The attitude of communists in the face of war has always been a clear class frontier between the camp of the proletariat and the camp of the bourgeoisie. Confronted with an unparalleled descent into the barbarism of war, with the ceaseless torrent of nationalist propaganda and the shameful lies of bourgeois pacifism, genuine revolutionaries have not bargained with the political principles of the workers’ movement, they have not hesitated to mount an unfailing defence of proletarian internationalism. When the proletariat was betrayed on the eve of the First World War and led into the trenches by Social Democracy, the revolutionaries who had remained loyal to internationalism, though small in number, made no concessions to the calls for a “Sacred Union” against “German militarism” on one side or “Tsarist autocracy” on the other.

On the contrary! When the chauvinist hysteria was at its height, including in the ranks of the proletariat, they came together, in spite of many confusions among them, at Zimmerwald in 1915, then at Kienthal the following year. The revolutionaries who were clearest about the new situation opened up by the war, the Zimmerwald left, and the Bolsheviks in particular, waged a bitter struggle in these conferences to clarify the road ahead and to hold high the banner of internationalism and autonomous proletarian struggle: the working class has no camp to choose and must not align itself with any other class. The only possible way to stop the war was the independent struggle of the proletariat on the basis of its specific interests!

During the Second World War, the atrocious height of several decades of counter-revolution, the revolutionary forces, those of the communist left, although scarce and dispersed, never stopped denouncing the war and intervening within their class to affirm, in an extremely difficult context, that it had to develop its struggle against all the imperialisms. There again, revolutionary organisations did not wait with folded arms until the proletariat mobilised en masse against the war. Rather they tried to act as a determined spearhead in the defence of internationalism, putting forward the necessity to overthrow the capitalist system, even though, in the context of the Second World War, the proletariat was absolutely unable to carry out this titanic task.

Following in the footsteps of our predecessors, several revolutionary organisations, including the ICC, distributed a “Joint Statement” in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, beginning with the words “The workers have no country! Down with all the imperialist powers! In place of capitalist barbarism: socialism!”

Those who see no further than the end of their noses will not fail (and have not failed) to pour derision on this appeal by a handful of small, inaudible organisations unknown in the working class. We have no illusions about this; we know perfectly well that only a tiny part of the class has had access to this statement, that its influence in the proletariat is restricted to a very small minority.

But we also know where we come from, we remember the lessons of Zimmerwald, of Kienthal, and of the combat of the communist left during the Second World War: the “handfuls of small, inaudible and unknown” organisations were able to take up their responsibilities, conscious of the need to regroup revolutionary forces on the basis of serious political clarification, in order to carry out a determined intervention in the proletariat on the clearest possible basis. As the “Joint Statement puts it: “Today, in the face of the acceleration of imperialist conflict in Europe, the political organisations based on the heritage of the Communist Left continue to hold up the banner of consistent proletarian internationalism, and provide a reference point for those defending working class principles.

That’s why organisations and groups of the Communist Left today, small in number and not well known, have decided to issue this common statement, and broadcast as widely as possible the internationalist principles that were forged against the barbarism of two world wars”.[1]

This is the task that consistent revolutionary organisations must take on today! It’s not a question of looking at past history from a balcony and commenting sagely on the state of the world: revolutionaries are fighters not academics! Neither is it a question of rushing into an artificial political agitation, of inventing an influence in the working class and sweeping away its immense difficulties with the power of our words and the correctness of our positions. Such an immediatist approach can only lead to demoralisation or, even worse, to the most shameful opportunism, making concessions on our principles in order to gain an influence which we don’t have and can’t have in the present situation.

But, right now, even if it is not yet in a position where it can fight directly against imperialist war, the proletariat has shown its ability to raise its head in response to the consequences of the war and the economic crisis. For several months now, the proletariat in the United Kingdom has been in struggle. Of course, the bourgeoisie, its left parties and its trade unions, are doing all they can to channel the workers’ anger and lead it into the dead-ends of sectionalism or electoralism, identity-based protests or inter-classist movements. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workers have come out onto the streets to express their anger, to discuss, and refuse to keep their heads down. And this in a country which has not seen significant struggles for 40 years! In many other countries, anger is growing, there are more and more struggles against inflation, lay-offs and the “reforms” of the bourgeoisie. These struggles are a ferment for the development of class consciousness. It is thus up to revolutionaries not only to defend the autonomy of the class struggle against the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, but also to show the link between the attacks hitting the proletariat in all countries and the historic crisis of capitalism, of which war is a caricatural expression as well as a powerful accelerator[2]. The more revolutionaries are armed politically to defend this orientation, the more their influence will be really decisive, in the first instance among workers searching for class positions.

Because the other lesson from the experience of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences is the necessity to construct the revolutionary organisation. Without the world party of the proletariat, without this most conscious and determined part of the working class, there can’t be a victorious revolutionary struggle against the crisis and the wars of capitalism. At Zimmerwald and Kienthal, as within the communist left, revolutionaries, despite their difficulties, their confusions, sometimes their errors, have always tried to confront their points of view, to defend the necessity to debate the divergencies within the proletarian camp.  At the conferences of 1915 and 1916, in spite of profound disagreements, they did not hesitate to come together and publish a Manifesto to put forward what they had in common: proletarian internationalism!

The war in Ukraine is not a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. Its devastation comes at the same time as a number of other catastrophic phenomena: climate change, environmental degradation, an accelerating economic crisis, political convulsions that are afflicting even the oldest country in capitalism (the United Kingdom), the return of terrible large-scale famines with mass migrations of populations fleeing war zones, slaughter, persecution, destitution... This combination of phenomena, and their interdependence and interaction, has led the International Communist Current to adopt and publish the document which appears below, which aims to integrate these aspects into a broader historical framework and which also takes account of the very important situation of the large-scale strike movement that has shaken the United Kingdom, an expression of deep discontent branded by the media "the summer of discontent".

 

1. The 20s of the 21st century are shaping up to be one of the most turbulent periods in history, and indescribable disasters and suffering are already mounting up. It began with the Covid-19 pandemic (which is still out there) and a war in the heart of Europe which has lasted for more than nine months and whose outcome no one can foresee. Capitalism has entered into a phase of serious difficulties on all fronts. Behind this accumulation and entanglement of convulsions lies the threat of the destruction of humanity. And, as we already pointed out in our "Theses on Decomposition [3]"[1], capitalism "is the first [society] to threaten the very survival of humanity, the first that can destroy the human species" (Thesis 1).

 

2. The decadence of capitalism is not a homogeneous and uniform process: on the contrary, it has a history which is expressed in several phases. The phase of decomposition has been identified in our Theses as "a specific phase, the ultimate phase of its history, the one in which decomposition becomes a factor, if not the decisive factor, of the evolution of society" (Thesis 2). It is clear that if the proletariat is not able to overthrow capitalism, there will be an agonising descent into barbarism, leading to the destruction of humanity.

 

3. Following the sudden outbreak of the Covid pandemic, we identified four characteristics of the phase of decomposition:

- The increased severity of its effects. The pandemic caused between 15 and 20 million deaths, the general paralysis of the economy for more than a year, the collapse of national health systems, the inability of states to coordinate internationally to combat the virus and produce vaccines, each state sinking instead into a policy of every man for himself. Such a situation not only indicates the impossibility of the system to escape its laws dictated by competition, but also that with the exacerbation of these rivalries comes the negligence, aberration and chaos of bourgeois management and this at the heart of the most powerful and developed countries of the planet.

- the irruption of the effects of decomposition at the economic level. This tendency, already noted at the 23rd Congress of the ICC, has been fully confirmed and is quite "novel" because since the 1980s the bourgeoisie of the central countries had managed to protect the economy from the main effects of decomposition. [2]

- The growing interaction of its effects, which aggravates the contradictions of capitalism to a level never reached before. Indeed, in the previous thirty years, the bourgeoisie had more or less succeeded (especially in the central countries) in isolating or limiting the effects of decomposition, generally preventing them from interacting. What has become clear over the last two years is the interaction and interweaving of a warlike barbarism, a phenomenal ecological crisis, the chaos in the political apparatus of a good number of important bourgeoisies, the continuing pandemic and the growing risk of new health crises, famines, the gigantic exodus of millions of people, the spread of the most retrograde and irrational ideologies, etc. All this develops in the midst of a virulent worsening of the economic crisis which further threatens entire sections of the population, in particular those proletarians exposed to growing impoverishment and an accelerated deterioration of their living conditions (unemployment, precariousness, difficulty finding food and housing...)

- The growing presence of its effects in the central countries. If, for the last thirty years, the central countries were relatively protected from the effects of decomposition, today they are being hit hard and, worse still, they tend to become its greatest propagators, as in the United States, where in early 2021 we witnessed the attempted storming of the Capitol by the supporters of the populist Trump as if it were a regular banana republic.

 

4. 2022 provided a striking illustration of these four characteristics, with:

- The outbreak of war in Ukraine.

- The appearance of unprecedented waves of refugees.

- The continuation of the pandemic with health systems on the verge of collapse.[3]

- A growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie over its political apparatus; the crisis in the UK was a spectacular manifestation of this.

- An agricultural crisis with a shortage of many food products in a context of widespread overproduction, which is a relatively new phenomenon in more than a century of decadence: "In the short term, climate change is attacking the foundations of food security. Rising temperatures and extreme climate variations threaten to jeopardise the harvests; in fact, in 2020, crop growing times have been shortened by 9.3 days for maize, 1.7 days for rice and 6 days for wheat in winter and spring, compared to the period between 1981 and 2004”.[4]

- The terrifying famines that are affecting more and more countries.[5]

The aggregation and interaction of these destructive phenomena produces a 'vortex effect' that concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of its partial effects, causing even more destructive devastation. Some scientists, like Marine Romanello of University College London, have formed a clear view on this: "Our report for this year reveals that we are at a critical juncture. We see how climate change is severely affecting health worldwide, while the continued global dependence on fossil fuels is exacerbating this health damage amidst a multiplicity of global crises”. This "vortex effect" expresses a qualitative change, the consequences of which will become increasingly evident in the coming period.

In this context, it is important to stress the driving force of war, as an action deliberately pursued and planned for by capitalist states, having become the most powerful and aggravating factor of chaos and destruction. In fact, the war in Ukraine has had a multiplier effect on the escalation of barbarism and destruction, involving the following elements:

- The risk of bombing nuclear power plants is always present, as can be seen particularly around the Zaporizhzhia site.

- The threat from the use of chemical and nuclear weapons.

- The violent ramping up of militarism with its consequences for the environment and the climate.

- The direct impact of the war on the energy crisis and the food crisis.

In this context, we can see the calamity of the growing environmental crisis, which is reaching levels never seen before:

- A summer heat wave, the worst since 1961, with the prospect of such heatwaves becoming a permanent feature.

- A drought unlike any before, the worst in 500 years according to experts, even affecting rivers such as the Thames, the Rhine and the Po, which are usually fast flowing.

- Devastating fires, that were also the worst in decades.

- Uncontrollable floods like those in Pakistan, which affected a third of the country's land area (and large-scale flooding in Thailand).

- A risk of collapse of the ice caps after the melting of glaciers comparable in size to the surface of the United Kingdom, with catastrophic consequences.

Other data linked to the environmental crisis, which at the same time aggravates it, relates to the dilapidated state of nuclear power plants[6] in the context of the energy crisis (resulting from the economic crisis) but also as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. There is clearly a risk of unprecedented disasters in addition to the risk of Ukrainian nuclear power plants being hit by bombs.

The seriousness of the situation is becoming even more clear. One person who can in no way be suspected of being an enemy of capitalism has declared that "the climate crisis is killing us. It would not only end any question about the health of our planet, but also that of its entire population through the contamination in the atmosphere." (says Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General in a message to his General Assembly in September 2022).

 

5. Underlying this catastrophic development is the dramatically worsening economic crisis that has been developing since 2019 and has been exacerbated first by the pandemic and then by the war. This crisis is shaping up to be a longer and deeper crisis than that of 1929. This is because the irruption of the effects of decomposition on the economy tends to cause havoc with the functioning of production, creating constant bottlenecks and blockages in a situation of growing unemployment - combined, paradoxically, with labour shortages in some areas. Above all, it is expressed in the outbreak of inflation, following various successive rescue plans hastily deployed by states in the face of the pandemic and the war, and thus caused and fuelled by a headlong rush into debt. The increase in interest rates by central banks in an attempt to curb inflation risks precipitating a very violent recession by shackling both states and companies. The proletariat in the central countries now faces a tsunami of misery and brutal impoverishment.

 

6. Some important countries are now in an increasingly dangerous situation, which may have serious repercussions for the world as a whole:

- Russia will not be able to avoid a massive upheaval. It is unlikely that a simple removal of Putin from office would be without bloody clashes between rival factions. The possible fragmentation of parts of Russia, the world's largest and most heavily armed state, would have unforeseeable consequences for the whole world.

- China is still suffering from repeated blows of the pandemic (with more likely to come), the weakening of the economy, repeated environmental disasters and the enormous imperialist pressure from the US. The economic and strategic initiative of the "New Silk Roads" can only further worsen the predicament of Chinese capitalism.

- As the Resolution on the International Situation of the 24e ICC Congress points out: "China is a ticking time bomb [...]. The totalitarian control over the whole social body, the repressive hardening of the Stalinist faction of Xi Jinping is not an expression of strength but a manifestation of the weakness of the state, whose cohesion is endangered by the existence of centrifugal forces within society and important struggles of the cliques within the ruling class".

- The US itself is in the grip of the most serious conflict inside the bourgeoisie since World War II, "the extent of the divisions within the US ruling class was laid bare by the contested November 2020 elections, and especially by the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021, driven by Trump and his entourage. The latter event demonstrates that the internal divisions shaking the United States run through society as a whole. Although Trump has been ousted from office, Trumpism remains a powerful, heavily armed force, expressed both on the streets and at the ballot box."[7] This was just confirmed recently with the Biden mid-term elections, where the divisions between the rival parties (Democrats and Republicans) have never been so deep and exacerbated, as have the rifts within each of the two camps. The weight of populism and of the most retrograde ideologies, marked by the rejection of rational, coherent thought, far from being curbed by attempts to block a new Trump candidacy, has only become more and more deeply and durably entrenched in American society, as in the rest of the world. This is an indication of how rotten the social relations are.

 

7. The degeneration of the world situation to an unprecedented level is further aggravated by two very important factors linked to the inadequate control of the social relations as a whole by the capitalist states, especially the most powerful ones:

- As we noticed with the Covid-19 crisis and even before (at our 23rd congress), the capacity for the big states to cooperate to delay and lessen the impact of the economic crisis and to limit or postpone the effects of decomposition on the weaker countries, has considerably weakened and the tendency is not for a "return" of "international cooperation", but rather the opposite. Such problems can only aggravate the global chaos.

- On the other hand, within the world's major bourgeoisies, one cannot reasonably detect an emergence of policies that could stem, even partially or temporarily, such a destructive and rapid erosion. Without underestimating the capacity of the bourgeoisie to respond, it is difficult to see, at least for the time being, the implementation of policies similar to those of the 1980s and 1990s that mitigated and delayed the worst effects of the crisis and decomposition.

 

8. This development, although it may have surprised us by its speed and scale, was largely foreseen in the update of our analysis on decomposition made by the 22nd congress (Report on Decomposition Today)[8]. On the one hand, the report clearly recognised the rise of populism in the central countries as an important manifestation of the bourgeoisie's loss of control over its political apparatus. Likewise, we identified the irruption of waves of refugees and the exodus of people to the centres of capitalism as another manifestation and placed particular emphasis on the environmental disaster and its scale.

At the same time, the report had identified problems that do not feature prominently in the media currently but which have continued to worsen: terrorism, the housing problem in the central countries, famine and in particular, “the destruction of human relationships, family ties, and human empathy has only worsened as evidenced by the use of anti-depressants, the explosion of psychological pressure and stress at work and the appearance of new occupations intended to "support" such people. There are also expressions of real carnage like that of summer 2003 in France where 15,000 elderly people died during the heat wave”. It is clear that the pandemic has had a considerable influence on the situation, pushing things to the limits, and that suicides and mental health problems during this period have been called "a second pandemic".

 

9. This current perspective follows coherently from the analytical framework developed by the "Theses on Decomposition" thirty years ago:

- “In this situation, where society’s two decisive - and antagonistic - classes confront each other without either being able to impose its own definitive response, history nonetheless does not just come to a stop. Still less for capitalism than for preceding social forms, is a ‘freeze’ or a ‘stagnation’ of social life possible." (Thesis 4). For thirty years, the decay has only deepened and is now leading to a qualitative worsening, showing its destructive consequences in a way never seen before.

- "No mode of production can live, develop, maintain itself on a viable basis and ensure social cohesion, if it is unable to present a perspective for the whole of the society which it dominates. And this is especially true of capitalism, which is the most dynamic mode of production in history." (Thesis 5). The current situation is the continuation of more than fifty years of unabated aggravation of the capitalist crisis without the bourgeoisie having been able to offer a perspective, while the proletariat has not yet been able to advance its own: the communist revolution. It is dragging the world into a spiral of barbarism and destruction in which the central countries, having played a role as a relative brake on decomposition for a whole period, are now becoming an aggravating factor.

Decomposition "does not lead back to a previous form of capitalism’s life. [...] Human civilisation today is losing some of its gains [...] The course of history cannot be turned back: as its name suggests, decomposition leads to social dislocation and putrefaction, to the void." (Thesis 11).

 

10. Faced with this situation, the "Theses on Decomposition", while warning that, "unlike the situation in the 1970s, time is no longer on the side of the working class" (thesis 16) and that there is the danger of a slow but ultimately irreversible erosion of the very foundations of communism, nevertheless make it clear that "the historical perspective remains completely open" (thesis 17).

Indeed, "Despite the blow that the Eastern bloc’s collapse has dealt to proletarian consciousness, the class has not suffered any major defeats on the terrain of its struggle. In this sense, its combativity remains virtually intact. Moreover, and this is the element which in the final analysis will determine the outcome of the world situation, the inexorable aggravation of the capitalist crisis constitutes the essential stimulant for the class’s struggle and development of consciousness, the precondition for its ability to resist the poison distilled by the social rot. […] Its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis constitutes the basis for the development of its class strength and unity." (Thesis 17).

"The economic crisis directly attacks the foundations on which this superstructure rests; in this sense, it lays bare all the barbarity that is battening on society, thus allowing the proletariat to become aware of the need for a radical change to the system, rather than trying to improve certain aspects of it." (Thesis 17).

This perspective is in fact beginning to emerge: "In the face of the bourgeoisie's attacks [...] the working class in Britain is showing that it is once again prepared to fight for its dignity, to reject the sacrifices that are constantly demanded by capital. It is indicative of an international dynamic: last winter, strikes started to appear in Spain and the US; this summer, Germany and Belgium also experienced walkouts; and now, commentators are predicting "an explosive social situation" in France and Italy in the coming months. It is not possible to predict where and when the workers' combativity will re-emerge on a massive scale in the near future, but one thing is certain: the scale of the current workers' mobilisation in Britain is a significant historical event. The days of passivity and submission are past. The new generations of workers are raising their heads".[9]

We have identified the struggles in the UK as a break from the passivity and disorientation that had existed previously. The return of workers' combativity in response to the crisis can become a source of consciousness, as can our intervention, which is an essential factor in this situation. It is clear that each acceleration of decomposition succeeds in bringing a halt to the workers' developing combativity: the movement in France 2019 came to a halt when the pandemic broke out. This shows an additional and not insignificant difficulty in the face of the development of struggles and the recovery of the proletariat's confidence in itself and in its own forces. However, there is no other way than the struggle. The resumption of the struggle is in itself a first victory. The world proletariat in very turbulent conditions, with many bitter defeats, can finally recover its identity as a class and eventually launch an international offensive against this moribund system.

 

11. Hence, in this context, the 20s of the 21st century will have a considerable impact on historical development. They will show with even greater clarity than in the past that the perspective of the destruction of humanity is an integral part of capitalist decomposition. At the other pole, the proletariat will begin to take its first steps, like those expressed in the combativity of the struggles in the UK, to defend its living conditions in the face of the multiplication of the attacks of the different bourgeoisies and the blows of the world economic crisis with all its consequences. These first steps will often be hesitant and full of weaknesses, but they are essential if the working class is to be able to reaffirm its historical capacity to impose its communist perspective. Thus, the two alternative poles of the perspective will confront each other globally: the destruction of humanity or the communist revolution, even if this latter alternative is still very far off and faces enormous obstacles. To deepen the understanding of the historical framework is an immense but absolutely necessary and vital task for the revolutionary organisations of the proletariat, which need to be the best defenders and propagators of a general perspective. It is also a crucial test of their ability to analyse and provide answers to the challenges posed by the different aspects of the current situation: war, crisis, class struggle, environmental crisis, political crisis, etc.

 

ICC, 28 October 2022

Some events have a significance that is not limited to the local or immediate level, but is international in scope. Because of the number of sectors affected, the combativity of the workers involved in the struggle and the widespread support for action among the working population, the wave of strikes which has spread throughout Britain this summer is an event of undeniable importance on the domestic level. But we also need to understand that the historical significance of these struggles goes far beyond their local dimension or even their one-off occurrence.

For decades, the working class in the European states has been under the suffocating pressure of capitalism’s decomposition. More concretely, since 2020, it has suffered a number of waves of Covid and then the horror of barbaric war in Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although these events affected workers' combativity, they did not make it disappear, as struggles in the United States, Spain, Italy, France, Korea and Iran at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 still underlined.

However, the wave of strikes in Britain in response to the attacks on their living standards caused by the deepening economic crisis, accentuated by the consequences of the health crisis and, above all, by the war in Ukraine, is on a different scale. In difficult circumstances, the British workers are sending a clear signal to workers all over the world: we must fight, even if we have suffered attacks and accepted sacrifices without being able to react; but today "enough is enough": we are no longer accepting this, we must fight. This is the message sent to workers in other countries.

In this context, the entry into struggle of the British proletariat constitutes an event of historical significance on a number of levels

 1. The proletariat in Britain regains its combativity

This wave of struggle is led by a fraction of the European proletariat which has suffered more than most from the general retreat of the class struggle since 1990. Indeed, if in the 1970s, although with a certain delay compared to other countries like France, Italy or Poland, British workers developed very important struggles, culminating in the wave of strikes of 1979 ("the Winter of Discontent"), the UK was the European country where the decline of combativity has been the most marked over the last 40 years.

During the 1980s, the British working class suffered an effective counter-offensive from the bourgeoisie which culminated in the defeat of the 1985 miners' strike by Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of the British bourgeoisie. Moreover, Britain has been particularly affected by de-industrialisation and the transfer of industries to China, India or Eastern Europe. So when the working class suffered a generalised worldwide decline in 1989, it was particularly marked in Great Britain.

In addition, in recent years, British workers have suffered the onslaught of populist movements and above all the deafening Brexit campaign, stimulating the division in their midst between "remainers" and "leavers", and then the Covid crisis which has weighed heavily on the working class, especially in Britain. Finally, and most recently, it has been confronted with intense pro-Ukrainian democratic hype and particularly abject war-mongering around the war in Ukraine.

The "Thatcher generation" suffered a major defeat, but today, a new generation of proletarians is appearing on the social scene, which is no longer affected as much as their elders by the weight of these defeats and are raising their heads, showing that the working class is capable of responding through struggle to these major attacks. While keeping a sense of proportion, we are witnessing a phenomenon quite comparable (but not identical) to the one that saw the French working class emerge in 1968: the arrival of a young generation less affected than their elders by the weight of the counter-revolution.

2. The international importance of the British working class

The "summer of anger" can only be an encouragement for all the workers of the planet and this for several reasons: it is the working class of the fifth world economic power, and an English-speaking proletariat, whose struggles can have an important impact in countries like the United States, Canada or in other regions of the world, like India or South Africa. English being the language of world communication, the influence of these movements necessarily surpasses that of struggles in France or Germany for example. In this sense, the English proletariat shows the way not only to the European workers, who will have to be in the vanguard of the rise of the class struggle, but also to the world proletariat, and in particular to the American proletariat. In the perspective of future struggles, the British working class can thus serve as a link between the proletariat of Western Europe and the American proletariat.

This importance can also be measured by the concerned reaction of the bourgeoisie, especially in Western Europe, to the danger of the extension of the "deterioration of the social situation". This is particularly the case in France, Belgium or Germany where the bourgeoisie, in contrast to the attitude of the British bourgeoisie, has taken firmer measures to put a ceiling on oil, gas and electricity increases or to compensate for the impact of inflation and price rises by means of subsidies or tax cuts, while loudly proclaiming that it wants to protect the purchasing power of workers. On the other hand, the extensive media coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral ceremonies was intended to counteract the images of class struggle and instead show a picture of a united British population enveloped in a nationalist fervour and respectful of bourgeois constitutional order. Since then, the bourgeois media has applied a wide blackout on the continuation of the strike movements.

The bourgeoisie knows perfectly well that the deepening of the crisis and the consequences of the war will go on and on. However, the fact that a massive movement is already developing in the face of the first attacks, which are similar for all the detachments of the proletariat, not only in England but in Europe and even in the world, attacks which the bourgeoisie is obliged to impose in the present context, can only deeply worry the bourgeoisie.

3. A break in the dynamics of the international class struggle

Even though the West European proletariat has not been defeated during the last forty years, unlike before the two world wars, the decline in its class consciousness after 1989 (underlined by the campaign on the "death of communism") has nevertheless been extremely important. Secondly, the deepening of decomposition from the 1990s onwards had increasingly affected its class identity, and this trend could not be reversed by certain movements of struggle or expressions of reflection among minorities of the class in the first two decades of the 21st century, such as the struggle against the Contrat Premier Emploi (CPE) in France in 2006, the 'Indignados' movement in Spain in 2011, the struggles at SNCF and Air France in 2014 and the movement against pension reform in 2019 in France or the 'Striketober' in the US in 2021.

Moreover, throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, the global working class has been confronted in its struggles with the danger of interclassist movements, as in France with the actions of the "Gilet Jaunes", the weight of populist mobilisations, such as the MAGA ("Make America Great Again") movement in the United States, or bourgeois campaigns such as the "marches for the climate " or the "Black Lives Matter" movement and mobilisations in favour of abortion rights in the US and elsewhere. More recently, in the face of the first consequences of the crisis, numerous popular revolts have erupted in various Latin American countries against the rise in the price of fuel and other basic commodities. All these movements constitute a danger for workers insofar as they drag them onto an interclassist terrain, where they are drowned out by the mass of "citizens" or dragged onto a terrain which is completely bourgeois.

But only the proletariat offers an alternative to the disasters that mark our society. And precisely, unlike these movements which lead the workers onto false grounds, the fundamental contribution of the wave of strikes of the British workers is the affirmation that the struggle against capitalist exploitation must be situated on a clear class ground and put forward clear workers' demands against the attacks on the workers' standard of living: “Moreover, and this is the element which in the final analysis will determine the outcome of the world situation, the inexorable aggravation of the capitalist crisis constitutes the essential stimulant for the class’ struggle and development of consciousness, the precondition for its ability to resist the poison distilled by the social rot. For while there is no basis for the unification of the class in the partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, nonetheless its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis constitutes the basis for the development of its class strength and unity.” (Theses on Decomposition [9], (1991) International Review No.107, 2001). The development of this massive combativity in struggles for the defence of purchasing power is, for the world proletariat, an inescapable condition for overcoming the deep setback it has undergone since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Stalinist regimes and for recovering its class identity and its revolutionary perspective.

In short, both from the historical point of view and from the current context facing the working class, this wave of strikes in Britain therefore constitutes a break in the dynamics of the class struggle, capable of setting in motion a "change in the social atmosphere".

4. Similarities and differences with May 68 in France

This change in the social atmosphere that has taken place with the struggles in Britain has a certain resemblance, keeping a sense of proportion, with the situation initiated by May 68 in France, which was symbolic of a break with a long period of counter-revolution, cutting through the Stalinist prison for containing the proletariat and bringing a new dynamism, an impetuous world wide development of workers’ struggles, opening a period of class confrontations which was confirmed in the next two decades with the “Hot Autumn” in Italy, the struggles in Poland in 1970 and 1976 before reaching their culminating point in August 1980, in Belgium between 1970 and 1972, then in 1983 (public sector) and in 1986, in the USA (General Motors in Lordstown, Ohio) in 1972 then a new wave of strikes in the summer of 1986, in France again with the steelworkers in Longwy and Denain in 1979, the railway workers  (winter 86) and nurses (October 88), in Sweden in 1984, the Rotterdam dockers in the Netherlands in 1984, in Germany, Greece, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa…

The entry into struggle of the proletarians in Britain has an importance comparable to that of May 68 in France, since it is located at the heart of one of the oldest and most developed capitalisms, in western Europe, among the battalions of the proletariat who are most experienced in the class war. In this sense it is destined to play a key role as a spur to the recovery of struggles on a world level. Also in Britain we see the same fire-brakes lit by the bourgeoisie as in May 68, which the working class will encounter in the shape of the same enemies: the unions, the left parties and the leftist organisations whose role is to control and sabotage the struggle, to drag it away from its class terrain.

Similarly, the reawakening of the combativity of the proletariat in Britain in response to the dramatic deterioration of the world crisis of capitalism and to the attacks of the bourgeoisie can, again with all proportions kept in mind, evoke May 68 with the important number of workers involved in a struggle which is hitting the main sectors of economic activity in the country. An analysis of the development of proletarian struggles at the heart of Europe must take account of this historical dimension, recognising that the development of the workers’ combativity on its own terrain faced with the crisis and the attacks of the bourgeoisie is being confirmed and expresses a dynamic towards the deepening of the class struggle.

There are however considerable differences between the two situations. The context is not at all the same: the working class today has been considerably weakened. The very strong illusions and confusions which the proletariat carries with it on the road towards revolution was one of the major weaknesses of the struggles of May 68 and the twenty years of workers’ struggles that followed. This left the proletariat disarmed and disoriented when the eastern bloc collapsed in 1989, enabling the bourgeoisie to develop a gigantic, world-wide ideological campaign against marxism and communism, falsely identified with Stalinism, and presenting the collapse of the latter as a victory for democracy against the totalitarian “Communist” regimes. This ideological campaign, aimed at sapping the self-confidence of the working class and provoking a general reflux in the class struggle, deeply affected the capacity of the proletariat to fight on its class terrain, opening up a new phase of decadent capitalist society, the phase of decomposition. This is phase, characterised by the tendency for society to rot on its feet, is the product of a blockage between the classes in which nether the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie has been able to impose its “way out” of capitalism in crisis: world revolution or world war.

One of the consequences of this difference in context is the following: in the period of developing struggles between 1968 and 1989, the proletariat was able to play a fully active role as a barrier to war in the confrontation between the two blocs: its mobilisation on a class terrain prevented it from being enrolled by the bourgeoisie for war. This was a decisive obstacle to the outbreak of a third world war. But this is no longer the case today, when the working class is not in a position to prevent the descent into military barbarism, as we can see with the war in Ukraine.

This situation demonstrates the accumulation and inter-action of the mortal dangers contained in the final phase of capitalist decadence, which can lead to planet-wide destruction even without the outbreak of world war.

On the other hand, the struggles in Britain show that the proletariat has not suffered a decisive defeat, that it is not already beaten, that it can still raise its head, in spite of all the difficulties and the new challenges that will inevitably rise up before it, making it clearer than ever that the alternative for the future is communism or barbarism.

Today, if a good number of the illusions and weaknesses which marked the struggles between 1968 and 1989 have fallen away, other major difficulties have arrived on the scene of the class struggle. It has become evident that the road towards the communist revolution is still a long one, littered with increasingly dangerous traps and obstacles. To progress along this road is a huge challenge, but the proletariat has no choice but to engage resolutely in this struggle, which still has the perspective of the class regaining confidence in itself, of developing its struggles to the point where it can affirm itself as the only social force capable of overthrowing and destroying capitalism before it destroys humanity.

5. A struggle against economic attacks worsened by imperialist war

The importance of this movement is not limited to the fact that it puts an end to a long period of relative passivity. These struggles are developing at a time when the world is confronted with a large-scale imperialist war, a war which opposes Russia and Ukraine on European soil but which has a global scope with, in particular, a mobilisation of NATO member countries which is a mobilisation not only in arms but also on the economic, diplomatic and ideological levels: in Western countries, governments are calling for sacrifices to "defend freedom and democracy". In concrete terms, this means that the proletarians of these countries must tighten their belts even more to "show their solidarity with Ukraine", in fact with the Ukrainian ruling class and the rulers of the Western countries.

Faced with the conflict in Ukraine, calling for a direct mobilisation of workers against the war is illusory in Western Europe or in the United States; however, since February 2022, the ICC has highlighted that the workers' reaction will appear on the basis of the attack on their wages, products of the accumulation and interconnection of the crises and disasters of the past period, and against the campaign calling for the acceptance of sacrifices in support of the "heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people".

Further, the mobilisation against capitalist austerity also ultimately contains an opposition against war. This is also what the strikes of the working class in the UK bear in embryo, even if the workers are not always fully conscious of it: the refusal to make more and more sacrifices for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal of sacrifices for the national economy and for the war effort, and the refusal to accept the logic of this system which leads humanity towards catastrophe and, finally, to its destruction.

In short, even if the struggles are limited to one country at the moment, even if they run out of steam, and even if we should probably not expect a series of similar major developments in different countries in the near future, a milestone has been reached. The essential achievement of the struggle of the workers in Britain is to stand up and fight because the worst defeat is to suffer impoverishment without a fight. It is on this basis that lessons can be learned and the struggle can move forward. In this perspective, the strikes represent a qualitative change and herald a change in the situation of the working class vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie: they mark a development of combativity on a class terrain which can be the beginning of a new episode of the struggle, because it is through its massive economic struggles that the working class will be able to progressively recover its class identity, eroded by the pressure of 40 years of decomposition, by the ebb of struggles and consciousness, by the sirens of interclassist movements, populism and environmental campaigns. It is on this basis that the working class will be able to open up a perspective for the whole of society. From this point of view, there is a "before" and an "after" to the summer of 2022.

 

R. Havanais / 22.09.2022

130 years ago, when tensions between capitalist powers were growing in Europe, Frederick Engels posed the dilemma for humanity: Communism or Barbarism.

This alternative was concretised in the First World War which broke out in 1914 and caused 20 million deaths, another 20 million invalids, and in the chaos of war there was the Spanish flu pandemic with more than 50 million deaths.

The revolution in Russia in 1917 and the revolutionary attempts in other countries put an end to the carnage and showed the other side of the historical dilemma posed by Engels: the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale by the revolutionary class, the proletariat, opening up the possibility of a communist society.

However, there followed:

- the crushing of this world revolutionary attempt, the brutal counter-revolution in Russia perpetrated by Stalinism under the banner of "communism",

- the massacre of the proletariat in Germany, initiated by Social Democracy[1] and completed by Nazism,

- the enlistment of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, the massacre of the proletariat in that country, and

- the enlistment of the proletariat behind the flags of anti-fascism and the defence of the "socialist" fatherland which led in 1939-45 to another new milestone of barbarism, the Second World War, with 60 million dead and an infinite sequel of suffering: the Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps; the Allied bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo (January 1945); the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the USA.

Since then, war has not stopped claiming lives on every continent.

First came the confrontation between the US and Russian blocs, the so-called Cold War (1945-89), with an endless chain of localised wars and the threat of a deluge of nuclear bombs hanging over the entire planet.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1989-91, chaotic wars have bloodied the planet: Iraq, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan... The war in Ukraine is the most serious war crisis since 1945.

The barbarity of war is accompanied by a proliferation of mutually reinforcing destructive forces: the COVID pandemic which is still far from being overcome and which heralds new pandemics; the ecological and environmental disaster that is accelerating and amplifying, combined with climate change, causing increasingly uncontrollable and deadly disasters: drought, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc., and an unprecedented degree of pollution of land, water, air and space; the severe food crisis bringing famines of biblical proportions. Forty years ago, humanity was in danger of perishing in a Third World War, today it can be annihilated by the simple aggregation and lethal combination of the forces of destruction currently at work: "In the end, it is all the same whether we are wiped out in a rain of thermonuclear bombs, or by pollution, radio-activity from nuclear power stations, famine, epidemics, and the massacres of innumerable small wars (where nuclear weapons might also be used). The only difference between these two forms of annihilation lies in that one is quick, while the other would be slower, and would consequently cause still more suffering"[2] (Theses on Decomposition).

The dilemma posed by Engels takes a much more pressing form: COMMUNISM or THE DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY. The historical moment is serious, and internationalist revolutionaries need to affirm it unequivocally to our class, because only our class can open up the communist perspective through a permanent and relentless struggle.

Imperialist war is capitalism’s way of life

The mass media falsify and underplay the reality of the war. In the early stages the media was devoted to the war in Ukraine 24 hours a day. But as time has gone by, the war has been trivialised, not even producing headlines, its echoes not going beyond threatening statements, calls for sacrifices to "send weapons to Ukraine", hammering out propaganda campaigns against the enemy, fake news, all served with vain hopes of "negotiations" ...

To trivialise war, to become accustomed to the repellent smell of corpses and smoking ruins, is the worst of treachery, it is concealing the serious dangers that menace humanity, it is to be blind to all the threats that are permanently hanging over our heads.

Millions of people, in Africa, Asia or Central America, know no other reality than WAR; from cradle to grave they live in an ocean of barbarism where atrocities of all kinds proliferate: child soldiers, punitive military operations, hostage-taking, terrorist attacks, mass displacement of entire populations, indiscriminate bombings.

While the wars of the past were limited to the front lines and the combatants, the wars of the 20th and 21st century are TOTAL WARS that encompass all spheres of social life and their effects spread throughout the world, dragging down all countries, including those that are not direct belligerents. In the wars of the 20th and 21st century, no inhabitant or place on the planet can escape their lethal effects.

On the front line, which can span thousands of kilometres and extend over land, sea and air... and through space! ... Life is cut short by bombs, shooting, mines, and even, in many cases, by "friendly fire" ... Seized by a murderous insanity, forced through the terror imposed by higher ranks, or trapped in extreme situations, all the participants are forced to carry out the most suicidal, criminal and destructive actions.

On one part of the military front there is "remote warfare" with the relentless deployment of ultra-modern machines of destruction: planes dropping thousands of bombs without pause; drones remotely controlled to attack enemy targets; mobile or fixed artillery relentlessly pounding the enemy; missiles covering hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

The so-called home front becomes itself a permanent theatre of war in which the population is taken hostage. Anyone can die in the periodic bombardment of entire cities... In the centres of production, people work at gunpoint, under the control of the police, parties, trade unions and all the other institutions in the service of the "defence of the homeland", while at the same time they run the risk of being ripped apart by enemy bombs. Work becomes an even greater hell than the daily hell of capitalist exploitation.

The dramatically rationed food is a filthy, stinking soup... There is no water, no electricity, no heating... Millions of human beings see their existence reduced to surviving like animals. Shells fall from the sky, killing thousands of people or causing terrible suffering, on the ground, endless police or military checkpoints, the danger of being arrested by armed thugs, state mercenaries referred to as "defenders of the homeland" ... You have to run to take refuge in filthy, rat-infested cellars ... Respect, the most elementary solidarity, trust, rational thought ... are swept away by the atmosphere of terror imposed not only by the government, but also by the National Union in which parties and trade unions participate with merciless zeal. The most absurd rumours, the most implausible news circulate incessantly, causing an hysterical atmosphere of denunciation, indiscriminate suspicion, massive stress and pogrom.

War is a barbarism willed and planned by governments that aggravate it by consciously propagating hatred, fear of the “other”, rifts and divisions between human beings, death for death's sake, the institutionalisation of torture, submission, power relations, as the only logic of social evolution. The violent fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine shows how the two sides have no scruples about the risk of provoking a radioactive catastrophe a lot worse than Chernobyl and with tremendous consequences for the population of Europe. The threat of the use of nuclear weapons looms ominously.

The ideology of war

Capitalism is the most hypocritical and cynical system in history. Its whole ideological art consists in passing off its interests as the "interest of the people" adorned with the loftiest ideals: justice, peace, progress, human rights...!

All states fabricate an IDEOLOGY OF WAR designed to justify it and to turn their "citizens" into hyenas ready to kill. “War is methodical, organised, gigantic murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is possible only when a state of intoxication has been previously created. This has always been the tried and proven method of those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a commensurate bestiality of thought and senses; the latter must prepare and accompany the former” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet).

The great democracies have PEACE as a cornerstone of their war ideology. Demonstrations "for peace" have always prepared imperialist wars. In the summer of 1914 and in 1938-39 millions of people demonstrated "for peace" in an impotent cry of "people of goodwill", exploiters and exploited holding hands, which the "democratic" side never stop using to justify the acceleration of war preparations.

In the First World War, Germany had mobilised its troops in "defence of peace", "shattered by the Sarajevo attack on its Austrian ally". But on the opposing side, France and Britain went to the slaughter in the name of peace "shattered by Germany". In World War II, France and Britain feigned a "peace" effort at Munich in the face of Hitler's ambitions, while frenetically preparing for war, and the invasion of Poland by the combined action of Hitler and Stalin gave them the perfect excuse to go to war... In Ukraine, Putin said until hours before the invasion on 24 February that he wanted "peace", while the United States relentlessly denounced Putin's warmongering ...

The nation, national defence and all the ideological weapons that gyrate around it (racism, religion etc.) is the hook to mobilise the proletariat and the whole population in imperialist slaughter. The bourgeoisie proclaims in times of "peace" the "coexistence between peoples", but everything vanishes with imperialist war, then the masks fall off and everyone spreads hatred of the foreigner and the staunch defence of the nation!

They all present their wars as "defensive". A hundred years ago, the ministries in charge of military barbarism were called "ministries of war"; today, with the worst hypocrisy, they are called "ministries of defence". Defence is the fig leaf of warfare. There are no attacked nations and aggressor nations, they are all active participants in the deadly machinery of war. Russia in the current war appears as the "aggressor" as it is the one that has taken the initiative to invade Ukraine, but before that the United States, in a Machiavellian manner, expanded NATO to several countries of the old Warsaw Pact. It is not possible to take each link in isolation, it is necessary to look at the bloody chain of imperialist confrontation that has been gripping the whole of humanity for more than a century.

They always talk of a "clean war", which follows (or should follow) "humanitarian rules" "in accordance with international law". This is a despicable fraud, served with unbridled cynicism and hypocrisy! The wars of decadent capitalism live by no other rule than the absolute destruction of the enemy, and that includes terrorising the subjects of the enemy with merciless bombing ... In war a relationship of force is established where ANYTHING GOES, from the most brutal rape and punishment of the enemy’s population, to the most indiscriminate terror against their own "citizens". Russia's bombing of Ukraine follows in the footsteps of the US bombing of Iraq, the American like the Russian governments in Afghanistan or in Syria and before that of Vietnam; France's bombing of its former colonies, such as Madagascar and Algeria; the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg by the "democratic allies"; and the nuclear barbarity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The wars of the 20th and 21st centuries have been accompanied by methods of mass extermination employed by all sides, although the democratic side usually takes care to subcontract it to shady individuals who get the blame.

They dare to talk of "just wars"!!! The NATO side supporting Ukraine says it is a battle for democracy against despotism and the dictatorial regime of Putin. Putin says he will "denazify" Ukraine. Both are blatant lies. The side of the "democracies" has just as much blood on its hands: blood from the countless wars they have provoked directly (Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan) or indirectly (Libya, Syria, Yemen...); blood from the thousands of migrants killed at sea or at the frontier hotspots of the USA or in Europe... The Ukrainian state uses terror to impose the Ukrainian language and culture; it kills workers for the sole crime of speaking Russian; it forcibly enlists any young person caught in the streets or on the roads; it uses the population, including those in hospitals, as human shields; it deploys neo-fascist gangs to terrorise the population... For his part, Putin, in addition to bombings, rapes and summary executions, displaces thousands of families to concentration camps in remote places; imposes terror in the "liberated" territories and enlists Ukrainians for the army by sending them to the slaughterhouse on the front line.

The real causes of war

Ten thousand years ago one of the means that broke up primitive communism was tribal warfare. Since then, under the aegis of modes of production based on exploitation, war has been one of the worst calamities. But certain wars have been able to play a progressive role in history, for example, in the development of capitalism, forming new nations, extending the world market, stimulating the development of the productive forces.

However, since the First World War, the world has been totally divided up among the capitalist powers, so that the only way out for each national capital is to wrest markets, zones of influence, strategic areas from its rivals. This makes war and all that goes with it (militarism, gigantic accumulation of armaments, diplomatic alliances) the PERMANENT WAY OF LIFE of capitalism. A constant imperialist pressure grips the world and drags down all nations, big or small, whatever their ideological mask and alibi, the orientation of the ruling parties, their racial composition or their cultural and religious heritage. ALL NATIONS ARE IMPERIALIST. The myth of "peaceful and neutral" nations is a pure fraud. If certain nations adopt a "neutral" policy, it is to try to take advantage of the conflict between the most resolutely opposing camps, to carve out their own zone of imperialist influence. In June 2022, Sweden, a country that has been officially neutral for more than 70 years, has joined NATO but it has not "betrayed any ideals", it has continued its own imperialist policy "by other means".

War is certainly good business for corporations engaged in arms manufacture, and it may even temporarily benefit particular countries but, for capitalism as a whole, it is an economic catastrophe, an irrational waste, a MINUS that weighs on world production that inevitably and negatively causes indebtedness, inflation and ecological destruction, never a PLUS that could increase capitalist accumulation.

An unavoidable necessity for the survival of every nation, war is a deadly economic weight. The USSR collapsed because it could not withstand the crazy arms race that the confrontation with the USA entailed and which the latter took to the ultimate with the deployment of the Star Wars program in the 1980s. The United States, which was the great victor of World War II and enjoyed a spectacular economic boom until the late 1960s, has encountered many obstacles to preserving its imperialist hegemony, of course since the dissolution of the blocs, which has favoured the emergence of a dynamic of reawakened new imperialist appetites - especially among its former 'allies' - of contestation and every one for themselves, but also because of the gigantic military effort that American forces have had to make for more than 80 years and the costly military operations it has had to undertake to maintain its status as the world’s leading power.

Capitalism carries in its genes, in its DNA, the most exacerbated competition, the EACH AGAINST ALL and the EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES, for every capitalist, as well as for every nation. This "organic" tendency of capitalism did not appear clearly in its ascendant period because each national capital still enjoyed sufficient areas for its expansion without the need to enter into conflict with its rivals. Between 1914-89 it was attenuated by the formation of large imperialist blocs. With the brutal end of this brutal discipline, centrifugal tendencies are shaping a world of murderous disorder, where any imperialisms with global ambitions for world domination, as well as imperialisms with regional pretensions, and more local imperialisms are all compelled to follow their expansive appetites and their own interests. In this scenario, the United States tries to prevent anyone from overshadowing it by relentlessly deploying its overwhelming military power, relentlessly building it up, and by launching constant, strongly destabilising military operations. The promise in 1990, after the end of the USSR, of a "New World Order" of peace and prosperity was immediately belied by the Gulf War and then by the wars in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, which fuelled the warlike tendencies in such a way that the "most democratic imperialism in the world", the USA, is now the main agent for spreading warlike chaos and destabilising the world situation.

China has emerged as a contender of the first order to challenge America's leadership. Its army, despite its modernisation, is still a long way from acquiring the strength and experience of its American rival; its war technology, the basis of its armaments and effective military deployments, is still limited and fragile, a far cry from the US; China is surrounded in the Pacific by a chain of hostile powers (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, etc.), which block its imperialist maritime expansion. Faced with this unfavourable situation, it has embarked on a gigantic economic-imperialist enterprise, the Silk Road, which aims to establish a global presence and a land expansion through Central Asia in one of the most unstable areas of the world. This is an effort with a very uncertain outcome that requires a total and immeasurable economic and military investment and political-social mobilisation beyond its means of control, which is essentially based on the political rigidity of its state apparatus, a heavy legacy of Stalinist Maoism: the systematic and brutal use of its repressive forces, coercion and submission to a gigantic, ultra-bureaucratised state apparatus, as was seen in the growing number of protests against the government's "zero Covid" policy. This aberrant orientation and the accumulation of contradictions that deeply undermine its development could eventually undermine the clay-footed colossus that is China. This, and the brutal and threatening response of the US, illustrates the degree of murderous insanity, of blind flight into barbarism and militarism (including the growing militarisation of social life), that capitalism has reached as symptoms of a generalised cancer that is eating away at the world and now directly threatens the future of the earth and the life of humanity.

The whirlwind of destruction that threatens the world

The war in Ukraine is not a storm out of a blue sky; it follows the worst pandemic (so far) of the 21st century, COVID, with more than 15 million dead, and whose ravages continued with draconian lockdowns in China. However, both should be seen in the context of, as well as stimulating, a chain of catastrophes striking humanity: environmental destruction; climate change and its multiple consequences; famine returning with great force to Africa, Asia and Central America; the incredible wave of refugees, which in 2021 reached the unprecedented figure of 100 million people displaced or migrating; the political disorder taking hold of the central countries as we have seen with the governments in Britain or the weight of populism in the United States; the rise of the most obscurantist ideologies...

The pandemic has laid bare the contradictions that undermine capitalism. A social system that boasts impressive scientific advances has no other recourse than the medieval method of quarantine, while its health systems collapse and its economy has been paralysed for almost two years, aggravating a skyrocketing economic crisis. A social order that claims to have progress as its banner produces the most backward and irrational ideologies that have exploded around the pandemic with ridiculous conspiracy theories, many of them from the mouths of "great world leaders".

The pandemic has a direct cause in the worst ecological disaster that has been threatening humanity for years. Driven by profit and not by the satisfaction of human needs, capitalism is a predator of natural resources, as it is of human labour, but, at the same time, it tends to destroy natural balances and processes, modifying them in a chaotic way, like a sorcerer's apprentice, provoking all kinds of catastrophes with increasingly destructive consequences: global warming, triggering droughts, floods, fires, collapse of glaciers and icebergs, massive disappearance of plant and animal species with unforeseeable consequences and heralding the very disappearance of the human species to which capitalism is leading. The ecological disaster is exacerbated by the necessities of war, by war operations themselves (the use of nuclear weapons is an obvious expression) and by the worsening of a world economic crisis that forces every national capital to further devastate numerous areas in a desperate search for raw materials. The summer of 2022 is a glaring illustration of the serious threats facing humanity at the ecological level: rising average and maximum temperatures - the hottest summer since records began internationally - widespread drought affecting rivers such as the Rhine, the Po and the Thames, devastating forest fires, floods such as the one in Pakistan affecting a third of the country's surface area, landslides... and, in the midst of this devastating panorama of disaster, governments withdraw their ridiculous ‘environmental protection’ measures in the name of the war effort!

"The final outcome of the capitalist mode of production is chaos", said the Platform adopted by the first Congress of the Communist International in 1919. It is suicidal and irrational, contrary to all scientific criteria, to think that all these ravages would be no more than a sum of passing phenomena, each resulting from distinct causes. There is a continuity, an accumulation of contradictions, which make a common bloody thread, which binds them together, converging in a lethal whirlwind which threatens humanity:

• We are witnessing an acceleration of all the contradictions of capitalism combining with each other and provoking a multiplying effect on the factors of destruction and chaos;
• The economy is plunged not only into crisis but also into increasing disorder (constant supply bottlenecks, a convergence of situations of overproduction and shortages of goods and labour);

- The most industrialised countries, which are supposed to be oases of prosperity and peace, are being destabilised and are themselves becoming major factors in the dizzying increase in international instability.

As we said in the Manifesto of our 9th Congress (1991): "Never has human society seen slaughter on such a scale as during the last two World Wars. Never has scientific progress been used on such a scale in the service or destruction, death, and human misery. Never has such an accumulation of wealth gone side by side with, indeed created, such famine and suffering as that of the Third World countries during the last decades. But it seems that humanity has not yet plumbed the depths. The decadence of capitalism means the system's death-agony, but this agony itself has a history: today, we have reached its ultimate phase, the phase of general decomposition. Human society is rotting where it stands.".[3]

The response of the proletariat

Of all the classes in society, the most affected and hardest hit by war is the proletariat. “Modern” war is waged by a gigantic industrial machine which demands a great intensification of the exploitation of the proletariat. The proletariat is an international class that HAS NO HOMELAND, but war is the killing of workers for the homeland that exploits and oppresses them. The proletariat is the class of consciousness; war is irrational confrontation, the renunciation of all conscious thought and reflection. The proletariat has an interest in seeking the clearest truth; in wars the first casualty is truth, chained, gagged, suffocated by the lies of imperialist propaganda. The proletariat is the class of unity across barriers of language, religion, race or nationality; the deadly confrontation of war compels the tearing apart, the division, the confrontation between nations and populations. The proletariat is the class of internationalism, of trust and mutual solidarity; war demands suspicion, fear of the "foreigner", the most abhorrent hatred of “the enemy”.

Because war strikes at and mutilates the very core of the proletarian being, generalised war necessitates the prior defeat of the proletariat. The First World War was possible because the then parties of the working class, the socialist parties, together with the trade unions, betrayed our class and joined their bourgeoisies in the framework of NATIONAL UNION against the enemy. But this betrayal was not enough. In 1915, the Left of social democracy grouped together in Zimmerwald and raised the banner of struggle for world revolution. This contributed to the emergence of mass struggles that paved the way for the Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the worldwide wave of proletarian onslaught in 1917-23, not only against the war in defence of the principles of proletarian internationalism, but against capitalism by asserting its capacity as a united class to overthrow a barbaric and inhuman system of exploitation

An indestructible lesson of 1917-18! The First World War was not ended by diplomatic negotiations or by the conquests of this or that imperialism, IT WAS ENDED BY THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY UPRISING OF THE PROLETARIAT. ONLY THE PROLETARIAT CAN PUT AN END TO MILITARY BARBARISM BY TURNING ITS CLASS STRUGGLE TO THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM.

In order to open the way to the Second World War, the bourgeoisie ensured not only the physical but also the ideological defeat of the proletariat. The proletariat was subjected to merciless terror wherever its revolutionary attempts had gone furthest: in Germany under Nazism, in Russia under Stalinism. But, at the same time, it had been recruited ideologically, behind the banners of anti-fascism and the defence of the "Socialist Fatherland", the USSR. “Unable to launch its own offensive the working class was led, bound hand and foot, into the second imperialist war. Unlike World War I, the Second World War did not provide the working class with the means to rise up in a revolutionary way. Instead it was mobilised behind the great 'victories' of the 'Resistance', 'anti-fascism', and colonial and national 'liberation' movement.” (Manifesto of the First International Congress of the ICC, 1975 [11]).

Since the historic resumption of the class struggle in 1968, and throughout the period when the world was divided into two imperialist blocs, the working class in the major countries refused to make the sacrifices demanded by war, let alone go to the front to die for the Fatherland, thus closing the door to a Third World War. This situation has not changed since 1989.

The fight against inflation and the fight against the war

However, the "non-mobilisation" of the proletariat of the central countries for war IS NOT ENOUGH. A second lesson emerges from historical developments since 1989: MERE PASSIVITY TO WAR OPERATIONS, AND SIMPLE RESISTANCE TO CAPITALIST BARBARISM IS NOT ENOUGH. STAYING AT THIS STAGE WILL NOT STOP THE COURSE TOWARDS THE DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY.

The proletariat needs to move to the political terrain of the general international offensive against capitalism. “The working class will only be able to answer capital’s attacks blow for blow, and finally go onto the offensive and overthrow this barbaric system thanks to: (-) an awareness of what is at stake in the present historical situation, and in particular of the mortal danger that social decomposition holds over humanity; (-) its determination to continue, develop and unite its class combat; (-) its ability to spring the many traps that the bourgeoisie, however decomposed itself, will not fail to set in its path.” (Theses on Decomposition, thesis 17 [9]).

The backdrop to the accumulation of destruction, barbarism and catastrophes that we are denouncing is the irreversible economic crisis of capitalism that is at the root of its functioning. From 1967 capitalism entered into an economic crisis from which, fifty years later, it is unable to escape, on the contrary, as shown by the economic upheavals that have been taking place since 2018 and the growing escalation of inflation, it is worsening considerably, with its consequences of poverty, unemployment, insecurity and famine.

The capitalist crisis affects the very foundations of this society. Inflation, insecurity, unemployment, hellish pace and working conditions that destroy workers' health, unaffordable housing… all testify to an unstoppable degradation of working class life and, although the bourgeoisie tries to create all imaginable divisions, granting "more privileged" conditions to certain categories of workers, what we see in its entirety is, on the one hand, what is possibly going to be the WORST CRISIS in the history of capitalism, and, on the other hand, the concrete reality of the ABSOLUTE PAUPERISATION of the working class in the central countries, fully confirming the accuracy of the prediction which Marx made concerning the historical perspective of capitalism and which the economists and other ideologues of the bourgeoisie have so much mocked.

The inexorable worsening of the crisis of capitalism is an essential stimulus for the class struggle and class consciousness. The struggle against the effects of the crisis is the basis for the development of the strength and unity of the working class. The economic crisis directly affects the infrastructure of society; it therefore lays bare the root causes of all the barbarism that hangs over society, enabling the proletariat to become conscious of the need to completely destroy the system and no longer try to improve some aspects of it.

In the struggle against the brutal attacks of capitalism and especially against the inflation that hits workers as a whole in a general and indiscriminate way, workers will develop their combativity, they will be able to begin to recognise themselves as a class with a strength, an autonomy and a historical role to play in society. This political development of the class struggle will give them the capacity to put an end to war by putting an end to capitalism.

This perspective is beginning to emerge: “in the face of the bourgeoisie's attacks, anger has been building up and today, the working class in Britain is showing that it is once again prepared to fight for its dignity, to reject the sacrifices that are constantly demanded by capital. Furthermore, it is indicative of an international dynamic: last winter, strikes started to appear in Spain and the US; this summer, Germany and Belgium also experienced walkouts; and now, commentators are predicting ‘an explosive social situation’ in France and Italy in the coming months. It is not possible to predict where and when the workers' combativity will re-emerge on a massive scale in the near future, but one thing is certain: the scale of the current workers' mobilisation in Britain is a significant historical event. The days of passivity and submission are past. The new generations of workers are raising their heads” (“The ruling class demands further sacrifices, the response of the working class is to fight!” [2] ICC International Leaflet August 2022)

We are seeing a break from years of passivity and disorientation. The return of workers' combativity in response to the crisis can become a focus of consciousness animated by the intervention of communist organisations. It is clear that each manifestation of the breakdown into the decomposition of society manages to slow down workers' combative efforts, or even paralyse them at first: as was the case with the movement in France 2019, which was hit by the outbreak of the pandemic. This means an additional difficulty for the development of struggles. However, there is no other way than struggle, the struggle itself is already the first victory. The world proletariat, even through a process necessarily strewn with pitfalls and traps set by the political and trade union apparatuses of its class enemy, with bitter defeats, keeps intact its capacities to be able to recover its class identity and finally launch an international offensive against this dying system.

The obstacles that the class struggle has to overcome

The twenties of the twenty-first century will therefore be of considerable importance in the historical evolution of the class struggle of the workers movement. They show - as we have already seen since 2020 - more clearly than in the past, the perspective of the destruction of humanity that capitalist decomposition holds. At the opposite pole, the proletariat will begin to take its first steps, often hesitant and full of weaknesses, towards its historical capacity to pose the communist perspective. Both poles of the alternative, Destruction of Humanity or Communist Revolution, will be posed, although the latter is still a long way off and faces enormous obstacles in asserting itself

It would be suicidal for the proletariat to try and conceal or underestimate the gigantic obstacles that come both from the activity of Capital and its states and from the putrefying atmosphere that is contaminating the social environment all over the world:

1: The bourgeoisie has drawn the lessons of the GREAT SHOCK of the initial triumph of the Revolution in Russia and the world revolutionary wave of 1917-23 which showed "in practice" what the Communist Manifesto declared in 1848: " A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism... The bourgeoisie produces… its own grave-diggers …  the proletariat".

1. It COLLABORATES INTERNATIONALLY against the proletariat as was seen in the face of the revolution in Russia 1917[4] and Germany in 1918 or against the mass strike in Poland in 1980.
2. It has developed a gigantic apparatus of control, diversion and sabotage of workers' struggles made up of trade unions and parties of all political colours, from the extreme right to the extreme left.
3. It uses and is going to use all the instruments of its state and the mass media to launch constant ideological campaigns and co-ordinate political manoeuvres aimed at counteracting and obstructing the consciousness and struggles of the proletariat.

2: The decomposition of capitalist society exacerbates the lack of confidence in the future. It also undermines the confidence of the proletariat in itself and in its strength as the only class capable of overthrowing capitalism, giving rise to "every man for himself", generalised competition, social fragmentation into opposing categories, corporatism, all are a considerable obstacle to the development of workers' struggles and above all their revolutionary politicisation.

3: In this context, the proletariat is in danger of being dragged into interclassist struggles or piecemeal mobilisations (feminism, anti-racism, climate or environmental questions...), all of which open the door to a diversion of its struggle onto a terrain of confrontation between fractions of the bourgeoisie.

4: “Time is no longer on the side of the working class. As long as society was threatened with destruction by imperialist war alone, the mere fact of the proletarian struggle was sufficient to bar the way to this destruction. But, unlike imperialist war, which depended on the proletariat’s adherence to the bourgeoisie’s “ideals”, social decomposition can destroy humanity without controlling the working class. For while the workers’ struggles can oppose the collapse of the economy, they are powerless, within this system, to hinder decomposition. Thus, while the threat posed by decomposition may seem more far-off than that of world war (were the conditions for it present, which is not the case today), it is by contrast far more insidious.” (Theses on Decomposition, Thesis 16 [9])

This immensity of dangers should not push us into fatalism. The strength of the proletariat is the consciousness of its weaknesses, its difficulties, the obstacles which the enemy or the situation itself raise against its struggle. “Proletarian revolutions … constantly criticise themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with merciless thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more colossal than ever, recoil constantly from the indeterminate immensity of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!" (Marx: “18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”).

The response of the Communist Left

In serious historical situations such as far-reaching wars like the one in Ukraine, the proletariat can see who are its friends and who are its enemies. These enemies are not only the major figures such as Putin, Zelensky or Biden, but also the parties of the extreme right, right, left and extreme left, who, with a wide range of arguments, including pacifism, support and justify the war and the defence of one imperialist camp against another.

For more than a century only the Communist Left has been and is capable of denouncing imperialist war systematically and consistently, defending the alternative of the class struggle of the proletariat, of its orientation towards the destruction of capitalism by the world proletarian revolution.

The struggle of the proletariat is not limited to its defensive struggles or mass strikes. An indispensable, permanent and inseparable component of it is the struggle of its communist organisations and, concretely, for a century now, of the Communist Left. The unity of all groups of the Communist Left is indispensable in the face of the capitalist dynamic of the destruction of humanity. As we already affirmed in the Manifesto from our first congress (1975): “Turning its back on the monolithism of the sects, the International Communist Current calls upon the communists of all countries to be aware of the immense responsibilities which they have, to abandon the false quarrels which separate them, to surmount the deceptive divisions which the old world has imposed on them. The ICC calls on them to join in this effort to constitute (before the class engages in its decisive struggles) the international and unified organisation of its vanguard. The communists as the most conscious fraction of the class, must show it the way by taking as their slogan: ‘Revolutionaries of all countries, unite!’"

ICC (December 2022)

 

The Sars-Cov-2 pandemic has given rise to a great number of works trying to establish the causes of Covid and proposing a number of alternatives. One of them, La Fabrique des pandemies by Marie Monique Robin, has aroused considerable interest. This work is presented under the form of a synthesis of studies made by the author along with around sixty scientists globally: virologists, infectious disease specialists, doctors, epidemiologists, even vets, for whom, the world is currently confronted by “an ‘epidemic of pandemics’ caused by human activity which has precipitated the collapse of biodiversity”.

Presented as “salutary”, this book makes an appeal to analyse the causes of the “new diseases” and to become aware of the necessity for a “profound change in our global economy which is predatory on the planet’s resources and the cause of climatic, ecological, health, economic, energy and financial crises” and conceives itself as “an appeal to set up a social-ecology of health and of the well-being of everybody”[1]. Nothing less!

Capitalism is an impediment to the establishment of truth

Research for scientific truth is a value shared by the proletariat. As a revolutionary class deprived of all material support within capitalist society and possessing only its consciousness and organisation as arms of combat, it is imperative for it to develop a de-mystified vision of reality. It is the condition sine qua non of its political action. For their part, the task of revolutionaries with regard to science, “is to theoretically assimilate its results, while understanding that its practical applications can only really serve human needs in a society evolving towards socialism.

The development of knowledge in the workers' movement thus involves seeing the theoretical development of the sciences as its own acquisition. But it must integrate this development into a more overall understanding which is centered round the practical realisation of the social revolution, the basis for all real progress in society”. [2]

Regarding research into the causes and scientific origins of the pandemic, the least that one can say is that it’s had a hard time making progress. It met a number of obstacles in the toxic atmosphere generated by the decomposition of capitalist society, marked by the development of irrationality and hostility regarding scientific thought, notably in a whole number of conspiracy theories. According to many of these “theories”, often networked by various populists, the pandemic is an artificial creation planned by “elites” in the service of hidden interests in order to maximise the profits of the big pharmaceutical groups or to impose extra controls by the state on individuals’ private lives. Even the supposedly more “responsible” representatives of the system have used the media to disparage the scientific conclusions which underline the role of the destruction of the environment in the emergence of Covid: “To see a link between air pollution, biodiversity and Covid-19 reveals surrealism and not science” declared the ex-Minister of National Education, Luc Ferry, on the pages of L’Express. The search for scientific truth sometimes exposes researchers to reprisals from the authorities, not only in China where this pressure is clearly evident, but also in the democratic states under more subtle forms via financing or their work being put on the shelf.

Even on the terrain of scientific knowledge powerful filters and important ideological limitations exist, acting against the analysis of reality. The “strongly anchored belief within the scientific world, the eco-modernism of man (who) is above all other species populating the Earth and is not part of nature (and who) measures nature by the yardstick of what it provides us with and what it inflicts upon us, good or ill (and which) reduces nature to a service provider for humanity” reflects a completely bourgeois ideological conception of nature which can only prevent an understanding of the significance of the Covid-19 pandemic for humanity.

Added to this is the background of imperialism and increasing war-like tension between China and the United States these last months, who both accuse each other of being at the origins of the pandemic by allowing the virus to escape from a laboratory in Wuhan which was receiving American funding. The brainwashing, disinformation, and lies at the service of one part of the state or the other with the aim of discrediting the adversary can only feed the conspiracy fantasies and bring a supplementary discredit to science.

Manipulation of viruses for bacteriological warfare is part of the modern, barbaric world today and the hypothesis of an escape from a laboratory can’t be a priori excluded.[3]  If such was the case in China or elsewhere, given the dramatic consequences, it would be overwhelming proof of the irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie and a loss of control over its own system! “But even if the virus escaped the lab accidently, does that change anything of our understanding of the emergence of successive zoonotic epidemics these last decades? Assuredly not!”

Decadent capitalism is responsible for the multiplication of pandemics

Since the 1950’s the planet has faced a real “epidemic of epidemics”, ancient as well as new: from around twenty in the 1940’s to more than a hundred in the 1990’s. Since 2000, humanity has confronted a new infectious illness every year (SARS, Ebola, Lassa fever, Covid-19). Seventy per-cent of emerging sicknesses are zoonotic, transferred from animals to humans.

This “epidemic of epidemics” is caused by deforestation, the extension of industrial agriculture, monoculture and industrial animal breeding (as well as an increasingly unbalanced climate) which, by weakening ecosystems and precipitating the collapse of biodiversity, creates and favours conditions for the propagation of new, infectious pathogens. The mechanisms for these emerging and successive problems since the Second World War have been clearly identified and focus around “several factors which contribute to the emergence of new diseases (...): the first, the one through which everything happens, is deforestation for the purposes of monoculture, mineral exploitation, etc. (...); the second, are domestic animals which serve as an epidemiological bridge between fauna and humans, but also amplifies them when they are industrially raised: (...) the third, is a country’s integration into the global market”. Thus, for example, we now know that “the real emergence (of AIDS) is linked to the colonial expansion of the nineteenth century. Demands for ivory, wood, then rubber resulting in massive deforestation along with the local labour force working on plantations and the construction of railways transformed both ecosystems and traditional societies”. Thus, the ancestor of the AIDS virus arose around 1910; it circulated in Africa for some years from the 1960’s and arrived in the United States before being identified in the 1980’s.

Finally, scientists have identified the natural mechanism of “the ‘dilution effect’ thanks to which a rich, local biodiversity has a regulating effect on the prevalence and virulence of pathogenic agents, whose activity is maintained at a low level in the ecosystem’s equilibriums”. The destruction of biodiversity represents a mortal danger for the human species and its preservation is a stake for its survival: “The majority of the scientists who expressed themselves in this book are convinced not only that the collapse (of human life on Earth) is possible, but that it’s already underway.”

An “implacable” accusation... but against whom? And to do what?

Of course, these scientists denounce the negligence of the public authorities. While they’ve known “for some time the health risks linked to industrial breeding as a major source of selection and amplification of pathogenic agents to potential pandemics (...) It’s clear that there’s been a failure to prepare for such an eventuality by the authorities, regarding the risks of pandemics as well as strategies for predicting their emergence”. They also point out the incapacity of states to bring any sort of solution to the health question, faced with which “successive health crises” have above all increased “measures of bio-surveillance and biodiversity”. But “every time the imperative to respond to the health crisis leads in the end to ignoring the causes of the emergency. They cannot answer the question of knowing how and why a virus circulating in some part of Asia can, in the space of a few months, find itself in the whole of the planet’s human population”. A negligence and an impotence of the dominant class that is confirmed by an institution that can hardly be called “anti-state”: the CIA, which in 2017, in a report on the world situation written for the new governmental administration, says: “The planet and its ecosystems are in peril of being strongly affected in the years to come by diverse human and natural mutations. These upheavals will expose populations to new vulnerabilities and needs for water, food, health services, energy and infrastructures (...) These risks will be distributed in an unequal fashion in time and space, but will hit the majority of ecosystems and populations, in a serious, even catastrophic manner in some cases (...) The change of environmental conditions and the growth of links and exchanges throughout the world will affect the frequency of rainfall, biodiversity and the reproduction of microbes. All of this will naturally affect produce and agricultural systems and will multiply the emergence, transmission and propagation of human and animal infectious diseases (...) The omissions and negligence of national and international health systems will make the detection and management of epidemics more difficult, risking aggravating their expansion over very large areas. The generalisation of contacts between populations will increase the propagation of already expanding chronic infectious illnesses (such as tuberculosis, AIDS and hepatitis) and will bring serious economic and human problems in the countries most badly affected, despite the importance of international resources granted for their prevention”.[4] The scientists interviewed in the work of Marie-Monique Robin are also legitimately scandalised and revolted by the economic aspects of healthcare, pointing to the “gap between those who profit from these activities (the economies which cause the emergencies) and those that pay the price of degraded health and health services”.

But when it’s a question of knowing precisely who or what is behind the “human activities which make up the main factor of health risks”, fog and confusion enters the discussion.

Who or what are they talking about? Neoliberalism? Finance? Some “pharmaceutical multinationals and agri-businesses or those leaders lobotomised by greed for short-term profits?” Who, in turn, are pilloried over the chapters of the book. In fact, the vague and inconsistent incrimination of “human activities” and of “the anthropomorphic impact on the environment” only leads us into a vague ambiguity.

In a society divided into classes, which capitalism is, the invocation of “Man” in general in order to explain a social phenomenon is a completely mystified formula. By obscuring the reality of the social relations of the capitalist system, it masks and prevents us grasping the terms in which health and environmental problems are really and concretely posed. In presenting as “excesses” or “deviations” something which in reality corresponds to its daily practice absolves the capitalist system as a whole from any responsibility.

When it moves on to concrete propositions for political action in order to engage with “the only issue which matters: the calling into question of the dominant economic model based on the predatory hold of humans over the ecosystems” all science completely evaporates and falls back into the nets of the dominant ideology and the bourgeois state. They propose different recipes to us which all turn around the old, tired mystification of “We are all in the same boat” and the need for “individual citizens” to mobilise in order to pressurise institutions and policies and so to “take up their responsibilities”. Thus, the book’s conclusion opens with, along with other such nonsense that this part is full of, the grandstanding promotion of a piece published in Liberation, “The time of ecological solidarity has arrived”, calling “everyone to take their part, to contribute within their possibilities to the continued exploration of two essential questions: What development do we want? What nature do we want? It is therefore necessary to encourage all levels of decision-making (citizens, collectives, associations, unions, spiritual groups, communes, businesses, departments, regions, state services, organisations of the United Nations...), to think individually and collectively then put this solidarity to work (near and far) in ecological, social and economic dimensions”. Let’s be clear: they are asking us to show confidence in a bourgeoisie and state institutions, to put our fate in their hands and make common cause with the class which embodies capitalism, which is precisely the agent of the catastrophe: in order to change everything, we must change nothing of the foundations of the capitalist world!

Unless it has discovered a magic wand allowing it to escape its own nature and the contradictions resulting from it... [5]  But for a long time the workers’ movement and marxism have shown that the capitalist system as a whole does not at all have the means to put a brake on its predation of ecosystems. In spreading the illusion of a capitalism able to limit its “excesses”, to make “reasonable choices for the good of all”, they confine us within the limits of capitalist society, in a logic of the management and reform of capitalism, all this on the terrain of citizen’s actions where the proletariat is completely absent. Believing in this possibility is a dead-end, wanting to make people believe in it clearly renders one an accomplice of the dominant class. In the context of the pandemic where the bourgeois state and the dominant class have partly lost the confidence of the exploited, La Fabrique des pandémies helps contribute to the campaigns of the bourgeoisie and is nothing other than an ideological fire-break, dug in order to block all those who are legitimately posing questions about what to do in order to prevent the barbaric cycle of environmental destruction.

Only one alternative: communism

Throughout the book, scientists sketch out the contours of what they think is a solution to the planetary environmental crisis. They put forward the necessity for a “societal revolution” on a universal scale, affecting all domains, capable of a “total, systematic re-think” particularly the relationship between humans and nature, especially on the levels of the economy and production, the need to develop new ethics and to settle “the question of poverty” without which it will be impossible to “durably preserve ecosystems”.

Can one seriously imagine for a moment that these so-called solutions correspond in any way to what a bourgeois world in full-blown decomposition can offer? Of course not! On the contrary, the main lines of this tableau point to a social project which has to become the gravedigger of the capitalist world, the only possible alternative that can open doors towards a future: “Communism… is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man”[6] , the project which is carried by the revolutionary class of our time, the proletariat.

In the 19th century, confronted with the consequences of industrialisation on the living conditions and health of the working class, with poor hygiene, epidemics, pollution of the air and water in the urban hell of large towns, as well as the alarming exhaustion of natural resources, particularly of soil under the weight of large-scale agriculture in England, then the most developed country along the capitalist road, the workers’ movement was, from its first steps, preoccupied with environmental questions.

Thus, marxism vigorously denounced the aberration of the private appropriation of the earth and the incompatibility of capitalism with nature and its preservation. The capitalist system, which presents itself as the pinnacle of a historic process which consecrated the world of commodities, a universal system of the production of goods, where everything is for sale, did not inaugurate the pillage of nature. But with capitalism this pillage takes place on a planetary level, an unprecedented fact in relation to previous modes of production which were constrained to more local dimensions, and takes on a qualitatively new scale of predation in the history of humanity: “it is only with it that nature becomes a pure object for man, a pure affair of utility; that is ceases to be recognised as a thing in itself; and even the knowledge of its autonomous laws appear as a simple ruse in order to subject it to human needs, as much as an object of consumption as a means of production”.[7] The incompatibility of capitalism with nature (which is shown in ecological disasters at the heights of its rapacity) is rooted fully in its exploitation, in the fact that, driven by the frenetic search for maximum profits, it is not only from the exploitation of the labour power of the proletariat that it draws its riches and profits, but also from the exploitation and pillage of the resources of nature. “Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much a source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. (...) And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labour, as an owner, treats it as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth.”[8] Marx was already denouncing the effects of exploitation and capitalist accumulation as similarly destructive to the planet as it was to the labour power of the proletariat: “In modern agriculture, the same as in the industry of the towns, the growth of productivity and the superior performances of labour is brought at the cost of the destruction and wearing out of the labour force. Moreover, each progression of capitalist agriculture is a progress not only in the art of exploiting the worker, but more so in the art of denuding the soil; each progress in the art of the short-term growth of fertility, a progress in the ruin of the durable sources of fertility. The more a country, the United States of North America for example, develops on the basis of large-scale industry, the quicker the process of destruction is accomplished. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”[9]

Above all, marxism has shown that the process of development of capital, submitting to the need for endless accumulation, affects the natural base of production, dangerously unbalancing the interaction between the human race and nature, provoking an irredeemable rupture of its metabolism. “With the still-greater preponderance of the urban population, concentrated in the main centres, on one hand capitalist production accumulates its historic motor force of society, on the other hand it upsets the metabolism between man and the earth, that’s to say returning to the soil some of its components utilised by man under the form of food and clothing and thus the eternal natural state of the permanent fertility of the soil[10]. “Great landed property reduces the agricultural population to a minimum, to a constantly lowered figure faced with the industrial population concentrated in large towns which grows ceaselessly; it thus creates the conditions which provokes an irreparable hiatus in the complex equilibrium of the social metabolism made up of the natural laws of life: there follows a wastage of the soil, a wastage that commerce transfers far beyond the frontiers of the country considered. Large-scale industry and agriculture, industrially exploited, acts in the same sense”.[11] That is why, despite all its scientific and technological advances, even when they are supposed to stand up against the ecological crisis, capitalism can only feed this crisis, spread it and aggravate it still more. In its devastating nature, in its threat to “the natural eternal condition of the life of humanity” Marx could already see that capitalism compromised the future of subsequent generations and, potentially, put the future of humanity in peril.[12]

If Marx and the workers’ movement of his time could only imagine the effects of the death throes of capitalism on humanity, their foresight has been amply confirmed after more than a century of the decadence of capitalism. During the course of this time, the accumulation of capital has become even more destructive, “the relentless destruction of the environment by capital (has taken on) another dimension and another quality (...); it is the epoch within which all the capitalist nations are obliged to compete on a saturated world market; consequently an epoch of a permanent war economy, with the disproportionate growth of heavy industry; an epoch characterised by irrationality, a pointless duplication of industrial complexes in each national unit (...) the rise of the megapolis (...) the development of types of agriculture no less damaging ecologically than the majority of different types of industry”.[13]

“The Great Acceleration” (as some elements describe the breadth and speed of ecological devastation these last decades) in reality forms one of the manifestations of the historic crisis of the capitalist mode of production in its period of decadence, which is now driven to paroxysms in its ultimate phase, that of decomposition. The ecological consequence of capitalist decomposition (of which the Covid-19 pandemic is a pure product) mixes and combines with all other phenomena of the dislocation of capitalist society, plunging humanity into growing chaos and barbarity. The exhaustion of resources and the consequences of global heating seriously disrupts and disorganises agricultural and industrial production, generating population displacements from unproductive and uninhabitable zones and exacerbating military rivalries in a world where each state searches to save itself faced with the catastrophe, posing a mortal danger for the survival of humanity.

It is thus the abolition of capitalism itself, of the social relations of capitalist exploitation, that alone holds the resolution of the ecological crisis. It goes hand-in-hand with the resolution of the social question and depends on the latter in order to establish a society of freely-associated producers (communism) which will have to “systematically establish (the metabolism between man and the earth) in regulatory law of social production”[14], in order to place the satisfaction of human needs at the centre of its mode of production. This communist society can only be implemented by the proletariat, the sole force able to develop a consciousness and a practice able to “revolutionise the existing world”, to “practically transform the existing state of affairs”.[15] It alone, through its fight for communism, can assure a future for humanity!

Scott, 25th October, 2021

Since 1989 and the collapse of the falsely named “Communist” regimes of the former imperialist bloc around the USSR, authentic marxism has had to fight back against an intensified campaign of deformations and lies, claiming that marxism is an out-of-date, discredited ideology which, when put into practice, could only prepare the ground for the Stalinist totalitarian gulag. These campaigns have been aided not only by the existence of regimes which have maintained the exploitation and repression of the working under a Red Flag, but also by all the former expressions of the workers’ movement which, having passed over to the side of the bourgeoisie, continue to make use of a disfigured version of marxism as an apology for their participation in imperialist wars and their advocacy of more statified forms of capitalist rule; and this has been a feature of the last 100 years and more. Thus, the mobilisation of the working class for the battle fields of 1914-18 was spearheaded by former Socialists who used passages in Marx and Engels that had been applicable in the period when national wars were still possible to justify their support for an imperialist and reactionary world war. Later on, the Stalinists and Trotskyists demonstrated their adherence to the camp of capital by painting the Second World War with a fraudulent marxist gloss, in particular by appealing for the defence of the “socialist fatherland” or the “degenerated workers’ state” in the USSR.

But the counter-revolution which engulfed the working class after the heroic struggles of 1917-23 did not only take the overt forms of Stalinism and fascism. It also required its “democratic” side, above all in the ideology of anti-fascism which was designed to draw in workers and even former revolutionary militants who were sickened by the horrors of fascist repression and mass murder. But on the more theoretical level, this democratic counter-revolution also gave birth to a new deformation of marxism, which has been termed “Western Marxism” and which has been a key component of what we call modernism[1]. Unlike the Stalinists and the Trotskyists, this trend was more amorphous and did not put forward a definite programme for the statification of capital (although it generally accepted that there was indeed something non-capitalist in what Marcuse and others termed “Soviet Marxism”). It was mainly based around the universities or state-sanctioned “institutes for social research” – most notably in the case of the Frankfurt School, the main intellectual inspiration for “Western Marxism”.

This trend can be seen as the fountainhead of modernism because it claims to offer a critique of marxism’s “outdated dogmas”, which may have been valid once but no longer apply in “modern capitalism”. Of course, authentic marxism is far from a being a static dogma and must constantly analyse the endless changes brought about by the most dynamic and expansive society yet seen in human history. But the essence of modernism lies in invoking the name of Marx to strip marxism of its founding principles, of all its revolutionary traits. It is thus characterised by some or all of the following elements:

 - First and foremost, the rejection of the revolutionary nature of the working class. The failure of the revolutionary attempts of 1917-23 demonstrated, for modernism, the historic failure of the working class, and even its enthusiasm for the counter-revolution – whether because of its submission to fascism (a strong element in the writings of Adorno, for example) or because “traditional” marxism itself was seen as being responsible for Stalinism (which would later align these “post-marxist” ideologies with the main themes of the ideological campaigns which followed the 1989 “collapse of communism”). In the period of the post-war boom, Marcuse, having concluded that the working class of the west had been bought off by economic prosperity and “one dimensional” ideologies like consumerism, began scrabbling around for other “revolutionary” subjects, such as the students protesting against the Vietnam war or the peasants allegedly leading the “anti-imperialist struggle” in the peripheries of the system[2];

- the rejection of any continuity with progressive historical development, both generally and more particularly that of the proletarian movement: Marx is accepted, but often Engels is dismissed as at best a vulgariser; the Second International pays no role in the development of marxism and is identified entirely with its opportunist wing; the same treatment can also be reserved for the Communist International, seen as no more than the source of latter-day “Soviet Marxism”;

- in line with the above, the rejection of the goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of a revolutionary class party. Indeed, revolutionary militancy is often presented as the highest form of alienation.

 Marxism is thus transformed into an individual utopian rejection of capitalism at the cultural ideological level, distorting the early Marx and his approach to the problem of alienation for this purpose, or turning the critique of political economy into a sophisticated argument in favour of the perennial, unchanging nature of capitalism and a dismissal of the theory of the decadence of capitalism.

Modernism penetrates the revolutionary movement

In our article “Modernism: From leftism to the void”, published in World Revolution number 3 in April 1975, we identified the Frankfurt School as one of the main sources of modernism, and showed that its main proponents had openly identified with ruling class and the imperialist war of 1939-45:

“In the 30s and 40s, the Stalinist fellow-travellers at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt (Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno) began to lay down the framework used by modernists today. According to them, marxism and the proletariat were failing because they were not being ‘revolutionary’ enough. For example, the workers had not fervently rallied to the defence of Republican Spain in 1936-38… Unable to see that the crushing of the workers’ uprisings of 1917-23 ultimately allowed for a new imperialist war, these dilettantes enthusiastically ‘chose’ to support the Allied side during that very same imperialist conflict”.

The article points out, for example, that, during the war, Marcuse served with the US Office of Intelligence Research in the State Department and became acting head of its East European section.

The article’s title, locating the origins of modernism in the left wing of capital, is perfectly accurate in this case. However, later experiences confirmed that modernism, like the various distortions of socialism criticised in the Communist Manifesto, could also take root in currents that had initially sought to place themselves on the terrain of the proletariat. In the 1960s, faced with the post-war economic boom, the group Socialisme ou Barbarie set out to prove that Marx had been wrong about the inevitability of economic crises in capitalism. In 1948, after breaking with Trotskyism, S ou B had insisted that capitalism had become a decadent system and were greeted by the Gauche Communiste de France as a potentially positive development, even though the GCF warned them explicitly about the difficulties of a complete break from Trotskyism and about the intellectual arrogance of seeing themselves as alone capable of solving the problems facing the working class and the revolutionary movement, without any reference to the left communist tradition which had already posed profound questions about the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutions and the nature of the “socialist” system in the USSR and elsewhere[3]. In reality, Sou B were to prove that they were no less entranced by capitalist growth in the 50s and 60s than a figure like the social democrat Bernstein had been in the 1890s. And as they increasingly came to see the dogmas of Stalinism and Trotskyism as rooted in marxism itself, they began to call into question not only the economic contradictions of the system but even the fundamental contradiction between the working class and capital, replacing it with a nebulous conflict between “order givers and order takers” which reproduced the classic anarchist obsession with “authority”. A logical consequence of denying the inner contradictions of capital was the elaboration of a conception of socialism as a system of “self-management” which could co-exist with commodity production – another regression to anarchism presented as a new and radical alternative to “traditional marxism”[4].

SouB, and in particular their vision of generalised self-management, was a major influence on the situationist current whose moment of glory came in the events of May-June 1968. An article by Marc Chirik in Révolution Internationale 2, 1969[5], showed that S ou B’s influence also extended to the situationists’ rejection of the marxist conception of the profound link between the class struggle and an objective capitalist crisis. For them the huge class movements of 68 and afterwards were above all the consequence of subjective factors: at a general level, the boredom and alienation of “everyday life” under capitalism, but also, more specifically, of the exemplary intervention of the situationists themselves. The situationists were thus embedded in the modernist world-view, but having participated in a real class movement, and despite the classically “artistic” – in fact petty bourgeois – nature of slogans like “Never Work Ever” – were far less hostile to the struggle of the working class than some of those who succeeded them.

By the early 1970s, both S ou B and the Situationist International had ceased to exist, and the majority of the modernist currents – some of whom had passed through the school of S ou B and situationism, and even the Bordigist branch of the communist left - had developed a more “marxist” language which was able to discern the errors of self-management (even if, as we will see, they often resurrected it in in new forms) and insist that communism meant the eradication of the totality of capitalist social relations, based on wage labour and commodity production. This was the birth of the “communising” current which has since become the main form of modernist ideology. It is no accident that this development coincided with the revival of the communist left. The communisers, such the Invariance group around Jacques Camatte, the group Mouvement Communiste around Barrot/Dauvé[6], or the Organisation des Jeunes Travailleurs Révolutionnaires around Dominic Blanc, were much more willing to present themselves as heirs of the historic communist left but also as critics of its limitations, and above all of the “conservatism” of the revived communist left groups with their insistence on the need for militant political organisation and on the defensive struggle of the working class as the precondition for a future communist revolution. The elements in this new trend have referred to themselves as “communisers” because they claim to be the only real communists, the only ones who had understood what Marx meant in The German Ideology when he defined communism as “the real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs”. In this sense, while there were some early debates between the communisers and the new left communist groups[7] this updated expression of modernism increasingly became a destructive force against the communist left, as evidenced by the role of the so-called Bérard or ex-Lutte Ouvrière tendency which split with Révolution Internationale in 1974 and very rapidly disappeared from political life.

As we have said, the revival of the communist left in the late 60s and early 70s was deeply connected to the earthquake of international class struggle which shook much of Europe and the Americas, and also to the increasingly obvious return of the open economic crisis. In such a period, while the communisers, and above all Camatte, more and more called into question the central importance of the workers’ class struggle, the idea that the working class was merely a “class for capital”, and that its future lay in its negation rather than its affirmation as a class, carried far less weight than it was to do following the difficulties of the class struggle in the 1980s and above all with the onset of the phase of capitalist decomposition after the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989. As we have argued elsewhere[8], this period has been marked by a real weakening of class identity, of the proletariat’s awareness of itself as a distinct and antagonistic force within capitalist society. These conditions provided more fertile soil for the communisers, who have in general argued that it is precisely this class identity that the proletariat needs to abolish, not as the ultimate result of a revolutionary struggle, but as its precondition.  And in a period in which the crisis of the system is more and more giving rise to popular revolts in which the working class has no distinct role, it can appear that the communisers’ ideas are being vindicated, and that we are beginning to see the “revolt of humanity” against capital which Camatte and others predicted back in the 1970s.

In parallel to this, the first signs of a revival of class struggle in the first decade of the new century was accompanied by a certain resurgence of anarchism, attracting young elements looking for revolutionary ideas but for the most part unable to connect with the genuine marxist tradition, which they still tended to associate with the defeat of the Russian revolution and the degeneration of Bolshevism. Given the paucity of anarchism’s theoretical framework, the communisers, particularly individuals like Dauvé and groups like Théorie Communiste, Aufheben and Endnotes, were able to offer the anarchist milieu an appearance of theoretical profundity, displaying their familiarity with marxist terminology while in no way challenging most of the central prejudices of anarchism, in particular the rejection of centralised political organisation. Looked at from another angle, the communisation current is itself a new variant of anarchism, as we will seek to demonstrate in subsequent articles in this series. But because many of its adherents refer not just to Marx but to Bordiga, the KAPD, and other components of the tradition of the communist left, they can often be confused with the real left communist tradition, and this can be an extremely negative factor in the political evolution of new elements searching for communist clarity.

For precisely this reason, it is essential that the communist left demarcates itself sharply from the communisation tendency around the most important questions which separate them

• First and foremost, by insisting that despite all the changes in the composition of the working class that we have seen over the last few decades, despite all the ideological and political set-backs experienced by the working class, it remains the only revolutionary class in capitalist society, and that its struggles in defence of its material interests remains the only soil in which a revolutionary assault on capital can grow. Thus, the repudiation of all theories which call on the working class to negate itself or to renounce its defensive struggles.
• Second, by reaffirming that to fight against the onslaught of bourgeois ideology, and for the eventual transformation of immediate economic struggles into a political and social offensive against the whole system, the revolutionary minority must be organised on an international scale and on the basis of a coherent political platform. Thus, the critique of the idea that communist militancy is “the highest stage of alienation”, that proletarian political organisations can only be “sects” or “rackets” and should dissolve into a loose cooperation between sovereign individuals. In doing so, we will show how hostility to revolutionary organisation has led parts of the communisation current towards political parasitism, and its propensity to individualism towards bourgeois careerism.
• Third, by defending the necessity for the working class to fight for its political dictatorship over society in order to begin a period of transition towards communism, as opposed to the communisers view of a kind of “grand dissolution” which bypasses both the need for working class political power and a period of transition.

On the method of this series

We see this series as an offshoot of our long-standing series on the historical development of the communist programme[9]. Thus, in taking up the points that distinguish us from the communisers listed above, we will also take a historical approach, focusing on certain of the “classical” texts of communisation theory from the 1970s and the trajectory of some of the main figures in the development of communisation theory. Thus, our projected articles will include:

• A review of the ICC’s first major combat against modernist/communisation theory in its own ranks, the “ex-Lutte Ouvière tendency” in the early 70s;
• A reminder of the political trajectory of Jacques Camatte, which in many ways reveals the true “secret” or direction of communisation theory;
• A critique of texts such as Camatte’s “On organisation” and the OJTR’s “Militancy: The Highest Stage of Alienation”
• A response to certain texts by Barrot/Dauvé on “communist measures” and the abolition of value.

In carrying out this work, we will also republish some of the ICC’s own texts in response to the modernist conception of communism and the class struggle, most of which have not been available for many years.

CDW

The capitulation of the proletarian German Social Democratic Party to imperialism in 1914 is well known amongst revolutionaries. So is the fact of the opportunist decline of the SPD that led to this momentous betrayal of the working class.

What is less well known is the continual struggle waged by the revolutionary wing of the Party since its inception against the forces of reformist opportunism, not just at the theoretical level by such seminal works as the Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx, the Anti-Duhring by Friedrich Engels, or Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg, but also at the level of the defence of organisational class principles. 

The following article, often drawing on research into books and documentation that are only available in the German lnguage, chronicles the history of this organisational struggle in two parts. The first part, published here, covers the period from 1872 to 1890, from the Gotha to the Efurt programmes; the second part, to be published subsequently, will deal with the ensuing period to 1914.

Part 1. 1872-1890

Chapter 1, 1872-5

From the Paris Commune to the Gotha Congress.

The fight to preserve key acquisitions.

After the suppression of the Paris Commune of 1871, the bourgeoisie reacted with a wave of repression across the whole of Europe. Of course, the Communards in France, more than 20,000 of whom had been murdered, 38,000 had been arrested and over 7000 deported by the Versailles government, were the main victims. But in view of this first major successful seizure of power in a city by the working class, workers organisations in other countries were also subjected to increased repression. At the same time, the ruling class stimulated an attack from within against the First International - with Bakunin and his Alliance of Socialist Democracy as spearheads. With the help of a secret organisation, the previous achievements of the First International were to be undermined at the level of functioning, the First International was to be reduced to anarchy. At the Hague Congress of 1872, the General Council of the First International, headed by Marx and Engels, exposed this plot. This struggle to defend the organisation was to become one of the most valuable treasures of the revolutionary movement's experience, the significance and consequences of which were largely underestimated at the time and long forgotten. In a series of articles (International Review 84-88), the ICC has described this struggle and its lessons in detail. We recommend them to our readers as indispensable material to understand the subsequent development.[1]

The German sections of the First International participated actively in the preparation of the Hague Congress - against the resistance of the rulers in Germany. After the Paris Commune, the formation of sections of the International had been banned in Germany, only individual adhesion was possible. Thus there was officially no membership of an organisation from Germany in the First International and also officially no local sections. In most European countries no organisation of any noteworthy size could exist if it openly declared its affiliation to the International after 1872. The government forbade the members living in Germany to travel to The Hague and to act as delegates, yet they managed to circumvent these coercive measures.

Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, leading figures of the SDAP (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei/Eisenacher [2] (1869-1875) were imprisoned for 2 years for high treason for adopting an internationalist position during the Franco-German war. Many comrades writing for ‘Volksstaat', (the publication of the SDAP) were arrested and the publication of material about the Hague Congress was forbidden by the authorities. Nevertheless the German delegation at the Congress was able to provide 15 delegates out of a total of 65 delegates (i.e. almost a quarter) and play an active role. Marx had received a mandate from Leipzig, Engels one from Breslau, and Cuno was chairman of the committee investigating the activities of the Bakuninist Alliance.

After the conclusion of the Hague Congress (2-7 September 1872), the delegates immediately went to the party congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (Eisenacher) in Mainz (7-11 September).

While in the beginning the Eisenachers took a vehement stand against the Bakuninists even after the Hague Congress, the statements of the ‘Volksstaat’ against the Bakuninists softened shortly after autumn 1872/73. In this phase Liebknecht abstained from criticizing the anarchists, he wanted to mollify the Lassalleans[3]. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, threatened that if the ‘Volksstaat’ stayed silent on the question, they would have to terminate their cooperation. Marx and Engels said we cannot achieve real unity by abandoning principles. Following criticism by Marx and Engels, the ‘Volksstaat’ reactivated its criticisms of the Bakuninists for a short time.[4] Meanwhile, the Lassalleans continued their support for the Bakuninists. In April 1873, Lassalleans rejected the decisions of the Hague Congress and even sent delegates to a Bakuninist meeting in Switzerland. 

The Gotha unification congress and the dilution of principles.

The tendency of the Eisenacher Party to make concessions to the Lassallean Party (General German Workers Association - ADAV) was justified, among other things, by the prospective unification. Nevertheless at the Coburg Congress in 1874 the SDAP still mainly discussed mutual support in the class struggle and an immediate unification of the SDAP and the ADAV was not on the agenda. Contrary to the vote of Marx and Engels however, the leaders of the SDAP raced to a quick unification in Gotha in March 1875 and founded the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD) with the Lassalleans.

"One must not be distracted by the cry for "unification" (...) Of course every party leadership wants to see success, that is also quite good. But there are circumstances where one must have the courage to sacrifice the current success for more important things. Especially for a party like ours, whose ultimate success is so absolutely certain, and which has developed so colossally in our lifetime and under our eyes, instant success is by no means always and absolutely necessary. (...) In any case, I believe that in time the capable elements among the Lassalleans will turn towards you by themselves and that it would therefore be unwise to eat an unripe fruit, as the unifying people want. By the way, the old Hegel already said: "A party proves to be the victorious one by splitting itself and being able to tolerate splitting".

In the same letter, Engels warned that after the Eisenachers saw themselves in competition with the ADAV, as it were, one "gets used to thinking about the ADAV in everything (...) In our opinion, which we have found confirmed by long practice, the right tactic in propaganda is not to alienate individual people and memberships from the opponent here and there, but to work on the large masses, who are still indifferent. A single new force that one has drawn from the raw is worth more than a Lassallean defector who always carries the seed of his wrong direction into the party." [5]

After the Paris Commune was defeated and the First International was de facto dissolved in Europe after 1873[6], the focus of the work shifted to the different countries. "The centre of the movement shifted to Germany"[7] where the Marxist tendency had won political authority thanks to its internationalism during the Franco-Prussian war.

In the 1870s, the SAPD then was one of the first parties to be founded as a merger of two existing parties in one country. Since no major international cooperation was possible immediately after the dissolution of the First International, the international labour movement was faced with the task of working towards the founding of a party in the different countries and placing it programmatically and organisationally on a higher level than in the 1860s.[8]

In Austria, the United Social Democratic Party of Austria was founded in April 1874 (its program was based on that of the Eisenachers).[9] In the other countries, the process of party formation only began later.[10]

The Gotha Founding Congress of the SAPD expressed some signs of progress, such as the fact that for the first time a party with fixed organisational principles existed in a whole country. The merger of two organisations had made it possible to overcome the "leader dictatorship" which had previously been exercised in the ADAV by Lassalle and to place the leadership of the party in collective and centralised hands. Lassalle, who died in a duel 1867, had played the role of a president with almost dictatorial powers and claims among the Lassalleans, and his approach still cast its shadow over the ADAV.

The statutes of the ADAV of 1872 demanded:

"III. membership § 3: Every worker becomes a member of the association with full and equal voting rights by simple declaration of membership and can resign at any time. § 6 The affairs of the association are administered by the executive committee, consisting of a president and 24 members”

In the following points above all the powers of the president were further defined. The statutes of the SAPD, founded in 1875, said however:

Ҥ1 Anyone can belong to the party who is committed to the principles of the party programme and actively promotes the interests of the workers, including by donating money. Those who do not contribute for three months are no longer regarded as party comrades".

Because there were already bans on the formation of associations and active participation in revolutionary organisations, the statutes avoided references to active cooperation in the organisation.   

It was stated that "party members who act against the interests of the party may be excluded from the board. Appeals to the party congress are admissible". (§ 2 Statutes). In this respect, continuity was established with the methods of the Communist League, which were, however, only passed on via the Eisenachers.

While the newly founded party therefore represented a step forward at the organisational level, the party reflected the great political immaturity at the programmatic level, which manifested itself in a multitude of birth defects.

Of the Lassalleans, 73 delegates were present for 15,322 members, 56 delegates for 9121 votes from the Eisenachers.[11] Because the Lassalleans were more confused, the leadership felt that compromises should be made towards them and programmatic dilution accepted in the interests of unity. When Karl Marx sent the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” to Wilhelm Bracke on May 5, 1875, the party leadership concealed it from Congress and party members; even Bebel, the most famous leader did not know about the letter:

"After the coalition congress will have been held, Engels and I will publish a brief statement stating that we are quite at odds with the above-mentioned programme of principles and have nothing to do with it. (...) Apart from that, it is my duty not to recognise by diplomatic silence what I believe to be a thoroughly reprehensible program that demoralises the party. Every step of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If it was not possible to go beyond the Eisenach programme - and the circumstances did not allow this - we should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. If, however, one makes programmes of principle (instead of postponing them until the time when such a thing was prepared by longer common activity), one erects milestones in front of the whole world by which it measures the progress of the party movement (...) One obviously wanted to avoid all criticism and prevent any reflection in the party. One knows how the mere fact of unification satisfies the workers, but one is mistaken in believing that this instant success is not too dearly bought. Incidentally, the programme is useless, [it only contains] a canonisation of Lassalle's articles of faith." [12]  [13]

Engels wrote in October 1875 in a letter to Wilhelm Bracke:

"We entirely agree with you that Liebknecht, through his zeal to reach agreement, to pay any price for it, has bungled the whole thing. (...) Once the unification process had been set in motion on a rotten basis and had been trumpeted, it was not allowed to fail”[14]

Marx and Engels' vehement criticism of this lack of clarity and even opportunistic attitude made clear how much Marx and Engels emphasised programmatic clarity, and that unity must not be brought about by the abandonment of the programme and the union with unreliable, unclear forces. It would be better to be few at first but working on a clear basis rather than many on an unclear basis. Marx and Engels thus took the view that unity should only be created on a clear basis and that clarity should not fall victim to unity. The marxists' adherence to programmatic intransigence and loyalty to principles characterised their behaviour toward opportunistic tendencies and forces that emerged later. In this respect, the attitude of Marx and Engels, to oppose unity at any price, but fight for clarity and without fear of demarcation, and possibly division, stood in contrast to the later policies of the SPD.

At the same time, the way in which Marx and Engels' criticism of these weaknesses was dealt with brought to light a tendency that has repeatedly arisen in the revolutionary movement: the evasion, if not the concealment, of criticisms on the pretext that unity or unification was more important than clarity. As we show below, it was not until 1891 (i.e. 16 years later and after Marx's death) that Friedrich Engels was able to push through the publication of this critique in the Neue Zeit against the fierce resistance of the opportunists in the party leadership. The Gotha Programme later facilitated the emergence of opportunism by anchoring certain opportunist views in writing. Only at Engels' insistence was a point included in the programme that proclaimed the solidarity of the German proletariat with the workers of all countries and its willingness to fulfil its international duties.([15]) In addition, apart from the insufficient emphasis on internationalism at the Gotha Founding Congress, almost no reference was made to the consequences of the experience of the Paris Commune. There was already a kind of gap in the historical continuity and in the transmission of the experience from the struggle for the organisation against the Bakuninists.

Another important aspect of the dilution or distortion of important political criticisms was their misrepresentation as something arising from personal motives. Even Franz Mehring, who wrote an otherwise penetrating biography of Marx and a history of German Social Democracy, fell into this trap:

"Marx didn’t realise that the draft programme faithfully reflected the theoretical views of both factions; he believed that the Eisenachers had already grasped all the consequences of scientific communism, while the Lassalleans were a retarded sect

"Usually accustomed to judging the workers' movement by the major importance of its steps, this time he put things too much under the microscope and searched behind small awkwardness, unevenness, inaccuracies of expression for sneaky intentions that really were not behind it. Nor can it be denied that his antipathy to Lassalle in this letter influenced his judgment..."[16]

Thus the discussion about basic principles was played down and presented as a question of personal antipathy between Marx and Lassalle. Instead of emphasising that the overcoming of Lassalleanism meant a partial liberation, Mehring wrote:

"Lassalleanism was extinguished in these Gotha days forever, and yet they were the days of Lassalle's triumph. However right Marx might have been with his objections to the Gotha programme, the fate of his letter clearly showed that the ways in which a powerful and invincible workers' party could develop in Germany as the carrier of the social revolution had been correctly recognised by Lassalle. "[17]  

At the same time, there were signs of ambiguity in the way that Mehring "contrasted" party development in different countries with development at the international level.

"The idea of international solidarity had taken root so deeply in the modern proletariat that it no longer needed external support, and the national workers' parties developed so peculiarly and vigorously through the industrial upheavals of the 1870s that they went beyond the scope of the international...”[18]

After the crushing of the Paris Commune and the impossibility of continuing the work of the First International, the activities of revolutionaries had first to be directed to the different countries in order to create the conditions for the foundation of parties. But this focus on the individual countries did not mean that international orientation and cooperation had become obsolete and that international solidarity or even an International would thus become superfluous, or that the rapid growth of the parties in different countries would even cause the national framework to grow beyond the international framework. Perhaps this view reflects Mehring's lack of international spirit, to which Engels had already referred in his previous criticism of the Gotha programme. An internationalist orientation can only be realised through a constant and conscious struggle against national or even localist priorities. Although the main part of the activities was focused on the development of the SAPD, efforts were also made to establish international contacts and prepare the foundation of the Second International in 1889. 

For reasons of space, we cannot go into the SAPD's contribution to the founding of the Second International here.

Moreover, the tendency to ‘forget’ acquisitions continued. The determination of a large part of the German delegates at the Hague Congress in 1872, and the subsequent defence of the policy of the General Council against the Bakuninists by the SDAP, seemed to have been buried in Gotha in 1875. The lessons of the Hague Congress, which had taken place only three years earlier and where revolutionary principles had been vehemently defended, were not taken up any further. There was no evidence of continuity and transmission of this experience. Instead, Mehring later also tended to portray this struggle, like the differences between Lassalle and Marx, as a conflict between the personal authority of Marx and that of Bakunin.

Chapter 2, 1878 to 1890

The period of the Anti-Socialist Law

The fight for revolutionary organisation against parliamentary opportunism

At the Gotha Unification Congress in 1875, Hamburg was elected as the seat of the party executive and Leipzig as the seat of the Control Commission. The ruling class was alarmed by the growing labour movement, and the SAPD was banned within the scope of the Prussian Law on Associations from March 1876, and a short time later, in Bavaria and Saxony as well. The bourgeoisie in Germany began to forge its plans for a general ban on the SAPD. The assassination attempts by two individuals were used as a pretext to pass the Socialist Law on October 21, 1878.

All associations with social democratic, socialist or communist aims were to be dissolved, printed publications and assemblies with the aim of disseminating such aims banned, as were educational associations, dance clubs and theatre clubs (the members of the SAPD were previously usually officially registered as members of an association).

"Subsequently, 1,299 printed publications, 95 trade unions, 23 support associations, 106 political associations and 108 so-called amusement associations were banned. Approximately 1,500 persons were sentenced to imprisonment, almost 900 were expelled from various places in the Reich. Those deported who did not go into exile were mostly forced to resettle in remote regions and tried to continue working politically there. Only the Reichstag fraction of the SAP remained unchallenged due to the right of voting a person in a constituency and was able to continue its parliamentary work."[19]

In other words, while the party was to be hindered in its activities at the grassroots level and the consolidation of an organisational tissue was to be prevented, its entire focus (and from the point of view of the rulers it was far better that this should be the case) was to be on parliamentary activity. Although Bismarck initially wanted to ban parliamentary activity as well, the other bourgeois factions in the Reichstag did not yield to Bismarck's insistence. The bourgeois parties' ultimate aim was to fully integrate the SAPD into the parliamentary machinery. Mobilisation for the elections thus became a focal point of their activities at that time. Compared to the repressive measures in Russia under the tsar, the Socialist Law in Germany was far less brutal but much more insidious.

Even before the Socialist Law had been passed in the Reichstag, the Hamburg-based Central Election Committee, acting as the party executive, had announced to the police authorities that the party organisation would dissolve itself, contrary to Bebel's and Liebknecht's stand on this issue, and had also called on the local sections to dissolve themselves! The party leadership proposed "absolute legalism":

"Hold fast to the slogan that we often call out to you: ‘our enemies must perish from our legality’. ‘Be calm, refuse to be provoked.’" [20]

As Marx and Engels wrote in a 1879 circular, the "anticipatory obedience" of the party executive was no anomaly:

"The party, under the pressure of the Socialist Law, shows right now that it is not willing to follow the path of violent, bloody revolution, but is determined ... to follow the path of legality, i.e. reform."[21]

Marx and Engels opposed this, in ironic terms:

“In order to take away the last trace of fear from the bourgeoisie, it must be clearly and concisely proved to it that the spectre is really only a spectre, that it does not exist. But what is the secret of the red spectre, if not the bourgeoisie's fear of the inevitable life and death struggle between it and the proletariat? (...) It is the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie who are registering, full of fear that the proletariat, pushed through its revolutionary situation, may ‘go too far’. (...) All historically necessary conflicts are reinterpreted into misunderstandings, and all discussions end with the affirmation: in the main we are all in agreement. "

"The Social Democratic Party is NOT to be a workers' party, is not to incur the odium of the bourgeoisie or anyone else; it should above all conduct energetic propaganda among the bourgeoisie; instead of laying stress on far-reaching aims which frighten away the bourgeoisie and after all are not attainable in our generation, it should rather devote its whole strength and energy to those petty-bourgeois patchwork reforms which, by providing the old order of society with new props, may perhaps transform the ultimate catastrophe into a gradual, piecemeal and as far as possible peaceful process of dissolution.“ [22]

At the same time, some voices in the SAPD articulated the need for violent reactions. Johannes Most advocated individual terror, which was rejected at the first congress of the SAPD in Wyden, Switzerland, in 1880.

The fight against spies and calumnies

The party continued the tradition developed since the Communist League, of resolutely resisting slander because it undermined confidence within the party. Thus, in 1882, the illegal organisation of the Berlin Social Democrats decided in their statutes:

Point 13: Every militant – even if he is a well-known comrade – has the duty to maintain confidentiality about the topics discussed in the organisation – no matter which topics are discussed. If a comrade hears from another comrade an accusation being made, he has the duty to maintain confidentiality in a first phase and he must demand this from the comrade who informed him about it; he has to ask for the reasons of the accusation and find out who spread it. He has to inform the secretary [of the local section], who has to take appropriate steps and who has to clarify the issue at a meeting with the presence of the accuser and the accused. If the person under accusation is the secretary, the information must be given to his deputy. Any other step such as in particular spreading suspicion without any proven reason and without being testified by the secretaries, will provoke a lot of damage. Since the police notoriously have an interest in promoting disunity in our ranks through spreading denigrations, any comrade who does not stick to the procedure described above runs the risk of being considered as a person who works on behalf of the police. “[23]

At the party congress in Wyden, a "resolution on the exclusion of Wilhelm Hasselmann from the party" was passed:

"After the Congress had been enlightened about Hasselmann's intrigues and unscrupulous conduct, it fully approved Hasselmann's exclusion proclaimed by the deputies and warned all foreign comrades to recognise that this personality has been exposed as a notorious slanderer”.

At the same Congress a "Resolution on the Exclusion of Johannes Most from the Party" was passed:

"Considering that Johann Most had for a long time acted against the principles of the party which he himself still defended under the Socialist Law and [since then] only followed the influences of his frequently changing mood;

in further consideration that Most became the spreader of any slander raised against the German Social Democracy, no matter which side it came from, and that he promoted notorious police agents in spite of warnings about them, only because they insulted the so-called party leaders;

- Finally, considering that Most has committed acts contrary to all laws of honesty,

The Congress declares that it rejects any solidarity with Johann Most and regards him as having left the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany". [24]

Thanks to the network established by the members of the party, the party was able to expand its influence on the ground for a dozen years and also learned to organise material and political solidarity for the persecuted. In short, the harsh conditions of illegality did not discourage the party members, but rather strengthened solidarity among them.

Functioning under illegality

The remaining party bodies spoke out against a national secret organisation because it could be too easily dismantled by the police and the party would then be completely incapable of action. In fact, a combination of illegal and legal work (mainly in parliament) was used. In Germany itself, they organised the

 "publication of the illegal newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat, which was produced abroad and distributed in the Reich via a conspiratorial distribution network (including Red Field Mail). The legal and illegal activity had to be led by a secret official body called ‘Corpora', (inner circle or organisation). It was formally separated from the distribution apparatus of the Sozialdemokrat for security reasons. With the help of this factually illegal organisation, in which J. Motteler played a prominent role, the cohesion of the party was further made possible at grass root level. Informers were exposed in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat. Under the camouflage name ‘The Iron Mask’, the party's security service warned against informers and provocateurs (cf. Fricke, p. 182). 

On the one hand, this prevented the slide into a conspiratorial society, and on the other hand, an illegally functioning apparatus could be set up. Party meetings took place under the guise of singing clubs and smoking clubs.[25]

At the first party congress since illegality in Wyden, Switzerland, in 1880, the previous wording that the party wanted to achieve its goals by "all legal means" was deleted from the text because the party did not want its hands tied to legality.

The need for local members to have sufficient leeway for their own initiatives and to be in contact with each other via a network of confidants was discussed at the Wydner Congress.

“We cannot act according to a template, we cannot always consult the so-called ‘leaders’ in every single case, but neither should an individual act on his own. Joint consultation is necessary, no matter what form it takes, and joint action with the whole on important issues. This must be our guideline for all our actions.

So, organise yourselves, no matter how. The larger, better situated and more spiritually powerful places must support the smaller ones around them, and [since] the comrades cannot do this in greater numbers, the representatives from the different sections must often enter into oral exchange with each other. "[26]

Since the party was still allowed to nominate candidates for the Reichstag elections, "electoral associations" were founded in each constituency, which had the task of "theoretically forming the comrades and turning them into well-formed socialists. The administration of the party's affairs and the execution of its public agitation were still to provide the 'inner movement'”,[27] i.e. despite the legal meetings in electoral clubs for propaganda purposes, the party maintained the 'inner organisation', its underground organisational tissue. This was crucial for their survival.

However, this complementary "interplay" between centralisation and sufficient local initiative was later theorised and presented as a basic argument against centralisation.

At the Wydner Congress, the "official party leadership ... was transferred to the current Reichstag deputies."[28] However, the transfer of party leadership to parliamentarians on the basis of their immunity would turn out to be a trap, because a revolutionary party must not regard a parliamentary fraction as a "natural leadership“. Lenin later warned that parliamentary fractions "have certain traces of the influence of the general bourgeois electoral conditions."[29] Thus, this measure of transferring leadership into the hands of parliamentarians further contributed to not placing the emphasis on the initiative at the party grass root level, but very strongly focusing on parliamentary activities.

The actual party leadership, which centralised the illegal work, was de facto in the hands of a subcommittee of five people. However, due to great geographical dispersion, comrades were rarely able to meet and there were always major communication problems. In fact, Bebel (i.e. the most prominent leader) played a central role in the leadership of the party.

After the Copenhagen Congress of 1883, the official central organ of the SAPD still declared: "We are a revolutionary party, our goal is a revolutionary one, and we have no illusions about its parliamentary implementation.[30] But opportunist impulses were unmistakably felt at the Copenhagen Congress. The Sozialdemokrat went on to write about the incalculable divergences at the Congress:

"We have no reason to hide the fact that on some issues the opinions of our comrades diverge, for it is precisely a sign of the strength of our party that it nevertheless stands out externally as a united whole. As hard as the spirits burst into each other as openly and unreservedly one expressed one another's opinion, on the other hand the general aspiration clearly emerged: not finding a majority, but confrontation and understanding. Not by cliques that rivalled each other, but by comrades who disagreed on one question and agreed on the other, uninfluenced by personal relationships. And this lively exchange of views on the various questions of tactics, etc., showed that our party is in no way exposed to the danger of ossification, that there is no papacy and no orthodoxy in it, but that within the principles laid down in our programme it has room for every honestly fought conviction”. (ibid.)

But the willingness to discuss divergences within the shared programmatic framework was quickly questioned.

While on the one hand the party did not allow itself to be too fixated on the repression under the Socialist Law, on the other hand fears of a continuing illegality of the party arose more and more, especially among the members of the Reichstag who were legally active in the Reichstag. And there was a tendency for the Reichstag fraction to become autonomous and for an opportunist development to take place in its ranks. There was a growing gap between parliamentarians and the "grass roots". Already in 1883, i.e. a few years after the beginning of the Socialist Law, Bebel wrote to Engels: "And there is no doubt that among our parliamentarians there are especially people who, because they do not believe in the level of  revolutionary development, are inclined to parliamentarism and are very reluctant to take any sharp action."[31] A little later Bebel wrote to W. Liebknecht: "More than ever the thought of abandoning parliamentarianism comes to my mind, it is a good school for sinking into the political mire. We will see enough of this in our own friends."[32] In 1885 Bebel, the longest serving and most resolute SAPD member of the Reichstag, also warned:

"The Reichstag mandate satisfies their ambition and vanity, they see themselves with great self-satisfaction among the elect of the ‘nation’. They develop a taste for parliamentary comedy while taking themselves very seriously. Moreover, most of them no longer study or have gone astray with their studies, they are also alienated from practical life and do not know what it looks like... "[33] Engels spoke of an attempt by the opportunists "to constitute the petty bourgeois element as the ruling, official one in the party and to push back the proletarian to a merely tolerated one. "[34]

Opportunism in parliamentary garb

On March 20, 1885, the Social Democratic Parliamentary Group of the Reichstag published a statement against the criticism of the parliamentary group by the SAPD newspaper Sozialdemokrat:

"In recent times, especially in the month of January of this year, several open and hidden attacks against the Social Democratic Parliamentary Group of the German Reichstag could be read in Sozialdemokrat. They referred in particular to the behaviour of the Social Democratic members of the Reichstag on the issue of the steamship subsidy. (....) It is not the paper which determines the position of the parliamentary group, but the parliamentary group which has to control the position of the paper. "[35] [36] 

Bebel protested: "Through this statement the parliamentary group raises itself to absolute ruler over the position of the party organ. Der Sozialdemokrat is then no longer a party organ, but a parliamentary organ, and the party comrades are forbidden to express any opinion which is unpleasant or uncomfortable for the fraction, and the freedom of the press which the programme demands for all is an empty phrase for their own party comrades "[37] 

And further protest letters were also written from various cities in Germany. For example, the Social Democrats' protest letter in Frankfurt/Main in April 1885:

“…the Socialist Law is actually beginning to have an educational effect; our deputies have already become very tame. (...) We comrades of Frankfurt (Main) see in this declaration of the parliamentary group an attempt at dictatorial reprimand, an attempt by the majority of the parliamentary group to introduce a kind of exceptional law into our inner party life (...) We can see from the tone of this ukase that the noble democratic self-confidence of the majority of the parliamentary group has given way to a reprehensible arrogance which is expressed in the term ‘storm of indignation’ (...). We do not need to explain that we do not grant any special (aristocratic) rights to the members of the parliamentary group... We declare that we will continue to subject the behaviour of our deputies to public scrutiny or criticism at the party congress, that we will continue to fight out differences of opinion in the public arena and that we will not allow ourselves to be reduced to unwilling bearers of ideas."[38] From Wuppertal Barmen came a similar letter of protest from the Social Democrats on 18.5.1885: “We are not among those who, having sent our representatives to parliament in greater numbers than ever before, expected miracles from the parliamentary activity of the same, we know very well that the emancipation of the workers is not fought out in the parliaments”. [39]

The SAPD deputy Wilhelm Blos rejected any revolutionary attitude of the Sozialdemokrat. As a result, electors from Wuppertal Barmen wrote the following statement:

“1. If Mr. Blos claims that his voters had sent him to Berlin to participate in the legislation and to influence it in the sense of the Social Democratic program, we cannot see this view as correct. We believe that it is contrary to the party's position to call ‘parliament’ the main reason or even the only cause of electoral activity. For our part, we have voted:

a) Out of agitational and propagandistic considerations;

b) To protest loudly against today's class rule through our votes;

c) To enable our representatives, if necessary, to express this protest decisively in parliamentary speeches.” [40]

The confrontations shown here made it clear that during these years two wings clashed, leading Engels to the insight that the division of the party could arise. In May 1882, Engels wrote to Bebel:

“I have long since had no illusions that one day the bourgeois elements of the party would come into conflict and that there would be a divorce between right and left wing, and in the handwritten essay on the yearbook article, I even expressed this as highly desirable. (...) I did not explicitly mention the point in my last letter, because it seems to me that there is no hurry with this split. (…)

On the other hand, they know that under the rule of the Socialist Law we also have our reasons for avoiding internal divisions that we cannot debate publicly”.[41] 

But even under the conditions of the Socialist Law, he did not consider the necessity of a split to be excluded. For only a few months later he took up the same question: “The controversial question is purely a matter of principle: should the struggle be conducted as a class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, or should it be allowed to drop the class character of the movement and the programme … wherever one can get more votes, more 'followers'? (...) Unification is quite good as long as it possible, but there are things that stand above unification.[42]

“I would consider any split under the Socialist Law to be a misfortune, since any means of communication with the masses is cut off. But it can be imposed on us, and then you have to face the facts.” [43]

And he placed the same emphasis on an aggravation of opposites, and that you shouldn't shy away from division at the right time: “The division into the proletarian and the bourgeois camps is becoming more and more pronounced, and once the bourgeois have exerted themselves to outvote the proletarians, the rupture can be provoked. This possibility must, I believe, be kept in mind. If they provoke the rupture - which they would have to drink themselves some courage for - it's not so bad. I always take the view that as long as the Socialist Law exists, we should not provoke it; but if it does, then we have to go with it and then I'll be in your side.” [44]

Even under the harsh conditions of illegality, Social Democracy at the time sought not to isolate itself internationally. Because the reorganisation of political groups and parties in Europe gathered pace during the 1880s, German Social Democracy became a pioneer of international contacts and the preparation of a new International.

“In order to establish a regular connection between the socialists and socialist associations abroad among themselves and with the party in Germany, and to maintain communication between the latter and the brother parties abroad, a communication centre outside Germany is created, which has to organise exchanges between the individual associations, receive all complaints, applications, etc., and deal with them in an appropriate manner.” [45]

Despite the Socialist Law, the rulers did not succeed in smashing the party or suppressing its influence. On the contrary, in 1878, the year the Socialist Law was introduced, the SAPD received: 437,000 votes (7.6%), 2 deputies after the main election, 9 after the run-off election; 1890: 1,427,000 votes, i.e. 19.7% of the votes, 20 deputies in the main election and 35 after the run-off election.[46] The great electoral successes thus reflected the support for the SAPD. But at the same time they not only increased the weight of the Reichstag deputies within the party, but also the overall parliamentary orientation and the democratic ideology which grew with it.

Chapter 3, 1890/1

The end of the Anti-Socialist Law and the new programme and statutes at Halle and Erfurt

In September 1890, the Socialist Law was lifted. The SAPD was renamed SPD at the Halle party conference shortly thereafter.

Due to the conditions of the Anti- Socialist Law, the debates about the programme could only take place to an extremely limited extent. Now, with the end of the law, at the party conference in Halle 1890 and especially in Erfurt 1891, the programme question was put as a central point on the agenda. After extensive discussions with more than 400 meetings and a multitude of articles and discussion contributions in the SPD press, it was planned to make important corrections to the Gotha programme. In our series of articles in IR 84-88 we have dealt extensively with the debates and criticisms of the positions of the Erfurt programme, therefore we continue to concentrate here on the organisational question.

In 1891 Marx and Engels' critique of the Gotha programme was published for the first time and widely discussed. The party leadership active at the time of Gotha, which at that time had withheld the criticisms of Marx and Engels from the party, agreed to these criticisms in 1891 at the Erfurt Congress. Thus, the specifically Lasallean and vulgar-socialist views of the Gotha programme were overcome.

At the Halle and Erfurt Congresses, the views of the oppositional, anarchistic group “Die Jungen” (the Young), which appeared for the first time, were also discussed and rejected.

The Statutes - a mirror reflecting organisational principles

The statutes regulated membership as follows: point 1 “Any person shall be considered as member of the party who agrees with the principles of the Party Programme and supports the Party to the best of his or her ability”.[47] Members were thus required only to adhere to the principles of the Party Programme and not to the details of the Party Programme itself. For people like Ignaz Auer[48], this was an occasion to speak out against "narrow-mindedness" at the level of the programme, because “some may have objections to this or that particular point and a slight deviation of any kind is not harmful”. According to Auer this was intended to give members scope for their own interpretation of the party's programme.

“According to the situation of the association legislation in all larger German states, the party conference in Halle had to refrain from the creation of a centralised organisation. Any attempt to establish an association existing in the whole of Germany, with local memberships, representatives, regular dues, membership cards, etc., would only result in the dissolution of the party in the shortest possible time for violation of the provisions of any paragraph of the Vereinsgesetz. (...) Since political associations are not allowed to communicate with each other in most of Germany, no correspondence or other connection may take place between the local associations and the party leadership. (...) Now, however, the party leadership (...) must have connections everywhere (...). This task should be fulfilled by the confidants (hommes de confiance) (...). These confidants should primarily be the correspondents to whom the party leadership addresses its communications and who in turn inform the party leadership about what is going on in the individual towns and constituencies”.[49]

The opposition group of Die Jungen, which appeared for the first time, advocated a loose concept of party membership. They spoke out against a firmly established party organisation and pleaded for a loose, non-binding form of organisation. According to them, a general verbal commitment to the SPD or voting for an SPD candidate was sufficient to claim to be a social democrat.

In Bebel's draft of the statutes for the party conference in Halle, the party conference formed the "highest representation of the party". Bebel emphasized concrete, firm rules of conduct that were binding for all members of the party. This emphasis on binding rules of conduct was groundbreaking for the later debate at the 2nd Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1903 (see the article in International Review 116 1903-4: the birth of Bolshevism [19]..).

The relationship between the Reichstag fraction and the party as a whole was also discussed for the first time at the Halle Party Congress. After the end of the Anti-Socialist Law Bebel wanted to transfer the party leadership from the Reichstag fraction to the party congress and the party executive elected by it as the decisive authority. The party executive should be accountable to the party congress, and the Reichstag fraction should thus be deprived of its special rights. Resistance arose on the part of the parliamentarians. It was also planned at the congress in Halle that the party executive elected by the congress should control the party organ Vorwärts. Ignaz Auer continued to insist on special rights for the Reichstag fraction: the fraction should be given the right of supervision and control over the party executive and thus over the entire party activity, which meant the fraction was placed over the party executive elected by the party congress. According to Auers' point of view the statutes should require the submission of the party to the members of parliament. Georg v. Vollmar, a member of parliament, demanded in the debate on the organisational question at the Halle Congress that “each local section should decide independently on its own organisational form, that splitting the organisation into autonomous sub-organisations was also a good protection against possible further repression."[50] At the same time Auer rejected the programmatic principles of the party. Here one could feel the theorisation of hostility to centralisation and the desire to subordinate the party and its central organ to the parliamentary fraction.

Bebel himself described the draft he submitted to Engels as a "compromise work".[51] Bebel later admitted, in view of the resistance of the parliamentarians: “I let myself be persuaded and gave in for the sake of peace”. A short time later, Bebel confessed to Victor Adler: “I once again recognised how much damage is created when one gives in to the move to the right.”[52] Finally, though, the party adopted a statute in which the party executive took over the party leadership. With the recognition that the party congress was the highest representation of the party, with the binding nature of the documents and resolutions adopted by the party congress, with the accountability of the party executive to the party congress, with the recognition of the newspaper Vorwärts as a central organ, the principles for the functioning of the party according to the "party spirit" were laid down. Lenin was later able to rely on these party principles in 1903.

Given the great weaknesses of the 1875 Gotha programme, the 1891 Erfurt programme was a step forward. The reformist Lassallean ideas still present in the Gotha programme had been overcome; a scientific framework was put forward, insisting that capitalism was still doomed to failure because of its contradictions, and that the working class could bring about the only possible solution through the conquest of political power: the overthrow of this society. Nevertheless, there was a crucial shortcoming in this programme: there was no talk of the necessary dictatorship of the proletariat in overturning capitalism. Engels had criticised the political demands of the draft in the debate on the draft programme. He took the opportunity “to give a bashing to the ‘peaceful opportunism’ ... and the fresh, pious, cheerful and free 'growing into' of the old mess socialist society.”[53] In the final version, however, nothing substantial was changed in the political demands Engels had criticised; in fact, his critique was suppressed and only published 10 years later.[54] 

Engels’ warning against reformist illusions ...

Influenced by the hope for a "repression-free life in democracy"[55] and a hope in some circles already noticeable in 1890-91 for society to grow into socialism, Engels warned: “Out of fear of a renewal of the Socialist Law, out of remembrance of all sorts of premature statements made under the rule of that Law, the present legal situation in Germany should suddenly be able to satisfy the party's demands peacefully. One fools oneself and the Party by claiming that ‘today's society is growing into socialism’” ... [56]

But while Engels rightly warned of the danger of opportunist hopes, he himself fell into a certain euphoria which Rosa Luxemburg later picked up at the founding congress of the KPD. (see IR 88 The German Revolution: The Failure to Build the Organisation [20]

... overcome temporarily by euphoria

In the years since the Socialist Law, the SPD had increased its votes in the elections by more than 20%. This caused euphoria and illusions about a corresponding increase in the power of the working class. As early as 1884, after the SAPD had won half a million votes, Engels told Kautsky in a letter:

“For the first time in history, a solidly united workers’ party stands there as a real political power, developed and grown under the toughest persecutions, inexorably conquering one post after another (...),,inexorably working its way up (so) that the equation of its growing speed and thus the time of its final victory can already be mathematically calculated now [1884].” [57] And in the autumn of 1891 Engels wrote: “Eleven years of Reichsacht [the Anti-Socialist law] and siege have quadrupled their strength and made them the strongest party in Germany. (...) The Social Democratic Party, which managed to topple a figure [as powerful] as Bismarck, which after eleven years of struggle broke the Anti-Socialist Law, the Party, which like the rising tide overflows all dams, which pours over state and land, penetrating into the most reactionary agricultural districts, this party today is about to reach the point where it can determine with almost mathematically exact calculation the time in which it will come to power.

(...) In the elections of 1895 we can thus count on at least 2.5 million votes; but these would increase around 1900 to 3.5 to 4 million. (...) The main strength of German Social Democracy, however, lies by no means in the number of its voters. You only have voting rights at the age of 25 years, but you can already be conscripted at the age of 20 years. And since it is precisely the young generation that supplies our party with its most numerous recruits, it follows that the German army is increasingly infected by socialism. Today we have one soldier in five, in a few years we will have one in three, and around 1900 the army, formerly the Prussian element of the country, will be socialist in its majority. We are moving closer and closer to this situation, almost inevitably like the ‘hour of destiny’. The Berlin government sees it coming, as well as we do, but it is powerless” [58] “That the time is approaching where we are the majority in Germany, or yet the only party strong enough - if peace remains - to take the helm .”[59] And also in the last years before his death, for example in 1892, he said: “(...) the victory of the European working class [depends] not only on England. It can only be ensured by the cooperation of at least England, France and Germany. In the latter countries the workers' movement is well ahead of the English. In Germany it is even within a measurable reach of triumph.”[60] In 1894 he even predicted that “we can (almost) calculate the day on which state power will fall into our hands”. [61]

This glorification of the election results is also made clear by the statement Bebel made at the Hamburg Party Congress in 1897:

“Reichstag elections have always been the most important event for us as a fighting party, because they give us the opportunity to stand up for our ideas and demands with all the necessary vigour, because we can see from the election result how the development of our party in the past period has been; they were and are the yardstick for us of how far the party has come on its advance to victory. From this point of view, we considered the elections in 1897 to be the best opportunity to measure our strength.”[62]

Before falling into this temporary euphoria, however, Engels had stressed before the Erfurt Congress that the SPD should continue along the revolutionary path and should not allow room for ideas about a 'lawful, peaceful' path of development towards socialism.

The necessity of a clear demarcation and, if necessary, separation from the opportunists

In view of the great divergences between Lassalleans and Eisenachers at the beginning of the 1870s, Marx and Engels had warned of the danger of the loss of programmatic clarity and insisted on a sharp demarcation. Again and again they emphasised: “(...) In our party we can use individuals from every social class, but not groups which stand for capitalist, middle-class or middle peasant interests”.[63] Even when, at the time of the Socialist Law, more and more people from different backgrounds, including the ruling class, were constantly joining Social Democracy, Engels insisted in a correspondence with Bebel and Liebknecht:

“When such people from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first demand is that they do not use remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois ideology, etc.. (...) If there are reasons to tolerate them [people with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas] for the time being [in a workers' party], there is an obligation only to tolerate them, not to allow them to influence the party leadership, to remain aware that the break with them is only a matter of time.”[64]

“The proletariat would abandon its leading historical role (...) if it made concessions to these (petty-bourgeois and bourgeois) ideas and desires.”[65]

Therefore, Engels also considered the possibility that after the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law there could be a split between the proletarian and petty-bourgeois wings in the party.

“We owe all this mess largely to Liebknecht with his penchant for educated wiseacres and people in bourgeois positions, with which one can impress the Philistine. He cannot resist a literary man and a merchant who fancies socialism. But in Germany these are the most dangerous people (...). The split is sure to come, but I maintain that we should not fall into provocations and let it happen under the Anti-Socialist Law.”[66]

It was obvious that the approach of the state aimed at smashing and splitting the party, and that the party moving closer together was the main tendency in this phase. But determination in the face of repression does not automatically prevent opportunist tendencies. On the contrary, opportunism may even proliferate more without consciously and pratically being held in check. 

In 1890, shortly before the repeal of the Socialist Law, Engels also recognised:

“The party is so large and big that absolute freedom of debate within it is a necessity. There is no other way that the many new elements that have joined us in the last three years and that in many areas are still quite green and raw, be integrated and that they assimilate and be ‘formed’ (...). The largest party in the Reich cannot exist without all the shades in it being fully expressed, and even the appearance of dictatorship à la Schweitzer must be avoided. "[67]

In order to build up a certain protection against unacceptable deviations, the leading party posts were to be filled with full-time functionaries paid by the party. However, this in turn did not offer any real protection against opportunism or even censorship by the party leadership. In order to be able to conduct the fight against opportunism and its representatives in the Reichstag faction more freely, Engels even said that the radical forces should have an independent press organ:

“Your 'nationalisation' of the press becomes a great evil if it goes too far. You absolutely must have a press in the party which is not directly dependent on the executive committee and even the party congress, i.e. which is in a position to openly oppose individual steps of the party within the programme and the adopted tactics and also to freely subject the programme and tactics to criticism within the limits of the party statutes”.[68]

In a letter to Bebel, Engels not only warned him against the right-wing approach and its mouthpiece Vollmar, but he also made a number of tactical recommendations.[69]

The "Jungen"

The 1890 Halle Party Congress also saw the first open debate with the opposition group labelled by the bourgeois press as the "Jungen".[70] In fact, the only common denominator appears to have been their low average age.[71]

Their social composition was extremely heterogeneous. Politically, they were united above all by their warning of the dangers of parliamentarianism.

“1.) The attitude of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, which at times was likely to awaken the hope that the situation of the working class could already be significantly improved within capitalist society. 2.) The agitation in the last Reichstag elections, which often amounted more to winning seats in parliament than to forming social democrats. 3.) The fraction's advocacy of bourgeois candidates in the last run-off elections. 4.) The parliamentary group's approach to the question of 1 May.(...)[72]  6.) A certain way of comrades treating objective criticism as personal insults.” [73]

But this political criticism of opportunist tendencies in the party became blurred and lost credibility because Bruno Wille insinuated "corruption" in the ranks of SPD parliamentarians and thus tended to pin the problem on individuals.

At a major SPD gathering in Berlin at the end of August 1890, in which more than 10,000 party members took part, Bebel confronted the criticisms of the SPD in a debate with some representatives of the “Jungen”. At the end of the debate, a resolution was passed in which of the approximately 4,000 counted participants (of the 10,000 participants only half could fit into the hall) about 300-400 voted against the resolution written by Bebel.

“The assembly declares the assertion made by various sides that the Social Democratic Reichstag fraction was corrupt, that it intended to rape the party, and that it was anxious to suppress freedom of expression in the party press, as a grave insult to the fraction, or to the party leadership, which lacked all proof. The Assembly also declares unjustified the attacks directed against the parliamentary activity of the fraction to date.” [74]

At the party conference in Erfurt, an investigation commission presented its findings on the accusations of some of the “Jungen”. However, the mandate of this commission had dealt with two tasks at the same time: with regard to the accusations of systematic corruption and the fact that party funds were given to parasites, the commission acquitted the accused of the charges.

At the same time, it rejected the political criticism expressed in an anonymous flyer distributed at the Halle party conference. The leaflet said: “We do not therefore accuse the leaders of dishonesty, however, but that they showed too much consideration for the powers that be, resulting from the changed position in life and the lack of contact with proletarian poverty, the heart beat of the people in agony”.[75]

“The worst thing that the Socialist Law has brought us is corruption” (Wille referred above all to political behaviour and directed this accusation primarily against the party leadership).[76]

At the same time, the Jungen warned of the danger of the party decaying.[77]

The Commission countered this with its political findings: “1.) It is not true that the revolutionary spirit is systematically being killed by individual leaders. 2.) It is not true that a dictatorship is practiced in the party. 3.) It is not true that the whole movement has decayed and the Social Democracy has sunk down to a pure reform party of petty bourgeois direction. 4) It is not true that the revolution was solemnly sworn off at the tribune of the Reichstag. 5.) To this day, nothing has been done to justify the accusation that attempts were made to bring into harmony the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.”[78]

Finally, some members of the Jungen who continued to uphold the accusation of corruption were expelled at the Erfurt party congress. Previously, other members had resigned from the party. After a rejected appeal against their exclusion, the opposition founded the "Association of Independent Socialists" (Verein Unabhängiger Sozialisten) on November 8, 1891, shortly after the Erfurt Party Congress (its organ became the Socialist, which appeared from 1891-1899). Engels said it spread "nothing but gossip and lies"[79]

This opposition, which emerged at the beginning of the 1890s, had shown a vague awareness of the increasing danger of the party's degeneration. But by putting the criticisms of the party's policies into the category of accusations of bribery against party leaders - without any concrete evidence - and thus personalising them - its well-founded warnings of the dangers of sinking into degeneration lost their impact and could be used by the opportunists. Previously, some representatives of the Jungen (Werner and Wille) had demanded that a central organ of the party (i.e. in the form of a newspaper) was not necessary at all. Some of them also spoke out against centralisation and only for loose structures, and they spoke out against binding membership criteria.

The founding appeal of the "Independent Socialists" stressed that the “organisational form of today's party [restricts] the movement of the proletarian social classes”. Instead, they advocated a “free organisation,” and argued that the purpose of the organisation was to be a “discussion and education association.”[80]

The "Independent Socialists" split shortly after their founding - some returned to the SPD, others went over to the anarchists.

For the SPD, dealing with this heterogeneous group had been a twofold challenge. On the one hand, accusations at the level of behaviour, such as allegations of corruption, should not be left unchecked. And those who continued to uphold such accusations without any evidence should not be allowed to claim such things without any sanctions.

But at the same time, this was a test of the willingness of the party to deal with warnings of opportunism, which were inevitably confused and sometimes misleading, and were presented in a brawling manner, as Engels said. A policy of exclusion due to political divergence was not on the agenda. Before the Halle party conference, Engels spoke out against a policy of exclusion from the party:

“I will probably see Bebel and Liebknecht here before the Congress and do what I can to convince them of the imprudence of all expulsions that are not based on striking evidence of the party's injurious actions, but merely on charges of endless opposition”.[81]

“It is clear that you will be able to deal with the Jungen and their followers at the Congress. But make sure that no germs are laid for future difficulties. Do not make unnecessary martyrs, show that freedom of criticism prevails, and if someone has to be expelled then only in cases where quite blatant and fully provable facts (...) of wickedness and betrayal exist.”  [82]

After the Erfurt party congress Engels approved their exclusion, mainly because the Jungen had continued to spread unproven suspicions and accusations within the party. But shortly after the party had excluded them, he realized that people like Vollmar (representatives of the right) were "much more dangerous" than the Jungen.[83] A short time later he adopted a nuanced attitude. He described the attacks of the Jungen against the "petty-bourgeois elements" in the party as "priceless". [84]

Even Bebel recognised the positive role of the Jungen after the publication in the summer of 1892 of Hans Müller's Der Klassenkampf in der Sozialdemokratie (The Class Struggle in Social Democracy). “It's quite good in itself that there are a few ankle snappers who remind you to watch out that you don't stumble. If we didn't have this opposition, we'd have to make ourselves one. If you scold them at the next party conference, I'll sing their praises.” [85]

————-

The battle that we have described between the revolutionary and opportunist tendencies in German Social Democracy became even more intense in the following period from 1890 to 1914. We will describe this exacerbated conflict in the second part of the article.

Dino

The previous article in this series introduced the ‘communisers’ and drew out their relationship with the current emerging at the end of the 1960s which the ICC calls modernism. The article showed the bourgeois origin of the modernist ideology by looking at the beginnings and the development of this current. This second part will focus on one of its earliest expressions, the Bérard tendency, which was formed in 1973 within the group Révolution Internationale (RI), the future section of the ICC in France.

Bérard, a new prophet

Although there was an overestimation of the revolutionary dynamic, most of the groups of the proletarian political milieu existing at the time understood that May 68 in France and the Hot Autumn in Italy the following year could by no means be seen as a revolutionary situation. In spite of its combativity and the development of its consciousness, the working class was still dominated by illusions in capitalism and bourgeois democracy. Much time was still needed for its consciousness to be transformed in depth and to become capable of making the revolutionary assault. However, it was necessary to explain concretely why the revolutionary upsurge had receded in most countries by the middle of the 1970s[1].

In an attempt to explain this reflux, a militant of RI, Bérard (or Hembé), put forward the idea that the defensive struggles waged by the proletariat up until then had ended in an impasse due to the illusion that significant reforms in favour of the workers were possible, which prevented them from radicalising their struggles. He argued that if the proletariat were to go forward once more it had to reject, not only these illusions, but also demand struggles as such. His article was accepted as a contribution to the discussion and appeared in the journal RI (new series) no.8 (March-April 1974) under the title of “Lessons of the struggle of the English workers”. In it he defended the following slogans: “The dead-end of struggles for economic demands, the impossibility of reformism, the need for a qualitative leap towards the revolutionary unification of the class”. Everyone was agreed that the historical period for reforms had ended when the First World War broke out. On the other hand, Marx had emphasised the inadequacy of defensive struggles while by no means denying the need for them. Bérard however was definitely rejecting struggles for economic demands: “Demand struggles do not become revolutionary; it is the class that becomes revolutionary by going beyond and rejecting the immediate struggle”. Moreover, the proletariat would have to refuse not only its immediate struggles but also its essence as an exploited class. At first the proletariat appears as a “class for capital” but as it struggles “the class must begin to act as the negation of its relationship with capital, therefore no longer as an economic category but as a class-for-itself. Thus, it breaks the divisions that were a part of its previous state and appears no longer as a sum of wage workers but as a movement of autonomous affirmation, that is, the negation of what it was beforehand”. Bérard’s article takes up a classic marxist position: “the proletariat is an exploited and revolutionary class” only to immediately deny it in the following phrase: “So it is the very being of the class which constitutes the dynamic link between the various transitory phases, the movement that affirms and denies in different moments of struggle”. According to this conception, the repeated defeats of its resistance struggles must make the proletariat understand the need to negate itself. “Defeats are fruitful in as far as they unmask the institutions that are counter-revolutionary and sap the credibility of reformism”. And Bérard rejoiced at any significant workers’ struggle that made no specific demand .

This is in fact a voluntarist vision which ignores the material forces that make possible the transformation of defensive struggles into revolutionary struggles. Rosa Luxemburg, who participated in the 1905 revolution and who knew what she was talking about, explained that the mass strike is a tangle of economic struggles and political struggles, a dynamic composed of advances and retreats, in which the workers politicise and organise their struggles, acquire greater unity and a deeper consciousness, In fact, according to Bérard’s schema, the workers never returned to their struggle at the end of the 1970s. Yet in July 1980, it was the elimination of price subsidies on consumer goods (the price of meat sold directly to the workers at the work place increased by a dramatic 60%) that sparked off the strikes in the Warsaw suburbs and the Gdansk region. This triggered the mass strike in Poland, the most important battle in the second international wave of workers’ struggles.

Discussion began within the RI sections and, one after another, they adopted a position against Bérard’s conclusions. But at this point it was important to reply rapidly to Bérard’s modernist positions which were a total break with marxism. The reply to his article appeared in issue no.9 of RI (new series) of May-June 1974, under the title of “Why the working class is the revolutionary class”[2]. It reasserts the classic marxist position: “The process by which the working class rises to the level of its historic task is not a separate process that is external to its daily economic struggle against capital. On the contrary, it is within and by means of this conflict that the working class forges the weapons of its revolutionary struggle.” So there are not two working classes but one alone that is both exploited and revolutionary. This is why revolutionary struggles are always preceded by a long period of demand struggles, and it is also why the latter always reappear during the revolutionary period.[3] “And how could it be otherwise when we are dealing with the revolutionary struggle of a class, that is, with a set of men economically determined, united by their shared material situation?”.

As the new prophet of communisation,[4] Bérard stated in RI no.8 that in revolutionary struggles, “it is not wage labour that confronts capital, but wage labour in the process of becoming something else, of dissolving. The proletariat affirming itself is nothing other than this movement of negation”. Making wage labour dissolve in this way, when in fact it is present even during the phase of the international generalisation of the revolution, is typical of modernist speculation which confuses the departure point with its culmination, its ultimate outcome. In order to make value melt away, it is necessary to have a political organ powerful enough internationally to be able to overturn the system from top to bottom, destroy all economic categories and replace market control with planned production. The reply in RI no.9 had to give a reminder that “given that capitalist production takes place on a world scale and that today every commodity is composed of goods from the four corners of the globe, the abolition of wage-labour can only come to pass when market exchange has been eliminated all over the entire planet. As long as there are parts of the world where the labour product must be bought and sold, the abolition of wage-labour cannot be fully achieved anywhere.”

For the modernists, the abolition of wage labour is just a pious wish because they reject the three conditions that make it possible:

• The seizure of power internationally or at least in the most important countries of the world; this is what Marxists call the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the destruction of the State and the nation as the condition for the international power of the workers’ councils to emerge.
• The process of the collectivisation (or socialisation) of production which makes it possible to destroy the divisions within capitalist labour and to redirect production towards the satisfaction of human needs.
• The gradual integration of all members of society into associated labour which makes possible the definitive disappearance of the division of society into classes.

It is actually by the proletariat affirming itself, not by negating itself, that the dissolution of classes and the disappearance of the law of value is made possible The conflict between labour and capital is constantly present in the class struggle, from the smallest defensive struggle which timidly affirms the solidarity of the workers, to the mass strike, in which the workers have gained a degree of political consciousness and unity that enables them to force through their demands, and even up to the period of transition when they are changing production so radically that we can say with Marx and Engels: “the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour”.[5]

The ravages of individualism

The discussion was soon to fester. The minority, imbued with a sense of hurt pride, were furious at not finding any echo within the organisation. In issue no.9 of RI another article appeared, “Demand struggles and the emergence of the class-for-itself”, which this time was presented as “a text of the tendency”. This article confirmed the direction that the minority was taking: in view of the difficulties of the class struggle, it was necessary to invent a magic recipe for overcoming the divisions and breaking out of union entrapment. It became increasingly removed from the real world. “Demand struggles exist and are necessary. We have gone over this often enough not to have to repeat it. But our task is to understand and to state [that the working class] must go beyond them by rejecting them and by destroying the organisation that coincides with them (the unions)”. In reality, workers will be faced by the unions for a long time yet - up until the revolution - and it is not by decreeing that they vanish that they can be got rid of. The article is also completely wrong about the nature of the unions; they are not defenders of workers’ demands or the ones who negotiate a good price for labour power. Their function is precisely to encircle and sabotage demand struggles by rejecting the means that would enable them to win (even if this is always temporary): the geographical extension and politicisation of the struggle.

The minority takes a rather original “materialist” direction: “Either there are no demands or else no-one gives a damn about ‘demands’; it is not that material needs do not make themselves felt, on the contrary, general, social revolt expresses the only real material need felt by the class as a class confronted with the degradation of the whole of society, that is, the transformation of social relations”. Contestation, revolt; this is as far as the horizon of the petty bourgeoisie in May 68 extends. It is true that for us material necessity is manifested in the need for communism as the only possible solution to capitalist contradictions, but it is also manifested in the will to win immediate struggles as a condition for the generalisation of the fight. Because of its idealism the minority was unable to understand the dynamic described in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers”.

As the discussion developed, the ‘tendency’ adopted an increasingly aggressive tone: it intervened in an irresponsible way in a Public Forum of RI and finally published a pamphlet externally (by this time it was calling itself “Une Tendance Communiste”: the pamphlet was entitled “The Revolution will be communist or nothing”. This way of proceeding is typical of those who want to save themselves as individuals rather than going forward collectively to clarify political questions.

Half of the pamphlet is dedicated to replying to the article in RI no.9. The tendency tries again to demonstrate that its position is the materialist one. Let us see how. “No-one can deny that wage labour and associated labour are, in a purely descriptive and static way, the two aspects of the proletariat’s situation in as far as it is an ‘economic category’. However, in our discussion this ‘description’ says nothing about ‘How the working class is the revolutionary class’ (title of the [RI] article) because, in order to understand the nature of the proletariat as a revolutionary subject in terms of the ‘concrete human activity’ that Marx talks about, the objective situation must be understood as a contradiction and not as a juxtaposition of fixed attributes. [RI] does not say that the class is forced to become revolutionary because the material relations and social objectives within which it exists have entered into contradiction, rather its explanation is that it is revolutionary because 1) it is exploited (wage labour); 2) it is associated (by capital)”[6] We can borrow from the assessment that Marx made regarding Proudhon: “A petty bourgeois of this kind deifies contradiction, for contradiction is the very basis of his being. He is nothing but social contradiction in action.”[7] Contradiction, as it is seen here, is completely sterile, and the concepts of qualitative leap and of negation, that are so important to marxist dialectic, are used here in a totally metaphysical way; they are a magic wand waved by the intellectual as he pretends to resolve the social problems that trip him up.

In order to look clearly at the contradiction and resolve it, we have to distinguish between what is discarded, what is preserved and what takes on a different meaning. Otherwise, the continuity of the movement as a whole is broken. This is what the marxist dialectic means by transcending what has gone before. This is what Rosa Luxemburg says about the meaning marxism gives to negation and the qualitative leap: “Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind. For this reason, Friedrich Engels designated the final victory of the socialist proletariat a leap of humanity from the animal world into the realm of freedom. This ‘leap’ is also an iron law of history bound to the thousands of seeds of a prior torment-filled and all-too-slow development. But this can never be realized until the development of complex material conditions strikes the incendiary spark of conscious will in the great masses.” [8]

Bérard began by rejecting the demand struggles of the proletariat, then its nature as an exploited class: the only way he can resolve his ‘contradiction’ is to quite simply throw out the proletariat itself. His intention was to distinguish himself from Camatte (who had already openly rejected the ‘theory of the proletariat’) and reinstate the proletariat as a revolutionary subject, but the notion of an immediate communisation without a period of transition leads inevitably to the rejection of class autonomy and to diluting the proletariat in the other classes. Thus, “There is a nucleus determined by material circumstances, in practice a vanguard of the class-for-itself (the workers of large businesses), but this nucleus, by abandoning capitalist relations, tends at once to precipitate ‘the imminent passage of the middle classes into the proletariat’ (Marx). […] The ‘danger’ of dissolving the proletariat into the population does not exist”.[9] The autonomy of the class has been a palpable principle of the proletarian struggle since 1848. It is the thread that ties the partial struggles of the workers to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The loss of class identity that we witness today makes the poison of interclassism even more dangerous. This demonstrates how modernism does the work of the bourgeoisie.

The anti-organisational prejudices of the generation of 68

There have been numerous tendencies throughout the history of the workers’ movement, but the Bérard tendency is a false one whose trajectory can easily be explained. All except one of its seven members came from the Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvrière. It was in fact an affinity-based regroupment around an element who had a certain charisma and it proved to be a real obstacle for its members as they engaged in the process of breaking with Trotskyism.[10] Immediately after the break with LO, at the beginning of 1973, Bérard wrote a pamphlet: The break with LO and Trotskyism, which described how Trotskyism had passed into the bourgeois camp after a long opportunist drift and its betrayal of internationalism during the Second World War. This very effective pamphlet had great success and three subsequent editions were produced. The last one came out in 1976 and included an introduction that corrected some ambiguities in the text.[11] But without doubt this document demonstrates the talents of its author, as does the article on “The period of transition”, especially the second part which appeared in Révolution Internationale (new series) no.8 (March-April 1974), which tackles the question of labour vouchers[12]. Carried away by his polemic with the Lassalliens, Marx considers the possibility that labour vouchers could be used in the period of transition from capitalism to communism as a means of individual payment based on the labour time given to society.[13] Bérard shows very well that this is a type of wage under another name and is a contradiction in terms that would act more as a fetter on the dictatorship of the proletariat than anything else. His argumentation is based on the criticisms made by Marx himself against the labour vouchers advocated by Proudhon (Poverty of Philosophy) or by Bray and Gray (Grundrisse). In the Grundrisse, Marx strikes a death blow to this panacea: “Because price is not equal to value, therefore the value-determining element – labour time – cannot be the element in which prices are expressed”[14] In other words, labour time cannot be measured in terms of itself. This critique of the illusions held on the question of labour vouchers that was made at the time by RI is today the position of the ICC. [15]

At that time Bérard was participating in the work of reappropriating the historic gains of the Communist Left current and his role was often a positive one, including in the discussions between the various groups that emerged in the United Kingdom.

However, such militant qualities can change from being a factor that strengthen the organisation to a factor towards its destruction. Very quickly, Bérard and his followers were to express extreme confusion and prejudice on the organisation question.

In the Spring of 1973, after five years of its existence, after the regroupment that took place in France,[16] the group RI felt that it was necessary to make another step forward in the construction of the organisation by reappropriating the proletarian principle of centralisation. Up until then there had been an International Commission that had the task of coordinating the discussions that were to lead to the formation of the ICC; the proposal was then made to create an Organisation Commission, whose responsibility it would be to structure and give an orientation to the group. The debates proved to be very lively as a significant minority was still influenced by the contestationist and councilist ideas of May 68. This is why the new Commission was appointed with only a small majority at the national meeting of November 1973. However, the discussion did make it possible to clarify a central principle of marxism: that the organisational question is a vital necessity and an entirely political question in its own right,

This is the question around which the Bérard tendency was formed (very soon after they had been integrated into RI), crying out against the danger of bureaucratisation and demanding safeguards that would give protection against this diabolical threat. This revealed a real hostility towards continuity within the workers’ movement and they distrusted totally the organisational measures proposed, mistaking them for the (genuinely) Stalinist practices of the Trotskyists. Contrary to the disinterested nature and devotion of militants of the class of associated labour, the ex-LO tendency was deeply imbued with individualism: “It’s enough to signal the fact that some days after the vote installing the Organisation Committee, to which Bérard was opposed, the same Bérard proposed to MC the following deal: ‘I will vote in favour of the OC if you propose me for it, otherwise I will fight it’. MC sent Bérard packing with a flea in his ear, but did not make it public in order not to ‘crush’ Bérard publicly and to allow the debate to go to the roots. Thus the OC only represented a danger of ‘bureaucratisation’ because Bérard was not put on it. No comment!” [17]

Past, present and future of the proletariat

Following the article “Demand struggles and the emergence of the class-for-itself”, published in RI (new series) no.9 (May-June 1974), the tendency published “Fractions and the Party” in issue no.9 of the Study and discussion bulletin (September 1974). It revealed its vision of the proletariat and the organisation of the communist vanguard. It is immediately obvious that there is a break with the continuity of the workers’ movement. “If we are to understand what the communist fractions were in this period [of counter-revolution], it will not be by starting off from an organic ‘continuity’ that does not exist; we must refuse concepts such as ‘inheritance’, ‘acquisitions’ which confuse the question. We must stop looking for a purely ideological continuity (ideas giving rise to other ideas). We must start from the actual experience of the proletariat, the need for the class to exhaust in practice all the consequences of the historic crisis of wage labour. We say in practice because the workers come up against, are ‘organised’ within, capitalist relations and it is in a very concrete way, through bloody defeats, that they come up against a new reality that they cannot yet grasp: the proletariat can no longer assert itself as long as it remains wage labour”. Here we can see the shadow of Proudhon, who rejected workers’ struggles because, according to him, they led to the legitimisation of the boss. The tendency came to the same conclusion as the councilists: “The old workers’ movement is dead”.

In his reply, [18] comrade MC began by reaffirming the importance of continuity. “As they are not very proud of their parents, they prefer to say that they are bastards, organically as well as politically. To be completely comfortable with this, they want the proletariat and the entire communist movement to do likewise. The presence of this ‘continuity’, of the ‘past’, of ‘acquisitions’ is a nightmare for these comrades who return to it time and again in order to create safeguards against it. They wrap everything up, as is their wont, in a jumble of words, in which there are ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ for every taste but they never manage to completely hide the aversion they feel at the very word ‘acquisitions’, almost as much as for the word ‘organisation’. This is understandable: continuity, acquisitions, organisation, all demand a framework and rigorous boundaries which sit ill with those who gossip and chatter about everything while actually knowing very little, and with the phantasies of those who are ‘hunting after originality’.‘Have nothing to do with the past’ is the rallying cry of all the contestationists of France and the rest of the world, and not for nothing! To talk of a new coherence without identifying where it comes from or on what established positions it is based, to talk of a new coherence ‘with no past’ betrays megalomaniac pretensions worthy of a Duhring. Wise words about it being ‘necessary to go beyond’ only serve in this case as a fig leaf; to go beyond is never the same as to obliterate, it always has a basis in the past. To talk about going beyond without first answering the question ‘what aspect of the past must be preserved and why’ is just a trick and the worst kind of empiricism”.

He then goes into the vital importance of the contribution of the Communist Left and of the living tradition that it embodies despite the divergences existing between the groups that are a part of it today. Splits or elements coming out of leftism have always had great difficulty understanding the question of the heritage of the Communist Left, seeing only various heterogeneous and confused communist lefts.[19] This demonstrates their blindness as regards the enormous step forward that the Communist International (CI) represented and the huge contribution made by all those who, while being part of the CI, were able to identify its opportunist drift and learn the lessons. Conditions at the time made it impossible to unify the various Lefts, but in fact they were united despite national boundaries and their divergences, in their work as a fraction against opportunism and the liquidation of the old party. This is why a tradition of the Communist Left exists today, that is, there is a method, a fighting spirit, a series of positions which distinguish it and which act as a bridge thrown across the abyss of time towards the future world communist party. “Hembé has got the wrong address. He thinks that he is still speaking within and to LO. The various currents of the communist left certainly had their weaknesses and inadequacies. They often groped around and stammered. But they had the undying merit of having been the first to sound the alarm against the degeneration of the CI, of having defended, in different ways but with force, the fundamental principles of revolutionary marxism, of having been at the head of the proletariat’s revolutionary combat, and their stammerings were, and still are, an enormous contribution to the theory and practice of the proletariat, addressing as they do the problems and tasks of the proletarian revolution”.

By publishing their pamphlet outside of RI and refusing to participate in the National Meeting of November 1974, which was to take stock of the situation as regards the divergences, the ex-LO tendency placed itself outside of the organisation. Given the importance of the organisational question and the destructive role of the ‘tendency’, the general meeting of RI decided to formally exclude its members. At the end of the 1980s Bérard was associated with the Cahiers du doute [Notebooks of Doubt], then he disappeared into the void after having been briefly an advocate of primitivist theses. An altogether logical trajectory, the doubt referred to being not creative scientific doubt but the reflection of an enormous weakness of revolutionary conviction.

Lessons of these first struggles against modernism

The first lesson we must learn is that it is necessary to have in-depth discussions with elements who apply for candidature on the profound significance of the culture of debate within communist organisations, as opposed to democratism which tends to be verbose and to have a fetish for divergence.

The second lesson is the importance of the organisation question and the principles that must guide us in the construction of the organisation and the perspective of the future world Party. A profound understanding of the organisation question must prevent the formation within discussions of grouplets, even informal ones, that are based, not on political agreement, but on heterogenous criteria such as personal affinity, dissatisfaction with this or that orientation of the organisation or the contestation of a central organ. The communist organisation is based on loyalty to the organisation and to revolutionary principles and not on loyalty to one’s mates.

The third lesson flows from the error committed at the time by RI, which was not sufficiently attentive towards elements who were breaking collectively from a leftist organisation. Such a split is not systematically destined to failure but experience has shown that it is difficult to bring it to term. Splitting from a cohesive counter-revolutionary entity does not automatically mean understanding and reaching the coherence of revolutionary positions.

Now we come to the final lesson. Communist militancy is based on devotion to the cause, on theoretic vigilance and on revolutionary conviction; this protects us from the sirens of empiricism and immediatism. Modernism and its communisation avatar are, on the contrary, a huge danger acting, as they do, to dissolve the proletariat in the icy waters of doubt and ignorance, which reflects today’s world of capitalist decomposition.

The article in RI no.3 (old series), “On organisation”, which was written for a meeting organised by Informations et Correspondance Ouvrières in 1969, could only set out the premises of the organisation question, by specifically recalling this obvious point: the degeneration and the betrayal of revolutionary organisations of the past does not in any way mean that they were useless or dangerous, In 1973-74 the organisation question was addressed more bluntly and concretely with the process of building the organisation that was taking place (regroupments in various countries, the creation of the ICC). In the face of this practical challenge there was opposition, one expression of which was the Bérard tendency. Because of an incomplete break with Trotskyism and affinity-based defects, the Bérard tendency raised the standard of revolt against centralisation and against the vital need to change from a circle of friends to a political group, to go from the circle spirit to the party spirit. It was the classic expression of the penetration of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology within the proletariat, which was concretely expressed by an explosion of individualism and opportunist impatience that looks for shortcuts to reaching the communist goal. The fury of the communisers against the revolutionary organisation and the communist programme makes them much more dangerous today than the unoriginal intellectuals who poisoned the movement during the 1970s.

To leave the concluding words to comrade MC: “What are we to think of these little gentlemen who stroll so casually through the history of the workers’ movement as if they were in some local café. From all their cheap and boastful proclamations, the only thing relevant is the following conclusion: ‘The need to make a critical break from now on with the past’. RI has always insisted on the need, after fifty years of reaction and counter-revolution, to renew, continue, and transcend the past in a critical way, towards the climax that is the revolutionary assault of the proletariat. [It has placed] as well the emphasis on the fundamentally historic unity of the class, [whereas] contestationist renovators of all stripes have no other desire than to break, efface, sweep away the past in order to start from a virgin present, a new beginning, in other words, themselves”. [20]

Elberg

 

As we explained in the preceding articles in this series, the degeneration of the Communist International didn’t develop without provoking a response. In the face of this degeneration, left communist fractions stood up and energetically defended the principles being abandoned by the CI and, at the same time, tried to respond to the new questions posed by the entry of capitalism into its phase of decadence. These groups were all excluded and subjected to repression one after the other, while opportunist degeneration ate into the ranks of the International and the Communist Parties betrayed the proletarian camp.

This final article in the series highlights the trajectory of the principal groups and above all the fundamental lessons that we can draw from their combat.

1. The reaction to the opportunism within the CI: the birth certificate of the Communist Left

In the second part of this series we showed the basis on which the groups of the left arose within the Third, Communist International. As we recalled, the founding Congress was marked by some fundamental advances in the understanding of the conditions of the new historic period. However, for the majority, revolutionaries remained marked by the weight of the past and regressions were already being made in following congresses on a number of questions. This development, which heralded of the opportunist degeneration of the CI, had disastrous consequences for the revolutionary consciousness of the working class internationally. But, in the same way as the development of opportunism within the Second International gave rise to a proletarian response in the form of left currents, the growth of opportunism in the Third International met the resistance of the communist left - many of whose spokesmen, such as Pannekoek and Bordiga, had already proved in the old International to be among the best defenders of Marxism.  The latter was essentially an international current and had expressions in numerous countries from Bulgaria to Britain, the United States to South Africa. However, its most important representatives were to be found in the countries where the traditions of marxism were the strongest: Germany, Italy and Russia.

And if these groups didn’t reach the same level of clarity and cohesion, all of them looked for an alternative to the degeneration of the CI and tried to defend communist principles and the communist programme while confronting new questions brought about by the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence: questions such as, are the unions still organs of the working class or have they been enmeshed in the cogs of the bourgeois state? Was it necessary to finish with the tactic of “parliamentarism”? How to understand national liberation struggles in the era of global imperialism? What were the perspectives for the new Russian state? The raising of all these problems expressed the will to arm the International which itself was unable to comprehend all the implications of the new period of “wars and revolutions”.

But the lefts within the CI remained scattered, having few links between each other. Consequently, they were not really up to taking on the role of an international current of the communist left and thus undertake the real fight of a fraction within the CI. These elements of the left were moreover gradually excluded from the ranks of the CI, under the yoke of Stalinist repression. This was particularly the case with the Workers’ Group, formed in 1922, which was the only real reaction within the Communist Party of Russia to look like a serious fraction able to formulate its critiques, not in the framework of Russia, but against the CI as such[1], thus expressing a clear will to become involved in the combat at an international level. But very quickly it became victim of the repression from 1923; its main elements were imprisoned by the GPU, thus preventing the group from developing and fulfilling its role.

This fragmentation increased as the different groups were excluded. “At the time of the death of the CI, the German Left, which was already dispersed into several parts, fell into activism and adventurism, and was eliminated under the blows of a bloody repression; the Russian Left was inside Stalin's prisons; the weak British and American Lefts had long since disappeared. Outside Trot­skyism, it was essentially the Italian Left and what remained of the Dutch Left which, from 1928 on, would maintain a proletarian political activity -- without Bordiga and without Pannekoek -- by each making a different assessment of the experience that they had had.”[2] We can really see to what point the reflux of the revolutionary wave during the 1920’s and the first blows of the counter-revolution were a terrible test which wiped out a large part of the revolutionary minorities. But whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the lefts, it is nevertheless essential to consider them all as attempts by the proletariat to develop, at the historical level, a consciousness of the conditions of its revolutionary combat to overthrow capitalism. Further, they all had in common the characteristic of joining in the intransigent defence of the class terrain of the proletariat. Similarly, left communism didn’t come from out of nowhere but from the revolutionary movement of the time. On the contrary, it constituted an organic reaction to the abandonment of principles by the CI and its former vanguard, the Bolshevik Party. It was thus normal that as in Russia, in Italy, Germany and elsewhere the different groups of the communist left had come from inside the Communist Parties. It was time therefore for the fight of the fraction to straighten up the CI which was bending under the growing weight of opportunism: “It is the responsibility of the minority, which upholds the revolutionary programme, to conduct an organised struggle for its victory within the party. Either the Fraction succeeds, its principles triumph and the party is saved, or the party continues to degenerate and pass bag and baggage into the bourgeois camp. The moment when the proletarian party passes into the bourgeois camp is not easy to determine. However, one of the most important signs of this passage is the fact that no proletarian political life any longer appears within the party. It is the responsibility of the Left Fraction to continue the fight within the party as long as there remains any hope of redressing it; this is why during the late 1920’s and early 30’s, the left currents did not leave the parties of the CI, but were excluded, often by means of sordid manoeuvres”.[3]

It’s not a question here of asking why the fractions of the left were not up to “winning” the combat, nor of why, while the CI noted the reflux in the revolutionary wave, the necessity to fall back in good order and prepare the conditions for the resurgence of a future party was not more largely understood in its ranks. As the saying goes, with enough ifs, buts and maybes you could put Paris in a bottle! What’s important to us concerns rather the way in which the left fractions undertook the struggle against the opportunist degeneration of the CI. As we saw above, not all of them were to make the same contribution to the historic struggle of the proletariat against capitalist exploitation and the domination of the bourgeoisie.

It is thus indispensable to be able to draw all the lessons of their trajectories and the evolution that they went through during the counter-revolutionary period which opened up at the end of the 1920’s.

2. The fundamental contribution of the Italian Left

“Faced with the demise of the CI, the problem is posed of the formation of cadres capable of reconstructing the international organisation of the proletariat. With this aim it is necessary to set up fractions of the left in each country. The political basis of them must be found, in the first place, in the very foundations of the CI and perfected following a critique of all the events following the war. This critique should represent the specific contribution of each proletariat to the problems that the CI wasn’t able to resolve at the time of its foundation.”[4] Such was the orientation proposed by the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy to all the forces of proletarian opposition. This was in 1933, and the Italian Fraction, seeing the death of the CI, made an appeal to draw all the lessons of the setback of the revolutionary wave in order to arm the proletariat for future battles and assume political continuity up to the time when favourable conditions for the upsurge of a new class party came together. In other words, it was a question of taking on the real work of a fraction.

Among all the groups of the left involved in the fight against the opportunist degeneration of the CI at the end of the 20’s, the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy made the richest contribution by far. Why? Because it was alone in assimilating in depth the contribution of the Bolshevik Party within the 2nd International between 1903 and 1917; and because it understood that it was a matter of putting a similar work in place faced with the suicidal path taken by the CI. It was thus a question of presenting itself as: “an organisation inside the party which is united not by place of work, by language or by any other objective condition, but by a system of common conceptions on the problems posed to the party”. What appears essential to us here doesn’t reside in the content of the debates themselves but rather in the method with which the Italian Left tried to defend its positions with the aim of “redressing” the International. Disagreements between the CI and the CP of Italy appeared very early on, from 1920-21, at the time when the CI declared the slogan of the “United Front”, of a “workers’ government” and the creation of mass parties through the fusion of the CP with various centrist currents. Up to 1925, the majority of the CP of Italy, animated in particular by Amadeo Bordiga, turned out to be the most determined to counter all this political opportunism. But the process of the “Bolshevisation” of the Communist Parties changed the conditions in which the left was able to undertake the fight, since the 1925 mid-April enlarged Executive of the CI ordered the elimination of the “Bordiga tendency” for the Third Congress of the CP of Italy. Despite this political manoeuvring, the new “minority” of the Italian CP tried to give itself all the means to pursue the combat within the Communist International. This is what it did at the Pantin Congress of April 1928 by constituting itself as “the Left Fraction of the Communist International” and not only of the Italian CP. Faced with pressures, manoeuvres and the denigrations which became the norm within the Communist Parties, the Fraction never gave up and was able to defend the principles of the communist programme as much through the press – fortnightly publication (monthly from 1933) of the journal Prometeo – as through interventions in the factories and demonstrations. It was also very active in opening up to common work with groups at the international level through the confrontation of positions with a view to the regroupment of revolutionary forces on the basis of clear principles and a clear programme.

This work became even more crucial from 1933 when the disarmament of the international proletariat faced by the victory of Nazism in Germany largely consecrated the victory of the counter-revolution. The time was no longer to struggle for turning the CI around but of drawing the lessons of the defeat of the revolution and the degeneration of the International so as to strengthen the world proletariat and prepare the conditions for the resurgence of the future party. For that to happen it was important not to avoid any questions and of facing up to the fundamental problems confronted by the proletariat and its organisations since October 1917. This theoretical and political work, exemplified by Bilan, wouldn’t have been possible without a profound understanding of the demands of the work of a fraction. In 1935, taking on board the definitive passage of the CP into the camp of the counter-revolution, it henceforth saw itself as an external fraction in order to continue to lead the fight for communism: “This special situation of the Third International has already resulted in a great number of capitulations coming mainly from the fact that militants think it essential is to keep the organic links with the Communist Parties, and who haven’t understood that the essential is to construct the organism which is demanded by the new situation, and which has to find a communist solution to the same problems which have given birth to centrism.”[5]

The theoretical and political contribution of the Italian Fraction up to 1944-1945 will subsequently be continued and enriched by the Communist Left in France up to 1952 and the International Communist Current from 1975![6]

3. The failure of the KAPD to take up the fight of a fraction

Unfortunately the German Left was unable to follow the same trajectory. If, very early on, the KAPD defended clear positions on the rejection of parliamentary work or participation in the unions[7], it wasn’t able to achieve the same organisational coherence of the Italian Left, seeing itself as having an organic continuity with the old party. Quite to the contrary, its whole trajectory after its exclusion from the CI at its 3rd Congress in September 1921, would even be characterised by calling into question the purely proletarian nature of the revolution in Russia (and of the Bolshevik Party) to the profit of a vision of a “dual revolution”, both bourgeois and proletarian; bourgeois, because it suppressed feudalism in order to bring capitalism to the countryside; proletarian, because it suppressed capitalism in the towns. The same incomprehension of the gradual process of degeneration is found in its analysis of the 3rd International, which was already thought of as having been totally absorbed by the Russian state. Thus, the KAPD thought that all the sections of the CI (the Communist Parties) were definitively lost. This implied that no revolutionary fractions could arise from within it or within the Communist Parties. This whole theoretical scaffolding justified the proclamation of a Communist Workers’ International (KAI). This totally artificial and voluntarist foundation of an alternative International led to the party splitting (between partisans and opponents of the KAI) and its numerical disintegration. It revealed a lack of understanding of the role of the party within the class and the relationship between fraction and party that could only lead to failure.

This suicidal policy was to be heavy with consequence for the revolutionary movement since it considerably weakened the capacity of the left communist fractions to group together in order to carry on the fight against the degeneration of the CI to the end.[8] The Dutch Left, which subsequently took up the theoretical spirit of the German Left, went on to amplify these errors on the organisational question. The councilist current, in the image of the Group of Internationalist Communists (founded in 1927), came to purely and simply deny the necessity for revolutionary organisations as an active factor of the class struggle and of the development of consciousness. This was to the profit of a federation of “working groups” reduced to the sole role of giving an opinion. This was a real regression on the question of organisation within the communist left since the latter was reduced to a merely decorative addition to the class. Moreover, the century just passed is there to witness the weakness of the councilist current faced with the challenges posed to revolutionaries in the decadence of capitalism.

4. Trotsky and the Left Opposition: a catastrophic policy

“In the past, we have defended the fundamental notion of the ‘fraction’ against the idea of an ‘opposition’. By fraction we understand it to be the organism which builds the cadres to ensure the continuity of the revolutionary struggle and which is called upon to become the protagonist of the proletarian victory. Against us, the concept of the ‘opposition’ has triumphed within the International Left Opposition. The latter has affirmed that you should not have to proclaim the necessity for the formation of cadres: the key to events can be found in the hands of centrism and not in the hands of the fraction. This divergence has now taken on a new aspect: the basic contrast is the same, although at a first look it seems that the problem today is this: for or against new parties. For the second time comrade Trotsky totally neglects the work of the formation of cadres, thinking it possible to pass immediately to the construction of new parties and of a new International”. This statement made by the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy in the first number of its theoretical review Bilan contains the central question posed to all the organisations engaged in the reaction to the degeneration of the CI: “What are the tasks of the hour? The fight of the fraction or the creation of a new party?” These two discordant approaches express a major divergence between the Left Fraction and Left Opposition led by Trotsky.

As we described in the preceding article, the years 1921-1922 were marked by the combat led by Lenin against the rise within the Communist Party of Russia, then of the CI, of the bureaucratic faction led by Stalin. Although the means Lenin advocated expressed a clear inability to remedy the situation, Lenin well understood that the direction taken by the RCP distanced itself a little more each day from the proletarian camp.

However, he put all his political energy into a desperate battle against the growth of Stalinism and asked Trotsky to join with him in the fight against bureaucratism in general and Stalin in particular.[9]

But from 1923, and his forced retreat from political life, a real, open crisis broke out within the RCP. On one side, the bureaucratic faction consolidated its grip, initially under the form of a “triumvirate” formed by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, whose main cement was its need to isolate Trotsky. This enterprise showed itself in the form of a real cabal against the “best of the Bolsheviks”, as he recalled in his autobiography: “Lenin was resting at Gorki; myself at the Kremlin. The epigones were enlarging the circles of their plot. (...) A whole new science was created: the fabrication of artificial reputations, making up biographical fantasies, claims of a leadership appointed in advance. (...) Later, when Zinoviev and Kamenev fought Stalin, the secrets of this first period were revealed by the very accomplices in the plot; because it really was a conspiracy. A secret political bureau was created to which all the members of the official political bureau belonged except me. (...) Leaders in the party and the state were chosen systematically according to a single criterion: ‘against Trotsky’. (...) Thus a certain type of ‘careerism’ was determined which later became openly called ‘anti-Trotskyism’. (...) At the end of 1923, in all the sections of the Communist International, the same work was undertaken: Leaders were removed, others kept their places according to the attitude that they had taken towards Trotsky.”[10]

Since then, during the course of 1923, an opposition appeared in the ranks of the RCP. It took the form of a political platform signed by 46 militants either close to Trotsky, or coming from the Democratic Centralist group. This “Platform of the 46” expressed two things above all:

- the necessity for greater state planning in the economic domain;

- a warning against the suffocation of the internal life of the party.

But, at the same time, the platform publicly took its distance from the Left Communists within the RCP, labelling them “unhealthy”.[11]

Although Trotsky didn’t sign the Platform, he openly took part in this left opposition while several times showing hesitations to engage with the struggle against the Stalinist faction in a determined and intransigent way, thus revealing a tendency towards centrism that made him more and more incapable of defending essential principles. This indecision showed itself at the 5th Congress of the CI (June 1924) when Bordiga pressed him to become the spokesman of a Left Opposition at an international level. Trotsky refused, even asking Bordiga to approve the motion of the 13th Congress of the RCP so as not to be excluded.

While we can always invoke individual characteristics, the essential reason for Trotsky’s timidity lay in his incapacity:

- to understand that Stalinism constituted the bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia:

- to draw the lessons of how the politics undertaken by the party (in which he had largely participated) had accelerated the course of its degeneration.

In other words Trotsky and the opposition in Russia did not at all understand the meaning of the struggle to be waged, namely, fraction work aimed at re-directing the party away from its opportunist course. Instead of that, the Opposition continued to defend tooth and nail “the banning of fractions” adopted at the 10th Congress of the RCP in 1921. Consequently, “inasmuch as it sees itself, not as revolutionary fraction trying to safeguard the theoretical and organisational gains of the October Revolution, but as a loyal opposition to the Russian Communist Party, it will not go beyond a certain ‘manoeuvrism’, making unprincipled alliances with the aim of changing an almost completely gangrened party (for example, Trotsky looking for the support of Zinoviev and Kamenev who had continually slandered him since 1923). For all these reasons, one could say that the ‘left opposition’ of Trotsky in Russia always fell below the proletarian oppositions which appeared from 1918.”[12]

However, the oppositional tendency succeeded in organising itself internationally but in a dispersed fashion, without any real rigour on the organisational level. It was only from 1929 and the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR that an International Left Opposition organised itself in a more centralised way without being able to go beyond the errors and confusions carried by the CI[13].

Consequently, it “constituted in more ways than one the extension of what had been represented by the setting up and the struggle of the ‘Left Opposition’ in Russia. It went backwards on the main ideas and claimed the first four congresses of the CI. Moreover, it perpetuated the ‘manoeuvrism’ which already characterised the ‘Left Opposition’ in Russia. In many ways this ‘Opposition’ was an unprincipled regroupment of all those who wanted to make a left criticism of Stalinism. It banned all real political clarification within its ranks and left to Trotsky, who was seen as a living symbol of the October Revolution, the task of becoming its spokesman and ‘theoretician’. In these conditions it very quickly turned out incapable of resisting the effects of the counter-revolution which was developing on a global scale on the basis of a defeat of the international proletariat.”[14]

The incapacity of the Trotskyist current to become involved in the work of a left fraction, restricting itself to the role of a simple “opposition” to Stalinism, equally led it to see the construction of the party as a matter of “will” without taking into consideration “the conditions of the class struggle contingent as they are upon the historical development and the rapport de force of the existing classes.”[15]

So, far from bringing forward any credible contribution to the ranks of a working class suffering from the full force of the assaults of the counter-revolution, Trotskyism took over a good number of opportunist positions developed within the CI, actively participating in the disorientation of the world proletariat and finishing up capitulating and abandoning proletarian internationalism during the course of World War II in the name of anti-fascism and the defence of the “workers’ state”.[16]

Conclusion

The founding of the Communist International in March 1919 was the most profound undertaking by revolutionaries which provided the working class with an organisation capable of leading it to victory. A century later, the history of this heroic moment of the struggle of the proletariat, and the lessons that revolutionaries have drawn from it, should not be displayed like goods in a shop window. Quite the contrary; all this legacy must be at the heart of the preoccupations of revolutionaries today so that they are able to defend the clearest conception of how the party of tomorrow must be built. We hope that the effort of deepening the questions undertaken throughout this series of articles offers a pertinent contribution to the reflection and to the discussion in the whole of the revolutionary milieu on a subject of such great importance for future combats. For now, we think that we can affirm some major lessons regarding the political conditions in which the party will have to emerge:

1.      The foundation of the party must be determined by the conditions of the class struggle.

2.      The necessity for the party to be established before the outbreak of a revolutionary wave.

3.      The regroupment of revolutionary forces must be based on the clarification of principles programme and not on the basis of a simple desire to participate in the revolutionary struggle. As Bordiga said, the party is above all “a programmatic body and a will to act”.

4.      In the period preceding the foundation of the party, the fraction type of work is the one and only organisational form allowing revolutionaries to prepare for its construction. 

Nadjek (11th November 2022).

The eruption of populism in the world's most powerful country, which was crowned by the triumph of Donald Trump in 2016, brought four years of contradictory and erratic decisions, denigration of international institutions and agreements, intensifying global chaos and leading to a weakening and discrediting of American power and further accelerating its historic decline. The situation is becoming more serious and internal divisions in American social life are appearing openly. The pandemic can be added to this, the management of which has shown the great irresponsibility of the populist approach, ignoring preventative measures proposed by scientists to the point that the United States has the most deaths in the world. State terror, violence in the anti-racist (BLM) demonstrations, the growth of armed supremacist groups, the increase in criminality; and within the framework of this ferocious escalation of events, on 6 January 2021, Trumpist gangs took over the Capitol, the 'symbol of democratic order', to try to prevent the ratification of the result in favour of the Biden faction[1]. The pandemic has accelerated the tendencies to the loss of control of the social situation; the internal divisions of the American bourgeoisie were sharpened in an election where, for the first time in history, the president and candidate for re-election accused the system of the most democratic country in the world of "electoral fraud" in the style of a "banana republic". The USA is now the epicentre of social decomposition.

 

In order to explain, through a marxist analysis, this "new" situation of the old superpower, we need an historical approach. First of all, we must explain how it was that the United States became the major world power, the country which dominated trade, politics and war, and how its money became a world currency. In the first part of this article we will examine the historic journey undertaken by the United States, from its founding to its highest point, its rise as uncontested world policeman, that's to say that we will look at events from the end of the eighteenth century to the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. This is the historic period which has been marked by the supremacy of American capital at the world level. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc marked the beginning of the final phase in the evolution of capitalism: social decomposition[2]. With this phase also begins the decline of American leadership and the slide of the bourgeois system into chaos and barbarity. The second part of this article will deal with the period from 1990 to today. In 30 years of the decomposition of bourgeois society, the United States has become a factor of aggravation of chaos, and its world leadership will not be recovered whatever the Biden team proclaims in its speeches. It is not a question of wishes; it is the characteristics of this final phase of capitalism which determines the tendencies it is obliged to follow, leading inexorably into the abyss if the proletariat cannot put an end to it through world communist revolution.

 

1 - The formation of the United States: from the American dream to the reality of capitalism

 

When Marx wrote Wage Labour and Capital, and above all Capital, those great classic of marxism, he examined the internal workings of the most developed capitalist country of the time: Britain, the home of the industrial revolution and birthplace of modern capitalism. In the 18th century, the United States had barely begun to consolidate itself as a country on the new continent. The Declaration of Independence by the 13 colonies on 4 July, 1776 and the drafting of the Constitution of the United States would push forward the dizzying development of capitalism in North America. 

 

In this article we are not going to elaborate on the history of the 13 British colonies. However, we would like to stress that one of the great complaints of the colonies came about because of increases in taxes and the lack of "representation", that is why the slogan was "One Man, One Vote" or "No taxation without representation". Democracy began to appear as the best framework for the development of "free enterprise and private property" and it wasn't a coincidence if the United States began to consider itself as the guarantor of democracy throughout the world.

 

The 18th century was dominated by the great colonial powers: Britain, France, Spain and, to a lesser extent, Holland and Portugal. That is why the recognition of the independence of the United States happened in a climate of rivalries and territorial conflicts between these powers. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 recognised the independence of the United States and their territorial rights up to the Mississippi. France owned Louisiana; Spain dominated Florida and had absolute control over the Vice-Royalty of New Spain, which later became Mexico.

 

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention decided to create a Constitution for the 13 new states, thus eliminating the confrontations between them (between New Jersey and New York for example). The aim was to resolve the problem of empty coffers in order to face up to invasion from the west by Britain and Spain. At the same time as the endorsement of the Constitution in 1789, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" was also approved. As the growing bourgeoisie was a new exploiting class and capitalism was a system based on the extraction of surplus value from the working class, all these declarations about "rights" as in the motto of the French revolution "Liberté, égalité et fraternité" were only ideological covers to justify the modern relations of capitalist exploitation, a programme to achieve the consolidation of capitalism against the old feudal regime and its aftermath. These grandiose "declarations" would soon become just a cover for a fierce exploitation without any semblance of humanity: slavery, racism and the fight for civil rights in the United States are a demonstration of the chasm between the "affirmations" of democracy and the reality of life under capitalism.

 

Ships arrived at the East Coast ports filled with immigrants aspiring to the new and fertile territories and wanting to create their own businesses; in other words, the "American dream" was a possibility for millions of migrants to improve their situation. The law permitted migration and numerous Europeans left to colonise the American West. The American population increased enormously thanks to immigration. In 1850, there were 23 million inhabitants and by 1910 there were 92 million, or more than the population of Britain and France put together. In the ascendant stage of capitalism emigration was different to emigration today. At the time of the expansion of capitalism, the possibility of better living conditions was real whereas today it's simply a matter of a blind and suicidal flight, a real dead-end. Thus today, the caravans of thousands of migrants leaving Central America and trying to get to the United States overland are confronted with hunger, trafficking gangs and state repression, the majority of them finding only unspeakable suffering or death pure and simple.

 

The expansion of capitalism towards the West was known, in a phrase coined in 1845, as "Manifest Destiny". Capitalism spread and opened up through the barrel of a gun, with Winchesters in hand; indigenous people were displaced or exterminated and the survivors of this violent and forced expropriation were confined to reservations. "The frontier" was extended throughout the 18th century in the name of a so-called predestination with "a mission dictated by divine will". "Manifest Destiny" expressed the ideology of the first colonists, Protestants and Puritans, who saw themselves as a "chosen" nation destined to spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This expansion accompanied the arrival of the railways[3] and the growing need for the supply of merchandise. It seemed as if capitalism had undergone an unlimited expansion, based on the idea of permanent progress in an almost autonomous state. This "internal expansion" continued until the early 20th century.

 

At the beginning of the 19th century, the young American republic adopted a doctrine that would mark its history: the Monroe Doctrine. Elaborated in 1823 by Quincy Adams and presented to the US Congress by James Monroe, this doctrine was a cornerstone of American foreign policy which could be summed-up in the phrase "America for the Americans". It was already clear from the Doctrine that the United States was not only proclaiming its will to put an end to the presence of Europeans on American soil but also that the base of this doctrine was in fact insufficient in relation to the territories that the United States were going to dominate on the planet.

 

This mythical "frontier" underwent a dizzying expansion in the 19th century. Napoléon Bonaparte had re-sold Louisiana and all the Mississippi Basin, and then the Americans brought Florida from Spain (1821) and won the war against Mexico in 1846, gaining more than half of Mexican territory and thus reaching the Pacific Coast. Later, in 1898, the war between the United States and Spain was concluded with an American victory, which took control of Cuba, other Caribbean islands and the far-off Philippines. This already demonstrated the decline of the Spanish Empire and the growth of the United States as a regional power[4] . "The same year that George Washington became president of the United States, fifteen ships loaded with silk and tea arrived from the exotic and legendary Asiatic port of Canton, while ships from New York, Boston and Philadelphia boldly penetrated the zone monopolised by the East India Company. And in less than fifteen years American-flagged vessels, armed with their valiant marines, were stopping over in Calcutta, the Philippines, Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco. The history of the foreign trade of the United States began in a spectacular manner.[5]  In the Pacific, from the middle of the 19th century, the United States began to make its presence felt in contributing to the "opening" of Japan to capitalism. At the same time, Britain penetrated China and established its relations with this Asiatic country. However, at this stage, the United States did not have enough power to spread its presence and defend its possessions, which came about above all at the beginning of the 20th century.

 

The long process of the incorporation of the States of the Union began in 1787 up to the last additions in 1959. Alaska was brought from the Russians in 1867, but it was only in January 1959 that Alaska became the 49th state and Hawaii became the 50th in August of the same year. We're talking about more than 170 years, a period during which the territory extended up to the conquest of the "final frontier", that's to say up to the Pacific coast of California. In the frenetic advance of capitalism over the immense lands of North America, it was necessary to confront the slave states of the South for two reasons: first, to consolidate the unity of the national state by putting an end to Southern secessionism which constantly threatened independence and, on the other hand, to eliminate the archaic system of slavery which then allowed the existence of "free citizens"... free to sell their labour! This was a more necessary undertaking given that right up to the First World War, the United States suffered from a shortage of labour.

 

In the 19th century, the United States became the greatest importer of slaves. The labour of these agricultural slaves was concentrated in the states of the South. On the other hand, the industrial North was based on the development of the exploitation of wage labour, which posed a problem to capitalism: industry dominated the country and labour had to "circulate freely" so that capital could use it indiscriminately. The slave owners resisted this logic of capital and detached themselves from the industrial North. The bloody civil war (1861-1865) was a total victory for capitalism and gave a harsh lesson against separatist temptations. This advance of capitalism had been saluted by marxism because the relations of bourgeois production brought with them their gravediggers: the modern proletariat.  That's why "In a congratulatory address to Mr. Lincoln on his re-election as president, we expressed our conviction that the American Civil War would prove of as great import to the advancement of the working class as the American War of Independence had proved to that of the bourgeoisie."[6]

 

While the United States was engaged in its war of secession, in Mexico, France had imposed a member of the House of Habsburg as the Mexican Emperor. Napoleon III intended to fight over the backyard of the United States. It wasn't a question of the "compliance" of Uncle Sam or because the Monroe Doctrine was a fantasy, no; it was simply occupied by Civil War, but once that ended, the US was able to expel France from its natural zone of influence. So as to teach the Europeans a lesson and keep their future pretensions in check, the United States shot the Emperor Maximillian despite appeals from the European aristocracy and writers such as Victor Hugo. It was an episode that was to give the tone of future global policy.

 

At the beginning of the 20th century "the United States constituted the most vigorous capitalist society in the world and had the most powerful industrial production (...) Productivity increased more than ever before, the same for profits, wages and national revenue." "But when Marx died in the 1880s, US capitalism had caught up with British industrial production, and then passed it for good and all, to make the United States the leading industrial power in the world (...) The First World War resulted in a considerable drop in European production and an increase in US production, until by the time of the Russian Revolution the United States produced almost as much as the whole of Europe".[7]

 

For the American bourgeoisie and all its ideologues, it seemed that capitalist manna was something like a "natural characteristic" of the system; however, the reality was based on the conquest of a vast territory in which, as the "frontier" advanced towards the west, the demand for all sorts of supplies and goods increased, a process which was also capable of absorbing a great number of immigrants; and, while growth figures climbed, the borrowing which supported this expansion came from Europe. In 1893, Chicago became the site for the World's Fair, which put the United States in the top rank of industrial powers. But the "American Dream" was in fact reaching its limits; the beginning of the 20th century and the First World War announced the entry of capitalism into its historic decadence and new conditions were appearing, accounting for the evolution of the United States as it began to emerge as a world power.

 

2 - The First World War and the Great Depression of 1929

 

The First World War showed the need for a "new division of the world". Industrial powers like Germany arrived late to the division of the world market. Whereas France and Britain had gained much through the extent of their colonial conquests, and the United States dominated the American continent having consolidated its expansion from East to West, Germany had almost nothing and wanted a new carve-up of the world. Under capitalism there is no other means to find additional territory than from war and from 1914, war became the mode of life of decadent capitalism[8].

 

The "Great War" dragged all of Europe into destruction, massacres and barbarity pure and simple. Germany unleashed hostilities. It was the first time in the modern era that Europe had experienced so dramatic a situation.

 

The United States maintained its "neutrality" up to 1917. There was an enormous weight of illusions about the unlimited development of capitalism in a country that was far from the problems of Europe. Despite the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson maintained "neutrality"; a very useful neutrality as the United States increased production in a remarkable fashion, becoming the great provider of munitions to the Entente: military provisions of all sorts, food, etc. American ships went back and forth across the Atlantic loaded with goods and material in order to supply the war front. That's why Germany knew that it would have to declare war on the United States in order to put a stop to this logistical support to Britain and France. In 1917, Germany renewed its submarine attacks without limitations. Added to this, Germany interfered in Mexico, profiting from the social upheavals in this country. Berlin asked the Mexican government to declare war on the United States and added that victory for the German camp would see Mexico regain its lost territories[9]. In order for the US to maintain its role as major supplier and to protect its ships, its Panama Canal and a “back-yard” prey to convulsions, "neutrality" was already useless and entry into the war was an imperious necessity for the American bourgeoisie, despite the attempts of Wilson to block this route. In the final analysis, the logic of capitalism prevailed against puritanical and sincere intentions for the maintenance of peace.

 

“America's entry into the war decisively changed the relation of industrial strength between the combatants, and, in consequence, the relation of military strength. Without the United States the industrial strength of Britain and France on the one hand and of Germany and her allies on the other was at least comparable, but with the United States the relation of strength changed to approximately three-to-one against Germany. With this the prospect of a German military victory became hopeless".[10]  The United States sent a million men to the Western Front, the main theatre on war, their industry was the great strategic arm that forced Germany to surrender, and the Treaty of Versailles established the conditions for the vanquished to pay war reparations. The United States pushed for the creation of the League of Nations on the basis of the "Fourteen Points" put forward by Woodrow Wilson. However, the United States never joined this organisation in order to maintain its "neutrality" in the event of future conflicts.

 

Whereas the industrial centres of Europe and their populations were badly hit by destruction and massacres, the United States, situated thousands of miles away from the battlefields, maintained industry at full growth and a population far away from the direct suffering produced by the war. France and Britain, the "victorious" countries, did not regain their industrial strength. In 1919, all the European belligerents had over 30% lower growth, while the United States came out of the war strengthened and with a concentration of more gold in its coffers than ever before. In the middle of the 19th century, Britain was the uncontested world power and its Empire, over which "the sun never sets" was there to prove it, but after the First World War it had to reluctantly accept its position behind the Americans. The United States passed from the status of debtor to that of a major creditor and lender to Europe during the period after the war. The decline of capitalism inaugurated a new organisation within the imperialist constellation.

 

"The plight of the once powerful British economy was typified by the situation in 1926 when it resorted to direct wage cuts in a vain attempt to restore its competitive edge on the world market (…). The only real boom was in the USA, which benefited both from the sorrows of its former rivals and the accelerated development of mass production symbolised by the Detroit assembly lines churning out the Model T Ford. America’s coronation as the world’s leading economic power also made it possible to pull German capital from the floor thanks to the injection of massive loans".[11]

 

In reality, after the war, there was neither a recovery of the economy nor any expansion of new markets. For the United States, it was thanks to the war that it massively increased its exports to Europe, and the fact of having kept intact its industrial strength which reinforced the idea within the American bourgeoisie of "unlimited growth". However, 1929 and the Great Depression shattered this ideology and reminded everyone that capitalism had entered into its decadence and crisis and war would henceforth be its modus operandi.

 

The Great Depression hit America like a biblical curse. Massive unemployment, bankrupt businesses, hunger in the streets... the images of desolation were repeated across the whole country and the ravages spread to the rest of the world. The American state, under the direction of Franklin D. Roosevelt, decided to intervene. State capitalism, which had been taking shape since the First World War, became omnipresent and stepped in to save the economy. The "New Deal" was nothing other than Keynesianism; the state must invest in infrastructure in order to revitalise the whole of industry. The implementation of this plan was delayed and the expected positive effects took time to arrive. Thus, in the 1930s, the world's bourgeoisie looked for a way out of the situation and the only way out that the bourgeoisie could come up with was - a new world war, that was only possible through the crushing of the proletariat. This time the war would be more devastating and deadlier and the United States would come out of it still better positioned as the uncontested world power.

 

3 - The Second World War

 

Once again it was Germany that had to question the status quo. The annexation of Austria and the blitzkrieg invasion of Poland in 1939 opened up new hostilities. The United States, whose territory was sheltered from the battlefields, again maintained its neutrality. While France was invaded by an army of occupation and Britain suffered German bombings, the United States re-activated its role as supplier for the front; unemployment was re-absorbed and American industry again took on its frantic production. It wasn't the New Deal but rather the war which enabled the recovery of the American productive apparatus.

 

Germany seemed unstoppable. Within the United States there was strong resistance to any entry into the conflict, the "isolationist" wing normally concentrated in the Republican Party wasn't in agreement with America's entry into the war, and there was strong sympathy from sectors of American society towards the Axis powers and particularly towards Germany. The American bourgeoisie knew that Germany would take control of Europe if it didn't intervene. Contrary to the First World War, this time Japan, which had already spread its imperialist ambitions to Manchuria and occupied great parts of China, immediately came into the war on the side of the Axis (Berlin-Rome-Tokyo) and tried to dominate the Pacific.

 

To be able to enter the war it was necessary for the American bourgeoisie to break the isolationists but also to convince the population and neutralise the working class behind the Star Spangled Banner. An attack was necessary in order to justify its entry into the war without resistance. Increasing provocations against Japan bore fruit and in December 1941, the Empire of Hirohito took the bait and attacked Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. The Machiavellianism of the American bourgeoisie is worthy of study: the loss of life and material destruction are secondary when it's a question of imperialist objectives[12]. Once again, America's entry into the war tipped the balance in favour of the Allies and all the industry of the former was given over to the furnishing of arms and other material to the Allies. The New Deal hadn't fulfilled its promise of full employment: in 1938 there were 11 million unemployed and in 1941 it was still more than 6 million. It was only when the whole of the industrial apparatus had been established in order to respond to the demands of the war that unemployment finally fell. And with that the mirage of having surmounted the economic crisis reappeared on the American horizon.

 

The American bourgeoisie had built a modern army capable of intervening throughout the world and scientific research had already harnessed nuclear fission. Its peace-loving "neutrality" was armed to the teeth. To be an economic power is intimately linked to the capacity of the nation state to defend its interests and to spread them throughout the world.

“Under capitalism, there is no fundamental opposition between war and peace, but there is a difference between the ascendant and decadent phases of capitalist society and, consequently, a difference in the function of war (and in the relationship between war and peace) in the two respective phases. While in the first phase war had the function of enlarging the market with a view towards a greater production of consumer goods, in the second phase production is focused essent­ially on the production of the means of destruction, i.e. with a view towards war. The decadence of capitalist society is strikingly ex­pressed in the fact that whereas in the ascendant period wars led to economic development, in the decadent period economic activity is geared essentially towards war.

This doesn’t mean war has become the goal of capitalist production, which remains the prod­uction of surplus value, but it does mean that war, taking on a permanent character, has become decadent capitalism’s way of life".[13]

 

The Second World War was clearly much more destructive than the First. Globally more than 50 million died, which included a great number of civilians. The destruction of factories and workers' districts in enemy countries introduced a new element because, in order to weaken the adversary's capabilities, it was essential to destroy the centres of the workforce and munitions factories and facilities for producing food and medicines etc. The destruction of Europe enabled the rise of a second-rank power, the USSR, whose imperialist appetites seemed insatiable. The United States had to use its new power, the atomic bomb, in order to negotiate with Stalin from a position of strength. That's why at Yalta, in February 1945, while the Americans had not yet completed the building of their atomic weapons, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had left the Russians guessing on the question, the latter wanting to invade Japan before May. Under Harry S. Truman, the Potsdam Agreement was completed by the beginning of August 1945, but Truman received telegrams confirming the success of atomic bomb tests over New Mexico and was able to put more pressure on the USSR knowing that they already had the weapon that would put them on top of the Russians. The United States dropped their atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on a Japan that was already beaten and no longer representing a threat to the Allies, in order to impress the Russians. The atomic bombardment put an end to the ambitions of the USSR. The Second World War was not yet finished and the Cold War had already raised its head.

 

4 - The Cold War: a consequence of the "American Century"

 

The United States secured global control at the end of the Second World War. The creation of the UN, the Bretton Woods Agreement (in 1945, 80% of the world's gold was in the United States), the World Bank, the IMF, GATT, NATO... represented a whole organisational architecture which assured American world superiority at the economic, political and, above all, military levels. American bases multiplied around the planet, 800 of them plus the secret bases probably existing in countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia. During the war the US, with over 12 million men under arms, had doubled its Gross National Product, and by the end of the war it accounted for “half of the world’s manufacturing capacity, most of its food surpluses, and almost all of its financial reserves. The United States held the lead in a wide range of technologies essential to modern warfare and economic prosperity. Possession of extensive domestic oil supplies and control over access to the vast oil reserves of Latin America and the Middle East contributed to the US position of global dominance” (D. S. Painter, Encyclopaedia of US Foreign Policy)[14].

 

Thus, "American strength was favoured by advantages accruing from America’s relative geographic isolation. Distant from the epicentre of both world wars, the American homeland had suffered none of the massive destruction of the means of production that the European nations had experienced, and its civilian population had been spared the terror of air raids, bombardments, deportations, and concentration camps that led to the death of millions of non-combatants in Europe (more than 20 million civilians in Russia alone) ".[15]

 

From 1945 the major axis of American Cold War foreign policy was the "containment of the USSR" and of the falsely-named "Communist" bloc. The ambitions of the USSR were soon seen openly: Russia swallowed up the Baltic States, installed its government in Poland, negotiated access to the Black Sea with Turkey, fuelled the civil war in Greece, and did not hide its claims towards Japan and the Kuril Islands with which it would strengthen its power from Europe to the Pacific. The United States conceived its "Marshall Plan" strategy in 1947: more than $12.5 billion for urban reconstruction, for hunger relief, and to supply goods across Europe. In short, a great part of the Marshall Plan was to enable the Europeans to continue buying American goods. Otherwise, the main objective was to prevent the development in Europe of the conditions that allowed the USSR, and the Communist parties faithful to Moscow, to stir up the socially volatile situation and integrate new members into the Russian bloc, the case of Czechoslovakia being an eloquent example that could not be repeated.[16]

 

At the end of the war, George Marshall arrived in China in order to try to form a coalition. However Mao Tse Tung of the CCP and Chiang Kai-Shek of the Kuomintang, advised by Moscow, put their rivalries to one side and made a common front against the Americans and broke off negotiations in Spring 1946.

 

At the end of the Second World War, the USSR and the United States met to divide up Korea from the 36th parallel, but in 1950, the North, supported by the Russians, invaded South Korea which was under American control. The horrors of the Cold War had come into macabre fruition[17]: the war lasted 3 years and cost 3 million deaths, with families divided and long-lasting distress for the population of Korea. The United States succeeded in gaining the upper hand and pushed the North Korean forces towards the initially agreed frontier. This war marked the beginning of a situation in which the United States was the first and uncontested world superpower for the next 40 years.

 

Europe was divided by the "Iron Curtain". NATO was created in 1949 for the military protection of Western Europe, and in 1955 the USSR responded with the Warsaw Pact. The world was plunged into a permanent threat of conflict, missiles and all sorts of armaments appeared on the landscape as capitalist "peace" became a new Sword of Damocles.

 

Little by little the United States imposed its authority. In 1956, when the UK and France, with the connivance of Israel, acted impulsively in trying to take back the Suez Canal, the Americans imposed their discipline and relegated France and the United Kingdom to a secondary role behind the USA.

 

The only direct confrontation between the two bloc leaders, USA and USSR, was the "Cuban missile crisis" in 1962, which ended in a secret agreement between the Kennedy administration and Nikita Khrushchev. Other confrontations of this period were made through the means of intermediaries.

 

The most important stumbling block for the "American century" was the war in Vietnam. Vietnam was divided between North and South, the South being under the influence of Washington and the North under the USSR and China. This war led to numerous divisions within the American bourgeoisie and the idea of being "bogged-down in the Vietnamese swamp", as well as the progress of Moscow in the Middle East, contributed to the Americans ending this war and re-orientating their foreign policy. Although more than 500,000 men had been sent to Vietnam in 1968, they had to abandon this former French colony and, in 1973, the "Paris Accords" were signed stipulating the departure of the Americans from South Vietnam. That soon resulted in the taking of Saigon by North Vietnam in 1975 and a reunification under the "Communist" aegis with the grandiose name of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

 

Apart from this fiasco, which was not insignificant, the Americans succeeded in reaching the Moon and leading in technological and scientific research in the military domain. In the rivalry with the "Communist" bloc they were successful in containing the USSR across the whole American continent. Cuba was an exception which Washington guaranteed would not be repeated: the Monroe Doctrine was applied to the letter. Cuban influence was limited to the romanticism around the revolution of the men with beards which nurtured the guerrilla leftism symbolised by Che Guevara. In the Middle East the United States made Israel its bridgehead in order to contain Arab flirtations with Moscow. In the Far East however, the failure of the Vietnam War brought something positive for Washington: it succeeded in drawing China into the Western Bloc and there was a definite break by the former with the Russians. Naturally, the United States would have to abandon its previous position recognising Taiwan as the government of China; imperialism has no remorse or shame, such sentiments do not exist for it and what prevails is the cold calculation of the most sordid interests so as to assure power and control over others. The Cold War saw four decades of manoeuvrings, "containment" and finally the encirclement of the USSR.

 

The United States did not intervene in the Hungarian uprising of 1956 but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan at the beginning of the 1980s it was forced to support and underwrite the "resistance" against the Soviet invasion, thus giving birth to the mujahideen and what later became al-Qaida, led by Osama Bin Laden, who served alongside the Americans. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, all these "allies" had started to play their own games to the point of daring to rebel against and attack their old master.

 

Conclusion

 

From the end of the 18th century the establishment of the United States allowed it to conquer an immense territory and welcome a constant flow of emigration. The industrialisation of the North won out over the anachronistic system of slavery in the South and, with it, capitalism consolidated the basis of its expansion. At the end of the nineteenth century the United States was already a country whose territory spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We should note here that the United States is literally the sum of states which generates a national unity maintained under constraints. But the "Manifest Destiny" was that the United States would spread through the entire world; after all, this "destiny" was that of American capitalism, expressed in the dreams of the first pioneers. The end of American expansion on its home territory and the Monroe Doctrine’s demarcation (in the face of the European powers) of the US zone of influence throughout the American continent coincided with the opening of the 20th century and the beginning of capitalism's decadence. The First World War was the open expression of the end of the progressive phase of capitalism and of the beginning of its historic decline.

 

The United States came out of the First World War much strengthened, with the lenders of yesterday becoming debtors; in contrast to Europe, where even the victors Britain and France were unable to resume their former place in the concert of nations, the United States positioned itself as the world's first power and became the great provider of the Entente. Being geographically distant from the battlefields, its industrial production and its population remained intact and concentrated on production in order to supply the front. The Great Depression showed to what point state capitalism had already taken over economic, social and military life. Although the New Deal didn't resolve the crisis it did show the role of the state. The Second World War more than confirmed the role of the United States as a world power. This time its role as provider was greater, reserves of gold were concentrated in American coffers and its army was present over the whole planet: sky, sea and land. All its productive and scientific apparatus was subordinated to the needs of war. At the end of the Second World War, we saw the crowning of the great victor of two world wars: the United States. The Cold War was completely dominated by the Americans, the Russian bloc imploded in 1989 without a shot being fired or a missile launched from the West. But American domination was founded on shifting sands as its empire was gangrened by the cancer of militarism. Whereas the Soviet bloc, with Russia at its head, was exhausted and dislocated through the depletion of its productive apparatus after decades of trying to keep up with the arms race, the United States itself undermined its supremacy under the weight of an economy subject to the demands of war. The position of the world's first power isn't defended by poetry but by the maintenance and expansion of a powerful army. It's the same in this period where the "American Century" ends. The weight of military expenditure had driven the USSR into the ground, but the armaments industry is a domain of waste pure and simple for world capital, for capital as a whole, and so the USSR is not alone in suffering from this weight. We will analyse in the second part how these developments have also had a negative effect on the competitive capacity of American capital.

 

The United States can be considered as the classic country of the decadence of capitalism. If Britain and France were the powers of capitalism's ascendency, the United States has become the greatest power through the conditions created by the decadence of capitalism, in particular war as "a way of life" of a system in decline. This decadence has opened up its terminal phase, social decomposition, which, since the end of the 1980s, has marked a qualitative accentuation of the contradictions of this mode of production. Thirty years of social decomposition have led the central countries of capitalism, and above all the United States, to become the motor force of chaos.

 

Marsan

Last spring, the ICC held its 25th International Congress. A true general assembly, the Congress is a privileged moment in the life of our organisation; it is the highest expression of the centralised and international nature of the ICC. The Congress enables our entire organisation, as a whole, to debate, clarify and develop orientations. It is our sovereign organ. As such, its tasks are to

1. to draw up analyses and general guidelines for the organisation, particularly with regard to the international situation;
2. to examine and take stock of the organisation's activities since the previous Congress;
3. to define its perspectives for its future work.

Revolutionary organisations do not exist for themselves. They are both the expression of the historic struggle of the proletariat and the most determined part of that same struggle. It is the working class which entrusts its organisations to revolutionaries, so that they can play their role: to be an active factor in the development of proletarian consciousness and the struggle towards revolution.

It is therefore up to the revolutionaries to give an account of their work to the class as a whole. By publishing a large part of the documents adopted at our last congress, this is the mission which this issue of our International Review has set itself.

The first task of this Congress was to take the measure of the gravity of the historical situation.

As the report on the Class Struggle indicates, with Covid 19, the conflict in Ukraine and the growth of the war economy everywhere, with the economic crisis and its raging inflation, with global warming and the devastation of nature, with the rise of every man for himself, of irrationality and obscurantism, and the decomposition of the entire social fabric, the 2020s is not only witnessing an addition of murderous scourges. All these scourges are converging, combining and feeding on each other in a kind of "whirlwind effect". The catastrophic dynamics of global capitalism mean much more than a worsening of the international situation. The very survival of humanity is at stake.

The “whirlwind” effect of decomposition

The 25th International Congress adopted as its first report an "Update of the Theses on Decomposition".

In May 1990, the ICC had adopted theses entitled "Decomposition, the ultimate phase of capitalist decadence", which presented our overall analysis of the world situation at the time of and following the collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc at the end of 1989. The central idea of these theses was that the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, which had begun during the First World War, had entered a new phase in its evolution, one dominated by the general decomposition of society. 27 years later, at its 22nd Congress in 2017, our organisation considered it necessary to update these theses for the first time by adopting a text entitled "Report on decomposition today (May 2017)". This text highlighted the fact that not only had the analysis adopted in 1990 been amply verified by the evolution of the situation, but also that certain aspects had taken on a new importance: the explosion in the flow of refugees fleeing wars, famine and persecution, the rise of xenophobic populism having an increasing impact on the political life of the ruling class...

Now, only 6 years later, the ICC has decided that it is necessary to update the 1990 and 2017 texts. Why so quickly? Because we are witnessing a spectacular increase in the manifestations of the general decomposition of capitalist society.

Faced with the evidence of the facts, the bourgeoisie itself is obliged to recognise this vertiginous plunge of capitalism into chaos and decay. Our report quotes extensively from texts intended for the world's political and economic leaders, such as the Global Risks Report (GRR), which is based on the analyses of a multitude of "experts" and is presented every year at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. The ICC is adopting a method used by the workers' movement, which consists of relying on the work of bourgeois experts to highlight the statistics and facts that reveal the reality of the capitalist world. The same method can be found in marxist classics such as Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England and Marx's Capital. In the GRR, we read: “The first years of this decade have heralded a particularly disruptive period in human history.. ... COVID-19...war in Ukraine... food and energy crises... inflation... geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare... unsustainable levels of debt... declining human development... Together, these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come.”

Here the bourgeoisie’s experts are putting their finger on a dynamic they fundamentally cannot understand. Yes, indeed, all these elements “are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade." But they can only stop there. In fact, they describe this dynamic as a "polycrisis", as if it were a question of different crises adding up. In reality - and only our theory of decomposition allows us to understand this -  behind this explosion of the worst scourges of capitalism lies one and the same dynamic: the rotting on its feet of this decadent system. The capitalist mode of production no longer has any perspective to offer, and given the inability of the proletariat so far to develop its revolutionary project, it is the whole of humanity that is plunging into the “no future” and its consequences: irrationality, withdrawal, atomisation... It is in this absence of perspective that we can find the deepest roots of the putrefaction of society, at every level.

Even in the proletarian camp, there is a tendency to put forward a specific and isolated cause for each of the catastrophic manifestations of present history; to fail to see the coherence of the whole process underway. There is then a great danger of :

• finding ourselves disorientated, lost, tossed about by one event after another ;
• focusing on a single aspect, however spectacular and devastating it may be (like the war in Ukraine, for example), and then falling into a kind of immediate catastrophism ("Quick, we absolutely must act because the third world war is about to break out");
• underestimating the danger, by failing to understand that the global dynamic is in fact a spiral where all the crises are interwoven, interlinked and multiplying.

We need to dwell a little on this risk of underestimating the danger of the historical situation of decomposition. At first sight, when someone shouts loudly about the imminent outbreak of the Third World War, they may say to themselves that they are planning for the worst. In reality, and the war in Ukraine confirms this once again, the real process that could lead to widespread barbarism, or even the destruction of humanity, is a combination of factors: war spreading through a multiplication of conflicts (in the Middle East, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, etc.), conflicts that are increasingly unpredictable amd irrational; a warming climate with its share of disaster; the gangsterism and the sense of no-future that are sweeping through ever-larger sections of the world's population... this process of decomposition is all the more dangerous because it is so elusive and insidious, gradually seeping into every pore of society.

And among the various factors which feed the plunge into decomposition, war (and the generalised development of militarism) constitutes the central factor, as a deliberate act of the ruling class.
This is why the imperialist situation was the second report debated at our congress: "In particular, the phase of decomposition accentuates one of the most pernicious aspects of war in decadence: its irrationality. From the opening of this phase, the effects of militarism become ever more unpredictable and disastrous. Our vulgar materialists do not understand this aspect and object that wars always have an economic motivation, and therefore a rationality. They fail to see that today's wars are fundamentally not economically but geostrategically motivated, and even then they no longer achieve their original objectives, but lead to the opposite result. (...) The war in Ukraine is an exemplary confirmation of this: whatever the geostrategic objectives of Russian or American imperialism, the result will be a country in ruins (Ukraine), a country ruined economically and militarily (Russia), an even more tense and chaotic imperialist situation from Europe to Central Asia and millions of refugees in Europe."
 

Within the organisation, some comrades disagree strongly with this analysis of the current imperialist dynamic. For them, the war in Ukraine is not just the result of a trend towards the bipolarisation of the world. Around China on the one hand and the United States on the other, two increasingly clearly defined camps are taking shape, two camps which, in time, could form blocs and confront each other in a third world war.

The Congress was another opportunity to respond: " The consequences of the conflict in Ukraine do not lead to a 'rationalisation' of tensions through a 'bipolar' alignment of imperialisms behind two dominant 'godfathers', but on the contrary to the explosion of a multiplicity of imperialist ambitions, which are not limited to those of the major imperialisms (to be examined in the next section), or to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, thus accentuating the chaotic and irrational character of the confrontations".
To live up to their responsibilities and identify all the dangers hanging over humanity, and especially over the working class, revolutionaries must understand the coherence of the whole situation and its real gravity. Our report shows that only the marxist method and its materialism allow such an understanding, but a materialism which is not vulgar, a dialectical and historical materialism capable of embracing all the factors in their relationship and their movement, a materialism which integrates the force of thought in its relationship and its influence on the whole of the material world because thought is one of the driving forces of history. Our report highlights four central points that belong to this method:

1. The transformation of quantity into quality
Applied to the historical situation opened up in 1989/90, it translates as follows: manifestations of decomposition may have existed in the decadence of capitalism, but today the accumulation of these manifestations is proof of a transformation, a break in the life of society, signalling the entry into a new epoch of capitalist decadence in which decomposition becomes the decisive element.

2. The whole is not the sum of its parts
This is one of the major phenomena of the present situation. The various manifestations of decomposition, which at first might have seemed independent but whose accumulation already indicated that we had entered a new epoch of capitalist decadence, are now increasingly reverberating one on top of the other in a kind of "chain reaction” that is growing ever stronger, a "whirlwind" that is driving the historical acceleration we are now witnessing. These cumulative effects now far outweigh their mere addition.

3. The historical approach to current events
In this historical approach, the aim is to take account of the fact that the realities we are examining are not static, intangible things that have existed from time immemorial, but correspond to constantly evolving processes with elements of continuity but also, and above all, of transformation and even rupture.

4. The importance of the future in the life of human societies
Marxist dialectics attributes to the future a fundamental place in the evolution and movement of society. Of the three moments of a historical process - past, present and future - it is the future that constitutes the fundamental factor in its dynamics. And it is precisely because today's society is deprived of this fundamental element, the future, the perspective (which is felt by more and more people, particularly the young), a perspective that only the proletariat can offer, that it is sinking into despair and rotting on its feet.

It is this method which enables our resolution on the international situation to elevate our analysis from the abstract to the concrete: "... we are now seeing this “whirlwind effect” in which all the different expressions of a decomposing society are inter-acting with each other and accelerating the descent towards barbarism. Thus, the economic crisis has been palpably deepened by the pandemic and the lock-downs, the Ukraine war, and the mounting cost of ecological disasters; meanwhile the war in Ukraine will have serious implications at the ecological level and around the globe; competition for dwindling natural resources will further exacerbate military rivalries and social revolts."
 

The return of the working class struggle
On the other side of this pole of destruction is the pole of the proletariat's revolutionary perspective.
The last few months have shown that the proletariat is not only not defeated, but is even beginning to raise its head, to find its way back to the path of struggle. As early as the summer of 2022, the ICC recognised in the strikes in the United Kingdom a change in the situation of the working class. In our international leaflet published on 31 August, "The bourgeoisie imposes new sacrifices, the working class responds with struggle", we wrote: "Enough is enough". This cry has reverberated from one strike to the next over the last few weeks in the UK. This massive movement, dubbed ‘The Summer of Discontent’ (...), has involved workers in more and more sectors each day (...) only the huge strikes of 1979 produced a bigger and more widespread movement. Action on this scale in a country as large as Britain is not only significant locally, it is an event of international significance, a message to the exploited of every country (...) the return of widespread strikes in the UK marks the return of the combativity of the world proletariat".

Theoretically armed to understand the strikes and demonstrations that emerged in many countries, the ICC was able to intervene, to the best of its ability, by distributing eight different leaflets, in order to follow the evolution of the movement and the reflection going on in the working class. What all these leaflets have in common is that they highlight :

• the return of working class combativity
• the historical and international dimension of the movement
• the growing feeling in the ranks of the workers that they are all "in the same boat", a breeding ground for the reconquest of class identity,
• the need to take the struggle into our own hands and, to do so, to reappropriate the lessons of past struggles.

Here too, as with the war in Ukraine, there is disagreement and debate within the organisation. The same comrades who believe they see in the war in Ukraine a step towards the constitution of blocs and the third world war, put forward the idea that the current workers' struggles and combativity do not constitute a break in a negative dynamic since the 1980s, with a long series of defeats which are not definitive but which have led to a particularly serious weakness, especially at the level of consciousness. In this vision, "in a capitalist world which, more than ever since 1989, is moving chaotically and 'naturally' towards war, the response of the proletariat at the political level remains far below what the situation demands of it" (one of the comrades' amendments, rejected by the Congress, to the resolution on the international situation). For them, the current situation, while not identical, is a course of history reminiscent of the 1930s, with a proletariat that was combative in many central countries but still unable to avoid war. "For the moment, the necessary development of mass assemblies and a genuine culture of debate has not yet taken place. Nor has the emergence of a new generation of politicised proletarian militants". (ibid.) Another argument was put forward to explain the scale of the social movements and the proliferation of strikes in many countries: the shortage of labour in many sectors and the need to keep the war economy running at full capacity made the situation favourable for the working class to demand higher wages. For the Congress, the reality unfolding before our eyes, namely the wave of impoverishment underway, with prices soaring while wages stagnate and government attacks rain down, belies this theory.

For the comrades, the leaflets distributed by the ICC, some 150,000 of them, during the various social movements in recent months, do not correspond to the needs of the situation. In line with their analysis of an almost defeated proletariat and a dynamic towards the constitution of two blocs and world war, the first task of revolutionaries is not intervention but involvement in theoretical deepening.

On the contrary, the Congress drew a very positive balance sheet of the organisation's international intervention in struggles. The ICC knew that it would not be able to influence the class and the movement as a whole: revolutionary organisations cannot have such an impact in the current historical period This role of guiding the masses is only possible when the class has developed its consciousness and its historical struggle to a much higher level. This intervention was addressed to a section of the working class, the minority that is today seeking class positions. The significant number of discussions that the distribution of these leaflets in the processions provoked, the letters received, the newcomers to our various public meetings show that our intervention played its role: stimulating reflection in part of the minority, provoking debate and encouraging the regroupment of revolutionary forces.

Behind the immediate recognition of the historical significance of the return of class struggle in the United Kingdom and its implications for our intervention in the struggle, there is the same method which enabled us to apprehend the novelty in the current acceleration of decomposition, with its "whirlwind effect": the transformation of quantity into quality, the historical approach... But one facet of this method is of particular importance here: the approach to the events through their international dimension.
It was already this recognition of the necessarily international dimension of the class struggle which, in 1968, enabled those who were to found the ICC to grasp immediately the real and profound meaning of the events of May. While the entire proletarian political milieu of the time saw it as nothing more than a student revolt, and claimed that there was "nothing new under the sun", our comrade Marc Chirik and the militants who were beginning to join together saw that this movement heralded the end of the counter-revolution and the opening of a new period of class struggle on an international scale.

This is why point 7 of the international resolution we adopted, explicitly entitled "The recovery of worker’s’ combativity in a number of countries is a major, historic event which does not only result from local circumstances and can’t be explained by purely national conditions. (...) The fact that the present struggles were initiated by a fraction of the proletariat which has suffered the most from the general retreat in the class struggle since the end of the 1980s is profoundly significant: just as the defeat in Britain in 1985 announced the general retreat at the end of the 1980s, the return of strikes and working class combativity in Britain reveals the existence of a deep current within the proletariat of the whole world."

In fact, we had been preparing for this eventuality since the beginning of 2022! In January, we published an international leaflet announcing "Towards a brutal deterioration in living and working conditions". Based on the signs that the struggle was beginning to develop, we announced the possibility of a response from our class. The return of inflation was fertile ground for workers' combativeness.

A month later, the outbreak of war in Ukraine considerably aggravated the effects of the economic crisis, causing energy and food prices to soar.
 

Aware of the profound difficulties of our class, but also knowing the history of its struggles, the ICC knew that there would be no direct, large-scale reaction of our class to the barbarity of war, but that there was, on the other hand, the possibility of a reaction to the effects of the war "in the rear", in Europe and the United States[1]: strikes in the face of the sacrifices demanded in the name of the war economy. And that's exactly what happened.

On these theoretical and historical foundations, the ICC did not delude itself about the possibility of a class reaction to the war, it did not believe that internationalist committees would spring up everywhere, still less did it seek to create them artificially. Our response was, above all, to try to defend as firmly as possible the internationalist tradition of the Communist Left by calling on all the forces of the proletarian political milieu to rally around a common declaration. While a large part of the milieu ignored or even rejected[2] our appeal, three groups (Internationalist Voice, Istituo Onorato Damen and Internationalist Communist Perspective) responded to keep alive the method of struggle and regroupment of international forces initiated by the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in September 1915 and April 1916 in the face of the First World War[3].

The villages of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, in Switzerland, became famous as the places where socialists from both sides met during the First World War to launch an international struggle to end the slaughter and denounce the patriotic leaders of the social democratic parties. It was at these meetings that the Bolsheviks, supported by the Bremen Left and the Dutch Left, put forward the essential principles of internationalism against imperialist war which are still valid today: no support for either imperialist camp, the rejection of all pacifist illusions, and the recognition that only the working class and its revolutionary struggle can put an end to the system which is based on the exploitation of labour power and which constantly produces imperialist war. Today, faced with the acceleration of the imperialist conflict in Europe, it is the duty of the political organisations based on the heritage of the Communist Left to continue to raise the banner of consistent proletarian internationalism and to provide a point of reference for those who defend the principles of the working class. This, at least, is the choice of the organisations and groups of the Communist Left who have decided to publish this joint declaration in order to disseminate as widely as possible the internationalist principles that were forged against the barbarity of the world war.

This way of uniting revolutionary forces around the fundamental principles of the Communist Left is a historic lesson for the future. Zimmerwald yesterday and the joint declaration today are small markers that will point the way to tomorrow.

 

The responsibility of revolutionaries
The preparatory debates and the Congress itself were concerned with the essential question of building the organisation. While this is clearly the central dimension of the ICC's activities, this concern for the future goes far beyond our organisation alone.

"Faced with the increasingly clash of the two poles of the alternative -destruction of humanity or communist revolution – the revolutionary organisations of the communist left, and the ICC in particular, have an irreplaceable role to play in the development of class consciousness, and must devote their energies to the permanent task of theoretical deepening, to putting forward a clear analysis of the world situation, and to intervening in the struggles of our class to defend the necessity for class autonomy, self-organisation and unification, and for the development of the revolutionary perspective. This work can only be carried out on the basis of a patient work of construction of the organisation, laying the basis for the world party of the future. All these tasks demand a militant struggle against all the influences of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology in the milieu of the communist left and the ICC itself. At the present juncture, the groups of the communist left are faced with the danger of a real crisis: with some exceptions they have been unable to unite in defence of internationalism in the face of the imperialist war in Ukraine, and are increasingly open to the penetration of opportunism and parasitism. A rigorous adherence to the marxist method and proletarian principles provides the only response these dangers.” (point 8 of the resolution on the international situation).

For revolution to be possible in the long run, the proletariat must have in its hands the weapon of the Party. It is this future construction of the Party that must be prepared today. In other words, a minority of organised revolutionaries carry on their shoulders the responsibility of keeping the present organisations alive, of keeping alive the historical principles of the workers' movement and particularly of the Communist Left, and of transmitting these principles and positions to the new generation which will gradually join the revolutionary camp.

Any spirit of competition, any opportunism, any concession to bourgeois ideology and parasitism within the proletarian political milieu are all stabs in the back of the revolution. In the very difficult context of the acceleration of decomposition, which disorientates people, which pushes them to go it alone, which undermines confidence in the ability of the class and its minorities to organise and unite, it is the responsibility of revolutionaries not to give in and to continue to hold high the banner of the principles of the Communist Left.

Revolutionary organisations face a huge challenge: to be able to pass on the experience accumulated by the generation that emerged from the May 68 wave.
 

Since the late 1960s, for almost sixty years, decadent global capitalism has been slowly sinking into endless economic crisis and increasing barbarism. From 1968 to the mid-1980s, the proletariat waged a whole series of struggles and accumulated a great deal of experience, particularly in its confrontation with the trade unions, but the class struggle declined sharply from 1985/1986 and has almost died out to the present day. In this very difficult context, very few militant forces joined the revolutionary organisations. A whole generation was lost to the false propaganda of the "death of communism" in 1989/1990. Since then, with the development of decomposition, which slyly attacks militant conviction by favouring no future, individualism, the loss of confidence in collective organisation and in the historic struggle of the working class, many militant forces have gradually abandoned the struggle and disappeared.

So yes, today the future of humanity rests on a very small number of shoulders, scattered across the world. Yes, the disastrous state of the proletarian political milieu, gangrened by the spirit of competition and opportunism, makes the chances of success for the revolution even slimmer. And yes, the role of revolutionary organisations in general, and of the ICC in particular, is even more vital. Passing on to the new generations of revolutionary militants who are just beginning to arrive the lessons of our history, the history of organisations motivated by the revolutionary spirit of the militant generations of the past, is the key to the future.

 

ICC, 11 June 2023
 

 

[1] Our report on the class struggle and the debate at the Congress once again reminded us of the crucial role of the proletariat of the Western countries which, through its history and experience, will have the responsibility of showing the world proletariat the road to revolution. Our report also amply recalls our position on "the critique of the weak link". It is also this approach which has enabled us to be aware of the heterogeneity of the proletariat in different parts of the planet, of the immense weakness of the proletariat in the countries of Eastern Europe, and to anticipate the possibility of conflict in the Balkans. Thus, as early as this spring, our report drew lessons from the war in Ukraine and predicted that: "The inability of the working class in this country to oppose the war and its mobilisation, an inability which opened the possibility of this imperialist butchery, indicates the extent to which capitalist barbarism and decomposition are gaining ground in ever wider parts of the globe. After Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, it is now part of Central Europe that is threatened by the risk of plunging into imperialist chaos; Ukraine has shown that there is, in some satellite countries of the ex-USSR, in Belarus, in Moldavia, in ex-Yugoslavia, a proletariat very weakened by decades of forced exploitation by Stalinism in the name of Communism, decades where it bore the weight of democratic illusions and was gangrened by nationalism. In Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, tensions are indeed rising.”

[2] The Internationalist Communist Tendency has thus preferred to commit itself to the No War But the Class War adventure. Read our article "A committee that leads its participants into a dead end [49]", World Revolution 395
[3] See " Joint statement of groups of the international communist left about the war in Ukraine [1]" in World Revolution 392
 

The ICC has recently held its 25th International Congress, where it adopted a number of reports on the world situation. This is the report on inter-imperialist tensions. 

To have a precise analysis of the historical situation and the perspectives that flow from it is one of the major responsibilities of revolutionary organisations, who need to provide a solid framework for their intervention in the class and to propose to the latter precise orientations for understanding the dynamics of capitalism or the actions and manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, the groups of the proletarian political milieu as a whole largely neglect this task, either because they remain stuck in the schemas of the past, applied mechanically without submitting them to criticism even if they no longer fit historical reality (the Bordigist groups), or because their opportunism leads them to prioritise an immediatist and empiricist approach, aiming at an illusory immediate success, rather than making the effort to verify the solidity and the relevance of their analyses (the Internationalist Communist Tendency)[1].

For its part, the ICC, faithful to the tradition of the workers’ movement and the marxist method, has always subjected its analytical frameworks to a critical verification to see if they remain valid - or if, on the contrary, they need to be amended or even revised. In line with this approach, this report takes as its starting point the resolution on the international situation from the 24th ICC Congress (2021)[2]. This highlighted the significant acceleration of decomposition that was then demonstrated in the ravages of the pandemic and its impact on the economic basis of the system, thus concretising the alternative "socialism or barbarism", put forward by the 3rd International. But, "In contrast to a situation in which the bourgeoisie is able to mobilise society for war, as in the 1930s, the exact rhythm and forms of decomposing capitalism’s drive towards the destruction of humanity are harder to predict because they are the product of a convergence of different factors, some of which may be partially hidden from view." (Resolution, Point 10). Various observations underlined this acceleration of decomposition in terms of imperialist confrontations:

- An intensification of the development of militarism, which had already become the way of life of capitalism in its decadent phase. Thus, the "massacres of innumerable small wars" are plunging capitalism "into an increasingly irrational imperialist every-man-for-himself" (pt 11), while at the same time we are witnessing a hardening of the conflicts between the world powers. "In this chaotic picture, there is no doubt that the growing confrontation between the US and China tends to take centre stage (...) (pt 12). While the US-China rivalry tends to escalate, the new Biden administration has announced that it will no longer be "taken in" by Russia (pt11).

- The aggressive policy of the United States, which, faced with its declining hegemony, does not hesitate to use "its capacity to act alone to defend its interests". However, "the pursuit of every man for himself will make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to impose its leadership, an illustration of each against all in the acceleration of decomposition" (pt 11).

- China's extraordinary growth is itself a product of decomposition. (...). The totalitarian control over the whole social body, the repressive hardening of the Stalinist faction of Xi Jinping, is not an expression of strength but a manifestation of the weakness of the state " (pt 9).

- Increased tensions "do not mean that we are heading towards the formation of stable blocs and generalised world war" (pt 12). However, we do not live "in an era of greater security than during the Cold War (...). On the contrary, if the phase of decomposition is marked by an increasing loss of control on the part of the bourgeoisie, this also applies to the vast means of destruction - nuclear, conventional, biological and chemical - that have been accumulated by the ruling class, (...)" (pt 13).

The outbreak of war in Ukraine and the resulting sharpening of imperialist tensions are fully in line with the frame of reference adopted by the 24th International Congress. However, they undoubtedly represent a qualitative development in society's slide towards barbarism by highlighting the driving role of militarism in the interrelation of the various crises (health, economic, political, ecological, etc.) that are currently affecting capitalism.

Part 1: Balance sheet of 15 months of war in Ukraine

After two years of pandemic, the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 was a qualitative step in the sinking of society into barbarism. Since 1989, the US had indeed sought confrontation on several occasions (with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Afghanistan), but these confrontations had never involved another major imperialist power or had an impact on the whole planet. This war is a different matter:

"It is the first military confrontation of this magnitude between states to take place on Europe's doorstep since 1940-45 (...), so that the heart of Europe is now becoming the central theatre of imperialist confrontations;

- this war directly involves the two largest countries in Europe, one of which has nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and the other is supported financially and militarily by NATO. This Russia-NATO confrontation tends to revive the memory of the opposition between the blocs from the 1950s to the 1980s and the nuclear terror that ensued, (...);

 - the scale of the fighting, the tens of thousands of deaths, the systematic destruction of entire cities, the execution of civilians, the irresponsible bombing of atomic power stations, the considerable economic consequences for the whole planet underline both the barbarity and the growing irrationality of conflicts that can lead to a catastrophe for humanity"[3] One year after the outbreak of the war and following on from our internal report of May 2022, it is important to establish the main lessons of the conflict in terms of imperialist relations and the framework of reference put forward by the ICC.

1. The impact on imperialist relations

The material and human toll of one year of war is terrible: the human losses and material destruction are gigantic, the displaced populations number in the millions. Tens of billions of euros have been sunk by both sides (45 billion euros by the United States, 52 billion by the EU, 77 billion by Russia, i.e. 25% of its GDP). Russia is now committing about 50% of its state budget to the war, while the hypothetical reconstruction of Ukraine would require more than 700 billion dollars. This war is also having a considerable impact on the intensification of imperialist tensions.

1.1 The US imperialist offensive

Faced with the decline of its hegemony, the United States has since the 1990s pursued an aggressive policy aimed at defending its interests, and this is especially true towards Russia, the former leader of the rival bloc. Despite the commitment made after the break-up of the USSR not to enlarge NATO, the Americans have integrated into this alliance all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, including countries, such as the Baltic States, that were part of the former USSR itself, and were considering doing the same for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008. The "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine in 2014 had replaced the pro-Russian regime with a pro-Western government and widespread protests in Belarus threatened the pro-Russian Lukashenko regime. Faced with this strategy of encirclement, Putin's regime tried to react by employing its military force, the remnant of its past as the head of the bloc (Georgia in 2008, Crimea and Donbass in 2014, etc.). Faced with the upheavals of Russian imperialism, the US began arming Ukraine and training its army in the use of more sophisticated weapons. When Russia deployed its army in Belarus and eastern Ukraine, they tightened the trap by claiming that Putin would invade Ukraine while providing assurances that they themselves would not intervene in the situation. 

In short, if the war was indeed initiated by Russia, it is the consequence of the strategy of encirclement and suffocation of the latter by the United States. In this way, the United States has succeeded in intensifying its aggressive policy, which has a much more ambitious objective than simply stopping Russia's ambitions:

- In the immediate aftermath, the fatal trap they set for Russia is leading to the significant weakening of the latter's remaining military power and the radical degradation of its imperialist ambitions. The war also demonstrated the absolute superiority of US military technology, which is the basis for the "miracle" of "little Ukraine" pushing back the "Russian bear";

- Then they tightened the screws within NATO by forcing European countries to come under the Alliance's banner, especially France and Germany, which had tended to develop their own policies towards Russia and ignore NATO, which until a few months ago French President Macron had claimed was 'brain dead';

- Beyond the beating handed out to Russia, the primary objective of the Americans was undoubtedly an unequivocal warning to their main challenger, China ("this is what awaits you if you risk trying to invade Taiwan"). For the past decade, the defence of US leadership has focused on the rise of this serious challenger. Under the Trump administration, this desire to confront China took the form mainly of an open trade war, but the Biden administration also stepped up the pressure militarily (the tensions around Taiwan). The war has weakened China's only important ally, which could in particular provide it with military input, and is putting a strain on the New Silk Road project, one axis of which passed through Ukraine.

1.2. The stinging defeat of Russian imperialism

Russia's initial objective was to quickly reach Kyiv by means of a bold combined operation of its elite troops to eliminate the Zelensky faction and install a pro-Russian government; and secondly to cut off access to the Black Sea by taking Odessa. By underestimating the capacity for resistance from the Ukrainian army, supported financially and militarily by the USA, but also by overestimating its own military capabilities, it suffered a bitter defeat. The second, more modest objective was the occupation of the north-east of the country, but the Russian army once again suffered heavy losses and had to retreat to Kharkiv and abandon Kherson. Programmes to mobilise new recruits saw hundreds of thousands of young Russians flee abroad and the Russian army forced to rely on the mercenaries of the Wagner group, often common prisoners, to hold the front line. It is now trying by all means to hold the territory linking the Donbass to Crimea. To do this, it is massively bombing all the towns, power stations and bridges, to make Ukraine pay dearly for its victory and to force Zelensky to accept Russian conditions. Moreover, given its precarious military situation, it cannot be ruled out that Russia will end up using tactical nuclear weapons.

Whatever the final outcome, it is already clear that Russia has emerged heavily weakened from this military adventure. It has been bled dry from a military point of view, having lost a hundred thousand soldiers, in particular among its most experienced elite units, a large quantity of the most modern and efficient tanks, planes and helicopters; it is strongly weakened from the economic point of view because of the enormous costs of the war (25% of its GDP this year), as well as by the collapse of the economy caused by the war effort and the sanctions of the Western countries; finally, its image as an imperialist power has suffered greatly from the events, which have demonstrated the military and economic limits of its power.

1.3 European and Chinese imperialism under pressure

The European bourgeoisies, especially France and Germany, had urged Putin not to launch this war, or even to launch an attack limited in scope and time. Boris Johnson's indiscretions revealed that Germany was even considering effectively endorsing a Russian "blitzkrieg" of a few days to eliminate the regime. However, faced with the failure of the Russian forces and the unexpected resistance of the Ukrainian army, Macron and Scholz had to sheepishly join the US-led NATO position. However, they remain on the sidelines in the military involvement with Ukraine and have dragged their feet on cutting all economic ties with Russia. On the other hand, they have sharply increased their military budget for the massive rearmament of their armed forces (a doubling even for Germany, i.e. 107 billion euros). Chancellor Scholz's recent visit to Beijing confirmed Germany's determination not to bow to the US and to maintain important economic relations with China.

As for China, faced with the difficulties of its Russian "ally" and the indirect but insistent threats of the United States, it has taken a very cautious stance with regard to the Ukrainian conflict: it has called for the cessation of hostilities and, while it has not formally adhered to the sanctions against Russia, it has not supplied the latter with either weapons or military equipment. Xi even openly expressed his concern to Putin and invited Russia to seek negotiations. For the Chinese bourgeoisie, the lesson is bitter: the war in Ukraine has shown that any global imperialist ambitions are illusory in the absence of a military and economic power capable of competing with the US superpower. Today, China has neither the armed forces nor the economic structure to support such global imperialist ambitions. All its economic and commercial expansion is vulnerable to the chaos of war and the pressures of American power. Of course, China is not giving up its imperialist ambitions, in particular the re-conquest of Taiwan, as Xi Jinping reminded the CCP congress, but it can only make progress in the long term, avoiding giving in to American provocation.

On a more general level, the conflict in Ukraine has not only represented an extremely important qualitative deepening of militarism, but it is also the driving force behind the intensification, on a global level, of economic difficulties (inflation and recession), health problems (the waves of Covid), the influx of refugees and the system's inability to deal with the ecological crisis (the reactivation of nuclear and even coal-fired power stations), which characterise the current plunge into decomposition.

2. Testing our theoretical framework

The initial denial by the ICC that a massive invasion of Ukraine was going to happen, despite explicit warnings from the US, was not an expression of an inadequacy of our analytical framework, but a manifestation of a lack of mastery of our analytical framework and more specifically a 'forgetting' of the orientations put forward in the text “Militarism and Decomposition” (1990)[4]. The ICC therefore adopted a complementary document updating the October 1990 text ("Militarism and Decomposition, May 2022"[5]). It points in particular to the following lessons, fully highlighted by a year of war in Ukraine:

2.1. The need for a dialectical materialist approach to current events

The question of method is crucial in the apprehension of current events: should dialectical materialism be conceived as a simple economic determinism or rather, as Engels reminds us in 1890 in a letter to Bloch, a dialectical method which takes into account the interactions between the different aspects of reality, in particular the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, even if "the determining factor in history is, in the last instance, the production and reproduction of real life"[6]. This approach contradicts all the vulgar materialistic analyses, which are in the majority in the proletarian political milieu, and which explain each war only on the basis of immediate economic interests, without differentiating the situations in the different phases of capitalism. However, as the Gauche Communiste de France clearly understood, "The decadence of capitalist society finds its striking expression in the fact that from wars with a view to economic development (ascending period), economic activity is essentially restricted to war (decadent period). This does not mean that war has become the goal of capitalist production, the goal always remaining for capitalism the production of surplus value, but it does mean that war, taking on a character of permanence, has become the way of life for decadent capitalism"[7]

2.2. The irrationality of militarism is accentuated in decomposition

In particular, the phase of decomposition accentuates one of the most pernicious aspects of war in decadence: its irrationality. From the opening of this phase, the effects of militarism become ever more unpredictable and disastrous. Our vulgar materialists do not understand this aspect and object that wars always have an economic motivation, and therefore a rationality. They fail to see that today's wars are fundamentally not economically but geostrategically motivated, and even then they no longer achieve their original objectives, but lead to the opposite result:

• The United States fought the two Gulf Wars, as well as the war in Afghanistan, to maintain its leadership on the planet, but both Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in an explosion of chaos and instability, causing a wave of refugees to knock on the doors of industrialised countries;
• Whatever the objectives of the many imperialist vultures - Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, American or European - who intervened in the horrific Syrian or Libyan civil wars, they inherited a country in ruins, fragmented and divided into clans, with millions of refugees flooding into neighbouring countries or fleeing to the industrialised countries.

The war in Ukraine is an exemplary confirmation of this: whatever the geostrategic objectives of Russian or American imperialism, the result will be a country in ruins (Ukraine), a country ruined economically and militarily (Russia), an even more tense and chaotic imperialist situation from Europe to Central Asia and millions of refugees in Europe.

2.3 Increasing chaos and imperialist tensions are largely hindering the course towards bloc formation

The increase in militarism and the irrationality of war implies a terrifying expansion of military barbarity. However, it does not lead to the regrouping of imperialisms into blocs and thus to a generalised war on the whole planet. Various elements support this analysis:

• The war in Ukraine has not shown a strong and stable alignment of imperialisms behind the leaders of the potential blocs: important imperialist powers like India, Brazil and even Saudi Arabia clearly keep their autonomy from the protagonists; the link between China and Russia has not tightened, on the contrary, and while the US has used the war to impose its views within NATO, member countries like Turkey or Hungary are openly going it alone and Germany and France are trying by all means to develop their own policy.
• A bloc leader must be able to generate trust among the countries of the bloc and guarantee the security of its allies, while China has been very cautious in its support for its Russian ally. As for the United States, Trump's "America First" policy was a cold shower for the "allies" who thought they could count on the United States, and Biden is basically pursuing the same policy: he decided without consulting his allies to withdraw his troops from Kabul and he is making them pay a high price in energy for boycotting the Russian economy, even though the United States is self-sufficient in this area.
• The absence of a defeated proletariat, an indispensable condition for engaging a country in a world war. The recent struggles in various Western countries show that the proletariat is not ready to accept the austerity imposed by the economic crisis, let alone the sacrifices linked to a generalised war. Even in Russia, where the proletariat is weak and subject to a strong nationalist battering, the majority of the population does not support the war. Finally, there is also the lack of a strong ideological weapon, capable of enlisting the proletariat, like fascism and anti-fascism in the 1930s.

The formation of blocs should not be confused with ad hoc alliances, formed for particular objectives. Thus, Turkey, a member of NATO, adopts a policy of neutrality towards Russia in Ukraine, hoping to take advantage of this to ally itself with Russia in Syria against the Kurdish militias supported by the USA. At the same time, it confronts Russia in Libya or in Central Asia, where it militarily supports Azerbaijan against Armenia, a member of the Russian-led alliance.

2.4. The polarisation of tensions is a product of the US offensive.

If, since the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, a polarisation of imperialist tensions has become more and more apparent between the United States and China, this should in no way be seen as the beginning of a dynamic towards the constitution of blocs. Contrary to the latter, it is not the product of pressure from the challenger (Germany, the USSR in the past), but rather of a systematic policy pursued by the dominant imperialist power, the United States, to try to halt the irreversible decline of its leadership. Initially, it focused on neutralising the aspirations of the former allies of the US bloc, especially Germany. Then, it aimed at polarising the "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) in an attempt to rally other imperialisms behind the global policeman. More recently, its aim is precisely to prevent any emergence of challengers.

Thirty years of such a policy by the US has not brought any discipline and order to imperialist relations but has instead exacerbated every man for himself, chaos and barbarism. The United States is today a major vehicle for the terrifying expansion of military confrontations.

2.5. The war does not facilitate the development of the proletarian struggle.

Certainly, on a general level, the war in Ukraine demonstrates the bankruptcy of this system (especially because it is obviously a deliberate action from the ruling class) and can in this sense constitute a source of consciousness of this bankruptcy, even if this is today limited to minorities of the class. Fundamentally, however, it confirms the analysis of the ICC that the war and the feelings of powerlessness and horror that it provokes do not favour the development of working class struggle. On the other hand, it causes a significant aggravation of the economic crisis and the attacks on workers, pushing the latter to oppose them in order to defend their living conditions[8].

 

Part II: The conflict in Ukraine as a multiplier and intensifier of imperialist contradictions

In the current period, the war in Ukraine cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon. The entry into the twenties of the 21st century is marked first of all by an accumulation and interaction between different types of crises - health crisis, economic crisis, climate and food crisis, tensions between imperialisms - but above all, they are all impacted by the effects of this conflict, which constitutes a real multiplier and intensifier of barbarism and destructive chaos. This war is the central factor that determines the intensification of the other aspects:

“With this aggregation of destructive phenomena and its ‘vortex effect’, it is important to stress the driving force of war, as an action deliberately pursued and planned for by capitalist states, having become the most powerful and aggravating factor of chaos and destruction. In fact, the war in Ukraine has had a multiplier effect on the escalation of barbarism and destruction, involving the following elements:

- The risk of bombing nuclear power plants is always present, as can be seen particularly around the Zaporizhzhia site.

- The threat from the use of chemical and nuclear weapons.

- The violent ramping up of militarism with its consequences for the environment and the climate.

- The direct impact of the war on the energy crisis and the food crisis”[9]. In short, whatever the scenario in the coming months, the global repercussions of the conflict in Ukraine will manifest themselves through:

(a) the expansion of areas of imperialist tension in the world, as well as the destabilisation of political structures within many states,

(b) the exacerbation of confrontations between the main protagonists of the conflict, as well as within the different bourgeoisies of these countries (including the Ukrainian).

1. The global impact of growing tensions and chaos

The consequences of the conflict in Ukraine do not lead to a 'rationalisation' of tensions through a 'bipolar' alignment of imperialisms behind two dominant 'godfathers', but on the contrary to the explosion of a multiplicity of imperialist ambitions, which are not limited to those of the major imperialisms (to be examined in the next section), or to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, thus accentuating the chaotic and irrational character of the confrontations.

1.1 Increasing points of imperialist confrontation in the world

- In Europe, the emergence in the East of a Ukraine heavily armed by the US will fuel the struggle between US and German imperialism to control it[10]. Its central position will also generate tensions with other Eastern European countries, such as Romania, Hungary (very reluctant in its support for Ukraine) and especially Poland, which have minorities in various parts of Ukraine. In the West, pressure on Germany has caused dissension with France, while conflicts in Bosnia or between Serbs and Kosovans are being rekindled (through Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group). Finally, the EU reacted with anger to the Inflation Reduction Act, which was seen as a real declaration of war against European exports to the US.

- In Central Asia, the retreat of Russian power goes hand in hand with a rapid expansion of the presence of other imperialist powers, such as China, Turkey, Iran and, of course, the USA, in the republics of the former Soviet Union. In the Far East, the risks of conflict are emerging between China and India (with regular border clashes) or Japan (which is massively rearming), not to mention the tensions between India and Pakistan and the recurrent ones between the two Koreas, in which the US is fully involved. The specific imperialist position of India deserves to be mentioned: if its relations with China are conflictual on the political, military and economic levels, they are more ambiguous in relation to the United States (member of QUAD but not of AUKUS) or Russia (important military contracts), a striking illustration of every man for himself and the fragility of rapprochement between imperialist powers.

- In the Middle East, the weakening of Russia, the internal destabilisation of important vultures such as Iran (popular revolts, struggles between factions and imperialist pressures) or Turkey (disastrous economic situation) will have a major impact on imperialist relations, even though these three countries tend to come closer together with the aim of carrying out military actions in Syria and Iraq against various Kurdish factions, supported by the US. Finally, the attitude of Saudi Arabia, bogged down in the civil war in Yemen, which opposes the US policy and is moving closer to Russia and China, as well as the formation of an extreme right-wing government in Israel, are also expressions of the worsening of military chaos and every man for himself.

- In Africa, while the energy and food crisis and war tensions are raging in different regions (civil war between the Ethiopian central government and the insurgent province of Tigray, in which Eritrea or Sudan are also involved, civil war in Libya, high tensions between North and South Sudan and also between Algeria and Morocco), the aggressiveness of the imperialist powers stimulates destabilisation and chaos. Between 2016 and 2020 China invested the equivalent of all Western investments for the same period ($70 billion) and has waived the repayment of 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries in 2021. India overtook France as the continent's number three trading partner in 2018 (after China and the US). Turkey's trade with the African continent has risen from $5 billion to $25 billion in twenty years. Russia, for its part, is continuing its destabilising activities in Mali and the Central African Republic with the mercenaries of the Wagner group, while remaining a major trading partner in arms and agriculture (cereals and fertilisers) for African countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa. France and Britain, which are losing ground, want to regain a market share and are promising investments. As for US imperialism, to counter the influence of Russian and Chinese imperialism in Africa, it organised an important US-African summit on 13 December 2022 in Washington, where they promised 55 billion dollars for Africa over 3 years.

1.2 Increasing destabilisation of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie in many states

The increasing weight of decomposition also tends to accentuate the loss of control of the bourgeois political apparatus, to reinforce the struggle between factions and the pressure of populist tendencies[11] This increased political instability will have a growing impact on the unpredictability of imperialist positioning, as the Trump presidency illustrated.

The European countries, which are under strong US pressure and tensions within the EU, are confronted with populist tendencies and struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie, which strongly destabilise the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie and can lead to changes in imperialist orientations. This is already the case not only in Britain, but also in Italy where there have been several governments with populist components. This growing destabilisation is also tending to strengthen in France ("Les Républicains" of Ciotti are willing to govern with the populists) and even in Germany[12]. Imperialist turmoil can also exacerbate tensions within the bourgeoisies, as is the case in Russia and China (see next section), and eventually lead to imperialist reorientations. So, in Iran, the confrontations between factions within the Iranian bourgeoisie, fanned by certain foreign interference and exploiting the revolts and expressions of despair of the population, can modify imperialist orientations[13].

Finally, in many states in Africa (Sudan, Ethiopia), Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan) or Latin America (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile), the multiplication of popular revolts or inter-ethnic massacres marked the destabilisation of the state structure, and these various situations have accentuated the instability of imperialist relations and the unpredictability of conflicts.

2. Destabilisation and turbulence among the main protagonists of the Ukrainian conflict

A year of war has caused significant turbulence in the orientations of the major imperialisms involved, but also in the tensions within the different bourgeoisies of these countries.

2.1. The US offensive is more than ever a central factor in increasing tensions and chaos

2.1.1. The initial success of the current US offensive is based on a characteristic already highlighted in "Militarism and Decomposition" (1990): the economic and especially military superiority of the USA, which exceeds the forces of potentially competing powers. The US exploits this advantage to the full in its policy of polarisation. This policy has never led to more order and discipline in imperialist relations, but on the contrary has proliferated military confrontations, exacerbated the "every man for himself" attitude, sown barbarism and chaos in many regions (Middle East, Afghanistan, ...), intensified terrorism, provoked huge waves of refugees and exacerbated the ambitions of small and large sharks alike.

The question facing the US in Ukraine today is whether to offer a way out to Russia, which can in any case no longer claim a leading world imperialist role after this war, or whether to aim for total humiliation, which could provoke a desperate and uncontrolled reaction from the Russian bourgeoisie and imply the risk of a disintegration of Russia, worse than in 1990, and thus a destabilisation of the whole of this part of the planet. The dominant factions of the US bourgeoisie (especially the Democrats) are undoubtedly aware of these dangers, even if they are keen to complete their objectives, already largely achieved, in terms of the definitive weakening of Russia, and above all the accentuation of the pressure on China in order to contain it and block its expansion. As a result, the US is carefully measuring the military capabilities of the Ukrainian army, pressuring Zelensky to increase his control over his administration and his army and indicating that "one way or another this war will have to end around a negotiating table" (Gen. Milley, Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff). However, this orientation can be countered by:

• a possible strategy by the Russian leadership to capitalise on Western fatigue by prolonging the war over time, as well as by pressure from the hard-line faction calling for all-out war (see below);
• tensions within the Ukrainian state and military apparatus, with some factions calling for continued offensives until total victory against Russia, including the recapture of the Donbass and Crimea;
• an irrational slip-up, linked to the chaos and barbarity of the environment, such as a missile hitting Poland, Belarus or a nuclear power plant.

Whatever the outcome of the conflict, the current confrontational policy of the Biden administration, far from producing a lull in tensions or imposing discipline among the imperialist vultures, will be a major factor in the future of the region. This policy:

• will further increase economic and military tensions with Chinese imperialism;
• will exacerbate the contradictions between imperialisms, for example in Central Europe where the weakening of Russia and the massive arming of the Ukraine will sharpen the oppositions between Central European countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Romania and of course Germany. In Central Asia, in addition to the United States, Chinese, Turkish and Iranian imperialisms are already jostling to take Russia's place;
• will intensify the oppositions within the various bourgeoisies, in the US, Russia and Ukraine of course, but also in Germany or China, as we will develop in the following points.

Contrary to the rhetoric of its leaders, the offensive and brutal policy of the United States is thus at the forefront of military barbarity and the destruction linked to capitalist decomposition.

2.1.2. The US strategy to counter its decline has also revealed divisions within the US bourgeoisie. While there is a clear consensus on policy toward China, these divisions now concern how to 'neutralise' Russia in the context of focusing on the 'main enemy', China. The Trump faction tended to envisage an alliance with Russia against China, but this orientation met with opposition from large parts of the US bourgeoisie and resistance from most state structures. The strategy of the dominant factions of the US bourgeoisie, represented today by the Biden administration, aims instead at dealing decisive blows to Russia, so that it can no longer pose a potential threat to the US: "We want to weaken Russia in such a way that it can no longer do things like invade the Ukraine" [14], while issuing a clear warning to China ("this is what you get if you decide to invade Taiwan").

The mid-term elections confirmed that the fractures are still as deep and exacerbated between Democrats and Republicans, as well as the divisions within each of the two camps[15], while the weight of populism and the most backward ideologies, marked by the rejection of rational and coherent thinking, far from being stopped by the campaigns aimed at putting Trump aside[16], has only pressed more and more deeply and durably on American society. These tensions within the American bourgeoisie (which cannot simply be reduced to the irrationality of the individual Trump), accentuated by the tilt of the House of Representatives towards the Republicans and the new presidential candidacy of Trump, who is still favoured by more than 30% of Americans (i.e. almost 2/3 of Republican voters), for the 2024 elections, bring a dose of uncertainty to the American policy of massive support for Ukraine and do not encourage other countries to take the promises of the United States at face value.

This unpredictability of US policy is itself (in addition to its polarisation policy) a factor in intensifying chaos in the future.

2.2. Russia's weakening whets the appetite of other imperialisms and exacerbates internal tensions

2.2.1. The failed intervention in Ukraine, already catastrophic, will have even more serious consequences in the months to come. The Russian army has demonstrated its inefficiency and has lost many of its elite soldiers and much of its most modern equipment. Its economy is being hit hard, especially in the hi-tech sectors because of the lack of raw materials due to the boycott and the exodus of large numbers of the technological elite (1 million people are said to have fled abroad). Despite a huge financial effort (50% of the state budget is now devoted to the war effort), the military industry sector, which is crucial for a long-term war effort, cannot keep up and it is typical that Russia has to call on North Korea (ammunition) and Iran (drones) for help to make up for the shortcomings of its own war economy.

But it is above all at the level of imperialist relations that Moscow will suffer more and more clearly from its defeat. Russia is isolated, and even "friendly" countries like China and Kazakhstan are openly distancing themselves. Moreover, in Central Asia, the various countries, ex-members of the USSR, have refused to allow their citizens living in Russia to be mobilised and are becoming increasingly critical of Russia: Kazakhstan took in 200,000 Russians fleeing the mobilisation order, expressly disapproved of the Russian invasion, and provided material aid to Ukraine; Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan openly criticised Russia for being unable to intercede in their internal conflict; Armenia is furious that Russia did not respect the assistance pact that bound them in the war with Azerbaijan; even Lukashenko, the tyrant of Belarus, is desperately trying to avoid getting too involved with Putin. The collapse of Russian influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia will increase tensions between the different bourgeoisies in these regions and whet the appetites of the big vultures, thus accentuating their destabilisation. And to top it all, Russia will have to accept a Ukraine powerfully armed by the United States 500 km from Moscow.

2.2.2. Internally, tensions are becoming increasingly strong and visible between different factions within the Russian bourgeoisie. Several tendencies appear:

Divisions are appearing more and more within the Russian bourgeoisie and in particular within the Putin faction; we can see 3 main divisions

- The pro-democracy faction, which is currently heavily repressed.

- The faction behind Putin which is in turn divided into 3 factions:

• The 'hardline' faction behind the Chechen leader Kadyrov and the Wagner Group
• A smaller faction lobbying for Putin to stop the war in Ukraine
• A faction behind Putin, who is trying to play these two factions off against each other in order to keep his grip on the Russian state

Apparently, these divisions run through both the army and the security services, as well as through Putin's entourage.

From Putin's political survival to that of the Russian Federation and the latter's imperialist status, the stakes resulting from the defeat in Ukraine are high: as Russia sinks into problems, settlements of accounts are likely to occur, even bloody clashes between rival factions. Warlords such as Kadyrov or Prigozhin (founder of the Wagner Group) are emerging and increasingly opposing the general staff, even criticising Putin. Similarly, a large proportion of the soldiers killed come specifically from some of the poorer autonomous republics, leading to numerous demonstrations and sabotage in these regions and potentially to the fragmentation of the Russian Federation. These contradictions point to a period of great instability in the world's largest and most armed state, with the risk of loss of control and unpredictable consequences for the world.

2.3. The Chinese challenger in turmoil

If some people, on the basis of an empirical approach, could imagine two years ago that China was the big winner of the Covid crisis, recent data confirm on all levels today that it is on the contrary facing all kinds of destabilisation and the prospect of serious turmoil.

In the face of the trap set for the Russian "ally" in Ukraine and the stinging defeat suffered by the latter, China is trying to calm the situation with the United States, whose polarisation policy is fundamentally aimed – via Russia - at China, as shown by the ongoing tensions around Taiwan. However, China's strategy differs fundamentally from Russia's. While Russia's only asset is its military power as the former bloc leader, the Chinese bourgeoisie understands that the development of its strength is linked to an economic build-up that still needs time to develop.

Will it be given this time? Pressured by the development of military chaos and imperialist polarisation, China is at the same time confronted with health, economic and social destabilisation, which places the Chinese bourgeoisie in a particularly uncomfortable situation.

2.3.1. China is highly destabilised in several ways:

- China's inability to control the health crisis, which it has been experiencing since late 2019, has largely crippled its economy and penalised its population. The consequences have been gigantic, including endless lockdowns, such as in November 2022, when as many as 412 million Chinese were locked up under terrible conditions in various parts of China, often for several months.

- The Chinese economy has suffered a severe slowdown due to repeated lock-downs, the property bubble and the blocking of various "Silk Road" routes by armed conflicts (Ukraine) or because of the ambient chaos (Ethiopia).

GDP growth is not expected to exceed 3% in 2022, the lowest growth since 1976 (apart from the "Covid year" of 2020). Young people are particularly affected by the deteriorating situation, with an estimated 20% unemployment rate among university students looking for a job.

- The dramatic decline in its demography, which has led to the first decline in China's total population in 60 years and could reduce the population to around 600 million by 2100, is leading to a gradual inversion of the age pyramid and a loss of competitiveness in Chinese industry due to the increased labour costs of a shrinking workforce, as well as pressure on the pension system, which is now almost non-existent, and on the social and health infrastructure for an ageing population.

- Even more distressing for the Chinese bourgeoisie, the economic problems, in conjunction with the health crisis, have led to major social protest movements, even though the Chinese state's policy since 1989 has been to avoid any large-scale social turmoil at all costs. The movements of buyers duped by the difficulties and bankruptcies of the real estate giants, but above all the riots, the strikes, such as that of the 200,000 workers at the huge factory of the Taiwanese giant Foxconn, which assembles Apple's iPhones, and the widespread demonstrations in many Chinese cities, such as Shanghai, with cries of "Xi Jinping resign! CCP resign!" have left Xi and his supporters in a cold sweat.

2.3.2. The convulsions of an outdated neo-Stalinist model[17]

Faced with economic and then health difficulties, Xi Jinping's policy from the beginning of his second term (2017) has been to return to the classic recipes of Stalinism:

-              on the economic front, since Deng Xiao Ping the Chinese bourgeoisie had created a fragile and complex mechanism to maintain an all-powerful single-party framework cohabiting with a private bourgeoisie stimulated directly by the state. “By the end of 2021, Deng Xiaoping's era of reform and openness was clearly over, replaced by a new statist economic orthodoxy"[18]. Indeed, the dominant faction behind Xi Jinping has reoriented the Chinese economy towards absolute Stalinist state control;

-              on the social level, the "zero Covid" policy has allowed Xi not only to tighten ruthless state control over the population, but also to impose this control on regional and local authorities which had proved unreliable and ineffective at the beginning of the pandemic. As recently as the autumn, he sent central government police units to Shanghai to call to order local authorities that were liberalising state control measures.

But, as the previous point shows, this policy of the Chinese authorities has brought them to a dead end. In fact, faced with an explosive social protest, the regime was forced to back down in great haste at all levels and to abandon in a few days the policy that it had maintained for years against all odds:

-              it abruptly abandoned the "zero Covid" policy without proposing the slightest alternative, without having achieved immunity, without effective vaccines or sufficient stocks of drugs, without a policy of vaccinating the weakest, without a hospital system capable of absorbing the shock, and the inevitable catastrophe has indeed taken place: patients are queuing up to get into overcrowded hospitals and corpses are piling up in front of overcrowded crematoria; projections predict that, by the summer, 1.7 million people will have died and tens of millions will be heavily affected by the current wave of the virus. In addition, tens of thousands of workers hired to organise the lockdowns or working in factories producing tests or other anti-Covid materials are being laid off, causing major social upheaval.

-              it is reconsidering his policy of absolute state control of the economy by reducing controls on access to credit in the real estate sector and by anti-monopolistic measures in the technology sector. It even promises that foreign banks and investment companies could become full owners of companies in China. But scepticism still prevails among foreign companies and the withdrawal of foreign capital from China remains massive, while economic pressure from the US is intensifying, in particular with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, which directly target exports of Chinese technology firms (e.g. Huawei) to the US.

This zigzag policy reveals the impasse of a Stalinist-type regime where "the great rigidity of the institutions, which leaves practically no room for the possibility of the emergence of oppositional bourgeois political forces capable of playing the role of buffers"[19] While Chinese state capitalism has been able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by its change of bloc, the implosion of the Soviet bloc and the globalisation of the economy advocated by the US and the major Western bloc powers, the congenital weaknesses of its Stalinist-type state structure are now a major handicap in the face of economic, health and social problems. The regime's desperate convulsions reveal the failure of Xi Jinping's policy, re-elected for a third term after backroom dealings between factions within the CCP, and foreshadow factional conflicts within a state apparatus whose inability to overcome political rigidity reveals the heavy legacy of Maoist Stalinism[20].

2.3.3. An imperialist policy under pressure

Confronted with the economic-military offensive of the United States, from Taiwan to the Ukraine, the Chinese bourgeoisie seems to have learned the lessons on the imperialist level and is orienting its policy for the moment towards a strategy of avoiding the spiral of provocations, military or otherwise:

-              the aggressive nationalist “wolf warrior” diplomacy launched by Xi in 2017 has been abandoned and the foreign ministry spokesman who personified it, Zhao Lijian, has been demoted;

-              China is trying to counter the strategy aimed at isolating it by seeking new partnerships in all directions: Xi has met 25 foreign heads of state in three months in order to revive its economy and forge diplomatic links (for example with Germany, Saudi Arabia and more widely with Europe);

-              it is increasing its involvement on the international scene, as illustrated by its conciliatory attitude at the last G20 in Indonesia and its strong involvement in the Montreal conference on ecological diversity

However, the economic and military aggressiveness of the United States is intensifying through the massive arming of Taiwan, but also by increasing the pressure on China's "partners" such as Iran and Pakistan. With the rise of Japanese militarism as well as the increasingly assertive ambitions of India, this accentuated imperialist pressure in the Middle East and the Pacific zone can lead to unforeseen developments. On the other hand, the "whirlwind" of upheavals and destabilisations that are hitting the Chinese bourgeoisie is also putting heavy pressure on its imperialist policy and instilling it with a high degree of unpredictability. And it should be clear that the destabilisation of Chinese capitalism will have unpredictable consequences for world capitalism.

2.4. German imperialism facing increasing destabilisation

Germany is also facing a series of unambiguous signals: its status as a military dwarf has forced it to fall in line as a member of NATO; the blockade imposed on Europeans by the United States with Russian oil and gas is plunging it into great economic difficulties, especially since the "Inflation Reduction Act", and the "CHIPS and Science Act" are also a direct attack on European, and thus particularly German, imports.

2.4.1. At the time of the implosion of the Soviet bloc, the ICC pointed out that if, in the near future, "[...] there exists no country capable in the years to come of opposing the military potential of the USA to a point where it could set itself up as a rival bloc leader "[21], the only imperialist power potentially capable in the longer term of becoming the central nucleus of a bloc competing with the United States was then, according to our analysis, Germany: “As for Germany, the only country which could eventually play such a role, as it already has in the past, it will be several decades before it can rival the USA on the military level (it does not even possess atomic weapons!). And as capitalism plunges ever deeper into its decadence, it becomes ever more necessary for a bloc leader to have a crushing military superiority over its vassals in order to maintain its place." [22]

However, Germany was at that time in a particularly complex situation: it was faced with the enormous economic, political and social challenge of integrating the former GDR into its industrial fabric, while foreign troops (American but also from other NATO countries) were stationed on its territory. This gigantic financial effort to "unify" the divided country made it impossible to make the substantial investment needed to bring its military forces up to the required level, the division of the country and the dismantling of its military force being of course the consequence of the 1945 defeat[23]. In this context, the German bourgeoisie has developed over the last 20 years a policy of economic and imperialist expansion resolutely turned towards the East, transforming many Eastern countries into subcontractors for its industry while guaranteeing its stable and cheap energy supply through gas and oil agreements with Russia, which also allowed it to take full advantage of the globalisation of the economy. At the same time, by integrating the Eastern European states into the EU, it also secured political pre-eminence within the EU.

2.4.2. The illusory hope of being able to develop its imperialist power without a deployment of militarism and the construction of a consequent military force has been shattered by the war in Ukraine. The German bourgeoisie, however, has done everything to maintain the partnership with Russia despite the conflict:

-              it has set up front companies to continue the joint project with Russia for pipelines under the Baltic Sea (North Stream 1 and 2), despite threats of economic sanctions from the US;

-              it has developed (like France) an intensive diplomacy towards Putin to try to avoid or limit the conflict;

-              it considered endorsing the Russian operation against Ukraine with an idea of a quick victory which would then have only a limited impact on economic relations (according to what Boris Johnson said to CNN).

The intensive war, financed and maintained through massive US arms deliveries, is putting Berlin under particularly intolerable pressure, but this is an extension of the Trump administration's already clear hostility to German imperialism's autonomous policy, highlighting its position as a military dwarf and putting its energy supply sources under others’ control.

2.4.3. In the face of this, the German bourgeoisie, caught in the trap, has undertaken all-out actions to (a) strengthen its military position, (b) seek new economic partnerships and (c) maintain its imperialist presence in Eastern Europe:

(a) faced with the bitter realization that it was illusory to assert imperialist ambitions without accompanying them with a consequent military power, it doubled the military budget (8 years will be required to bring the German army up to standard) and took draconian economic and energy measures to guarantee the defence of its industrial fabric;

(b) it has embarked on a search for new strategic alliances, notably with China, as illustrated by Chancellor Scholz's surprise solo visit to Xi on 4 November 2022, which involved, among other things, the purchase of 25% of the shares in the port of Hamburg by Beijing: "This visit to Beijing by the German Chancellor is all the more strange given that last October, at their last summit, the 27 Member States had discussed for three hours what to do with Beijing. The European tone had then become much tougher and the Baltic countries (...), had urged the EU to show the utmost caution in dealing with China" [24]

(c) it announced its readiness to finance a huge Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

2.4.4 These reactions of the German bourgeoisie to the US offensive exacerbate tensions and the "every man for himself" attitude not only towards the US but also within Europe itself. Thus, the German decisions to order fighter jets from the US and to set up an anti-missile shield based on German and ... Israeli technology by freezing sophisticated weapons programmes (planes and tanks) planned with France have caused major rifts between France and Germany, the backbone of the EU.

French imperialism has decided to postpone a Franco-German council and has expressed its refusal to build a gas pipeline linking Spain and Germany to bring gas from Africa. The last joint Franco-German council in January 2023 did not change the situation, despite the rhetorical joint declarations: "Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz staged a symbolic show on Sunday in Paris for the 60th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, but did not make any strong proposals on support for Ukraine, European defence or the energy crisis"[25]. However, it is not in Germany's interest to detach itself too much from France, which represents the first military power in Europe and constitutes a central pillar to maintain an EU regrouped around Germany.

The German government's every man for himself approach to economic measures, relations with China or the future of Ukraine is increasing tensions with other countries in the EU more generally, especially with some in Eastern Europe, such as the Baltic States or Poland, which are strongly supportive of US policy.

This policy of Scholz also causes divisions within the German bourgeoisie (some of the Greens in the government were against Scholtz's trip to China for example) and, unlike the SPD, the other parties in the government (FDP and the Greens) are rather in favour of the US policy towards Russia. These differences between factions of the German bourgeoisie are likely to deepen as the economic crisis deepens, with the pressure on the German economy and the country's imperialist position, heralding increasing political instability, with the danger of a stronger impact of populist movements[26] in the face of the deteriorating social situation.

Conclusion

The explosion of militarism is the illustration par excellence of the qualitative deepening of the period of decomposition, while at the same time heralding an inevitable accentuation of chaos and every man for himself.

- the explosion of military budgets: in addition to the United States, which continues to increase its military budget, which already represents 8.3% of the state budget, the significant increase in military spending was already evident before the war in Ukraine, especially in Asia, in China (5% of the budget), India (which is the third largest country in terms of military spending after the "big two"), Pakistan and South Korea. Since then, as a direct consequence of the invasion of Ukraine, the acceleration has been phenomenal, first of all for the major powers such as Japan, which has committed 320 billion dollars to its armed forces in 5 years, the biggest arms spending since 1945, and above all in Western Europe with Germany, which has also increased its defence budget by 107 billion euros, but also France and Great Britain. Even smaller imperialisms, such as Turkey (already the second largest army in NATO) or Saudi Arabia; and in Europe a country like Poland, which aims to have the most powerful army in Europe, is arming itself to the teeth.

- The extension of militarism to space and a revival of nuclear power: The arms race is increasingly encompassing the conquest of the earth's orbit and space. Here, too, the United States, but also China, is pulling out all the stops and the last expressions of cooperation are tending to disappear.  Finally, "All nuclear-weapon states are increasing or modernising their arsenals and most are reinforcing the nuclear rhetoric and the role of nuclear weapons in their military strategy. This is a very worrying trend"[27].

- The reinforcement of the implementation of the war economy: the war in Ukraine clearly poses the questions of the reorientation, within the "think tanks" of the bourgeoisie, of financial investments and especially of the means to ensure the adhesion of the populations:

 "That's why the ability to equip Ukraine with enough weapons to win the war is a growing concern, it's about sort of moving to a peacetime war economy, (...) And Western leaders will have to have a frank discussion with their populations about the future costs of defence and security, it's a whole nation effort, all nations, because it's not just the minister of defence ordering more equipment [from] the industry. It's about having a discussion about how we increase production. The weak links in the arms supply chain are not just about low public spending, but also about social attitudes and the reluctance of financial institutions to invest in arms companies"[28].

 We have pointed out that "the aggregation and interaction of destructive phenomena leads to a 'vortex effect' which concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of its partial effects, causing even more destructive devastation"[29]. In this framework, if the economic crisis is, in the last instance, the basic cause of the tendency to war, this tendency is now transformed into an aggravation of the economic crisis. Indeed, far from being a stimulus for the economy, war and militarism are an aggravation of the crisis. This explosion of expenditure as a consequence of the Ukrainian conflict will aggravate the debts of the states, which also constitute another burden on the economy. It will produce an acceleration of the growth of inflation which is another threat to economic growth; in turn, combatting inflation requires a contraction of credit which can only lead to an open recession, which also means an aggravation of the economic crisis. Finally, the war in Ukraine has caused a huge increase in energy costs, which is weighing on all industrial production, as well as a shortage of agricultural products and a slowdown in world trade.

In short, "The twenties of the twenty-first century will therefore, in this context, have considerable importance for historical development"[30]insofar as the alternative "socialism or barbarism", put forward by the Communist International in 1919, is increasingly concretised as "socialism or the destruction of humanity".

 

Preamble

The ICC’s text on the perspectives opening up in the 2020s[1] argues that the multiple contradictions and crises of the world capitalist system – economic, health, military, ecological, social - are more and more coming together, interacting, to create a kind of “whirlwind effect” which is making the destruction of humanity an ever-more likely outcome. This conclusion has now become so obvious that important parts of the ruling class are painting a similar picture. Alarm bells were already being rung by the 2021-22 UN report on Human Development [2] but the World Economic Forum “Global Risk” report published in January 2023 is even more explicit, talking about the “polycrisis” facing human civilisation: “As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of “older” risks – inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare – which few of this generation’s business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced. These are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalization, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions in an ever-shrinking window for transition to a 1.5°C world. Together, these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come”.

This is the bourgeoisie talking honestly to itself about the current global situation, even if can only remain deluded about the possibility of finding solutions inside the existing system. And it will continue to sell these delusions to the world population, aided and abetted by any number of political parties and protest campaigns which offer radical-sounding programmes which never question the capitalist social relations which have given rise to the impending catastrophe.

For us as communists there can of course be no solution which does not abolish capitalist relations and lay the basis for a planet-wide communist society. And what the WEF point to as another “risk” in the period ahead - “widespread social unrest" – contains, if we disentangle the term from all the various bourgeois or cross-class movements which it files under this category, the opposite pole of the alternative confronting humanity: the international class struggle, which alone can lead towards the overthrow of capital and the creation of communism.

 

1. The historical framework

The bourgeoisie is not capable of locating the “polycrisis” in the insoluble economic contradictions arising from the existing antagonistic social relations, instead seeing its cause in the abstraction of “human activity”; nor can it place them in a coherent historical framework. For communists, by contrast, the catastrophic trajectory of world capitalism is the result of over a century of decadence of this mode of production.

The war of 1914-18, and the revolutionary wave it provoked, led the First Congress of the Communist International to proclaim that capitalism had reached its epoch of “inner disintegration”, of “wars and revolutions”, offering the choice between socialism and a descent into barbarism and chaos. The defeat of the proletariat’s first revolutionary attempts meant that the events at the end of the 1920s, then during the 30s and 40s (the greatest economic depression in capitalism’s history, an even more devastating world war, systematic genocide, etc), tipped the scales towards barbarism, and after World War Two the ensuing conflict between the US and Russian blocs confirmed that decadent capitalism now had the ability to destroy humanity. But the decadence of capitalism continued to move through a series of phases: the post-war economic boom, the return of the open crisis at the end of the 1960s, the resurgence of the international working class after 1968. The latter put an end to the domination of the counter-revolution, obstructing the drive towards a new world war and opening a new historic course towards class confrontations, which contained the potential for the revival of the communist perspective. But the inability of the working class as a whole to develop this perspective resulted in a stalemate between the classes which became increasingly evident in the 1980s. In this period, capitalism entered a qualitatively new and terminal phase in the epoch of decadence (which we call the phase of decomposition). Its most spectacular manifestation was the collapse of the old imperialist order in 1989-91. The fact that this phase was characterised by a growing tendency towards chaos in international relations added a further obstacle to a trajectory towards world war, but this in no way made the future of human society more secure. In our Theses on Decomposition [9], published in 1990, we predicted that the decomposition of bourgeois society could lead to the destruction of humanity without a world war between organised imperialist blocs, through a combination of regional wars, ecological destruction, pandemics and social collapse. We also predicted that the cycle of workers’ struggles from 1968-89 was at an end and that the conditions of the new phase would bring with it major difficulties for the working class.

2. The acceleration of decomposition

The present situation of world capitalism provides a striking confirmation of this prognosis. The 2020s opened with the Covid pandemic and this was followed in 2022 by the war in Ukraine. At the same time, we have witnessed numerous confirmations of the planet-wide ecological crisis (heat waves, floods, melting of the polar icecaps, massive pollution of the air and oceans, etc). Since 2019 we have also been experiencing a new dive into economic crisis as the “remedies” for the so-called financial crisis of 2008 reveal all their limitations. But whereas in the previous decades the ruling class of the major countries had managed to some extent to preserve the economy from the impact of decomposition, we are now seeing this “whirlwind effect” in which all the different expressions of a decomposing society are inter-acting with each other and accelerating the descent towards barbarism. Thus, the economic crisis has been palpably deepened by the pandemic and the lock-downs, the Ukraine war, and the mounting cost of ecological disasters; meanwhile the war in Ukraine will have serious implications at the ecological level and around the globe; competition for dwindling natural resources will further exacerbate military rivalries and social revolts. In this concatenation of effects, imperialist war, the result of deliberate choices by the ruling class, has played a central role, but even the impact of a “natural” disaster like the terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria has been substantially worsened by the fact that it has taken place in a region already crippled by war. And we can also point the finger at the endemic corruption of politicians and entrepreneurs which is yet another feature of social decay: in Turkey, the heedless pursuit of profit in the local construction industry resulted in the ignoring of safety standards which could have greatly diminished the earthquake’s death toll. This acceleration and interaction of the phenomena of decomposition marks another transformation of quantity into quality within this terminal phase of decadence, making it clearer than ever that the continuation of capitalism has become a tangible threat to human survival.

 

3. Impact of the war in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine also has a long “prehistory”. It is the culmination of the most important developments in imperialist tensions over the last three decades, in particular:

• The collapse of the post-1945 bloc system at the end of the 1980s and the unleashing of “every man for himself” in inter-imperialist relations, provoking a significant decline of US global leadership
• The emergence, within this new global free-for-all, of China as the major imperialist challenger to the US, with its long- term strategy to build the world-wide economic foundations for its future imperialist domination. The USA’s reaction to its own decline and the rise of China has not been to withdraw from global affairs, on the contrary. The US has launched its own offensive aimed at restricting China’s advance, from Obama’s “pivot to the East” through Trump’s focus on trade war, to the more directly military approach of Biden (provocations around Taiwan, downing of Chinese spy-balloons, the formation of AUKUS, the new US base in the Philippines, etc). The aim of this offensive is to build a fire-wall around China, blocking its capacity to develop as a world power.
• At the same time, the USA has continued to press forward with the gradual encirclement of Russia through the expansion of NATO, with the objective not only of containing and weakening Russia itself but above all at sabotaging its alliance with China. The trap laid for Russia in Ukraine was the final move in this chess game, leaving Moscow with little choice but to strike back militarily, pushing it into a war which has the potential to bleed it white and undermine its ambitions as a regional and global force.

In the shadow of these global imperialist rivalries, there is an extension and intensification of other areas of conflict which are also connected to the struggle between the main powers, but in an even more chaotic manner. Numerous regional powers are increasingly playing their own game, both with regard to the Ukraine war and the conflicts in their own region. Thus Turkey, a member of NATO, acts as an “intermediary” on behalf of Putin’s Russia on the question of grain supplies while supplying Ukraine with military drones and opposing Russia in the Libyan “civil war; Saudi Arabia has defied the USA by refusing to increase oil supplies and thus lower world oil prices; India has refused to comply with US-led economic sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, the war in Syria, almost unreported in the mainstream media since the invasion of Ukraine, has continued its ravages, with Turkey, Iran and Israel more or less directly implicated in the slaughter. Yemen has been a bloody battleground between Iran and Saudi Arabia; the accession of a far-right government in Israel is throwing oil on the fire of the conflict with the PLO, Hamas, and Iran. Following a new US-Africa summit, Washington has announced a series of economic measures explicitly aimed at countering the growing involvement of Russia and China in the continent, which continues to suffer from the impact of the Ukraine war on food supplies and from a whole mosaic of regional wars and tensions (Ethiopia-Tigray, Sudan, Libya, Rwanda-Congo, etc) which provide openings to all the regional and global imperialist vultures. In the Far East, North Korea, which is one of the few countries directly supplying Russia with weapons, is rattling its sabre in the face of South Korea (particularly through new missile launches, which are also a provocation against Japan). And behind North Korea stands China, responding to growing US encirclement.

A further war aim of the US in Ukraine, a clear break with Trump’s efforts to undermine the NATO alliance, has been to rein in the independent ambitions of its European “allies”, forcing them to comply with US sanctions against Russia and to continue arming Ukraine. This policy of drawing the NATO alliance together has had some success, with Britain being the most enthusiastic supporter of Ukraine’s war effort. However, the reconstitution of a real US-controlled bloc is still very far off. France and Germany – with the latter having the most to lose from giving up its traditional “Ostpolitik”, given its dependence of Russian energy supplies – remain inconsistent about sending the weapons demanded by Kyiv – and have persisted with their own diplomatic “initiatives” towards Russia and China. Meanwhile China has taken a very cautious line towards the war in Ukraine, recently unveiling its own “Peace Plan” and stopping short of supplying Moscow with the “lethal aid” it so desperately needs.

The overall evidence – even leaving aside the question of the mobilisation of the proletariat in the central countries that this would demand - thus confirms the view that we are not moving towards the formation of stable imperialist blocs. But this does not at all lessen the danger of uncontrolled military escalations, including the resort to nuclear weapons. Ever since George Bush Senior announced the advent of a “New World Order” after the demise of the USSR, the very attempts by the US to impose this “order” have made it the most potent force for increasing disorder and instability around the world. This dynamic was lucidly illustrated by the nightmarish chaos which continues to prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of the US invasions of those countries, but the same process is also at work in the Ukraine conflict. Pushing Russia against the wall thus contains the danger of a desperate reaction by the Moscow regime, including the resort to nuclear weapons; alternatively, if the regime collapses it could trigger the disintegration of Russia itself, creating a new area of chaos with the most unpredictable consequences. The irrationality of war in the decadence of capitalism can be measured not only in its gigantic economic costs, which far outweigh any possibilities for short-term profits or reconstructions, but also in the rapid collapse of the military-strategic goals which, in the period of capitalist decadence, have more and more displaced the economic rationality of war. In the wake of the first Gulf War, in our orientation text “Militarism and Decomposition” [53] (IR 64, first quarter of 1991), we predicted the following scenario for imperialist relations in the phase of decomposition:

"In the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterized the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force".

As shown in the aftermath of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, the USA’s increasing reliance on its military power had shown clearly that, far from achieving this minimum of order, “the imperialist policy of the USA has become one of the main factors in global instability” (Resolution on the International Situation [58], 17th ICC Congress, (IR 130, third quarter 2007), and the results of the USA’s offensive against Russia have made it even more evident that the “world cop” has become the main factor in the intensification of chaos on a planetary scale.

 

4. The economic crisis

The war in Ukraine is a further blow to a capitalist economy already weakened and undermined by its internal contradictions and by convulsions resulting from its decomposition. The capitalist economy had already been in the midst of a slowdown, marked by the development of inflation, mounting pressures on the currencies of the major powers and growing financial instability (reflected in the bursting of the real estate bubbles in China as well as the crypto-currencies and tech). The war is now powerfully aggravating the economic crisis at all levels.

The war means the economic annihilation of Ukraine, the severe weakening of the Russian economy by the immense cost of the war and the effects of the sanctions imposed by the western powers. Its shock waves can be felt across the world, fuelling the food crisis and famines through the soaring price of basic necessities and through grain shortages.

The most tangible consequence of the war across the world is the explosion of military expenditure, which has soared above 2000 billion dollars. All the world’s states are caught up in the spiral of rearmament. More than ever, economies are being subjected to the needs of war, increasing the part of national wealth devoted to the production of instruments of destruction. The cancer of militarism means the sterilisation of capital and constitutes a crushing burden on commercial exchanges and the national economy, leading to the demand for greater and greater sacrifices on the part of the exploited.

At the same time, the most serious financial convulsions since the 2008 crisis, born of a series of bank failures in the USA (including the 16th largest bank in the US) and then of Credit Suisse (the country's 2nd largest bank), has been spreading on an international scale, while the massive intervention of the US and Swiss central banks has not succeeded in averting the risk of contagion to other countries in Europe and other risky sectors, or to prevent these failures from turning into a 'systemic' credit crisis.

Unlike in 2008, when the failure of major banks was caused by their exposure to sub-prime mortgages, this time the banks are weakened mainly by their long-term investments in government bonds, which, with the sudden rise in interest rates to combat inflation, are losing their value. The current financial instability, although not (yet) as dramatic as in 2008, is approaching the heart of the financial system, as the resort to government debt - and in particular by the US Treasury at the centre of this system - has always been seen as the safest haven.

In any case, financial crises, whatever their internal dynamics and immediate causes, are always, in the final analysis, a manifestation of the crisis of overproduction which resurfaced in 1967 and has been further aggravated by factors linked to the decomposition of capitalism.

Above all, the war reveals the triumph of every man for himself and the failure, even the end, of any “global governance” at the level of coordinating economies, responding to the climate problems, etc. This tendency of every man for himself in relations between states has grown progressively since the 2008 crisis, and the war in Ukraine has brought to an end many of the economic tendencies, described under the heading of “globalisation”, which have been going on since the 1990s.

Not only has the capacity of the main capitalist powers to cooperate in order to hold back the impact of the economic crisis more or less disappeared, but, faced with the deterioration of its economy and the deepening of the global crisis, and in order to preserve its position as the world’s leading power, the USA has increasingly been deliberately aiming to weaken its competitors. This is an open break with a large part of the rules adopted by states since the crisis of 1929. It opens the way to a terra incognita more and more dominated by chaos and unpredictable consequences.

The USA, convinced that preserving its leadership against the rise of China depends to a large extent on the power of its economy, which the war has placed in a position of strength at the political and military level, is also on the offensive against its rivals at the economic level. This offensive operates in a number of directions. The US is the big winner of the “gas war” launched against Russia to the detriment of the European states who have been forced to end Russian gas imports. Having achieved self-sufficiency in oil and gas thanks to a long-term energy policy begun under Obama, the war has confirmed America’s supremacy in the strategic sphere of energy. It has put its rivals on the defensive at this level: Europe has had to accept its dependence on America’s liquefied natural gas; China, which is greatly dependent on imported hydrocarbons, has been made more fragile given that the US is now in a position to control China’s supply routes. The US now has an unprecedented capacity to put pressure on the rest of the world at this level.

Profiting from the central role of the dollar in the world economy, from being the world’s leading economic power, the various monetary, financial and industrial initiatives (from Trump’s economic recovery plans to Biden’s massive subsidies to products “made in the USA”, the Inflation Reduction Act, etc) have increased the “resilience” of the US economy, and this is attracting the investment of capital and industrial relocations towards American territory. The US is limiting the impact of the current world slow-down on its economy and is pushing the worst effects of inflation and recession onto the rest of the world.

In addition, in order to guarantee its decisive technological advantage, the US is also aiming to ensure the relocalisation to the US, or international control of, strategic technologies (semiconductors) from which it aims to exclude China, while threatening sanctions against any rival to its monopoly.

The USA’s drive to preserve its economic power has the consequence of weakening the capitalist system as a whole. The exclusion of Russia from international trade, the offensive against China and the uncoupling of their two economies, in short the declared will of the USA to reconfigure world economic relations to its advantage, marks a turning point: the US is proving to be a factor in the destabilisation of world capitalism and the extension of chaos at the economic level.

Europe has been hit especially hard by the war which has deprived it of its main strength: its stability. European capitals are suffering from the unprecedented destabilisation of their “economic model” and run a real risk of deindustrialisation and delocalisation towards the American or Asian zones under the blows of the “gas war” and American protectionism.

Germany in particular is an explosive concentration of all the contradictions of this unprecedented situation. The end of Russian gas supplies places Germany in a situation of economic and strategic fragility, threatening its competitive edge and the whole of its industry. The end of multilateralism, from which German capital benefited more than any other nation (also sparing it from the burden of military expenses), is more directly affecting its economic power, which is dependent on exports. It also runs the risk of becoming dependent on the US for its energy supplies, while the latter pushes its “allies” to join in the economic /strategic war against China and to renounce their Chinese markets. Because this is such a vital outlet for German capital, this is facing Germany with a huge dilemma, one which is shared by other European powers at a time when the EU is itself under threat from the tendency of its member states to put their national interests above those of the Union.

As for China, although two years ago it was presented as the big winner of the Covid crisis, it is one of the most characteristic expressions of the “whirlwind” effect. Already suffering from economic slowdown, it is now facing major turbulence.

Since the end of 2019, the pandemic, the repeated lockdowns and the tsunami of infections that followed the abandonment of the “Zero Covid” policy continue to paralyse the Chinese economy.

China is caught up in the global dynamic of the crisis, with its financial system threatened by the bursting of the property bubble. The decline of its Russian partner and the disruption of the “Silk Roads” towards Europe by armed conflict or the prevailing chaos are causing considerable damage. The powerful pressure of the US further increases its economic difficulties. And faced with its economic, health, ecological and social problems, the congenital weakness of its Stalinist state structure is a major handicap.

Far from being able to play the role of locomotive for the world economy, China is a ticking time bomb whose destabilisation holds unpredictable consequences for world capitalism.

The main zones of the world economy are already in recession or about to sink into it. However, the gravity of “the crisis which has been unfolding for decades and which is set to become the most serious in the whole period of decadence, whose historic significance will even go beyond the biggest crisis of this epoch, the one which began in 1929”[2] is not restricted to the breadth of this recession. The historical gravity of the present crisis marks an advanced point in the process of the “internal disintegration” of world capitalism, announced by the Communist International in 1919, and which flows from the general context of the terminal phase of decadence, whose main tendencies are:

• The acceleration of decomposition and the multiple impact of its effects on a capitalist economy which had already been deteriorating;
• The acceleration of militarism on a world scale
• The acute development of every man for himself between nations against a background of increasingly sharp competition between China and the US for world supremacy
• The abandonment of the rules of cooperation between nations to face up to the contradictions and convulsions of the system
• The lack of a locomotive able to relaunch the capitalist economy
• The perspective of absolute impoverishment of the proletariat in the central countries, which is already underway

 

We are witnessing the coincidence of different expressions of the economic crisis, and above all their interaction in the dynamics of its development: thus, high inflation requires the raising of interest rates; this, in turn provokes recession, itself a source of the financial crisis, leading to new injections of liquidity, thus even more debt, which is already astronomical, and is a further factor of inflation.... All this demonstrates the bankruptcy of this system and its inability to offer a perspective to humanity.

The world economy is heading towards stagflation, a situation marked by the impact of overproduction and the unleashing of inflation as a result of the growth of unproductive expenses (primarily arms spending but also the exorbitant cost of the ravages of decomposition) and from the resort to printing money which further fuels debt. In a context of mounting chaos and unforeseen accelerations, the bourgeoisie not only reveals its impotence: everything it does tends to make the situation even worse.

For the proletariat, the surge of inflation and the bourgeoisie’s refusal to add to the “wage-price spiral” is drastically reducing spending power. Added to which massive lay-offs, vicious cuts in social budgets, attacks on pensions, augur a future of poverty, as is already a reality in the peripheral countries. For wider and wider sections of the proletariat in the central countries it will become harder and harder to obtain housing, heating, food or social care.

The bourgeoisie is confronted with a massive shortage of labour in a number of sectors. This phenomenon, whose scale and impact on production is something new, seems to be the crystallisation of a number of factors which bring together capitalism’s internal contradictions and the effects of decomposition. It is at once the product of the anarchy of capitalism, which generates both overcapacity – unemployment – at the same time as labour shortages. Other factors in this phenomenon are globalisation and the growing fragmentation of the world market which obstructs the international availability of labour power; demographic factors such as falling birth rates and aging populations which limit the number of workers available for exploitation, the relative lack of a sufficiently qualified workforce, despite the selective immigration policies implemented by numerous states. To which can be added the flight of wage-earners away from sectors where working conditions have become unbearable.

 

5. The destruction of nature

The war in Ukraine is also a stark demonstration of how war can further accelerate the ecological crisis which has been building up throughout the period of decadence but had already reached new levels in the first decades of capitalism’s terminal phase. The devastation of buildings, infrastructure, technology and other resources constitutes an enormous waste of energy and their reconstruction will generate even more carbon emissions. The profligate use of highly destructive weapons leads to the pollution of soil, water and air, with the ever-present threat that the whole region could again become a source of atomic radiation, either as the result of the bombardment of nuclear power stations or the deliberate use of nuclear weapons. But the war also has an ecological impact at the global level, since it has made the achievement of global targets for limiting emissions even more remote, with each country being more concerned with its “energy security”, which generally means further reliance on fossil fuels.

Just as the ecological crisis is a factor in the “whirlwind effect”, it also generates its own “feed-back loops” which are already speeding up the process of global warming. Thus, the melting of the polar icecaps not only contains the dangers inherent in rising sea levels, but itself becomes a factor in global temperature rises since the loss of ice implies a reduced capacity to reflect solar energy back into the atmosphere. Similarly, the melting of the permafrost in Siberia will release a huge store of the potent greenhouse gas methane. The worsening and combining effects of global warming (floods, wildfires, drought, soil erosion etc) are already making more and more parts of the planet uninhabitable, further exacerbating a global refugee problem already fuelled by the persistence and extension of imperialist conflicts.

As Marx and Luxemburg both explained, the relentless quest for markets and raw materials has driven capitalism to invade and occupy the entire planet, destroying the remaining “wild” areas or subjecting them to the law of profit. This process is inseparable from the generation of zoonotic diseases such as Covid and thus lays the basis for future pandemics.

The ruling class is increasingly aware of the dangers posed by the ecological crisis, especially because all this comes at an enormous economic cost, but the recent environmental conferences have confirmed the fundamental incapacity of the ruling class to deal with the situation, given that capitalism cannot exist without competition between nation states and the demands of “growth”. Part of the bourgeoisie, such as a sizeable wing of the Republican Party in the US, whose ideology is sustained by the profound irrationality typical of capitalism’s final phase, persist in their denial of climate science, but as the WEF and UN reports show, the more intelligent factions are well aware of the gravity of the situation. But the solutions they offer can never go to the root of the question and indeed rely on technical fixes which are just as toxic as the existing technology (as in the case of “clean” electrical vehicles whose lithium batteries are based on vast and highly polluting mining projects) or imply further attacks on the living conditions of the working class. Thus, the idea of a “post-growth” economy in which a “benevolent” and “truly democratic” state presides over all the fundamental relations of capitalism (wage labour, generalised commodity production) is not only a logical absurdity – since it is these very relations which underlie the necessity for endless accumulation – but would also involve fierce austerity measures, justified by the slogan “consume less”. And while the more radical wing of the “green” movements (Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, etc) increasingly criticise the “blah blah” of government environmental conferences, their calls for direct action by concerned “citizens” can only obscure the need for workers to fight this system on their own class terrain and to recognise that real “system change” can only come about through the proletarian revolution. As environmental disasters follow each other with increasing rapidity, the bourgeoisie will certainly make use of these forms of protest as false alternatives to the class struggle, which alone can develop the perspective of a radically new relationship between humanity and its natural environment.

 

6. Political instability of the ruling class

In 1990 the Theses on Decomposition pointed to the growing tendency for the ruling class to lose control of its political game. The rise of populism, oiled by the total lack of perspective offered by capitalism and the development of every man for himself at the international level, is probably the clearest expression of this loss of control, and this trend has continued despite counter-moves by other more “responsible” factions of the bourgeoisie (for example the displacement of Trump, and the rapid dumping of Truss in the UK). In the US, Trump is still preparing a new presidential bid, which, if successful, would seriously undermine the US government’s current foreign policy orientations; in Britain, the classic country of stable parliamentary government, we have seen a train of four successive Tory prime ministers, expressing deep divisions in the Tory party as a whole, and again mainly driven by the populist forces which pushed the country into the fiasco of Brexit; away from the historic centres of the system nationalist demagogues like Erdogan and Modi continue to act as mavericks preventing the formation of a solid alliance behind the US in its conflict with Russia. In Israel, Netanyahu has also risen from what seemed like his political grave, supported by ultra-religious, openly annexationist forces, and his efforts to subordinate the Supreme Court to his government has provoked a huge protest movement, entirely dominated by calls to defend “democracy”.

The January 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters highlighted the fact that the divisions within the ruling class, even in the most powerful country on the planet, are becoming more and more entrenched and contain the potential for degenerating into violent clashes and even civil wars. The election of Lula in Brazil saw Bolsonarist forces attempting their own version of January 6, and in Russia there is growing evidence of opposition to Putin within the ruling class, perhaps most significantly from ultra-nationalist groups who are not satisfied with the running of the current “special military operation” in Ukraine. Rumours of military coups abound; and while Putin himself is currently adapting to the pressure from the right through constant threats of escalating the “war with the West”, a replacement of Putin by a rival gang would be anything but a peaceful process. Finally, in China, the divisions in the bourgeoisie are also becoming more overt, in particular between the faction around Xi Jinping, advocates of reinforcing central state control over the whole economy, and rivals more committed to the possibilities of developing private capital and foreign investment. Although as recently as the October 2022 Party Congress the reign of Xi faction seemed to be unassailable, its disastrous handling of the Covid crisis, the deepening economic crisis, and the severe dilemmas created by the Ukraine war, have revealed the real weaknesses of the Chinese ruling class, weighed down by a rigid Stalinist apparatus which lacks the means to adapt to major social and economic problems.

However, these divisions do not put an end to the capacity of the ruling class to turn the effects of decomposition against the working class, or, faced with a rising class struggle, to temporarily put aside its divisions to confront its mortal enemy. And even when the bourgeoisie is unable to control its internal divisions, the working class is permanently threatened by the danger of being mobilised behind rival factions of its class enemy.

 

7. The rupture with 30 years of retreat and disorientation

The recovery of worker’s’ combativity in a number of countries is a major, historic event which does not only result from local circumstances and can’t be explained by purely national conditions.

At the origin of this resurgence, the struggles which have been going on in Britain since the summer of 2022 have a significance which goes beyond the British context alone; the reaction of the workers in Britain sheds a light on those going on elsewhere and confers on them a new and particular meaning in the situation. The fact that the present struggles were initiated by a fraction of the proletariat which has suffered the most from the general retreat in the class struggle since the end of the 1980s is profoundly significant: just as the defeat in Britain in 1985 announced the general retreat at the end of the 1980s, the return of strikes and working class combativity in Britain reveals the existence of a deep current within the proletariat of the whole world. Faced with the aggravation of the world economic crisis, the working class is beginning to develop its response to the inexorable deterioration of living and working conditions in the same international movement. .And this analysis is also valid as regards the massive mobilisations of the working class in France that have been taking place for three months in response to the government’s attack on pensions. For several decades, the workers of this country have been among the most combative in the world, but the mobilisations that began in early 2023 are not a simple continuation of the important struggles of the previous period: the breadth of these mobilisations must also, and most fundamentally, be explained by the fact that they are an integral part of the combativity being displayed by the proletariat of numerous countries.

The present workers’ struggles in Europe confirm that the class has not been defeated and conserves its potential. The fact that the unions control these movements without being challenged should not minimise or relativise their importance. On the contrary, the attitude of the ruling class, which for a long time has been prepared for the prospect of a revival of workers’ struggles, is testimony to their potential: the unions have been ready in advance to take a “militant” stance and put themselves at the head of the movement in order to fully play their role as guardians of the capitalist order.

Carried forward by a new generation of workers, the breadth and simultaneity of these movements testify to a real change of spirit in the class and represents a break with the passivity and disorientation which has prevailed from the end of the 1980s up till now.

Confronted with the test of war it was not possible to expect a direct response from the working class. History shows that the working class does not mobilise directly against war but against its effects on life at the rear. The scarcity of pacifist mobilisations organised by the bourgeoisie does not mean that the proletariat adheres to the war, but it does show the effectiveness of the campaign for “the defence of Ukraine against the Russian aggressor”. However, it’s not just a passive non-adherence. The working class in the central countries is still not ready to accept the supreme sacrifice of death, but also rejects the sacrifice of living and working conditions demanded by the war. The current struggles are precisely the response of the workers at this level; they are the only possible response and contain the premises of the future, but at the same time they show that the working class is not yet able to make the link between war and the degradation of its conditions.

The ICC has always insisted that despite the blows against class consciousness, despite its reflux in the last few decades:

• the proletariat of the central countries has retained enormous reserves of combativity which have up to now not been put a decisive test;
• the development of open resistance to the attacks of capital more than ever constitutes, in today’s situation, the most crucial condition for the proletariat to recover its class identity as the starting point for a more general evolution of class consciousness.

Up to now, the expressions of combativity which have come to the surface seem to have had “very little echo within the rest of the class: the phenomenon of struggles in one country 'responding' to movements elsewhere appears to be almost non-existent. For the class in general, the fragmented and unconnected nature of the struggles does little, on the surface at least, to reinforce or rather restore the self-confidence of the proletariat, its awareness of itself as a distinct force in society, as an international class with the potential to challenge the existing order”[3].

Today, the combination of a return of workers’ combativity and the worsening of the world economic crisis (in comparison to 1968 or 2008), which will spare no parts of the proletariat and will hit all of them simultaneously, objectively changes the bases for the class struggle

The deepening of the crisis and the intensification of the war economy can only continue on a world scale and everywhere this can only generate a rising combativity. Inflation will play a particular role in this development of combativity and consciousness. By hitting all countries, the whole working class, inflation pushes the proletariat to struggle. Not being an attack that the bourgeoisie can prepare and eventually withdraw, but a product of capitalism, it implies a deeper struggle and reflection.

The revival of struggles confirms the ICC’s position that the crisis indeed remains the best ally of the proletariat:

“the inexorable aggravation of the capitalist crisis constitutes the essential stimulant for the class struggle and development of consciousness, the precondition for its ability to resist the poison distilled by the social rot. For while there is no basis for the unification of the class in the partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, nonetheless its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis constitutes the basis for the development of its class strength and unity”. (Theses on Decomposition, International Review 107, ibid). This development of struggles is not a flash in the pan but possesses a future. It indicates a process of class revival after years of reflux and contains the potential for the recovery of class identity, of the class once again becoming aware of what it is, of the power it has when it enters into struggle.

Everything indicates that this class movement, born in Europe, can last a long time and will be repeated in other parts of the world. A new situation is opening up for the class struggle.

Faced with the danger of destruction contained in the decomposition of capitalism, these struggles show that the historic perspective remains totally open: “These first steps will often be hesitant and full of weaknesses, but they are essential if the working class is to be able to reaffirm its historical capacity to impose its communist perspective. Thus, the two alternative poles of the perspective will confront each other globally: the destruction of humanity or the communist revolution, even if this latter alternative is still very far off and faces enormous obstacles”[4].

Although the very context of decomposition represents an obstacle to the development of struggles and the recovery of proletariat’s self-confidence, despite the fact that decomposition has made frightful advances, despite the fact that time is no longer on its side, the class has managed to return to the struggle. The recent period has strikingly confirmed our prediction in the Resolution on the International Situation from the 24th International Congress (see footnote 2):

“As we have already recalled, the phase of decomposition indeed contains the danger of the proletariat simply failing to respond and being ground down over a long period – a “death by a thousand cuts” rather than a head-on class confrontation. Nevertheless, we affirm that there is still sufficient evidence to show that, despite the undoubted “progress” of decomposition, despite the fact that time is no longer on the side of the working class, the potential for a profound proletarian revival– leading to a reunification between the economic and the political dimensions of the class struggle – has not vanished."

The struggle itself is the first victory for the proletariat, revealing in particular:

• The road to the recovery of class identity. Whereas the fragile reappearance of the class struggle (USA 2018, France 2019) was to a large extent blocked by the pandemic and the lock-downs, these events did reveal the condition of the working class as the main victim of the health crisis but also as the source of all labour and all material production of essential goods. Workers are now engaging in a collective experience of the struggle where there is a search for unity and a beginning of solidarity between the different sectors of the class, between “blue collar” and “white collar” workers, between the generations. The feeling of all being in the same boat will enable the working class to recognise itself as a social force united by the same conditions of exploitation. The recovery of the class identity of the proletariat includes a dimension inseparable from these first steps in the recognition of itself and its strength; it also includes the identification of its class antagonist, beyond this or that employer or government. This restarting of the confrontation between classes sets the conditions for a perspective of a more conscious politicisation of the struggle, a long and tortuous process which is only just beginning.
• A progression in the subterranean maturation of consciousness, which has been developing over a fairly long period and at various levels: in the wider layers of the class, subterranean maturation first takes the form of a loss of illusion in the capacity of capitalism to offer a future, an awareness that the situation can only get worse, that the whole dynamic of capitalism is pushing society up against the wall, above all a deeply-seated revolt against the conditions of exploitation, summed up in the slogan “enough is enough”. In a more limited sector of the class, we see a reflection on past struggles and the search for lessons about the means to strengthen the struggle, how to create an effective balance of force against the state. And finally, “in a fraction of the class that is even more limited in size, but destined to grow as the struggle advances, it takes the form of an explicit defence of the communist program, and thus of regroupment into the organized marxist vanguard”. “On the subterranean maturation of consciousness”, IR 43). This is concretised by the appearance of minorities interested in the political positions of the communist left.

It was the gradual loss of class identity which made it possible for the bourgeoisie to sterilise or recuperate the two biggest moments of proletarian struggle since the 1980s (the movement against the Contrat Première Embauche in France in 2006, and the Indignados in Spain in 2011), because the protagonists were deprived of this crucial base for the more general development of consciousness. Today the tendency towards the recovery of class identity and the evolution of subterranean maturation express the most important change at the subjective level, revealing the potential for the future development of the proletarian struggle. Because it means the consciousness of forming a class united by common interests, opposed to those of the bourgeoisie, because it means the “constitution of the proletariat as a class” (Manifesto), class identity is an inseparable part of class consciousness, for the affirmation of the conscious revolutionary being of the proletariat. Without it, there is no possibility of the class linking back to its history in order to draw the lessons of past combats and thus engage in its present and future struggles. Class identity and consciousness can only be strengthened by the development the autonomous struggle of the class on its own terrain.

The revival of class combativity and the subterranean maturation of consciousness require the trade unions, these state organs who specialise in corralling workers’ struggles, and the leftist political organisations, bourgeois false friends of the working class, to put themselves in the front line against the class struggle.

The current effectiveness of union control relies on the weaknesses that derive from decomposition, weaknesses which are exploited politically by the bourgeoisie, and from the retreat in consciousness which has gone on for some decades and which have been expressed by the “return in force of the unions” and the strengthening of “reformist ideology on the struggles in coming period, greatly facilitating the work of the unions “(International Review 60, p10).

In particular, the weight of atomisation, the lack of perspective, the weakness of class identity, the loss of acquisitions and of the lessons from confrontations with the unions in the past are behind the extremely important influence of corporatism. This weakness enables the unions to maintain a powerful influence over the class.

Although they are not yet threatened by a challenge to this control of the struggle, the unions have been obliged to adapt to the current struggles, the better to carry out their usual work of division, by using a more “combative”, “working class” language, presenting themselves as the artisans of class unity, all the better to sabotage it.

Parallel to this, the different leftist organisations (and the left in general) are working inside and outside the unions and provide a powerful support for them. Defenders of the most sophisticated anti-working class mystifications in a radical covering, they also have the function of capturing minorities looking for class positions.

The constant barrage in defence of “democracy” and the interests of the “people” are aimed at hiding the existence of class antagonisms, feeding the lie of the state as protector and attacking proletarian class identity, reducing the working class to a mass of citizens or “sectors” of activity separated by particular interests.

Confronted with movements of non-exploiting classes or of the petty bourgeoisie pulverised by the economic crisis, the proletariat must beware of “popular” revolts or interclassist struggles which drown its own interests in an undifferentiated sum of the “people”. It must stand firmly on the terrain of the defence of its own demands and of its class autonomy, as a precondition for the development of its strength and its combat.

It must also reject the traps set by the bourgeoisie around single-issue struggles (to save the environment, against racial oppression, feminism, etc) which divert it from its own class terrain. One of the most effective weapons of the ruling class is its ability to turn the effects of decomposition against the class and encourage the decomposing ideologies of the petty bourgeoisie. On the soil of decomposition, of irrationality, of nihilism and “no-future” all kinds of ideological currents are proliferating. Their central role is to make each repulsive aspect of this decadent capitalist system a motive for a specific struggle, taken in charge by different categories of the population or sometimes by the “people”, but always separated from any real questioning of the system as a whole.

All these ideologies (ecologist, “woke”, racial, etc) which deny the class struggle, or like those who preach “intersectionality”, put the class struggle on the same level as the struggle against racism or male chauvinism, represent a danger for the class, in particular for the young generation of workers lacking experience but deeply revolted by the state of society. At this level these ideologies are supplemented by the panoply of leftists and modernists (“communisers”) whose role is to sterilise the proletariat’s efforts to develop class consciousness and to draw workers away from the class struggle.

If the class struggle is by nature international, the working class is at the same time a heterogeneous class which has to forge its unity through its struggle. In this process, it’s the proletariat of the central countries which has the responsibility of opening the door of revolution to the world proletariat.

In countries such as China, India, etc even if the working class has shown itself to be very combative and despite their importance on the quantitative level, these fractions of the proletariat, owing to their lack of historical experience are particularly vulnerable to the ideological traps and mystifications of the ruling class. Their struggles are easily reduced to impotence or diverted into bourgeois dead-ends (calls for more democracy, freedom, equality, etc) or completely diluted in interclassist movements dominated by other social strata. As shown by the Arab spring of 2011: the very real workers’ struggle in Egypt was rapidly diluted into the “people” then drawn behind factions of ruling class on the bourgeois terrain of “more democracy”. Or again, the immense movement of protest in Iran, where, in the absence of a clear revolutionary perspective defended by the more experienced fractions of the world proletariat, in western Europe, the many workers’ struggles in the country can only end up being drowned in the popular movement and diverted from their class terrain behind the slogan of women’s’ rights.

In the US, although marked by weaknesses linked to the fact that the class in that country has not been directly confronted by the counter-revolution and does not possess a deep revolutionary tradition, the proletariat of the world’s first power, in spite of numerous obstacles generated by decomposition, of which the US has become the epicentre (the weight of racial divisions and populism, the whole atmosphere of quasi-civil war between populists and Democrats, the impasse of movements working on a bourgeois terrain such as Black Lives Matter) shows the capacity to develop its struggles (during the pandemic, the during “Striketober in 2021) on its class terrain. The proletariat of the US is showing, in a very difficult political situation, that it is beginning to respond to the effects of the economic crisis.

The key to the revolutionary future of the proletariat remains in the hands of its fraction in the central countries of capitalism. Only the proletariat of the old industrial centres of Western Europe constitutes the point of departure for the future world revolution:

• Because it is the seat of the most important revolutionary experience of the working class from the first battles of 1848 to the revolution in Germany 1918-19 passing through the Paris Commune of 1871
• Because the European proletariat has been the most hardened by the confrontation with the most sophisticated bourgeois mystifications of democracy, elections, trade unions
• Because it also has been confronted with the counter-revolution in the different forms taken by the dictatorship of the ruling class: bourgeois democracy, Stalinism and fascism
• Because the question of the internationalisation of the class struggle is posed right away by the proximity of the most powerful nations in Europe
• Because the political groups of the communist left, although still a very small, weak minority, are present there.

 

8. The responsibility of revolutionaries

Faced with the increasingly clash of the two poles of the alternative -destruction of humanity or communist revolution – the revolutionary organisations of the communist left, and the ICC in particular, have an irreplaceable role to play in the development of class consciousness, and must devote their energies to the permanent task of theoretical deepening, to putting forward a clear analysis of the world situation, and to intervening in the struggles of our class to defend the necessity for class autonomy, self-organisation and unification, and for the development of the revolutionary perspective. This work can only be carried out on the basis of a patient work of construction of the organisation, laying the basis for the world party of the future. All these tasks demand a militant struggle against all the influences of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology in the milieu of the communist left and the ICC itself. At the present juncture, the groups of the communist left are faced with the danger of a real crisis: with some exceptions they have been unable to unite in defence of internationalism in the face of the imperialist war in Ukraine, and are increasingly open to the penetration of opportunism and parasitism. A rigorous adherence to the marxist method and proletarian principles provides the only response these dangers.

The ICC adopted in May 1990 Theses entitled "Decomposition, the ultimate phase of capitalist decadence" which presented our overall analysis of the world situation at the time of and following the collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc in late 1989. The central idea of the Theses was, as the title indicates, that the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, which had begun in the First World War, had entered a new phase of its evolution, one dominated by the general decomposition of society. At its 22nd congress, in 2017, by adopting a text entitled "Report on decomposition today (May 2017)", our organisation considered it necessary to update the 1990 document, to "confront the essential points of the theses with the present situation: to what extent the aspects put forward have been verified, or even amplified, or have been disproved, or need to be completed". This second document, written 27 years after the first, showed that the analysis adopted in 1990 had been fully verified. At the same time, this 2017 text addressed aspects of the world situation that were not included in the 1990 text, but which complemented the picture presented in that document and which had taken on major importance: the explosion in the number of refugees fleeing wars, famine, persecution and also the rise of xenophobic populism, which was having an increasing impact on the political life of the ruling class.

Today, the ICC considers it necessary to update the 1990 and 2017 texts, not a quarter of a century after the latter, but only 6 years after, because in the last period we have witnessed a spectacular acceleration and amplification of the manifestations of this general decomposition of capitalist society.

This catastrophic and accelerating development of the state of the world has obviously not escaped the attention of the world's leading political and economic leaders. In the "Global Risks Report" (GRR) based on the analyses of a multitude of "experts" (1,200 in 2022) and which is presented each year at the Davos forum (World Economic Forum - WEF), which brings together these leaders, one can read:

"The first years of this decade have heralded a particularly disruptive period in human history. The return to a "new normal" following the COVID-19 pandemic was quickly disrupted by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, ushering in a fresh series of crises in food and energy - triggering problems that decades of progress had sought to solve.

As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of "older" risks - inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare - which few of this generation's business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced.) These are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalization, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions in an evershrinking window for transition to a 1.5°C world. Together, these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come”. (Executive Summary, page 6)

In general, whether in government statements or in the mainstream media, the ruling class tries to downplay the extreme gravity of the global situation. But when it brings together the world's main leaders, or talks to itself, as at the annual Davos Forum, it cannot avoid a certain lucidity. It is significant that the alarming findings of this report have had very little echo in the mainstream media, whose fundamental vocation is not to honestly inform the population, and particularly the exploited, but to act as propaganda agencies designed to make them accept a situation that is becoming more and more catastrophic, to hide from them the complete historical bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production.

In fact, the findings contained in the report presented at the Davos Forum in January 2023 are largely in line with the text adopted by the ICC in October 2022 entitled "The acceleration of capitalist decomposition openly raises the question of the destruction of humanity". In reality, it is not by a few months that the ICC's analysis preceded that of the most informed "experts" of the ruling class, but by several decades, since the observations made in our October 2022 document are only a striking confirmation of the forecasts that we had already put forward at the end of the 1980s, notably in our "Theses on decomposition". That the communists have a certain lead, and even a definite lead, over the bourgeois "experts" in the prediction of the great catastrophic tendencies which work the capitalist world is not surprising: the dominant class can, as a general rule, only hide a fundamental reality from itself and from the class which it exploits, and which alone can bring a solution to the contradictions which undermine society, the proletariat: as with the modes of production which have preceded it, the capitalist mode of production is not eternal. Like the modes of production of the past, it is destined to be replaced, if it does not destroy humanity beforehand, by another, superior mode of production corresponding to the development of the productive forces that it has allowed at a certain moment in its history. A mode of production that will abolish the commodity relations that are at the heart of the historical crisis of capitalism, where there will no longer be room for a privileged class living off the exploitation of producers. It is precisely because it cannot envisage its own disappearance that the bourgeois class is incapable, as a rule, of taking a clear-sighted look at the contradictions that are leading the society it rules to its ruin.

In the afterword to the 2nd edition of Capital in German, Marx wrote: “The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.”

At the very moment when the ICC was adopting the Theses on Decomposition, announcing the entry of capitalism into a new phase, the ultimate phase, of its decadence, marked by a qualitative aggravation of the contradictions of this system and a general decomposition of society, the "practical bourgeois", notably in the person of President Bush senior, was ecstatic about the glorious new perspective which, in its eyes, had been inaugurated by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the "Soviet" bloc: an era of "peace" and "prosperity". Today, confronted with the "contradictory movement of capitalist society", not in the form of a cyclical crisis like those of the 19th century but in the form of a permanent and insoluble crisis of its economy generating a growing disruption and chaos of society, this same "practical bourgeois" is obliged to let a little "dialectic" enter his head.

For this reason, the updating of the Theses on Decomposition will be based on the analyses and forecasts contained in the 2023 Global Risks Report, as well as on our October 2022 text, which in many respects it confirms. This is a confirmation provided by the most lucid institutions of the ruling class; in reality it is an admission of the historical bankruptcy of its system. The use of data and analysis provided by the enemy class is not an "innovation" of the ICC. In fact, revolutionaries do not, in general, have the means to collect the data and statistics that the state and administrative apparatus of the bourgeoisie collects for its own needs for directing society. It was partly on the basis of this kind of data, obviously with a critical eye, that Engels fleshed out his study on The Condition of the Working Class in England. And Marx, especially in Capital, often uses the "blue notebooks" of British parliamentary enquiries. Concerning the analyses and forecasts produced by the "experts" of the bourgeoisie, it is necessary to be even more critical than on the factual data, especially when they correspond to propaganda intended to "demonstrate" that capitalism is the best or the only system capable of ensuring human progress and well-being. However, when these analyses and forecasts underline the catastrophic impasse in which this system finds itself, which obviously cannot function as an apology for the system, it is useful and important to rely on them to support and reinforce our own analyses and forecasts.

 

Part I: The 2020s usher in a new phase in the decomposition of capitalism

 

In the text adopted in October 2022, we read:

“The 20s of the 21st century are shaping up to be one of the most turbulent periods in history, and indescribable disasters and suffering are already mounting up. It began with the Covid-19 pandemic (which is still out there) and a war in the heart of Europe which has lasted for more than nine months and whose outcome no one can foresee. Capitalism has entered into a phase of serious difficulties on all fronts. Behind this accumulation and entanglement of convulsions lies the threat of the destruction of humanity. And, as we already pointed out in our "Theses: Decomposition, the final phase of capitalist decadence [3] (International Review 107, 4th Quarter 2001), capitalism "is the first [society] to threaten the very survival of humanity, the first that can destroy the human species" (Thesis 1).

Following the sudden outbreak of the Covid pandemic, we identified four characteristics of the phase of decomposition:

- The increased severity of its effects...

- The irruption of the effects of decomposition at the economic level …

- The growing interaction of its effects, which aggravates the contradictions of capitalism to a level never reached before …

- The growing presence of its effects in the central countries…

2022 provided a striking illustration of these four characteristics, with:

- The outbreak of war in Ukraine.

- The appearance of unprecedented waves of refugees.

- The continuation of the pandemic with health systems on the verge of collapse.

- A growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie over its political apparatus; the crisis in the UK was a spectacular manifestation of this.

- An agricultural crisis with a shortage of many food products in a context of widespread overproduction, which is a relatively new phenomenon in more than a century of decadence…

- The terrifying famines that are affecting more and more countries.

The aggregation and interaction of these destructive phenomena produces a 'vortex effect' that concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of its partial effects, causing even more destructive devastation … This ‘vortex effect’ expresses a qualitative change, the consequences of which will become increasingly evident in the coming period.

In this context, it is important to stress the driving force of war, as an action deliberately pursued and planned for by capitalist states, having become the most powerful and aggravating factor of chaos and destruction…

In this context, we can see the calamity of the growing environmental crisis, which is reaching levels never seen before:

- A summer heat wave, the worst since 1961, with the prospect of such heatwaves becoming a permanent feature.

- A drought unlike any before, the worst in 500 years according to experts, even affecting rivers such as the Thames, the Rhine and the Po, which are usually fast flowing.

- Devastating fires, that were also the worst in decades.

- Uncontrollable floods like those in Pakistan, which affected a third of the country's land area (and large-scale flooding in Thailand).

- A risk of collapse of the ice caps after the melting of glaciers comparable in size to the surface of the United Kingdom, with catastrophic consequences”.

 

The findings of the WEF "experts" are no different:

“The next decade will be characterized by environmental and societal crises, driven by underlying geopolitical and economic trends. ‘Cost-of-living crisis’ is ranked as the most severe global risk over the next two years, peaking in the short term. ‘Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse’ is viewed as one of the fastest deteriorating global risks over the next decade, and all six environmental risks feature in the top 10 risks over the next 10 years. Nine risks are featured in the top 10 rankings over both the short and the long term, including ‘Geoeconomic confrontation’ and ‘Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarisation’, alongside two new entrants to the top rankings: ‘Widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity’ and ‘Large-scale involuntary migration’ …

Governments and central banks could face stubborn inflationary pressures over the next two years, not least given the potential for a prolonged war in Ukraine, continued bottlenecks from a lingering pandemic, and economic warfare spurring supply chain decoupling. Downside risks to the economic outlook also loom large. A miscalibration between monetary and fiscal policies will raise the likelihood of liquidity shocks, signaling a more prolonged economic downturn and debt distress on a global scale. Continued supply-driven inflation could lead to stagflation, the socioeconomic consequences of which could be severe, given an unprecedented interaction with historically high levels of public debt. Global economic fragmentation, geopolitical tensions and rockier restructuring could contribute to widespread debt distress in the next 10 years. …

Economic warfare is becoming the norm, with increasing clashes between global powers and state intervention in markets over the next two years. Economic policies will be used defensively, to build self-sufficiency and sovereignty from rival powers, but also will increasingly be deployed offensively to constrain the rise of others. Intensive geo-economic weaponization will highlight security vulnerabilities posed by trade, financial and technological interdependence between globally integrated economies, risking an escalating cycle of distrust and decoupling …

Interstate confrontations are anticipated by GRPS respondents to remain largely economic in nature over the next 10 years. However, the recent uptick in military expenditure and proliferation of new technologies to a wider range of actors could drive a global arms race in emerging technologies. The longer-term global risks landscape could be defined by multi-domain conflicts and asymmetric warfare, with the targeted deployment of new-tech weaponry on a potentially more destructive scale than seen in recent decades.

The ever-increasing intertwining of technologies with the critical functioning of societies is exposing populations to direct domestic threats, including those that seek to shatter societal functioning. Alongside a rise in cybercrime, attempts to disrupt critical technology-enabled resources and services will become more common, with attacks anticipated against agriculture and water, financial systems, public security, transport, energy and domestic, space-based and undersea communication infrastructure.

Nature loss and climate change are intrinsically interlinked – a failure in one sphere will cascade into the other. Without significant policy change or investment, the interplay between climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, food security and natural resource consumption will accelerate ecosystem collapse, threaten food supplies and livelihoods in climate-vulnerable economies, amplify the impacts of natural disasters, and limit further progress on climate mitigation.

Compounding crises are widening their impact across societies, hitting the livelihoods of a far broader section of the population, and destabilizing more economies in the world, than traditionally vulnerable communities and fragile states. Building on the most severe risks expected to impact in 2023 – including ‘Energy supply crisis’, ‘Rising inflation’ and ‘Food supply crisis’ – a global Cost-of-living crisis is already being felt. …

Associated social unrest and political instability will not be contained to emerging markets, as economic pressures continue to hollow out the middle-income bracket. Mounting citizen frustration at losses in human development and declining social mobility, together with a widening gap in values and equality, are posing an existential challenge to political systems around the world. The election of less centrist leaders as well as political polarization between economic superpowers over the next two years may also reduce space further for collective problem-solving, fracturing alliances and leading to a more volatile dynamic.

With a crunch in public-sector funding and competing security concerns, our capacity to absorb the next global shock is shrinking. Over the next 10 years, fewer countries will have the fiscal headroom to invest in future growth, green technologies, education, care and health systems. 

Concurrent shocks, deeply interconnected risks and eroding resilience are giving rise to the risk of polycrises – where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part. Eroding geopolitical cooperation will have ripple effects across the global risks landscape over the medium term, including contributing to a potential polycrisis of interrelated environmental, geopolitical and socioeconomic risks relating to the supply of and demand for natural resources. The report describes four potential futures centred around food, water and metals and mineral shortages, all of which could spark a humanitarian as well as an ecological crisis – from water wars and famines to continued overexploitation of ecological resources and a slowdown in climate mitigation and adaption." (Executive Summary, Key Findings: some elements’, p7)

"Our global ‘new normal’ is a return to basics – food, energy, security – problems our globalized world was thought to be on a trajectory to solve. These risks are being amplified by the persistent health and economic overhang of a global pandemic; a war in Europe and sanctions that impact a globally integrated economy; and an escalating technological arms race underpinned by industrial competition and enhanced state intervention. Longer-term structural changes to geopolitical dynamics (…) are coinciding with a more rapidly changing economic landscape, ushering in a low-growth, low-investment and low-cooperation era and a potential decline in human development after decades of progress." (1.1.Current crises, p.14)

"A combination of extreme weather events and constrained supply could lead the current cost-of-living crisis into a catastrophic scenario of hunger and distress for millions in import-dependent countries or turn the energy crisis towards a humanitarian crisis in the poorest emerging markets.

Estimates suggest that over 800,000 hectares of farmland were wiped out by floods in Pakistan, … Predicted droughts and water shortages may cause a decline in harvests and livestock deaths across East Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa, exacerbating food insecurity.

'Severe commodity price shocks or volatility' was a top-five risk over the next two years in 47 countries surveyed by the Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey (EOS), while ‘Severe commodity supply crises’ registered as a more localized risk, as a top-five concern across 34 countries, including in Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, Chile and Türkiye. The catastrophic effects of famine and loss of life can also have spill-over effects further afield, as the risk of widespread violence grows and involuntary migration rises." (‘Cost-of-living crisis’, p.16-17)

"Some countries will be unable to contain future shocks, invest in future growth and green technologies or build future resilience in education, healthcare and ecological systems, with impacts exacerbated by the most powerful and disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable." (‘Economic downturn’, p.19)

"In the face of vulnerabilities highlighted by the pandemic and then war, economic policy, particularly in advanced economies, is increasingly directed towards geopolitical goals. Countries are seeking to build “self-sufficiency”, underpinned by state aid, and achieve “sovereignty” from rival powers. …

This may spur contrary outcomes to the intended objective, driving resilience and productivity growth lower and marking the end of an economic era characterized by cheaper and globalized capital, labour, commodities and goods.

This will likely continue to weaken existing alliances as nations turn inwards." (‘Geoeconomic warfare’, p.19)

"Today, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have all reached record highs. Emission trajectories make it very unlikely that global ambitions to limit warming to 1.5°C will be achieved.

Recent events have exposed a divergence between what is scientifically necessary and what is politically expedient.

Yet geopolitical tensions and economic pressures have already limited – and in some cases reversed – progress on climate change mitigation, at least over the short term. For example, the EU spent at least EUR50 billion on new and expanded fossil-fuel infrastructure and supplies, and some countries restarted coal power stations.

The stark reality of 600 million people in Africa without access to electricity illustrates the failure to deliver change to those who need it and the continued attraction of quick fossil-fuel powered solutions – despite the risks.

Climate change will also increasingly become a key migration driver and there are indications that it has already contributed to the emergence of terrorist groups and conflicts in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.” (‘Climate action hiatus’, p.21-22)

 

This assessment of the state of the world today contains all the elements that were cited in our October 2022 text, often in greater detail. In particular, the four major characteristics of the present situation:

- The increased severity of its effects ...

- The irruption of the effects of decomposition at the economic level …

- The growing interaction of its effects, which aggravates the contradictions of capitalism to a level never reached before …

- The growing presence of its effects in the central countries ...

are indeed present in the WEF document, even if in somewhat different words and formulations, and even if the political impact of decomposition on the most advanced countries is addressed in somewhat "timid" terms: one should not anger the governments and political forces of these countries by referring to their increasingly irrational and chaotic policies.

In particular, the WEF report highlights the increasing interaction of the effects of decomposition, which we call the "vortex” or “whirlwind” effect". To do this, it introduces the term "polycrisis", which was already used in the 1990s by Edgar Morin, a French "philosopher" and friend of Castoriadis, the mentor of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group. The definitions of this term used in the WEF report are the following:

"A problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity. In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts.

Another explanation of polycrisis would be - when multiple crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects."

This "considerable deterioration in the prospects of humanity" is found in the WEF report in the chapter entitled "Global Risks 2033: Tomorrow’s Catastrophes", a title which is already significant for the tone of these perspectives. Some of the sub-headings are also significant: "Natural ecosystems: past the point of no return'; Human health: perma-pandemics and chronic capacity challenges; Human security: new weapons, new conflicts"

More concretely, here are some examples of how the WEF report addresses these themes:

"Biodiversity within and between ecosystems is already declining faster than at any other point during human history.

Human interventions have negatively impacted a complex and delicately balanced global natural ecosystem, triggering a chain of reactions. Over the next 10 years, the interplay between biodiversity loss, pollution, natural resource consumption, climate change and socioeconomic drivers will make for a dangerous mix. Given that over half of the world's economic output is estimated to be moderately to highly dependent on nature, the collapse of ecosystems will have far-reaching economic and societal consequences. These include increased occurrence of zoonotic diseases, a fall in crop yields and nutritional value, growing water stress exacerbating potentially violent conflict, loss of livelihoods dependent on food systems and nature-based services like pollination, and ever more dramatic floods, sea-level rises and erosion from the degradation of natural flood protection systems like water meadows and coastal mangroves.

Nature loss and climate change are intrinsically interlinked – a failure in one sphere will cascade into the other, and attaining net zero will require mitigatory measures for both levers. If we are unable to limit warming to 1.5°C or even 2°C, the continued impact of natural disasters, temperature and precipitation changes will become the dominant cause of biodiversity loss, in terms of composition and function.

Continued damage to carbon sinks through deforestation and permafrost thaw, for example, and a decline in carbon storage productivity (soils and the ocean) may turn these ecosystems into “natural” sources of carbon and methane emissions. The impending collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may contribute to sea-level rise and coastal flooding, while the ‘die-off’ of low-latitude coral reefs, the nurseries of marine life, are sure to impact food supplies and broader marine ecosystems.

Pressure on biodiversity will likely be further amplified by continued deforestation for agricultural processes, with an associated demand for additional cleared cropland, especially in subtropical and tropical areas with dense biodiversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Yet, there is a more existential feedback mechanism to consider: biodiversity contributes to the health and resilience of soil, plants and animals, and its decline puts both food production yields and nutritional value at risk. This could then fuel deforestation, increase food prices, threaten local livelihoods and contribute to diet-related diseases and mortality. It may also lead to Large-scale involuntary migration.

It is clear that both the scale and pace needed to transition to a green economy require new technologies. However, some of these technologies risk impacting natural ecosystems in new ways, with limited opportunity to “field-test” results." (‘Natural ecosystems: past the point of no return’, p.31-32)

"Global public health is under growing pressure and health systems around the world are at risk of becoming unfit for purpose.

Given current crises, mental health may also be exacerbated by increasing stressors such as violence, poverty and loneliness.

Healthcare systems face worker burnout and continued shortages at a time when fiscal consolidation risks deflecting attention and resources elsewhere. More frequent and widespread infectious disease outbreaks amidst a background of chronic diseases over the next decade risks pushing exhausted healthcare systems to the brink of failure around the world. …

Climate change is also expected to exacerbate malnutrition as food insecurity grows. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can result in nutrient deficiencies in plants, and even accelerated uptake of heavy minerals, which have been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and impaired growth." (‘Human health: perma-pandemics and chronic capacity challenges’, p.35-37)

"A reversal of the trend towards demilitarisation will heighten the risk of conflict, on to a potentially more destructive scale. Growing mistrust and suspicion between global and regional powers has already led to the reprioritisation of military expenditures with stagnation on non-proliferation mechanisms. The spread of economic, technological and, therefore, military power to multiple countries and actors is driving the latest round of a global arms race.

The proliferation of more destructive and new-tech military weaponry may enable newer forms of asymmetric warfare, enabling smaller powers and individuals to have a greater impact at a national and global level." (‘Human Security: New Weapons, New Conflicts’, p.38)

"The set of emerging demand and supply concerns around natural resources is already becoming an area of growing alarm. The GRPS [Global Risks Perception Survey] respondents identified a strong relationship and reciprocal links between the “natural resource crises” and the other links identified in previous chapters.

The report describes four potential futures centred around food, water and metals and mineral shortages, all of which could spark a humanitarian as well as an ecological crisis – from water wars and famines to continued over-exploitation of ecological resources and a  slowdown in climate mitigation and adaption." (‘Competition for Resources: Four Emerging Futures’, p.57-58)

The conclusion of the report gives us an overall picture of what the world will be like in 2030:

"Global poverty, climate-sensitive livelihood crises, malnutrition and diet-related diseases, state instability and involuntary migration have all risen, elongating and spreading the instability and humanitarian crises …

Food, energy and water insecurity becomes a driver of social inequality, civil unrest and political instability.

Overexploitation and pollution - the tragedy of the global commons - has expanded. Famine has returned at a scale not seen in the last century. The sheer scale of humanitarian and environmental crises showcases broader paralysis and ineffectiveness of key multilateral mechanisms in addressing crises facing the global order, spiralling downwards into a self-perpetuating and compounding polycrises."

The report tries at times to guard its readers against despairing by saying, for example:

"Some of the risks described in this year’s report are close to a tipping point. This is the moment to act collectively, decisively and with a long-term lens to shape a pathway to a more positive, inclusive and stable world." But overall, it demonstrates that the means to "act collectively, decisively" are non-existent in the current system.

 

In the 1990 ICC text we based the development of our analysis on the observation of the emergence or aggravation at the world level of a whole series of deadly or chaotic manifestations of social life. We can recall them here to see to what extent the current situation, as presented above, has intensified and increased these manifestations:

• "More widespread famine in 'third world' countries"
• "The transformation of this same 'third world' into a giant slum with the development of the same phenomenon at the heart of the big cities of the 'advanced' countries"
• "An increase in 'accidental' disasters and increasingly devastating effects at a human, social and economic level of 'natural' disasters"
• "Environmental degradation (dying rivers, polluted oceans, unbreathable city air, radioactive contamination, greenhouse effect)
• "The development of epidemics
• "The incredible corruption that grows and prospers in the political apparatus of the ruling class"

The phenomenon of corruption is not dealt with in the WEF report (afraid to upset the corrupt!). Despite all the "virtuous" programmes aimed at dealing with it, this scourge still thrives, particularly in Third World countries, of course: for example, the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the advance of jihadist groups in the Sahel owe a great deal to the unbridled corruption of the regimes that were or are in power. In the countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union, like Russia and Ukraine, these are mafia-like governments. But this phenomenon does not spare the most developed countries, with all the shenanigans (which are only the tip of the iceberg) revealed by the "Panama papers" and other bodies. Similarly, "petro-dollars" are flowing to the advanced countries, particularly those in Europe, to buy compliance on the part of "decision-makers” in these countries with absurd and misguided decisions such as the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar or (unbelievable but true) the awarding of the Asian Winter Games to Saudi Arabia! But one of the high points was reached when the vice-president of the European Parliament, an institution that is supposed to fight corruption among other things, was taken by surprise, caught with suitcases full of banknotes from Qatar.

Finally, it is clear that the terrible human toll of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in early February was largely the result of corruption that permitted developers to increase their profits by evading official earthquake zone building regulations.

"The general tendency for the bourgeoisie to lose control in the conduct of its politics":

We have seen this issue treated very cautiously in the WEF report, especially when it refers to “an existential challenge for political systems worldwide” and “the election of less traditional ('centrist') leaders”.

Finally, manifestations of decomposition identified in 1990 are not directly mentioned in the WEF report (usually for "diplomatic" reasons) nor in our October 2022 text because they were secondary to the central theme of this text: the considerable advance taken by decomposition as we enter the 2020s.

“the constant increase in criminality, insecurity, and urban violence, as well as the fact that more and more children are falling prey to this violence 

Two examples (among many) are the continuation of mass killings in the United States and the recent murders of several teenagers by other teenagers in France.

"the development of nihilism, despair, and suicide amongst young people (expressed for example in the punk slogan ‘no future’) and hatred and xenophobia” The rise of racist hatred (often in the name of religion) which is the breeding ground for far-right populism (Nigel Farage in the UK, Trump and his followers in the US, Le Pen in France, Meloni in Italy, etc.).

"the tidal waves of drug addiction … especially prevalent among young people": this scourge does not diminish, as illustrated by the power of drug gangs like those in Mexico.

"the profusion of sects, the renewal of the religious spirit including in the advanced countries”: There are many examples today of the aggravation of this phenomenon with the rise of:

1. Salafism, the most obscurantist version of Islam
2. extreme right-wing Christian fanaticism, illustrated by the growing influence of evangelicals, as in the United States and Brazil
3. a bellicose and xenophobic Hinduism in India (the most populated country in the world)
4. an extreme right-wing "militant Judaism" in Israel.

Of course, the WEF report carefully avoids mentioning these phenomena: there is a need to be polite to the participants of the Davos Forum who represent governments where religion and religious fanaticism are a major political instrument of their power.

“the rejection of rational, coherent thought even amongst certain ‘scientists’ ": The recent development of conspiracy theories, particularly at the time of the Covid pandemic, often associated with an extreme right-wing ideology; and there is a counterpart, on the other side of the political spectrum: the growing success of "wokism", a current originating from American universities, whose "radicality" consists in regrouping in small "activist" factions around totally bourgeois themes that claim to be "fighting the system".

"the attitude of “every man for himself”, marginalisation, the atomisation of the individual”: A dramatic example during the pandemic, that of the isolation of the elderly, especially those in care homes, before the availability of vaccines. And also the distress caused to the families of the deceased.

 

All the above passages in bold and in inverted commas are based on the 1990 Theses. They reflect the characteristics that were already present in the world at that time and that provided the basis for our analysis. This simultaneous accumulation of all these catastrophic manifestations, their quantity, indicated that a qualitatively new period in the history of the decadence of capitalism was beginning. In the Theses, the interaction between a number of these manifestations was already present. However, at that time, we had mainly highlighted the common origin of these manifestations which, in a way, seemed to develop in parallel without interacting with each other. In particular, we noted that, although the economic crisis of capitalism was fundamentally at the origin of the phenomenon of the decomposition of society, it was not really affected by the different manifestations of this decomposition.

At the 22nd Congress, in addition to highlighting the emergence of two new and inter-related manifestations of decomposition, mass immigration and the rise of populism, we pointed out that the economy was beginning to be affected by decomposition (notably through the rise of populism), whereas previously it had been relatively unaffected. Today, this interplay between fundamental aspects of the world situation and its crucial historical importance is growing dramatically. Our October 2022 text, as well as the WEF report, highlights the extent to which these different manifestations are now intertwined.

Thus, with its entry into the 2020s, and particularly in 2022, we witnessed an acceleration of history, a further dramatic aggravation of the decomposition that is leading human society, indeed the human species, to its destruction - with a growing number of people becoming aware of it,

This intensification of the different convulsions on the planet, their increasing interaction, constitutes a confirmation not only of our analysis but also of the marxist method on which it is based, a method that other groups in the proletarian political milieu tend to "forget" when they reject our analysis of decomposition.

 

 

Part II: The marxist method, an indispensable tool for understanding the world today.

The part of the report being published here has been augmented by a series of developments which are part of the marxist method of grasping reality. They were not explicit in the version submitted to the Congress but underlay it. The aim of this addition is to fuel public debate in defence of the marxist conception of materialism against the vulgarised version defended by most of the components of the proletarian political milieu, notably the Damenists and Bordigists.

History is the history of the class struggle

Generally speaking, the groups of the PPM[1].have understood very little of our analysis of decomposition. The one that has gone the furthest in refuting this analysis is the Bordigist group that publishes Le Prolétaire in France. They have devoted two articles to our analysis of the rise of populism in various countries and its link with the analysis of decomposition (which they call "well-known and controversial" (in French “fameuse et fumeuse”)):

"Révolution Internationale explains the roots of this so-called ‘decomposition’: the present incapacity of the two main and antagonistic classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, to put forward their own perspective (world war or revolution) has resulted in a situation of "temporary blockage" and the rotting of society on its feet. The proletarians who daily see their conditions of exploitation worsen and their living conditions deteriorate, will be happy to learn that their class is capable of blocking the bourgeoisie and preventing it from putting forward its ‘perspectives’..." (LP 523)

"We therefore deny that the bourgeoisie has ‘lost control of its system’ politically and that the policies pursued by the governments of Britain or the United States are the product of a mysterious disease called 'populism' caused by 'society's sinking into barbarism'.

To put it in very general terms, these developments (to which one could add the progress of the extreme right in Sweden or Germany, with the support of a part of the bourgeois political personnel) have the function of responding to a need for bourgeois domination, whether internally or externally, in a situation of accumulation of economic and political uncertainty at the international level - and not something which ‘disturbs the political game with the consequence of a growing loss of control of the bourgeois political apparatus on the electoral terrain’." (LP 530)

Le Proletaire believes that populism corresponds to a genuinely "realistic" policy under the control of the bourgeoisie. The self-destructive economic policy of Brexit in the UK in recent years should give this group pause for thought.

Le Prolétaire nevertheless takes the trouble to go to the heart of our analysis: the situation of blockage between the classes that arose as a result of the historical recovery of the world proletariat in 1968 (which it did not recognise like the entirety of the PPM) and the inability of the bourgeoisie to therefore mobilise the working class for the capitalist solution of World War III. In fact, behind this misunderstanding, there is a lack of understanding and rejection of the notion of the historical course, which refers to a disagreement we have with all the groups which came out of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista of 1945 in Italy.

Well, this denial of the historical role of the ‘now hidden, now open’, class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, whether it be in 1945, 1968 or 1989, is a major problem for the marxist credentials of all these groups.

Denying the existence of the period of decomposition means in reality refusing to recognise the integral historical role played by the struggle between the classes in the development of the world situation. In other words a major departure from the marxist method. To only recognise the decisive factor of the class struggle in exceptional moments when the proletariat makes its presence felt openly on the world stage, i.e., when the capacities of the working class are obvious to everybody, is an indication of the decline of the epigones of the Italian left and the claims of all its groups to be the vanguard[2].

The fact that the bourgeoisie always, in every epoch, whether in periods of defeat or retreat or in periods of revolution, has learnt to take into account the disposition of the working class was known to marxism as far back as 1848, after the bloody crushing of the revolutionary insurrection of the French proletariat in June of that year. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte of Marx, which Engels always held up as a prime example of the application of the method of historical materialism to world events, shows that, following the events of 1848, the bourgeoisie was obliged, henceforth, to nevertheless recognise the defeated working class as its historic adversary. This recognition was a significant factor in the alignment of the ruling class behind the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte of 1852 and the suppression of the republican faction of the bourgeoisie. [3].

 

The rise and fall of modes of production in history

Another successor to the Partito of 1945, the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ex-IBRP), which shares the disdain for the decisive role of the class struggle, also proudly displays its ignorance of the historical specificity of the decomposition of world capitalism, the theory of which it describes as non-marxist and idealist:

"After the collapse of the USSR the ICC suddenly declared that this collapse had created a new situation in which capitalism had reached a new stage, which they called ‘decomposition’. In their lack of understanding of the way capitalism works, for the ICC almost everything that is bad - from religious fundamentalism to the numerous wars which have broken out since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc - is simply the expression of Chaos and Decomposition. We think that this is tantamount to the complete abandonment of the terrain of marxism, as these wars, just like the earlier wars of capitalism's decadent phase, are the result of this imperialist order itself ... An overproduction of capital and commodities, which is cyclically called forth by the tendential fall of the rate of profit, leads to economic crises and to contradictions which, in their turn, engender imperialist war. As soon as enough capital is devalued and means of production are destroyed (through war), then a new cycle of production can begin. Since 1973, we have been in the final phase of such a crisis, and a new cycle of accumulation has not yet begun”[4].

One wonders whether the comrades in the ICT (who think that it was following the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 that we suddenly pulled our analysis of decomposition out of our hat) have bothered to read our basic text of 1990. In its introduction, we are very clear:

"Even before the events in the East, the ICC had already highlighted this historical phenomenon (see, for example,  International Review no. 57)".

It is also appallingly superficial to attribute to us the idea that "almost everything that is bad ... is simply the expression of Chaos and Decomposition". And their basic point is to claim something they think we had not thought of: "these wars, just like the earlier wars of capitalism's decadent phase, are the result of this imperialist order itself". What a discovery! We have never said anything else, but the question that is being asked and that they are not asking, is in what general historical context the imperialist order is framed today. For the ICT militants, it is enough to destroy enough constant capital for a new cycle of accumulation to begin. From this point of view, the destruction taking place today in Ukraine is a boon to the health of the world economy. This message must be passed on to the economic leaders of the bourgeoisie who expressed alarm at the recent Davos Forum, at the prospects of the capitalist world and in particular at the negative impact of the war in Ukraine on the world economy. In fact, those who attribute to us a break with the marxist approach would do well to reread (or read) the fundamental texts of Marx and Engels and try to understand the method they employ. If the facts themselves and the evolution of the world situation confirm, day after day, the validity of our analysis, it is largely because it is firmly based on the dialectical method of marxism (even if there is no explicit reference to this method or quotations from Marx or Engels in the 1990 theses).

In its rejection of the analysis of decomposition of world capitalism, the ICT distinguishes itself, or embarrasses itself, depending on your point of view, by also taking its polemical axe, however blunt, to another pillar of the marxist method of historical materialism that is summarised in Marx’s Preface (reprised, by the way, in the first point of the ICC platform). The relations of production in every social formation of human history - relations which determine the interests and actions of the contending classes issuing from them - are always transformed from factors of development of the productive forces in an ascendant historical phase, to negative fetters of these same forces in a later, downward phase, creating the necessity for social revolution. But the period of decomposition, the culmination of a century of capitalism’s decadence as a mode of production, simply doesn’t exist for the ICT.

While the ICT uses the phrase ‘capitalism’s decadent phase’ it hasn’t understood what this phase means either for the development of the economic crisis of capitalism or the imperialist wars resulting from it.

In the ascendent epoch of capitalism the cycles of production - commonly known as booms and slumps - were the heart beats of a progressively expanding system. The limited wars of this time could either accelerate this progression through national consolidation - as the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 did for Germany - or gain new markets through colonial conquest. The devastation of two world wars and the imperialist destruction of the decadent period and their aftermath express by contrast the historic ruination of the capitalist system and its dead end as a mode of production.

For the ICT however the healthy 19th century dynamic of capitalist accumulation is everlasting: for them the cycles of production have only increased in size. And this leads them to the absurdity that a new cycle of capitalist production could be fertilised in the ashes of a third world war[5]. Even the bourgeoisie isn’t so stupidly optimistic about the perspectives of its system and has more insights into the age of catastrophic bankruptcy that it confronts.

The ICT maybe ‘economically materialist’ but not in the marxist sense of analysing the development of the relations of production in changing historical conditions.

In three fundamental works of the workers' movement, Marx's Capital, Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital and Lenin's The State and Revolution we find a historical approach to the questions studied. Marx devotes many pages to explaining how the capitalist mode of production, which already fully dominated the society of his time, developed in the course of history. Rosa Luxemburg examines how the question of accumulation was posed by various earlier writers and Lenin does the same on the question of the state. In this historical approach, the point is to account for the fact that the realities under examination are not static, intangible things that have existed from the beginning of time, but correspond to constantly evolving processes with elements of continuity but also, and above all, of transformation and even rupture. The 1990 Theses try to draw on this approach by presenting the current historical situation within the general history of society, that of capitalism and more particularly the history of the decadence of this system. More concretely, they point out the similarities between the decadence of pre-capitalist societies and that of capitalist society but also, and above all, the differences between them, a question that is at the heart of the occurrence of the decomposition phase within the latter:

“whereas in past societies, the new productive relations which were to supersede the old were able to develop alongside the latter, within society - which to a certain extent limited the effects and the degree of social decadence - communist society, which alone can follow capitalism, cannot develop at all within it; the regeneration of society is thus completely impossible without the violent overthrow of the bourgeois class and the eradication of capitalist relations of production”

By contrast the ahistorical materialism of the ICT can explain every event, every war, in every epoch by incanting the same phrase: ‘cycles of accumulation’. Such oracular materialism, because it explains everything, explains nothing, and for this reason it cannot exorcise the danger of idealism.

On the contrary the gaps created by vulgar materialism need to be filled with an idealist glue. When the real conditions of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat can’t be understood or explained an idealist deus ex-machina is required to resolve the problem: ‘the revolutionary party’. But this is not the communist party that emerges and is constructed in specific historical conditions but a mythical one that can be inflated in any period by opportunist hot air. 

 

The dialectical component of historical materialism

The epigones of the Italian left, in decrying the existence of a period of decomposition of world capitalism therefore have had to try and remove two major pillars of the marxist method of historical materialism. First, that the history of capitalism, as all previous history, is the history of class struggle, and secondly that the determinant role of economic laws evolves with the historical evolution of a mode of production.

There is a third forgotten requirement implicit in the other two facets of the marxist method: the recognition of the dialectical evolution of all phenomena, including the development of human societies, according to the unity of opposites, which Lenin describes as the essence of dialectics in his work on the question during the First World War. Whereas the epigones only see development in terms of repetition and in increase or decrease, marxism understands that historic necessity - materialist determinism - expresses itself in a contradictory interactive way, so that cause and effect can change places and necessity reveal itself through accidents.

For marxism the superstructure of social formations, that is their political, juridical and ideological organisation, arises on the basis of the given economic infrastructure and is determined by the latter. This much the epigones have understood. However the fact that this superstructure can act as cause - if not the principle one - as well as effect, is lost on them. Engels, towards the end of his life had to insist on this very point in a series of letters in the 1890s addressing the vulgar materialism of the epigones of the time. His correspondence is absolutely essential reading for those who deny today that the decomposition of the capitalist superstructure can have a catastrophic effect on the economic fundamentals of the system.

“Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc, development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. (Engels to Borgius, January 25, 1894.)

In the final phase of capitalist decline, its period of decomposition, the retroactive effect of the rotting superstructure on the economic infrastructure is increasingly accentuated, as the negative economic effect of the Covid pandemic, climate change and imperialist war in Europe have strikingly proved - except to the blinkered disciples of Bordiga and Damen[6].

Marx did not have the opportunity to explain his method, the one he uses especially in Capital, as he had planned. He only mentions this method, very briefly, in the afterword to the German edition of his book. For our part, notably in the face of the often stupid accusations of the PPM (and even more so of the parasites) that our analysis "is not marxist", that it is "idealist", it is up to us to highlight the fidelity of the approach of the 1990 theses with respect to further aspects of the dialectical method of marxism, of which we can recall a few of the elements:

 

The transformation of quantity into quality

This is an idea that recurs frequently in the 1990 text. Manifestations of decomposition could exist in capitalism's decadence, but today the accumulation of these manifestations is proof of a 'transformational-rupture' in the life of society, signaling the entry into a new epoch of capitalist decadence in which decomposition becomes the determining element. This component of the marxist dialectic is not limited to social facts. As Engels points out, especially in the Anti-Dühring and The Dialectic of Nature, it is a phenomenon that can be found in all fields and which, moreover, has been detected by other thinkers. In the Anti-Dühring, for example, Engels quotes Napoleon Bonaparte saying (in summary) "Two Mamelukes were absolutely superior to three Frenchmen; ... 1,000 Frenchmen always knocked down 1,500 Mamelukes" because of the discipline that becomes effective when it involves a large number of combatants. Engels also insists that this law is fully applicable in the field of science. As far as the present historical situation and the multiplication of a whole series of catastrophic facts are concerned, to not rely on this law of the transformation of quantity into quality is to turn one's back on marxist dialectics (which is normal on the part of bourgeois ideology and the majority of academic "specialists"). This is however, the case for the whole of the PPM which tries to apply a specific and isolated cause to each of the catastrophic manifestations of current history.

 

The whole is not the simple sum of its parts

Though each has a specificity and though they may even acquire in certain circumstances a relative autonomy, the various components of the life of society are determined inside a totality governed "in the end" (but only in the end, as Engels says in a famous letter to J Bloch, September 21 1890), by the mode and relations of production and their evolution. This is one of the major phenomena of the present situation. The various manifestations of decomposition, which at first might have seemed independent but whose accumulation already indicated that we had entered a new epoch of capitalist decadence, are now increasingly having an impact one upon the other in a kind of "chain reaction", a "whirlwind" which is giving to history the acceleration we (as well as the "experts" in Davos) are witnessing.

 

The decisive role of the future

Finally borrowing this essential aspect of movement, of transformation, from the marxist historical dialectic, lies at the heart of the central idea of our analysis of decomposition:

"no mode of production can live, develop, maintain itself on a viable basis and ensure social cohesion, if it is unable to present a perspective for the whole of the society which it dominates. And this is especially true of capitalism, which is the most dynamic mode of production in history." (Thesis 5)

And, at the current time, neither of the two main classes, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, offer such a perspective to society.

For those who call us 'idealists', it is a real scandal for us to assert that a phenomenon of an ideological order, the absence of a vision for society, can impact in a major way the life of society. In fact, they prove that the materialism they claim to be based on is nothing more than a vulgar materialism already criticised by Marx in his time, notably in the Theses on Feuerbach. In their vision, the forces of production develop autonomously. And the development of the forces of production alone dictates the changes in the relations of production and the relations between classes. According to them, institutions and ideologies, i.e. the superstructure, remain in place as long as they legitimise and preserve the existing relations of production. And so elements such as ideas, human morality or even political intervention in the historical process are ruled out.

Historical materialism contains, in addition to economic factors, other factors such as natural wealth and contextual elements. The forces of production include much more than machines or technology. They include knowledge, know-how, experience. In fact everything that makes the work process possible or hinders it. The forms of cooperation and association are themselves productive forces and are also an important element of economic transformation and development.

Those who could be called “anti-dialecticians”[7] deny the distinction between the objective and subjective conditions of revolutionary struggle. They see the strength of the class is derived from the simple defence of its immediate economic interests. They consider that the class interests of the proletariat will create its capacity to realise and defend these interests. They disregard the forces at work to systematically disorganise the working class, divide it, disarm it and obscure the class nature of its struggle.

As Lenin noted, we have to make concrete analyses of a concrete situation. And in the most developed capitalist society, a very important role is given to ideology, to an apparatus which must defend and justify bourgeois interests and give stability to the capitalist system. This is why Marx pointed out that for the communist revolution to take place, its objective and subjective conditions must be met. The first condition is the capacity of the economy to produce in sufficient abundance for the world population. The second condition is a sufficient level of development of class consciousness. This brings us back to our analysis of the question of the "weak link" and the necessary historical experience expressed in consciousness.

The “mechanical determinists" remove the development of the productive forces from their social context. They tend to deny ANY significance to the ideological superstructure, even if they don't say this. Workers' struggles tend to appear as a pure question of reflexes. This is a fundamentally fatalistic view which is well expressed in Bordiga's idea that "the revolution is as certain as if it had already taken place". Such a view leads to a passive submission, a submission that awaits the automatic effects of economic development. In the end, it leaves no room for class struggle as a fundamental condition for any change, in contradiction with the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles."

The third thesis on Feuerbach gives us a good understanding of historical materialism and rejects strict determinism:

"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, that, therefore changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that circumstances are changed precisely by men and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which towers above society (Robert Owen, for example).

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can only be conceived and rationally understood as revolutionary practice."

 

The importance of the future in the life of human societies

It is likely that our detractors will see this as an idealistic view, but we maintain that the marxist dialectic attributes to the future a fundamental place in the evolution and movement of society. Of the three moments of a historical process, the past, the present and the future, it is the latter which constitutes the fundamental factor in its dynamic.

The role of the future is fundamental to human history. The first humans who set out from Africa to conquer the world, the aborigines who set out from Australia to conquer the Pacific, were looking to the future for new means of subsistence. It is the preoccupation with the future that drives the desire for procreation as well as most religions. And since our detractors need "good economic" examples, we can cite two in the functioning of capitalism. When a capitalist invests, it is not with an eye to the past, it is to obtain a future profit. Similarly, credit, which plays such a fundamental role in the mechanisms of capitalism, is no more than a contract with the future.

The role of the future is omnipresent in the texts of Marx and marxism more generally. This role is well highlighted in this well-known passage from Capital:

"Our starting point is work in a form that belongs exclusively to man. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will."

Obviously, this essential role of the future in society is even more fundamental for the workers' movement, whose present struggles only take on real meaning in the perspective of the communist revolution of the future.

"The social revolution of the 19th century [the proletarian revolution] cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future.” (Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

"Trade unions act usefully as centres of resistance to the encroachments of capital. They partly fail in their purpose as soon as they make an unwise use of their power. They entirely miss their goal as soon as they confine themselves to a war of skirmishes against the effects of the existing regime, instead of working at the same time for its transformation and using their organised strength as a lever for the definitive emancipation of the working class, that is to say, for the definitive abolition of wage-labour.” (Marx, Wages, Prices and Profit)

"The final goal, whatever it may be, is nothing, the movement is everything. [according to Bernstein]. The final aim of socialism is the only decisive element distinguishing the socialist movement from bourgeois democracy and bourgeois radicalism, the only element which, rather than giving the workers' movement the vain task of plastering over the capitalist regime in order to save it, makes it a class struggle against this regime, for the abolition of this regime..."  (Rosa Luxemburg, Social Reform or Revolution?)

"What is to be done?", "Where to begin?" (Lenin)

And it is precisely because today's society is deprived of this fundamental element, the future, the perspective (which is felt by more and more people, especially among the youth), a perspective that only the proletariat can offer, that it is sinking into despair and rotting on its feet.

 

Part III: The perspective for the proletariat

 

The WEF 2023 report convincingly alerts us to the extreme gravity of the current world situation, which will be much worse by the 2030s "without significant policy change or investment". At the same time, it "showcases broader paralysis and ineffectiveness of key multilateral mechanisms in addressing crises facing the global order" and notes "a divergence between what is scientifically necessary and what is politically expedient". In other words, the situation is desperate and the current society is definitively incapable of reversing the course of its destruction, which confirms the title of our October 2022 text: "The acceleration of capitalist decomposition openly poses the question of the destruction of humanity", as well as fully confirming the prognosis already contained in our 1990 Theses.

At the same time, the report repeatedly refers to the prospect of 'widespread social unrest' which 'will not be contained to emerging markets' (meaning that it will also affect the most developed countries) and that ‘are posing an existential challenge to political systems around the world.’ Nothing less! For the WEF, and the bourgeoisie in general, this social unrest falls into the negative category of "risks" and threats to "world order". But the WEF's forecasts timidly and unintentionally add fuel to our own analysis by pointing out that the proletariat continues to represent a threat to the bourgeois order. Like the bourgeoisie as a whole, the WEF does not distinguish between different types of social unrest: all this is a factor of "disorder" and "chaos". And it is true that some movements fall into this category, as was the case with the "Arab Spring" for example. But in reality, what frightens the bourgeoisie the most, without it saying so openly or being fully aware of it, is that among these examples of "social unrest" there are some that prefigure the overthrow of its power over society and the capitalist system: the struggles of the proletariat.

Thus, even in this aspect, the WEF illustrates our Theses of 1990 and our text of October 2022. The former text takes up the idea that, despite all the difficulties it has encountered, the proletariat has not lost the game, that “Today, the historical perspective remains completely open.” (Thesis 17). And it reminds us that "Despite the blow that the Eastern bloc’s collapse has dealt to proletarian consciousness, the class has not suffered any major defeats on the terrain of its struggle. In this sense, its combativity remains virtually intact. Moreover, and this is the element which in the final analysis will determine the outcome of the world situation, the inexorable aggravation of the capitalist crisis constitutes the essential stimulant for the class struggle and the development of consciousness, the precondition for its ability to resist the poison distilled by the social rot. For while there is no basis for the unification of the class in the partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, nonetheless its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis constitutes the basis for the development of its class strength and unity." (Ibid.).

In addition :

“unlike social decomposition which essentially effects the superstructure, the economic crisis directly attacks the foundations on which this superstructure rests; in this sense, it lays bare all the barbarity that is battening on society, thus allowing the proletariat to become aware of the need to change the system radically, rather than trying to improve certain aspects of it.” (Ibid.)

And in fact we can see today that, despite the weight of decomposition (notably the collapse of Stalinism) and the long torpor that affected it, the working class is still present on the stage of history and has the capacity to take up its struggle again, as demonstrated in particular by the struggles in the United Kingdom and in France (the two proletariats that were at the origin of the foundation of the IWA in 1864 (a mere wink ago in historical terms!)

In this sense, if the different manifestations of decomposition act in a negative way on the struggle of the proletariat and its consciousness (weight of populism, of inter-classism, of democratic illusions), we have today a new confirmation that only the directly economic attacks allow the proletariat to mobilise itself on its class terrain and that these attacks which are being unleashed at the moment, and which are going to worsen even more, create the conditions for a significant development of workers' struggles on the international scale. Thus, we must underline what is written in the October 2022 text:

 “Hence, in this context, the 20s of the 21st century will have a considerable impact on historical development. They will show with even greater clarity than in the past that the perspective of the destruction of humanity is an integral part of capitalist decomposition. At the other pole, the proletariat will begin to take its first steps, like those expressed in the combativity of the struggles in the UK, to defend its living conditions in the face of the multiplication of the attacks of the different bourgeoisies and the blows of the world economic crisis with all its consequences. These first steps will often be hesitant and full of weaknesses, but they are essential if the working class is to be able to reaffirm its historical capacity to impose its communist perspective. Thus, the two alternative poles of the perspective will confront each other globally: the destruction of humanity or the communist revolution, even if this latter alternative is still very far off and faces enormous obstacles.”

Indeed, the path that the proletariat has to accomplish is extremely long and difficult. On the one hand, it will have to face all the traps that the bourgeoisie will put on its way, and this in an ideological atmosphere poisoned by the decomposition of the capitalist society which permanently hinders the fight and the consciousness of the proletariat;

• Solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look out for number one’;
• the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of the relationships which form the basis for all social life;
• the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society;
• consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch”. (Thesis 13)

The 1990 Theses insist on these difficulties. In particular, they stress that “it is ... fundamental to understand that the longer the proletariat takes to overthrow capitalism, the greater will be the dangers and the dangerous effects of decomposition.” (Thesis 15)

“In fact, we have to highlight the fact that today, contrary to the situation in the 1970’s, time is no longer on the side of the working class. As long as society was threatened with destruction by imperialist war alone, the mere fact of the proletarian struggle was sufficient to bar the way to this destruction. But, unlike imperialist war, which depended on the proletariat’s adherence to the bourgeoisie’s ‘ideals’, social decomposition can destroy humanity without controlling the working class. For, while the workers’ struggles can oppose the collapse of the economy, they are powerless, within this system, to hinder decomposition. Thus, while the threat posed by decomposition may seem more far-off than that of world war (were the conditions for it present, which is not the case today), it is by contrast far more insidious.The workers’ resistance to the effects of the crisis is no longer enough: only the communist revolution can put an end to the threat of decomposition.” (Thesis 16)

The brutal acceleration of decomposition that we are witnessing today, which makes the perspective of the destruction of humanity more and more threatening, even in the eyes of the most lucid sectors of the bourgeoisie, constitutes a confirmation of this analysis. And since only the communist revolution will be able to put an end to the destructive dynamics of decomposition and its increasingly deleterious effects, this can give an idea of the difficulty of the path that leads to the overthrow of capitalism. It is a path in which the tasks that the proletariat must accomplish are considerable. In particular, it will have to fully reappropriate its class identity, which has been strongly affected by the counter-revolution and the various manifestations of decomposition, notably the collapse of the so-called "socialist" regimes. It will also be necessary, and this is also fundamental, to reappropriate its past experience, which is an immense task since this experience has been forgotten by the proletarians. This is a fundamental responsibility of the communist vanguard: to bring a decisive contribution to this reappropriation by the whole class of the lessons of more than a century and a half of proletarian struggle.

The difficulties that the proletariat will have to face will not disappear with the overthrow of the capitalist state in all countries. Following Marx, we have often insisted on the immensity of the task that awaits the working class during the period of transition from capitalism to communism, a task that is out of all proportion to all the revolutions of the past, since it is a question of passing from the "reign of necessity to the reign of freedom". And it is clear that the longer it takes for the revolution to be accomplished, the more immense the task will be: day after day capitalism destroys a little more of the planet and, consequently, the material conditions for communism. Moreover, the seizure of power by the proletariat will follow a terrible civil war increasing the devastation of all kinds already caused by the capitalist mode of production even before the revolutionary period. In this sense, the task of rebuilding society that the proletariat will have to accomplish will be incomparably more gigantic than what it would have had to achieve if it had taken power during the revolutionary wave of the first post-war period. Similarly, if the destruction of the Second World War was already considerable, it only affected the countries concerned by the fighting, which allowed a reconstruction of the world economy, especially as the main industrial power, the United States, had been spared by this destruction. But today it is the whole planet that is concerned by the increasing destruction of all kinds caused by dying capitalism. Consequently, it must be clear that the seizure of power by the working class on a global scale will not in itself guarantee that it will be able to accomplish its historic task of establishing communism. Capitalism, by allowing a tremendous development of the productive forces, has created the material conditions for communism, but the decay of this system, and its decomposition, could undermine these conditions, leaving the proletariat with a completely devastated, unsalvageable planet.

It is therefore the responsibility of revolutionaries to point out the difficulties that the proletariat will have to face on the road to communism. Their role is not to provide consolations so as not to cause despair in the working class. The truth is revolutionary, as Marx said however terrible it may be.

That said, if it succeeds in taking power, the proletariat will have a number of assets at its disposal to accomplish its task of rebuilding society.

On the one hand, it will be able to put at its service the tremendous progress made by science and technology during the 20th century and the two decades of the 21st century. The WEF report refers to these advances as "dual-use (civilian and military) technologies". Once the proletariat has taken power, military use will no longer be necessary, which is a considerable advance since it is clear that today the military sphere accounts for the lion's share of the benefits of technological progress (alongside many other unproductive expenditures).

More globally, the seizure of power by the proletariat will have to allow an unprecedented liberation of the productive forces imprisoned by the laws of capitalism. Not only will the enormous burden of military and unproductive expenditure be eliminated, but also the monstrous waste represented by the competition between the various economic and national sectors of bourgeois society as well as the phenomenal under-utilisation of the productive forces (programmed obsolescence, mass unemployment, absence or deficiency of the education systems, etc.).

But the main asset of the proletariat in this period of transition-reconstruction will not be technological or strictly economic. It will be fundamentally political. If the proletariat succeeds in taking power, it will mean that it has reached a very high level of consciousness, organisation and solidarity during the period of confrontation with the capitalist state, of the civil war against the bourgeoisie. And these are gains that will be precious for facing the immense challenges that will come its way. Above all, the proletariat will be able to rely on the future, this fundamental element in the life of society, this future whose absence in the present society is at the heart of its rotting on its feet.

In its 2021/2022 Human Development Report, published last October and entitled Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives, the UN tells us:

“A new ‘uncertainty complex’ is emerging, never before seen in human history. Constituting it are three volatile and interacting strands: the destabilizing planetary pressures and inequalities of the Anthropocene, the pursuit of sweeping societal transformations to ease those pressures and the widespread and intensifying polarization…

Global crises have piled up: the global financial crisis, the ongoing global climate crisis and Covid-19 pandemic, a looming global food crisis. There is a nagging sense that whatever control we have over our lives is slipping away, that the norms and institutions we used to rely on for stability and prosperity are not up to the task of today's uncertainty complex." (Overview, p 15-16)

As can be seen, this UN report goes in the same direction as the WEF report. It goes even further in a way, since it considers that the earth has entered a new geological period due to the action of humans, which began in the 17th century and which it calls the Anthropocene and which we call capitalism. Above all, it emphasises the deep despair, the 'no future' that increasingly permeates society (which it calls the 'uncertainty complex').

Precisely, the fact that the proletarian revolution gives back to human society a future it has lost will be a powerful factor in the ability of the working class to finally reach the "promised land" of communism, not after 40 years, but after well over a century of "wandering in the desert".

 

Beginning with a horrific pandemic, the 2020s have been a concrete reminder of the only alternative that exists: proletarian revolution or the destruction of humanity. With Covid 19, the conflict in Ukraine and the growth of the war economy everywhere, the economic crisis and its devastating inflation, with global warming and the destruction of nature that increasingly threaten life itself, with the rise of every man for himself, of irrationality and obscurantism, the decomposition of the entire social fabric, the 2020s are not only seeing an addition of deadly scourges; all these scourges converge, combine and feed off each other. The 2020s will be a concatenation of all the worst evils of decadent and rotting capitalism. Capitalism has entered a phase of grave and extreme convulsions, the most threatening and bloody of which is the risk of an increase in military conflicts.

The decadence of capitalism has a history, and since 1914 it has gone through several stages. The one that began in 1989 is "a specific phase -the ultimate phase- of its history, the one in which decomposition becomes a factor, if not the decisive factor, of the evolution of society"[1]. The main characteristic of this phase of decomposition, its deepest roots, and what undermines the whole society and generates decay, is the absence of perspective. The 2020s prove once again that the bourgeoisie can only offer humanity more misery, war and chaos, a growing and increasingly irrational disorder. But what about the working class? What about its revolutionary perspective, communism? It's obvious that the proletariat has been plunged for decades into immense difficulties; its struggles have been rare and not very massive, its capacity to organise itself is still extremely limited and, above all, it no longer knows that it exists as a class, as a social force capable of leading a revolutionary project. And time is not on the side of the working class.

Nevertheless, if this danger of a slow and finally irreversible erosion of the very bases of communism exists, there is no fatality to this end in total barbarism; on the contrary the historical perspective remains totally open. Indeed, "despite the blow dealt by the collapse of the Eastern bloc to the proletariat's consciousness, it has not suffered any major defeat on the terrain of its struggle in this sense, its combativity remains practically intact. But moreover, and this is the element which ultimately determines the evolution of the world situation, the same factor which is at the origin of the development of decomposition, the inexorable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism, constitutes the essential stimulus to the struggle and to the awareness of the class, the very condition of its capacity to resist the ideological poison of the rotting of society. Its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis itself constitutes the basis for the development of its strength and its class unity"[2]

And today, with the terrible worsening of the world economic crisis and the return of inflation, the working class is beginning to react and to find the path of its struggle. All its historical difficulties persist, its capacity to organise its own struggles and even more so to become aware of its revolutionary project are still very far away, but the growing combativity in the face of the brutal blows dealt by the bourgeoisie to living and working conditions is the fertile ground on which the proletariat can rediscover its class identity, become aware again of what it is, of its strength when it struggles, when it shows solidarity and develops its unity. It's a process, a struggle that is resuming after years of passivity, a potential that the current strikes suggest. The strongest sign of this possible dynamic is the return of workers’ strikes in the UK. This is an event of historic significance.

The return of workers' combativity in response to the economic crisis can become a focus for the development of consciousness. Until now, each acceleration of decomposition has brought a halt to the embryonic expressions of workers' combativity: the movement in France 2019 suffered from the outbreak of the pandemic; the struggles of winter 2021 stopped in the face of the war in Ukraine, etc. This means an additional and not insignificant difficulty to the development of struggles and the confidence of the proletariat in itself. However, there is no other way than the struggle: the struggle is in itself the first victory. The world proletariat, in a very tortuous process, with many bitter defeats, can gradually start to recover its class identity and launch, in the long run, an international offensive against this moribund system. In other words, the coming years will be decisive for the future of humanity.

During the 1980s, the world was clearly heading either for war or for major class confrontations. The outcome of this decade was as unexpected as it was unprecedented: on the one hand, the impossibility for the bourgeoisie to go to world war, prevented by the refusal of the working class to accept sacrifices; and on the other hand, this same working class was incapable of politicising its struggles and offering a revolutionary perspective. This engendered a kind of blockage, plunging the whole of society into a situation without a future, and thus gave rise to generalised decomposition. The "years of truth" of the 1980s[3] thus led to the phase of decomposition. Today, the situation is more intense and dramatic:

• On the one hand, the 2020s will show, with even greater acuteness, the possibility of the destruction of humanity contained in capitalist decomposition.
• But on the other hand, the proletariat will start to take the first steps, often hesitant and full of weaknesses, on the path of its struggles, which can lead it to pose the perspective of communism. The proletariat will go through a very hard and difficult apprenticeship.

The two poles of the perspective will arise and clash. During this decade, there will be at the same time an ever-more dramatic aggravation of the effects of decomposition along with workers' reactions that offer another future. The only alternative, the destruction of humanity or proletarian revolution, will reappear and become more and more palpable. It is therefore a fight, a struggle, the class struggle. And for the outcome to be favourable, the role of revolutionary organisations will be vital. Whether it's the development of class consciousness and organisation in the struggle or the clear understanding of the stakes and the perspective by minorities, our intervention will be decisive. We ourselves must therefore have the clearest and most lucid awareness of the dynamics underway, of its potential, of the strengths and weaknesses of our class, as well as of the ideological attacks and traps set on the path ahead by the historical situation of decomposition and by the bourgeoisie, the most intelligent and Machiavellian ruling class in history.

 

 

1. In the face of war, the working class has not suffered a decisive defeat...

War is always a decisive moment for the world proletariat. With war, the world working class suffers the massacre of a part of itself, but also a monumental slap in the face from the ruling class. From all points of view, war is the exact opposite of what the working class is, of its international nature symbolised by its rallying cry: "Workers have no homeland. Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

The outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine thus puts the world proletariat to the test. The reaction to this barbarism is a primordial marker for understanding where our class stands, where the balance of power with the bourgeoisie stands. And there is no homogeneity here. On the contrary, there are huge differences between countries, between the periphery and the central regions of capitalism.

In Ukraine, the working class is physically and ideologically crushed. Widely involved in the defence of the fatherland, against the "Russian invader", against "the brutal thug Putin", for the defence of Ukrainian culture and freedoms, for democracy, the workers join the mobilisation in the factories as in the trenches. This situation is obviously the result of the weakness of the international workers' movement but also of the history of the proletariat in Ukraine. If it's a concentrated and educated proletariat, with a long experience, this proletariat has also and above all suffered the full force of the consequences of counter-revolution and Stalinism. The famine organised in the 1930s by the Soviet authorities, the Holomodor, in which 5 million people lost their lives, forms the basis of a hatred against the Russian neighbour and a strong patriotic feeling. More recently, in the early 2010s, a whole section of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie chose to emancipate itself from Russian tutelage and ally itself with the West. In reality, this development reflected increasing US pressure throughout the region. The "Orange Revolution"[4] of 2004, and then the Maidan (or "Revolution of Dignity") of 2014, showed the extent to which a very large part of the population adhered to the defence of "democracy" and Ukrainian independence against Russian influence. Since then, the nationalist propaganda has only increased until the culminating point in February 2022.

The inability of the working class in this country to oppose the war and its mobilisation, an inability which opened the possibility of this imperialist butchery, indicates the extent to which capitalist barbarism and decomposition are gaining ground in ever wider parts of the globe. After Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, it is now part of Central Europe that is threatened by the risk of plunging into imperialist chaos; Ukraine has shown that there is, in some satellite countries of the ex-USSR, in Belarus, in Moldavia, in ex-Yugoslavia, a proletariat very weakened by decades of forced exploitation by Stalinism in the name of Communism, decades where it bore the weight of democratic illusions and was gangrened by nationalism. In Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, tensions are indeed rising.

On the other hand, in Russia, the proletariat is not ready to sacrifice its life on a massive scale. Certainly, the working class of Russia is not capable of opposing the war adventure of its own bourgeoisie, certainly it accepts without reacting this barbarism and its 100,000 dead, certainly the reaction of the conscripts not to go to the front is taking the form of desertion or self-mutilation, so many desperate individual acts reflecting the absence of a class reaction; but the fact remains that the Russian bourgeoisie cannot declare a general mobilisation. Because the Russian workers don't sufficiently support the idea of getting slaughtered en masse in the name of the Fatherland.

It is very probably the same in Asia: it would thus be a mistake to deduce too quickly from the weakness of the proletariat in Ukraine that the way is also free to unleash military conflict between China and Taiwan or between the two Koreas. In China, South Korea and Taiwan, the working class has a higher concentration, education and consciousness than in Ukraine and in Russia. The refusal to be turned into cannon fodder is still the most plausible situation in these countries today. Thus, beyond the balance of forces between the imperialist powers involved in this region of the world, first and foremost China and the USA, the presence of a very high concentration of educated workers represents the first brake on the war dynamic.

As for the central countries, unlike in 1990 or 2003, the great democratic powers are not directly involved in the Ukrainian conflict, they are not sending their troops of professional soldiers. Rather they are politically and militarily supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, defending the democratic freedom of the Ukrainian people against the dictator Putin, by sending weapons, all labelled "defensive weapons".

In 2003, and even more so in 1991, the effects of the war had been translated into a relative paralysis of combativity but also into a deep, anxious reflection on the historical stakes. This situation within the class had then necessitated the organisation by the forces of the left of the bourgeoisie of pacifist demonstrations which had flourished everywhere against "US imperialism and its allies". These big mobilisations against the interventions of the Western countries were not the work of the working class; by saying "we are against the policy of our government which participates in the war", they had an impact on the working class, leading it into a dead end and sterilising any effort of consciousness. Nothing like that today: there have been no such pacifist mobilisations. Those who criticise the policies of Western countries and their support for Ukraine are mainly the far-right forces linked to Putin. In the United States, it is the Trumpists or Republicans who are "wavering".

This absence of pacifist mobilisation today does not mean an indifference or even less an adhesion of the proletariat to the war. Yes, the campaign to defend democracy and freedom in Ukraine against the Russian aggressor has demonstrated its full effectiveness in this respect: the working class is trapped by the power of pro-democratic propaganda. But, unlike in 1991, the other side of the coin is that it has no impact on the workers' combativity. It is far from a simple passive non-adherence. Not only is the working class in the central countries still not ready to accept deaths (even of professional soldiers), but it also refuses the sacrifices that war implies, the degradation of their living and working conditions. Thus, in Britain, the European country which is both materially and politically the most involved in the war, the most determined to support Ukraine, is at the same time the one where the workers' combativity is most strongly expressed at the moment. The strikes in the UK are the most advanced part of the international class reaction, of the refusal by the working class of the sacrifices (of overexploitation, of the decrease in the number of workers, of the increase in the pace of work, of the rise in prices, etc.) that the bourgeoisie imposes on the proletariat, and that militarism commands it to impose more and more.

One of the current limits of the efforts of our class is its incapacity to make the link between the degradation of its living conditions and the war. The workers' struggles that are being produced and developed are a response by the workers to the conditions that are imposed on them; they form the only possible response to the policies of the bourgeoisie, but at the same time they do not show themselves capable, for the moment, of taking up and integrating the question of war.

Nevertheless, we have to pay attention to possible developments. For example. In France, on 19 January there were massive demonstrations after the announcement of a pension reform in the name of a balanced budget and social justice; the next day, 20 January, president Macron made official, with great ceremony, a record military budget of 400 billion euros. The link between the sacrifices being demanded and war expenditure will necessarily, over time, become more lodged in workers’ minds. 

The intensification of the war economy directly implies a worsening of the economic crisis; the working class does not yet really make the connection, it does not mobilise, globally, against the war economy, but it stands up against its effects, against the economic crisis, first of all against wages being too low in the face of inflation.

This is not a surprise. History shows that the working class does not mobilise directly against the war at the front but against its effects on daily life at the back. Already in 1982, in an article in International Review 30 which posed the question "Is the war a favourable condition for the communist revolution?", we answered in the negative and affirmed that it is above all the economic crisis which constitutes the most fertile ground for the development of struggles and consciousness, adding quite rightly that "the deepening of the economic crisis breaks down these barriers in the consciousness of a growing number of proletarians through the facts which show that it is a question of the same class struggle”.

 

2. ...on the contrary, it is finding its way back into the struggle against the crisis

The reaction of the working class to the war, if it is very heterogeneous across the world, shows that where the key to the future lies, where there is accumulated historical experience, in the central countries, the proletariat has not suffered a major defeat, that it is not ready to let itself be embroiled and to sacrifice its life. Moreover, its reaction to the effects of the economic crisis indicates a dynamic towards the resumption of workers' combativity in these countries.

By returning to strike action, British workers sent a clear signal to workers around the world: "We must fight”. A section of the left-wing press even sometimes headlined: "In the United Kingdom: the great return of the class struggle". The entry into struggle of the British proletariat thus constitutes an event of historical significance.

This strike wave was led by the fraction of the European proletariat that has suffered the most from the general retreat of the class struggle since the end of the 1980s. If in the 1970s, although with a certain delay compared to other countries like France, Italy or Poland, the British workers had developed very important struggles culminating in the wave of strikes of 1979 ("the Winter of Discontent"), during the 1980s, the British working class suffered an effective counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie which culminated in the defeat of the miners' strike of 1985, faced with the government of Margaret Thatcher. This defeat and the retreat of the British proletariat in a way announced the historical retreat of the world proletariat, revealing before its time the result of the incapacity to politicise the struggles and the weight of corporatism. During the 1990s and 2000s, Britain was particularly affected by deindustrialisation and the transfer of industries to China, India or Eastern Europe. In recent years, British workers have suffered the onslaught of populist movements and especially the deafening Brexit campaign, stimulating the division within them between "remainers" and "leavers", and then the Covid crisis which has weighed heavily on the working class. Finally, and most recently, it has been confronted with the call for the necessary sacrifices of the war effort, sacrifices that are "very small" compared to the "heroic Ukrainian people" resisting under the bombs. However, despite all these difficulties and obstacles, a generation of proletarians is appearing today on the social scene, no longer affected, as their elders had been, by the weight of the defeats of the "Thatcher generation", a new generation which is raising its head by showing that the working class is capable of responding to the attacks through struggle. All things considered, we see a phenomenon quite comparable (but not identical) to that which saw the French working class emerge in 1968: the arrival of a young generation less affected than its elders by the weight of the counter-revolution. So, just as the 1985 defeat in the UK heralded the general retreat of the late 1980s, the return of working class combativity and strike action on the British Isle points to a deep dynamic in the guts of the world proletariat. The "summer of anger" (which has continued into autumn, winter... soon into spring) can only be an encouragement for all the workers of the planet for several reasons: it is the working class of the fifth world economic power, and an English-speaking proletariat, whose struggles can only have an important impact in countries like the USA, Canada or even in other regions of the world, like India or South Africa. English being, moreover, the language of world communication, the influence of these movements necessarily surpasses the possible impact of struggles in France or Germany, for example. In this sense, the British proletariat shows the way not only to the European workers, who will have to be in the vanguard of the rise of the class struggle, but also to the world proletariat, and in particular to the American proletariat. In the perspective of future struggles, the British working class can thus serve as a link between the proletariat of Western Europe and the American proletariat. In the US, as the strikes in many factories in the last few years show, there is a growing combativity of the class and the Occupy movement had already revealed all the reflection at work in its entrails; we must not forget that the proletariat has a great history and experience on that side of the Atlantic. But its weaknesses are also very great: the weight of irrationality, populism and backwardness; the weight of isolation within its own continent; the weight of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois ideology about freedoms, race, etc. The link with Europe, the link provided by the United Kingdom, is thus all the more crucial.

To understand how the return of the strike movement in the UK is a sign of the possibility of a future development of proletarian struggle and consciousness, we need to go back to what we said in our Resolution on the International Situation adopted at our International Congress in 2021[5]: "In 2003, on the basis of new struggles in France, Austria and elsewhere, the ICC predicted a renewal of struggles by a new generation of proletarians who had been less influenced by anti-communist campaigns and would be confronted by an increasingly uncertain future. To a large extent, these predictions were confirmed by the events of 2006-07, notably the struggle against the CPE in France, and 2010-11, in particular the Indignados movement in Spain. These movements have shown important advances in intergenerational solidarity, self-organisation through assemblies, the culture of debate, real concerns about the future for the working class and humanity as a whole. In this sense, they showed the potential for a unification of the economic and political dimensions of the class struggle. However, it took us a long time to understand the immense difficulties faced by this new generation, 'raised' in the conditions of decomposition, difficulties that would prevent the proletariat from reversing the post-1989 retreat during this period." (Point 25). The key element in these difficulties has been the continued erosion of class identity. This is the main reason why the CPE movement of 2006 left no visible trace: in its aftermath, there were no discussion circles, no appearance of small groups, not even books, collections of testimonies etc., to the point of being totally unknown in the ranks of youth today. The precarious students of the time had used the methods of struggle of the proletariat (general assemblies) and the nature of its struggle (solidarity) without even knowing it, which made it impossible to become aware of the nature, strength and historical aims of their own movement. This is the same weakness that hindered the development of the Indignados movement in 2010-2011 and prevented the fruits and lessons from being learned. Indeed, “despite significant advances in consciousness and organisation, the majority of the Indignados saw themselves as ‘citizens’ rather than members of a class, making them vulnerable to the democratic illusions peddled by groups like Democratia real Ya! (the future Podemos), and later to the poison of Catalan and Spanish nationalism." (point 26). Due to a lack of anchorage, the movement went adrift. Because it is the recognition of a common class interest, opposed to that of the bourgeoisie, because it involves the “constitution of the proletariat as a class” as the Communist Manifesto puts it, class identity is inseparable from the development of class consciousness. For example, without class identity, it is impossible to make a conscious link with the history of the class, its battles, its lessons.

In other words, the two greatest moments for the proletariat movement since the 1980s, the movement against the CPE and the Indignados, have either been sterilised or recuperated primarily because of the absence of the more general development of consciousness, because of the loss of class identity. It is this considerable weakness that the return of the strike in the UK carries the possibility of overcoming. Historically, the proletariat in the UK is marked by important weaknesses (union control and corporatism, reformism)[6] , but the word "worker" has been less erased there than elsewhere; in the UK the word is not shameful; and this strike can begin to bring it back into the international mainstream. The workers in the UK are not leading the way at all levels, because their methods of struggle are too marked by their weaknesses, that will be the role of the proletariat elsewhere, but they are sending the most important message today: we are struggling not as citizens or students but as workers. And this step forward is possible thanks to this beginning of a workers' reaction to the economic crisis.

The reality of this dynamic can be measured by the worried reaction of the bourgeoisie, especially in Western Europe, to the dangers of the extension of the "deteriorating social situation". This is particularly the case in France, Belgium or Germany where the bourgeoisie, in contrast to the attitude of the British bourgeoisie, has taken measures to cap increases in oil, gas and electricity or to compensate by means of subsidies or tax cuts for the impact of inflation and price rises and claims loudly that it wants to protect the "purchasing power" of the workers.

In Germany, in October and November 2022, “warning strikes” immediately were immediately followed by the announcement of ‘inflation subsidies’ (3000 euros in the metal industry, 7000 in the car industry) and promises of wage increases.

But with the real aggravation of the world economic crisis, the national bourgeoisies are still obliged to attack the proletariat in the name of competitiveness and balancing the budget; their measures of ‘protection’ and other ‘safeguards’ are bound to diminish little by little. In Italy, the ‘2023 finance law’ reduces a big part of the ‘special assistance’ and represents a new frontal attack on living and working conditions. In France, the Macron government had to announce its major pension reform at the beginning of January 2023, after months of preparation. Result: massive demonstrations, even bigger than the unions anticipated. Apart the millions in the street, it was the atmosphere and nature of the discussions on the marches in France which shows very clearly what’s going on in our class:

• The pension reform was seen by many as “the last straw”, it’s the whole situation that has become intolerable and unliveable;
• “at a certain moment, it’s enough”. This idea expressed in the demonstrations hit the headlines of the newspapers. This is a clear echo of the British slogan “enough is enough”. The link with the situation in the UK seemed obvious to the demonstrators that we discussed with while distributing our international leaflet: “You’re right, it’s the same everywhere, in all countries”;
• this is a confirmation of what we had already noticed in the demonstrations of 2019 and during the strikes of Autumn 2022: the feeling of being “all in the same boat”. The scattered strikes which have been going for months in France were seen as a dead-end, the idea that “we must all struggle together” is emerging more and more;
• There is even a certain change in the ambiance of the latest demonstrations compared to the previous ones where there was more of an air of resignation. The idea that “united, we can win” is much more present.

Obviously, this positive dynamic has not yet arrived at the level of self-organisation. The confrontation with the unions is not there for the moment. Our class has not yet reached that point, the question is not being posed right now. And when the workers begin to confront this question, it will be a very long process involving the reconquest of general assemblies and committees, with all the traps laid by the different forms of trade unionism (the union centres, rank and file, co-ordinations, etc). But the fact that the unions, in order to keep up with the concerns of the class and stay at the head of the movement, are compelled to organise big, apparently unified demonstrations whereas they have been avoiding this for months, show that there is a tendency for the workers to express their solidarity in the struggle.

It’s also interesting to follow how the situation in the UK has evolved at this level. After 9 months of repeated strikes, the anger and combativity does not seem to have diminished. At the beginning of January, ambulance workers and teachers joined the round of strikes. And here as well the idea of fighting together is germinating. Thus, the union discourse has had to adapt, putting more stress on words like ‘unity’ and ‘solidarity’ and promises of united rallies. For the first time, the striking sectors have come out on the same day, for example ambulance workers and nurses.

This simultaneity of struggles in several countries has not been seen since the 1980s! The influence of the militancy of the workers of Britain on the proletariat in France needs to be followed more closely, as does the influence of the tradition of street demonstrations in France on the situation in the UK. Nearly 160 years ago, 28 September 1864, the International Workingmen’s Association was formed, mainly on the initiative of the British and French workers. This is more than just a glance back at history. It reveals the depth of what is going on: the most experienced parts of the world proletariat are moving and once again making their voices heard. The class in Germany, still deeply marked by the defeats of the 1920s, its physical and ideological crushing, is still largely absent, but the intensity of the economic crisis beginning to hit it will also oblige it to react.

The deepening of the crisis and the consequences of the war will reach a crescendo, everywhere generating the rise of anger and combativity. And it is very important that the worsening of the world economic crisis now takes the form of inflation because:

• it pushes proletarians to struggle, out of necessity, it leaves them no choice;
• it affects all countries;
• it is not an attack that the bourgeoisie can prepare and then eventually withdraw as a reform;
• it affects the entire working class, in all sectors;
• it is not the fruit of this or that government, this or that boss, but of capitalism, so it implies a more global, more general struggle and reflection.

Periods of inflation in history have thus regularly pushed the proletariat into the streets. The whole of the end of the 19th century was marked at the international level by rising prices, and at the same time a process of mass strikes developed, from Belgium after 1892 to Russia 1905. The 1980s in Poland had its roots in soaring meat prices. The opposite example is Germany in the 1930s: if galloping inflation did lead to immense anger at that moment too, it participated in the fear, withdrawal and disorientation of the class; but this moment is situated in a very different historical period, that of the counter-revolution, and it is precisely in Germany that the proletariat had already been most crushed ideologically and physically.

Today, (West) Germany is affected by the world economic crisis as it has not been since the 1930s, but this deterioration in living and working conditions, this reappearance of inflation, is taking place in the context of an international revival of workers' combativity. The evolution of the social situation in this country, after decades of relative slumber, therefore demands close study.

Thus, despite the tendency of decomposition to act on the economic crisis, the latter remains the best ally of the proletariat. This is a new confirmation of our Theses on Decomposition: "the inexorable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism constitutes the essential stimulus of the struggle and of the awareness of the class, the very condition of its capacity to resist the ideological poison of the rotting of society. Indeed, as much as the proletariat cannot find a ground for class unity in partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis itself constitutes the basis for the development of its strength and its class unity." So we were right when, in our last resolution on the international situation, we said, "we must reject any tendency to downplay the importance of the 'defensive' economic struggles of the class, which is a typical expression of the modernist conception that sees the class only as an exploited category and not also as a historical, revolutionary force." We already defended this cardinal position in our article in International Review 23 and which belongs to our heritage, "The Struggle of the Proletariat in Decadent Capitalism": "The proletarian struggle tends to go beyond the strictly economic framework to become social, confronting the state directly, politicising itself and demanding the massive participation of the class". It's the same idea which is contained in Lenin's formula: "Behind every strike lurks the hydra of revolution" (see annex).

The 2006 movement against the CPE was a reaction to an economic attack which immediately raised profound general political questions, in particular that of the organisation in assemblies but also that of solidarity between generations. But, as we saw above, the loss of class identity sterilised all this underlying questioning. In the coming strikes, at the international level, in the face of the deepening economic crisis, there is the possibility that workers, even with all their weaknesses and illusions, will begin to see themselves, to recognise themselves, to understand the strength that lies in collective action, and therefore as a class, and then all those questions that have been on hold since the beginning of the 2000s about the perspective ("Another world is possible"), about the methods of struggle (assemblies and the overcoming of corporatist divisions), about the feeling of being "all in the same boat", about the need for solidarity, will become the soil of unity. It is in this way that the issues of the day will become clearer, that they can finally start to be consciously seen and discussed. In this way, the economic and political dimensions will become intertwined.

The intensification of the war economy and the aggravation of the economic crisis in a global context create a rise of anger and combativity also at the global level. And, as in the face of war, the heterogeneity of the proletariat in different countries generates a heterogeneity of the responses and the potential of each movement. There is a whole range of struggles depending on the situation, the history of the proletariat and its experience.

Many countries are approaching the European situation, with a high concentration of workers and 'democratic' governments in power. This is the case in Central and South America. The doctors' and nurses' strike at the end of November or the ‘general’ strike at the end of December in Argentina confirms this relative similarity, this partly common dynamic. But in these countries, the proletariat has not accumulated the same experience as in Europe and North America. The weight of the intermediate layers and therefore the danger of the interclassist trap are much greater there; the Piqueteros movement of the 1990s in Argentina is still the dominant model of struggle. Above all, the throes of decomposition are rotting the whole social fabric: violence and drug trafficking dominate society in the north of Mexico, in Colombia, in Venezuela, and are beginning to become gangrenous in Peru, Chile... These weaknesses explain, for example, why in this last decade, Venezuela sank into a devastating economic crisis without the proletariat being able to react, even though it is a highly educated industrial proletariat with a strong tradition of struggle.

This reality confirms once again the primary responsibility of the proletariat in Europe. On its shoulders weighs the duty to show the way by developing struggles that put at their heart the methods of the proletariat: workers' general assemblies, unifying demands, solidarity between sectors and generations... and the defence of workers' autonomy, a lesson that dates back to class struggles in France in 1848!

In particular, we need to follow the evolution of the class struggle in China. China has 770 million workers and seems to be experiencing a significant increase in the number of strikes in the face of an economic crisis that is taking the form of huge waves of layoffs. Some analysts suggest that the new generation of workers is not ready to accept the same exploitative conditions as their parents, because with the developing economic crisis the promise of a better future in exchange for current sacrifices no longer holds. The iron fist of the Chinese state, whose authority is based above all on repression, can help to stir up anger and push people to massive struggle. That said, the terrible history of the proletariat in China suggests that the poison of democratic illusions will be very powerful; it is inevitable that the anger and demands will be diverted on bourgeois terrain: against the ‘Communist’ yoke, for rights and freedoms, etc. This is at least what happened when anger broke out against the unbearable restrictions of China's anti-Covid policy in late 2022.

In a whole part of the world, the proletariat is marked by a very great historical weakness and its struggles can only be reduced to impotence and/or sink into bourgeois impasses (call for more democracy, freedom, equality, etc.), or diluted in interclass movements. This is the main lesson of the Arab Spring of 2010; even if the workers' mobilisation was real, it was diluted in the ‘people’ and, above all, the demands were directed towards the bourgeois terrain of a change of ruler ("Mubarak out", etc) and the call for more democracy. The huge protest movement in Iran is a perfect new illustration of this. The massive anger of the population is turning to demands for women's rights (the central and now world-famous slogan is 'Woman, Life, Freedom'), so although many workers' struggles are still taking place in the country, they can only be drowned out by the popular movement. In recent years, the very radical language of these social movements has led people to believe that there is a certain form of workers' self-organisation: criticism of the unions, calls for soviets, etc. In reality, this marxist terminology is a veneer spread by the radical left that does not correspond to the reality of working class actions in Iran[7] . Many of the leftist militants from Iran trained in Europe in the 1970s/80s, and they took away this vocabulary which they use to defend their own interests, i.e. those of the left wing of capital in Iran.

Moreover, democratic states use these movements, in China as in Iran:

• On the imperialist level, of course, Ukraine has shown how the "defence of democracy" card can be played by the US to increase its influence over a country, or to destabilise it. It's no coincidence that it's in the Kurdish region of Iran that social protest is strongest, where American influence is also most important.
• On the level of ideology too, against their own proletariat, by hammering home the idea that democracy can be defended, that it was won through hard struggle, “over there they are fighting to get it" and that it is as "the people" that we can mobilise.

It appears here that the political weakness of the proletariat in one country is instrumentalised by the bourgeoisie against the whole world proletariat; and conversely, the experience accumulated by the proletariat of the central countries can show the way to all.

Such confusions on the social movements shaking the peripheral countries compels us to recall our own critique of the theory of the weak link, which is part of our patrimony. In the resolution on the international situation of January 1983 we wrote: “The other major lesson of these battles and their defeat is that this world-wide generalization of struggles can only begin from the countries that constitute the economic heart of capitalism. That is, the advanced countries of the west and, among these, those in which the working class has the oldest and most complete experience: Western Europe”[8]. And, to be even more precise, our resolution from July 1983 says: “Neither the countries of the Third World, nor of the eastern bloc, nor North America, nor Japan can be the point of departure for the process that leads to revolution:

-- the countries of the Third World because of the numerical weakness of the proletariat and the weight of nationalist illusions;

-- Japan and especially the US because they have not so directly been through the counter-revolution and world war, and because of the absence of a deep revolutionary tradition;

-- the eastern bloc countries because of their relative economic backwardness and the specific form that the world crisis takes there (scarcity) obstructing the development of a direct and global consciousness of the cause of the crisis (ie overproduction), and because of the Stalinist counter-revolution which has, in the minds of workers, transformed the idea of socialism into its opposite and has allowed democratic, trade unionist and nationalist illusions to have a new impact[9].

While outside the central countries there can be massive struggles which demonstrate the anger, the courage and combativity of the workers in these parts of the world, these movements on their own cannot develop a perspective. This impossibility underlines the historical responsibility of the proletariat in Europe which has the duty to base itself on its experience to spring the most sophisticated traps of the bourgeoisie, beginning with democracy and “free trade unions”, and thus show the way forward.

 

3. The action of the bourgeoisie against the maturation of workers' consciousness
and the weight of decomposition

What we are seeing in the current strikes and demonstrations, the development of solidarity, of the feeling that we must fight together, that we are all in same boat, indicates a certain subterranean maturation of consciousness. As MC[10] wrote in his text “On subterranean maturation” in an internal bulletin in 1983, “the work of reflection continues in the minds of the workers and manifests itself in the recrudescence of struggles. There is a collective class memory, and this memory also contributes to the development of consciousness and its extension in the class”. But we have to be more precise. Subterranean maturation expresses itself in different ways depending on whether we are talking about the class as a whole, the more combative sectors, or minorities seeking clarity. As we say in our International Review 43:

- at the least conscious level, and also in the broadest layers of the class, it takes the form of a growing contradiction between the historic being, the real needs of the class, and the workers' superficial adherence to bourgeois ideas. This clash may for a long time remain largely unadmitted, buried or repressed, or it may begin to surface in the negative form of disillusionment with, and disengagement from, the principal themes of bourgeois ideology;

- in a more restricted sector of the class, among workers who fundamentally remain on a proletarian terrain, it takes the form of a reflection on past struggles, more or less formal discussions on the struggles to come, the emergence of combative nuclei in the factories and among the unemployed. In recent times, the most dramatic demonstration of this aspect of the phenomenon of subterranean maturation was provided by the mass strikes in Poland 1980, in which the methods of struggle used by the workers showed that there had been a real assimilation of many of the lessons of the struggles of 1956, 1970 and 1976 (for a fuller analysis of how the events in Poland demonstrate the existence of a collective class memory, see the article on ‘Poland and the role of revolutionaries' in IR 24) ;

- in a fraction of the class that is even more limited in size, but destined to grow as the struggle advances, it takes the form of an explicit defence of the communist program, and thus of regroupment into the organized marxist vanguard. The emergence of communist organisations, far from being a refutation of the notion of subterranean maturation, is both a product of and an active factor within it”. 

So, where is this subterranean maturation in the different levels of our class?

Examining the politics of the bourgeoisie is always absolutely essential, both to best assess where our own class stands and to spot the traps that are being prepared against it. Thus, the energy that the bourgeoisie deploys in the central countries, mainly through its unions, to split up the struggles, to isolate the strikes from each other, to avoid any massive unitary demonstrations, proves that it does not want the workers to gather together to demonstrate for wage increases because it knows that this is the most fertile ground for the reconquest of class identity.

So far, this strategy has worked, but the bourgeoisie knows that the idea of having to fight "all together" will continue to germinate in the heads of the workers, as the crisis worsens everywhere; moreover, there is already a small part of the class which is asking itself this kind of question. That's why, both to prepare for the future and to capture and sterilise the thinking of the current minorities, some of the unions are increasingly displaying a radical facade, putting forward a class-struggle, fighting unionism.

It is also striking to see in the demonstrations to what extent the extreme left-wing organisations are attracting an increasingly important part of the youth. Part of the Trotskyist groups thus claim to be more and more concerned with the struggle of the revolutionary working class for communism, whereas in the 1990s, on the contrary, they turned towards the defence of democracy, the left fronts, etc. This clear difference is the result of the adaptation of the bourgeoisie to what it feels in the class: not only the return of working class combativity but also a certain maturation of consciousness.

Moreover, this growing radicalism of a part of the left and trade union forces is also visible on the question of war. Many "fighting" unions and parties claiming to be anarchist, Trotskyist or Maoist have produced "internationalist" declarations, i.e. apparently denouncing the two camps present in Ukraine, Russia and the USA, and apparently calling for a united working class struggle. Here again, this activity of the left of capital has a double meaning: to capture the small minorities in search of the class positions which are developing and, in the longer term, to respond to the deep preoccupations of the class.

For all that, we must not underestimate the impact of either imperialist propaganda or the war itself on workers' consciousness. If the "defence of democracy" cannot suffice today to mobilise workers directly, the fact remains that it pollutes people's heads, that it maintains illusions and the lie of the protective state. The permanent discourse on the "people" contributes to attacking class identity even more, to making people forget that society is divided into irreconcilable, antagonistic classes, since the "people" is supposed to be a community of interest grouped by the nation. Last but not least, the war itself amplifies all the fear, the irrationality, the desire to retreat: the incomprehensible aspect of this war, the growing disorder and chaos, the inability to foresee the evolution of the conflict, the threat of extension, the fear of a third world war or the use of nuclear weapons.

More generally, in the last two years, irrationality has surged among the population at the same time as decomposition has deepened: pandemic, war and the destruction of nature have considerably reinforced the feeling of no-future. In fact, everything we wrote in 2019 in our "Report on the Class Struggle for the 23rd International Congress of the ICC" has been verified and amplified:

“The capitalist world in decomposition necessarily engenders apocalyptic moods. It can offer humanity no future and its potential for destruction on a scale that beggars the imagination has become more and more evident to wide layers of the world’s population…

Nihilism and despair arise from a sense of powerlessness, in a loss of conviction that there is any possible alternative to the nightmare scenario being prepared by capitalism. It tends to paralyse reflection and the will to action. And if the only social force that could pose this alternative is virtually unaware of its own existence, does this mean that the game is up, that the point of no return has already been reached?

We certainly recognise that the longer capitalism sinks into decomposition, the more it is sapping the basis for a more human society. Again, this is illustrated most clearly by the destruction of the environment, which is reaching the point where it can accelerate the tendency towards a complete break-down of society, a condition which does not favour the self-organisation and confidence in the future required to make the revolution”[11].

The bourgeoisie uses this gangrene shamelessly against the working class, by promoting decomposed petty-bourgeois ideologies. In the US, a whole section of the proletariat is affected by the worst effects of decomposition, such as the rise of xenophobia and racial hatred. In Europe, the working class is showing greater resistance to these ultra-nauseating manifestations, while conspiracy theories and the rejection of rational thought (e.g. the anti-vaccine current) have also started to spread in this historical heartland. And above all, in all the central countries, the proletariat is increasingly polluted by ecologism and wokism.

We can see a general process here: each aspect of this decadent and decomposed capitalism is isolated, separated from the question of the system and its roots, in order to make it a fragmented struggle in which either a category of the population (blacks, women, etc.) or everyone as a "people" must be involved. All these movements constitute a danger for workers who thus risk being dragged into interclassist or downright bourgeois struggles in which they are drowned in the mass of "citizens". The workers of the classic and experienced sectors of the class seem less influenced by these ideologies and these forms of "struggle". But the younger generation, which is both cut off from the tradition of class struggle and particularly outraged at blatant injustices and worried about the bleak future, is largely lost in these "non-mixed" movements (black-only meetings, or women-only meetings, etc.), the ideologies around "gender" (the theory of the absence of biological distinction between the sexes), etc. Instead of the struggle against exploitation, which is the root of the capitalist system, allowing for an increasingly broad movement of emancipation (the question of women, minorities, etc.), as was the case in 1917, ecologist, wokist, indigenist, “Zadiste”[12] ideologies sweep aside the class struggle, deny it or even judge it to be the cause of the current state of society. According to the current which in France refers to itself as “racialist”, class struggle is a white thing that maintains the oppression of blacks; according to wokism, class struggle is a thing of the past marked by macho paternalism and domination; or, according to the theory of intersectionality, workers' struggle is just one struggle equal to others: feminism, anti-racism, "classism", etc. are all particular struggles against oppression that can sometimes be found side by side, "converging". The result is catastrophic: rejection of the working class and its methods of struggle, division by categories which is nothing other than a form of every man for himself, superficial criticism of capitalism which ends up asking for reforms, greater "awareness" by those in power, new laws, etc. The bourgeoisie therefore does not hesitate to give all these movements the maximum echo whenever possible. All democratic states have taken up the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which has become the symbol of social protest in Iran.

And as these movements are obviously powerless, a part of these young people, the most radical and rebellious, are called on to engage in "stronger", “direct” actions, sabotage, etc. In recent months we have seen the development of "radical ecology". The most "left-wing" of these ideologies is "intersectionality": it claims to be about revolution and class struggle, but it puts the struggle against exploitation and the struggles against racism, machismo, etc. on the same level, in order to better dilute the workers' struggle and direct it underhandedly towards interclassism.

In other words, all these decomposed ideologies cover the whole spectrum of thinking that germinates within our class, especially its youth, and are thus very effective in sterilising the effort of a proletariat that is seeking how to struggle, how to face this world that is plunging into barbarism and destruction.

A whole section of the parties and organisations of the left and the far left obviously promote these ideologies. It is striking to see how a whole part of Trotskyism puts more and more emphasis on "the people"; and the offshoots of modernism (communisers and others)[13] have here the role of dealing specifically with attracting to them the youth who clearly seek to destroy capitalism, of doing the dirty work of distancing them from the class struggle and hindering any reconquest of class identity.

 

4. Our role

In the years to come, there will therefore be both a development of the proletariat's struggle in the face of the aggravation of the economic crisis (strikes, days of action, demonstrations, social movements) and at the same time a sinking of the whole of society into decomposition with all the dangers that this represents for our class (piecemeal struggles, inter-class movements and even bourgeois demands). At the same time, there will be the possibility of a progressive reconquest of class identity and the growing influence of decomposed ideologies.

The ICC will thus have a key role to play in these upcoming battles.

Vis-à-vis the class as a whole, we will have to intervene through our press, in demonstrations, in possible political meetings and general assemblies in order to 1) Exploit the growing feeling of "being all in the same boat" and the rise in combativity to defend all the methods of struggle which, in history, have shown themselves to be bearers of solidarity and unity, of class identity. 2) To denounce the sabotage and divisive work of the unions. 3) Qualify the nature of each movement, on a case by case basis (working class, interclassist, single issue, bourgeois...). For this last point, our difficulties of the last few years demands vigilance. The war in Ukraine has not and will not trigger a massive reaction in the class, there will be no movement against the war. If we are to raise the torch of internationalism, it would be illusory, or opportunist, to believe that workers' committees could be formed on this terrain; the totally artificial and hollow nature of the No War But The Class War committees kept alive by the sole will of the Internationalist Communist Tendency is a vivid proof of this. It is indeed on the terrain of the struggle against the deterioration of living conditions, particularly in the face of rising prices, that the ground will be most fertile for the future development of struggle and consciousness.

With regard to a whole section of the class that questions the state of society and the perspective, we will have to continue to develop what we have begun to do with our text on the 2020s, namely to express the coherence of our analysis as best we can, as the only one capable of linking the different aspects of the historical situation and bringing out the reality of the dynamics of the historical moment.

More specifically, towards all those young people who want to fight but who are caught up in decomposed ideologies, we will have to develop our critique of wokism, ecologism, etc. and recall the experience of the workers' movement on all these questions (the question of women, nature, etc.). Just as it is absolutely necessary to answer all the questions that Trotskyism knows how to capture (the distribution of wealth, state capitalism, communism, etc.). Here, the question of perspective and communism, the weak point of our intervention, takes on its full importance.

Finally, with regard to the searching minorities, the concrete denunciation of the various extreme left forces which are developing to destroy this potential, as well as the struggle against all the offshoots of modernism appear absolutely primordial; it is our responsibility for the future and the construction of the organisation. And it is here that our call to the organisations of the Communist Left to unite around an internationalist declaration in the face of the war in Ukraine takes on its full meaning, that of taking up the method of our predecessors, those of Zimmerwald, so that the current minorities can anchor themselves in the history of the workers' movement and resist the contrary winds blown by the bourgeoisie and its ideologies of the far left.

 

Annex to the report on class struggle

On the link between economics and politics in the development of struggle and consciousness: extract from From Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet The Mass Strike:

“When, however, we have in view the less important strike of the demonstrative kind, instead of the fighting strike as it represents in Russia today the actual vehicle of proletarian action, we see still more clearly that it is impossible to separate the economic factors from one another. Here also the reality deviates from the theoretical scheme, and the pedantic representation in which the pure political mass strike is logically derived from the trade-union general strike as the ripest and highest stage, but at the same time is kept distinct from it, is shown to be absolutely false. This is expressed not merely in the fact that the mass strike from that first great wage struggle of the Petersburg textile workers in 1896–97 to the last great mass strike in December 1905, passed imperceptibly from the economic field to the political, so that it is almost impossible to draw a dividing line between them.

Again, every one of the great mass strikes repeats, so to speak, on a small scale, the entire history of the Russian mass strike, and begins with a pure economic, or at all events, a partial trade-union conflict, and runs through all the stages to the political demonstration. The great thunderstorm of mass strikes in South Russia in 1902 and 1903 originated, as we have seen, in Baku from a conflict arising from the disciplinary punishment of the unemployed, in Rostov from disputes about wages in the railway workshops, in Tiflis from a struggle of the commercial employees for reduction of working hours, in Odessa from a wage dispute in a single small factory. The January mass strike of 1905 developed from an internal conflict in the Putilov works, the October strike from the struggle of the railway workers for a pension fund, and finally the December strike from the struggle of the postal and telegraph employees for the right of combination. The progress of the movement on the whole is not expressed in the circumstances that the economic initial stage is omitted, but much more in the rapidity with which all the stages to the political demonstration are run through and in the extremity of the point to which the strike moves forward.

But the movement on the whole does not proceed from the economic to the political struggle, nor even the reverse. Every great political mass action, after it has attained its political highest point, breaks up into a mass of economic strikes. And that applies not only to each of the great mass strikes, but also to the revolution as a whole. With the spreading, clarifying and involution of the political struggle, the economic struggle not only does not recede, but extends, organises and becomes involved in equal measure. Between the two there is the most complete reciprocal action.

Every new onset and every fresh victory of the political struggle is transformed into a powerful impetus for the economic struggle, extending at the same time its external possibilities and intensifying the inner urge of the workers to better their position and their desire to struggle. After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle shoot forth. And conversely. The workers’ condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval; it forms, so to speak, the permanent fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian classes, from which the political fight ever renews its strength, and at the same time leads the indefatigable economic sappers of the proletariat at all times, now here and now there, to isolated sharp conflicts, out of which public conflicts on a large scale unexpectedly explode.

In a word: the economic struggle is the transmitter from one political centre to another; the political struggle is the periodic fertilisation of the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continually change places; and thus the economic and the political factor in the period of the mass strike, now widely removed, completely separated or even mutually exclusive, as the theoretical plan would have them, merely form the two interlacing sides of the proletarian class struggle in Russia. And their unity is precisely the mass strike. If the sophisticated theory proposes to make a clever logical dissection of the mass strike for the purpose of getting at the “purely political mass strike,” it will by this dissection, as with any other, not perceive the phenomenon in its living essence, but will kill it altogether”

The resolution adopted by the 24th ICC Congress provided a framework to orientate the organisation through the evolving economic crisis.  It stated that: "The scale and importance of the impact of the pandemic, the product of the agony of a system in total decay and which has become completely obsolete, illustrates quite clearly that the phenomenon of capitalist decomposition is now also massively affecting the entire capitalist economy and on a global scale. This irruption of the effects of decomposition in the economic sphere directly affects the evolution of the new phase of crisis that is inaugurating a situation totally unprecedented in the history of capitalism. The effects of decomposition, by profoundly altering the mechanisms of state capitalism put in place to "track" and limit the impact of the crisis until now, add into the situation a factor of instability and fragility, of growing uncertainty." (Point 14)

It also recognised the predominant role of ‘every man for himself’ in relations between nations and the "rush of the most 'responsible' bourgeois factions towards increasingly irrational and chaotic management of the system, and above all the unprecedented advance of 'every man for himself', a tendency, revealing the growing loss of control of its own system by the ruling class" (Point 15). This tendency "By causing increasing chaos in the world economy (with the tendency to the fracturing of supply chains and the splitting up of the world market into regional areas, the strengthening of protectionism and the proliferation of unilateral measures), this totally irrational movement of each nation to save its own economy at the expense of all the others is counterproductive for every national capital and a disaster at the global level, a decisive factor in the decline of the whole world economy." (Point 15)

It underlined that "The consequences of the unbridled destruction of the environment by capitalism in decomposition, the phenomena resulting from climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, (...) are increasingly affecting all economies, with the developed countries at the helm, (...) disrupting the production in the industrial sector and also weakening the productive capacity of agriculture. The global climate crisis and the increasing disruption of the world market for agricultural products threaten the food security of many states."  (Point 17)

On the other hand, if the resolution did not envisage the outbreak of war between nations, it did state that "we cannot exclude the danger of unilateral military flare-ups or even of terrible accidents which would mark a further acceleration of the slide into barbarism. (Point 13)

And it is clear that: "The crisis that has already been unfolding for decades is going to become the most profound of the entire period of decadence, and its historical significance will exceed even the first crisis of this era, the one that began in 1929. After more than 100 years of capitalist decadence, with an economy ravaged by the military sector, weakened by the impact of environmental destruction, profoundly affected in its mechanisms of reproduction by debt and state intervention, plagued by pandemic, suffering increasingly from all the other effects of decomposition, it is an illusion to think that under these conditions there will be any kind of sustainable recovery of the world economy." [1]

So:

- The acceleration of decomposition and the impact of its cumulative effects on the already highly degraded capitalist economy;

- The eruption of war and the world-wide increase of militarism that drastically worsens the situation;

- The growth at all levels of ‘every man for himself’ between nations against the backdrop of increasingly fierce competition between China and the USA for global supremacy;

- The abandonment of a minimum set of rules and cooperation between nations for dealing with the contradictions and convulsions of its system;

- The absence of a locomotive capable of reviving the capitalist economy;

- The perspective of total pauperisation is now on the agenda for the proletariat of the central countries;

all these indicators point to the historical gravity of the current crisis and illustrate the process of "internal disintegration" of world capitalism as proclaimed by the Communist International in 1919.

I. The concatenation of the factors of decomposition

A. The consequences of the war

As a major French industrialist summarised it: "What has been exceptional over the last two years is that crises start but do not stop. There is a real accumulation effect. The covid crisis started in 2020 but it is still there! Since then, we have been confronted with extreme pressures and disruptions in supply chains, a profoundly changed relationship with work, a war at the borders of Europe, the energy crisis and the return of inflation, and finally the realisation of climate change (...) The shocks are adding up. They are sudden and violent. (Les Echos 21-22/10). In a historical situation where the various effects of decomposition combine, intertwine and interact in a devastating whirlwind effect, with global warming and the ecological crisis, the war and its repercussions highlight every man for himself in relations between the states and, in general, the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, that it becomes the central aggravating factor of the economic crisis:

• The destruction of Ukraine: The size of the economy is reduced to 40% of what it was. According to its Prime Minister, "the damage was estimated in the autumn at $350 billion. But these estimates are expected to double by the end of the year, to $700 billion, due to the massive strikes carried out by Moscow against our infrastructure. (...) The current power cuts are expected to represent a loss of between 3% and 9% of GDP[2]. The military effort absorbs 30% of its resources; the shortfall of budget revenues has forced the government to go into debt and to print money.
• Inflation: It causes inflation to soar around the world: 7.2% in advanced countries, 9.8% in emerging countries, 13.8% in the Middle East and Central Asia and 14.4% in sub-Saharan Africa. In the EU the average is 10%, although in some of its countries this figure is higher: Latvia and Lithuania are at 22%, the Netherlands at 17%. The US peaked at 9% in mid-2022, falling to 7.1% by the end of 2022.
• The worsening global food crisis and famines: In pitting two key producers of grain and fertiliser against each other, the war has resulted in “an unprecedented increase in hunger, far worse than any since the Second World War”.[3] "The shock is compounded by other major problems that had already led to higher prices and shortages of goods, including the Covid-19 pandemic, logistical constraints, high energy costs and recent droughts, floods and fires[4]." The world's grain production has fallen: China, following severe flooding in 2021, is facing the worst wheat crop in decades and in India "the crop yields have been significantly lower this year" due to unprecedented heat waves. Rising prices and "threats to food security" have provoked a "wave of food protectionism", with India banning grain exports or with the introduction of quotas (in Argentina, Kazakhstan, Serbia...) to guarantee domestic supplies. While American winter wheat "is in bad shape", France's reserves "are running out" and "the world is beginning to face a wheat shortage".[5]

-          Capitalist anarchy is reaching new heights. The organisation of production and supply chains, exposing each national capital to multiple dependencies without any consequences and with world trade and commerce being able to be carried out without any restrictions until now, has been undermined by the pandemic and then the war, which have changed the situation. Lockdowns in China, sanctions against Russia and the effects of the trade war between the USA and China have led to multiple blockages and interruptions in both production and trade, causing chaos and anarchy; shortages are multiplying in many areas: e.g. computer chips, medical products, raw materials.

-          The development of militarism and arms production. One of the main consequences of war is the boost given by all states to staggering levels of arms expenditure. The burden of military spending (a deadweight for capital) on the national economy, the accelerated increase in arms production, the possible conversion of strategic sectors to military industries, the resulting indebtedness and fall in investment in other sectors of the economy will significantly change economies and world trade.

 

B. What effects have the sanctions had on the Russian economy?

By aiming to 'bleed the world's 8th largest economy dry', Western sanctions against Russia have opened a real 'black hole' in the world economy with as yet unknown consequences. Even if the Russian economy has not yet collapsed or been divided in two (as Biden promised), the Russian economy is being suffocated and driven to ruin, caught in the trap of the ongoing war and strangled by the retaliatory measures imposed by the US. With GDP falling by 11% and inflation at 22%, the economic sanctions have weakened the Russian war effort[6] and caused crippling shortages within industry. The embargo on semi-conductors imposes limits on the production of precision missiles and tanks.[7]

With the withdrawal of foreign manufacturers, the automobile sector has almost completely collapsed by 97%. The sectors of aeronautics (strategic) and air transport (crucial for such a vast country), totally dependent on Western technologies, have been heavily hit.

With hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing abroad, the Russian economy is suffering a massive loss of labour, particularly in the IT sector with the departure of 100,000 IT specialists.

The assistance offered by China and those who resist Western sanctions (India, Turkey, purchasers of Russian energy) may have provided a temporary respite but it does not compensate for the disappearance of Western markets, far from it. The enforcement from the start of December of the European embargo on Russian oil (a volume equivalent to these purchases) will destroy this 'breath of fresh air'.

While Chinese imports from Russia have risen, exports to Russia have fallen in line with those from the West (due to China's cautious implementation of most Western sanctions[8]). The resilience of the value of the rouble, and even its rise against the dollar, reflects this massive imbalance between the high volume of oil and gas exports and the parallel collapse of imports as a result of the sanctions, and is by no means a sign of strength. The financial sanctions and the freezing of 40-50% of Russian reserves and the ban on its use of the SWIFT system have increasingly affected its practical ability to make foreign payments as well as the credibility of the Russian state's creditworthiness.

Despite the apparent resilience, sanctions are a formidable weapon of war and will have a significant medium-term impact on the Russian economy and because of their 'delayed' effect, the prolongation of the war will be the means by which the US fulfils its objective of 'destroying' the Russian economy.

 

C. The destabilising shock of the war on gas

The seismic shock of the war represents an important 'epochal change', not only affecting individual nations, especially the European ones, but also the situation internationally.

The war is a sinkhole with exorbitant economic costs "(from March to August) Ukraine received 84 billion euros from 40 partner states and EU institutions - the most important allies being the US, EU institutions, the UK, Germany, Canada, Poland, France, Norway, Japan and Italy." "Ukraine could receive up to $30 billion between September and December 2022." The EU plays a central role "in maintaining Ukraine's macro-financial stability" (by providing €10 billion between March and September 2022)[9]. The economic shockwave of war in the world does not impact in the same way, immediately and in the medium term, the main areas of the planet. European capital is suffering the most brutal effect. It is an unprecedented destabilisation of their 'economic model' for these countries.

Due to the economic sanctions imposed by the US on Russia, European firms more involved in Russia than American ones are more directly affected by the severing of economic relations with Russia.

The Russian gas embargo is having a huge impact with knock-on effects in Europe: "The real bombs are falling in Ukraine, but it is as if the EU's industrial infrastructure has also been destroyed. The continent will experience a violent industrial crisis. It will be a terrible shock for public finances and for the middle and poor classes in European countries.[10] As J. Borrell said: "The United States took care of our security. China and Russia provided the basis for our prosperity. That world no longer exists (...) Our prosperity was based on energy from Russia, its gas, which was said to be cheap, stable and risk-free. All this was wrong (...) This will lead to a profound restructuring of our economy."

Each capital is faced with almost insoluble contradictions and dilemmas, having to make drastic and urgent economic and strategic choices to protect its national sovereignty and safeguard its world ranking.

1. Even though growth was already slowing down, the sharp rise in energy prices (the price of gas has multiplied by a factor of 20 compared to 2010) has already lead to a downturn across entire industrial sectors heavily dependent on imported energy where large parts of the business are no longer profitable nor competitive. Some of them have had to reduce production (chemicals, glass, blast furnaces in the steel industry, aluminium, etc.) to offset exorbitant costs, while many bankruptcies are looming because of the dramatic fall in profitability.
2. Faced with the seriousness of the situation, the State intervened massively with the nationalisation of the main energy companies, Uniper in Germany and EDF in France, and the setting up of 'financial or tariff barriers' to protect companies and cushion the blow on companies and individuals.
3. European countries are running a real risk of de-industrialisation and economic downgrading, due to the ongoing difference in energy prices between Europe and the USA and Asia. In this atmosphere of "saving yourself", there is a tendency for those who can to relocate European activities whose survival is threatened to American or Asian areas where energy prices are lower.
4. With the drying up of Russian gas supplies, there is the fear of having to restrict production in the most exposed sectors such as chemicals, metallurgy, wood-paper, or the plastics and rubber industry, or even to interrupt it during the winter, in France for example. In addition, there is the electricity shock: due to under-investment and the dilapidated state of nuclear power stations, electricity cuts could lead to a reduction or even shutdowns in manufacturing as early as next January and to chaos in sectors such as transport, food processing and telecommunications in the world's 5th economic power![11]

The undermining of German capital: It is in Germany in particular where all the contradictions of this unprecedented situation seem concentrated, ready to explode. The end of Russian gas supplies places German capital in a situation of unprecedented strategic and economic fragility: the competitiveness of its entire manufacturing sector is at stake.[12] German capital (and European) runs the risk of having to move from dependence on Russian gas to dependence on American LNG, which the United States is seeking to impose on the European continent, taking over the role that Russia has played until now. The end of multilateralism, from which German capital has benefited more than any other nation (also saving itself from the burden of the military expenditures with the 'peace dividend' from 1989), is affecting more directly its economic power, which is based on exports. Finally, the pressure exerted by the US to force its "allies" to engage in the economic/strategic war with China and to relinquish markets in China, places Germany in a huge dilemma, as it depends highly on the Chinese market. Because of its leading position in the EU, the wavering of German power has repercussions for the whole of Europe, which is marked, to varying degrees, by the same contradictions and dilemmas.

China and the Silk Roads are directly affected. One of the goals of the war alongside the weakening of Russia is to target China. The war thwarts the major objective of the Silk Roads of making Ukraine a gateway into the European market; the chaos cuts China off from one of its major markets. This will mean it having to seek an alternative route via the Middle East.

 

D. The climate crisis

Although the major powers agree that "climate change is a destabilising, even economically disruptive force", the Sharm El Sheikh COP was torn over the question of “who should pay?” Beyond capitalism's congenital inability to hold back the destruction of nature, what sounds the death knell for the great powers' commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the return and preparation by all states for 'high intensity' warfare. Indeed: "No war without oil. Without oil, it is impossible to wage war (...) To give up the possibility of obtaining abundant and cheap oil is simply to disarm. Transport technologies [that do not require oil, hydrogen and electricity] are totally unsuitable for armies. Battery-powered electric tanks pose so many technical and logistical problems that they must be considered impossible, as must everything else that runs on land (armoured vehicles, artillery, engineering machinery, light off-road vehicles, lorries). The internal combustion engine and its fuel are so efficient and flexible that it would be suicidal to replace them."[13]

Capitalism is condemned to suffer more and more the effects (huge fires, floods, heat waves, droughts, violent weather phenomena...) which affect more and more significantly and penalise more and more heavily the capitalist economy: the climatic factor (already an aspect of the implosion of the Arab countries in the decade of 2010) is in itself instrumental in the collapse of particularly vulnerable countries of the periphery of capitalism. According to UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, in Pakistan "climate carnage is on an unprecedented scale"; it has caused damage estimated at 2 ½ times its GDP - a catastrophe that is impossible to overcome economically.[14] Above all, the magnitude of the climate shock is now directly impacting the core countries of capitalism and all their economic activity at every level:

- The costs of climate-related damage in the central countries continue to rise: in the United States alone "the total costs of natural disasters amounted to 3 billion dollars per year in the 1980s. This amount rose to more than 20 billion dollars per year from 2000 to 2010 (...) And from 2011 and 2012 (...) these costs started doubling" and reached "300 billion dollars of material damage in 2018 which corresponds to ¾ of the annual cost of servicing the American debt."

- Productive infrastructure (and its distribution) trade is directly affected, undermining and jeopardising the stability of national economies due to climate change: among other examples, the combination of drought and overuse of water in America, Europe and China is disrupting both nuclear and hydroelectric power generation; disrupting and reducing the flow of goods by river; and "posing a major risk to US agricultural capacity (...) A permanent state of water catastrophe, fraught with conflict and internal migration, is taking hold in the American West." China is threatened by "a new food insecurity induced by the climatic, water and biological fragility of agriculture."

The “increasingly rapid and intense” effects of rising sea levels are posing huge challenges to states. Soil salinisation is sterilising arable land (as in Bangladesh). They threaten both coastal megacities (as in the United States on the East and West coasts and many cities in China) and coastal industries (the oil industry around the Gulf of Mexico; the Shenzhen region of China, at the heart of the country's electronics manufactures, where "the Chinese urban authorities are already starting to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people".

In the last two years, the various effects of decomposition that had already begun to impact the capitalist economy have taken on a new quality with unprecedented interaction on a previously unknown scale which has only become stronger in a kind of infernal "whirlpool" where each catastrophe feeds the virulence of the others: the pandemic has disrupted the world economy; this in turn has aggravated the barbaric war and the environmental crisis. The war and environmental crisis will continue to have a huge impact striking at the heart of the major powers and considerably worsening the economic crisis which forms the backdrop to this catastrophic development.

 

II. A mode of production weakened and undermined by its contradictions

A capitalist system already weakened as a whole by the convulsions resulting from its contradictions and its decomposition has been impacted further by the war.

 

A. Weakened industrial production

The shock wave of the war has hit a very vulnerable economy with certain sectors very weakened since the pandemic: "in 2022, world automobile production will still be lower than in 2019. In China, it will certainly increase by 7%, but in Europe it will remain 25% lower, and in the United States by 11%. The industry has lost volumes and is seeing its costs rise..."[15]

 

B. Inflation

"The fundamental causes of inflation are to be found in the specific conditions of the functioning of the capitalist mode of production in its decadent phase. Indeed, empirical observation allows us to see that inflation is fundamentally a phenomenon of this epoch of capitalism, as well as to see that it manifests itself most acutely during periods of war (1914-18, 1939-45, the Korean War, 1957-58, in France during the Algerian War...), i.e. those where unproductive expenditure is highest. Therefore it is logical to consider that it is on the basis of this specific characteristic of decadence, the considerable share of armaments and more generally of unproductive expenditure in the economy, that we should try to explain the phenomenon of inflation.[16]

A consequence of the increase in the weight of unproductive expenditures, the build-up of a debt burden by the states in their various rescue plans dealing with the pandemic and in the development of the war economy and general rearmament of the capitalist nations, inflation will only increase[17] further because of the needs of each national capital for mounting unproductive expenditures, with:

- the absurd levels of arms spending, subjecting the economy more than ever to the service of war and the unbridled production of the instruments of destruction without any economic rationality;

- the effects of the recourse to printing money to feed the debt to address the contradictions of its system;

- the exorbitant cost of the devastation that decomposition causes to society and the manufacturing infrastructure: pandemics, severe weather events, etc.

- the ageing of the population in all countries (including China), which sharply reduces the proportion of the working age population in the total population.

With inflation at a high and lasting level, which capitalism can no longer control as before (the bourgeoisie rejects a return to 2% as unrealistic), it also marks an important stage in the aggravation of the crisis. It will affect the economy more and more negatively by destabilising world trade and production which it deprives of the needed transparency, when it will be an essential vector of monetary and financial instability.

 

C. Financial and monetary tensions

The fragility of the capitalist system is illustrated by "growing risks to financial stability in key parts of financial markets and sovereign debt". (K. Georgieva (IMF) and new “cracks” opening up.)

- The fragility and tensions around the currencies of the main powers is becoming an increasingly important feature of the situation: the fall of the pound against the dollar to its lowest level in history, it lost 17% of its value; the devaluation of the yen (-21%) to its lowest level since 1990; the fall of the yuan to its lowest level against the dollar for 14 years; the unprecedented fall of the euro to equal parity with the dollar... Already requiring the intervention of the central banks to support their currencies; a growing monetary instability is taking shape.

- The bursting of the crypto-currency financial bubble (with a reduction by 3 in one year of the bitcoin market's stock market valuations) and high-profile bankruptcies in this sector with FTX (the world's second largest crypto-currency player) having the bourgeoisie fearing contagion to other players in traditional finance. The financial instability in this sector is a harbinger of the threat of further crashes, like the one in real estate (50% of global transactions by value), which started in China, and threatens to appear elsewhere.

- Similarly, "The tech economy is faltering, (...) Over the last ten years or so we have seen the emergence of a financial bubble fed by the abundance of liquidity created by central banks. (...) This bubble has burst since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the advent of inflation. The valuation of tech on the stock market has collapsed. Amazon became the first company in history to lose $1,000 billion in stock market value. A $200 billion loss in six months for Meta. (...) This brutal return to reality has unleashed vast layoff plans, particularly in the United States. It is likely that 130,000 jobs were destroyed in the tech industry in 2022.[18]

 

D. The continuation of the policy of increasing debt

Although the mass of indebtedness (260% of world GDP) is already weakening the whole system[19], the evolution of the nature of indebtedness, which is less and less based on surplus value already created and is fed by the printing press and the sovereign debt of the states, the continuation of the debt policy continues; despite the deleterious effects on the increasingly uncertain stability of the capitalist system, it remains an unavoidable necessity for all national capitals. All states depend on it more and more in order to address the contradictions of the capitalist system. It is behind the suspension of the EU Stability Pact, which was only reinstated at the beginning of 2023 after having been heavily modified with the relaxation of its enforcement rules and quite probably to allow the ECB to play the role of lender of last resort.

 

E. Political chaos within the ruling class, a factor in the aggravation of the crisis

The irresponsibility and negligence of the ruling class, which has been manifest in the health crisis as well as in the energy crisis and in the face of the climatic calamity, is a powerful factor in the aggravation of the crisis.

Added to these factors are the political chaos and the impact of populism within the ruling class. They are having catastrophic effects on the UK economy, on the world's oldest bourgeoisie. Brexit illustrates the economic irrationality of ‘every man for himself’; "Instead of the prosperity, sovereignty and international influence, which [the Conservatives] claimed to be bringing by separating from their neighbours, they have only achieved a fall in exports, the depreciation of the pound, the worst growth forecasts of the developed countries except Russia, and diplomatic isolation.[20]" (Le Monde 18-19/12) Following Johnson's departure, the brief period in office of incompetence and cronyism of the government of Liz Truss is explained by its irresponsible decisions, condemned by the rest of the ruling class: the announcement of £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts for the benefit of the wealthiest in society precipitated a fall in the Pound, and a fear for its collapse and a debt crisis!

In Italy, Prime Minister Meloni's pledges to respect European rules (the first time a far-right government has come to power in one of the founding countries of the EU) have momentarily calmed fears about the future of the Italian recovery plan financed by the European monetary fund created by an agreed debt placed on the member countries, but it does not augur well for future stability.[21]

Finally, the divisions within the ruling class can only be aggravated by the choices and priorities to be adopted in the defence of the interests of each national capital in this more than uncertain and contradictory context.

 

F. The exacerbation of every man for himself at the basis of relations between nations

In the 2020 report, the ICC asked if the development of every man for himself, originating in the impasse of overproduction and the increasing difficulty of capital to realise the expanded accumulation of capital, while subjected to the effects of decomposition, was irreversible. Since the crisis of 2008 (which can be considered as the crisis of globalisation) and up until today, every man for himself in relations between powers has progressively undergone a qualitative change and now is completely triumphant. According to the IMF the war will "fundamentally alter the global economic and geopolitical order. The conflict in Ukraine is bringing the 'in-between' period after 2008 to a close and it marks the end of globalisation:

- After 2008, ‘every man for himself’ was first shown in the tendency for China and especially the USA to question the framework of globalisation; the one by sabotaging structures such as the WTO, the other by developing its own alternative Silk Road project.

- It was then brilliantly illustrated during the Covid epidemic, notably through the inability to coordinate a policy for production, distribution and vaccination at a global scale; the gangster-like behaviour of certain countries stealing medical equipment destined for other countries, the tendency to retreat into the national framework, and the desire of each bourgeoisie to save its own economy to the detriment of the others as an irrational tendency could only be disastrous for all countries and for the world economy as a whole.

- The current 'war on gas' between nations is proving to be worthy of the mask war[22]: The recent sabotage of the Nord Stream II pipeline, blamed on an as yet unidentified 'state agent', illustrates the gangster mentality while "in the LNG market, (...) all bets are off."[23]

The US is the big winner in the war, including on the economic terrain. In the historical conditions of decomposition, through the war, the ultimate expression of the war of all against all, military power - as the only real means at the disposal of the US to defend its world leadership - the US obtains the momentary strengthening of its national economy to the detriment of the rest of the world at the price of global dislocation and the decisive weakening of the whole capitalist system[24]. This economic strengthening of the US is the direct product of every man for himself; it is not in contradiction with the sinking of the whole system into the spiral of its decomposition (it is a manifestation of it and in no way represents a stabilisation, but on the contrary testifies to its sinking deeper) since it has as its corollary and condition the extreme development of chaos and the weakening of the capitalist system as a whole. "Washington's unwavering support for Ukraine has made the US the global winner of the sequence without a single GI having to set foot on Ukrainian soil. Undeniable geostrategic, military and political gains. (...) Against a backdrop of unabashed protectionism and economic nationalism, Biden's America can now devote itself entirely to the technological war against its one great rival, China. Europe, which had managed to act in solidarity during the Covid crisis, has been weakened and divided, with the Franco-German tandem in tatters."[25] In this descent into the abyss by world capitalism, the war changes the situation for all capitals and upsets all global economic relations:

• The oil and gas war: in an unprecedented turnaround, Washington is the big winner - while the US did not export LNG 10 years ago, it is now the world's largest exporter. "The United States enjoys near-independence in energy, which allows it to project itself calmly into a world where hydrocarbons have become geopolitical weapons. America does not need to import gas, it is the world's leading producer ahead of Russia. As for oil, Washington is also the world's leading producer and has recently reduced its dependence on foreign crude"[26]. (Le Point Géopolitique, Les guerres de l'énergie, p.7) The product of a vast policy of long term self-sufficiency in the planning of the Obama administration as part of its wish to counter the increasing power of its Chinese challenger, the war in Ukraine allows the US to take full benefit from it to boost its industry[27], and it also provides the means for it to set itself up as a key player. The US is putting its rivals on the defensive and in an inferior position on this strategic energy front:

Europe is almost reduced to a dependence on Russian gas and American LNG. To escape this deadly strangulation, the Europeans are frantically seeking to diversify their suppliers.

China, which is largely dependent on hydrocarbon imports, is at a disadvantage and has been weakened by the US, which is now in a position to control - to cut off - the land and sea routes of Chinese supplies.

• The strengthening of the military sector: With 40% of the arms market, "the undeniable strategic success of the American war machine" is a boost to the US military industry: "The arsenal of democracy, as President F D Roosevelt called it, is running at full capacity (...) As a result, the American military sector is faced with considerable production pressures.[28]".

- The strong dollar and the increase in interest rates: The unprecedented scale of the Biden plan to support the US economy with $1.17 trillion to boost demand and consumption, followed by the beginning of the dismantling of quantative easing and the gradual increase in interest rates by the FED (from the beginning of 2022) caught all its rivals off guard. Taking advantage of both the central role of the dollar (in the reserves of the world's central banks, its preponderance in the world economy and trade) and the strong dollar, the size of its economy and its rank as the world's leading economic power, this policy has the effect of:

a. attracting and channelling capital and investment (in search of a safe haven) into the US economy,

b. making the rest of the world give financial support to its economy,

c. passing the most adverse effects of inflation on to other weaker countries[29]. The US is stabilising and strengthening its own economy at the direct expense of its most immediate competitors.

Clearly, the US is not concerned with the risk of fuelling recession, slowing down international trade and provoking financial crises in the weakest states provided that its own economy profits and it is able to save its own economy and protect its place as the world's leading power.

Increased protectionism: with the $370 billion government Inflation Reduction Act for public investment in US industry coupled with strong protectionist measures giving preference to US-produced manufactures over imported products, the EU has experienced a '2nd competitivity shock' (after the gas shock).

More generally, all the economic, monetary, financial and industrial measures adopted in the USA are designed to attract investments and to draw companies into relocating to the US. The 'Eldorado' of low energy prices and subsidies diverts capital and large foreign companies to the USA, to the detriment of Europe in particular. More than sixty German companies (Lufhansa, Siemens, etc.) are planning to invest in the USA. VW has announced that it wants to increase its production of electric vehicles in the USA and plans to invest 7 billion in its US sites. BMW is investing 1.7 billion in its North Carolina plant and is tempted to produce batteries there rather than in European projects. France estimates its potential losses at "10 billion euros of investment" and "10,000 potential jobs" lost.

This "tipping" of the United States "to the wrong side" of protectionism (according to the EU)[30] is being met with the threat of a 'Buy European Act'; and "France and Germany have formalised a proposal for a counter-offensive ... and asked Brussels to relax the rules governing public subsidies to companies as well as targeted subsidies and tax credits for strategic sectors."[31]

• Agriculture: "The war in Ukraine has upset the global agricultural equilibrium. Africa and the Maghreb were the first victims. But the old continent has also been affected. Over the past decade, Europe has depended on the Ukraine for its maize supplies[32] (...) Even though a large part of the shipments have been able to leave the Ukraine, the European buyers have not been able to acquire enough and have had to knock on the doors of other suppliers. The United States has a very large maize production capacity (...) This strength has not only enabled it to serve its own domestic market but also to take over from Russia and Ukraine and to export extensively to other countries, and in particular to Europe"[33].
• The US offensive against China at the economic level: From a position of strength, the US is stepping up pressure on China and attacking its economic interests around the world through various initiatives and, in profiting from the weakening and the divisions among the Europeans, is seeking through various means to coerce them to follow in its offensive[34]: 'A first': The meeting of the G7 in June 2022 denounced "non-transparent and market-distorting interventions by China" and called for "collective approaches, also outside the G7, to address the challenges posed by non-market policies and practices that distort the global economy" using the democratic argument of "eliminating all forms of forced labour from global supply chains, including state-sponsored forced labour, such as in Xinjiang."

In order to guarantee its decisive technological lead over China, the United States is organising the relocation[35] of the production of the latest generation of semi-conductors on to home soil, as well as controlling the entire sector internationally, from which it intends to exclude China, and is threatening sanctions against any rival that maintains commercial relations with the latter that might violate this 'monopoly'.

The vast investment programme of 600 billion dollars between now and 2027 for these developing countries of the Global Partnership for Infrastructures aims to counteract as a priority the huge projects financed by China as part of the Silk Roads, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but also in Central America and Asia.

The establishment of the Indo-Pacific Economic Partnership[36] to "write the new rules for the 21st century economy" (Biden) and "build strong and resilient supply chains" under Washington's control was immediately denounced by China as the "formation of cliques intended to keep it at bay".

 

Is the EU in the grip of ‘every man for himself’?

With Germany's unilateral release of a $200 billion support plan for its economy (described as a "middle finger to the rest of Europe") and with the dispute between France and Germany over leadership, the EU is facing major internal conflicts. "Some countries, like Germany, have the means to massively subsidise their industry. Others, such as Italy, much less so. Greece, Spain and also France are worried about this and are asking for European solidarity measures to correct these differences. 'The American Inflation Reduction Act is 2% of GDP, we must make a comparable effort', said President Macron. Conversely, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden remain opposed to a new European financial package."[37] The two European powers are not on the same wavelength towards China: "Diplomatic niceties are no longer enough to hide the gap between Washington - which sees Beijing as its main rival - and the German government whose interests lie in maintaining a good trade relationship with China. (...) Though not aligned with the United States, France is closer to Washington than to Berlin. China is only France's 5th major trading partner (...) When Macron met Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit, his position was closer to Biden's than Scholz's.[38]" So Scholz's trip to China was responded to by Macron's trip to the US.

If these tensions worsen, as a consequence of the competing national interests fanned by the American rival, to the point of threatening the break-up of the EU, this would further aggravate the crisis and destabilise the whole capitalist system.

 

China's reaction: The war in Ukraine shows how the decoupling of the US and Chinese economies initiated by the US makes China vulnerable:

- The sanctions against Russia are a warning to China about "the huge consequences for the Chinese economy of potential Western sanctions against China.[39]" As it has huge foreign exchange reserves in dollars "The war in Ukraine has set off alarm bells (...) Chinese experts note that its dependence on the dollar is an even greater concern than the case of Russia. China is not ready to face possible Western sanctions" and "wants to drastically strengthen the security of its foreign assets so as not to repeat the mistakes of Russia, (...) to change the structure of its foreign investments and reduce dependency on US dollars[40] as soon as possible" to avoid the contradiction of having "no other solution currently for protecting the value of the dollars accruing from its trade surplus than to lend them continually to the United States.[41]

- The State's efforts to make the yuan an international currency competing with the dollar have failed, even in a context where many countries could seek to protect themselves from Western sanctions: the yuan has stagnated at 2.88% of foreign exchange reserves (30% of which are held by Russia) compared to 59.5 for the dollar and 19.76 for the euro; and since 2015 at 5th position in global payments with a share of 2.44% compared to 42% for the dollar. The BPC (People's Bank of China) must fight to halt the depreciation of the yuan against the dollar.

- "As a result of measures taken in recent years by the United States" restricting the export of advanced technology (used in high-tech production in the automobile, aeronautics, space exploration, scientific research, computers, transport, medicine, etc.) "China is currently no longer in the race (...) Chinese semiconductor manufacturers do not have the technology to catch up. (...) So much so that some experts doubt that China will be able to catch up in the short and medium term in this field, which is responsible for a large part of future economic growth." (Asyalist)

- China is engaged in a competitive struggle to the death for control of certain strategic sectors (such as rare earths and metals); or to guarantee its hydrocarbon supplies, is taking advantage of Russia's weakening to sign contracts with the Central Asian republics and with the every man for himself approach to get closer to Saudi Arabia

- China's vital economic interests are at stake in the tensions with Taiwan, which like Singapore, acts as an essential platform for China's manufacturing industry and is indispensable to its current economic model.

The result: The exclusion of Russia from international trade by the United States, the offensive against China, and its desire to reconfigure global economic relations to its advantage mark a turning point in the vision of free trade that guided American policy for nearly thirty years. This will result in further fragmentation of the global market and in the multiplication of regional agreements such as the one between the United States, Canada and Mexico signed in 2020[42].

The fact that "signatories would share more common interests", and that states and companies would favour like-minded partners and no longer trade with just anyone, does not augur well for stability or the formation of exclusive economic relationships under the aegis of major sponsors. On the contrary, because they tend to follow the multiple fault lines of tensions between the powers, it will only result in the further fragmentation of the world market on a global scale and the reinforcement of the every man for himself trade war, national withdrawal and the search for the preservation of national sovereignty on all levels. This will only sharpen, as a matter of survival, the desire to control strategic supply chains essential for national survival and the need to put oneself in a position of strength vis-à-vis other powers using blackmail, etc., or by evading them[43].

In a nutshell: From now on, not only has the capacity of the main capitalist nations to cooperate in order to delay and lessen the impact of the economic crisis on the whole capitalist system and on themselves slowly disappeared (without any perceptible return), but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a policy, in particular driven by the first of the great powers, the United States, to safeguard its own position in the world arena at the direct expense of the other powers of the same type (and the rest of the world) by attacking their interests and deliberately weakening them.

This situation is a clear break with a substantial part of the rules that were established after the crisis of 1929 and opens up a period, terra incognita, where chaos will unfold on a greater scale, including in and among the central countries, with repercussions that are still difficult to 'imagine', striking at the heart of the capitalist system sinking even deeper into the crisis

 

III. PERSPECTIVES

1.  Worsening crisis: the only future under capitalism

The irreversible crisis of capitalism is the backdrop to an acceleration of chaos and barbarism. 50 years of economic crisis that has accelerated since 2018 is openly manifested by galloping inflation with its consequences in misery, hunger and widespread impoverishment.

"The capitalist crisis affects the very foundations of this society. Inflation, insecurity, unemployment, hellish pace and working conditions that destroy workers' health, unaffordable housing… all testify to an unstoppable degradation of working class life and, although the bourgeoisie tries to create all imaginable divisions, granting "more privileged" conditions to certain categories of workers, what we see in its entirety is, on the one hand, what is possibly going to be the WORST CRISIS in the history of capitalism, and, on the other hand, the concrete reality of the ABSOLUTE PAUPERISATION of the working class in the central countries, fully confirming the accuracy of the prediction which Marx made concerning the historical perspective of capitalism and which the economists and other ideologues of the bourgeoisie have so much mocked."[44]

In contrast to the 1930s, there are now more factors aggravating the crisis. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine stamp a new quality on the situation. The concatenation of the factors of decomposition is at the root of a spiral of degradation and the worsening of the global economic situation. "This crisis is shaping up to be a longer and deeper crisis than that of 1929. This is because the irruption of the effects of decomposition on the economy tends to cause havoc with the functioning of production, creating constant bottlenecks and blockages in a situation of growing unemployment - combined, paradoxically, with labour shortages in some areas. Above all, it is expressed in the outbreak of inflation, following various successive rescue plans hastily deployed by states in the face of the pandemic and the war, and thus caused and fuelled by a headlong rush into debt. The increase in interest rates by central banks in an attempt to curb inflation risks precipitating a very violent recession by shackling both states and companies. The proletariat in the central countries now faces a tsunami of misery and brutal impoverishment."[45] The spectre of "stagflation" hangs over the world. While it was a concept of bourgeois economists in the 1970s to characterise a state of high inflation with economic stagnation, today this danger is becoming evident and the current uncontrolled inflation and economic slowdown will lead to a chain of bankruptcies, even of entire countries (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc.) as well as financial turbulence and even greater difficulties in the emerging countries.

"Growth in advanced economies is expected to decelerate sharply from 5.1% in 2021 to 2.6% in 2022 (1.2 percentage points lower than projected in January). Growth is expected to moderate further to 2.2% in 2023, largely reflecting the withdrawal of monetary and fiscal policy support provided during the pandemic."[46]. The bourgeoisie has no alternative but to continue to raise interest rates, as the Fed did last November, all states are involved in this dynamic and this will cause contractions in the markets, company closures with massive layoffs as we can see in the technology companies in the USA (GAFAM). The relocation of companies from China to America (Nearshoring) will worsen the unemployment situation in certain regions of the world.

Unlike the 1930s, current debt levels are unprecedented. China, the world's second largest power, owes 2.5 times its GDP! At the same time, it has become a financial backer, primarily to support its Silk Road and to ensure its influence in Africa and Latin America. The United States, whose total debt now exceeds 31 trillion (millions of millions), has printed $5 billion while the EU, with 750 million euros, has printed 20% more than the US. The prospects for the coming years will be full of convulsions and difficulties for capitalism.

 

B. China as a factor destabilising and exacerbating the crisis

i.- The Chinese economy has suffered a sharp slowdown due to repeated blockages and then the tsunami of infections that caused chaos in the health system, the real estate bubble and the blockage of several "silk road" routes due to armed conflicts (Ukraine) or the chaos that surrounds it (Ethiopia). Growth in the first half of this year was 2.5%, making the 5% target for this year unattainable. For the first time in 30 years, China's economic growth will be lower than that of other Asian countries (Vietnam). Large technology and business companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and iQiyi have laid off 10-30% of their workforce. Young people are particularly sensitive to the deteriorating situation, with an estimated 20% unemployment rate among university students looking for work. Expansion plans for the "New Silk Road" are also in trouble due to the deepening economic crisis: almost 60% of the debt owed to China is now owed to countries in financial difficulty, compared to 5% in 2010. In addition, economic pressure from the US is intensifying, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, which directly target technology exports from several Chinese technology companies (e.g. Huawei) to the US.

Even more distressing for the Chinese bourgeoisie, the economic problems, coupled with the health crisis, have given rise to major social protests.

 

ii.-The failure of the neo-Stalinist model of the Chinese bourgeoisie. Faced with economic and health sector difficulties, Xi Jinping's policy has been to return to the classic recipes of Stalinism:

- Economically, since Deng Xiao Ping, the Chinese bourgeoisie had created a fragile and complex mechanism to maintain an all-powerful single party framework cohabiting with a private bourgeoisie directly stimulated by the state. "By the end of 2021, Deng Xiaoping's era of reform and opening up is clearly over, replaced by a new statist economic orthodoxy.[47] The dominant faction behind Xi Jinping is reorienting the Chinese economy towards absolute Stalinist-style state control;

- On the social front, with the "Covid Zero" policy, Xi not only ensured ruthless state control over the population, but also imposed this control on regional and local authorities, which had proved unreliable and ineffective at the beginning of the pandemic. By the autumn, he sent central state police units to Shanghai to rein in local authorities that were liberalising lockdown measures.

"A developed national capital, held "privately" by different sectors of the bourgeoisie, finds parliamentary "democracy" its most appropriate political apparatus; to the almost complete statification of the means of production, corresponds the totalitarian power of the single party".[48]

The failure of the "Covid Zero" policy has resulted in the re-election for a third term of the man who imposed it, Xi Jinping, at the cost of complex compromises between the factions of the CCP. The Chinese bourgeoisie is thus demonstrating more than ever its congenital inability to overcome the political rigidity of its state apparatus, a heavy legacy of Stalinist Maoism.

 

iii.- A crisis that spreads inexorably. The world's second largest power is caught up in the same dynamic as its rivals. This catastrophe is still to come.

- China's role in the 2008 financial crisis was to contain and not stop investing, including focusing on its domestic market and infrastructure (high-speed rail), of course, all on the back of a mountain of debt. However, during the financial crisis of 2008, it remained a 'healthy sector of the economy'. Today we cannot say the same, China, after the bankruptcy of Evergrande was followed by that of Shintao (second largest construction company after Evergrande), Evergande alone represented 350 billion dollars of debt that they cannot pay. Behind this debt are international investors who are demanding their money, among them BlackRock. Regional banks have failed to the point of triggering a Chinese "corralito[49]". 320 real estate projects are at a standstill and there are 100 million empty homes. Household debt has tripled to $7 trillion and there is also corporate debt. Drought has severely reduced hydroelectric power production to the point of rationing and partial closure of factories, such as TESLA which ironically produces electric cars! What was the response of the Chinese bourgeoisie to the crisis? Lower interest rates, massive state hiring, state funds for infrastructure and real estate, (nothing new!) and we already know the "effectiveness" of these measures... We can only expect a series of economic shocks in the near future in this part of the world.

- The trade war with the United States and the intentions of not being dependent on China have forced the developed countries, and the United States in the forefront, to diversify their supply chains and look for new maquiladora countries. Thus, countries such as Mexico, but especially Vietnam, which has already surpassed China in terms of economic growth in percentage terms, are emerging as the new "maquiladoras[50]" of capitalism. This year, US orders to Chinese manufacturers have fallen by 40% (CNBC).

 

In conclusion, it now seems that while Chinese state capitalism has been able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the change of bloc, the implosion of the Soviet bloc and the globalisation of the economy advocated by the US and the major Western bloc powers, its congenital weakness in its Stalinist-style state structure is now a major handicap in the face of economic, health and social problems. The situation foreshadows instability and possible upheaval, even for the position of Xi and his supporters within the CCP. A destabilisation of Chinese capitalism would have unpredictable consequences for global capitalism.

 

C. The continuation of militarism and the war economy

The year 2021 saw an accelerated explosion in military spending. The US increased its spending by 38% ($880 million), China by 14% ($243 million) and Russia by 3% ($65 million). America's military superiority is reflected in its budget.  According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in the same year "the world spent $2 trillion" on the military.

The entire Indo-Pacific region has seen its military spending increase for fear of falling victim to Chinese imperialism: Japan has also doubled its military budget and signed a 'defence transfer' agreement with Vietnam, Thailand is investing $125 million in 50 warships to protect its seas, Indonesia is increasing its military investment in the China Sea by 200%, and the Philippines has just received an additional $64 million from the US to strengthen its military bases in order to contain the Chinese threat. But this region is not the only one caught up in this dynamic; no one is spared.

The world is heading for an explosion in military spending like never before in history. All this unproductive spending will be loaded onto the backs of working people.

-The energy war will mark the future of capitalism: despite the frantic search for clean and renewable energy, it will be impossible under capitalism. The control of energy sources, in particular gas and especially oil, will remain a question of "national security" for every capital. The functioning of business depends on it, and at the imperialist level, the military runs on petrol (US=gasoline). The US currently has control over these resources and the fact that it is now Europe's main supplier becomes a source of future blackmail and pressure on EU countries. Xi's trip to Saudi Arabia and the recent energy deal with Russia confirm this (30 Dec 2022).

The historical acceleration of the influence of war on the economy is worth noting, and was tragically demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. If we make a historical comparison with the Vietnam War, the military burden was on the economy, but today the impact of militarism on the economy is even greater.

 

D. The impossible energy transition

Capitalism is the only system in history capable of devastating nature on a massive scale, eliminating entire ecosystems and accelerating the extinction of species that alter the entire natural order. This phenomenon is cumulative and accelerating, leading to the rapid devastation of the planet. The current "clean energy transition" is simply an expression of the struggle between capitalists and their competition to the death. It's all about who will get to the market first and take customers away from their rivals. All the talk about their "concern" for the environment is demagogy. The worsening "ecological crisis" is accelerating and causing unacceptable devastation. The United States, whose former president Trump denied the existence of "climate change", is facing the effects of this ecological crisis and the world's leading power is far from being "spared" from "natural disasters" and even holds the dubious world record for the destruction of biodiversity. In fact, capitalism cannot be a competitive system and be "ecological" at the same time, because

- Its objective is profit, not the preservation of nature, which will always be considered by capitalism as a source of free resources whose depredation and the consequences do not concern it;

- The ‘every man for himself’ and the anarchy of production mean that the bourgeoisie has no control over the "new technologies", it is a sorcerer's apprentice!

- Technological advances are one-sided; they never care about the global implications. If the extraction of lithium for car batteries is polluting and its recyclability is reduced to 5%, it does not matter. The main thing is to sell 'green' cars;

- The separation between man and nature becomes extreme under capitalism, to the point of considering man as 'outside' his natural environment.

On the other hand, the return to coal, even if companies pay an extra tax to cover environmental damage, which is just a smokescreen, does not eliminate the enormous failure of capitalism to eliminate carbon emissions. If the Europeans had decided to abandon nuclear power, they are now trying to reintroduce it to offset their dependence on Russia and the US. This is yet another example of the failures of capitalism, which pushes us to revive old glories, even if they are polluting. Each country only looks out for itself and the others suffer!

A transition to "green energy" under capitalism is equivalent to the illusion of a capitalism without wars.

 

E. Towards the absolute impoverishment of the working class in the central countries

The unproductive spending of capital will not stop, militarism and the maintenance of the state will take its toll on the working class. This phenomenon of the impoverishment of the working class in the central countries has its history, but since the pandemic and the war in Ukraine it has accelerated. Inflation drastically reduces the purchasing power of workers and, unlike the 1970s, today the bourgeoisie does not resort to wage indexation, for example, the bourgeoisie in the UK has taken a hard line on demands for wage increases to compensate for inflation, the British Prime Minister has said "no negotiation is possible".

- The slogan of the British strikes "Heating or eating" reveals the seriousness of the situation. For many working families, it is more expensive to pay for energy than for a mortgage: increasingly miserable wages, rising costs of living, ever-increasing prices, mass redundancies, cuts in social security, attacks on pensions, etc. All this points to a future of misery to which the proletariat will have to respond by following its class brothers and sisters in Britain, Europe and even the USA. A future of pauperisation of the proletariat is opening up and accelerating.

- The 'labour shortage'. The discussion [at the ICC Congress] should provide a response to this phenomenon: is the shortage the product of a ‘new’ relationship to work in one part of the class? Is it the product of the increasing anarchy that seizes Capital that generates both unemployment (over capacity) and the shortage of personnel? This report can only give a few elements such as the following:

- The logistics of commodity capitalism are in chaos, there are not enough drivers and products rot or there is a shortage. In health care there are too many vacancies and in education teachers are quickly leaving their jobs. In China, for example, 1 in 5 young people cannot find a "promising" job and prefer not to take it. "Let it rot" (bai lan) is a common Chinese expression used by young people who do not accept work. Behind this situation is obviously an individual and desperate outcome, a "private" reaction to the deterioration of working conditions. The new generations do not want to live at the pace of capitalist production. This phenomenon is at the same time the expression of a lack of class identity, they don't organise themselves to fight and only take an individual position in the face of an eminently social, economic and political problem. The reduction in unemployment benefits, the lack of pensions in many countries, the increase in mental illness and suicides, all this creates unbearable living and working conditions.

It is the crisis and the prospect of global recession that creates the conditions for workers to begin to raise their struggles on their own terrain. "Unlike social decomposition which essentially effects the superstructure, the economic crisis directly attacks the foundations on which this superstructure rests; in this sense, it lays bare all the barbarity that is battening on society, thus allowing the proletariat to become aware of the need to change the system radically, rather than trying to improve certain aspects of it " (Theses on Decomposition) [9] International Review 107.

 

(January 2023)