With the publication of comrade Steinklopfer’s most recent text, and the reply that follows here, we are continuing, after some delay, the internal debate about the world situation and its perspectives which can be followed in a dossier of contributions going back to the 23rd ICC Congress in 2019[1]. The first exchange in this debate, under the heading Internal Debate in the ICC on the international situation, [1] published in August 2020, outlined the main differences between the organisation and the comrades in disagreement around the development of imperialist antagonisms and the balance of class forces, with comrade Steinklopfer discerning a marked tendency towards the formation of new imperialist blocs and towards a world war, based on a different evaluation of the defeats suffered by the working class in the 1980s and its capacity to obstruct the march towards world war. But it also touched on the underlying causes and ultimate consequences of the phase of decomposition.

In the next two texts, Explanation of the amendments by comrade Steinklopfer rejected by the Congress [2] and Reply to comrade Steinklopfer, August 2022 [3], the debate went further into our understanding of decomposition; for the organisation, the positions being developed by Steinklopfer were tending to call this theoretical concept into question, even though the comrade still claimed to be defending it. In May 2022 we published a contribution by comrade Ferdinand, who had voted for the amendments proposed by comrade Steinklopfer. The focus of this article was on the ICC’s approach to the emergence of China as a world power, and the response of the organisation, Reply to Ferdinand [4] devoted a large section responding to what Ferdinand saw as our underestimation of this undoubtedly important historic development, one which is again central to the latest contribution by Steinklopfer and our reply. In both the ICC replies, we argued that despite certain initial errors, our recognition of the historic significance of the rise of China is clear – the difference is over how we interpret this in the context of capitalism’s terminal stage.  

We invite our readers to go back to these articles in order to follow the main threads of the debate, which has very concrete implications for our capacity to analyse the real dangers facing the working class and the whole of humanity, and to fully understand both the role of the working class as an alternative pole to capitalist barbarism and the function of the revolutionary organisation in the current conditions of the proletarian struggle.

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That capitalist civilisation is on its last legs, that it increasingly threatening the very survival of humanity, is becoming more and more evident. The more intelligent factions of the ruling class already recognise this with their notion of the “poly crisis” linking pandemics, economic and ecological breakdown with the proliferation of war and military tensions[2]. For the different components of the revolutionary marxist milieu, who have been highlighting the alternative between socialism or barbarism for over a century now, the slide towards barbarism is also becoming more and more concrete. But there are considerable divergencies between the organisations of the communist left about the precise form and trajectory of this slide today, and thus about the most urgent dangers confronting the working class and humanity as a whole. The majority of these groups argue that we are seeing the formation of stable imperialist alliances or blocs dominated by an undisputed leader, and thus a definite course towards a new world war. This also implies that the ruling class now has the ability to mobilise the working class – on a world scale – to enlist in the war effort of these hypothetical contending blocs. In particular, both the organisation and comrades in disagreement accept that the overarching imperialist conflict on the planet pits the USA against its new challenger, China, and that, especially since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, there is a mounting danger of military clashes not only between secondary or tertiary imperialist states, but between the great powers themselves. We can also note that the debate has clarified certain erroneous interpretations of our application of the concept of decomposition. For example, as comrade Steinklopfer notes in his most recent text: “Another clarification is the answer it gives to my criticism that the ICC now considers the imperialist each against all to be a kind of second main explanation for capitalisms entry into decomposition. The article explains that the ICC considers this each against all to be a contributing factor and not a cause of decomposition. I have understood this now comrades, you will not hear this criticism from me again”.

Nevertheless, there are still fundamental disagreements between the two points of view, regarding the implications of the “each for himself” tendency in imperialist relations, and the capacity of the bourgeoisie to mobilise the working class for war. And as we will try to show again in this article, the positions adopted by Steinklopfer in his most recent contribution still tend to call into question the foundations of the ICC’s notion of decomposition.

 

The implications of the rise of China

For Steinklopfer the most important change to have emerged since 1990 is the emergence of China as a real challenger to the USA. As he puts it in his latest contribution:

“Our Theses on Decomposition were right at the time they were written. These Theses never said that the tendency towards bi-polarity (towards the regroupment of rivalries around two main leading protagonists) or towards the formation of imperialist blocs disappears. What it said, and rightly so, is that, at the time of writing, there was no country existing (and none in sight) capable of challenging the United States, and that therefore world war was no longer on the agenda. In this situation the Theses were also right to insist that, even without world war, capitalism remained tendentially condemned to eventually wipe out our species, through local wars, general chaos, the destruction of nature etc. Not surprisingly, three decades later the situation has changed. Above all because China is developing the global potential to challenge the United States. But also because Russian imperialism has regained its capacity of counter-attack (a power with many weaknesses, but which still possesses inter-continental rockets which threaten America).

The rise of China has put the question of World War back on the agenda of history. This represents, in a sense, a kind of ‘normalisation’ in relation to the history of decadent capitalism. The period after 1989, during which the ruling class was not getting ready for world war, was an exception to the rule. An exception which is now over. This does not mean that a Third World War is inevitable: throughout the Cold War, it was also on the agenda, yet it never broke out. What we can be sure of, however, is that the proletariat, humanity as a whole, and the planet will be made to pay a terrible price for the Sino-American conflict, one way or the other, whatever forms it takes”.

As we say in our update on Militarism and Decomposition (May 2022), when we analysed the possibilities for the formation of new imperialist blocs in 1990, we did not take into account the rise of China on the economic and imperialist levels. This is certainly a development of enormous significance and there is no doubt that, unlike the candidates we considered at the time (Germany and Japan), China has shown itself to be a more credible challenger to the USA’s global domination. Despite its deep divisions, all the main factions of the US bourgeoisie recognise the need to block the ascent of China and, at least since the Obama administration, have evolved a strategy of encircling China through military alliances such as AUKUS and the Quad, through mounting economic pressure – and the attempt to weaken China’s most powerful military “friend”, Russia, by surrounding the latter with NATO member-countries and pushing it to strike back in Ukraine[3]. China too has its strategy for attaining global hegemony – building up its economic strength over an extended period, broadening its commercial (and military) reach through the construction of the “New Silk Roads”, and thus preparing for the more direct imperialist confrontations of the future.

However, the reality of the “bipolarisation” between the US and China, and the real existence of these longer-term imperialist strategies, does not signify that we are now much further advanced towards the constitution of new imperialist blocs than we were in 1990. True, we now have in China a serious contender for the role of bloc leader, but at the same time, the counter-tendency of each for themselves at the level of international relations, and within the national bourgeoisies, has also grown more powerful. The unpredictability in the political life of the American ruling class is a clear sign of this. A Trump victory in the coming elections would undermine the present administration's strategy towards China by adopting a much more conciliatory attitude towards Russia, in contrast to the current US efforts to put pressure on Russia and weaken its capacity to act as a serious military ally of China; Trump would also give Israel a free hand to pursue its scorched-earth policy in the Middle East, which can only have the result of intensifying instability and barbarism throughout the region; and Trump’s “pay up or else” attitude to the NATO countries would reverse Biden’s efforts to bring NATO back into the US military fold. But even if Biden wins, this would not substantially improve the capacity of the US to impose its will on Israel or to discipline its “allies” in Europe, where powerful centrifugal forces have been gestating. If the war in Ukraine, at first sight, appeared to conform to the model of two clearly defined sides that were typical of the 1945-89 period, notably the war in the Middle East and the IS-K terrorist attack in Moscow, expressing a new threat on Russia’s Asian borders, have brought to light the truly chaotic nature of inter-imperialist conflict today.

For its part, China’s dreams of forging a solid alliance against the USA are also coming against significant obstacles. The period of its “economic miracle” is drawing to a close under the weight of a vast accumulation of debt; these economic weaknesses, together with mounting instability in the Middle East and elsewhere, are threatening the future of its entire Silk Road project; while at the same time China’s undoubted economic power makes all of its neighbours and potential allies, including Russia, extremely wary of submitting themselves to a new form of Chinese domination[4].

Of course, the more aggressively the US steps up its encirclement of China, the more China will be pushed towards lashing out, notably by invading Taiwan, and this would necessarily provoke a military response by the US, entailing risks of nuclear escalation no less and perhaps even greater than those currently inscribed in the Ukraine war. Comrade Steinklopfer welcomes the fact that the previous reply to him recognises “that the danger of uncontrolled atomic conflicts is greater than during the Cold War – and the danger continues to grow”. But for us, such uncontrolled catastrophes are profoundly embedded in the very process of every man for himself, of growing imperialist chaos, and are thus entirely compatible with the analysis of decomposition. For Steinklopfer, on the other hand, the formation of blocs and a “controlled” march towards world war doesn’t contradict the theory of decomposition:

“According to the August 2022 Reply, both Steinklopfer and Ferdinand ‘still insist that they agree with the concept of decomposition, although in our view some of their arguments call it into question’.

Which are these arguments?

The first argument cited is that Steinklopfer and Ferdinand fail to understand that the bourgeois each for himself has become a major impediment to the formation of new blocs.

Yes, I fail to understand this. The formation of imperialist blocs is itself not the diametrical opposite of each for himself, but on the contrary a product of each for himself. Blocs are one possible form taken by the struggle of each against all, since competition is inherent to capitalism. Whether this struggle of nation states against each other takes a more chaotic, unbridled form, or whether it takes the form of alliances and even blocs, depends on circumstances. Which circumstances? After 1989, the circumstances were such as to rule out the formation of new blocs, and our Theses were quite right to recognise this. The most important circumstance here was that there was only one remaining superpower, the United States, so that all the others had the overriding concern to avoid their own room for manoeuvre being cut or eliminated by this one giant. Today the circumstances are changing. If China succeeds in continuing its present ascent, so that it would become a second superpower alongside America, all the other countries will find themselves under increasing pressure to choose between Washington and Beijing (or, to put it more correctly, they will have to define for themselves which of the two powers represents the greater threat to their own interests)”.

But our position on the possibility of new blocs (developed not so much in the Theses on Decomposition but in the orientation text on militarism and decomposition, published in October 1990[5] ) did not limit itself to the truism that blocs are, in the final analysis, the product of capitalist competition, but argued that in addition to the lack of a real candidate for a new leader, the mounting disorder of the new phase was itself a counter-tendency to the formation of new blocs. In the new period, citing the fact that “the centrifugal tendencies amongst all the states as a result of the exacerbation of national antagonisms, cannot but be accentuated”. Therefore “the more the bourgeoisie's different fractions tend to tear each other apart, as the crisis sharpens their mutual competition, so the more the state must be reinforced in order to exercise its authority over them. In the same way, the more the open historic crisis ravages the world economy, so the stronger must be a bloc leader in order to contain and control the tendencies towards the dislocation of its different national components. And it is clear that in the final phase of decadence, the phase of decomposition, this phenomenon cannot but be seriously aggravated.

For all these reasons, especially the last, the reconstitution of a new pair of imperialist blocs is not only impossible for a number of years to come, but may very well never take place again: either the revolution, or the destruction of humanity will come first.

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”.

Within a few years, as previously stated, we had concluded that, far from maintaining a minimum of order, the USA’s increasing resort to military force, above all in the Afghanistan and Iraq, had become a main factor in the extension and intensification of disorder, and that was the case well before the marked acceleration of decomposition and chaos in the 2020s.

We can add that it is surely significant that comrade Steinklopfer makes no mention of the fact that the founding event which made it possible to speak of decomposition as a qualitatively new phase in the life of capitalism was precisely the collapse of an entire imperialist bloc without a world war – a profound expression of the process of “inner disintegration”(to use the term used to define the new epoch of decadence at the Comintern’s founding Congress in 1919) which came into its own in the final phase of this epoch.

What the Theses on Decomposition make clear, and again we repeat, is that society is putrefying, falling apart at the seams, because neither class is able to offer a perspective for the future; and for the ruling class, this also implies the ability to unite society behind this perspective, as it was during the years of the counter-revolution when the working class had suffered a frontal and historic defeat. We will return to this point when we consider the situation of the world proletariat today, but first we must examine a question which further contributes to comrade’s overestimation of the bourgeoisie’s capacity to maintain its control over society: the question of ecology, the capitalist destruction of nature.

Decomposition and the growth of “destructive forces”

In the German Ideology of 1845 – when capitalism was advancing towards its zenith – Marx and Engels already foresaw that “in the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money)”. In their impatience to see the proletarian revolution, they saw this change in quality as being more or less imminent. They soon drew the lessons of the revolutions of 1848 and concluded that capitalism still had some time to go before its historic crisis would open the door to the communist revolution; but Marx in particular returned to this question towards the end of his life, in his researches into ancient communal forms and growing problems in man’s “metabolism” with nature, asking himself – faced with the need to answer the questions posed by revolutionaries in Russia – whether it would be necessary for every country to go through the fires of capitalist development, with all its destructive consequences, before a world revolution became a real possibility. Again, the effective conquest of the globe by imperialism in the last part of the 19th century showed that the process of brutal destruction of pre-capitalist forms and the plundering of natural resources was ineluctable. But this headlong race only hastened the point at which capitalism plunged into its epoch of “inner disintegration”, signalled by the outbreak of World War One, when the revolution presented itself not only as possible but as a necessity if humanity was avoiding a catastrophic regression. 

Against numerous misinterpretations, the ICC has always insisted that the decadence of capitalism does not mean a halt in the development of the productive forces and can indeed include a prodigious development in certain branches of production. However, precisely because capitalism’s continued survival has been a burden on humanity’s back which grows heavier and heavier through the decades, we are more and more seeing the productive forces of capital turning into destructive forces. The most obvious expression of this change is the development of the cancer of militarism – a permanent war economy to meet the needs of near-permanent imperialist war. This is classically illustrated by the advent of nuclear weapons, in which the most profound advances in science have been marshalled to produce weapons that could easily destroy all life on Earth, a grim fulfilment of Marx’s words in his Speech at the anniversary of the People’s Paper, in April 1856: "At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on a dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life and stultifying human life into a material force."

Another striking example: the spectacular development of computing, the internet, and artificial intelligence. Potentially a means of shortening the working day and doing away with repetitive and exhausting labour, decadent capital has seized on the computer and the internet as a means of blurring the distinction between working life and private life, of laying off huge numbers of workers, of spreading the most pernicious ideological intoxication, while the widespread use of artificial intelligence – even if its potential dangers may be deliberately exaggerated to hide more imminent dangers resulting from capitalist production - now appears not only as a threat to jobs but as a potential means for the replacement and destruction of the human species. 

In the reply by comrade Steinklopfer, however, the destructive side of capitalism’s “development of the productive forces” seem to be severely underestimated. Thus, for him, the transformation of millions of peasants into workers by the Chinese economic miracle, accompanied by the frenzied urbanisation of the entire country, seems only to be a gain for the future proletarian revolution: “In the past 30 years anything up to half a billion peasants in China have been proletarianised, by far the most massive numerical development of the proletariat in the history of capitalism. Moreover, this gigantic new proletariat, to an important extent, is very skilful, educated and inventive. What a gain for the productive capacities of humanity! What a potential above all for the future!”

The world working class, in moving towards the revolution, will certainly harness the potential of these new proletarian masses. But Steinklopfer makes no mention of the fact that the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of China in the past few decades has also been a factor in the acceleration of the global ecological crisis, including the gestation of pandemics like the explosion of Covid 19[6]. As the Theses on Decomposition explain, the prolongation of capital’s life into the phase of decomposition should not at all be seen as a necessary precondition for the world proletarian revolution. On the contrary, they insist that decomposition is essentially a negative factor in the development of proletarian class consciousness, while capital’s debt-fuelled “globalisation” in the past few decades threatens above all to undermine of the natural bases for a future communist society. Once again, we think that this is further evidence that Steinklopfer, despite claiming to agree with the Theses on Decomposition, is really opposing them at the most essential level.

Further evidence of Steinklopfer’s underestimation of the ecological question can be found in this passage: “Although we certainly should not underestimate the gigantic dangers flowing from capitalism´s destructive relation with nature (of which imperialist war is an essential part), it is quite possible that bourgeois society – through its technological and other manipulations - can postpone the extinction of our species through environmental crises for the next 50 or one hundred years (at the expense of an unspeakable barbarism, for instance possible genocides against environment refugee movements”.

In this view, the destruction of nature appears to be acting somewhat “in parallel” to the drive towards war, even if the comrade recognises that imperialist war is a part of it. But what has been emphasised by the ICC, in particular since the beginning of the present decade, is the growing inter-action between the ecological crisis and imperialist war: a lucid demonstration of this is provided by the ecological cost of the current wars in Ukraine and the Middle East (rapid increase in emissions, threat of destruction of agriculture and famine, danger of nuclear and other forms of pollution, cutting back of projected “green” measures by western governments in order to pour more resources into war, etc). Simultaneously, the exhaustion of natural resources and the race to exploit remaining energy sources can only exacerbate national and thus military competition. We can also add that a number of scientific studies have shown that capitalism’s proposed “technological fixes” to climate change (such as the massive injection of sulphur dioxide into Earth’s upper atmosphere to thicken the layer of light reflecting aerosol particles artificially, or the idea of Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage – BECCS) are more than likely to exacerbate the problem in the not-so-long run[7].

The working class and the danger of war

1. The question of “bloc ideologies”

We have already referred to the inability of the bourgeoisie to mobilise the working class of the central capitalist countries for world war. At one level, this is expressed by the continuing resistance of the working class to the bourgeoisie’s attempts to reduce living standards in the “national interest”, for which read the imperialist interests of the nation state. But the problem facing the bourgeoisie is also an ideological one. To cohere different countries around an imperialist bloc, a unifying ideological glue is needed, such as anti-fascism and the defence of democracy in the 30s and 40s. This all-encompassing “bloc ideology” was swiftly succeeded in the late 40s and over the next few decades by the fables of “anti-totalitarianism” in the West and “the defence of the socialist fatherland” in the East, although it must be said that the capacity of the ruling class in the West to switch enemies from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Russia, and get away with it, would not have been possible but for the fact that the counter-revolution was still in full swing. As a unifying force, it lacked the power of anti-fascism because the influence of Stalinist ideology on the working class in the West was still strong during that period. In any case, one of the signs that the counter-revolutionary period was reaching its end in the 1960s was the tendency for the working class to detach itself from some of the main themes of bourgeois ideology. One expression of this was the development of the so-called “Vietnam syndrome” in the USA, an open admission of the inability of the ruling class to continue the direct mobilisation of proletarian youth in the name of “containing Communism”.

In the period of decomposition, it is evident that the ruling class in the central countries is seriously lacking an ideology that could serve to convince the working class that it is worthwhile and necessary to sacrifice itself on the altars of imperialist war. The “War against Terror”, designed expressly in the USA to replace anti-Communism as a justification for war, ended in the fiascos of Afghanistan and Iraq and in breeding even more forms of terrorism, such as Islamic State. It’s true that the call to defend democracy against the “autocracies” in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is currently being taken out of mothballs, but given the extreme scepticism towards the “democratic process” in the advanced countries, there is some way to go before a new crusade for democracy could be used by the bourgeoisie to oil the wheels of the war machine; and although much of this scepticism is largely being taken in hand by the forces of populism rather than by a proletarian critique of democracy, populism itself is no more effective as a war ideology, because it is a direct product of decomposition and of the fractures in the ruling class which result from it; and it can only feed itself through further stoking these divisions, real or imaginary (culture wars, denunciation of the elites, scapegoating of immigrants etc). It lacks the “responsibility” to guide major nation states through a war effort (which doesn’t of course preclude the resort to highly “irresponsible” acts of war when it does seize the reins of government).

We could add that the potential leader of a new bloc – China – is far too dependent on ruling either through blatant repression or economic pressure while lacking the ideological strength to attract other global forces into its orbit. What bourgeois commentators like to call “Leninist capitalism” is much less effective at this level than the “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” claims of the former USSR or China itself under Mao.

These are real problems for the bourgeoisie today but they are conspicuous by their absence in Steinklopfer’s arguments.

1. Once again on the question of defeats

Comrade Steinklopfer’s reply does of course address itself to the question of defeats suffered by the working class in assessing the capacity of the ruling class to go to war. He lays out his position in the second part of his reply (point 4):

“Since 1968, the proletariat has suffered a number of defeats. One of the most positive aspects of the present reply to Steinklopfer is that it more clearly recognises the reality of these defeats. It recognises both the defeat of the politicisation after 1968 and that of the loss both of class identity and of the revolutionary communist goal by the working class around 1989. And it now recognises (as Steinklopfer had previously pointed out) that the understanding of these defeats is consistent with our theory of decomposition. This represents a real step forward when you consider that, not long ago, the organisation was arguing that any talk of defeats is defeatist….

At all events, we agree on the fact that the proletariat can still recover from its present weaknesses. The defeats we are speaking of here are not part of a counter-revolution, since they were not preceded by a revolution or an attempted revolution. However, it is extremely difficult to judge the precise nature and impact of these defeats, since they are historically unprecedented. Never before did the proletariat lose its class identity and its revolutionary goal as it has presently done. All of which makes it more difficult to estimate by which means the class can recover its strength and begin to go forward again”.

In reality, the organisation did not discover the idea of defeats a couple of years ago when the previous reply to Steinklopfer was written, and if it believed that merely to talk about defeats was “defeatist”, it would have to level this accusation at itself. As we said in the previous reply, the ICC has always adhered to Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum that “revolution is the only form of ‘war’ – and this is another peculiar law of history – in which the ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of ‘defeats’” (“Order Prevails in Berlin”, 1919). In the 1980s, for example, we wrote about the serious defeat of the mass strike in Poland and of the miner’s strike in Britain. The resolution on the balance of forces between the classes from the 23rd Congress[8] clearly explains that the latter was part of a global counter-offensive of the ruling class which, along with the growing effects of decomposition on the class, explains its inability to take forward the third wave of struggles since 1968, which certainly exacerbated the enormous impact of the ideological campaigns around the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989.

The question dividing us here is not whether or not we talk about defeats, but the nature, the quality of such defeats. For us the very notion of decomposition is founded on the argument that the class in the advanced countries, in any moment since the 1980s, had not suffered a frontal, historic defeat comparable to what it went through in the 20s, 30s and 40s. This was why we talked about a stalemate and not a victory for the bourgeoisie. This is why we are still arguing that the preconditions for the mobilisation of the class for world war remains the same. In our view, evidence for this lack of a historic defeat and the continuing capacity of the proletariat to respond to the capitalist crisis is provided by the break-through in the class struggle which has been ongoing since the struggles of the proletariat in Britain in the summer of 2022 and has not abated. Comrade Steinklopfer does not mention these historically important events in his text. It is true that this was written in September 2022, before the revival of struggles was confirmed by the outbreak of movements in other countries (notably in France), but even in the autumn of 2022 it would have been possible to have made a preliminary assessment of the movement in the UK and of the organisation’s analysis of it – most notably our insistence that these struggles marked the beginning of the recovery of the lost class identity mentioned in Steinklopfer’s reply.

(c) On the development of class consciousness

In the two parts of comrade Steinklopfer’s reply, there are two points made about the specific question of class consciousness. In the first part, he takes up our criticisms of his idea that, instead of seeing a “subterranean maturation” of class consciousness, we are actually going through a process of “subterranean regression”.

“But there is another idea in the Reply, which is that I deny the concept of subterranean maturation. This idea is based on the fact that I have spoken of a ‘subterranean regression’, by which I mean a stagnation or regression of the politicised vanguard as a whole. All of which poses a very interesting question: is subterranean maturation necessarily always a linear, accumulative process, in which no stagnation and above all no regression is possible? Why would this be the case? Because reality is constantly changing, political and theoretical work necessarily has to keep in step with developments. If they fail to do so, would this not represent a kind of regression of the subterranean development of the consciousness of the revolutionary milieu?”

To begin with, the comrade’s answer gets off on the wrong tack when it asks “is subterranean maturation always a linear, accumulative process”? We have never talked about the maturation of consciousness in the class, whether open or hidden, overground or underground, as a linear process which must always go forward. What we have said from the time we first started using this idea in the 1980s was that, even in periods where the spread of class consciousness on a general level (“consciousness in the class”), class consciousness, communist consciousness, can deepen and advance through the theoretical activities of revolutionaries, as it did in the 1930s for example through the work of the left fractions. At the same time, we have argued that such a process of maturation is not limited to the reflection and elaboration of political organisations, but can also develop on a much wider scale, above all in periods when the working class has not been crushed by the counter-revolution. In our view, we are seeing evidence of precisely such a process in the current strike movements, which are not merely a response to the immediate attacks facing the class, but the surfacing of discontent that has been building up for years (“enough is enough”), and which has also provided signs of a reappearance of working class memory, as in the references to the struggles of 1968 and 2006 in the movement in France. Alongside this, we are also seeing the appearance of more directly politicised elements searching for clear positions, notably around the problem of internationalism. Such are the fruits of a real underground growth, and it would be a serious mistake for revolutionaries to fail to notice them. Finally, while it is true that parts of the communist left are indeed “regressing” into opportunism or remain hamstrung by outdated formulae, we don’t think that the ICC itself is a victim of such stagnation or backward steps, even if the combat against the influence of the dominant ideology is necessarily a permanent one for all revolutionary organisations.  

The second point relates to the connection between the different dimensions of the class struggle: economic, political and theoretical.

“My divergence is that I disagree with the organisation because it thinks that the economic struggle is the main crucible of the recovery of the class, out of which the political and theoretical development can take place. For me, on the contrary, there is no such main crucible. The proletariat can only begin to go forward when it advances on all three levels. Our expectation that politicisation in particular would develop out of the economic struggles was already disproven in the 1980s. Why should it be more successful now in the absence of class identity and a revolutionary perspective? There is not one main crucible. When the proletariat advances, it will do so concerning all three dimensions of its historic struggle: the economic, the political and the theoretical dimensions.

In fact, never in the history of the proletariat did its political organisations and the works of theory develop one-sidedly out of the economic struggle. In the 19th century the revolutionary organisations of the proletariat in Europe (such as the Chartist movement in Britain or the Social Democracy in Germany) developed out of a political break with the progressive, in some cases even revolutionary bourgeoisie, based on the recognition: our goal is not the bourgeois revolution but the proletarian revolution. The same thing happened, in a more embryonic form, already in 1525 during the Peasant War in Germany and during both the English and the French bourgeois revolutions. Today, one of the departure points will have to be the break with bourgeois reformist illusions, the recognition that the way forward really lies beyond capitalism”.

Despite affirming the unity of these three dimensions, we think that the comrade actually persists in isolating the economic from the political and theoretical aspects. The struggles of the proletariat did not remain on the purely economic level after the heady days of May-June 68 in Paris. The inevitably political side of every strike movement worth its name was already affirmed by Marx and Engels in the ascendant period, but it is even more true in the epoch of decadence where the tendency of the struggle is to come up against the power of the state. The workers of Poland in 1976 and 1980 knew this perfectly well, as did the miners in Britain in 1972,74 and 84. The problem, of course, was that the potential to take this implicit politicisation further was and continues to be hampered by the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie, actively imposed by the forces charged with keeping the class struggle under control, in particular the trade unions and left parties. But the fact remains that the need to develop a broader and deeper vision of the direction of the class struggle, linking it to the whole future of humanity, requires the stimulus of the economic crisis and the willingness of the workers to fight on their own terrain. This approach was already put forward in the concluding parts of the Theses on Decomposition, and is being confirmed once again by the present revival of class struggles, which are taking the first steps towards the recovery of class identity, finding a route through the fog of confusion created by populism, identity politics and inter-classist mobilisations. And the fight to push forward the political and theoretical dimension of these movements is the most characteristic, specific role of the revolutionary organisation. On the other hand, the tendency to separate the economic from the political dimensions of the class struggle, which we can still discern in Steinklopfer’s text, has always been the first step towards the modernist view which sees the working class being trapped in its purely economic resistance, or even fully integrated into bourgeois society. At the same time, aside from emphasising the necessity for the revolutionary organisation to develop its theoretical weapons (which no one would disagree with in itself), the full range of implications for our militant activity -defence and construction of the organisation, intervention in the class struggle – remains unexamined in the contributions of Steinklopfer and Ferdinand, and would have to be further explored in the discussion if it is to move forward. 

Amos, April 2024

In several countries there are now significant populist parties, some of them even in government. Populist parties have a serious weight in at least a dozen parliaments in European countries, but the most critical populist events were Trump becoming US President, and Britain’s Brexit. However, we should not overlook the extension of this tendency to Latin America, with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil, or the government currently in place in Argentina headed by Javier Milei.

Governments like Milei’s have their roots in deepening economic upheaval and the rotting of the capitalist system, which is causing growing tensions within the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, and destabilising the political apparatus as a result. Governments, both left and right, promise to improve the situation, but in the end they only worsen poverty, which generates hope among the population for bourgeois groups that falsely present themselves as critics of traditional policies... At his inauguration, Milei declared that he was ushering in "a new era in Argentina, an era of peace and prosperity, an era of growth and development, an era of freedom and progress...". But only a few weeks passed before it was clear that behind these promises there was a further deterioration in wages, redundancies and repression.

Argentinean workers are not only faced with direct attacks from the government, they are also confronted with the traps that the unions and opposition parties are preparing to divert the discontent.

While Milei shouts "Long live freedom", misery and exploitation increase

In an attempt to attenuate the impact of the economic crisis, the bourgeoisie will always tend to increase the exploitation and misery of workers. This observation has been corroborated in a particularly dramatic way in the case of the Argentinean proletariat. The "anti-inflationary" shock measures imposed by Milei, in less than 100 days, triggered real hardships and desperation for workers. In the first two months of this government, wages have lost their value to such an extent that they are no longer enough to buy the basic necessities of life. Food prices have risen by 66% and medicine by 65%, leading to a fall in consumption of 37% for the former and 45% for the latter. But that's not the only thing that's become unaffordable: the price of public transport has risen by 56%, fuel by 125%, electricity by 130%... and to all this we must add massive redundancies, which have already reached a figure of between 50-60,000 and are expected to rise to 200,000 over the course of the year. The situation is so desperate that people are forced to sell their furniture on the streets.

The official references and figures for assessing the living conditions of the population point to an accelerated increase in poverty. Figures for December 2023 show that around 10,000 people were living on the streets and 44.7% of the population were below the "poverty line", but by January 2024 this had risen to 57.4%, meaning that there are already 27 million people (out of a total population of around 46 million) living in extreme poverty. And the attacks don't stop: basic teachers' salaries have been cut, retirement "adjustments" and greater "labour flexibility" are being prepared, which means dismissals without compensation, the abolition of overtime pay and, of course, the banning of strikes. Hunger and job losses are the main reasons why workers have taken to the streets. These demonstrations, although in their infancy, have expressed a great combativeness, which is why the bourgeoisie is fully committed to diverting this anger.

The left of capital reorganises to subjugate the proletariat

The parties of the left and other capitalist currents have reorganised themselves, diverting discontent towards the defence of the national economy, as the CGT did during the strike of 24 January, with the slogan "the country is not for sale"[1], or as the governors "in revolt" do, trying to reduce the problem to "the constitutional defence of the resources of the provinces", or, like the Peronist deputies, trying to concentrate the force of the discontent on the call for the impeachment of Milei. The "opposition" gave priority to nationalism, trying to ensure that the demands for jobs and higher wages, which were present in the demonstrations, were drowned out by the defence of the economy, and that all fighting spirit was trapped in the false dilemma between the "more State" policies proposed by Peronism and Milei’s "neo-liberal" or "libertarian" policies.

In this tangle of false choices for the state, the actions of Peronism stand out. After its years in government, where for decades it was responsible for implementing anti-crisis measures, it is now determined to erase the memory of its past by once again assuming the role of opposition to the government, as part of the division of tasks that all the parties carry out in the game of taking turns at government. Faced with the shock measures, people like Sergio Massa (former presidential candidate) and Peronist governors joined forces to "stand up" to the government. Above all, there was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (former president, and vice-president of the last government) who, with her February letter “Argentina in its third debt crisis" and the governor of Buenos Aires Axel Kicillof (former economy minister in Kirchner's government) with his report at the opening of Congress in March, set the tone for the bourgeois opposition forces. Their "fiery" speeches criticising the adjustment plans focus solely on the procedural differences in the adoption of economic measures, i.e. using the chainsaw with moderation and discretion, but only to strengthen the national economy.

This brutal attack on Argentinean workers can only be carried out with a strong trade union and political apparatus and, to do this, it relies not only on Peronist organisations like the CGT and the CTA, which play an important role in presenting themselves as the organised expression of the workers' movement, but also on more "radical" or "critical" "alternatives" like the left-wing apparatus grouped within the Left Unity Front (FIT-U)[2]. The latter accuses the leaders of the opposition of being "treacherous bureaucrats", thus stimulating the hope that, for example, the CGT can be "saved" by "forcing" it to take on the leadership of the demonstrations, a role which, according to leftism, should be played by the country's largest trade unions. Of course, in these moves, we must include other "more grassroots" organisations which, like the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP) and "Pickets Unity", called for demonstrations at the end of February to demand more money for canteens, as if the solution to wage exploitation were the management of misery and adaptation to hunger![3]

In the struggle against the brutal assaults waged by the bourgeoisie, neither the unions, nor the Peronists, nor the FIT-U parties, nor the "grassroots" and "independent" organisations are on the side of the workers; they are all instruments used by the bourgeoisie to control workers’ actions and dissipate discontent.

In this context, there are two latent dangers for Argentine workers:

- interclassism, in which actions promoted by the petty bourgeoisie dilute proletarian demands and mix them with the demands of other social strata that do not have the same interests, as happened with the “yellow jackets” in France (2018). In Argentina, these expressions were experimented with, for example, during the popular revolts of 2001, when workers left their class terrain of defending their working and living conditions.

- bourgeois mobilisations, whose objectives have nothing to do with workers' interests, such as the demonstrations for democracy in Hong Kong (2019), or the illusion of sustainable development or racial equality within capitalism, as in the case of the recurrent youth climate marches (YFC -Youth For Climate) and the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations (2013)[4]. Conflicts over provincial resources in Argentina, for example, point in this direction.

We must avoid the trap of polarisation between for and against Milei, and more specifically between populists and anti-populists, because this is a minefield which diverts discontent and combativity from the real problem of defending the interests of the working class against capital.

In the face of capitalist poverty and exploitation, the only way out is workers' struggle.

As we said at the beginning of this government "...the bourgeoisie knows that the unity of the proletariat is the only force that can stop Milei's chainsaw, which is why it needs the left-wing apparatus and the trade union structure to get its way. These organisations are cogs in the state serving the interests of the bourgeoisie and they are already preparing to prevent the emergence of unity and solidarity among the workers. For example, the unions have already begun to present "radical" speeches against austerity, to win the sympathies of workers and to drag them into false, controlled struggles, into dead ends "[5].

The mobilisations that have taken place, as we have said, although still embryonic and controlled by the trade union and political apparatus, must be welcomed for their determination to defend their living and working conditions because, in reality, the attacks can only be stopped by workers in struggle, as demonstrated by the workers' struggles that have developed since 2022, starting in central Europe and continuing throughout Europe, the United States and other countries.

The next step must necessarily be to consider that the struggle only has a future outside the call and control of the unions and the opposition parties of the bourgeoisie. This means that workers must take control of their struggles from the outset by defining their demands and making their own decisions. "In the US, the UK, France, Spain, Greece, Australia and all the other countries, to end this organised division, to be truly united, to reach out to each other, to encourage each other, to expand our movement, we must wrest control of the struggles from the hands of the unions. These are our struggles, the struggles of the whole working class!"[6]

T/RR, 29-03-2024

On the back of the 800 civilians and 300 Israeli soldiers killed in the Hamas raid on Israel on October 7, a new round of barbarism has led to 150 being shot dead and 300 wounded, some with knives, by an Islamic State (IS) commando unit that attacked a rock concert on the outskirts of Moscow on March 25. In between these two tragic events, the horrors of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the intensification of the bloody war between Russia and Ukraine has sent a constant stream of innocent people to their graves with entire towns razed to the ground. In Gaza there are now more than 32,000 predominantly civilian deaths, which includes more than 13,000 children. And the deadly combination of constant bombing, growing famine and the spread of epidemics among a population literally on its last legs will only add to the death toll. At the same time the intensification of the war in Ukraine has meant that the two-year death toll of the conflict is now alarmingly at least 500,000 deaths, without counting the civilian victims and the ruins and desolation inflicted across many parts of Ukraine, or the threat to the Russian city of Belgorod, regularly bombarded by Ukrainian artillery, and to Moscow itself and other parts of Russia.

Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the dissolution of the Western bloc in 1990, the wars intrinsic to decadent capitalism are no longer symptomatic of the tensions between two rival imperialist blocs and the discipline they exercise. They increasingly obey the logic of every man for himself and of generalised chaos. The current world situation provides a graphic illustration of this tendency insofar as one country, Russia, is now at war with two adversaries, namely Ukraine and the Islamic State, who have not entered into an alliance with each other.

Behind the monstrosity of the Moscow attack lies the gravity of the global situation. By inciting Russia to invade Ukraine in order to weaken it through the ensuing conflict, the United States did not wish to cause its collapse, with all the immense risks that a break-up of the Russian Federation would entail. Nonetheless, this has now become a serious risk.

Chaos on the borders of Russia

The IS, the butcher of the attack on the outskirts of Moscow, is also emblematic of the trend towards widespread chaos. Increasingly, sinister militias are taking part in imperialist conflicts, seeking to impose their rule through terror and sometimes by killing each other, nearly always under the banner of religious fundamentalism, like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah,...

The Islamic State in Khorassan (IS-K), which claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow, is an Afghan branch of the terrorist group. It broadcast its responsibility, accompanied with a video showing its four assailants in action. There can be no doubt about the significance of this barbaric act, which is also an act of war and not without antecedents in Russia. On 31 December 2018, a building in a town in the Urals had already been bombed, killing 39 people. A few hours later, the town was the scene of an armed confrontation. IS-K had recently demonstrated its "military" capabilities, as it was behind the attack in Iran on January 3 that killed almost ninety people. Its members, who carry out particularly brutal attacks in Afghanistan against girls' schools and hospitals, are now even in open combat with the Taliban.

The rivalry between IS-K and Moscow is the result of Russia's weakening position on its borders, which has allowed the terrorist group to infiltrate the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, from where the perpetrators of the attack originated) and certain autonomous republics of the Russian Federation itself. The rapprochement between Moscow and the Taliban is explained by Russia's need to defend its influence in the region. But for Russia it also means opening up a second military front at a time when it is exhausted in an interminable war in Ukraine.

Great problems ahead for Putin and Russia

Putin's handling of the terrorist attack in Moscow is bound to weaken his credibility. His initial reaction of attributing direct or indirect responsibility to Ukraine was grotesque, when everything pointed to IS as the culprit, with the United States having previously warned various countries, including Russia, they might be targeted by terrorist attacks. When he realised his mistake, Putin added to the farce by declaring that there was still some doubt as to who was behind the attack. It was then that the IS's claim of responsibility for the attack put the nail in Putin's coffin. He could do nothing but keep a low profile, especially as there was a precedent to support the plausibility of the warning transmitted by the American intelligence services.

Indeed, this terrorist attack could hardly have come as a surprise to the Kremlin, given that " Vladimir Putin had already expressed alarm on 15 October 2021 about 'the ambitions and strengths of the Islamic State jihadist group in Afghanistan', stressing the 'combat experience' acquired by its members in Iraq and Syria ". Putin, questioning the ability of the Afghan Taliban to defeat these armed groups, said at the time that " the leaders of the Islamic State are preparing plans to extend their influence in the countries of Central Asia and the Russian regions by stirring up ethno-religious conflicts and religious hatred ". (1) What's more, IS-K had already organised an attack on the Russian embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Putin has thus just committed a huge faux pas, which will certainly not go unnoticed at a time when he is launching a spring conscription campaign, to draft 150,000 people for compulsory military service: in short, a campaign to requisition cannon fodder for the war. This miscalculation can only undermine his authority and legitimacy in the face of his rivals.

As the war continues to weaken the Kremlin's authority, the danger of a pure and simple break-up of the Russian Federation is growing. At the forefront of the consequences of such a break-up would be the spread of the nuclear arsenal among different warlords with their own uncontrollable ambitions. It would also represent a formidable headlong rush into chaos, in the heart of a region that is particularly strategic for the world economy (raw materials, transport, etc.). So far from benefiting any one belligerent, this new hotbed of war could have dramatic consequences for an entire region of the world.

Fern, 3 April 2024

 

1 "Attentat près de Moscou : l'Asie centrale, nouvelle tête de pont de l'organisation État islamique", Le Monde (25 March 2024).

 

Since the end of 2023, the winds of war are blowing in South America. Venezuela and Guyana are taking diplomatic and military measures due to their long-standing dispute over the territory of the Essequibo[1].

Although the conflict is currently in "hibernation", it is taking place in a global context that is conducive to it exploding and escalating into a major confrontation. Indeed, since the second decade of the 21st century, new wars and armed conflicts have broken out around the world: the war in Ukraine, now in its third year; the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that began almost six months ago, which is dragging on and accentuating the armed confrontations in several Middle Eastern countries; the escalation of conflicts in North Africa and the Sub-Saharan region, and so on.

In these conflicts, major powers such as the USA, Russia and China intervene through their policy of "appeasement" and "credit diplomacy". Second-tier countries or powers also intervene, such as Western European countries (Middle East, Africa) or Iran, which has a significant presence in several Middle Eastern countries. Each of the countries involved in the conflicts, obviously including the countries directly at war, intervenes for its own benefit, mainly geopolitical. This situation is due to the fact that, after the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 and the consequent weakening of the USA as the world's gendarme, a "multipolar" world has developed, in which countries of the second or third order in economic and military terms can more easily develop their own imperialist interests.

In this sense, we reaffirm what we say with regard to the conflict in the Middle East: “The current conflict has nothing to do with the old "logic" of confrontation between the USSR and the United States. On the contrary, it represents a further step in the drive of global capitalism towards chaos, the proliferation of uncontrollable convulsions and the spread of ever more conflicts.”[2]. Thus the present scenario of wars and armed conflicts between nations confirms the analysis Rosa Luxemburg put forward in 1916: “Imperialism is not the creation of one or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.”[3]

Another macabre characteristic of the wars of this decade, in addition to their irrationality, is their "scorched earth" character with destruction and death everywhere. We see this in the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Therefore, we affirm that these military confrontations, together with the economic and ecological crisis, create a "whirlwind" effect that brings with it "the risk of destabilising ever larger regions of the planet, with shortages, famines, millions of displaced people, increased risks of attacks, confrontations between communities...The war in Gaza like the war in Ukraine shows that the bourgeoisie has no solution to war. It has become totally powerless to control the spiral of chaos and barbarism which capitalism is inflicting on the whole of humanity."[4]

The Guyana-Venezuela confrontation moves the imperialist chessboard in the region

The conflict between Venezuela and Guyana contains the potential elements for the development of a larger confrontation. The regime of Nicolás Maduro, through the call for a Referendum, has called for patriotic unity over the claim to the territory of the Essequibo, referring to how Venezuela has been historically usurped, first by the British Empire and then by US imperialism. The Referendum has served as a basis for creating legislation on the disputed area: a new map of Venezuela with the annexed territory, the appointment of a state authority for the region and the mobilisation of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) towards the border with Guyana. For its part, the Guyanese government is not standing idly by: President Irfaan Ali is raising flags in the area, distributing economic aid to the population that has been abandoned for years, and declaring that it will not succumb to Maduro's trickery and that it will defend its country by any means necessary.

Both countries, each with the means at their disposal, develop their own imperialist policies. In the case of Venezuela, Chávez developed an imperialist policy towards the region, using the sale of cheap oil as artillery, even challenging the USA itself. China has given it important economic support, sustained by the supply of Venezuelan oil; Russia, as a supplier of armaments, has a military presence in the country; Iran, together with radical Islamic movements of the Middle East such as Hamas and Hezbollah; Cuba also has a military and intelligence presence in the country; sectors of the leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) of Colombia act openly on Venezuelan territory. This spectrum of "anti-imperialist" forces was established by Chavismo with the aim of developing an "asymmetrical war", anticipating an open confrontation with the US. Today, Maduro's government openly proposes the annexation of the disputed territory of the Essequibo.

For its part, Guyana, which plays the weaker country, has made progress in exploiting the oil resources of the disputed area, establishing economic and military alliances with the US and European countries that exploit these resources, as well as with China in the economic sphere, through Chinese consortiums that also exploit the resources of the disputed area.

A sign of the possible escalation of tensions in the region, after the Venezuelan government's decision to annex the disputed area of Esequibo became known, was when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Washington's "unconditional support" for the Guyanese government and troops from the Southern Command immediately began exercises with Guyanese military forces, with the possibility of having a permanent presence in Guyana. Then, earlier this year, the British military vessel HMS Trent arrived off the coast of Guyana to conduct military exercises with the armed forces of its Commonwealth partner. The Caribbean governments grouped in CARICOM[5] have given their support to Guyana, even though they have agreements with the Venezuelan government for the supply of oil.

On the other hand, Lula intervened by positioning Brazil as a "mediator" in the conflict, declaring that "We don't want wars and conflicts, we need to build peace". However, he ordered the deployment of a military contingent in the Brazilian state of Roraima, on the border with Guyana and Venezuela. In this way, he is not only trying to maintain his status as a regional imperialist power, but is also making use of the alliance with Chavismo, which he has used in his confrontation with the US since his first government took office. For their part, Cuba and Colombia are not taking a position on the conflict, because, by positioning themselves against Maduro, there could be negative repercussions for the Cuban regime due to the economic and military agreements that exist between the two countries; and in the case of Colombia, the agreements established with the leftist government of Gustavo Petro could be affected. These are all purely geopolitical calculations of an imperialist nature.

The Maduro regime is under strong pressure, internally, due to the advance of the opposition sectors, and internationally, mainly due to the sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union. For this reason, it is not out of the question that the Chavista leadership will embark on the adventure of war against Guyana, which would open another front of war for the USA, this time in its own "backyard".

Faced with this conflict, the proletariat and the population as a whole in Venezuela and Guyana are faced with an unprecedented situation: the possibility of being dragged into a war which would not only have repercussions in these countries, but at the regional level.

Left and leftist parties: false internationalists

As in every situation of conflict between nations, the governments of the day call on the workers and the exploited masses to support and mobilise against the opposing government, accusing it of being the aggressor. The workers of Guyana and Venezuela must refuse to participate in these campaigns, which only benefit the governments that exploit them and subject them to misery. The same must be done by workers in the wider region, for if a conflict breaks out they will be called upon to support one side or the other.

The rejection must not only be against the calls of the leaders and parties of the respective governments, but also against the opponents of those governments. All of them want to drag the working and exploited masses into being cannon fodder in a conflict that is not their concern, but in the interest of the ruling class of the warring nations. In the case of Venezuela, the calls of Maduro and the PSUV[6] leaders for "national unity in defence of the homeland" must be rejected. Also the calls of the opposition parties to Chavismo, both in the country and in exile, for "the defence of Venezuela and our territory". In the case of Guyana as well, the workers and exploited of that country must oppose the calls of the government of Irfaan Ali and the entire Guyanese ruling class to defend the homeland.

Even more important is the rejection of the calls and slogans of other parties and groups of the left of capital, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), as well as Trotskyist groups and organisations. The PCV criticises the Maduro government for leading the country towards "a strategic defeat of Venezuela's legitimate aspirations over the Essequibo territory and an advance in the positioning of transnational capital and the interests of the imperialist powers in the region "[7]. The Trotskyists, like the Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo, do the same, because "It has been this government that is carrying out a policy that brutally facilitates the plundering of our resources and that is a real humiliation and subordination of the country to foreign capital "[8]. They claim to defend internationalist positions, but we see how they present themselves as the best defenders of the interests of each national capital; both of them, since World War II, have mobilised the workers as cannon fodder, defending the camp of democratic imperialism and Stalinism against the fascist imperialists and, during the Cold War, calling on the workers to support and fight in favour of the countries under the orbit of the former USSR. Chavists, Stalinists and Trotskyists are of the same stock, all defenders of the capitalist system.

The slogan to defend: "The proletariat has no fatherland".

The exacerbation of tensions between Venezuela and Guyana represents a real danger for the proletariat of these countries and the whole of Latin America. If a conflict breaks out, there will be further destabilisation in the region, with its aftermath of hardship, famine, millions of displaced people to add to the 8 million Venezuelans who have emigrated due to the economic crisis and the exacerbation of tensions between Venezuela and the US since the Obama presidency. In this sense, the region has already been suffering for years from the effects of the economic crisis and the decomposition of the capitalist system at all levels: political, economic, social and environmental.

Any struggle in the defence of a state can only mean the political defeat of the proletariat, as is happening today in Ukraine and Russia, as well as in Gaza and Israel, i.e. proletarians trapped in the defence of their homeland. Against this background of the winds of war, the proletariat must make its own the slogan of the revolutionary organisations of yesterday and today: "The proletariat has no fatherland".

LB 29/3/24

 

 

 

 

International Communist Current

Online public meeting

Saturday 4 May, 2pm to 5pm UK time

The devastating world wars of the 20th century showed that capitalism as a social system had become totally obsolete. They were followed by a “Cold War” between two imperialist blocs in which proxy conflicts killed as many people as the world wars. The old bloc system fell apart in the 1990s but imperialist wars didn’t go away – they just got more chaotic and unpredictable. Of the many wars ravaging the planet today,  the carnage in Ukraine and the Middle East are the clearest proofs - alongside an ecological crisis which the system can’t begin to solve -  that capitalism’s decline has reached a terminal phase in which the threat to the very survival of humanity has become increasingly evident.

This meeting will discuss the historical background of the war in the Middle East and analyse the interest of the different imperialist powers involved. But it will above all seek to argue that the only possible response is the intransigent defence of internationalism against all the false responses offered by those who defend one or another form of nationalism, and against all capitalist states and governments, from Israel to Iran and Hamas, from Russia to Ukraine, from the USA to China. All of their wars are genocidal imperialist wars, and the only power on earth that can put an end to the nightmare of decomposing capitalism is the international working class.

If you want to take part in this meeting, write to us at [email protected] [18]

Find us online at www.internationalism.org [19]

In Britain, the group Lotta Comunista hides behind the “Internationalist Workers Club”, which runs food banks in London. It may at first sight look like an internationalist organisation from the tradition of the Communist left. This article argues that appearances can be deceptive.

 

There exists in Italy a group called Lotta Comunista (Communist Struggle) that not only claims to pass itself off as a vanguard of the working class, an internationalist group, but even to be one of the political formations belonging to the communist left, i.e. to come at least politically if not organisationally from the political current that, starting in the 1920s, opposed the degeneration of the Third International. We will see how this is completely without foundation and how LC in fact pursues very different objectives.

LC and the Communist Left

In reality, Lotta Comunista is the name of the newspaper it publishes, but the real name of this grouping is Leninist Groups of the Communist Left. LC has never explained what its political and theoretical connection to the Communist Left consists of. In its press we have never found any reference to the experiences of those minorities that in various countries, such as Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, France, clashing with the forces of capitalist repression, have tried to maintain the real thread of marxist continuity.

If LC carefully avoids any reference to the positions of the Communist Left, while continuing to bear its name, it is because the origins of this organisation are at the political antipodes of the Communist Left. They are in fact rooted in the so-called 'Resistance' to the occupation of Italy by German troops during World War II. A number of partisans, including Cervetto, Masini and Parodi, later joined the anarchist movement, forming the Proletarian Anarchist Action Groups (GAAP) in February 1951 with L'Impulso as their press organ. The GAAP founding conference, held in Genoa-Pontedecimo on 28 February 1951, is considered by LC itself to be the starting point for the whole organisation as we know it today, so much so that on 28 February 1976 a 25th anniversary commemoration event took place in Genoa-Rivarolo. In those days the city of Genoa was plastered with posters indicating the place and time of the demonstration and with the words in big letters "Lotta Comunista - 25 anni"; nothing else.

It is more than evident, therefore, that LC's reference to the Communist Left is a pure historical forgery.

LC and Marxism

For LC, marxism is something metaphysical, suspended above society, the classes and the struggle between them and not, instead, the expression of the real movement of emancipation of the proletariat. It is but a revelation, a religion - passed off as a science to be applied, detached from the reality and material situation of the proletariat in its contradictory relationship with capital. LC’s 'marxism' is merely the product of the thinking of ideologues based on philosophical speculation. To give itself some credibility, Lotta Comunista attaches the adjective 'scientific' to its elucubrations and thus believes it is saving its soul: we then have the party as the place where the science of revolution is born and lives, we have the 'scientific' revolutionary programme, 'proletarian science'. The development of this purported marxist science takes place in the brains of thinkers, albeit armed with 'revolutionary science' and not as a theory expressed by the proletariat in its movement, which is antagonistic to capitalist society. Today this immutable corpus of "marxist science" is supposedly the dowry of Lotta Comunista, which uses it to develop itself outside the oscillations of the real movement and outside the ebbs and flows of the class struggle.

LC and the analysis of society

For LC, the economic crisis does not exist; on the contrary, it is a fable invented by the bosses to attack the working class. In 1974 LC even printed a pamphlet with the significant title "But what crisis?".

Capitalism is said to be expanding thanks to whole areas and markets that capitalism has yet to conquer.

LC sticks to the statistics of the OECD or Fortune magazine or the Financial Times without any marxist interpretation. The paper, instead of being a journal of study but also of propaganda and struggle is, after the front page that could be described as a colourless, aseptic examination of the concentration of car companies, pharmaceutical firms, the mass media, with nowhere a concern for the emerging revolutionary perspective. The references to the working class in the column on workers' struggles in the world are just a photographic statistic of strike hours without any reference to the level of consciousness, the degree of combativeness, let alone autonomous organisation. After all, it is not strange: LC sees in the proletariat only a producer of surplus value, of variable capital, exactly like capital does. There is no analysis, no dynamic vision of the becoming of the class struggle and its prospects, but only a static vision, in which the proletariat is conceived as a statistical summation of atomised individuals, to be led, tomorrow, to the revolution - or what is believed to be the revolution.

LC, the class struggle and trade unions

In order to understand LC's position on the working class and the class struggle, we must refer to three different elements that combine to determine LC's conception of the problem: the 'Leninist' conception of the party, the role of the trade unions, and finally the current economic phase that apparently requires an “orderly retreat” on the part of the class. Let us try to analyse these three elements in order.

LC has a conception of consciousness and of the party according to which the proletariat is unable to develop a communist consciousness; this should instead be transmitted to it exclusively by the party, made up of bourgeois intellectuals dedicated to the revolutionary cause.

In this view, LC takes no account of the real struggles of the proletariat, but focuses mainly on the level of unionisation of the working class and its own influence within its adopted union, the 'red' CGIL. LC's argument is simple: being the revolutionary party, we have to organise and direct the working class and, to achieve this, we have to take over the union, by whatever means.

The consequence of this is that its interventions in the working class are never aimed at raising the consciousness of the proletariat, but only at gaining new political spaces to control and recruiting a few more cadres.

Finally, insofar as LC believes that the economic phase of capitalism is one of continuous growth and that it is essentially up to the working class to wait for events to mature, i.e. for capitalism to be implanted in all its glory, in 1980 this group launched the watchword of “orderly retreat”:

"... we have long since taken up the courageous Leninist watchword of gathering around the revolutionary party the conscious and healthy forces of the working class willing to fight in an orderly retreat, without zig-zags, delusions, confusions, demagogy."[1]

This implies working to dampen the aggressiveness of struggles, in order to avoid, apparently, having to suffer a “disorderly rout”. In this sense LC even goes so far as to reproach the old Italian Stalinist party, the PCI, for having gone too far on this level for mere party interests:

"As it is no coincidence that the PCI has instead gone so far as to use the trade unions to aggravate the disorderly course of workers' struggles in order to defend its own parliamentary weight in the exclusive interest of the bourgeois factions."[2]

Same criticism of the 'big union', namely the CGIL, a union of which LC dreams of being able to put itself at the head:

"Having, instead, disregarded the task we indicated at the beginning of the restructuring crisis, of organising an orderly retreat to then be able to reorganise the recovery, the big union has ended up making entrepreneurs and rulers cry not because of its strength but because of its crisis of authority and confidence."[3]

Here are the mosquitos who advise - unheeded - the union on what to do. But the latter does not listen to them and goes into crisis, making entrepreneurs and rulers cry. And why would entrepreneurs and rulers cry over the union's crisis? Because those whose moral and material authority keeps the workers chained behind the wagon of capital are failing in their job. This is how base committees[4] come into being; if, on the other hand, the union had listened to LC's advice, it would not have to contend with the base committees, i.e. the workers' tendency to break free from the union prison and start organising themselves autonomously, forcing unionism to radicalise in an attempt to better contain the workers.

All of this produces a political practice whose objective is not to foster maturation in the working class, but only the strengthening of 'party' positions on the skin of the class itself. Here is an example of this policy with profoundly negative consequences. In the first half of 1987, when the school workers organised themselves into base committees, LC peeped into a few assemblies to proclaim that the problem was not to set up a new trade union organisation, but to take the political direction of the existing ones. This meant not abandoning the CGIL but leaving the leadership of the movement to LC itself, and everything would be fine. But the school workers' movement in 1987 was a movement that was beginning to organise on a class basis, albeit with all its weaknesses. Well, given that it was sent packing, LC subsequently preferred to denigrate it publicly by calling it a “southern' movement” (due to the fact that it was more developed in southern Italy, almost as if it were a regionalist movement), a “breeding ground for future leaders of parliamentary parties”, calling instead for an extraordinary congress of the CGIL. Put simply, the CGIL had to wake up and not let the struggling school workers slip through its fingers. Here are the 'revolutionaries' at work!

LC and bourgeois institutions

LC declares itself "against all parliamentary parties" and "against the state and democracy", but then signs a press release together with the main bourgeois parties - PCI, DC, PR, DP, PSI -  in which it unanimously reaffirms its "firm condemnation of terrorism and all those forces linked to it" and invites "all workers to reject the serious attack carried out by those economic and political forces that tend to destabilise democracy in our country".

As far as elections are concerned, LC declares that it does not believe in them and is abstentionist, except when abstentionism becomes too unpopular to be maintained, as in 1974 on the occasion of the referendum on the abrogation of the right to divorce, demanded by Fanfani's DC. LC then brought out an issue of its newspaper consisting of a single sheet, at half price, in which it denounced “petty-bourgeois mass-based state capitalism” and called for a 'no' vote. Of course, the whole thing was peppered with phrases like “the vote is not enough, we must continue the struggle”. In fact LC, like the extra-parliamentarians of those years, took sides for one bourgeois faction against another.

LC and the Resistance

The question of participation in imperialist war is a particularly loaded question because it acts as a watershed between the proletarian and bourgeois camps. Although LC claims to be internationalist, it appears particularly compromised on this level.

In a pamphlet of April 1975 it is explained to us that after 8 September 1943 “faced with the collapse of the bourgeoisie the first workers' nuclei spontaneously organised themselves: from strikes they moved on to armed struggle. IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE RESISTANCE! The workers go to the mountains, organise themselves clandestinely in the cities and factories. The first obstacle to the construction of the new society is the presence of the fascists and Nazis. It is against these servants of capital that the partisans must begin to fight. But the workers know well that this cannot be the goal but only an obligatory step towards socialism”[5].

This discourse is completely on a bourgeois terrain. In fact the partisan bands are groupings at the service of 'democratic' imperialism, and even the organisations that acted in the city and in the factories, the GAP and the SAP[6], although formed by workers, were totally led by the PCI and the other bourgeois parties. The revolutionaries, on the other hand, had to denounce the fact that workers had allowed themselves to be caught up in a 'people's war' in the service of imperialism in which they were not defending their own interests but those of their class enemy. It is true that in March 1943 the workers went on strike with class-based and not anti-fascist demands, but it is equally true that these strikes and those that followed were distorted and diverted into an anti-fascist function. The proletarians in German army uniforms - either because of class instincts or because of memories of workers' struggles handed down to them by their parents - in some cases sought contact with the striking workers or showed their sympathy by throwing cigarettes at them,[7] but they were confronted by the Stalinist scum of the PCI who shot at them to prevent fraternisation between proletarians regardless of nationality and language. Italian workers and proletarians in German uniforms[8] were beginning to spontaneously put proletarian internationalism into practice. LC, on the other hand, saw these proletarians - defined as Nazis tout-court - as the first enemy to be put down.

Again in the same pamphlet we read that the workers will understand that power must be taken away from the bourgeoisie "and this is what they will try to do where they will succeed in seizing power, even if only for a short time: formation of new political structures in which the power to make laws and enforce them is unified, appointing mayors and officials directly; management of the factories; direct exercise of judicial power and liquidation of the fascists"[9]. Here LC's shamelessness has no limits. They would have us believe that the National Liberation Committees (CNL), referred to in the previous passage, were proletarian bodies, when it is well known that in the CLN there were only the parties of the bourgeoisie that subjected the workers to the demands of imperialist war.

The tragedy of the Resistance is that proletarians allowed themselves to be caught up in a 'people's war' in the service of imperialism for objectives that were not their own; and it is a further misfortune that groups like LC, passing themselves off as the heirs of the Communist Left and Lenin, come to exalt the Resistance by presenting it as a failed revolution. For revolutionary communists, on the other hand, the Resistance was the culmination of counter-revolution, the blackest period of counter-revolutionary stagnation, where true internationalists had to guard against both the Gestapo and the Stalinists, often being killed by the latter.

In the 1970s, when LC's pamphlet on the Resistance came out, anti-fascism - democratic or militant - was in fashion, and LC, in order to gain militants, adapted to the times. Thus, while other groups collected signatures to outlaw the MSI[10], Lotta Comunista, like the nascent 'workers' autonomy' current, opted for action in the streets. One was for democratic anti-fascism, the other for militant anti-fascism. The result does not change: both practices go against class interests.

In other cases, against fascism, LC preferred denunciation: in a 1976 pamphlet, it complained that the MSI received 4.5 billion in public funding. LC really has a delicate stomach: let them fund the DC, the PCI and all the other parties, but not the MSI, it just doesn't go down well. Of course this would be class-based, proletarian anti-fascism, as if the proletariat's historical task was to fight against a specific form of bourgeois rule and not against the bourgeoisie as a class and its state.

LC and internationalism

Finally, one has to ask: on what does a group like LC, which came out of the Resistance and has not made any attempt to separate itself from this experience with a minimum of criticism of its past, base its internationalism? On nothing, given that, again in homage to the idea of completing the bourgeois revolution before being able to put its hand to the proletarian one, LC has set itself the task of supporting all national struggles against particular countries defined as imperialist. It has never taken on board Rosa Luxemburg's lesson that shows how in the age of capitalism's decadence all states, big or small, strong or weak, are forced to pursue an imperialist policy.

Thus LC puts forward the idea that "to actively intervene against every manifestation of the predominant imperialist force in one's own country means to place oneself in the front line of the international class struggle. To participate in every struggle that directly or indirectly affects one or all sectors of imperialism, to participate by distinguishing oneself ideologically and politically with one's own theses, watchwords, resolutions and by denouncing the unitary dialectic of imperialism". And it sets as its task "in the colonies and semi-colonies to fight imperialism by all means by supporting all those actions and initiatives of the national bourgeoisies that actually concretely go against imperialist forces, foreign or local."[11]

LC has also republished all the articles of its historical founder Cervetto[12] where it defends, among other things, both the policy of support for Korea:

"... we consider it the task of the working masses to fight so that American and Chinese troops leave Korea and the Korean people are left free to conduct their national and social emancipation by the revolutionary path alone, without Soviet or Chinese or UN interference."[13]

And in favour of African independence:

"The anti-imperialist revolt of the African peoples in no way preludes the formation of socialist society on the continent. It is a necessary stage for the rupture of imperialist domination, for the disintegration of feudal stratification, for the liberation of economic forces and energies necessary for the establishment of a national market and an industrial capitalist structure, (...). For this reason alone we support the struggle for African independence."[14]

The logical consequence is feeling obliged to pay tribute to the personalities of the bourgeoisie, who fell in the struggle fought against other bourgeoisies:

"Lumumba is a fighter of the colonial revolution on whose grave the proletariat will one day lay the red flower. We who, as marxists, have criticised and criticise his confused political actions, defend him from insults (...). Lumumba knew how to die fighting to make his country independent. We internationalists defend his nationalism against those who make their (white!) nationalism a profession."[15]

LC also has flattering words for Castroism:

"Castroism becomes revolutionary despite its origin, that is, it is forced to make a decisive break with the past"[16].

and, of course, for Vietnam:

"For those who, like us, have always supported the struggle for state unification as a process of the Vietnamese bourgeois-democratic revolution, the historical significance of the political and military victory in Hanoi transcends the contingent fact."[17]

To conclude ...

There are many other critical points in LC's remote and less remote past that should be examined, such as the coexistence for about 10 years with Raimondi's Maoist-like current (which in 1966 would merge into the M-l Federation of Italy)[18] or with a character like Seniga, who had left Togliatti and Secchia's PCI taking the party's cash box with him[19], or the policy of forming power bases, often involving episodes of physical violence against unwelcome characters or ex-militants[20].

But concretely what emerges from what we have seen is that, faced with the class struggle and the problems of internationalism, fundamentally LC never takes the right position in the class confrontation and therefore, beyond all the goodwill and even good faith that LC militants may put into their work, this is destined to produce effects exactly opposite to those necessary for the triumph of the class struggle.

Ezekiel, 6 April 2010

 

[1] Lotta Comunista No. 123, Nov. 1980.

[2] Idem.

[3] Parodi, Criticism of the Subaltern Trade Union, Lotta Comunista editions.

[4] Parodi, op. cit., p. 30.

[5] Viva la Resistenza operaia, pamphlet of Lotta Comunista, April 1975, page 5.

[6] Patriotic Action Groups and Patriotic Action Squads.

[7] See Roberto Battaglia, Storia della Resistenza italiana, Einaudi.

[8] We are of course talking about the German army, formed for the most part by proletarians like all armies, not the Gestapo or the SS.

[9] Viva la Resistenza operaia, pamphlet of Lotta Comunista, April 1975, p. 5.

[10] Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), at the time a neo-fascist party later converted to ‘democracy’ under the direction of the current president of the Chamber of Deputies, Fini, with the name of Alleanza Nazionale and then merged into Berlusconi's Party of Liberties.

[11] From L'Impulso, 15 December 1954, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 133, edizioni Lotta Comunista (emphasis ours).

[12] Arrigo Cervetto (1927-1995) was born in Buenos Aires to Italian emigrant parents. As a young worker in Savona he participated in the liberation with the partisans against fascism and militated in libertarian trade union organisations. He collaborated on the editorial staff of Prometeo and Azione Comunista until 1964, creating the LC group around him and working on the construction of the new 'revolutionary workers' party', founded on a 'daily work of organisation and education of the proletariat'.

[13] From Il Libertario, 13 December 1950, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 70, edizioni Lotta Comunista.

[14] From Azione Comunista No. 44, 10 April 1959, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 258, Lotta Comunista editions.

[15] From Azione Comunista No. 59, 25 March 1961, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 326, Lotta Comunista editions.

[16] From Azione Comunista No. 54, 10 October 1960, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 329, Lotta Comunista editions.

[17] From Lotta Comunista No. 57, May 1975, now published in L'imperialismo unitario, p. 1175, edizioni Lotta Comunista.

[18] The conception of the Party held by Cervetto and Lotta Comunista (Part 2) [20], ICC Online

[19] Idem.

[20] Idem.