wrote this on the positions:
"The development of capitalism leads to increasingly violent crises which express themselves in an ever growing unemployment and greater and greater dislocation of the productive apparatus, so that millions of workers find themselves outside production and at the mercy of starvation. The increasing impoverishment and uncertitude of existence force the working class to start to struggle for the communist mode of production ..."
When Paul Mattick, after the 1929 crash, made the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) adopt Grossman's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in their program (see the Mortal Crisis of Capitalism, Chicago, 1933) Pannekoek extended his critique of Rosa Luxemburg to Mattick's theory of the crisis in a presentation which he made to the GIC and which was published. Again he warned that the final collapse of capitalism that Mattick talked about could take place later than foreseen and that, fundamentally, only the working class could put an end to capitalism. The GIC was in agreement with the political consequences of Pannekoek's critique, and today we think that revolutionary groups and elements can also be in broad agreement with these consequences. In 1933 the GIC, in a pamphlet on ‘the movements of the capitalist economy' engaged in a chicken and egg type discussion which continues today between those who defend a theory of the crisis based on the saturation of markets (Rosa Luxemburg) and those who defend a theory of the crisis based on the tendency of the falling rate of profit (Bukharin/Lenin, Grossman/ Mattick). In this pamphlet the GIC presents itself as a supporter of the falling rate of profit analysis but insists at the same time on a fact stressed by the theory of the saturation of markets:
"The whole world has been made into a gigantic workshop. This means that crises on the present level of specialization have an international character."
We can say that the GIC, in its main lines, followed Mattick's economic theory. But, at the same time, the GIC put forward the same warning as Pannekoek:
"Particularly at the present time when there is so much talk about the ‘mortal crisis' of capitalism, of the ‘final crisis' in which we find ourselves, it is important to be aware of the essential characteristics of the present crisis. Not to do so would mean submitting to all sorts of illusions and surprises regarding the measures which the ruling class tries in order to maintain the future development of the capitalist system. An ‘absolute' collapse is expected, without taking into account what that means. One must say that capitalism is stronger than was foreseen because the ‘absolute' collapse hasn't happened, because a large part of economic life continues to function. Thus the transition from capitalism to communism isn't automatic but will always be linked to the level of consciousness developed in the working class. It is precisely because of this that the propaganda of principles is necessary." (De bewegingen van het kaitalistische bedrijfsleven, Permateriaal GIC, 6 Jg, no.5)
And so, in the following years, the GIC analyzed the measures of the bourgeoisie which led to the development of the war economy. It showed that economic ‘planning' lowered the standard of living of the working class without really overcoming the crisis. Here is the conclusion of an article on economic ‘planning' in Holland:
"It is clear that the relations of property have entered into conflict with the productive forces. And, at the same time, this clearly shows that the problem cannot be resolved on the basis of capitalist production. The problem can only be solved through a world 'economy' based on an international division of labor, on communist foundations." (Radencommunisme, May 1936)
A second article on this question demystified the social democratic ‘labor plans' which were part of the tendency towards statification, and which followed the example of the fascist organization of capital. The GIC showed that with the social democrats in power national defense would be stimulated while at the same time the war economy created new conditions of struggle for the workers: the purely economic struggles became useless against the organized policy of prices and so were struggles for the preservation of the dying, democratic bourgeois legal system. The GIC's articles on Germany showed how, during the period of the Weimar Republic, social democracy and Russia's foreign policy brought about economic ‘planning', the defeat of workers' struggles and preserved Germany's military might which could be perfected by the Nazis into a fully functioning war machine.
Let us return to Pannekoek's ‘disgust' for economic theories of the crisis. In Workers' Councils, written during World War II, he treated the question of the limits of capitalist development in a coherent and global manner. Departing from the idea developed in the Communist Manifesto about the expansion of capitalism on a world scale, Pannekoek arrived at the conclusion that the end of capitalism would be approached:
"When tens of millions of people who live in the fertile plains of East Asia and the South are pushed into the orbit of capitalism, the principal task of capitalism would have been fulfilled." (P. Aartsz, Workers' Councils, chap.II)
It is interesting to see that Marx posed the same question in a letter to Engels (8.10.1858):
"The specific task of bourgeois society is the establishment of a world market, at least in outline, and of production based upon this world market. As the world is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonization of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan. The difficult question for us is this: on the Continent the revolution is imminent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Is it not bound to be crushed in this little corner, considering that in a far greater territory the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant?"
But in his article on China in the same years, (published in the New York Daily Tribune), Marx responded to this question in the negative.
Today, 120 years later, Pannekoek's epigones continue to defend the idea that capitalism still has a great task to fulfill in Asia[3]. While Marx in the 1850s showed that American and British expectations concerning the development of trade with the opening up of China were greatly exaggerated, today, the bourgeoisie of the US bloc has already reached this conclusion concerning the recent re-opening up of China to the western bloc: the western bourgeoisie merely provides military equipment in preparation for a third world war and even sees its trade diminish given the restricted nature of the Chinese market. Today, the crisis is there. Nobody with sense would dare to claim that it doesn't exist.
Today's councilists, like Daad en Gedacht would leave one to understand that capitalism is free of crises, if not in words, then at least by their silence on the present crisis. Is that an exaggeration on our part? This is what Cajo Brendel claims in reply to our criticisms (in Wereld Revolutie):
"I thought I knew the positions of Daad en Gedacht to some degree. I want to know where Daad en Gedacht has ever written something which could justify this position. As far as I know Daad en Gedacht takes exactly the opposite position by saying that capitalism cannot be crisis-free (...) It is one thing to say that there cannot be a crisis-free capitalism and quite another to speak of a ‘permanent crisis' or a ‘mortal crisis' of capitalism or something like that. Already the GIC, in the thirties, not only presumed but also proved with arguments that the permanent crisis didn't exist. I agree with this, but whoever interprets this as a belief in a crisis-free capitalism show, in my opinion, that he has understood nothing of this position ..."
We also think we know a bit about the positions of Daad en Gedacht insofar as they are found in their publications! Perhaps we don't read very well, but nowhere do we find that there can't be a crisis-free capitalism. Apart from the pamphlet Beschouwingen over geld en goud (a repetition of the Marxist labor theory of value and functions of money and gold), we haven't found a single article on economic subjects for the last ten years. This silence on the crisis seems to be one of the principles of this group!
So, what do we understand by the ‘permanent crisis' and ‘mortal crisis', terms which were developed by the German Left? Do we defend the idea that the collapse, the death of capitalism is as certain as a physical phenomenon in a laboratory? That's not what we think.
If the term ‘permanent crisis' means something, it is because it refers to a whole period of capitalism, the period of decadence, in which the cycle crisis-war-reconstruction-crisis ... has replaced the periodic and conjunctural cycle of commercial crises and crises of prosperity in the ascendant period of capitalism. Of course, there isn't a mortal crisis in the sense of an automatic collapse of capitalism; capitalism's solution is world war if the proletariat doesn't act in a revolutionary way. Capitalism could come out of crisis while it was in a period of development because it could still penetrate new geographic areas, a possibility suggested by Cajo Brendel in his book on Spain and China. But Cajo Brendel and Daad en Gedacht aren't interested in this question. Their study of many so-called ‘bourgeois revolutions' (Spain ‘36, China) depart from a national framework and not from the internationalist framework which was the determining factor for Marx and Pannekoek (cf Workers' Councils by Pannekoek), even if Pannekoek made a different response to this question.
It is this internationalism of Pannekoek and of the international communist left of which the Dutch Left was a part before slowly degenerating, that we lay claim to.
Today when the open crisis of world capitalism is a flagrant reality, it is important to deepen the contributions of the Dutch Left. If it was tentative, multi-faceted and diverse in its elaboration of the theory of capitalist crisis, it at least exposed the problems and contributed to the enriching of Marxist theory even if it didn't resolve them. Above all it maintained the essentials: its class loyalty to the communist revolution, to internationalism, to proletarian principles.
FK
[1] Translation Champ Libre, 1973 with preface by Pannekoek.
[2] "Because gold, alone of the products of labor, has the specific power to buy without having been sold in the first place, it can be the point of departure of the cycle and put it into movement." (Karl Horner, ‘Principle and Tactic', Proletarier, 1927)
[3] See the ICC's critique on ‘Theses of the Chinese Revolution' by Cajo Brendel in the ‘Epigones of Councilism', Part II, International Review, no. 2.
The text we are reproducing here appeared in Internationalisme, n°46 in summer 1952. This was the last issue of the review, and this text was in some ways a condensed summary of the positions and political orientation of this group. It will certainly be of interest to many.
What is particularly important to point out is that the perspective contained in this text is different from the one we see today. Internationalisme was right to analyze the period which followed World War II as the continuation of the period of reaction, of reflux in the proletarian struggle; consequently, they were correct in condemning the Bordigists' proclamation of the party as artificial and adventurist. They were also right to say that the end of the war didn't mean that capitalism was no longer decadent; all the contradictions that had led capitalism to war were still there and were pushing the world inexorably towards new wars. But Internationalisme didn't see or didn't sufficiently emphasize the phase of ‘reconstruction' that was part of the cycle crisis-war-reconstruction-crisis.
For this reason, and in the somber atmosphere of the cold war between the USA and the USSR, Internationalisme only saw the possibility of a proletarian resurgence during and after a third world war. Today there are still revolutionaries who share this view. However, the crisis which has of necessity followed the period of reconstruction -- which saw many mystifications begin to wear out -- has led to a renewal of working class struggle; despite the aggravation of its internal contradictions, this forces world capitalism to deal first and foremost with its class enemy.
If the perspective of an inevitable third world war was understandable in the context of the 1950's, and based on a real possibility, we have no reason to maintain this perspective today. Capitalism can still use local wars as a temporary outlet for its contradictions and antagonisms but it can't launch a generalized war as long as it hasn't succeeded in immobilizing the proletariat. Our perspective today looks to a major class confrontation, and this is what we must be preparing ourselves for. Nothing indicates that we should predict an unfavorable outcome to this confrontation. With all their struggle, revolutionaries must work and hope for the victory of their class.[1]
We're publishing here a series of exposes given at meetings with the comrades of the Union Ouvrière Internationaliste. In order to allow the discussion to take place as quickly as possible, we're presenting them in the form of an analytical summary. Thus the reader won't find the necessary statistical information or certain important developments. The text is a schema for a more profound work rather than the work itself.
Comrade M, who is responsible for these exposes, intends to enlarge them and add the relevant documentation.
We hope that the text gives rise to as broad a discussion as possible. It's superfluous to insist on the necessity of having such a discussion and of publishing all the documents relating to it. It goes without saying that we're prepared to take charge of doing the publishing work.
Before drawing out the general characteristics of capitalism in its present phase of state capitalism it's necessary to recall and delineate the fundamental characteristics of capitalism as a system.
Every economic system in a class-divided society has the aim of extracting surplus labor from the laboring classes for the benefit of the exploiting classes. What distinguishes these different societies is the way that the exploiters appropriate this surplus labor, and the way this evolves as a necessity imposed by the development of the productive forces.
Here we will limit ourselves to recalling the essential aspects of the capitalist exploitation of labor power.
Past, accumulated labor -- dead labor -- dominates and exploits present labor -- living labor. It's as the controllers of dead labor, ie of the means of production, that the capitalists -- not taken individually, but as a social class -- exploit the workers' labor.
Economic life is entirely geared towards this quest for profit by the capitalist. This profit is partly consumed by the capitalist, while the greater part of it is earmarked for the reproduction and expansion of capital.
The relationship between the members of society takes the form of a relationship between commodities. Labor power is itself a commodity which is paid for at its value: the value of the products necessary to reproduce it (wages). The wage-earning class's share in total social production can be measured by comparing the value of labor power to the value of what's produced. Thus the growing productivity of labor, by reducing the value of the commodities consumed by the wage-earning class, and thus the value of labor power, leads to the diminution of the wage in comparison to surplus-value. The more production augments; the more restricted is the workers' share in this production, the more wages fall in relation to this expanding production.
The exchange of commodities takes place on the basis of the law of value. This exchange is measured by the quantity of necessary social labor expended in the production of these commodities.
These characteristics apply to all stages in the evolution of capitalism. They are no doubt modified by this evolution, but these modifications take place within the system and are secondary: they don't fundamentally alter the nature of the system.
You can only analyze capitalism by grasping its essence -- the relationship between Capital and Labor. You must examine Capital in its relationship with Labor, not the relationship between this capitalist and that worker.
In societies previous to capitalism, ownership of the means of production was based on personal labor: the use of force was seen as an expression of this personal labor. Property really was private property, private ownership of the means of production, considering that the slave for example was himself a means of production. The owner was sovereign, and his sovereignty was limited only by even higher ties of allegiance (tribute, vassalage, etc...).
With capitalism, property is based on social labor. The capitalist is subject to the laws of the market. His freedom is limited both outside and inside his enterprise. He can't produce at a loss, infringing the laws of the market. If he does, he is immediately punished by bankruptcy. We should note, however, that this bankruptcy applies to the individual capitalist, not to the capitalist class as a whole. Everything happens as if the capitalist class is the collective, social owner of the means of production. The situation of the individual capitalist is unstable it's called into question every minute. Thus Marx could say that "the system of appropriation that derives from the capitalist mode of production, and thus capitalist property itself, is the first negation of individual private property based on personal labor". Capitalist property is essentially the property of the capitalist class as such. And thus in his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx rightly defined property relations as the "juridical expression of the relations of production".
The capitalist's ownership of his own private enterprise corresponded to a stage of capitalism when this was necessary because of the low development of the productive forces and because the system still had a vast field of expansion in front of it, which meant that a higher level of concentration of property wasn't necessary. In these conditions, the state had a very limited intervention into the economy: the state remained a political organ, whose role was to administer society in accordance with the interests of the capitalists.
However, while the low level of the development of the productive forces was the basis for the capitalist's private ownership of a fraction of global social capital -- the fraction represented by his own enterprise -- it doesn't follow that a high level of the development of the productive forces is the basis for state capitalism. This higher level certainly gave rise to a concentration of property, as we saw with the emergence of public companies and monopolies, but it's insufficient to invoke this to explain the resort to concentrating property in the hands of the state. In fact, purely on the level of property, concentration would have taken place -- and did in part do so -- on a different basis: the monopolistic concentration of property on an international scale (cartels for example), and not on the national scale, which is implied by any form of state property.
One of the essential features of the exploitation of man by man is that the whole of production does not satisfy all human social needs. There is a struggle for the distribution of goods, ie over the exploitation of labor. Thus the historic possibility of the emancipation of the workers can only arise on the basis of a certain level of the development of the productive forces; the productive forces must be capable of satisfying the whole of social needs.
Socialism, as a classless society is only conceivable on the basis of this level of development, which will make it possible to eliminate class contradictions. Because capitalism has brought production to the level it has, it can be seen to be a necessary precondition for socialism. Socialism can only be established because of the advances brought about by capitalism.
Thus we cannot say, as the anarchists do for example, that a socialist perspective would still be open even if the productive forces were in regression. We cannot ignore the level of their development. Capitalism has been a necessary, indispensable stage towards the establishment of socialism to the extent that it has sufficiently developed the objective conditions for it. But, as this text will attempt to show, just as in its present phase capitalism has become a fetter on the development of the productive forces, so the prolongation of capitalism in this phase will lead to the disappearance of the conditions for socialism. It's in this sense that the historic alternative being posed today is between socialism and barbarism.
While Marx analyzed the conditions for the development of capitalist production, he was unable, for obvious historic reasons, to concretely examine the supreme forms of its evolution. This task fell to his continuators. Thus, different theories have arisen in the Marxist movement, aiming to illuminate the evolution of capital. To make this expose more clear, we intend to make a very brief examination of the three main theories.
The theory of concentration
Proposed by Hilferding, then taken up by Lenin, this theory is more a description than an interpretation of the evolution of capitalism. It starts from the general observation that the high degree of concentration of production and centralization of capital gives the monopolies the role of directing the economy. The tendency of the monopolies to appropriate gigantic super-profits leads to the dividing-up of the world by imperialism.
This theory may have applied to the period when capitalism was moving from free competition to the monopolist phase, but it doesn't apply to state capitalism, which appeared as the negation of international monopoly. A more advanced level of concentration doesn't necessarily imply the resort to state forms of concentration. Capitalist concentration is the result of competition between the capitalists, which leads to the absorption of technically weaker capitals by stronger ones. This results in the expansion of the victorious capitalist. The continual development of a few enterprises tends to forbid the appearance of new enterprises, because of the size of the capital needed for investment in fixed and circulating capitals. This process may explain the formation of monopolistic trusts of highly centralized capital; but from the standpoint of the rising amount of capital needed for investment, it doesn't show that monopoly was incapable of facing up to the demands of an even higher level of concentration than had already been attained. Statification in no way represents a higher level of concentration than that attained by the monopolies. In fact certain international monopolistic alliances represent a higher level of concentration than the level operating inside a single state.
Moreover, in taking up the standpoint of the reformist Hilferding, Lenin arrived at the conclusion -- at least logically and implicitly -- that capitalism had not reached the last phase of its development. Thus barbarism for him wasn't a historic eventuality, but an image: an expression of the stagnation of the productive forces and the ‘parasitic' character of capitalism in these conditions. For Lenin, as for the social democrats -- though through different, opposed ways and means -- the question of the objective conditions for revolution were no longer posed in terms of regression, of regression of the productive forces, but simply in terms of the historic necessity for the proletariat to conclude the bourgeois revolution through the proletarian revolution. We will return to this aspect later on.
The theory of the tendential fall in the rate of profit
This theory was presented by Henryk Grossman. Starting from a new formulation of the Marxist schemas of enlarged reproduction, Grossman emphasized the fact that the continuous rise in the organic composition of capital would lead to a fall in the valorization of capital (a fall in the rate of profit leading to a fall in the mass of profit): the relative lack of surplus value would conflict with the needs of accumulation. To remedy this, the capitalists try to diminish the cost of production of capital and of transportation, the level of wages, etc... Technical development accelerates, while the class struggle intensifies in reaction to the super-exploitation of labor.
This theory clearly assigns an objective limit to the development of capitalist accumulation, pointing to its collapse. Capital will no longer find profitable outlets for investment. There will be a series of wars -- provisionally allowing profitability to be maintained -- and beyond that the collapse of capitalism. Grossman's viewpoint however, is hardly convincing in so far as it establishes an absolute connection between the fall in the rate of profit and the relative diminution of the mass of profit.
In her Anticritique Rosa Luxemburg observed:
"...we are left with the somewhat oblique comfort...that capitalism will eventually collapse because of the falling rate of profit. ...However...this comfort is unfortunately dispelled by a single sentence by Marx, namely the statement that ‘large capitals will compensate for the fall in the rate of profit by mass production'. Thus there is still some time to pass before capitalism collapses because of the falling rate of profit, roughly until the sun burns out".
How does capitalism respond to the falling rate of profit? Marx has already shown that, faced with the falling rate of profit, capitalism can respond in a number of ways that make the exploitation of additional labor profitable. Intensifying the exploitation of labor power is one of these means. Another is the expansion of production: although the falling rate of profit means that there will be less profit in each product, the total sum of profit is increased by the higher sum of products obtained. Finally capitalism responds by eliminating the ‘parasitic' elements which cut down on total profit. Thus the move from free competition to monopoly capitalism involved the partial elimination of backward small producers. But we cannot say that the move to state capitalism involves a similar process. On the contrary, there is more reason for saying that state concentration gives rise to a social stratum which produces no value and is therefore parasitic: the bureaucracy.
For this theory to be able to pass for an interpretation of the crisis of the system it would have to demonstrate that the increase of the mass of profit no longer succeeded in compensating for the fall in the rate of profit, or, in other words, that the sum of the global social profit diminished in spite of an increase in production.
The theorem that Grossman's theory must demonstrate, then, would be the following: at the end of a new cycle of production, the global profit (as the product of an increased mass of production multiplied by a lower rate of profit) is lower than the global social profit resulting from the preceding cycle (as the product of a lower mass of production multiplied by a higher rate of profit -- before its fall). Such a demonstration can be infinitely provided by schemas, but it is not confirmed in the real conditions of production. We must therefore conclude that the real solution is elsewhere. The impossibility of expanding production resides today not in the non-profitability of this enlarged production, but in the impossibility of finding outlets for it.
Rosa Luxemburg's theory of accumulation
As with the preceding theories we will only give a very incomplete summary of Rosa's thesis.[2] As is known, Rosa Luxemburg concluded, after profound study of the Marxist schemas of reproduction, that the capitalists could not realize all their surplus value on their own market. In order to continue accumulating, the capitalists were compelled to sell a part of their commodities in the extra-capitalist milieux: producers owning their own means of production (artisans, peasants, colonies or semi-colonies). It was the existence of these extra-capitalist milieux which determined the rhythm of capitalist accumulation. This extra-capitalist milieux was shrinking and capitalism was plunging into crisis. The different sectors of world capitalism were fighting each other over the exploitation of these extra-capitalist regions.
The disappearance of extra-capitalist markets was thus leading to a permanent crisis of capitalism. Rosa Luxemburg also showed that this crisis was opening up well before this disappearance had become absolute. In order to compensate for the disappearance of these markets, capitalism was developing a parasitic form of production, by its very nature unproductive: the production of the means of destruction. The decadent character of capitalism was confirmed by the fact that it was becoming incapable of maintaining the production of social values (objects of consumption). War became capitalism's way of life: wars between states or coalitions of states in which each one tries to survive by pillaging or subjugating its victims. Whereas in previous periods war led to the expansion of production in one or other of the protagonists, it now led, in varying degrees, to the ruin of both. This ruin was expressed both by the fall in the living standards of the population and by the increasingly unproductive character (in terms of value) of production.
The aggravation of struggles between states and their decadent character since 1914 leads each state to attempt to survive on its own, in a closed circle, and to resort to state concentration. This is what we ourselves are arguing here, and the aim of this text is to adjust this theory to historical reality.
State capitalism is not an attempt to resolve the essential contradictions of capitalism as a system of exploitation of labor power, it is the expression of these contradictions. Each group of capitalist interests attempts to push the effects of the crisis of the system onto a rival group, by taking it over as a market and as a field of exploitation. State capitalism is born out of the necessity for a given group of capital to concentrate itself and take hold of external markets. The economy is thus transformed into a war economy.
The problem of production and exchange
In the phases of capital prior to state capitalism, exchange preceded production: production followed the market. When the indices of production approached the indices of the volume of world trade, the crisis opened up. This crisis was a manifestation of the saturation of the market. Following the crisis, the revival of economic expansion took place first of all in the sphere of exchange and not of production, which followed demand.
From 1914 onwards, the phenomenon was reversed: production preceded exchange. At first it seemed that this could be put down to the destruction caused by the war. But in 1929 the indices of exchange matched those of production and we had the crisis. Stocks piled up and the capitalist was unable to realize surplus value on the market. Previously crises were reabsorbed by the opening up of new markets, which led to a revival of world trade and then of production. Between 1929 and 1935, the crisis could not find a solution to the extension of markets, since the tendential limits of this extension had already been reached. The crisis forced capitalism to turn itself into a war economy.
The capitalist world had entered into its permanent crisis: it could no longer go on expanding production. This was a striking confirmation of Rosa's theory: the shrinking of extra-capitalist markets led to the saturation of the capitalist market itself.
The problem of crises
The essential character of the crises since 1929 is that they are more profound than previous ones. We are no longer dealing with cyclical crises, but a permanent crisis. The cyclical crises which classical capitalism went through affected all capitalist countries. The booms that followed also had a global effect. The permanent crisis that we are now going through has been characterized by the continuing fall of production and trade in all capitalist countries (as in 1929-1934). But we no longer see a generalized recovery. Recovery only takes place in one compartment of production, and this at the expense of other sectors. Moreover, the crisis shifts from one country to another, keeping the entire world economy in a permanent state of crisis.
Unable to open up new markets, each country closes itself off and tries to live on its own. The universalisation of the capitalist economy, which had been achieved through the world market, is breaking down. Instead we have autarky. Each country tries to go it alone: it creates unprofitable sectors of production to compensate for the break-up of the market. This palliative further aggravates the dislocation of the world market.
Before 1914, profitability, via the mediation of the market, was the standard, the measure, the stimulant of capitalist production. In the present period this law of profitability is being violated. The law is no longer applied at the level of the enterprise, but at the global level of the state The distribution of value is carried out according to a plan of accounts at national level, no longer through the direct pressure of the world market. Either the state subsidizes the deficit part of the economy or the state itself takes over the entire economy.
This does not mean a ‘negation' of the law of value. What we are seeing here is that a given unit of production seems to be detached from the law of value, that this production takes place without any apparent concern for profitability.
Monopoly super-profits are realized through ‘artificial' prices, but on the global level of production this is still connected to the law of value. The sum of prices for production as a whole still expresses the global value of these products. Only the distribution of value among the various capitalist groups is transformed: the monopolies arrogate for themselves a super-profit at the expense of the less well-armed capitalists. In the same way we can say that the law of value continues to operate at the level of national production. The law of value no longer acts on a product taken individually, but on the entirety of products. This is a restriction in the law of value's field of application. The total mass of profit tends to diminish, because of the burden exerted by deficit branches of the economy on the other branches.
The field of application of the law of value
a) Capital. From what has been said it follows that while the rigorous mechanisms of the law of value do not always operate at the level of one enterprise, or even of a whole branch of the economy, the law does manifest itself at the level of exchange. As in previous periods the market remains, in the last instance, the supreme regulator of the capitalist value of commodities or, if, you prefer, of products. The law of value seems to be negated in countries where several industrial sectors are in the hands of the state. But when they exchange with other sectors, this takes place on the basis of the law of value.
In Russia the disappearance of individual property has led to a very great restriction in the capitalist application of the law of value. This law may no longer operate in exchanges between two statified sectors -- just as it doesn't operate between the workshops of one factory -- but it does operate as soon as it's a question of exchanging one completed product for another. The price of the product is still fixed according to the social labor time necessary for its production, and not by the omnipotent will of a ‘bureaucrat'. Products circulate and are exchanged according to the needs of production, and thus, no matter how ‘organized' this process may be, according to the needs of the market. Prices remain the mercantile expression of the law of value.
b) Labor Power: but the fundamental exchange in the capitalist economy is the one that takes place between products and labor power. In Russia as elsewhere labor power is bought at its capitalist value. The price paid is the one necessary for the reproduction of labor power.
The greater or lesser valorization of labor power, the higher or lower level of wages doesn't change the basic question. The value of labor is fixed partly by the way that the workers react against their exploitation. Their struggle, or lack of it, can increase or diminish that part of production which accrues to them in the form of wages. But within the framework of capitalism, the workers can only affect the volume of products attributed to them in exchange for their labor power, and not the capitalist basis of this distribution.
The fact that in Russia and elsewhere there exist a form of ‘concentration camp' labor doesn't change these observations. Not only does this represent a minimal fraction of the labor power expended in the whole country, but this phenomenon itself retains the fundamental characteristics of the relationship between capital and labor.
The meaning of the phenomenon is to be found in the necessity for a backward capitalist country to maintain a low level of wages. It's a pressure exerted within the framework of accumulation, in order to affect the global social value of the products aimed towards the reproduction of labor power, in the same way that the industrial reserve army, the unemployed, were used under classical capitalism. The transitory nature of this phenomenon can be seen when we consider that, in general, this ‘forced labor' is directed towards works of internal colonization. These are works that only have a long-term profitability and are carried out by a cheap, non-specialized workforce; in the general conditions of a backward economy, it's not possible to pay for this workforce at its capitalist value. We should also add that, in Russia, this use of labor power also serves as an effective method of political coercion.
Some see this form of exploitation as the beginnings of a return to slavery. To prove this you would have to show that the capitalist law of value had disappeared absolutely. It's worth pointing out that, when a slave was punished in antiquity, he received corporal punishment (the rod, branding, gladitorial games). The Russian worker convicted of ‘sabotage' is punished in value: he's forced to work a certain number of extra hours, unpaid. What's more, the ‘good' Stakhanovist gets extra wages and especially better housing and leisure facilities. Politically the aim of this is to divide the exploited class (by forming a labor aristocracy devoted to the regime).
In a general way it should be recognized that to palliate the fall in the average rate and the mass of profit, the available labor power must be used to the maximum. The number of workers is increased; the proletarianisation of the peasant or petty bourgeois masses is accelerated; the war-wounded and the insane are looked after so that they can be recuperated into the cycle of production; the procreation and education of children is encouraged and supported. The intensity of labor is increased: time is rigorously controlled; there is a return to piece-work in the form of bonuses and suchlike, etc ..... The swinish theoreticians of the growth of productivity or of full employment are simply rationalizing this tendency towards the maximum exploitation of human labor.
Production develops while trade diminishes. What happens to this production, which because of the lack of possibility for exchange, is doomed to remain devoid of any social use? It is orientated towards the production of the means of destruction. While state capitalism increases industrial production, it still doesn't create new value, but bombs or uniforms.
This production is financed essentially in three ways:
1. In a given cycle of production, an ever-larger part of this production goes into products which don't reappear in the following cycle. The product leaves the sphere of production and doesn't return to it. A tractor comes back into production in the form of sheaves of corn, but not a tank.
The amount of social labor time incorporated in this production confers a value to it. But this labor time is expended without any social counterpart: neither consumed, nor reinvested, it doesn't play any role in reproduction. It remains profitable to the individual capitalist, but not on the global level.
Production expands in volumes, but not in real social value. Thus an initial part of the production of means of destruction is levied from current production.
2. A second part is paid for by draining unproductive capitals (stockholders, shopkeepers, peasants) and also accumulated capitals which are productive but not indispensable to the operation of a productive apparatus which is no longer geared towards productive consumption. Savings start to disappear. Although they are open to dispute, the following figures give an idea of how things are going in a country like France, which is typical of this process.
"Evaluated in buying power, the capital of 1950 ...represents only 144 billion in 1911, as against 286 today, which means that half its value has been lost. But this view would be incomplete if we didn't take into consideration the mass of contributions from savings. At the 1910-1914 rate (4 billion), all things being equal, it would have added 144 billion to today's 300 billion. Reduced by two wars, the annual savings did still exist. Now there is no trace of them". (René Papin in Problèmes Economiques no.159, 16-1651).
Commercial profits are being amputated by an enormous state levy. Finally, inflation has become permanent and the degradation of the buying power of money has reached considerable proportions.
3. A third part is directly levied from the workers, by the reduction of living standards and the intensification of exploitation. In France for example, whereas the production figures for the beginning of 1952 were at 153 in relation the level of 1938, the living standards of the workers have fallen by 30% in relation to the prewar period, and this gap is even greater if we examine the increase in production. This apparent paradox -- continuously progressing production accompanied by a continuously regressing consumption by the workers and a continuously shrinking pile of social capital -- is one of the expressions of the decadence of capitalism.
Such economic transformations involve profound social changes. The concentration of economic power in the hands of the state -- and sometimes even the physical elimination of the bourgeois as an individual capitalist -- precipitates an evolution which was already discernible in previous stages of capitalism. A number of theories have flourished -- particularly on the soil of Trotskyism -- on the basis of interpreting this evolution as the dynamic of a struggle by a new class against the classical bourgeoisie. These theoreticians argue thus because of the physical destruction of the bourgeois and of individual private property in Eastern Europe and their limitation in the fascist or social democratic regimes, as well as those regimes which have come out of the ‘Resistance'. However, these examples do not justify that conclusion. To build a theory on a series of facts which find their most typical application in a relatively backward economy, and on facts which are more apparent than real (the capitalist isn't a physical person, but a social function) is to build on sand.
To make a clear analysis, you must observe the highly developed capitalist world. The situation there is characterized by an amalgam, an overlapping of traditional capitalist elements and elements from the state apparatus. Such amalgams don't of course take place without real friction and difficulties. In this sense ‘fascism' and the ‘Resistance' regimes were both failed attempts.
The conclusion drawn by our theoreticians -- a civil war between the new ‘bureaucratic' class and the classical capitalism -- leads to denying the evidence of a permanent crisis of capitalism. This crisis, whose effects have repercussions even within the exploiting strata, is then replaced by a struggle between two ‘historic' classes -- a struggle that is progressive for the official Trotskyists, though not for Schachtman and others. The proletariats' absence on the historic scene is therefore rationalized. The alternative posed by history and by revolutionaries -- socialism or barbarism -- is now joined by a third, which allows our theoreticians to integrate themselves into one bloc or another. This idea of the existence, within capitalism, of a new exploiting class, bearing with it a historic solution to the contradictions of capitalism, leads to the abandonment of revolutionary theory and to the adoption of a capitalist viewpoint.
The bourgeoisie's benefits from private property used to take the form of a reward proportionate to the size of the enterprise he was running. The ‘salary earning' character of the capitalist, in relation to capital, remained hidden: he appeared to be the owner of his enterprise. In his more recent form, the capitalist continues to live on the surplus value extracted from the workers, but receives his profit in the form of a direct salary; he is a functionary. Profits are no longer distributed according to juridical titles of ownership, but according to the social function of the capitalist. Thus the capitalist always feels a profound sense of solidarity with the whole of national production, and is no longer interested merely in the profits of his own enterprise. He tends to treat all workers equally, and tries to associate them to the concerns of production as a whole. The proletariat can see clearly that capitalism can exist without the individual ownership of the means of production. However, this tendency towards the ‘salarisation' of capital seems to abolish economic frontiers between classes. The proletariat knows that it's exploited, but finds it hard to recognize its exploiters when they've donned the garb of a union boss or progressive intellectual.
It was once believed in the worker's movement that the colonies could only be emancipated within the context of the socialist revolution. Certainly their character as ‘the weakest link in the chain of imperialism' owing to the exacerbation of capitalist exploitation and repression in those areas, made them particularly vulnerable to social movements. Always their accession to independence was linked to the revolution in the metropoles.
These last years have seen, however, most of the colonies becoming independent: the colonial bourgeoisies have emancipated themselves, more or less, from the metropoles. This phenomenon, however limited it may be in reality, cannot be understood in the context of the old theory, which saw colonial capitalism as the lackey pure and simple of imperialism, a mere broker.
The truth is that the colonies have ceased to represent an extra-capitalist market for the metropoles; they have become new capitalist countries. They have thus lost their character as outlets, which make the old imperialisms less resistant to the demands of the colonial bourgeoisie. To which it must be added that these imperialisms' own problems have favored -- in the course of two world wars -- the economic expansion of the colonies. Constant capital destroyed itself in Europe, while the productive capacity of the colonies or semi-colonies grew, leading to an explosion of indigenous nationalism (South Africa, Argentina, India, etc). It is noteworthy that these new capitalist countries, right from their creation as independent nations, pass to the stage of state capitalism, showing the same aspects of an economy geared to war as has been discerned elsewhere.
The theory of Lenin and Trotsky has fallen apart. The colonies have integrated themselves into the capitalist world, and have even propped it up. There is no longer a ‘weakest link': the domination of capital is equally distributed throughout the surface of the planet.
In classical capitalism, real life took place in civil society, outside the state. The state was simply the instrument of the dominant interests in civil society and that alone: it was an agent of execution rather than the organ effectively directing economic and political life. The agencies of the state, however, whose task is to maintain order -- ie to administer men -- have tended to escape the control of society and to form an autonomous caste with their own interests. This disassociation, this, struggle between the state and civil society, couldn't result in the absolute domination of the state as long as the state didn't control the means of production. The period of monopolies saw the beginnings of an amalgam between the state and the oligarchy, but this amalgam remained unstable: the state remained external to civil society which was still based essentially on individual property. In the present phase, the administration of things and the government of men are being unified under the same hands. Decadent capitalism has negated the antagonism between the two economically exploiting classes -- the capitalists and the landowners -- through the disappearance of the latter. It also negates the contradictions between the various capitalist groupings, the contrasts between which used to be one of the motor-forces of production. Today this production, in real value terms, is on the decline.
In its turn the economically exploited class is integrated into the state. On the level of mystification, this integration is facilitated by the fact that the workers are now confronted by capital as such, as the representative of the Nation, as the Nation itself, which the workers are supposed to belong to.
We've seen that state capitalism is forced to reduce the amount of goods accruing to variable capital, to savagely exploit the labor of workers. In the past, the economic demands of the workers could be at least partially satisfied through the expansion of production. The proletariat could effectively improve its conditions. This time is over. Capital can no longer resort to the safety-valve of a real increase in wages. The fall in real production makes it impossible for capitalism to revalorize wages. The economic struggles of the workers can only end in failure -- at best in maintaining living conditions which have already been degraded. They tie the proletariat to its exploiters by leading it to feel a solidarity with the system in exchange for an extra bowl of soup (which, in the last analysis, is only obtained through increasing ‘productivity').
The state maintains the forms of workers' organizations (the trade unions) the better to dragoon and mystify the class. The unions have become a cog in the state, and as such are concerned with developing productivity, ie with increasing the exploitation of labor. The unions were defensive organs of the class for as long as the economic struggle had any meaning. Devoid of their former content, without changing their form, the unions have become instruments of ideological repression for state capitalism, organs for the control of labor power.
In order to obtain the maximum output from labor in the best conditions, state capitalism has to organize and centralize agricultural production and cut down on parasitism at the level of distribution. The same goes for the artisan sectors. These different branches are grouped together in cooperatives whose aim is to eliminate commercial capital, reduce the distance between production and consumption, and integrate agricultural production into the state.[3]
The wage itself has been integrated into the state. Fixing wages at their capitalist value has devolved upon the state organs. Part of the workers' wages is directly levied and administered by the state. Thus the state ‘takes charge' of the life of the worker, controls his health (as part of the struggle against absenteeism) and directs his leisure (for purposes of ideological repression). In the end the worker no longer has a private life; every minute of his life belongs directly or indirectly to the state. The worker is seen as an active cell in a wider body: his personality disappears (but not without provoking innumerable neuroses: mental alienation in all its forms is to our epoch what the great epidemics were to the Mdiddle Ages). It goes without saying that the lot of the workers is also, mutatis mutandis, the lot of other economic categories in society.
There's no need to emphasize that, while socialist society will defend the individual against illness or other risks, its aims will not be those of capitalist Social Security. The latter only has a meaning in the framework of the exploitation of human labor. It's nothing but an appendage of the system.
We've seen that economic struggle, immediate demands can in no way emancipate the workers. The same goes for their political struggle waged inside and for the reform of the capitalist system. When civil society was separate from the state, the struggles between the different social strata who made up civil society resulted in a continuous transformation of political conditions. The theory of the permanent revolution corresponded to this perpetual modification of the balance of forces within society. These transformations allowed the proletariat to wage its own political struggle by outflanking the open struggles within the bourgeoisie.
Society thus created the social conditions and ideological climate for its own subversion. Revolutionary flux and reflux followed each other in a more and more profound rhythm. Each one of these crises allowed the proletariat to develop an increasingly clear historic class consciousness. The dates 1791, 1848, 1871 and 1917 are the most significant of a long list.
Under state capitalism we no longer have profound political struggles engendered by the antagonisms between different interest groups. In classical capitalism the multiplication of these interests gave rise to a multiplication of parties, the precondition for the functioning of parliamentary democracy. In state capitalism society is unified and there is a tendency towards the single-party system: the distribution of surplus value according to function creates a common interest for the exploiting class, a unification of the conditions under which surplus value is extracted and distributed. The single-party system is the expression of these new conditions. This means the end of classical bourgeois democracy: political offences have become a crime. The struggles which were traditionally expressed in parliament, or even in the street, now unfold within the state apparatus itself; or, with a few variations, they take place within the general coalition of the capitalist interests of a nation and, in the conditions of today, a bloc of nations.
The proletariat has been unable to become conscious of this transformation of the economy. What's more it finds itself integrated into the state. Capitalism could have been overthrown before it reached its statified form. The epoch of revolutions had begun. But the revolutionary political struggle of the workers ended in failure, in an absolute retreat of the class, on a scale unprecedented in history. This failure and retreat have allowed capitalism to carry out this transformation.
It seems to be impossible for the proletariat to reaffirm itself as a historic class during this process. What used to give the class the possibility of doing so was the fact that, through its cyclical crises, society would break through its own framework and eject the proletariat from the cycle of production. Rejected from society the workers would develop a revolutionary consciousness about their condition and the way to transform it.
Since the period before the war in Spain and the beginnings of the ‘anti-fascist' mystification, when for the first time we saw the relative unification of the exploiting class, and then during and after the second world war, capitalism has been moving towards the disappearance of its cyclical crises and their after-effects, by entering into a permanent crisis. The proletariat now finds itself associated to its own exploitation. It is thus mentally and politically integrated into capitalism.
State capitalism enchains the proletariat more firmly than ever, and it does it with its own traditions of struggle. This is because the capitalists, as a class, have drawn the lessons of experience and have understood that the essential weapon for preserving their class rule is not so much the police as direct ideological repression. The political party of the workers has become a capitalist party. What has happened with the trade unions, emptied of their former content and absorbed into the state, has also happened to what used to be the workers' party. While still using a proletarian phraseology, this party has become an expression of the exploiting class, adapting its interests and its vocabulary to new realities. One of the basic planks of this mystification is the slogan of struggling against private property.
This struggle had a revolutionary meaning when capitalism could be identified with individual property: it was a challenge to exploitation because it challenged its most apparent form. The transformation of the conditions of capital has made this struggle of the workers against individual property historically obsolete. It has become the battle-cry of those capitalist factions who have advanced the furthest along the road of decadence. It serves to ally the workers to those factions.
The workers' attachment to their traditions of struggle, to a whole series of outworn myths and images, is used to integrate the class into the state. Thus the First of May, which once meant strikes, often violent ones, and always had the character of a struggle, has become a capitalist Holy Day: the workers' Christmas. The Internationale is sung by generals and priests who excel themselves in anti-clericalism.
All this serves capitalism, because the old objectives of the struggle, linked to a bygone period, have disappeared, while the forms of the struggle survive, without their former content.
The development of a revolutionary consciousness by the proletariat is directly linked to the return of the objective conditions in which this coming-to-consciousness can take place. These can be reduced to the general postulate that the proletariat is ejected from society, that capitalism is no longer able to assure the material conditions of its existence. This condition comes about at the culminating point of the crisis. And, in the period of state capitalism, this culminating point of the crisis takes place during a war.
Up to this point, the proletariat cannot affirm itself as a historic class with its own mission. On the contrary, it can only express itself as an economic category of capital.
In the present conditions of capital, generalized war is inevitable. But this doesn't mean that the revolution is inevitable, and still less the victory of the revolution. The revolution only represents one pole of the alternative which historical development has set before humanity. If the proletariat doesn't achieve a socialist consciousness, the course will be opened to the kind of barbarism of which we can see some aspects today.
May 1952
[1] Extract from the introduction to the republication of the text in the Bulletin d'études et de discussion of Révolution Internationale, n°8, July 1974
[2] This summary has been done by Lucien Laurat (L'Accumulation du Capital d'apres Rosa Luxembourg, Paris 1930). See also J. Buret Le Marxisme et les Crises, Paris 1933; Leon Sarbre La Theorie Marxiste des Crises, 1934 - and that's the whole French language bibliography on the subject.
[3] Our comrade Morel has given an expose on this question, which can be found in Internationalisme no. 43.
Since May ‘68 in France, the leftist movement has gone through various transformations. After reaching its strongest point in 1969, the years that followed saw a relative decline in the influence of certain leftist groups and the development of a crisis within them taking different forms in different currents.
In contrast to the Trotskyist current which came out of a proletarian tradition that passed into the bourgeois camp during World War II, the Maoist current is a direct abortion of the counterrevolution. Coming out of the PCF (Communist Party of France) in the mid-sixties on the basis of the deterioration of relations between Russian capitalism and Chinese capitalism, the ‘pro-Chinese' movement never broke with any of the counter-revolutionary positions of the PCF. In fact it advocated a return to the teachings of Stalin and an alignment behind Mao's bourgeois state.
In 1969, the two main Maoist groups were the Gauche Proletarienne, which dissolved three years later, and the PCMLF (Parti Communiste Marxiste Leniniste de France). Since then about a dozen splits have taken place in the Maoist movement in France and today (early 1980) there are four main groups: the PCML (Parti Communiste Marxiste Leniniste), the PCPml (Parti Communiste Revolutionaire marxist leniniste), UCFML (Union des Communistes de France Marxistes Leninistes) and the OCFml (Organisation Communiste de France marxiste leniniste, Drapeau Rouge). In addition to these there are a dozen or so small local circles, some of them pro-Albanian like the PCOF (Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France) which publishes La Forge. But in fact over the last ten years the Maoist movement has gone through a major numerical decline and a semi-permanent crisis, the product of various political contradictions specific to an inexperienced bourgeois current and linked to the policies of the Chinese state. This crisis is the product of the decreasing capacity of the Maoist groups to intervene and sell their mystifications, and the fact that they are caught between a strong Trotskyist movement, a powerful Stalinist party and a social democratic party that has been growing since 1968.
More precisely, the Maoist groups have been weakened by the following developments in the class struggle and the international situation:
1. The development of the CP-SP mystification of the ‘Programme Commun', which the Maoists didn't support. They openly conciliated with the right and even the extreme right on the question of national defense (anti-Russian propaganda, support for the atomic strike-force, denunciation of the anti-militarist movement, support for French imperialism). Thus, Humanité Rouge (paper of the PCMLF) could write:
"The present government, while holding to the principle of national defense, is incapable of mobilizing the popular masses because of the reactionary and oppressive character of its domestic policies. As for the ‘Programme Commun', which represents a growing tendency in the bourgeoisie, it is extremely dangerous, because while it claims to be for the strengthening of national defense, it is completely silent about the Soviet danger" (Humanité Rouge, 240, Sept. 1974).
And also:
"As for ourselves, more than ever we call on the workers and youth to act for the strengthening of national defense..." (Humanité Rouge, 309, July 1975).
Maoism has undermined the basis of its own influence by unmasking itself too rapidly as a nationalist drug directly at the service of the bourgeoisie and the American bloc.
2. The abandonment of verbal anti-unionism by most of the Maoist groups is also helping to liquidate the Maoist myth: in many ways, this anti-union verbiage was one of the principal factors behind the influence of the Maoist groups. During and after May ‘68, many of the workers who were aware of the sabotage of the unions turned towards groups like the GP who advocated ‘hanging the bureaucrats', or like the PCMLF who called for the formation of ‘base unions' and denounced the CGT as ‘social fascist'. This kind of demagogy, which was useful for diverting the workers in a period of struggle, became useless during the ensuing period of reflux. The Maoists were unable to adapt their policies to this change.
3. The more and more open integration of China into the American bloc (remember that the Maoist groups in France arose essentially on the basis of support for Vietnam against the USA and a critique of Russia's capitulations to the US).
4. The political shifts within the Chinese state, especially after Mao's death (the liquidation of the ‘Gang of Four', the re-emergence of Teng Hsiao Ping, who had been thoroughly denounced by all the Maoist groups).
All these factors have led to the dispersion of the Maoists in all kinds of obscure directions: the abandonment of militantism and the entry into marginalism, journalism (Libération), philosophy (the ‘New Philosophy', now overtly right wing), semi-terrorism (NAPAP), spontaneist autonomy (Camarades), and even certain attempts to move onto a proletarian terrain, as expressed by the formation of the Organisation Communiste Bolshevik, which after various splits has given rise to L'Eveil Interna,tionaliste and the Gauche Internationaliste.
After the failure of the ‘Programme Cormun' and the resurgence of proletarian struggle, the main Maoist groups (PCMLF and PCRml) accelerated the change of image which they had begun in the mid-sixties, abandoning the overtly ‘radical' aspects of their interventions. They have now opted for a more conciliatory attitude towards the unions and left parties. The latter have also softened their attitude to the leftists in general.
This turn by the Maoist current was clearly expressed at the beginning of 1978 during the 40th Congress of the CGT, whose "democratic opening-up" was hailed by the PCMLF. Similarly the decision of the PCMLF and the PCRml to present a joint list at the March ‘78 election was a way of revamping electoralism something for which the Maoists had always denounced the left parties and Trotskyists. Finally, just after these elections, the PCMLF evolved a perspective for a work of "explanation directed at the electors, base militants, workers, employees and small peasants of the PS and PCF, linked to the indispensable pursuit of the class struggle for the defense of immediate demands" (HR, 851, March ‘78).
At the end of 1978, the PCMLF even undertook a self-criticism of its excessively chauvinist position of support for French imperialism, notably their support for the French intervention in Zaire.
As for the resurgence of workers' struggles, it's worth pointing out that the Maoist press is more and more advancing the perspective of ‘unity at the base' within the union framework. This confirms that the Maoists are moving towards the old Trotskyist tactics for sabotaging struggles. Under the heading ‘What is unity at the base', the PCMLF explained at the end of 1979:
"The realization of unity at the base requires compromises... both as individuals, or as representatives of an organized political force, or as members of a union section, we must abandon unilateral action. In a united action, we mustn't only popularize our own ideas, or only the program of our party or union... In the same way, we can't accept militants of other political forces ‘recuperating' our common action by trying to direct it towards their own party program." (HR, 1133)
They could hardly be more explicit. Just like the Stalinists of the PCF and the Trotskyists, the Maoists are openly preparing to break any attempt at autonomous class organization during the struggle.
More precisely the Maoist groups, apart from the small UCFML, have integrated themselves fully into the union apparatus, especially the CFDT. However, now that the divided left is assuring a clearer oppositional role, there seems to be a certain hesitation in the Maoist ranks, the logic of which is leading them to support social democracy against the PCF, especially the Maire-Rocard duo (the leader of the CFDT and the ‘new man' of social democracy). This perspective has been put forward very clearly by the small OCFml:
"The political and economic failure of the right, but above all the profound ideological failure both of the parties of the old right and the parties of the fake left, demand a new, clear alternative: a revolutionary anti-totalitarian force. The basis for the emergence of such a force can be seen both in the CFDT's good showing in the conciliation board elections, and in Michel Rocard's public-opinion successes" (Drapeau Pouge, 72, Dec. 1979).
In the same issue, the OCFml, in an article entitled "Will the leftists rejoin the PCF"', expressed its fears in seeing the leftists tail-ending the PCF, which is now engaged in a ‘radical' activity demanded by the need to control and contain the resurgence of workers' struggles. As an example of this it cites an extract from a letter written by a union militant to Humanité Rouge, which says that
"There are even comrades who think that the PCF is better than our party (the PCMLF) and who are leaving us on this basis. Because it lacks any serious analysis, I'm really afraid that our party will simply become an auxiliary to the present line of the PCF/CGT".
The OCFml uses this occasion to point out that the PCF is aligned to the Russian bloc and to stress the necessity to strengthen the camp of ‘democratic socialism', clearly the camp of social democracy and alignment behind the American bloc.
On the international level, most of the Maoist groups have tried to follow, in a more or less coherent manner, the evolution of China, and to put themselves at the disposal of the anti-Russian propaganda of the Western bloc. On several occasions, the Maoist groups have openly supported the maneuvers of the American bloc. For them, Russian imperialism is the main enemy and this explains their belligerent propaganda. Thus no. 65 of Drapeau Pouge, September ‘79, reproduced an advert from Le Monde for General Hachett's book The Third World War, and explained, in an article called ‘Defense: arm the people', that
"In Europe and in France, the consciousness of dangers and of realities seems to be sharper in bourgeois circles (than in the USA), and even if doubt and indecision still reign, there is also a will to face up to the Russian war danger."
A few months previously, this same group reproached the American bloc for its weakness over the China-Vietnam conflict:
"Carter has even given way to this military and political pressure. At a time when the whole world was talking about the USSR's preparations for war against China, he declared that ‘there is no doubt in my mind that the Soviets want peace'" (DR, 54, March ‘79).
In the Same article, the OCFml supported China's attack on Vietnam:
"China is in the right! It is simply affirming that it won't give way to the threats of petty hegemonism supported by the USSR. Munich 1938 has already shown that any policy of weakness only encourages aggression."
In a broader sense, when the Maoists aren't explicitly supporting western imperialism their implicit support for the European options blessed by Washington clearly shows the pro-western perspective of all the Maoist groups. The UCFML, a small ‘marginal' group, didn't support the Chinese invasion of Vietnam: "The entry of Chinese troops into Vietnamese territory is justified neither by Vietnamese provocations at the frontier, nor by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, nor by the infiltration of Vietnam by Russian social-imperialism". In no.36 of its paper (Le Marxiste Leniniste) this group devoted a long article defending the idea of a re-unified Europe, East and West Europe against the two ‘superpowers', a ‘Europe of the peoples'. Very rapidly, the group admitted that the China-US alliance was ‘inevitable', and at the end of ‘78 it explained about the threat of imperialist war, saying:
"On the question of war, the proletariat can't have a passive attitude. Pacifism is a guarantee for disaster. When at the beginning of the 1939-45 war the PCF refused to put itself at the head of the resistance against the Nazi invader, it made a dramatic error, clearly paid for afterwards, despite the heroism of the FTP. Allowing De Gaulle to appear as the incarnation of the resistance allowed the capitulationist bourgeoisie to reconstitute itself." (Le Marxiste Leniniste, no. 31)
This same patriotic tradition is claimed by the ‘pro-Albanian' PCOF. It denounces the preparations for war and puts equal blame on the PS and PCF, "accomplices in the fascisisation of the regime." This pseudo-denunciation is part of the PCOF's ‘anti-fascist' logic; in its own small way the PCOF is trying to refurbish the old myths used by the PCF to mobilize the proletariat for World War II. By assimilating war with fascism, the PCOF completes the whole panoply of Maoist lies. Thus Maoism defends bourgeois positions from A to Z, and with an imperturbable tenacity.
But, lacking a real influence in the working class, the Maoist current doesn't have much perspective of growth in comparison to the Trotskyist movement, which remains the ‘spearhead' of leftism in France.
Trotskyism is the main force of the extreme left of capital in France, The Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR), Lutte Ouvriere (LO) and the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI) have since 1968 shared most of leftisms's work of mystification.
The Trotskyist groups, unlike the Maoists, were less affected by crises and splits during the reflux in the workers' struggle. However there has been a sort of creeping crisis, which has taken the form of a crisis of militantism in the LCR, the definite organizational decline of the OCI, and a weakening of the political phraseology of LO which used to have an image as a ‘pure', ‘radical' group. The underlying cause of these phenomena was the alignment of these three groups behind the Union of the left (PC, PS, Left Radicals), and their rapid integration into the electoral circus.
This orientation in the Trotskyist movement has provoked a series of small ‘left-wing' splits, reacting against a policy that was too tailendist and too openly anti-working class. Thus the small group LIRQUI (now the Ligue Ouvriere Revolutionnaire -- LOR), after splitting from the OCI, explained during the spring ‘74 elections that:
"The OCI's recent rallying ‘without ambiguity for the victory of Mitterand' is one of the most important political facts of the day. This position is a complete negation of the whole past struggle of the 4th International in France. It is neither more nor less than a rallying behind the Popular Front. It is a shameful, unconditional capitulation" (Bulletin, no.4).
As for the Ligue Trotskyiste de France (LTF) which comes from a group expelled from the LCR, it makes the same accusation:
"The LTF's major accusation against the pseudo-Trotskyists is their inability to draw a class line against the Union of the Left Popular Front, both in their general intervention and in their trade union work. The strategic axis of the intervention of Trotskyists is the independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie, an independence that is obliterated when the workers' parties and unions enter into a popular front. The central axis of trade union work for consistent revolutionaries must be the denunciation of the treason of the popular front and the break between the unions and the popular front. The pseudo-Trotskyists have either called for the coming to power of the popular front (LCR and LO) or called for a vote to Mitterand against... the popular front (OCI)!" (French Bulletin of the Spartacist League no.10, October ‘75)
Finally, Combat Communiste, a small group called ‘state capitalist' because it recognizes the capitalist nature of the USSR, expelled from LO after a split by another group (Union Ouvriere), was banging the same drum:
"LO supports the camouflaged coalition between the bourgeoisie and the counterrevolutionary workers' leaders without even asking what is positive in this for the working class" (CC pamphlet, Critique du Programme de Transition).
All these groups, including Combat Communiste, maintain the logic of Trotskyism on the issue of supporting the capitalist left. They only differ on whether this support is opportune in a ‘non-revolutionary' period. Thus Combat Communiste, denouncing the caricatural way the big Trotskyist groups use the slogan of the workers' government, added:
"We have just seen that the ‘workers' government' slogan only has a meaning in a pre-revolutionary period. In a situation in which -- as happened in the Russian revolution -- the bourgeois leaders of the working class had a majority in the workers' councils, we can't exclude the possibility of inviting them to take power" (ibid) .
This position, which CC has never publicly criticized, shows the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of such a group breaking with the counter-revolution, despite its recognition of the capitalist nature of the USSR.
As for the LTF, sympathizing section of the international Spartacist tendency, which advocates a return to the origins of Trotskyism, it in no sense represents a class rupture with official Trotskyism. The radicalism of such a group is just verbiage and artifice built around the same counter-revolutionary positions as the other Trotskyists: frontism, defense of bourgeois democratism, of trade unionism and the Russian imperialist bloc (though, as we shall see, this last point is the source of various contradictions in the present Trotskyist movement). In fact these splits have had hardly any impact on the three main French Trtoskyist groups.
During the resurgence of class struggle in the winter of ‘79, these groups were unable to make up for the difficulties the Trotskyist movement was having in redefining a new policy after the electoral failure of the Union of the Left. The desire to maintain a ‘pure' Trotskyism can only be dashed by the reality of the class struggle: in this sense, groups like the LTF, the LOR, or even CC (which doesn't seem to be able to be consistent in its efforts to break with Trotskyism) don't have any independent perspective in France.
Another aspect of the French Trotskyist movement is its relative weight at the international level, The LCR, attached to the Unified Secretariat (USec) of the 4th International (more or less led by E Mandel), and the OCI, which has constructed the Comite d'organisation pour la Reconstruction de la Auatrieme Internationale (CORQUI), compete with each other in the subtlety of their maneuvers to set up an international organization which could create the illusion of being a real international proletarian organization. The myth of the existence of a truly revolutionary 4th International has kept going ever since Trotskyism passed into the bourgeois camp during World War II, when it supported Russian imperialism and the allies against the fascist imperialist bloc. It would take much too long to go through the history of all the splits and short-lived regroupments which have taken place since the 1930's, but in this whole shopping basket there's been nothing that's come anywhere near a real proletarian internationalist activity.
The OCI has also seen the downfall of the International Committee for the Reconstruction of the 4th International which it used to participate in -- first after the break with Healy's group in Britain (the SLL, now the WRP), and then the departure of the LIRQUI, led by Varga, who was denounced as a double agent of the CIA and GPU! Since then, the OCI has tried, not without some success, to prise away the American SWP which belongs to the USec but is the main rival to the LCR...
In fact, behind all these sordid maneuvers, there is a crisis in the Trotskyist movement, partly due to the present period, which is seeing the strengthening of the imperialist blocs and the resurgence of the proletarian struggle. This crisis is taking the form of a realignment of a large part of the Trotskyist movement, which has been more and more tempted to line up behind social democracy. As early as 1974, during the events in Portugal, we saw within the USec. a division between a ‘classical' tendency still attached to the defense of Russian interests and thus closer to the Stalinist party, and a ‘pro-social democratic' tendency more and more influenced by the needs of the American bloc. In this sense the OCI was the precursor of this tendency, and at this point it rallied to the standpoint of the American SWP by almost openly supporting the Portuguese SP:
"To note that the radicalization of the masses is using the channel of the Socialist Party doesn't mean adopting the program or policies of the Portuguese SP leadership. But it would be sheer blindness to refuse to see that, on the burning issues of the revolution, the Portuguese SP has started a struggle which coincides with the fundamental interests of the proletariat (workers' democracy in the unions, municipal elections, respect for the Constituent Assembly, freedom of the press, etc)" (Information Ouvrières, 717, Sept. ‘75).
On other issues, and in particular the question of support for the ‘dissidents' of the Eastern bloc, the (OCI has aligned itself behind the Western bloc, helping to give a ‘revolutionary' veneer to the nationalist and democratic cliques which are active in the Eastern bloc and which will be a dangerous force for mystification for the proletariat in struggle:
"The right of peoples to self-determination is today a powerful lever in the hands of the proletariat in its struggle against imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy: it can dislocate the counter-revolutionary European order which imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy, through the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, imposed on the peoples and proletariats of Europe, and which they want to preserve. It can give a powerful impetus to social contradictions. It is part of the struggle for political revolution in Eastern Europe and for social revolution in the West" (La Vérité, 565, January ‘75).
The Trotskyists are in the front ranks of those who aim to castrate the proletarian movement in the Eastern bloc by diverting it into the utopian struggle for ‘the rights of peoples to self-determination', a slogan which only serves the interests of imperialism in this instance western imperialism.
With the deepening of inter-imperialist contradictions, which are increasingly centering on Europe, a part of the Trotskyist movement has tended to adapt itself more and more to social democracy. What's more, the French social democrats have recently started a campaign to rehabilitate Trotsky, as a politician who opposed Stalin. More concretely, when the Frente Sandinista came to power in Nicaragua, this convergence between part of the Trotskyist movement and the Socialist Party was further solidified, notably through the campaigns of support for the ‘new' Nicaragua. The more or less rapid abandonment of the intransigent defense of the Russian bloc has not taken place without friction, given the particularly decaying character of the Trotskyist milieu, racked by rivalries and personal quarrels. There can only be an exacerbation of the conflicts between the Trotskyist groups who have concentrated their energies on the Stalinist parties, particularly LO and even the LCR to a lesser extent, and those who follow social democracy like the OCI, or who already act like a small social democratic party themselves, like the American SWP. It's this which allows us to understand why the Ligue Ccmmuniste Internationaliste was more or less expelled by the LCR, at the time of its last Congress, because of its links with the OCI, when at the exact same moment the LCR was engaged in official negotiations with the OCI!
Behind all these games is the real issue of how Trotskyism is to play its role of mystification in the workers' struggle. Initially all the French Trotskyist groups supported the electoral illusions of the union of the Left; now this left has split up and is playing a more oppositional role in order to sabotage workers' struggles more effectively. This has left the Trotskyist movement high and dry, temporarily incapable of developing a coherent policy. This in turn explains why the Trotskyists had such a weak intervention in the steelworkers' struggles of early ‘79. Thus, concerning the demonstration of 23 March, the LTF was left sermonizing to its big brothers about their ‘lack of militancy':
"The CGT and PC have both sabotaged their own march, mortally afraid that it might escape their control. Faced with this potentially explosive situation, the pseudo-Trotskyists of all kinds showed themselves lamentably incapable of advancing a perspective of struggle for the workers" (Le Bolshevik, 13 October ‘79)
While revolutionaries can only welcome these moments of impotence for Trotskyism, they can't sell the bearskin before the bear's been killed. The tail-endism vis-a-vis social democracy favored by part of the Trotskyist movement undoubtedly marks a weakening of the capacities for mystification which it derived from its support for the Russian bloc. This support allowed it to have an image of ‘anti-imperialism' and internationalism, and thus to have an influence on Stalinist militants. However, it won't be so easy for a group like LO to be tempted in this direction. At the time of the Union of the Left, this group had a clear divergence with the other Trotskyists:
"If there is one party in the Union of the Left which revolutionaries must be preoccupied with, it's not the Socialist Party, but the French Communist Party. Because the PCF has retained a working class base, and organizes in its ranks a number of militants who are devoted to the working class, to really changing the world, to socialism... Thus we ought to be preoccupied with what's going on inside the PCF, with the aspirations, hopes and doubts of the militants of this party." (Lutte de Classe, 22, October ‘74).
Today we can see how a group like LO is a precious supplement to the PCF, which is in fact the only left party that is really in a position to smash the workers' resistance, their combativity and their moves towards autonomy, thanks to its control over the CGT. By giving a new gloss to the militant work of the Stalinists, LO is rendering a more ‘radical' service to the counter-revolution than the OCI, which tends to sing about Bergeron, the leader of the union Force Ouvriere, or the LCR, which tends towards the CFDT.
But in the end, whether they are more ‘pro-Stalinist' or ‘pro-social democrat', more ‘pro- Russian' or more ‘pro-Western', the Trotskyist groups have the same basic tasks as guard dogs of capital, the same task of diverting class consciousness and sabotaging workers' struggles. At the international level, there are plenty of examples of this effort to undermine the proletariat's initial movements. The French Trotskyists have not yet had the chance of a government post like the Ceylonese Trotskyist group LSSP, or of supporting a military coup d'état like the Argentinian Trotskyists of the PST, who, after supporting Peron's return in 1973, applauded General Videla's seizure of power in 1976. But at one time or another they have all supported the direct suppression of the proletariat at an international level.
Thus, when Allende was in power in Chile, the LCR openly supported the government of Popular Unity, presenting it as something different from a bourgeois government, and presenting Chile as something different from a capitalist state. Faced with the danger of the army, the LCR called on the working class to defend one faction of the bourgeoisie against another:
"The Chilean revolutionaries of the MIR have clearly analyzed this situation: they call for the setting up of committees for socialism supporting Allende as long as he situates himself on a class terrain, and ready to go into action the moment he moves away from it." (Rouge, 86, Nov.73)
Let's remember that the MIR formed Allende's personal bodyguard and constantly supported the bourgeois left in power.
We've already mentioned the OCI's support for the Portuguese SP. For its part LO claimed that the Armed Forces Movement (AFM) -- ie the military clique responsible for repressing strikes -- could go in the same direction as the aspirations of the masses:
"In a period in which broad layers of the masses have confidence in the AFM, precisely because it proposes to carry out the objectives that correspond to their aspirations, to oppose the policies of the AFM en bloc would mean cutting oneself off from the masses. On the contrary, it's necessary to support these objectives of the AFM which are correct: agrarian reform for example. It's necessary to affirm loudly that, every time the AFM takes a step forward in satisfying democratic demands, it will have the workers' support against the forces of reaction." (Lutte de Classe, 31, Oct. ‘75)
As for inter-imperialist conflicts, these have given rise to the most cynical positions, notably on the part of the more ‘radical' Trotskyist groups. "Revolutionaries are for the right of peoples to self-determination. Even if in certain cases, supporting the right of certain peoples to self-determination means supporting the interests of imperialism." (Lutte de classe, 34, Feb. ‘76). In the same article, LO avoids saying a single word about the role of the USSR in so-called national liberation struggles. The Spartacist tendency is less hypocritical and takes up its positions more crudely in relation to Russian military interests. During the war in Angola, this group put forward the following positions:
"While the Stalinists of various kinds sing the praises of their favorite nationalist movement, the Spartacist tendency, since early November, has called for military support for the MPLA against the imperialist coalition... We have always refused to give political support to the forces that intend to create a capitalist Angola" (Spartacist 11).
This group thinks it can cover its tracks by making a subtle distinction between military and political support; this is the height of chauvinist chicanery, to be internationalist on paper and ferociously nationalist on the battlefield, arms in hand. In the case of the Spartacist tendency, it's all the more disgusting because the group doesn't put into practice its idea of military support: it simply calls on the African or Asian workers to get themselves slaughtered for Russian capital, with the blessing of international Trotskyism and third worldism. This is what it did once again over Afghanistan. The LTF, which defends the positions of the Spartacist tendency in France, wasn't left behind, and, concerning the situation in Iran, the LTF showed what lay beneath its ‘intransigence' against the Trotskyists who supported Khomeini. In a polemic against Combat Communiste the LTF attacks CC for seeing the struggles in Iran as being more important for the proletariat than the "nationalist peasant guerillas" in Vietnam, because that means preferring Khomeini to Ho Chi Minh and denying the "workers' gains" in Vietnam. It's hardly surprising that the LTF should prefer the stigmata of capitalist barbarism in the zones dominated by Russian imperialism to the first steps of the Iranian proletariat. The LTF's denunciation of Khomeini is in no way a defense of class positions, but simply an appeal to the pro-Russian forces in Iran to liquidate the Islamic clique. In this perspective, the LTF continues to defend ‘democratic' rights and the ‘right to self-determination', which are precisely the bloody impasses which the Iranian proletariat has to avoid.
In conclusion, the Trotskyist movement in France has over the last few years confirmed its bourgeois nature, mainly by its increasingly massive presence in the electoral game (in the 1978 legislative elections, LO put forward more than 5000 candidates:), by its presence in the three main unions (CGT, CFDT, FO), and by the control over the student union UNEF-Unite Syndicale by the OCI and the Etudiants Socialistes, competing with the UNEF-Renouveau controlled by the Stalinists. We can also mention the ‘responsible' role of the Trotskyist stewards at demonstrations, who have not hesitated in attacking the ‘autonomous' groups and calling them ‘provocateurs'. Finally, during workers' struggles, either by fighting for trade union unity, or by defending frontism and democratism vis-a-vis the Stalinists and Social democrats, the Trotskyists movement is carrying out its anti-proletarian role with consistency and self-denial.
The Trotskyist current plays its anti-proletarian role at another level: by distorting and caricaturing the role and functioning of a genuine internationalist proletarian organization, by presenting their quarrels between bureaucratic cliques as proletarian political debate, the various Trotskyist groups help to repel many workers trying to rejoin the revolutionary communist tradition. Faced with the miserable spectacle of the Trotskyist current, many people reject any form of revolutionary organization, any kind of militantism, and fall into anarchism, modernism, and individualism, which are very often points of no return.
But Trotskyism also exerts a weight on the revolutionary milieu itself. The Bordigist International Communist Party, for example, due to both dubious tactical considerations and political incomprehension, has in its criticisms of Trotsky more or less liquidated the work carried out by the Italian Left around the journal Bilan before the last war (on the analysis of the period, on the question of frontist and entryist tactics, on the national question, etc.) Today, the ICP has fallen into superficial polemics in which the class nature of Trotskyism is carefully hidden, and the Trotskyists are denounced as ‘centrist' or ‘opportunist', never bourgeois. What's more, the ICP uses the work of Trotsky himself to criticize the ‘renegades' of today, breaking with the tradition of the Communist Left which unanimously denounced Trotsky's capitulations to Stalinism, which led Trotskyism into the bourgeois camp during the second world war. For all these reasons it's necessary to insist on the counter-revolutionary role and nature of the Trotskyist groups today.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Far from being an expression of the petty bourgeoisie or an ‘activist', ‘centrist', or ‘opportunist' proletarian current, the leftist movement is part of capital's left front. There is nothing proletarian or revolutionary about either Trotskyism or Maoism. On the other hand, they share any number of basic agreements with Stalinism and social democracy even if they may differ on secondary, tactical questions. As for the question of the ‘armed' revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat which might appear to place leftism in the revolutionary camp, all the leftist currents not only present this as one tactic among others, but also portray the seizures of power by Castro, Mao or Ho as models for the workers to follow.
What leftism is attempting to prepare is the defeat of the proletariat; what it defends are political methods for smashing the proletariat.
The leftist current can only prepare the ground for the statist counter-revolution which has already been practiced by Stalinism and which consists of presenting state capitalism or self-management as socialism or even communism.
Chenier
IR21, 2nd Quarter 1980
ORIENTATION TEXT
(This text was adopted by the 3rd Congress of Internationalisme, the ICC's section in Belgium, February 1980.)
What is to be done outside times of open struggle? How should we organise when the strike is finished? How to prepare the struggles to come?
Faced with this question, faced with the problems posed by the existence of committees, circles, nuclei, etc, regrouping small minorities of the working class, we have no recipes to provide. We cannot choose between giving them moral lessons (‘organise yourselves like this or that’, ‘dissolve yourselves’, ‘join us’) and demagogically flattering them. Instead, our concern is this: to understand these minority expressions of the proletariat as a part of the whole class. If we situate them in the general movement of the class struggle; if we see that they are strictly linked to the strengths and weaknesses of different periods in this struggle between the classes, then, in this way, we’ll be able to understand to what general necessity they are a response. By neither remaining politically imprecise in relation to them, nor by imprisoning ourselves inside rigid schemas, we’ll also be able to grasp what their positive aspects are and be able to point out what dangers lie in wait for them.
Our first concern in understanding this problem must be to recall the general, historical context within which we find ourselves. We must remember the nature of this historic period (the period of social revolutions) and the characteristics of the class struggle in decadence. This analysis is fundamental because it allows us to understand the type of class organisation that can exist in such a period.
Without going into all the details, let’s recall simply that the proletariat in the nineteenth century existed as an organised force in a permanent way. The proletariat unified itself as a class through an economic and political struggle for reforms. The progressive character of the capitalist system allowed the proletariat to bring pressure to bear on the bourgeoisie in order to obtain reforms, and for this, large masses of the working class regrouped within unions and parties.
In the period of capitalism’s senility, the characteristics and the forms of organisation of the class changed. A quasi-permanent mobilisation of the proletariat around its immediate and political interests was no longer possible, nor viable. Henceforward, the permanent unitary organs of the class were no longer able to exist except in the course of the struggle itself. From this time on, the function of these unitary organs could no longer be limited to simply ‘negotiating’ an improvement in the proletariat’s living conditions (because an improvement was no longer possible over the long term and because the only realistic answer was that of revolution). Their task was to prepare for the seizure of power.
The unitary organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat are the workers’ councils. These organs possess a certain number of characteristics which we must make clear if we are to grasp the entire process which leads to the self-organisation of the proletariat.
Thus, we must clearly show that the councils are a direct expression of working class struggle. They arise in a spontaneous (but not mechanical) way from out of this struggle. This is why they are intimately tied to the development and maturity of the struggle. They draw from it their substance and their vitality. They don’t constitute, then, a simple ‘delegation’ of power, a parody of Parliament, but are truly the organised expression of the whole working class and its power. Their task isn’t to organise a proportional representation of social groupings, or political parties, but allow the will of the proletariat to realise itself practically. It’s through them that all the decisions are taken. That is the reason why the workers must constantly keep control of them (the revocability of delegates) by means of the General Assemblies.
Only the workers’ councils are capable of realising the living identification between the immediate struggle and the final goal. In this liaison between the struggle for immediate interests and the struggle for political power, the councils establish the objective and subjective basis for the revolution. They constitute, par excellence, the crucible of class consciousness. The constitution of the proletariat in councils is not then a simple question of a form of organisation, but is the product of the development of the struggle and of class consciousness. The appearance of the councils isn’t the fruit of organisational recipes, of prefabricated structures, of intermediate organs.
The more and more conscious extension and centralisation of struggles, beyond the factories and beyond frontiers, cannot be artificial, voluntarist action. To be convinced of the correction of this idea, it’s sufficient to recall the experience of the AAUD and its artificial attempt to unite and centralise the ‘factory organisations’ in a period when the struggle was in reflux. [1] [14]
The Councils can only continue to exist when the permanent, open struggle continues to exist, signifying the participation of an ever-growing number of workers in the struggle. Their appearance is essentially a function of the development of the struggle itself and of the development of class consciousness.
But we are not yet in a period of permanent struggle, in a revolutionary context which would allow the proletariat to organise itself in workers’ councils. The constitution of the proletariat in councils is the result of objective conditions (the depth of the crisis, the historic course) and subjective conditions (the maturity of the struggle and the consciousness of the class). It is the result of an entire apprenticeship, a whole maturation, which is as much organisational as it is political.
We must be conscious that this maturation, this political fermentation, doesn’t unfold in a well-designated straight line. It expresses itself instead as a fiery, impetuous, confused process within a jostling, jerky movement. It demands the active participation of revolutionary minorities.
Since it is incapable of acting mechanically in accordance with abstract principles, preconceived plans or voluntarist schemes detached from reality, the proletariat must forge its unity and consciousness by means of a painful apprenticeship. Incapable of regrouping all its forces on a preordained day, it consolidates its ranks in the course of the battle itself. It forms its ‘army’ within the conflict itself. But in the course of the struggle it forms in its ranks more combative elements, a more determined vanguard. These elements don’t necessarily regroup themselves within the revolutionary organisation (because, in certain periods, it is virtually unknown). The appearance of these combative minorities within the proletariat, whether before or after open struggles, isn’t an incomprehensible or new phenomenon. It really expresses the irregular character of the struggle, the unequal and heterogeneous development of class consciousness. Thus, since the end of the 1960’s, we’ve witnessed, at one and the same time, the development of the struggle (in the sense of its greater self-organisation), a reinforcement of revolutionary minorities, and the appearance of committees, nuclei, circles, etc, trying to regroup a working class avant-garde. The development of a coherent political pole of regroupment, and the tendency for the proletariat to try to organise itself outside the unions, both issue from the same maturation of the struggle.
The appearance of these committees, circles, etc, truly responds to a necessity within the struggle. If some combative elements sense the need to remain grouped together after they’ve been struggling together, they do so with the aim of simultaneously continuing to ‘act together’ (the eventual preparation of a new strike) and of drawing the lessons of the struggle (through political discussion). The problem which poses itself to these workers is as much one of regrouping with a view to future action as it is of regrouping with a view to clarifying questions posed by the past struggle and the struggle to come. This attitude is understandable in the sense that the absence of permanent struggle the ‘bankruptcy’ of the unions, and the very great weakness of revolutionary organisations creates an organisational and political void. When the working class returns to the path of its historic struggle, it has a horror of this void. Therefore, it seeks to reply to the need posed by this organisational and political void.
These committees, these nuclei, these proletarian minorities who still don’t understand clearly their own function, are a response to this need. They are, at one and the same time, an expression of the general weakness of today’s class struggle and an expression of the maturation of the organisation of the class. They are a crystallisation of a whole subterranean development at work within the proletariat.
That is why we must be careful not to lock away these organs in a hermetic, rigidly classified drawer. We cannot forecast their appearance and development in a totally precise way. Furthermore, we must be careful not to make artificial separations in the different moments in the life of these committees, getting ourselves caught in the false dilemma: ‘action or discussion’.
This said, it must not stop us from making an intervention towards these organs. We must also be capable of appreciating their evolution in terms of the period, depending on whether we are in a phase of renewal or reflux in the struggle. Because they are a spontaneous, immediate product of the struggle, and because the appearance of these nuclei is based mainly on conjunctural problems (in distinction to the revolutionary organisation which appears on the basis of the historical necessities of the proletariat), this means that they remain very dependent on the surrounding milieu of the class struggle. They remain more strongly imprisoned by the general weaknesses of the movement and have a tendency to follow the ups and downs of the struggle.
We must make a distinction in the development of these nuclei between the period of reflux in the struggle (1973-77) and today’s period of renewed class struggle internationally. While underlining the fact that the dangers threatening them remain identical in both periods, we must, nonetheless, be capable of grasping what differences the change in period implies for their evolution.
At the end of the first wave of struggle at the end of the 1960’s, we witnessed the appearance of a whole series of confusions within the working class. We could measure the extent of these confusions by examining the attitude of some of the combative elements of the class, who tried to remain regrouped.
We saw develop:
- the illusion in fighting unionism and the distrust of anything political (OHK, AAH, Komiteewerking [2] [15] ). In many cases, the committees that came out of struggles transformed themselves, categorically, into semi-unions. This was the case for the workers’ commissions in Spain and the ‘factory councils’ in Italy. Even more often they just disappeared.
- a very strong corporatism (which itself constitutes the basis for the illusion in ‘fighting unionism’).
- when attempts were made to go beyond the limits of the factory, the result was confusion and a great political eclecticism.
- a very great political confusion was present, rendering these organs very vulnerable to the manoeuvres of the leftists, and also allowing them to fall prey to illusions of the type held by the PIC (cf. their ‘bluff’ about workers’ groups)[3] [16]. Also, in the course of this period, the ideology of ‘workers autonomy’ developed, bringing with it an apology for immediatism, factoryism and economism.
All of these weaknesses were essentially a function of the weaknesses of the first wave of struggle at the end of the 60’s. This movement was characterised by a disproportion between the strength and extension of the strikes and the weakness in the content of the demands made. What especially indicated this disproportion was the absence of any clear, political perspective in the movement. The falling-back of the workers, which happened between 1973 and 1977, was a product of this weakness, which the bourgeoisie utilised to demobilise and ideologically contain the struggles. Each of the weak points of the first wave of strikes was ‘recuperated’ by the bourgeoisie to its own profit:
“Thus the idea of a permanent organisation of the class, at one and the same time economic and political, was transformed later into the idea of ‘new unions’ to end finally in a return to classical trade unionism. The vision of the General Assembly as a form independent of any content ended up — via the mystification concerning direct democracy and popular power - re-establishing trust in classical bourgeois democracy. Ideas about self-management and workers’ control of production (confusions which were understandable at the beginning) were theorised into the myth of ‘generalised self-management’, ‘islands of communism’ or ‘nationalisation under workers’ control’. All this caused the workers to put their confidence in plans to restructure the economy, which would supposedly avoid layoffs or caused them to back national solidarity pacts presented as a way of ‘getting out of the crisis”.
(Report on the Class Struggle presented to the IIIrd International Congress of the ICC).
With the renewal in struggle since 1977, we have seen other tendencies delineate themselves. The proletariat matured through its ‘defeat’. It had drawn albeit in a confused way, the lessons of the reflux, and even if the dangers represented by ‘fighting unionism’, corporatism, etc remain, they exist within a different general evolution in the struggle.
Since 1977, we have seen the hesitant development of:
- a more or less marked will on the part of the avant-garde of combative workers to develop political discussion (remember the General Assembly of Co-ordinamenti in Turin, the debate at Antwerp with the workers of Rotterdam, Antwerp, etc, the conference of dockers in Barcelona. [4] [17]);
- the will to enlarge the field of struggle, to go beyond the ghetto of factoryism, to give a more global political framework to the struggle. This will expressed itself through the appearance of the ‘co—ordinamenti’, and more specifically in the political manifesto produced by one of the co-ordinamenti situated in the North of Italy (Sesto S. Giovanni). This manifesto demanded the unification of the combative avant-garde in the factories, spelt out the necessity for a politically independent struggle by the workers and insisted on the necessity for the struggle to break out of factory limitations;
- the concern to establish a link between the immediate aspect of the struggle and the final goal. This concern was particularly expressed in workers groups in Italy (FIAT) and in Spain (FEYCU, FORD). The first of these groups intervened by means of a leaflet to denounce the dangers of layoffs made by the bourgeoisie in the name of ‘fighting terrorism’, and the second intervened to denounce the illusion of parliamentarism.
- the concern to better prepare and organise the struggles to come (cf. the action of the ‘spokesmen’ group of dockers in Rotterdam calling for the formation of a General Assembly).
We must repeat that the dangers of corporatism, ‘fighting unionism’ and locking-up of the struggle on a strictly economic terrain continue to exist even within this period. But what we must take into account is the important influence of the period on the evolution of the committees and nuclei that appear both before and after open struggles. When the period is one of combativity and resurgence of class struggle, the intervention of such minorities takes on a different sense, as does our attitude toward them. In a period of generalised reflux in the struggle, we have to insist more on the danger of these organs becoming transformed into semi-unions, of falling into the clutches of the leftists, of having illusions in terrorism, etc. In a period of class resurgence we insist more on the dangers represented by voluntarism and activism (see the illusions expressed in this connection in the manifesto of the co-ordinamenti of Sesto S. Giovanni), and by the illusion which some of these combative workers may have about the possibility of forming the embryos of future strike committees, etc. In a period of renewal in the struggle, we will also be more open to combative minorities which appear and regroup with a view to calling for strikes and the formation of strike committees, General Assemblies, etc.
The concern to situate the committees, nuclei, etc, in the cauldron of the class struggle, to understand them in terms of the period in which they appear, doesn’t imply, however, abruptly changing our analysis in the wake of the different stages in the class struggle. Whatever the mo5ent that gives birth to these committees, we know that they constitute only one stage in a dynamic, general process they are one moment in the maturation of the organisation and consciousness of the class. They can only have a positive role when they give themselves a broad, supple framework to work within, in order not to freeze the general process. This is why these organs must be vigilant if they are to avoid falling into the following traps:
- imagining that they constitute a structure which can prepare the way for the appearance of strike committees or councils;
- imagining themselves to be invested with a sort of ‘potentiality’ which can develop future struggles. (It isn’t the minorities who artificially create a strike or cause a General Assembly or a committee to appear, even though they do have an active intervention to make in this process).
- giving themselves a platform or statutes or anything else that risks freezing their evolution and thus condemning them to political confusion.
- presenting themselves as intermediate organs, half-way between the class and a political organisation, as if they were an organisation that is at one and the same time unitary and political.
This is why our attitude towards these minority organs remains open, but at the same time tries to influence the evolution of political reflection in their midst, and this whatever the period in which we find ourselves. We must try our hardest to ensure that these committees, nuclei, etc. don’t freeze up, either in one direction (a structure which imagines itself to prefigure the workers’ councils) or another (political fixation). Before all else, what must guide us in our intervention is not the interests and the conjunctural concerns of these organs (since we can’t suggest to them any organisational recipes nor any ready-made answers), but the general interests of the whole class. Our concern is always to homogenise and develop class consciousness in such a way that the development of the class struggle happens with a greater, more massive participation of all workers, and that the struggle is taken in-hand by the workers themselves and not by a minority, no matter what type it may be. It is for this reason that we insist on the dynamic of the movement and that we put the combative elements on their guard against any attempt at substitutionism or anything that might block the later development of the struggle and of class consciousness.
In orientating the evolution of these organs in one direction (reflection and political discussion), rather than another, we can give a response which will be favourable to the dynamic of the movement. But let it be well-understood that this doesn’t signify that we condemn any form of ‘intervention’ or ‘action’ undertaken by these organs. It is obvious that the instant a group of combative workers understands that the task isn’t to act to constitute themselves as a semi-union, but rather to draw the political lessons of the past struggles, this doesn’t imply that their political reflection is going to happen in an ethereal vacuum, in the abstract, without any-practical consequences. The political clarification undertaken by these combative workers will also push them to act together within their own factory (and in the most positive of cases, even outside their own factory). They will feel the necessity to give a material, political expression to their political reflection (leaflets, newspapers, etc). They will feel the need to take up positions in relation to the concrete issues that face the working class. In order to defend and disseminate their positions, they will thus have to make a concrete intervention. In certain circumstances they will propose concrete means of action (formation of General Assemblies, strike committees…) to advance the struggle. In the course of the struggle itself, they will sense the necessity for a concerted effort to develop a certain orientation for the struggle; they will support demands that will permit the struggle to extend itself and they will insist on the necessity for its enlargement, generalisation, etc.
Even though we remain attentive to these efforts and don’t try to lay down rigid schemas for them to follow, nonetheless it is clear that we must continue to insist on the fact that what counts the most is the active participation of all the workers in the struggle, and that the combative workers should at no time substitute themselves for their comrades in the organisation and co-ordination of the strike. Moreover, it is also clear that the more the organisation of revolutionaries increases its influence within the struggles, the more the combative elements will turn toward it. Not because the organisation will have a policy of forcibly recruiting these elements, but quite simply because the combative workers themselves will become conscious that a political intervention, which is really active and effective, can only be made in the framework of such an international organisation.
All that glitters isn’t gold. To point out that the working class in its struggle can cause more combative elements to appear doesn’t mean affirming that the impact of these minorities is decisive for the later development of class consciousness. We must not make this absolute identification: an expression of the maturation of consciousness = an active factor in its development.
In reality the influence which these nuclei can have in the later unfolding of the struggle is very limited. Their influence entirely depends on the general combativity of the proletariat and of the capacity of these nuclei to pursue without let-up this work of political clarification. In the long-term, this work cannot be followed except within the framework of a revolutionary organisation.
But here again, we’ve no mechanism to drop in place. It’s not in an artificial manner that the revolutionary organisation wins these elements. Contrary to the ideas of organisations like Battaglia Communista or the PIC, the ICC does not seek to fill-in, in an artificial, voluntarist manner, ‘the gap’ between the party and the class. Our understanding of the working class as a historic force, and our comprehension of our own role prevents us from wanting to freeze these committees into the form of an intermediate structure. Nor do we seek to create ‘factory groups’ as transmission belts between the class and the party.
This presents us with the question of determining what our attitude to such circles, committees, etc should be. Even while recognising their limited influence and their weaknesses, we must remain open to them and attentive to their appearance. The most important thing that we propose to them is that they open up widely to discussions. At no time, do we adopt toward them a distrustful or condemnatory attitude under the pretext of reacting against their political ‘impurity’. So that’s one thing we should avoid; another is to avoid flattering them or even uniquely concentrating our energies on them. We mustn’t ignore workers’ groups, but equally we mustn’t become obsessive about them. We recognise that the struggle matures and class-consciousness develops in a process.
Within this process, tendencies exist within the class that attempt to ‘hoist’ the struggle onto a political terrain. In the course of this process, we know that the proletariat will give rise to combative minorities within itself, but they won’t necessarily organise themselves within political organisations. We must be careful not to identify this process of maturation in the class today with what characterised the development of the struggle last century. This understanding is very important because it permits us to appreciate in what way these committees, circles, etc are a real expression of the maturation of class consciousness, but an expression which is, above all, temporary and ephemeral and not a fixed, structured organisational rung in the development of the class struggle. The class struggle in the period of capitalist decadence advances explosively. Sudden eruptions appear which surprise even those elements who were the most combative in the proceeding round of struggle, and these eruptions can immediately go beyond previous experience in terms of the consciousness and maturity developed in the new struggle. The proletariat can only really organise itself on a unitary level within the struggle. To the extent that the struggle itself becomes permanent, it causes the unitary organisations of the class to grow and become stronger.
This understanding is what allows us to grasp why we don’t have a specific policy, a special ‘tactic’ in relation to workers’ committees, even though in; certain circumstances it can be very positive for us to begin and systematically continue discussions with them, and to participate in their meetings. We know that it is possible and increasingly easy to discuss with these combative elements (particularly when open struggle isn’t taking place). We are also aware that certain of these elements may want to join us, but we don’t focus all our attention on them. Because what is of primary importance for us, is the general dynamic of the struggle, and we don’t set up any rigid classifications or hierarchies within this dynamic. Before everything, we address ourselves to the working class as a whole. Contrary to other political groups who try to surmount the problem of the lack of influence of revolutionary minorities in the class by artificial methods and by feeding themselves on illusions about these workers’ groups, the ICC recognises that it has very little impact in the present period. We don’t try to increase our influence among the workers by giving them artificial ‘confidence’ in us. We aren’t workerist, nor are we megalomaniacs. The influence which we will progressively develop within the struggles will come essentially from our political practice inside these struggles and not from our acting as toadies, or flatterers, or as ‘water-carriers’ who restrict themselves to performing technical tasks. Furthermore, we address our political intervention to all the workers, to the proletariat taken as a whole, as a class, because our fundamental task is to call for the maximum extension of the struggles. We don’t exist in order to feel satisfied at winning the confidence of two or three horny-handed worker but to homogenise and accelerate the development of the consciousness of the class. It’s necessary to be aware that it will only be in the revolutionary process itself that the proletariat will accord us its political ‘confidence’ to the extent that it realises that the revolutionary party really makes up a part of its historic struggle.
[1] [18] AAUD: Allgemeine Arbeiter Union Deutschlands, ‘General Workers Union of Germany’. The ‘Unions’ weren’t trade unions, but attempts to create permanent forms of organisation regrouping all the workers outside and against the unions, in Germany in the years following the crushing of the 1919 Berlin insurrection. They expressed nostalgia for the workers councils, but never succeeded in carrying out the function of the councils.
[2] [19] These were all workers groups in Belgium.
[3] [20] The French group PIC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste) was for several months convinced - and tried to convince everyone else - that it was participating in the development of a network of ‘workers groups’ which would constitute a powerful avant-garde of the revolutionary movement. They based this illusion on the skeletal reality of two or three groups largely made-up of ex-leftist elements. There’s not much left of this bluff today.
[4] [21] These are organised meetings regrouping delegates from different workers groups, collectives and committees.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/russian-invasion-afghanistan
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/khomeini
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/german-and-dutch-left
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/30/economics
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/gorter
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/pannekoek
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/roland-holst
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/1996/state-capitalism-after-world-war-ii
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/french-communist-left
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/trotskyism
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/stalinism
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/maoism
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn1
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn2
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn3
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn4
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref1
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref2
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref3
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref4
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/19/union-question
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/28/revolutionary-organisation