All the calamities generated by capitalism - exploitation, misery, unemployment, climatic disasters and war - are weighing more and more heavily and dramatically on the life of society, and in particular on the exploited class and the world's poor. The deadly conflict in Ukraine, for example, looks set to last until both sides are exhausted, while the more recent and particularly barbaric conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas carries the risk of uncontrolled escalation of war in the region. After 30 years of paralysis in the face of the bourgeoisie's attacks, our class is beginning to resist new, more violent attacks through often massive struggles. This other dynamic, at work since the Summer of Anger in 2022 in the UK, illustrates the existence in society of two opposing and antagonistic poles:

On the one hand, an infernal spiral of convulsions, chaos and destruction, increasingly driven by imperialist war and the general militarisation of society, combining their effects with those of the decomposition of society[1] , the economic crisis and the ecological crisis. All these factors do not act independently of each other, but combine and interact to produce a "whirlwind effect" (the existence of which the most far-sighted members of the world bourgeoisie cannot fail to recognise[2] ) which concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of the effects of the various factors involved, causing devastation on an even higher level.

On the other hand, stimulated by a wave of economic attacks leading to a considerable deterioration in its living conditions, the working class is fighting on its own class terrain with determination and often en masse in the world's main industrialised countries.

The dynamics of the first pole - capitalism's spiral of convulsions - can only lead to a dramatic sinking of humanity into misery, chaos and warlike barbarity, or even to its disappearance in the not-too-distant future if nothing is done to reverse the course of events. The second pole, on the other hand, is that of the opening up of another perspective for humanity, driven by the development of the class struggle. Thus, if the working class is capable of developing its struggles to the level of the bourgeoisie's attacks, but also of raising their politicisation to the level of what is at stake in history, then, after the first world revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the prospect of the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale will open up once again.

The convulsions of capitalism

a. The rising tide of social breakdown

This is the product of a situation where, in the 1980s, faced with a deepening economic crisis with no way out, the two fundamental and antagonistic classes of society confronted each other without succeeding in imposing their own decisive response (that of world war for the bourgeoisie, that of revolution for the proletariat). The inability of the ruling class to offer the slightest perspective for society as a whole, and the inability of the proletariat to openly assert its own, led to a period of generalised decomposition, of society rotting on its feet as the contradictions of capitalism in crisis deepen[3] .

A further worsening of the crisis could only give greater impetus to all the ravages of the decomposition of society that has been going on for 25 years, to the increasing fragmentation and dislocation of the social fabric, to such an extent that some of its expressions are now clearly part of this desolate landscape: the degradation of thinking, the explosion of mental and psychological illnesses, the development of the most irrational and suicidal behaviour, the irruption of violence into every aspect of social life, mass killings carried out by unbalanced people, harassment in schools and on the Internet, savage settling of scores between gangs, etc.

None of the global factions of the bourgeoisie has been spared the decomposition of its system, as shown by the rise of populism with the arrival in government of aberrant figures such as Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, etc. In some countries, the rise of populism to power is synonymous with no less aberrant choices, irrational from the point of view of the interests of the bourgeoisie itself, with possible global repercussions. For example, if Trump returns to power in the next US elections, he is likely to withdraw financial and military support for Ukraine - although this war was originally intended to weaken Russia and thus deprive China of possible Russian military support in a likely future military conflict between the US and China. Similarly, it is foreseeable that Trump in power will only encourage Netanyahu to go on the offensive everywhere, risking a regional conflagration that would require Uncle Sam to become heavily involved in the region to defend its hegemony.

b. The climate crisis is the result of capitalism's over-exploitation of nature

Recent events leave no room for doubt or relativisation when it comes to the consequences of ecological damage on the habitability of the planet and the survival of many species, including, ultimately, the human species: catastrophic massive flooding in Pakistan; temperatures rising this summer to over 40 degrees in the countries of southern Europe; pollution that forced schools to close in India for the Christmas holidays in November, causing respiratory problems in 1 in 3 children; the current pneumonia epidemic among children in China; famines in Africa, etc.

Subjected to the laws of capitalism, nature will be less and less able to shelter and feed the human race: fish stocks are threatened not only by industrial overfishing, but also by ocean warming; soil exhaustion and water shortages - resulting from persistent drought - are considerably reducing yields, particularly in tropical and subtropical areas. In the Horn of Africa, more than 23 million people are acutely food insecure and 5.1 million children suffer from acute malnutrition. And the worst is clearly ahead of us, as the environment approaches a series of "tipping points" where the damage caused will become uncontrollable, leading to new levels of destruction. [4]

In the face of these disastrous prospects, major international conferences such as COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates are nothing more than discussion forums designed to give the illusion that "something is being done", while certain sections of the ruling class are becoming increasingly "realistic" by opting to adapt to inevitable global warming rather than try to fight it. In fact, the objective function of COP 28 (and of all the others that have preceded or will follow) is to maintain the mystification that capitalism can solve the climate challenge, while the inability of the various national bourgeoisies to put aside their rivalries is leading humanity towards oblivion.

Faced with those who have no illusions about COP-type deceptions, there are calls to fight for the planet from groups that are often critical - even radically critical - of the COP meetings or even of today's society, but which, in their programme, do not put forward the only solution to the climate problems: the overthrow of capitalism by the only force in society capable of doing so, the working class.

c. The cancer of war and militarism

War under decadent capitalism is plunging humanity into misery and threatening its survival, taking on proportions unequalled in human history. The two World Wars and the many 'local' conflicts that have continued since the Second World War are an edifying illustration of this.

There are currently 56 wars worldwide, involving 1.1 billion people (14% of the world's population). War is thus the most ‘dynamic’ component of the spiral of destruction ravaging the world.

While the carnage continues in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, the South Caucasus and Nagorno-Karabakh, and war tensions persist in the Balkans, a new imperialist war zone, the one between Israel and Hamas, is making its brutal appearance, with its trail of destruction, mass emigration, and civilian deaths. The current wars in Ukraine[5] and the Middle East[6] are a dramatic confirmation of this dynamic, and, for now, are its high point.

These wars have already killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. They are plunging large sections of the population into extreme poverty. Their impact extends beyond the borders of Ukraine, Russia and Palestine. For example, the damage caused to Ukraine's agriculture, or the blockade on that country's exports of agricultural products, has led to a worsening and spread of malnutrition throughout the world. What's more, the ferocity of the Israeli bourgeoisie is not leaving a single square metre of land in the Gaza enclave safe from the bombs (and from hunger and epidemics) and is causing a gigantic exodus of the Palestinian population.

The risks of collateral effects also threaten populations even far from the battlefields, with, for example in Ukraine, the possible emission of radioactive clouds from nuclear power stations damaged accidentally or deliberately during the fighting.

Not only do people suffer from war, but so does the planet. The war machine's need for oil, gas and coal is leading to an exorbitant increase in the consumption of fossil fuels. While the failure of COP 28 to commit to reducing fossil fuel consumption was rightly attributed to the veto by Saudi Arabia and other oil producers (which in reality merely concealed a veto by most states), what was deliberately left in the dark was the insatiable need for oil, gas and coal by armed forces (tanks, military vehicles, combat aircraft, ... all of which consume a lot of fuel) the world over, starting with the most powerful countries. A study[7] of the carbon consumption of the US armed forces as a whole (air force, army and navy) reveals that they alone "pollute and consume more fuel than most countries in the world". The armed forces of EU countries contribute more to the greenhouse effect than all the cars in Portugal, Norway and Greece put together, not to mention the 'carbon footprint' of the European military industry. We should also take into account the pollution of the soil and atmosphere in war zones as a result of the munitions fired. If all these considerations were carefully avoided in the discussions at COP28, it is precisely because capitalism is war, and the only way to get rid of war is to get rid of capitalism.

As for the economic cost of all wars (the destruction of economic and social infrastructures, spending on weapons, etc.), this is ultimately borne by the population, the working class in particular, through ever-increasing levies on national budgets.

The economic irrationality of war during the decadence of capitalism is obvious: all belligerents lose. But what is most striking is that, with the period of decomposition, the irrationality of war also affects the strategic gains expected by all the belligerents, including the ‘victors’. Everyone loses out in this respect. And the war that has just broken out in the Middle East is already more irrational and barbaric than the one in Ukraine.

d. The ingredients for the next economic recession are there

The crisis of overproduction which reappeared in 1967, and whose first effects were at the origin of the international waves of class struggle, has since only worsened despite all the efforts of the bourgeoisie to slow its course. And it couldn't be any other way, because there is no solution to the crisis within capitalism. The only thing it can do, and which it has already used and abused, is to postpone the effects until later. So not only is debt, the main palliative to capitalism's historic crisis and already used on a massive scale, losing its effectiveness - thus further restricting the possibility of reviving the economy - but, what's more, the existence of this colossal accumulated debt makes capitalism vulnerable to ever more devastating convulsions.

After the open crisis of 2008, which marked the end of the ‘opportunities’ offered by globalisation, the even more obvious inability of the ruling class to overcome the crisis of its mode of production has resulted in an explosion of every man for himself in relations between nations and within each nation, with the gradual return of protectionism and the unilateral calling into question, on the part of the two main powers, of multilateralism and the institutions of globalisation. As a result, the bourgeoisie today finds itself more ill-equipped than ever to deal with the deepening of the current crisis and its possible brutal expressions, especially as the unity of action of the bourgeoisie at international level, which still existed at the time of the 2008 crisis, is de facto excluded.

The situation is made all the more serious by the fact that three factors are playing an increasingly important role in worsening the crisis: social breakdown, climate change and war. Indeed :

• social breakdown is increasingly contributing to the disorganisation of production and trade;
• Climate change is impacting agricultural production and productivity in the United States, China and Europe. Extreme rainfall and flooding are irreparably ruining entire regions or even states (such as Pakistan) by destroying vital infrastructure and disrupting the functioning of the industrial production system;
• War represents a huge cost for the economy, due to the increase in unproductive expenditure (armaments) but also to the destruction caused by conflicts.

For all these reasons, the next open expression of the economic crisis promises to be more serious than that of 1929.

A new level of peril

All states are now preparing for 'high-intensity' warfare. Military budgets are rising rapidly everywhere, so that the proportion of national wealth devoted to armaments is back to the same level as - and even exceeds - that reached at the height of the confrontation between the blocs. Every national capital is reorganising its national economy to strengthen its military industry and guarantee its strategic independence.

The worsening of imperialist tensions and conflicts over the last two years shows that war, as an action desired and planned by the capitalist states, is becoming the most powerful factor in chaos and destruction.

a. The perpetuation of the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine represents an enormous potential for amplifying war and chaos.

In Ukraine, both sides need to enlist more soldiers to maintain the current pressure on the fronts and the balance of military forces. This means more sacrifices on both sides and more repression of any expression of resistance to the demands of the state. It is already clear that the United States will not be able to maintain its financial and military support for Ukraine at its current level, and it is foreseeable that Europe will not be able, or even willing, to take over from the United States in this respect. This issue is likely to divide Europe, weaken it and possibly, in the long term, lead to its break-up, leaving a patchwork of imperialist tensions between its former members.

In the Middle East, after three months of conflict, nothing seems able to calm Netanyahu's imperialist aims, which unashamedly include the eradication of the Gazans. The massive US military presence in the region - justified by the fact that Israel has for decades been a strategic support for US imperialism in the Middle East - has so far prevented the enormous powder keg that is the Middle East from igniting, notably by pitting Israel against Iran, which is supported by its various militias in Lebanon and Yemen. The fact that the United States had to hastily assemble a naval force to secure maritime traffic on the Red Sea, affected by hostile fire from the Yemeni Houthis, is a serious indication of the explosive nature of the situation. The fact that a number of European countries have kept their distance from this American initiative speaks volumes about the difficulties that the United States may encounter in the future in this area[8] .

b. The limits of American global strategy

The backdrop to the current world situation is the US bourgeoisie's plan to halt China's expansion before it threatens US military and economic domination of the world[9] . Preventing this from happening will necessarily involve a military confrontation, the consequences of which would be disastrous for the world, even if the scale of such a conflict would be limited by several factors, in particular the absence of established world imperialist blocs and the fact that the American bourgeoisie will face certain limits in getting an undefeated working class to accept the consequences of war, a class which has recently demonstrated its fighting spirit in the face of economic attacks[10] . The war in Ukraine was entirely in the service of this perspective of the United States, which incited Russia to invade Ukraine[11] . But the fact that this conflict is dragging on beyond what was certainly expected by the United States, as well as the outbreak of war in the Middle East - against the grain of Uncle Sam's plans - are complicating the United States' task enormously, as the following passages from an article in the newspaper Le Monde highlight:  "Faced with new conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and tensions in the Indo-Pacific, Washington must mobilise its forces on all fronts, exacerbating the vulnerabilities of its military apparatus at a pivotal political period. (...)"[12]

c. What kind of war could the current dynamic lead to?

World War III is not on the agenda in the current situation. Contrary to the rhetoric - wherever it comes from - pointing to the prospect of a Third World War, the current proliferation of conflicts is not the expression of a dynamic towards the formation of two imperialist blocs, a prerequisite for a Third World War, but confirms on the contrary the tendency towards ‘every man for himself’ in imperialist confrontations. The fact that we live in an essentially multipolar world is reflected in the multiplicity of conflicts under way around the world, as illustrated, for example, by the ambiguous relations between Russia and China. While Russia has shown itself very willing to ally itself with China on specific issues, generally in opposition to the United States, it is no less aware of the danger of subordinating itself to its eastern neighbour, as demonstrated by the fact that it is one of the main opponents of China's "New Silk Road" towards imperialist hegemony.

The multipolarity underpinning current imperialist conflicts should not, however, lead us to underestimate the danger of uncontrolled military conflicts erupting, as happened at the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.[13]

d. World war is not on the agenda, but the destruction of humanity through mounting chaos is increasingly a real threat.

In the central capitalist countries, the bourgeoisie does not for the moment have the political and ideological means to maintain its control over the working class - which has not suffered physical and political defeat - with a view to a frontal and total military confrontation with another power, requiring the proletariat to bear the sacrifices necessary for the war effort.

That said, even in the absence of a world war between rival imperialist blocs, for which the conditions are not ripe, the current situation is full of perils that threaten humanity, including war. The number of local wars is on the increase, with increasingly damaging consequences for life on earth, which is at the mercy of the use of all kinds of weapons, including nuclear and chemical weapons.

The future belongs to the class struggle

Faced with the pole leading to the destruction of humanity stands the alternative pole of the class struggle of the proletariat. The former, with its accumulation of barbarity and mortal perils on an ever-expanding scale, appears like a Goliath, terrifying and disproportionate, faced with the David of a revival of the class struggle, less than two years old.

How can the proletarian David put an end to the downward spiral of convulsions, chaos and destruction of decaying capitalism? By following in the footsteps of the first worldwide attempt by the proletariat to overthrow capitalism in 1917-23. It was the Russian revolution of 1917 that put an end to the First World War. Conversely, the defeat and enlistment of the proletariat in the Second World War opened the door to an endless succession of wars (Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East). A clear lesson can be drawn from the period 1914-68: only the world proletariat can put an end to war, while its enlistment under bourgeois banners opens the door to the unleashing of militarism.

The period 1968-1989 is also rich in lessons. The historical re-emergence of our class, expressed in struggles such as May '68, the hot autumn in Italy, the mass strike in Poland, etc., halted the march towards the Third World War which, with its unbridled race for nuclear weapons, could have wiped out the planet. However, these workers' struggles went no further than constituting an obstacle to the march towards world war, because they were confined to the economic level without being able to become more politicised by questioning capitalism and understanding the historical stakes of the class struggle. As a result, they were unable to prevent capitalism from rotting on its feet and its consequences for all aspects of life in society, including the exacerbation of every man for himself at the imperialist level.[14]

The massive strikes in Britain in the summer of 2022, with their slogan "Enough is enough", were the first in a new international dynamic of class struggle, breaking with a whole period of 30 years of retreat.

Since then, major mobilisations have taken place in France, Germany, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Iceland, Bangladesh, Scandinavia, Quebec... most of them constituting, in the opinion even of the bourgeois media, a "historic event", marking a "break" with the previous situation in terms of massiveness and combativity. They are being led by a new generation of workers who have not been subjected to the steamrollering of the campaigns on the death of communism and the ‘disappearance’ of the working class developed by the bourgeoisie following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes; on the contrary, they are the product of a maturing of consciousness within our class, fed by a considerable worsening of the attacks of capitalism in crisis.[15]

In this respect, this renewal of the class struggle is comparable to the emergence of the class struggle in 1968, faced with the return of the open crisis of capitalism and carried by a new generation of the working class which had not, like its elders, been wiped out in terms of consciousness by the counter-revolution following the failure of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. But the new generation is now faced with a much more difficult task than the '68 generation. At that time, the bourgeoisie had to mobilise its trade unions, its left wing and sometimes its extreme left. However, the level of politicisation achieved by the working class at that time proved insufficient to cope with a series of obstacles: democratic illusions in Poland, which were largely responsible for the defeat of the 1980 struggles, and the resurgence of corporatism in the countries of Western Europe, as a consequence of the impact on the working class of the development of the ‘every man for himself’ mentality in society. From now on, it will be up to current and future generations of workers to raise the politicisation of their struggles to a much higher level in order to direct them towards the revolutionary perspective of overthrowing capitalism. Revolutionaries have a fundamental role to play in this necessary awakening of consciousness.

The role and responsibilities of revolutionaries

For a political vanguard to be fully involved in the struggle of the working class and capable of guiding it, it is essential that it has been able to emerge from the process of confrontation of political positions initiated by the activity of the Communist Left and its intervention in struggles. In this sense, the organisations which belong to this current must assume such a responsibility, which is far from being the case today, preoccupied as they are with immediate recruitment, often at the price of opportunist concessions.

Sylunken (20/01/2024)

Israel and Gaza since 7 October 2023: war in all its abomination, an explosion of barbarity.  On that day, in the name of "justified revenge" against "the crimes of the Zionist occupation", thousands of fanatical "fighters" from Hamas and its allies poured into the Israeli towns surrounding the Gaza Strip, spreading terror and committing crimes of unlimited savagery against defenceless civilians. No sooner had the Hamas murder squads been repelled than the IDF unleashed all its murderous might on the Gaza Strip in the name of the fight for "democratic civilisation" against "the forces of darkness": "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly", declared Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant on 9 October[1] [12] . For more than three months at the time of writing, Israeli aircraft and artillery have been pounding the overpopulated Hamas-controlled enclave day and night, massacring civilians and terrorists alike, while IDF armoured columns have been advancing through the ruins, shooting at anything that moves. Towns completely devastated, hospitals gutted by missiles, crowds of civilians wandering under the bombs, without food or water, families searching for loved ones under the ruins or mourning their dead everywhere... "Carthago delenda est" ("Carthage must be destroyed") was the obsessive refrain of Cato the Elder; this same obsession seems to haunt the minds of the ruling factions of the Israeli bourgeoisie. After only three months of conflict, Gaza already has proportionally more dead and destroyed buildings than Mariupol in Ukraine or the German cities bombed during the Second World War. This apocalyptic landscape is that of capitalism in the 21ste century.

These tens of thousands of Gazan civilians "eliminated", these millions of others thrown onto roads that lead nowhere, are the victims of the State of Israel, "the only democracy in the Near and Middle East", which claims to be the sole repository of the memory of the Holocaust and its extermination camps. Revolutionaries have been saying it for decades: capitalism is gradually plunging humanity into barbarism and chaos! In the Middle East, capitalism is revealing the future it has in store for all humanity! The war in Gaza is the perfect illustration of the terrifying intensification of the barbarity unleashed by capitalism in the final phase of its decadence, the period of decomposition.

The Middle East, a prime example of capitalism rotting on its feet

The history of the Middle East is a striking illustration of the terrifying expansion of militarism and war tensions, particularly since the decadence of capitalism in the early 20th century. Indeed, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire placed the region at the centre of imperialist appetites and confrontations[2] [13] . 

In particular, after the Second World War, the region was marked by the establishment of the new State of Israel and successive Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 (not forgetting Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982), and was a central area for confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Soviet Union and its bloc made persistent attempts to gain a foothold in the region by supporting Arab nationalism and in particular the Palestinian fedayeen and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. These attempts met with strong opposition from the United States and the Western bloc, which made the State of Israel one of the spearheads of their policy. At the end of the 1970s and during the 1980s, the American bloc gradually gained overall control of the Middle East and gradually reduced the influence of the Soviet bloc, even though the fall of the Shah and the "Iranian revolution" in 1979 not only deprived the American bloc of an important bastion but also heralded, through the coming to power of the retrograde mullah regime, the growing decomposition of capitalism. The aim of this offensive by the American bloc was “completing the encirclement of the USSR, of depriving this country of all the positions it has been able to maintain outside its direct area of domination. It has as a priority the definitive expulsion of the USSR from the Middle East, through the disciplining of Iran and the re­insertion of this country into the US bloc as an important pawn in its global strategy. It has the ambition of going on to recuperate Indochina. In the final analysis, its aim is to completely strangle the USSR, to strip it of its status as a world power."[3] [14] .

After the implosion of the Soviet bloc at the end of 1989, the 1990s were marked by the spectacular expansion of the manifestations of capitalism's period of decomposition. In this context, the "Report on imperialist tensions" of the 20e ICC Congress already noted in 2013: "The Middle East is a terrible confirmation of our analyses of the impasse in the system and the flight into 'every man for himself'. It illustrates this in a striking way through the central characteristics of this phase:

• the explosion of imperialist "every man for himself" through the expression of the hegemonic appetites of a multitude of states. Iran has expressed its imperialist ambitions, first in Iraq by supporting the main Shiite militias, which dominate a fragmented state apparatus, then in Syria by supporting Bashar al Assad's regime at arm's length, on the verge of being swept away by the revolt of the Sunni majority. Through its allies - from Lebanese Hezbollah to the Yemeni Houthis - the country of the mullahs has established itself as a formidable regional power. But Turkey, with its interventions in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, present in Yemen and Egypt, and even Qatar, the backer of groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, are not hiding their imperialist ambitions;
• the murderous reactions of the American superpower to counter the decline of its dominance. The United States has provoked and waged two murderous wars in the Middle East (Operation Desert Storm by Bush senior in 1991 and Operation Iraqi Freedom by Bush junior in 2003), which in the end have only resulted in more chaos and barbarism;
• the terrifying chaos resulting from bloody civil wars (Syria, Yemen) leading to the collapse of state structures, fragmented and failing states (Iraq, Lebanon), traumatised populations and millions of refugees.

In this dynamic of growing confrontation in the Middle East, Israel has played a key role. As the Americans' first lieutenant in the region, Tel Aviv was destined to be the keystone of a pacified region through the Oslo and Jericho-Gaza accords of 1993, one of the greatest successes of American diplomacy in the region, which granted the Palestinians the beginnings of autonomy and thus integrated them into the regional order conceived by Uncle Sam. However, in the second half of the 1990s, following the failure of the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, the "hard" Israeli right came to power (the first Netanyahu government from 1996 to 1999) against the wishes of the American government, which had supported Shimon Peres. From then on, the Right did everything it could to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians:

• in February 1994, a Jewish terrorist, a settler belonging to the racist movement created by Rabbi Meir Kahane, massacred 29 Muslims in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron; in November 1995, a young religious Zionist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin;
• through the secret stimulation of Hamas and its terrorist attacks aimed at undermining the authority of the PLO, to pursue a policy of divide and rule and to justify its increasing control over the Palestinian territories. 

From this perspective, the unilateral dismantling of the settlements in Gaza by the Sharon government in 2004 was in no way a conciliatory gesture, as Israeli propaganda presented it, but on the contrary the product of a cynical calculation to freeze negotiations on a political settlement of the conflict at a later date: the withdrawal from Gaza "means freezing the political process. And when you freeze this process, you prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and any discussion on refugees, borders and Jerusalem"[4] [15] . 

Moreover, since the Islamists reject the existence of a Jewish state in Islamic lands, just as the messianic Zionists reject the existence of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel, given by God to the Jews, these two factions are therefore objective allies in the sabotage of the "two-state solution". The right-wing sections of the Israeli bourgeoisie have also done everything in their power to strengthen the influence and resources of Hamas, insofar as this organisation was, like them, totally opposed to the Oslo Accords: in 2006, Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert forbade the Palestinian Authority from deploying an additional police battalion to Gaza to oppose Hamas and authorised Hamas to present candidates in the 2006 elections. When Hamas staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 to eliminate the Palestinian Authority and establish their absolute power, the Israeli government refused to support the Palestinian police. As for the Qatari financial funds that Hamas needed to be able to govern, Israel allowed them to be regularly transferred to Gaza under the protection of the Israeli police.

Israel's strategy is clear: Gaza given to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority weakened, with limited control over the West Bank. Netanyahu himself has openly asserted this policy: "Anyone who wants to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state must support the strengthening of Hamas and transfer money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy"[5] [16] . The headlong rush of the right-wing fractions of the Israeli bourgeoisie in power to follow their own imperialist policy, in opposition to Washington's interests, in particular with the successive Netanyahu governments from 2009 to the present day, is a caricature of the gangrene of decomposition eating away at the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The State of Israel and Hamas, at different times and with different means, have both practised the “worst-case policy” that has led to today's atrocious massacres.

In view of the priority given to containing Iran, Trump’s presidency pursued a policy of unconditional support for this policy of the Israeli right, providing the Israeli state and its respective leaders with pledges of unwavering support on all fronts: supply of the latest military equipment, recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital and of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights. It supported the policy of abandoning the Oslo Accords and the "two-state" solution (Israeli and Palestinian) in the "Holy Land". The cessation of American aid to the Palestinians and the PLO and the negotiation of the "Abraham Accords", a proposal for a "big deal" involving the abandonment of any claim to create a Palestinian state and the annexation by Israel of large parts of Palestine in exchange for "giant" American economic aid, were essentially aimed at facilitating the de facto rapprochement between Saudi and Israel: "For the Gulf monarchies, Israel is no longer the enemy. This grand alliance started a long time ago behind the scenes, but has not yet been played out. The only way for the Americans to move in the desired direction is to obtain the green light from the Arab world, or rather from its new leaders, MBZ (Emirates) and MBS (Arabia), who share the same strategic vision for the Gulf, for whom Iran and political Islam are the main threats. In this vision, Israel is no longer an enemy, but a potential regional partner with whom it will be easier to counter Iranian expansion in the region. [...] For Israel, which for years has been seeking to normalise its relations with the Sunni Arab countries, the equation is simple: it is a question of seeking Israeli-Arab peace, without necessarily achieving peace with the Palestinians. For their part, the Gulf States have lowered their demands on the Palestinian issue. This ‘ultimate plan’ [...] seems to aspire to establish a new reality in the Middle East. A reality based on the Palestinians accepting their defeat, in exchange for a few billion dollars, and where Israelis and Arab countries, mainly from the Gulf, could finally form a new alliance, supported by the United States, to counter the threat of the expansion of a modern Persian empire"[6] [17] .

However, as we pointed out back in 2019, these agreements, which were a pure provocation at both international (abandoning international agreements and UN resolutions) and regional level, could only reactivate the Palestinian bone of contention in the long term, which has been used by all the regional imperialists (Iran of course, but also Turkey and even Egypt) against the United States and its allies. What's more, they could only embolden Israel's counterpart in its own imperialist appetites and intensify confrontations, for example with Iran: "Neither Israel, hostile to the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, nor Saudi Arabia, can tolerate this Iranian advance"[7] [18] . The Abraham Accords irrevocably sowed the seeds of the current tragedy in Gaza.

War in Gaza: the growing irrationality and barbarity of imperialist confrontation

Hamas's suicidal attack and Israel's indiscriminate retaliation appear to be the expression of a chaotic and unpredictable dynamic of imperialist confrontation, devoid of any rationality. Indeed, these three months of destruction and massacres around the Gaza Strip are clearly not part of a gradual process of alignment behind a dominant leader or adherence to an imperialist bloc in formation, but illustrate on the contrary the explosion of imperialist "every man for himself", increasingly interrelated with an exacerbation of militarism, a multiplication of economic upheavals and a growing loss of control by national bourgeoisies over their political apparatus. These bloody confrontations are both inevitable and irrational, because none of the protagonists can really derive any lasting strategic advantage from them (not to mention the economic consequences, which are likely to be catastrophic for everyone). 

If we look first at the direct belligerents, it is clear that the choice of the worst-case policy will not ultimately benefit any of them, but will produce a terrifying extension of destruction and barbarism:

• For Hamas, which risked being totally marginalised by the consequences of the Abraham Accords, striking a blow was vital to redirect the international spotlight on the "Palestinian problem". Clearly, the 7 October attack was only made possible by a rapprochement with Iran, which supplied it with the appropriate weapons, but this rapprochement generated tensions within the organisation between the "military" (the commanders of the al-Qassam brigades) and the "political" leadership, which criticised Iran for its support for Assad during the civil war against Sunni groups in Syria. Moreover, by sending a thousand murderers to massacre civilians, Hamas is exposing itself to possible annihilation in Gaza and in any case to massive destruction of its forces. With these actions, this obscurantist and bloodthirsty band of "God’s madmen", which has replaced the rotten and corrupt Fatah in Gaza, is a caricature of the irrationality into which the Palestinian bourgeoisie has plunged.
• As for the State of Israel, it has embarked on bloody reprisals which will give rise to a generation of Palestinians drunk with vengeance and which at the same time risk accentuating the internal destabilisation of the country, given the growing chaos which reigns in the Israeli political apparatus: tensions between factions of the bourgeoisie, massive corruption, legislative shenanigans, tensions between the government and the judiciary that poorly conceal score-settling within the state apparatus, the supremacist ravings of the ultra-Orthodox... All this against a backdrop of a considerable explosion in poverty. Above all, the indiscriminate unleashing of vengeance risks seriously destabilising the entire region, insofar as the right-wing factions are aiming to put an end once and for all to the "two-state solution" by engaging in the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine of its entire Arab population, which can only accentuate opposition to the American "godfather".

The situation is hardly any different for the other protagonists involved in this conflict:

• In the short term, Iran seems to be gaining some advantage from the situation, but for it is a Pyrrhic victory! In reality, the mullahs' regime is forced to opt for a headlong rush into provocations because it is under heavy pressure from the economic sanctions imposed by the United States, but also from social tensions within Iranian society itself, which is suffering misery and shortages of vital goods as a result of forty years of a war economy. What's more, Iran is exposed to harsh reprisals against its positions in Lebanon and Syria, and even to destructive attacks on its territory, such as the recent attacks in Kerman. Israel already regularly bombs Hezbollah or Iranian al-Quds Brigade installations in Lebanon, Syria and even Iraq, and is always ready to attack Iranian nuclear power stations, as in July 2019, when "mysterious" explosions destroyed a nuclear centrifuge construction plant in Natanz;
• Turkey is part of the "Muslim Brotherhood" nebula with Qatar and Hamas and is therefore in the front line in condemning Israel: Erdogan has compared Netanyahu to Hitler and the Turkish police have arrested 33 people suspected of spying for Israel. Ankara is also quick to criticise the lukewarm attitude of the Gulf monarchies, demonstrating "the emergence of a brutal opposition between the Ankara-Doha axis and the Riyadh-Abu Dhabi axis. In July 2013, this opposition was already perceptible on the Egyptian stage during the coup d'état against President Mohamed Morsi"[8] [19] ;
• From Russia's point of view, the confrontations in Gaza are certainly diverting the attention of the United States and Europeans from Eastern Europe and reducing the pressure on the Ukrainian front. But the Gaza conflict also puts Moscow in a delicate position, torn between its traditional support for the Palestinian cause and its strategic rapprochement with Iran (which supplies it with drones) on the one hand, and Putin's good relations with Israel, and Netanyahu in particular, on the other (Israel does not take part in the programme of economic sanctions against Russia and, moreover, refrained from condemning the occupation of Crimea in 2014). Furthermore, a possible extension of the confrontations and interventions by other powers in the conflict could jeopardise Russian positions in Syria;
• China is also benefiting from the momentary reorientation of Washington's attention, which no longer places the China Sea and Taiwan at the centre of its immediate concerns. However, while Chinese diplomacy, by reconciling the brotherly enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia and integrating these countries and Egypt into the BRICS, succeeded in relaunching a branch of the "Silk Roads" through the Middle East, which was to end in Israel, the current outbreak of chaos and atrocities risks not only undermining its supply of hydrocarbons, but also constituting a considerable obstacle to the implementation of the "Silk Roads", which the ailing Chinese economy badly needs;
• Finally, as regards the world's leading power, the United States, the feverish reaction of the Biden administration, with an express visit by Biden to Tel Aviv and an almost weekly presence in the region by Secretary of State Blinken and Defence Secretary Austin, amply demonstrates that the war in Gaza is seriously disrupting their imperialist policy. During the Obama era, the United States embarked on an "Asian pivot", a policy of redirecting its economic and military resources to contain the Chinese challenger, a policy pursued and amplified by Trump and Biden. At the same time, they promoted a system of alliances between Israel and several Arab countries, in particular Saudi Arabia, to contain Iran's imperialist aspirations, delegating to the Jewish state the responsibility for maintaining order in the Middle East. But this was without taking into account the growing instability of alliances and the deep-seated tendency towards "every man for himself", and above all the increasingly marked tendency of the Israeli bourgeoisie to put its own imperialist interests ahead of those of the United States, 

The United States now finds itself backed into a corner by Israel, forced to support Netanyahu's irresponsible policy of "ethnic cleansing". Biden himself admitted as much at his press conference on 12 December: "They want revenge not just for what Hamas has done, but for all the Palestinians. They don't want a two-state solution". The US administration has little confidence in Netanyahu's clique, which risks setting the region on fire, while counting on American military and diplomatic support if the conflict escalates. Biden also regularly insists that "this indiscriminate bombing is causing Israel to lose its international support". The war in Gaza is therefore a new pressure point on US imperialist policy, which could prove calamitous if the conflict escalates. Washington would then have to assume a considerable military presence and support for Israel which could only weigh heavily, not only on the US economy, but also on its support for Ukraine and, even more so, on its strategy to contain China's expansion.

 In short, not only does no state have anything to gain from this hopeless conflict, but the continuation of the conflict can only lead to its extension and to even more destruction and barbarism. 

This applies first and foremost to Israel, as Mr Steinberg, one of Israel's leading experts on the Palestinian question, points out: "By pushing their main enemy to overreact, terrorist organisations seek to delegitimise it in the eyes of international opinion. This in turn gives them a form of legitimacy. If Israel does not withdraw from Gaza, it will face a form of omnipresent guerrilla warfare, the aim of which will be to trap it in a situation identical to the one it experienced in southern Lebanon. This would threaten relations with Egypt and Jordan, and could even call into question the peace treaties with these countries. Hamas would emerge stronger"[9] [20] . While for Israel, the risk of remaining "stuck in the vicious circle of the Netanyahu years" could lead to "isolation and economic and social collapse"[10] [21]; for the Middle East as a whole, the prospect of the conflict spreading to the whole region would generate a new spiral of barbarism, an outbreak of war dominated by "every man for himself", and the destabilisation of many states. The immediate consequences would be particularly devastating for the global economy as a whole, given the zone's importance in the production of hydrocarbons and in global naval transport. Finally, the conflict could be imported into Europe, with a series of deadly attacks and confrontations between communities.

The risk of a generalised conflagration in the Middle East is not negligible, and increases with the duration of the war. And the danger of the conflict spreading is becoming clearer: Hezbollah is firing rockets daily and, faced with these waves of missiles, the Israeli defence minister has threatened to invade southern Lebanon; Israel has "liquidated" one of the leaders of Hamas with a drone attack on a district of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah; bomb attacks are being carried out in Iran; the Houthis in Yemen attack merchant ships and oil tankers at the entrance to the Red Sea, prompting the formation of an "international coalition" involving the United States, Great Britain and other European states to "guarantee free circulation" in this artery vital to the world economy.

Far from the "bloc coherence" that prevailed until the collapse of the USSR, all the local players are ready to pull the trigger. Above all, the conflict risks opening up a new front, with Iran and its allies in ambush, likely to further weaken American leadership. The political tensions within the American bourgeoisie and the resulting difficulties in controlling its political game are themselves a powerful factor fuelling instability. They limit the freedom of action of the Biden administration and push the Israeli factions in power (like Putin for the conflict in Ukraine) to temporise in the hope of Donald Trump's return to the presidency. Washington is, of course, trying to prevent the situation from getting out of hand... a perfectly illusory ambition in the long term, given the disastrous dynamic into which the Middle East is sinking.

Whatever action is taken, the dynamic towards destabilisation is inescapable. Basically, then, this is a significant new stage in the acceleration of global chaos. This conflict shows the extent to which each state is increasingly applying a "scorched earth" policy to defend its interests, seeking not to gain influence or conquer interests, but to sow chaos and destruction among its rivals. This tendency towards strategic irrationality, short-sightedness, unstable alliances and "every man for himself" is not an arbitrary policy of this or that state, nor the product of the sheer stupidity of this or that bourgeois faction in power. It is the consequence of the historical conditions, those of the decomposition of capitalism, in which all states confront each other. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, this historical tendency and the weight of militarism on society have been profoundly aggravated. The war in Gaza confirms the extent to which imperialist war is now the main destabilising factor in capitalist society. The product of the contradictions of capitalism, the breath of war in turn feeds the fire of these same contradictions, increasing, through the weight of militarism, the economic crisis, the environmental disaster and the dismemberment of society. This dynamic tends to rot every part of society, to weaken every nation, starting with the foremost among them: the United States.

The working class confronted by the barbarity of a system in decomposition

For years, the situation of the population in general and the working class in particular in this region has been dramatic, especially in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. In Palestine, Hamas has bloodily repressed demonstrations against poverty, as it did in March 2019, while its mafia-like leaders gorge themselves on international aid (Hamas is one of the richest terrorist organisations on the planet). Today, all over the world, workers are being asked by the bourgeoisie to choose sides: "Palestinian resistance" or "Israeli democracy". As if they had no choice but to support one or other of these bloodthirsty bourgeois cliques.

On the one hand, the Israeli government is justifying the carnage by claiming to be avenging the victims of 7 October and preventing Hamas terrorists from again attacking the "security of the Jewish state". So much for the tens of thousands of innocent victims! Israel's security is worth a massacre! On the other side, they say: "We are not defending Hamas, we are defending the right of the 'Palestinian people' to self-determination", hoping to make us forget that "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" is just a formula designed to conceal the defence of what must be called the State of Gaza! The interests of proletarians in Palestine, Israel or any other country in the world must in no way be confused with those of their bourgeoisie and their state. A "liberated" Gaza Strip would mean nothing more than consolidating the odious regime of Hamas or any other faction of the Gazan bourgeoisie.

But some will argue that "the struggle of a colonised country for its liberation" undermines "the imperialism of the colonising states". In truth, as this article shows throughout, the Hamas attack is part of an imperialist logic that goes far beyond its own interests. "All the parties in the region have their hands on the trigger", said the Iranian Foreign Minister at the end of October. However weak it may be in the face of the power of the IDF, Hamas, like every national bourgeoisie since capitalism entered its period of decadence, can in no way magically escape the imperialist relations that govern the whole international arena. Supporting the Palestinian state means siding with the imperialist interests of Khamenei, Nasrallah, Erdogan and even Putin, who is rubbing his hands at the whole mess. There is no choice between this irrational Gazan gang thirsting for money and blood and Netanyahu's clique of the corrupt and the fanatical.

Finally, to complete the nationalist straitjacket in which the bourgeoisie seeks to imprison the working class, there are the pacifist campaigns: "We don't support either side! We demand an immediate ceasefire!” The most naïve no doubt imagine that the accelerated descent of capitalism into barbarism is due to the lack of "good will" on the part of the murderers at the head of the states, or even to a "failing democracy". But those in charge know perfectly well what sordid interests they are defending. Such is the case, for example, with President Biden, supplier of cluster bombs to Ukraine, who is "horrified" by the "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza while continuing to supply the essential munitions. And if Biden has raised his voice in the face of Netanyahu's methods, it is not to "preserve peace in the world", but to concentrate his efforts and military forces on his rival China in the Pacific, and on Beijing's bulky Russian ally in Ukraine. There is therefore nothing to hope for from "peace" under the rule of capitalism, any more than after the victory of one side or another. The bourgeoisie has no solution to war!

 The solution will not come from the proletarians of Gaza, crushed under the bombs, or from those of Israel, appalled by the barbaric massacres of Hamas and drawn into chauvinist campaigns, as is the case with the proletarians of Ukraine or Russia. It can only come from the international working class, in its rejection of austerity and the sacrifices that the development of economic turmoil and militarism entails. 

Through the unprecedented series of struggles in many countries, in the United Kingdom with a year of mobilisations, in France against pension reform, in the United States against inflation in particular, in Canada, Scandinavia and Bangladesh recently, the working class is showing that it is capable of fighting, if not against war and militarism themselves, at least against the economic consequences of war, against the sacrifices demanded by the bourgeoisie to feed its war economy. This is a fundamental stage in the development of combativity and, ultimately, of class consciousness. The war in the Middle East, with the deepening of the crisis and the additional demand for weapons it will generate in the four corners of the planet, will only increase the objective conditions for the proletariat’s break with past decades[11] [22] . 

The working class is not dead! Through its struggles, the proletariat is also confronting what true class solidarity is. In the face of war, workers' solidarity is not with the Palestinians or the Israelis. It is with the workers of Palestine and Israel, as it is with the workers of the whole world. Solidarity with the victims of the massacres certainly does not mean maintaining the nationalist mystifications which have led workers to place themselves behind a bourgeois clique. Workers' solidarity means above all developing the fight against the capitalist system, which is responsible for all wars. As the Communist Left clearly affirmed in the 1930s: "for real revolutionaries, naturally, there is no "Palestinian" question, but solely the struggle of all the exploited of the Near-East, Arabs and Jews included, which is part of a more general struggle of all the exploited of the entire world for the communist revolution "[12] [23] . Revolutionary struggle cannot arise with a snap of the fingers. It certainly won't come from adherence to the nationalist or imperialist camps advocated by the bourgeoisie; today, it can only come through the development of workers' struggles, against the increasingly harsh economic attacks that the bourgeoisie throws at them. Today's struggles pave the way for tomorrow's revolution!

7.1.24 / R. Havanais

[1] [24] "Un journal non aligné", Le Monde diplomatique, November 2023.

[2] [25] For a more detailed overview of imperialist relations in the region up to the Second World War, see “Notes on the history of imperialist conflicts in the Middle East, Part 1 & 2”,  [26]International Review no. 115, 2003 and no. 117, 2004.

[3] What is at stake/Resolution on the international situation [27], 6th ICC Congress, International Review no. 44, 1986.

[4] [28] Dov Weissglas, close adviser to Prime Minister Sharon, in the daily Haaretz, 8 October 2004. Quoted in Ch. Enderlin, " [29]L [29]' [29]erreur stratégique d' [29]Israël [29]" [29], Le Monde diplomatique, January 2024.

[5] [30] Netanyahu to Likud MPs on 11 March 2019, as reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz on 9 October.

[6] [31] Extract from the Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour, 18 June 2019.

[7] [32] ”23rd ICC International Congress, Resolution on the international situation”,  [33]International Review no. 164, 2019.

[8] [34] Le Monde diplomatique, June 2020.

[9] [35] Quote taken from Ch. Enderlin, "L' [29]erreur stratégique d' [29]Israël [29]" [29], Le Monde diplomatique, January 2024. [29]

[10] [36] Researcher T. Persico, in Ch. Enderlin, "L' [29]erreur stratégique d' [29]Israël [29]" [29], Le Monde diplomatique, January 2024. [29]

[11] [37] For further reflection on the reality of the rupture currently taking place within the working class, read the “Report on class struggle for the 25th Congress of the ICC” [38], International Review n°170, 2023.

[12] [39] " [40]Bilan & the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine" [41] (reprinted from Bilan no. 30 and 31, 1936), International Review no. 110, 2002.

The present imperialist bloodbath in the Middle East, is only the latest in over a century of almost permanent war that has characterised world capitalism since 1914. 

The multi-million massacres of defenceless civilians, the genocides, the reduction of cities, even entire countries to rubble have brought nothing except the promise of more and worse atrocities to come. 

The justifications or ‘solutions’ proposed by the various contending imperialist powers, large or small, to the present carnage, like all those before it, amount to a gigantic deception to pacify, divide and prepare the exploited working class for fratricidal slaughter on behalf of one national bourgeoisie against another. 

Today a deluge of fire and steel is raining down on the people living in Israel and Gaza. On one side, Hamas. On the other, the Israeli army. In the middle, workers being bombed, shot, executed and taken hostage. Thousands have already died.

All over the world, the bourgeoisie is calling on us to choose sides. For the Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Or for the Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism. Each denounces the barbarity of the other to justify war. The Israeli state has been oppressing the Palestinian people for decades, with blockades, harassment, checkpoints and humiliation. Palestinian organisations have been killing innocent people with knife attacks and bombings. Each side calls for the blood of the other to be spilled.

This deadly logic is the logic of imperialist war! It is our exploiters and their states who are always waging a merciless war in defence of their own interests. And it is we, the working class, the exploited, who always pay the price, with our lives.

For us, proletarians, there is no side to choose, we have no homeland, no nation to defend! On either side of the border, we are the same class! Neither Israel, nor Palestine!

Only the united international proletariat can put an end to these increasing massacres and the imperialist interests that lie behind them. This unique, internationalist, solution, prepared by a handful of communists of the Zimmerwald Left, was validated in October 1917 in Russia when the revolutionary working class struggle overthrew the capitalist regime and established its own political class power. By its example October inspired a wider, international revolutionary movement that forced the end of the First World War. 

The only political current that has survived the defeat of this revolutionary wave and maintained the militant defence of internationalist principle has been the Communist Left. In the thirties, it preserved this fundamental working class line during the Spanish war and the Sino-Japanese war while other political currents like the Stalinists, Trotskyists or Anarchists chose their imperialist camp that instigated these conflicts. The Communist Left maintained its internationalism during the Second World War while these other currents participated in the imperialist carnage that was dressed up as a fight between ‘fascism and anti-fascism’ and/or defence of the ‘Soviet’ Union. 

Today the meagre organised militant forces of the Communist Left still adhere to this internationalist intransigence but their scant resources are further weakened by fragmentation into several different groups and a mutually hostile, sectarian spirit. 

That’s why, in the face of an increasing descent into imperialist barbarism these disparate forces must make a common declaration against all imperialist powers, against the calls for national defence behind the exploiters, against the hypocritical pleas for ‘peace’, and for the proletarian class struggle that leads to the communist revolution.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

International Communist Current

Internationalist Voice

17.10.2023

————————————————-

Why this appeal?

Only 20 months ago, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a similar common statement was proposed to the Communist Left groups by the ICC. The groups that did sign it apart from the ICC – Istituto Onorato Damen, Internationalist Voice, International Communist Perspective (South Korea) – have subsequently produced two Discussion Bulletins of Groups of the Communist Left debating their respective positions and differences and have held public meetings in common.  

However, other Communist Left groups refused to sign the appeal (or didn’t reply at all) even though they agreed with its internationalist principles. Given the yet greater urgency of defending this principle in common today we ask these groups - listed below - to reconsider and sign this appeal.

One argument against signing the common statement on Ukraine was that other differences between the groups were too great to permit it. There’s no denying the existence of these important differences, whether on questions of analysis, theoretical questions, conception of the political party, or even on the conditions of membership for militants. But the most urgent and fundamental principle of proletarian internationalism, the class frontier that distinguishes revolutionary political organisations, is vastly more important. And a common statement on this question does not mean that the other differences are forgotten. On the contrary the Discussion Bulletins show that a forum for debate of them is possible and necessary. 

Another argument was that a more practical influence of the internationalist perspective in the working class, wider than a mere appeal limited to the Communist Left, was needed. Of course all internationalist militant communist organisations want more influence in the working class. But if internationalist organisations of the Communist Left are not even able to practically act together on their fundamental principle at crucial moments of imperialist conflict how then do they expect to be taken seriously by wider sections of the proletariat?[1]

The present Israel - Palestine conflict, more dangerous and volatile than all the previous ones, coming less than two years after the reemergence of imperialist war in Ukraine, and alongside many other imperialist conflagrations that have recently been reignited (Serbia/Kosovo, Azerbaijan/Armenia, and the increasing tensions between the US and China over Taiwan) means that a common internationalist statement is even more pressing than before. 

That’s why we directly and publicly ask the following groups to show their willingness to co-sign the statement against the imperialist war printed above, which can then if necessary be amended or reformulated according to its common internationalist purpose:

To:

ICT (Internationalist Communist Tendency)

PCI (Programma Comunista)

PCI (Il Partito Comunista)

PCI (Le Prolétaire, Il Comunista)

IOD (Istituto Onorato Damen)

Other groups outside the Communist Left who agree with the internationalist positions defended in this appeal can announce their support for this appeal and distribute it.

“War is methodical, organized, gigantic murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is possible only when a state of intoxication has been previously created. This has always been the tried and proven method of those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a commensurate bestiality of thought and senses; the latter must prepare and accompany the former”
(Rosa Luxemburg, "The Crisis of Social Democracy", 1915)

The terrible clashes that are once again bloodying the Middle East confirm once again what the great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote while in prison in 1915.

The Hamas militiamen who, on 7 October 2023, committed atrocious crimes against Israeli civilians, women, children and the elderly, were only able to behave with such barbarity because they had been conditioned and systematically brainwashed by the Islamist organisation that runs the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, if today the vast majority of the Israeli population approves of the criminal bombardments and the ground offensive against the inhabitants of Gaza, which have already caused thousands of civilian deaths, it is because they have suffered a terrible trauma with the massacre of 7 October, but also because they too have been the victims of decades of conditioning by the Israeli authorities and the various parties of the bourgeoisie.

Today, with the war between the State of Israel and Hamas, we are once again witnessing the use by the various political forces which defend the perpetuation of the capitalist order of a method which the exploiting class has used on a large scale since the beginning of the 20th century to justify the barbarity of war: the highlighting of atrocities committed by the "enemy" to justify its own atrocities. And there is no shortage of examples throughout the 20th century, the century in which the capitalist system entered its period of decadence.

Certainly, war existed well before this period, as did the justifications by those who waged it. But the wars of the past had never taken the form of a total war, mobilising all the resources of society and involving the entire population, as became the case from 1914 onwards. And it was during the First World War that the propaganda needed to mobilise the broadest possible sectors of a country's population was taken over in an organised and systematic way by the governments of the belligerent countries.

Confessions from the defenders of the capitalist order

We have already published a very detailed article in our press on propaganda designed "with a view to systematic murder", to "produce an appropriate intoxication in normally constituted men", as Rosa Luxembourg wrote. We encourage our readers to read the whole of this article, "Birth of totalitarian democracy"[1] , published in 2015, from which we will only quote a few short extracts here.

In particular, this article quotes extensively from a book by Harold Lasswell published in 1927 entitled "Propaganda technique in the World War"[2] .

Here are a few passages:

“The psychological resistance to war in modern nations is so great that every war must appear as a war of defense against a threatening and murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. The war must not be due to a world system of conducting international affairs, nor to the stupidity or malevolence of all governing classes, but to the rapacity of the enemy. Guilt and guilelessness must be geographically established, and all the guilt must be on the other side of the border. If propaganda wants to mobilize all the hatred of the populations, it must ensure that all the ideas in circulation place the sole responsibility on the enemy. Variations may be permitted under certain circumstances which we shall undertake to specify, but this theme must continue to be the dominant motif. The governments of Western Europe can never be perfectly certain that a class-conscious proletariat within the borders of their authority will rally to the clarion of war”.

Propaganda “is a concession to the rationality of the modern world. A literate world, a schooled world, prefers to thrive on argument and news (…) All the apparatus of diffused erudition popularises the symbols and forms of pseudo-rational appeal: the wolf of propaganda does not hesitate to dress in sheep’s clothing. All the eloquent men of the day – writers, reporters, editors, preachers, lecturers, teachers, politicians – are drawn into the service of propaganda to amplify the voice of the master and to present a master voice. All is conducted with the decorum and trappings of intelligence, for this is a rational epoch, and demands its raw meat cooked and garnished by adroit and skillful chefs”. These “new chefs” must serve up the “raw meat” of unavowable emotion: “A new flame must quench the canker of dissent and temper the steel of pro-war enthusiasm” (Lasswell, op. cit., p. 221).

"To mobilize the hatred of the people against the enemy, it is necessary to represent the opposing nation as a menacing, murderous aggressor (…) It is through the elaboration of war aims that the obstructive role of the enemy becomes particularly evident. Represent the opposing nation as satanic; it violates all the moral standards (mores) of the group and insults its self-esteem. The maintenance of hatred depends upon supplementing the direct representations of the menacing, obstructive, satanic enemy with assurances of ultimate victory". (Lasswell, op.cit., p. 195)

Reading these passages, which illustrate and complement Rosa Luxemburg's lines in a remarkable way, might lead one to think that Lasswell was a militant fighter against capitalism. In fact, he was an eminent American academic who published numerous works on political science and taught this discipline from 1946 to 1958 at the prestigious Yale University. His 1927 book concluded by advocating government control of communication techniques (telegraph, telephone, cinema and radio) and he put his skills at the service of the American bourgeoisie throughout his life, particularly during the Second World War when he was director of research on communication and war at the Library of Congress (the main and prestigious library in the United States) at the same time as working in the army's propaganda services.

The war between the Camp of GOOD and the Camp of EVIL

As Lasswell's writings so eloquently express, the aim of each state waging war is to present the enemy it is fighting as the embodiment of EVIL in order to present itself as the eminent representative of GOOD. There are many examples of this in history from 1914 onwards, and we can cite just a few.

As our 2015 article put it, "Britain made the most of Germany's occupation of Belgium, not without a healthy dose of cynicism, since the German invasion merely forestalled Britain’s own war plans. Much was made of the most lurid atrocity stories: German troops bayoneted babies, made soup out of corpses, tied priests upside down to the clapper of their own church bell, etc."

The French bourgeoisie was not to be outdone: in a propaganda postcard, there is a poem in which a soldier explains to his young sister what a "boche"  is.

"Do you want to know, child, what this monster is, a Boche?

A Boche, my dear, is a man without honour,

He's a sly, heavy-handed, hateful, ugly villain,

He's a bogeyman, a poisonous ogre.

He's a devil in soldier's clothing who burns down villages,

Shooting old men and women without remorse,

Kill the wounded, commit all kinds of looting,

Bury the living and strip the dead.

He's a coward who slits the throats of children and young girls,

Skewering babies with bayonets,

Massacring for pleasure, for no reason... without quarter

It's the man, my child, who wants to kill your father,

Destroying your homeland and torturing your mother,

He's the Teuton cursed by the whole universe."

This type of propaganda developed particularly in the wake of the fraternisations that took place at the front at Christmas time in 1914 between German, French and Scottish units. This poem makes it clear: there is no way you can fraternise with "monsters".

Subsequently, the accumulation of corpses on both sides was used by each belligerent state to justify the demonisation of the enemy. Each side praised the heroism and sacrifice of its own soldiers in the "necessary" task of stopping the "crimes" of soldiers from the other side. Killing human beings was no longer a crime if they wore a different uniform, but a "sacred duty in defence of humanity and morality".

This demonisation of "enemy" peoples in order to justify the barbarity of war continued throughout the 20th century and into the early 21st century as war became a permanent manifestation of capitalism's plunge into its phase of decadence.

The Second World War provides us with an example that is both enlightening and atrocious. For today's bourgeois propaganda, there was only one "Evil Camp": Nazi Germany and its allies.

The Nazi regime was the embodiment of the counter-revolution that had befallen the German proletariat after its revolutionary attempts of 1918-23. A counter-revolution to which the "democracies" of the "Camp of GOOD" had made their full contribution and which was completed by Nazism. Moreover, these "democracies" had long believed that they could get along with Hitler's regime, as evidenced by the Munich agreements of 1938. The atrocities committed by the Nazi regime were used by the Allies' propaganda to justify their own atrocities. In particular, the extermination of the Jews of Europe by this regime, the most concentrated expression of the barbarity into which the decadence of the capitalist system had plunged human society, constituted a massive argument, presented as "irrefutable", for the need for the Allies to destroy Germany, which involved in particular the murder of tens of thousands of civilians under the bombs of the Camp of GOOD. After the war, when the populations of the "victorious" countries learned of the crimes committed by their leaders, it was explained to them that the appalling massacres of civilian populations (in particular the bombings of Hamburg between 25 July and 3 August 1943 and those of Dresden from 13 to 15 February 1945 which, using incendiary bombs on a massive scale, mainly targeted civilians, killing a total of over 100,000 people) were justified by the barbarity of the Nazi regime. These same leaders organised massive propaganda on the - real - atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, and particularly the extermination of the Jewish population.[3] However, they were careful not to point out that the Allies did absolutely nothing to help these people, who were refused entry visas by most of the countries in the Camp of GOOD, which even rejected the Nazi leaders' offers to hand over hundreds of thousands of Jews.

The Communist Left's denunciation of the hypocrisy of "democracies

This immoral hypocrisy of the "democratic" bourgeoisie is very well demonstrated, with the evocation of proven historical facts, in an article entitled "Auschwitz ou le grand alibi" (“Auschwitz or the Great Alibi") which appeared in 1960 in No. 11 of the review Programme Communiste (organ of the  Bordigist International Communist Party) [4]. Here is the conclusion of this article, which we fully support:

"We have seen how capitalism has condemned millions of men to death by rejecting them from production. We have seen how it massacred them while extracting all the surplus value it could from them. We have yet to see how it continues to exploit them even after their death.

It was primarily the imperialists on the Allied side who used it to justify their war and, after their victory, to justify the infamous treatment inflicted on the German people. People rushed to the camps and the corpses, taking horrible photos everywhere and proclaiming: ‘Look what bastards those Krauts are! How right we were to fight them! And how right we are now to give them a taste of their own medicine!’ When you think of the countless crimes committed by imperialism; when you think, for example, that at the very moment (1945) when our Thorez was singing his victory over fascism, 45,000 Algerians (fascist provocateurs!) were falling victim to repression[5]; when you think that it is world capitalism that is responsible for the massacres, the despicable cynicism of this hypocritical satisfaction is truly nauseating.

At the same time, all our good anti-fascist democrats threw themselves on the corpses of the Jews. And since then they have been waving them under the nose of the proletariat. To make them feel the infamy of capitalism? No, on the contrary: to make them appreciate by contrast the true democracy, the true progress, the well-being they enjoy in capitalist society! The horrors of capitalist death must make the proletariat forget the horrors of capitalist life and the fact that the two are indissolubly linked! (...) If we show lampshades made of human skin, it's to make us forget that capitalism has transformed the living human being into a lampshade. The mountains of hair, the gold teeth, the body of the dead man that has become a commodity should make us forget that capitalism has turned the living man into a commodity. It is work, the very life of man, that capitalism has transformed into a commodity. This is the source of all evil. Using the corpses of capital's victims to try to hide the truth, using these corpses to protect capital, is the most infamous way of exploiting them to the bitter end.”

In fact, this article expresses what constitutes a fundamental position of the Communist Left: the denunciation of anti-fascist ideology, of which the evocation of the Shoah is a pillar, as a means of justifying the defence of capitalist "democracy". As early as June 1945, issue no. 6 of L'Étincelle, the newspaper of the Gauche Communiste de France, the political ancestor of the ICC, published an article entitled "Buchenwald, Maïdaneck, démagogie macabre"[6] which developed the same theme and which we reproduce below:

"The role played by the SS, the Nazis and their industrialised death camp, was that of exterminating in general all those who opposed the fascist regime and above all the revolutionary militants who had always been at the forefront of the fight against the capitalist bourgeoisie, whatever form it took: autarchic, monarchic or ‘"democratic’", whoever their leader: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Leopold III, George V, Victor-Emmanuel, Churchill, Roosevelt, Daladier or de Gaulle.

The same international bourgeoisie which, when the October revolution broke out in 1917, sought every conceivable means to crush it, which crushed the German revolution in 1919 with a repression of unprecedented savagery, which drowned the Chinese proletarian uprising in blood; the same bourgeoisie which financed fascist propaganda in Italy and then Hitler's propaganda in Germany; the same bourgeoisie brought to power in Germany the man it had designated as the gendarme of Europe; the same bourgeoisie today spends millions to finance the setting up of an exhibition on ‘The crimes of Hitler’s SS’     and the shooting and showing to the public of films on "German atrocities" (while the victims of these atrocities continue to die, often without care, and the survivors who return have no means of living).

This is the same bourgeoisie which, on the one hand, paid for the rearmament of Germany and, on the other, mocked the proletariat by dragging it into the war with the anti-fascist ideology; this is the same bourgeoisie which, having favoured Hitler's rise to power, used him to the last in order to crush the German proletariat and drag it into the bloodiest of wars, into the foulest butchery imaginable.

It is still the same bourgeoisie that sends representatives with wreaths of flowers to bow hypocritically at the graves of the dead it has itself created, because it is incapable of running society and war is its only form of life.

WE BLAME THEM!

because the millions of deaths the bourgeoise has perpetrated in this war are only the latest addition to an already far too long list of martyrs of ‘"civilisation’", of capitalist society in decomposition.

It is not the Germans who are responsible for Hitler's crimes. In 1934, they were the first to pay for Hitler's bourgeois repression with 450,000 human lives, and they continued to suffer this merciless repression when it took place abroad. No more than the French, the British, the Americans, the Russians or the Chinese are responsible for the horrors of the war which they did not want but which their bourgeoisie forced upon them.

On the other hand, the millions of men and women who died slowly in the Nazi concentration camps, who were savagely tortured and whose bodies are rotting somewhere, who were struck down during this war while fighting or caught in a ‘"liberating’" bombardment, the millions of mutilated, amputated, shredded and disfigured corpses, buried under the earth or rotting in the sun, the millions of bodies, soldiers, women, old people and children.

These millions of dead are crying out for vengeance...
... and they are demanding vengeance not on the German people, who are still paying, but on the infamous and unscrupulous bourgeoisie, who did not pay, but profited, and who continue to taunt the hungry slaves with their appearance as overfed pigs.

The only position for the proletariat is not to respond to demagogic appeals to continue and accentuate chauvinism through anti-fascist committees, but the direct class struggle for the defence of their interests, their right to life, a struggle of every day, of every moment until the destruction of the monstrous regime of capitalism".[7]

Even today, the State of Israel (and those who support it) invokes the memory of the Shoah to justify its crimes. The atrocities suffered by the Jewish people in the past are a way of pretending that this State belongs to the Camp of GOOD, even when it takes its cue from the "democracies" during the Second World War to deliberately massacre civilian populations with bombs. And the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October have enabled it to rekindle the flame in such a spectacular way that even in Israel the voices of those who previously denounced the criminal policies of this state have been silenced, and even swayed into the camp of all-out war.

At the same time, the enemies of Israel and those who support them, who for decades have made the oppression and humiliation of the Palestinian people their business, whether they line up behind Islamic flags or "anti-imperialist" flags, now find, with the massacres committed by the Hebrew state in Gaza, a shocking argument to justify their support for a Palestinian state which, like all states, will be the instrument of the exploiting class to oppress and repress the exploited.

To justify the barbarity of war, bourgeois propaganda has made massive use of lies, particularly since 1914, as we have seen above and continue to see. Take, for example, the myth of "weapons of mass destruction" used by the US government in 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq. But this propaganda is even more effective when it can rely on the real atrocities committed by those designated as the enemy. And these atrocities are not about to disappear; quite the contrary. As the capitalist system sinks deeper into decay and decomposition, they will become more frequent and more abominable. They will, as in the past, be used by every sector of the bourgeoisie to justify its own and future atrocities.

Indignation and anger at these atrocities are legitimate and normal in any human being. But it is important that the exploited, the proletarians, are capable of resisting the sirens of those who call on them to fight and kill the proletarians of other countries, or to be killed in these battles. No war in capitalism will ever be the "war to end all wars" as the propaganda of the Entente countries claimed in 1914 or as President Bush junior claimed in 2003 when he predicted "an era of peace and prosperity" after the elimination of Saddam Hussein (in fact, the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis). The only way to put an end to wars and the atrocities they provoke is to put an end to the system that generates them: capitalism. Any other perspective will only preserve the survival of this barbaric system.

Fabienne, November 24, 2023

Introduction

The evolution of the world situation since the 25th ICC Congress amply confirms what was stated in the resolution we adopted on the international situation. Not only is decomposition becoming the decisive factor in the evolution of society, as we had anticipated as early as 1990[1], but in the present decade, “the aggregation and interaction of destructive phenomena produces a ‘whirlwind effect’ that concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of its partial effects, provoking even more destructive devastation”[2] .

Concretely, the economic crisis deepens and there is a significant deterioration of the living conditions of the working class, which encourages a "rupture" with the situation of passivity and the development of combativity and potentially of consciousness, expressing a movement towards the adoption of a revolutionary perspective, even if it is still slow and fragile. At the same time, the ecological deterioration and the multiplication of the imperialist war zones (Ukraine, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Africa, Middle East) show the perspective of destruction and ruin that capitalism offers to humanity.

In the realm of the environmental crisis, recent events leave no room for doubt or relativising the consequences of ecological damage for the habitability of the planet and the survival of many species (including, ultimately, the human species). Recent illustrations have been the massive floods in Pakistan, or the rise in temperature this summer to over 40 degrees in the countries of southern Europe, the pollution that has forced schools to close in India for the Christmas vacations in November and that causes 1 in 3 children to have respiratory problems, the current pneumonia epidemic among children in China, the famines in Africa, etc.

Of all the elements of the "whirlwind effect" however, it is imperialist war which immediately accelerates the course of events in the world situation. Since the 25th Congress, we have witnessed a kind of stalemate in the war in Ukraine, the resurgence of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the warlike tensions in the Balkans and above all the war between Israel and Hamas. In the background is the growing confrontation between the US and China. This proliferation of conflicts is not the expression of a dynamic towards the formation of imperialist blocs but confirms the “every man for himself” tendency of imperialist confrontations in this period.

1.- With respect to the analysis of the imperialist confrontations during the cold war, the coordinates of marxist analysis have changed in the present situation; mainly on the possibility of the formation of imperialist blocs and on the confrontation of classes. In spite of this, the Bordigists (Programma, Le Proletaire, Il Partito) and Damenists (ICT) insist on seeing in the present situation the formation of two opposing imperialist blocs around China and the US, and therefore the march towards a third world war, based on the assumption of the defeat of the proletariat. In fact, even the "experts" of the bourgeoisie tend to recognise the dominant trend of imperialist conflicts is toward ‘multi-polarity’.[3]

In the resolution on the international situation of the 24th congress, we wrote:

“the march towards world war is still obstructed by the powerful tendency towards indiscipline, every man for himself and chaos at the imperialist level, while in the central capitalist countries capitalism does not yet dispose of the political and ideological elements - including in particular a political defeat of the proletariat - that could unify society and smooth the way towards world war. The fact that we are still living in an essentially multipolar world is highlighted in particular by the relationship between Russia and China. While Russia has shown itself very willing to ally with China on specific issues, generally in opposition to the US, it is no less aware of the danger of subordinating itself to its eastern neighbour, and is one of the main opponents of China’s “New Silk Road” towards imperialist hegemony.»[4]

2.- The recognition of the unruly correlation of imperialist forces, defined essentially by the tendency to “every man for himself”, must not lead to an underestimation of the danger of the explosion of uncontrolled military conflicts, as happened at the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The US-China conflict could well lead to direct military confrontation, so the threat of open conflict here (somewhat underestimated in the 25th Congress Resolution on the International Situation) must be further analysed.

The US’s proclaimed geo-political strategy since 1989 has been to prevent the emergence of any power that could rival its massive military superiority on the world stage. This doctrine at once confirmed that its primary ambition was not the recreation of a bloc, and at the same time indicated that, unlike the 1st and 2nd World Wars where it waited in a defensive posture before emerging with the spoils, it now had to take the military offensive on the world stage and become the dominant force of imperialist destabilisation.

The fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that the politics of the world cop only produced more chaos, showing at the same time the decline of US imperialism. More recently it has tried to react by turning to a stricter defense of its own interests (Trump’s “America first” and Biden’s “America is back”), even though this triggers even greater chaos. As we had already identified, China's enormous economic, technological and military development is a threat to American dominance.

For this reason, the US is developing a policy that seeks to hinder the progression of economic, technological and military development in China, with the relocation of companies, limitations on collaboration in cutting-edge university research, the blocking of technology exports, the "quadruple chip alliance" between the US and Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, which seeks to isolate China from the world supply chains of microchips, etc. On the military side, it is trying to establish a geopolitical encirclement to guarantee control of the Indo-Pacific and the Asian continent with initiatives such as the QUAD, the "NATO of Asia", which groups the US with Japan, India, Australia and South Korea, or AUKUS, a military cooperation treaty with Australia and the United Kingdom. The US encirclement continues to tighten, and the latest steps have been the installation of American military bases in the Philippines and gaining Vietnam as an ally in the region. Ultimately, for the US, the war in Ukraine also has the objective of isolating China strategically and militarily, bleeding Russia dry, stripping it of any world power relevance and trying to prevent China from taking advantage of its military technology or its energy resources and its experience in the world imperialist "great game”. The bloody stalemate of the war in Ukraine has advanced this US project of bleeding Russia dry.

Recently, the policy of encircling China has been compounded by a series of provocations such as Pelosi's visit to Taipei, the shooting down of weather balloons accused of spying, the announcement of 345 million dollars in military aid to Taiwan, or Biden's declarations that the US will not hesitate to send troops to the island to defend it from a Chinese invasion.

All these American initiatives together point to a strategy of isolation and provocation of China, which the US is trying to push into premature confrontations for which it is not yet equiped and which could include military clashes. This in fact reproduces the policy of encircling the ‘USSR’ which forced the latter to get involved in imperialist adventures beyond its real economic and military means, and which ended up producing the collapse of the imperialist bloc it led.

There is no doubt that China has learned and is taking note of the lessons of the collapse of the Eastern bloc; but we should not rule out the possibility that, faced with the continuation and intensification of US pressure, it may end up having no choice but to respond; and therefore we should not underestimate the possibility of a conflict, particularly in the China Sea around Taiwan. Evidently, in the event of such a conflict, the consequences would be disastrous and terrible for the whole world, even if the scale of such a conflict would be limited by several factors, in particular the absence of global imperialist blocs and the incapacity of the US bourgeoisie to drag an undefeated working class into a full-scale mobilization for war.

3.- The bloody conflict presently in the Middle East erupted precisely in the context of the chaotic and unpredictable expansion of the tendency of every imperialist power acting for itself, and not from any movement towards the solidification of blocs.

The withdrawal of a strong US military presence in the Middle East entrusted to Israel the maintenance of the Pax Americana in the region within the framework of the Oslo agreements (1993), which recognized the principle of "two States" (thus of a local Palestinian State). Apparently calm reigned, which had even allowed the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, sanctioning peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and excluding Iran. However, Israel has in practice continued and intensified a policy of harassment of the Arab population and support for the settlers in the West Bank, sabotaging the Palestinian Authority (PA) by supporting Hamas, which is now its mortal enemy, thus in practice sabotaging the American mandate. The situation has reached a limit with the Netanyahu government in conjunction with the extreme right. The finance minister has called on the army to take revenge for attacks on the settlers by burning Palestinian homes, and the presence of Israel's soldiers competes with that of the PA police. So Hamas, which won the last elections in the Gaza Strip, rather than wait idly for the fate of the West Bank, has launched a desperate attack. That attack however coincided with the ambitions of another regional power – Iran - which saw a weakening of its presence in the region and which in turn, under the auspices of China, had signed in March an agreement with Saudi Arabia on the "Silk Road", in direct competition with that of Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

The Wall Street Journal made public what everyone knew: the Hamas attack was openly prepared and supported by Iran and Hizbollah in southern Lebanon.

Israel's response, razing Gaza under the pretext of wiping out Hamas, shows a scorched earth policy on both sides. Hamas' murderous rage finds in Israel's exterminating vengeance the other side of the coin. And globally, the fire in the region is a call for the intervention of other regional powers, and particularly Iran, which is the main beneficiary of the situation of the breakdown of the regional balance.

This, however, does not benefit the US. The Biden administration has had no choice but to reluctantly support the Israeli army's response, trying, albeit futilely, to lower the tension, and has been forced to reestablish its military presence in the area by sending “Along with the aircraft carrier Ford, the cruiser Normandy and the destroyers Thomas Hudner, Ramage, Carney and Roosevelt, and will increase the presence of squadrons of F-35, F-15, F-16 and A-10 fighter planes in the region”[5] . Some have already had to intervene in the face of attacks on American troops in Iraq. The objective is to dissuade Iran at all costs from a direct intervention or one carried out through Hizbollah but also dissuade Israel from trying to carry out its threat to "wipe Iran off the map".

For its part, Russia undoubtedly benefits from the fact that the focus of attention and war propaganda is shifting from Ukraine to Palestine. This interferes with the financial and military resources that the US could employ on the Russian front and "gives a respite" to the intensity of its war there. Moreover, Putin benefits from US support for the savagery of Israeli repression by denouncing the hypocrisy of American society and of the "West", which for its part criticises the occupation of Crimea but consents to the invasion of Gaza. However Russia cannot significantly advance its own interests in the region through this war.

China might likewise welcome the weakening of the US policy of "pivot to the East"; but war and the destabilization of the region goes against its own geopolitical interests in charting the new Silk Road.

The current war in the Middle East is therefore not the result of the dynamics of the formation of imperialist blocs, but of the "every man for himself". Just like the confrontation in Ukraine, this war confirms the dominant trend of the global imperialist situation: a growing irrationality fueled by the tendency for each imperialist power to act for itself and the bloody policy of the dominant power, the USA, to counter its inevitable decline by preventing the rise of any potential challenger.

4.- The war in the Middle East has an impact on the working class as a whole in the central countries that is even greater than that of Ukraine. On the one hand because in some countries like France, a large percentage of imigration comes from Arab countries[6], but also because the "defense of the Palestinian people" has long been part of the baggage of the "left ideology" of the Trotskyist and anarchist groups, and also, it must be said, of the support for "national liberation" of some Bordigist groups like Programma. Thus we have seen demonstrations of 30,000 in Berlin, 40,000 in Brussels and 35,000 in Madrid, more than 500,000 in London, in defense of the Palestinians and for peace. On the other hand, Zionism covers itself with "the Jewish question", which not only has historical connotations, but also involves a part of the population in Europe and the USA. This explains the demonstrations and acts against anti-Semitism in France, recently in London, Paris, or in Germany; and also the campaigns in American universities, such as Harvard, where students who have denounced the massacres have been accused of anti-Semitism.

In spite of this, the war in the Middle East is probably not going to put an end to the dynamic of "rupture" of the passivity of the working class that we identified starting from the "summer of discontent" in Great Britain, which does not have as its starting point a response to  war, which in the present situation would demand a development of consciousness and a politicisation in the class as a whole that for the moment is not the case, but rather the deepening of the economic crisis.

When Internacionalismo raised the perspective of a resumption of the class struggle in the 1960s, its analysis was based fundamentally on two elements: 1) the end of the period of ‘prosperity’ after World War II and the perspective of the crisis; 2) the presence of a new generation in the working class that had not suffered a defeat. The dimension taken by the struggles in May 68 in France and the Hot Autumn in Italy 69, etc. was, in addition to the above, also the product of the lack of preparation of the bourgeoisie.

The condition that the proletariat is not defeated is equally determinant and the most important in the present situation. On the other hand, the present situation of worsening decomposition and whirlwind effect presents elements that are an obstacle to the struggle and the raising of consciousness of the proletariat; but it also contains a qualitative aggravation of the economic crisis, which is expressed in a significant deterioration of the living conditions of the proletariat. The decision to enter into struggle, not to resign oneself, not to trust and wait for "a new development of the economy", means a reflection on the global situation, a distrust towards the expectations that capitalism can offer, a minimum balance sheet of what we have been promised and has not been fulfilled. In this sense, "enough is enough" implies a subterranean maturation of consciousness. This approach has an international dimension for the working class as a whole. The example of the struggles in France and the UK, and now in the US, is also part of a reflection through which workers in other countries identify with those who participate in those struggles. This is also part of the beginning of a reflection on class identity.

It is true that, indirectly, the question of war is present in this process. This maturation has taken place during two decades of aggravation of the imperialist conflicts simultaneously with the aggravation of the economic crisis; moreover, the "rupture" has taken place in spite of the outbreak of the Ukrainian war. In fact, the development of the struggles necessarily leads to the embryonic beginning of a reflection linking the crisis and the war, for example when it is seen that inflation is increasing because of the expenditure on armaments and that sacrifices are demanded of us in order to increase the defense budgets.

5.- Nevertheless the worsening world situation is full of danger for the working class. Who can predict the consequences of a war between US and China, the scale of which may dwarf any conflict since 1945? Or the effects of other catastrophes that the period of decomposition will bring?

In this period of decomposition, not only have the conditions of aggravation of imperialist conflicts changed, passing from the "Cold War" between two imperialist blocs to "every man for himself"; they have also changed from the point of view of class confrontation.

During the Cold War period, the resistance of the proletariat, the fact that the bourgeoisie had not managed to defeat the working class, meant the latter was the main obstacle to the total imperialist war. And the class confrontation could be analysed in terms of an "historical course", as the Italian Left in exile (Bilan) had done in the 1930s, in the face of the 1936 war in Spain and the Second World War: either a course towards the defeat of the proletariat and world war, or a course towards decisive confrontations and the revolutionary perspective.

In the present period of chaotic aggravation of the imperialist conflicts according to the tendency of “every man for himself”, the fact that the proletariat is not defeated oes not prevent the proliferation of warlike confrontations which, although for the moment involve the countries where the proletariat is weaker, as in Russia/Ukraine or the Middle East, does not exclude the possibility that some of the central countries could embark on warlike adventures.

Thus, while in the years 1960-90, time was in favour of the proletariat which could absorb and develop the lessons of its failures and hesitations to prepare new assaults in its struggle against capitalism, since then, as we wrote in the “Theses on decomposition” in 1990, the period of decomposition has indeed created a race against time for the working class. This is why revolutionary organisations must include in their intervention an instance on the development of consciousness about this fact in the working class as a whole.

2.12.2023

"The UK is rocked by a historic strike" (Le Parisien, August 2022)

"Pension reform in France: historic mobilisation" (Midi libre, January 2023)

"Historic strike in German transport for better wages" (Euronews, March 2023)

"Canada: "a historic strike by civil servants for a wage increase" (France 24, April 2023)

"United States: historic strike in the automotive sector" (France Info, September 2023)

"Iceland: historic strike against pay inequality" (Tf1, October 2023)

"In Bangladesh, a historic strike by textile workers" (Libération, November 2023)

"In Sweden, a historic inter-professional strike movement" (Libération, November 2023)

"Historic public services strike in Quebec" (Le Monde, December 2023)

The headlines leave no doubt: since July 2022, something is happening within the working class. The workers have returned to the path of proletarian struggle, at an international level. And this is indeed a "historic" event.

The ICC  described this as a "rupture". We believe that this is a promising new dynamic for the future. Why is this so?

How can we understand the significance of the current resumption of the struggle?

In January 2022, while the Covid health crisis had not yet finished, we wrote in an international leaflet[1] : “In all countries, in all sectors, the working class is facing an unbearable degradation of its living and working conditions. All governments, whether of the right or the left, traditional or populist, are imposing one attack after the other as the world economic crisis goes from bad to worse. Despite the fear generated by an oppressive health crisis, the working class is beginning to react. In recent months, in the USA, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea, in Spain, France and Britain, struggles have broken out. These are not massive movements: the strikes and demonstrations are still weak and dispersed. Even so, the ruling class is keeping a wary eye on them, conscious of the widespread, rumbling anger. How are we to face up to the attacks of the ruling class? Are we to remain isolated and divided, everyone in ‘their own’ firm or sector? That’s a guarantee of powerlessness. So how can we develop a united, massive struggle?”

If we chose to produce and distribute this leaflet as early as the first month of 2022, it's because we were aware of the current potential of our class. In June, barely 5 months later, the UK's "Summer of Anger" broke out, the biggest wave of strikes in the country since 1979 and its "Winter of Discontent"[2] a movement that heralded a whole series of "historic" struggles around the world. At the time of writing, this strike wave is spreading to Quebec.

To understand the depth of the process underway, and what is at stake, we need to adopt a historical approach, the same one that enabled us to detect this famous "rupture" as early as August 2022.

1910-1920

In August 1914, capitalism announced its entry into decadence in the most shattering and barbaric way imaginable: the First World War broke out. For four appalling years, in the name of the Fatherland, millions of proletarians had to slaughter each other in the trenches, while those left behind - men, women and children - toiled night and day to "support the war effort". The guns spit bullets, the factories spit guns. Everywhere, capitalism was gobbling up metal and lives.

Faced with these unbearable conditions, the workers rose up. Fraternisation at the front, strikes at the back. In Russia, the momentum became revolutionary: the October insurrection. The proletariat's seizure of power was a cry of hope heard by exploited people the world over. The revolutionary wave spread to Germany. It was this spread that put an end to the war: the bourgeoisies, terrified by this red epidemic, preferred to put an end to the carnage and unite against their common enemy: the working class. Here, the proletariat demonstrated its strength, its ability to organise en masse, to take the reins of society into its own hands and to offer the whole of humanity a prospect other than that promised by capitalism. On the one hand exploitation and war, on the other international solidarity and peace. On one side death, on the other life. If this victory was possible, it was because the class and its revolutionary organisations had accumulated a long experience over decades of political struggle since the first workers' strikes in the 1830s.

In Germany, in 1919, 1921 and 1923, attempted insurrections were put down in bloodshed (by the social democrats then in power!). Defeated in Germany, the revolutionary wave was broken and the proletariat found itself isolated in Russia. This defeat was obviously a tragedy, but above all it was an inexhaustible source of lessons for the future (how to deal with a strong, organised bourgeoisie, its democracy, its left; how to organise in permanent general assemblies; what role the party had and what relationship it had with the class, with the workers' assemblies and councils...).

1930-1940-1950

Since communism was only possible on a world scale, the isolation of the revolution in Russia inevitably meant degeneration. Thus, from "within", the situation would rot until the triumph of the counter-revolution. The tragedy was that this defeat also made it possible to fraudulently identify the revolution with Stalinism, which falsely presented itself as the heir to the revolution when in reality it was murdering it. Only a handful would see Stalinism as a counter-revolution. Others would either defend or reject it, but all of them would carry the lie of a ‘continuity’ between Marx, Lenin and Stalin, thus destroying the invaluable lessons of the revolution.

The proletariat was defeated on an international scale. It became incapable of reacting to the new ravages of the economic crisis: galloping inflation in Germany in the 1920s, the 1929 crash in the United States, mass unemployment everywhere. The bourgeoisie could unleash its monsters and march towards a new world war. Nazism, Francoism, fascism, anti-fascism... on both sides of the border, governments mobilised, accusing "the enemy" of being a barbarian. During these dark decades, internationalist revolutionaries were hunted down, deported and murdered. The survivors gave up, terrified or morally crushed. Still others, disorientated and victims of the "Stalinism = Bolshevism" lie, rejected all the lessons of the revolutionary wave and, for some, even the theory of the working class as a revolutionary class. It was "midnight in the century"[3] . Only a handful stayed the course, clinging to a deep understanding of what the working class is, what its struggle for revolution is, what the role of proletarian organisations is - embodying the historical dimension, continuity, memory and ongoing theoretical effort of the revolutionary class. This current is called the Communist Left.

At the end of the Second World War, major strikes in northern Italy, and to a lesser extent in France, gave reason to believe that the working class was about to awaken. Churchill and Roosevelt also believed it; drawing lessons from the end of the First World War and the revolutionary wave, they "preventively" bombed all the working-class districts of defeated Germany to guard against any risk of an uprising: Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne... all these cities were razed to the ground with incendiary bombs, killing hundreds of thousands. But in reality, this generation was far too marked by the counter-revolution and its ideological crushing since the 1920s. The bourgeoisie could continue to ask the exploited to sacrifice themselves without risking a reaction: it had to rebuild and increase production rates. The French Communist Party ordered us to "roll up our sleeves".

1968

It was against this backdrop that the biggest strike in history broke out: May 68 in France. Almost all the Communist Left ignored the significance of this event, completely failing to understand the profound change in the historical situation. A very small group of the Communist Left, apparently marginalised in Venezuela, took a completely different approach. From 1967, Internationalismo understood that something was changing in the situation. On the one hand, its members noticed a slight upsurge in strikes and found people around the world interested in discussing the revolution. There were also the reactions to the war in Vietnam which, while being distorted for pacifist purposes, show that the passivity and acceptance of previous decades were  beginning to fade. On the other hand, they understood that the economic crisis was making a comeback with the devaluation of the pound and the re-emergence of mass unemployment. So much so that in January 1968 they wrote: "We are not prophets, and we do not pretend to guess when and how future events will unfold. But what we are sure of and aware of concerning the process in which capitalism is currently immersed is that it cannot be stopped (...) and that it is leading directly to crisis. And we are also sure that the opposite process of development of the combativity of the class, which we are now experiencing in general, will lead the working class to a bloody and direct struggle for the destruction of the bourgeois state". (Internacionalismo n° 8). Five months later, the general strike of May 68 in France provided a resounding confirmation of these predictions. It was clearly not yet time for "a direct struggle for the destruction of the bourgeois state", but for a historic revival of the world proletariat, stirred up by the first manifestations of the open crisis of capitalism after the most profound counter-revolution in history. These predictions were not an expression of  clairvoyance, but simply the result of Internacionalismo's remarkable mastery of marxism and the confidence that, even at the worst moments of the counter-revolution, this group had retained in the revolutionary capacities of the class. There were  four elements at the heart of Internacionalismo's approach, four elements which would enable it to anticipate May '68 and then, in the very heat of the moment, to understand the historical break that this strike engendered, i.e. the end of the counter-revolution and the return of the proletarian struggle to the international stage. These four elements were a profound understanding of:

1) the historical role of the proletariat as a revolutionary class;

2) the seriousness of the economic crisis and its impact on the class as a spur to action;

3) the ongoing development of consciousness within the class, which can be seen in the questions raised in the discussions of minorities seeking revolutionary positions;

4) the international dimension of this general dynamic, economic crisis and class struggle.

In the background of all this, Internacionalismo had the idea that a new generation was  emerging, a generation that had not suffered the counter-revolution, a generation that was confronting the return of the economic crisis while having kept all its potential for reflection and struggle, a generation capable of bringing to the forefront the return of the proletariat in struggle. And that's what May '68 was, paving the way for a whole series of struggles at the international level. What's more, the whole social atmosphere was changing: after the years of defeat , workers were thirsty to discuss, elaborate and "remake the world", particularly the  youth. The word "revolution" was everywhere. Texts by Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg and the Communist Left were circulating and provoking endless debate. The working class was trying to reappropriate its past and its experiences. Against this effort, a whole host of currents - Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism, Castroism, modernism, etc. - were working to pervert the lessons of 1917. The great lie of Stalinism = Communism was exploited in all its forms.

1970-1980

The first wave of struggles was undoubtedly the most spectacular: the hot autumn in Italy in 1969, the violent uprising in Cordoba in Argentina the same year and the huge strike in Poland in 1970, major movements in Spain and Great Britain in 1972... In Spain in particular, workers began to organise themselves through mass assemblies, a process that culminated in Vitoria in 1976. The international dimension of the wave carried its echoes as far as Israel (1969) and Egypt (1972) and, later, through the uprisings in the townships of South Africa, which were led by struggle committees (the "Civics"). Throughout this period, Internacionalismo worked to bring together revolutionary forces. A small group based in Toulouse and publishing a newspaper called Révolution Internationale joined this process. Together, they formed in 1975 what is still today the International Communist Current, our organisation. Our articles proclaimed "Welcome to the crisis!" because, in the words of Marx, we must not "see in misery only misery" but on the contrary "the revolutionary, subversive side that will overthrow the old society" (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847).

After a brief pause in the mid-1970s, a second wave of strikes began to spread: strikes by Iranian oil workers and steelworkers in France in 1978, the "Winter of Discontent" in Great Britain, dockworkers in Rotterdam (led by an independent strike committee), and steelworkers in Brazil in 1979 (who also challenged union control). This wave of struggles culminated in the mass strike in Poland in 1980, led by an independent inter-factory strike committee (the MKS), certainly the most important episode in the class struggle since 1968. Although the severe repression of the Polish workers put a stop to this wave, it wasn't long before a new movement took place with the struggles in Belgium in 1983 and 1986, the general strike in Denmark in 1985, the miners' strike in England in 1984-85, the struggles of railway workers and health workers in France in 1986 and 1988, and the movement of education workers in Italy in 1987. The struggles in France and Italy in particular - like the mass strike in Poland - show a real capacity for self-organisation with general assemblies and strike committees.

It's not just a list of strikes. This movement of waves of struggles was  not going round in circles, but making real advances in class consciousness. As we wrote in April 1988, in an article entitled "20 years after May 1968": "A simple comparison on the characteristics of the struggles of 20 years ago with those of today will allow us to see the extent of the evolution which has slowly taken place in the working class. Its own experience, added to the catastrophic evolution of the capitalist system, has enabled it to acquire a much more lucid view of the reality of its struggle. This has been expressed by;

• a loss of illusions in the political forces if the left of capital and first and foremost in the unions, towards which illusions have given way to distrust and, increasingly, an open hostility;
• the growing tendency to abandon ineffective forms of mobilisation, the dead-ends which the unions have used so many times to bury the combativity of the workers, such as days of action, token demonstrations, long and isolated strikes …

But the experience of these 20 years of struggle hasn’t only produced negative lessons for the working class (what should not be done). It has also produced lessons on what is to be done:the attempt to extend the struggle (especially Belgium ’86);

• the attempt by workers to take the struggle into their own hands, by organizing general assemblies and election, revocable strike committees (France ’86, Italy ’87 in particular)."

It was this strength of the working class that prevented the Cold War from turning into the Third World War. While the bourgeoisies were  welded into two blocs ready to do battle, the workers did not want to sacrifice their lives, by the millions, in the name of the Fatherland. This was also shown by the Vietnam war: faced with the losses of the American army (58,281 soldiers), the protest swelled in the United States and forced the American bourgeoisie to withdraw from the conflict in 1973. The ruling class could not mobilise the exploited of every country into an open confrontation. Unlike in the 1930s, the proletariat was not defeated.

1990...

In reality, the 1980s were already beginning to reveal the difficulties the working class was having in developing its struggle further, in carrying forward its revolutionary project:

- The mass strike in Poland in 1980 was extraordinary in terms of its scale and the ability of the workers to organise themselves in the struggle. But it also showed that in the East, illusions in Western democracy were immense. Worse still, in the face of the repression that was falling on the strikers, the solidarity of the proletariat in the West was reduced to platonic declarations, incapable of seeing that on both sides of the Iron Curtain it was in fact one and the same struggle of the working class against capitalism. This was the first indication of the proletariat's inability to politicise its struggle, to further develop its revolutionary consciousness.

- In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan sacked 11,000 air traffic controllers on the grounds that their strike was illegal. This ability of the American bourgeoisie to put down a strike using the weapon of repression showed where the balance of power stood.

- The repression in Poland and the strike in the United States acted as a real blow to the international proletariat for almost two years.

- In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went much further. At the time, Britain's working class was reputed to be the most militant in the world, setting a record for the number of strike days year after year. The Iron Lady provoked the miners; hand in hand with the unions, she isolated them from the rest of their class brothers; for a year, they fought alone, until they were exhausted (Thatcher and her government had prepared their coup by secretly accumulating stocks of coal); the demonstrations were put down in bloodshed (three dead, 20,000 injured, 11,300 arrested). It would take the British proletariat 40 years to recover from this blow, and it would remain sluggish and submissive until the summer of 2022 (we'll come back to this later). Above all, this defeat showed that the proletariat had not managed to understand the trap, to break through the union sabotage and division. The politicisation of struggles remained largely insufficient, which represented a growing handicap.

One little sentence from our 1988 article, which we have already quoted, sums up the crucial problem of the proletariat at the time: "Perhaps it is less easy to talk about revolution in 1988 than in 1968". At the time, we ourselves did not sufficiently understand the full significance of this observation, we were merely sensing it. In fact, the generation that had accomplished its task by putting an end to the counter-revolution in May 1968 could not also develop the revolutionary project of the proletariat.

This lack of perspective was beginning to affect the whole of society: nihilism and drug-addiction were spreading everywhere. It's no coincidence that it was around this time that two little words contained in a song by the punk band The Sex Pistols were being spray-painted on the walls of London: No future.

It was in this context, as the limits of the '68 generation and the rotting of society began to emerge, that a terrible blow was dealt to our class: the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989-91 unleashed a deafening campaign on the "death of communism". The great lie "Stalinism = Communism" was once again exploited to the full; all the abominable crimes of this regime, which was in reality capitalist, were attributed to the working class and "its" system. Worse still, it was trumpeted day and night: "This is where the workers' struggle leads, to barbarism and bankruptcy! This is where the dream of revolution leads: to a nightmare! The result was terrible: the workers were ashamed of their struggle, of their class, of their history. Deprived of perspective, they denied themselves and lost their class memory. All the lessons and achievements of the great social movements of the past fell into the limbo of oblivion. This historic change in the world situation plunged humanity into a new phase of capitalist decline: the phase of decomposition.

Decomposition is not a fleeting, superficial moment; it is a profound dynamic that dominates society. Decomposition is the last phase of decadent capitalism, a phase of agony that will end in the death of humanity or revolution. It is the fruit of the years 1970-1980, during which neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat was able to impose its perspective: war for one, revolution for the other. Decomposition expresses this historical deadlock between the classes:

1. The bourgeoisie did not inflict a decisive historic defeat on the working class that would have enabled it to mobilise for a new world war.

2. The working class, despite 20 years of struggle which prevented the march to war, and which saw important developments in class consciousness, has not been able to develop the perspective of revolution, to pose its own political alternative to the crisis of the system.

As a result, deprived of any way out but still sinking into economic crisis, decadent capitalism has begun to rot on its feet. This putrefaction is affecting society at every level, with the absence of prospects and a future acting like a veritable poison: a rise in individualism, irrationality, violence, self-destruction and so on. Fear and hatred gradually took over. Drug cartels developed in South America, racism was everywhere… Thought was marked by an inability to think ahead, by a short-sighted and narrow vision; the politics of the bourgeoisie was itself increasingly limited to the piecemeal. This daily wash inevitably permeates the proletarians, especially as they no longer believe in the future of the revolution, are ashamed of their past and no longer feel themselves to be a class. Atomised, reduced to individual citizens, they bear the full brunt of the rotting of society. The most serious problem is surely the amnesia about the gains and advances of the 1968-1989 period.

To drive the point home, the economic policy of the ruling class deliberately attacks any sense of class identity, both by breaking up the old industrial centres of working-class resistance and by introducing much more atomised forms of work, such as the so-called "gig economy", where workers are regularly treated as "self-employed".

For a whole section of working-class youth, the consequence is catastrophic: a tendency to form gangs in urban centres, which express both a lack of any economic prospects and a desperate search for an alternative community, leading to the creation of murderous divisions between young people, based on rivalries between different neighbourhoods and different conditions, on competition for control of the local drug economy, or on racial or religious differences.

While the '68 generation suffered this setback, the generation entering adulthood in 1990 - with the lie of "the death of communism" and the dynamic of social decomposition - seemed lost to the class struggle.

2000-2010

In 1999, at a WTO (World Trade Organisation) conference in Seattle, a new political movement came to the fore: anti-globalisation. 40,000 demonstrators, the vast majority of them young people, rose up against the development of a capitalist society that was commodifying the entire planet. At the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, they numbered 300,000.

What does the emergence of this trend reveal? In 1990, US President George Bush senior promised a "new world order" of "peace and prosperity", but the reality of the decade was quite different: the Gulf War in 1991, the war in Yugoslavia in 1993, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the crisis and collapse of the "Asian Tigers" in 1997, and rising unemployment, job insecurity and "flexibility" everywhere. In short, capitalism continued to sink into decadence. This inevitably prompted the working class and all sections of society to worry, question and reflect. Each in its own corner. The emergence of the anti-globalisation movement was the result of this dynamic: a "citizens’" protest against "globalisation", calling for "fair" global capitalism. It is an aspiration for another world, but on a non-working class, non-revolutionary terrain, on the bourgeois terrain of belief in democracy.

The years 2000-2010 were to see a succession of attempts at struggle, all of which were to come up against this decisive weakness linked to the loss of class identity.

On 15 February 2003, the world's largest recorded demonstration (to this day) took place. 3 million people in Rome, 1 million in Barcelona, 2 million in London, etc. The aim was to protest against the looming war in Iraq – a conflict which would actually break out in March. On the pretext of fighting terrorism, it would last 8 years and kill 1.2 million people. In reaction, there is the revulsion against war, whereas the successive wars of the 1990s had not aroused any resistance. But above all, it was a movement based on civic and pacifist values; it was not the working class that was fighting against the warlike intentions of their states, but a mass of citizens demanding that their governments adopt a policy of peace.

In May-June 2003, a series of demonstrations broke out in France against a reform of the pension system. A strike broke out in the national education sector, and the threat of a "general strike" loomed large. In the end, however, it did not happen, and the teachers remained isolated. This sectoral confinement was obviously the result of a deliberate policy of division on the part of the unions, but the sabotage succeeded because it was based on a major weakness in the class: teachers saw themselves as separate, not as workers, not as members of the working class. For the moment, the very notion of the working class was still lost in limbo, rejected, outdated and shameful.

In 2006, students in France mobilised en masse against a special precarious contract for young people: the CPE. The movement demonstrated a paradox: the class was  still thinking about the issue, but it didn’t know it. The students rediscovered a genuinely working-class form of struggle: general assemblies. They were open to workers, the unemployed and retired people, and the interventions of older people were applauded. The slogan used in the marches became: "Young lardons, old croutons, all the same salad". This was the emergence of working-class solidarity between the generations, and the understanding that everyone was affected, and that everyone had to pull together. This movement, which went beyond the trade union framework, contained the "risk" (for the bourgeoisie) of drawing employees and workers down a similarly "uncontrolled" path. The government withdrew its bill. This victory marked a step forward in the efforts made by the working class since the early 2000s to emerge from the doldrums of the 1990s. In the heat of the struggle, we published and distributed a supplement in France with the headline "Welcome to the new generations of the working class [51]". And indeed, this movement showed the emergence of a new generation that has experienced neither the loss of momentum of the struggles of the 1980s and sometimes their repression, nor directly the great lie "Stalinism = Communism", "revolution = barbarism", a new generation hit by the development of the crisis and precariousness, a new generation ready to refuse the sacrifices imposed and to fight. But this generation also grew up in the 1990s, and what marks it most is the apparent absence of the working class, the disappearance of its project and its experience. This new generation had to "reinvent" itself; as a result, it was taking up the methods of struggle of the proletariat but - and the "but" is a big one - in a non-conscious way, by instinct, by diluting itself in the mass of "citizens". It's a bit like in Molière's play where Monsieur Jourdain makes prose without knowing it. This explains why, once the movement had disappeared, it left no apparent traces: no groups, no newspapers, no books... The protagonists themselves seemed to forget very quickly what they had experienced.

The "movement of the squares" (the so-called Arab Spring, Occupy, etc) that swept the world a few years later was to be a flagrant demonstration of these contradictory forces, of this momentum and these profound and historic weaknesses. Combativity developed, as did reflection, but without reference to the working class and its history, without a sense of belonging to the proletariat, without a class identity.

On 15 September 2008, the biggest bankruptcy in history, that of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, triggered a wave of international panic; it was the so-called "subprime" crisis. Millions of workers lost their meagre investments and pensions, and austerity plans plunged entire populations into misery. Immediately, the propaganda steamroller was set in motion: it was not the capitalist system that was once again showing its limitations, but the crooked and greedy bankers who were the cause of all the ills. The proof is that some countries are doing well, notably the BRICS and China in particular. The very form that this crisis is taking, a "credit crunch" involving a massive loss of savings for millions of workers, made it even more difficult to respond on a class basis, since the impact seems to be affecting individual households rather than an associated class. Which is precisely the Achilles heel of the proletariat since 1990: forgetting that it exists and that it is even the main force in society.

In 2010, the French bourgeoisie seized on this context of great confusion in the class to orchestrate, with its unions, a series of fourteen days of action which ended in victory for the government (the adoption of yet another pension reform), exhaustion and demoralisation. By limiting the struggle to union marches, with no life or discussion in the processions, the bourgeoisie succeeded in exploiting the great political weaknesses of the workers to erase even further the main positive lesson of the anti-CPE movement of 2006: general assemblies as the lifeblood of the struggle.

On 17 December 2010, in Tunisia, a young itinerant fruit and vegetable seller saw his meagre goods requisitioned by the police, who beat him up. In despair, he set himself on fire. What followed was a veritable cry of anger and indignation that shook the whole country and crossed borders. The appalling poverty and repression throughout the Maghreb pushed people to revolt. The masses gathered, first in Tahrir Square in Egypt. The workers who were fighting found themselves diluted in the crowd, in the midst of all the other non-working classes in society. “Mubarak out", "Gaddafi out", and so on. The protagonists demanded democracy and the sharing of wealth. The widespread anger led to these illusory, bourgeois slogans.

In 2011, in Spain, a whole generation of underprivileged people, forced to stay at home with their parents, took inspiration from what is now known as the "Arab Spring" and invaded Madrid's main square. The slogan was: "From Tahrir Square to the Puerta del Sol". The "Indignados" movement was born and spread throughout the country. Although it brought together all strata of society, as in North Africa, here the working class was in the majority. So the gatherings took the form of assemblies to debate and organise. When we took part, we noticed a kind of internationalist impetus in the many eager acknowledgments of the numerous expressions of solidarity from all corners of the world; the slogan "world revolution" was taken seriously, there was a recognition that "the system is obsolete" and a strong desire to discuss the possibility of a new form of social organisation.

In the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom, this "movement of the squares" took on the name "Occupy". The participants spoke of their suffering as a result of the precariousness and flexibility that made it almost impossible to have real, stable colleagues or the slightest social life. This destructuring and relentless exploitation individualises, isolates and atomises. The Occupy protagonists were delighted to be able to get together and form a community, to be able to talk and even live as part of a collective. So there's already a kind of regression here compared to the Indignados, because it's less a question of fighting than of being together. But above all, Occupy was born in the United States, the country of workers' repression under Reagan, the country that symbolised the victory of capitalism over "communism", the country that championed the replacement of the working class by self-employed individuals, freelancers and so on. This movement was therefore extremely marked by the loss of class identity, by the erasure of all the accumulated but repressed working-class experience. Occupy focused on the theory of the 1% (the minority who own the wealth... in fact the bourgeoisie) to demand more democracy and a better distribution of goods. In other words, dangerous wishful thinking for a better, fairer, more humane capitalism. Moreover, the stronghold of the movement was set up in Wall Street, the New York stock exchange (Occupy Wall Street), to symbolise that the enemy is crooked finance.

But in the end, this weakness also marked the Indignados: the tendency to see themselves as "citizens" rather than proletarians made the whole movement vulnerable to democratic ideology, which ended up allowing bourgeois parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain to present themselves as the true heirs of these revolts. "Democracia Real Ya" (Real Democracy Now!) became the watchword of the movement.

In the end, the ebb of this "movement of the squares" further deepened the general retreat of class consciousness. In Egypt, illusions about democracy paved the way for the restoration of the same kind of authoritarian governance that was the initial catalyst for the "Arab Spring"; in Israel, where mass demonstrations once launched the internationalist slogan: "Netanyahu, Mubarak, Assad, same enemy", the brutal militarist policies of the Netanyahu government are now taking over again; in Spain, many young people who had taken part in the movement are embroiled in the absolute impasse of Catalan or Spanish nationalism. In the United States, the focus on the 1% is fuelling populist sentiment against "the elites", "the Establishment"...

The period 2003-2011 thus represents a whole series of efforts by our class to fight against the continuing deterioration of living and working conditions under capitalism in crisis, but, deprived of class identity, it ended up (temporarily) in a greater slump. And the worsening decomposition in the 2010s would make these difficulties even greater: development of populism, with all the irrationality and hatred that this bourgeois political current contains, proliferation on an international scale of terrorist attacks, seizure of power over whole regions by drug traffickers in South America, by warlords in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, huge waves of migrants fleeing the horror of hunger, war, barbarism, desertification linked to global warming... the Mediterranean is becoming a watery graveyard.

This rotten and deadly dynamic tends to reinforce nationalism and to rely on the "protection" of the state, to be influenced by the false critiques of the system offered by populism (and, for a minority, by jihadism), to adhere to "identity politics"... The lack of class identity is aggravated by the tendency towards fragmentation into racial, sexual and other identities, which in turn reinforces exclusion and division, whereas only the proletariat fighting for its own interests can be truly inclusive.

In short, capitalist society is rotting on its feet.

2020...

But the current situation is not just one of decay. Other forces are at work: as decadence sinks in, the economic crisis worsens and with it the need to fight; the horror of everyday life constantly raises questions in the minds of workers; the struggles of recent years have begun to bring some answers and these experiences are digging their furrow without us realising it. In the words of Marx: "We recognise our old friend, our old mole who knows so well how to work underground, only to appear suddenly".

In 2019, a social movement developed in France against a new “pension reform” (sic). Even more than the fighting spirit, which is very high, what attracts our attention is the trend towards solidarity between the generations that is being expressed in the processions: many blue-collar workers in their sixties - and therefore not directly affected by the reform - are striking and demonstrating to ensure that younger employees do not suffer this government attack. The intergenerational solidarity that was very much in evidence in 2006 seems to be re-emerging. We heard demonstrators chanting "The working class exists", singing "We're here, we're here for the honour of the workers and for a better world", and defending the idea of "class war". Even if it's a minority, the idea is back in the air, something that hasn't happened for 30 years!

In 2020 and 2021, during the Covid pandemic and its many confinements, we note the existence of strikes in the United States, Iran, Italy, Korea, Spain and France which, even if they are scattered, testify to the depth of anger, since it is particularly difficult to fight in these times of state-led campaigns in the name of "health for all".

That's why, in January 2022, when inflation made a comeback after almost 30 years of lull on this economic front, we decided to write an international leaflet:

"Prices are soaring, particularly for basic necessities: food, energy, transport... the concrete reality is more and more people struggling to feed themselves, to find accommodation, to keep warm, to travel."

And it is in this leaflet that we announce: "In every country, in every sector, the working class is suffering an unbearable deterioration in its living and working conditions (...) Attacks are raining down under the weight of the worsening global economic crisis. (...) Despite the fear of an oppressive health crisis, the working class is beginning to react (...) Admittedly, these are not massive movements: strikes and demonstrations are still too few and far between. But the bourgeoisie is watching them like a hawk, aware of the scale of the anger that is growing. (...) So how can we develop a united and massive struggle?"

The outbreak of war in Ukraine a month later caused alarm; the class feared that the conflict would spread and degenerate. But, at the same time, the war considerably worsened inflation. Added to the disastrous effects of Brexit, it is the United Kingdom that is hardest hit.

Faced with this unbearable deterioration in living and working conditions, strikes broke out in the UK in a wide range of sectors (health, education, transport, etc.): it was what the media called "The Summer of Anger", in reference to "The Winter of Discontent" in 1979 (which remains the most massive movement of any country after that of May 1968 in France)!

By drawing this parallel between these two major movements, separated by 43 years, journalists are saying much more than they realise. Because behind this expression of “anger” lies an extremely profound movement. Two expressions will run from picket line to picket line: “Enough is enough” and “We are workers”. In other words, if British workers are standing up to inflation, it’s not just because their situation is unsustainable. The crisis is a necessary whip, but not sufficient in itself. It is also because awareness has matured in the heads of the workers, that the mole which has been digging for decades is now poking out a little piece of its snout. Taking up the method of our ancestors in Internationalismo, which enabled them to anticipate the coming of May 1968 and then to understand its historical significance, we have been able since August 2022 to point out in our international leaflet that the awakening of the British proletariat has a global and historical significance; that’s why our leaflet concludes with: “The massive strikes in the UK are a call to action for proletarians everywhere”. The fact that the proletariat which founded the First International with the French proletariat in 1864 in London, which was the most combative of the 1970-80 decade, which suffered a major defeat at the hands of Thatcher in 1984-85 and which since then had not been able to react, announces that now “enough is enough” reveals what is maturing in the depths  of our class: the proletariat is beginning to recover its class identity, to feel more confident, to feel itself a social and collective force.

Especially as these strikes are taking place at a time when the war in Ukraine and all its patriotic rhetoric are raging. As we said in our leaflet at the end of August 2022:

“The importance of this movement is not just the fact that it is putting an end to a long period of passivity. These struggles are developing at a time when the world is confronted with a large-scale imperialist war, a war which pits Russia against Ukraine on the ground but which has a global impact with, in particular, a mobilisation of NATO member countries. A commitment in weapons but also at the economic, diplomatic and ideological levels. In the Western countries, the governments are calling for sacrifices to ‘defend freedom and democracy’. In concrete terms, this means that the proletarians of these countries must tighten their belts even more to ‘show their solidarity with Ukraine’ - in fact with the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and the ruling class of the Western countries (...) Governments are now calling for ‘sacrifices to fight inflation’. This is a sinister joke when all they are doing is making it worse by escalating their spending on war. This is the future that capitalism and its competing national bourgeoisies are promising: more wars, more exploitation, more destruction, more misery. Furthermore, this is what the workers’ strikes in Britain point to, even if the workers are not always fully conscious of it: the refusal to sacrifice more and more for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal to sacrifice for the national economy and for the war effort, the refusal to accept the logic of this system which leads humanity towards catastrophe and, ultimately, to its destruction.”

While strikes were continuing in the UK, affecting more and more sectors, a major social movement was taking place in France against... pension reform. The same characteristics were apparent on both sides of the Channel: in France, too, the demonstrators emphasised that they belonged to the workers' camp, and the slogan "Enough is enough" was taken up in the form of "ça suffit”. Obviously, the proletariat in France brought to this international dynamic its habit of taking to the streets en masse, which contrasted with the scattered pickets imposed by the unions in the United Kingdom. Even more significant of the contribution made by this episode of struggle to the global international process was the slogan that flourished everywhere in the processions: “You give us 64, we’ll give you 68” (the government wanted to push back the legal retirement age to 64, and the demonstrators countered with their desire to re-enact May 68). Apart from the excellent pun (the inventiveness of the working class in struggle), this immediately popular slogan indicates that the proletariat, by beginning to recognise itself as a class, by beginning to recover its class identity, is also beginning to remember, to reactivate its dormant memory. We were surprised, moreover, to see references to the 2006 movement against the CPE. We published and distributed a new leaflet immediately, going back over the chronology of the movement and its lessons (the importance of open and sovereign general assemblies, i.e. really organised and run by the assembly and not by the unions). When they saw the title, the demonstrators came to ask us for the paper and some, after reading it, thanked us when they saw us again on the pavement.

So it's not just the "break with the past" factor that explains the ability of the current new generation to lead the whole proletariat into the struggle. On the contrary, the notion of continuity is perhaps even more important. So we were right to write in 2020: "The gains of the struggles of the 1968-89 period have not been lost, even if they may have been forgotten by many workers (and revolutionaries): the fight for self-organisation and the extension of struggles; the beginnings of an understanding of the anti-worker role of the unions and the parties of the capitalist left; resistance to being dragooned into war; distrust towards the electoral and parliamentary game, etc. Future struggles will have to be based on the critical assimilation of these gains, taking them further, and certainly not denying or forgetting them." (The Responsibilities of revolutionaries in the current period: the different facets of fraction-like work [52] (International Review 164, 2020).

The experience accumulated by previous generations since '68, and even since the beginning of the workers' movement, has not been erased but buried in a dormant memory; reclaiming class identity means that it can be reactivated, and that the working class can set out to reclaim its own history.

In concrete terms, the generations who lived through '68 and the confrontation with the unions in the 70s and 80s are still alive today, and can tell their stories and pass them on. The "lost" generation of the 90s will also be able to contribute. The young people from the 2006 and 2011 assemblies will finally be able to understand what they did, the meaning of their self-organisation, and tell the new generation about it. On the one hand, this new generation of the 2020s has not suffered the defeats of the 1980s (under Thatcher and Reagan), nor the lie of 1990 about the death of communism and the end of the class struggle, nor the years of darkness that followed; on the other hand, it has grown up in a permanent economic crisis and a world in perdition, which is why it carries within it an undiminished fighting spirit. This new generation can draw all the others along behind it, while having to listen to them and learn from their experiences, their victories and their defeats. The past, the present and the future can once again come together. This is the full potential of the current and future movements, this is what lies behind the notion of "rupture": a new dynamic that breaks with the apathy and amnesia that have dominated since 1990, a new dynamic that reappropriates the history of the workers' movement in a critical way to take it much further. The strikes that are developing today are the fruit of the subterranean maturation of previous decades, and can in turn lead to a much greater maturation.

And obviously, those who represent this historical continuity and memory, the revolutionary organisations, have a huge role to play in this process.

Faced with the devastating effects of decomposition, the proletariat will have to politicise its struggles

Since 2020 and the Covid pandemic, the decomposition of capitalism has accelerated across the planet. All the crises of this decadent system - health, economic, climate, social and war crises - are intertwining to form a devastating vortex[4] . This dynamic threatens to drag all humanity to its doom.

The working class is therefore faced with a major challenge, that of developing its revolutionary project and putting forward its perspective, that of communism, in this context of generalised rot. To do this, it must be able to resist all the centrifugal forces that are relentlessly exerting pressure on it; it must be able to resist the social fragmentation that encourages racism, confrontation between rival gangs, withdrawal and fear; it must be able to resist the siren calls of nationalism and war (supposedly humanitarian, anti-terrorist, "resistance", etc. - the bourgeoisies always accuse the enemy of barbarity to justify their own). Resisting all this rot which is gradually eating away at the whole of society, and succeeding in developing its struggle and its prospects, necessarily implies that the whole working class must raise its level of consciousness and organisation, succeed in politicising its struggles, and create places for debate, for working out and taking control of strikes by the workers themselves.

So what do all these strikes, described by the media as "historic", tell us about the current dynamic and the ability of our class to continue its efforts, despite being surrounded by a world in perdition?

Social fragmentation versus workers’ solidarity

The solidarity that has been expressed in all the strikes and social movements since 2022 shows that the working class, when it fights back, not only manages to resist this social putrefaction, but also initiates the beginnings of an antidote, the promise of another possible perspective: proletarian fraternity. Its struggle is the antithesis of the war of all against all towards which decomposition is pushing.

On the picket lines and in the processions of demonstrators, in France and Iceland, the most common expressions are "We're all in the same boat" and "We have to fight together".

Even in the United States, a country plagued by violence, drugs, and racial division, the working class has been able to put forward the question of workers' solidarity between sectors and between generations. The evidence emerging from this summer's "historic" strike, the heart of which was the car workers, even shows that the process continues to progress and deepen:

- "We have to say that enough is enough! Not just us, but the entire working class of this country has to say, at some point, enough is enough (...) We've all had enough: temps have had enough, long-tenured employees like me have had enough... because these temps are our children, our neighbours, our friends" (Littlejohn, skilled trades maintenance manager at Ford's Buffalo stamping plant in the United States).

- "All these groups are not simply separate movements, but a collective rallying cry: we are a city of workers - blue-collar and white-collar, union and non-union, immigrant and native-born" (Los Angeles Times).

- "The Stellantis complex in Toledo, Ohio, was abuzz with cheers and horns at the start of the strike" (The Wall Street Journal).

- "Horns honk in support of strikers outside the carmaker's plant in Wayne, Michigan" (The Guardian).

This solidarity is explicitly based on the idea that "we are all workers"!

What a contrast to the attempted anti-immigrant pogroms that took place in Dublin (Ireland) and Romans-sur-Isère (France)! In both cases, following a fatal stabbing, a section of the population blamed the murders on immigration and demanded revenge, taking to the streets to lynch people. These are not isolated and insignificant incidents; on the contrary, they herald the general drift of society. Brawls between gangs of young people, attacks, murders committed by unbalanced individuals and nihilistic riots are multiplying and will only increase again and again.

The forces of decomposition will gradually drive social fragmentation; the working class will find itself in the midst of growing hatred. To resist these fetid winds, it will have to continue its efforts to develop its struggle and its consciousness. The instinct for solidarity will not be enough; the working class will also have to work towards unity, in other words, towards taking conscious control of its links and its organisation in the struggle. This will inevitably mean confronting the unions and their permanent sabotage of division. So here we come back to the need to re-appropriate the lessons of the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s.

War versus internationalism

The crossing of the Atlantic by the cry "Enough is enough" reveals the profoundly international nature of our class and its struggle. The strikes in the United States are the direct result of the strikes in the United Kingdom. So here too we were right when we wrote in the spring of 2023: "English being, moreover, the language of world communication, the influence of these movements necessarily surpasses the possible impact of struggles in France or Germany, for example. In this sense, the British proletariat shows the way not only to the European workers, who will have to be in the vanguard of the rise of the class struggle, but also to the world proletariat, and in particular to the American proletariat." (Report on the class struggle to the 25th ICC Congress [38], International Review 170, 2023).

During the strike by the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors) in the United States, the feeling of being an international class began to emerge. In addition to this explicit reference to the UK strikes, the workers tried to unify the struggle on both sides of the American-Canadian border. The bourgeoisie was not mistaken: it understood the danger of such a dynamic and the Canadian government immediately signed an agreement with the unions to put a premature stop to this vestige of common struggle and thus prevent any possibility of unification.

During the movement in France too, there were expressions of international solidarity. As we wrote in our April 2023 leaflet[5] : "Proletarians are beginning to reach out to each other across borders, as we saw with the strike by workers in a Belgian refinery in solidarity with workers in France, or the strike by the ‘Mobilier national’ in France, before the (postponed) visit of Charles III to Versailles, in solidarity with ’the English workers who have been on strike for weeks for wage increases’". Through these still very embryonic expressions of solidarity, workers began to recognise themselves as an international class: "We're all in the same boat!"

In fact, the return of working-class combativity since the summer of 2022 has an international dimension that is perhaps even stronger than in the 1960s/70s/80s. Why is this so?

- This is because "globalisation", this extremely tightly woven global economic fabric, gives the economic crisis an equally immediate global dimension.

- Because there are no longer any areas that are 'resisting' the economic crisis, China and Germany are now also being hit, unlike in 2008 (which says a lot about the seriousness of this ongoing open crisis).

- Because the proletariat faces the same deteriorating living conditions everywhere.

- Last but not least, because the links between proletarians in different countries have become much closer (economic collaboration via multinationals, intense international migration, globalised information, etc.).

In China, "growth" continues to slow and unemployment to soar. Official Chinese government figures show that a quarter of young people are unemployed! In response, struggles are developing: "Hit by the drop in orders, factories employing very large numbers of workers are relocating and laying off workers. Strikes against unpaid wages and demonstrations against dismissals without compensation multiplied". Such strikes in a country where the working class is under the ideological and repressive blanket of "communism" are particularly significant of the scale of the anger that is brewing. With the probable collapse of the property construction sector just around the corner, we'll have to keep an eye on the possible reactions of the workers.

For the time being, in the rest of Asia, it is above all in South Korea that the proletariat has returned to strike action, with a major general strike last July.

This profoundly international dimension of the class struggle, this beginning of an understanding that striking workers are all fighting for the same interests whatever side of the border they are on, represents the exact opposite of the intrinsically imperialist nature of capitalism. The opposition between two poles is developing before our eyes: one made up of international solidarity, the other made up of increasingly barbaric and murderous wars.

That said, the working class is still a long way from being strong enough, conscious and organised enough, to stand up explicitly against war, or even against the effects of the war economy:

- In Western Europe and North America, for the time being, the two major wars underway do not seem to be substantially affecting workers' combativity. Strikes in the United Kingdom began just after the start of the war in Ukraine, the car industry strike in the United States continued despite the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza, and other strikes have since developed in Canada, Iceland and Sweden ... But the fact remains that workers have not yet managed to incorporate into their struggle - in their slogans and their debates - the link between inflation, the blows dealt by the bourgeoisie and the war. This difficulty is due to the workers' lack of self-confidence, their lack of awareness of the strength they represent as a class; to stand up against the war and its consequences appears to be far too great a challenge, overwhelming, out of reach. Achieving this link depends on a higher degree of consciousness. It took the international proletariat three years to make this link in the face of the First World War. In the 1968-1989 period, the proletariat was unable to make this link, which was one of the factors inhibiting its ability to develop its politicisation. So, after 30 years of hindsight, we shouldn't expect the proletariat to take this fundamental step straight away. It is a profoundly political step, which will mark a crucial break with bourgeois ideology. It is a step that requires an understanding that capitalism is  military barbarism, that permanent war is not something accidental but a characteristic of decadent capitalism.  

- In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, the war has had an absolutely disastrous impact; there has been no opposition - not even pacifist demonstrations - to the war. Although the conflict has already claimed 500,000 lives (250,000 on each side), and young people in Russia and Ukraine are fleeing the mobilisation to save their skins, there has been no collective protest. The only way out is for individuals to desert and go into hiding. This absence of class reaction confirms that while 1989 was a blow against the whole proletariat at world level, the workers of the Stalinist countries were hit even harder. The extreme weakness of the Eastern European working class is the tip of the iceberg of the weakness of the working class in the countries of the whole of the former USSR. The threat of war hanging over the countries of ex-Yugoslavia is partly permitted by this profound weakness of the proletariat living there.

- As for China, it is difficult to assess precisely where the working class in that country stands in relation to the war. We need to keep a close eye on the situation and how it develops. The scale of the coming economic crisis will have a major impact on the dynamics of the proletariat. Having said that, as in Eastern Europe, Stalinism (dead or alive) will continue to play its role against our class. When you have to study the (distorted) ideas of Karl Marx at school, you can only be disgusted with marxism.

In fact, each war - which will inevitably break out - will pose different problems for the world proletariat. The war in Ukraine does not pose the same problems as the war in Gaza, which does not pose the same problems as the looming war in Taiwan. For example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is creating a rotten situation of hatred in the central countries between the Jewish and Muslim communities, which allows the bourgeoisie to create a huge hype of division.

But in the West as in the East, in the North as in the South, we can nevertheless recognise that, generally speaking, the process of developing consciousness on the question of war will be very difficult, and there is no guarantee that the proletariat will succeed in carrying it through. As we pointed out 33 years ago: "Contrary to the past, the development of a new revolutionary wave will not come from a war but from the worsening of the economic crisis (...) working class mobilization, the starting point for large-scale class combats, will come from economic attacks. In the same way, at the level of consciousness, the aggravation of the crisis will be a fundamental factor in revealing the historical dead-end of the capitalist mode of production. But on this same level of consciousness, the question of war is once again destined to play a part of the first order:

- by highlighting the fundamental conse­quences of this historical dead-end: the de­struction of humanity,
- by constituting the only objective conse­quence of the crisis, decadence and decomposi­tion that the proletariat can today set a limit to (unlike any of the other manifestations of de­composition), to the extent that in the central countries it is not at present enrolled under the flags of nationalism." ("Militarism and decomposition [53]", International Review 64, 1991)

Here again, we can see the extent to which the proletariat's ability to politicise its struggles will be the key to the future.

Populist irrationality versus revolutionary consciousness

The worsening of decomposition is putting a whole series of obstacles in the path of the working class towards revolution. In addition to social fragmentation, war and chaos, populism will flourish.

Javier Milei has just been elected President of Argentina. The 23rd world power finds itself with a man at the head of its state who declares that the earth is flat! He holds his meetings with a chainsaw in his hand. In short, he makes Trump look like a man of science. Beyond the anecdote, this shows the extent to which decomposition is advancing and engulfing ever larger sections of the ruling class in its irrationality and rot:

• In the United States, Trump is the favourite for the next presidential election.
• In France, for the first time, the possibility of the far right coming to power is becoming credible, and even highly probable.
• Italy is led by the Meloni government.
• In Holland, the victory of Geert Wilde, a self-confessed Islamophobe and Eurosceptic , came as a surprise to all the experts.
• In Germany, populism is also on the rise, fuelled above all by hate speech in the face of massive waves of refugees.

So far, all this putrefaction has not prevented the working class from developing its struggles and its consciousness. But we must keep our minds and eyes wide open to follow developments and assess the weight of populism on the rational thinking that the proletariat must develop to carry through its revolutionary project.

This decisive step in the politicisation of struggles was missing in the 1980s. Today, it is in the much more difficult context of decomposition that the proletariat must succeed in achieving it, otherwise capitalism will sweep all humanity into barbarism, chaos and, ultimately, death.

The victorious outcome of a revolution is possible. It's not just  decomposition that's progressing, but also the objective conditions for revolution: an increasingly devastating world economic crisis that's pushing us towards struggle; a working class that's ever more numerous, concentrated and linked on an international scale; an accumulation of historic working-class experience.

As we slide deeper into decadence, the need for world revolution becomes ever more apparent!

To achieve this, the current efforts of our class will have to continue, in particular the reappropriation of the lessons of the past (the waves of struggle of the 1970s-80s, the revolutionary wave of the 1910s-20s). The current generation that is rising up belongs to a whole chain that links us to the first struggles, the first fights of our class since the 1830s!

Eventually, we will also have to break the great lie that has hung over us since the counter-revolution, namely that Stalinism = Communism.

It is in the heat of the struggles to come, in the political struggle against trade union sabotage, against the sophisticated traps of the great democracies, by managing to come together in assemblies, in committees, in circles to debate and decide, that our class will learn all these necessary lessons. For, as Rosa Luxemburg wrote in a letter to Mehring: "Socialism is not, precisely, a bread and butter problem, but a movement of culture, a great and powerful conception of the world." (Rosa Luxemburg, letter to Franz Mehring).

Yes, this path will be difficult, rugged and uncertain, but there is no other way.

Gracchus

The first part of this article[1] described the rise to power of American imperialism which in the decadent phase of capitalism became the dominant imperialism, leader of the Western bloc that finally triumphed over the rival Soviet bloc in the late 1980s. In the introduction to this first part, it was already emphasized that "the collapse of the Eastern bloc marked the beginning of a terminal phase in the evolution of capitalism: social decomposition", which would not only accelerate the bourgeois system's descent into chaos and barbarism, but also lead to the decline of American leadership. The second part of this article will focus precisely on highlighting this process, which began in the 1990s: "In 30 years of rotting bourgeois society, the USA has become a factor in aggravating the chaos, its world leadership will not be recovered, no matter how much the Biden team proclaims it in their speeches, it's not a question of wishes, it's the characteristics of this final phase of capitalism that determine the tendencies it is obliged to follow leading inexorably into the abyss if the proletariat cannot put an end to it through world communist revolution."[2] .

1. The implosion of the Soviet bloc exacerbates every man for himself and global chaos

The implosion of the Eastern bloc marked the opening of a period of decomposition for capitalism, a period in which there was a dramatic acceleration in the breakdown of the various components of the social body into "every man for himself", and a plunge into chaos. If there is one area where this tendency was immediately confirmed, it was imperialist tensions: "The end of the 'Cold War' and the disappearance of the blocs only served to exacerbate the outburst of imperialist antagonisms characteristic of capitalist decadence, and to aggravate in a qualitatively new way the bloody chaos into which the whole of society is sinking (...)"[3] .

In fact, the total disintegration of the Soviet bloc also led to the implosion of the Soviet Union itself, and, as a corollary, to the disintegration of the rival US bloc. The orientation text "Militarism and decomposition [53]"[4] examines the impact of decadent capitalism's entry into its period of decomposition on the deployment of imperialism and militarism. It begins by pointing out that the disappearance of the blocs does not call into question the reality of imperialism and militarism. On the contrary, they are becoming more barbaric and chaotic: "Indeed, it is not the formation of imperialist blocs that is at the origin of militarism and imperialism. Quite the opposite is true: the constitution of blocs is only the extreme consequence (which, at a certain point, can aggravate the causes themselves), a manifestation (which is not necessarily the only one) of the sinking of decadent capitalism into militarism and war. (...) the end of the blocs only opens the door to an even more barbaric, aberrant and chaotic form of imperialism"[5] .

This exacerbation of warlike barbarity will be expressed more concretely through two major trends, which will mark the development of imperialism and militarism over the last three decades.

A first important feature of this is the explosion of imperialist appetites on all fronts, which will result in the multiplication of tensions and sources of conflict: "The difference with the period just ended is that these rifts and antagonisms, which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs, will now come to the fore. (...) as a result of the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the presence of the blocs, these conflicts are likely to be more violent and more numerous, particularly, of course, in those areas where the proletariat is weakest"[6]. This multiplication of antagonisms is also a major obstacle to the reconstitution of new blocs in the current period.

The second tendency resulting from the exacerbation of every man for himself is the explosion of bloody chaos and, as a corollary, attempts to contain it, both of which are factors in the aggravation of warlike barbarism: "The chaos already reigning in much of the world, and which now threatens the major developed countries and their relations with each other, (...) faced with the tendency towards generalized chaos characteristic of the phase of decomposition, and to which the collapse of the Eastern bloc has given a considerable boost, there is no other way out for capitalism, in its attempt to hold in place the various parts of a body which is tending to break up, than the imposition of the iron corset constituted by the force of arms. In this sense, the very means it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody chaos are a factor of considerable aggravation of the warlike barbarism into which capitalism is plunged"[7] .

Indeed, in the face of this predominant historical trend towards every man for himself, the USA, as the only remaining superpower, pursued a policy aimed at countering this trend and maintaining its declining status, exploiting in particular its overwhelming military superiority to impose its leadership on the world and in particular on its "allies": "Confirmed as the only remaining superpower, the USA would do everything in its power to ensure that no new superpower - in reality no new imperialist bloc - could arise to challenge its 'New World Order'"[8] . Thus, the history of the last 35 years is characterised not only by an explosion of "every man for himself", but also by continual attempts on the part of the USA to maintain its hegemonic position in the world and counter the inevitable decline of its leadership. These relentless initiatives by the USA to maintain its leadership in the face of threats from all sides would, however, only accentuate the chaos and the plunge into militarism and barbarism, of which Washington is ultimately the main instigator. What's more, these initiatives would give rise to internal dissensions within the American bourgeoisie on the policy to be pursued, which will become more pronounced as time goes by.

2. A "new world order" against the spread of chaos

Faced with the disappearance of the blocs and the intensification of chaos, US President George W. Bush senior promoted the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, to enable Washington to mobilise a broad international military coalition around the USA to "punish" Saddam Hussein.

2.1. The first Gulf War is aimed at countering the rise of "world disorder"

The 1st Gulf War (1991) was actually intended to set an "example": faced with a world increasingly gripped by chaos and "every man for himself", the American global policeman wanted to impose a minimum of order and discipline, primarily on the most important countries of the former Western bloc. The only superpower left standing wanted to impose on the "international community" a "new world order" under its aegis, because it was the only one with the means to do so, but also because it is the country with the most to lose from global disorder: "In 1992 Washington adopted a very clear, conscious orientation to guide its imperialist policy in the post-Cold War period, based on ‘a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor. No coalition of great powers without the United States will be allowed to achieve hegemony’ (Prof. G.J. Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct. 2002, p.49). This policy seeks to prevent the rise of any power in Europe or Asia that could challenge American prominence and serve as a pole of regroupment for the formation of a new imperialist bloc. This was initially spelled out in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance policy statement drafted by Rumsfeld in1992, during the last year of the first Bush administration which clearly established this new grand strategy"[9].

In truth, Bush Senior's policy, far from ushering the planet into a "new world order" under Washington's supervision, represented no more than a desperate attempt by the United States to contain the lightning expansion of "every man for himself"; it would fundamentally lead to an accentuation of chaos and warlike confrontations: only six months after the Gulf War, the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia had already confirmed that the "new world order" would not be dominated by the Americans, but by the creeping "every man for himself".

The bloody civil war resulting from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia (1995-2001) saw the imperialist appetites of the various "allies" of the former American bloc come to the fore and clash: France and England supported Serbia, Germany Croatia and Turkey Bosnia: "6) The conflict in the former Yugoslavia, finally, confirms one of the other major features of the world situation: the limits to the effectiveness of the 1991 ‘Desert Storm’ operation, designed to assert US leadership over the world. As the ICC asserted at the time, the main target of this large-scale operation was not Saddam Hussein's regime, nor even other countries on the periphery that might have been tempted to imitate Iraq. For the United States, the main aim was to assert and reaffirm its role as ‘world policeman’ in the face of the convulsions arising from the collapse of the Russian bloc, and in particular to win the obedience of the other Western powers who, with the end of the threat from the east, were spreading their wings. Just a few months after the Gulf War, the outbreak of fighting in Yugoslavia illustrated that these same powers, and Germany in particular, were determined to make their imperialist interests prevail over those of the United States"[10] . In the end, it was by increasingly encircling the whole world in the steel corset of militarism and warlike barbarism by intervening militarily, first alongside Croatia, then Bosnia against Serbia, that President Clinton countered the imperialist appetites of European countries by imposing the "Pax Americana" in the region under his authority (Dayton Accords, December 1995).

Far from suppressing challenges to US leadership and the various imperialist appetites, Operation Desert Storm exacerbated polarisation. Thus, the Mujahideen who had been fighting the Russians in Afghanistan rose up against the US "crusaders" (formation of al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden) and, inspired by the failure of the US intervention in Somalia (operation "Restore Hope" from 1993 to 1994), began a campaign of anti-American jihadist attacks at the end of 1998. After its army's failure to invade southern Lebanon, the hard-line Israeli right came to power in 1996 (the first Netanyahu government) against the wishes of the American government, which had supported Shimon Peres. From then on, the right did everything in its power to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians (the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords), which had been one of the greatest successes of Washington's diplomacy in the region. Finally, the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 during the war between local clans, each supported by Western imperialism, is a dramatic example of where the intensification of imperialist "every man for himself" leads.

One of the most obvious expressions of the contestation of American leadership was the dismal failure in February 1998 of Operation Desert Thunder, aimed at inflicting a new "punishment" on Iraq and, beyond Iraq, on the powers that support it under the radar, notably France and Russia. Saddam Hussein's obstruction of visits to the "presidential sites" by international inspectors led the superpower to a new attempt to assert its authority by force of arms. But this time, in contrast to the missile attacks on Iraq which it carried out again in 1996, it was forced to abandon its enterprise in the face of resolute opposition from almost all the Arab states, most of the major powers and with only the (timid) support of Great Britain. The contrast between "Desert Storm" and operation "Desert Thunder" highlighted the deepening crisis of US leadership. Of course, Washington doesn't need anyone's permission to strike when and where it wants (as it did at the end of 1998 with Operation Desert Fox). But by pursuing such a policy, the United States put itself at the head of a trend it wanted to counter - that of every man for himself - whereas it had momentarily succeeded in avoiding it during the Gulf War. Worse still: for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, the American bourgeoisie (the Republican and Democratic parties) showed itself incapable of presenting a united front to the outside world, despite being in a war situation.

2.2. The emergence of explicit tensions within the US bourgeoisie

The erosion of the U.S. bourgeoisie's ability to manage the political game adequately became apparent at the end of the "Cold War", and as capitalism entered a period of decomposition in the early 1990s, particularly through Ross Perot's "independent" candidacy in '92 and '96. “This general tendency for the bourgeoisie to lose control of its own policies was one of the primary factors in the Eastern bloc’s collapse; this collapse can only accentuate the tendency:

• because of the resulting aggravation of the economic crisis;
• because of the disintegration of the Western bloc which is implied by the disappearance of its rival;
• because the temporary disappearance of the perspective of world war will exacerbate the rivalries between different bourgeois factions (between national factions especially, but also between cliques within national states”.[11]

This tendency to lose control of the political game came to the fore in 1998, at the height of Operation Desert Fox. The impeachment proceedings against Clinton, which intensified during the events, highlighted the extent to which American politicians, immersed in a real internal conflict, lent credence to the propaganda of America’s enemies that Clinton had taken the decision to intervene militarily in Iraq because of personal motives (the "Monicagate" scandal), rather than disavowing it.

3. The crusade against "rogue states”

The 1998 RI Congress resolution, following the failure of Operation Desert Thunder, was prescient: While the US has not recently had the opportunity to use its armed might and to participate directly in this ‘bloody chaos’, this can only be a temporary situation, especially because it cannot allow the diplomatic failure over Iraq to pass without a response."[12] .

3.1. The 9/11 terrorist attack spawns the "War against Terror”

With the coming to power of George W. Bush junior and his team of "neoconservatives" (Vice President D. Cheney, Defense Secretary D. Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and J. Bolton), Washington focused its attention on "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, which threatened world order through their aggressive policies and support for terrorism. The al-Qaeda attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 prompted President Bush junior to call for a "crusade against terrorism" and launch a "War against Terror", leading to the invasion of Afghanistan and above all Iraq in 2003. Despite all the American pressure and the presentation of "fake news" at the UN aimed at mobilising the "international community" behind their military operation against the "Axis of Evil", the United States ultimately failed to corral the other imperialists against Saddam and had to invade Iraq virtually single-handed, with Tony Blair's England as its only significant ally. "If the September 11 attacks allowed the US to draw countries like France and Germany into their intervention in Afghanistan, it didn't succeed in dragging them into its Iraqi adventure in 2003; in fact it even provoked the rise of a circumstantial alliance between these two countries and Russia against the intervention in Iraq. Later on, some of its main allies in the ‘coalition’ which intervened in Iraq, such as Spain and Italy, quit the sinking ship. The US bourgeoisie failed to achieve any of its official objectives in Iraq: the elimination of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the establishment of a peaceful ‘democracy’; stability and a return to peace throughout the region under the aegis of America; the retreat of terrorism; the adherence of the American population to the military interventions of its government."[13] .

Despite a colossal commitment of soldiers, weapons and financial resources, these ill-considered interventions by the "neocons" led to a stalemate and ultimate failure, underlined by the withdrawal from Iraq (2011) and Afghanistan (2021). In particular, they highlighted the fact that the USA's claim to play "world sheriff" has only intensified warlike and barbaric chaos: "The attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon by Al Qaeda on 11 September 2001, and the unilateral military response of the Bush administration, further opened the Pandora's box of decomposition: with the attack and invasion of Iraq in 2003 in defiance of international conventions and organisations and without taking into account the opinion of its main ‘allies’, the world's leading power went from being the gendarme of world order to the principal agent of every man for himself and chaos. The occupation of Iraq and then the civil war in Syria (2011) would powerfully stir up the imperialist every man for himself, not only in the Middle East but all over the world."[14] . This opening of the Pandora's box of decomposition was manifested in particular by the multiplication of terrorist attacks in Western metropoles (Madrid, 2004, London, 2005) and by an all-out increase in the imperialist ambitions of powers - China and Russia, of course, and Iran, who had become increasingly bold and aggressive - but also Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and even the Gulf Emirates and Qatar, leading to barbaric conflicts such as the civil wars in Libya and Syria as early as 2011, and in Yemen from 2014 onwards, the emergence of particularly cruel terrorist organizations such as Islamic State provoking a new wave of attacks, and the "refugee crisis" caused by the sudden, uncontrolled influx of undocumented, stateless people into Europe in 2015.

3.2. The adventurism of the "neocons" reveals the growing contradictions between bourgeois factions

While the obvious impasse in U.S. policy and the aberrant headlong rush into warlike barbarism underline the clear weakening of U.S. global leadership, they also reveal more than ever the internal contradictions and factional divisions within the U.S. bourgeoisie. Already, G. Bush junior had won the presidency through a "stolen election", which illustrated the unstable nature of the American democratic apparatus: his opponent, Al Gore, had obtained 500,000 more votes than him, but the decision concerning the final distribution of votes only came 36 days later, more specifically in Florida, where Bush's brother was governor. "“A popular e-mail parody of the election began circulating throughout internet asking what the media would say if in an African nation, there was a controversial election in which the winning candidate was the son of a previous president, who had previously served as director of the state security forces (CIA), and where the victory was determined by a disputed counting of the ballots in a province governed by a brother of the presidential candidate"[15] The twists and turns of the 2000 elections were a clear indication of the bourgeoisie's difficulty in managing its political system in the face of increasingly obvious centrifugal tendencies.

This is all the more true as factions linked to Christian fundamentalism have begun to make their presence felt on the American political scene. Already present in the Republican Party during the Reagan era, they became stronger and more radical in the "rural states" as a result of the growing chaos and lack of hope for the future. Thus emerged the "Tea Party" which would play an important role in torpedoing the Obama administration's plans, accusing the president of being a "Marxist" and a "Muslim agent". The Tea Party was not only made up of Christian fundamentalists but also white supremacists, anti-immigrant activists, militia members, etc., a whole cocktail that infiltrated the Republican Party and increasingly threatened the stability of the political system. Federated around opposition to the "Establishment in Washington", these factions form the swell of the wave of populist ideology on which Donald Trump would later surf.

These centrifugal tensions within the American bourgeoisie were clearly manifested in the headlong rush into the catastrophic Iraqi adventure adopted by the feckless Bush Jr. administration to ensure the maintenance of American supremacy: "The accession [in 2001] of the ‘Neo-Cons’ to the head of the American state represents a real catastrophe for the American bourgeoisie. The question posed is the following: how was it possible for the world's leading bourgeoisie to call on this band of irresponsible and incompetent adventurers to take charge of the defence of its interests? What lies behind this blindness of the ruling class of the leading capitalist country? In fact, the arrival of the team of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. to the reins of the state was not the simple result of a monumental mistake in casting by the ruling class. While it has considerably worsened the situation of the US on the imperialist level, it was already the expression of the impasse facing the US given the growing weakening of its leadership and more generally given the development of the ‘every man for himself’ in international relations which characterises the phase of decomposition."[16] .

3.3. The Obama presidency: a vain attempt to restore multilateralism

The Obama administration tried to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the adventurist unilateralism promoted by Bush junior. While reminding the world of America's absolute technological and military superiority through the execution of Bin Laden in 2011 via a spectacular commando operation in Pakistan, it attempted to put multilateralism back on the agenda by involving Washington's "allies" in the implementation of American policy. However, it was unable to truly counter the explosion of various imperialist ambitions: China implemented its economic and imperialist expansion through the unfolding of the "New Silk Roads" from 2013 onwards; as for Germany, while it avoided any direct confrontation with the United States, given Washington's overwhelming military superiority, it markedly strengthened its pretensions through a growing economic-energy collaboration with Russia. France and Britain, for their part, took the initiative of intervening in Libya to oust Gaddafi; Russia and Iran strengthened their positions in the Middle East by taking advantage of the civil war in Syria. Finally, in Ukraine, faced with the victory of pro-Western parties in the "Orange Revolution", Putin militarily occupied Crimea and supported pro-Russian militias in the Donbass in 2014. Faced with the rise of China as the main challenger threatening US hegemony, there was intense debate within the Obama administration, the state apparatus and the wider US bourgeoisie over a reorientation of its imperialist strategy.

In short: "The policy of forcing things through, illustrated during the two terms of Bush Junior, has resulted not only in the chaos in Iraq, which is nowhere near being overcome, but also to the growing isolation of American diplomacy … For its part, the policy of ‘co-operation’ favoured by the Democrats does not really ensure the loyalty of the powers that the US is trying to associate with its military enterprises, particularly because it gives these powers a wider margin of manoeuvre to push forward their own interests"[17] .

4. The "America First" policy breaks with the ambition to establish a new world order

At a time when the "world policeman" policy was squandering huge budgets, resulting in massive military deployments around the world ("boots on the ground") and consequent losses, and at a time when the working masses were not ready to be dragooned (cf. the huge difficulties in recruiting soldiers under Bush junior for the war in Iraq), Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 after a campaign centered on the slogan "America First". This basically expresses an official recognition of the failure of American imperialist policy over the past 25 years, and a refocusing of that policy on the immediate interests of the United States: "The Trump administration's formalisation of the principle of defending only their interests as a national state and the imposition of profitable power relations as the main basis for relations with other states, confirms and draws implications from the failure of the policy of the last 25 years of fighting against the ‘every man for himself’ tendency as a world policeman in defence of the world order inherited from 1945." [18]

4.1. The "vandalisation" of imperialist relations

The "America First" policy implemented by the populist Trump went hand in hand with a "vandalisation" of relations between powers. Traditionally, in order to guarantee a certain order in international relations, states based their diplomacy on a principle, summed up by the following Latin formula: "pacta sunt servanda" - treaties, agreements are supposed to be respected. When you sign a global - or multilateral - agreement, you're supposed to respect it, at least in appearance. The United States, under Trump, was abolishing this convention: "I sign a treaty, but I can abolish it tomorrow". This happened with the Trans-Pacific Pact (TPP), the Paris Agreement on climate change, the nuclear treaty with Iran and the final agreement on the G7 meeting in Quebec. In their place, Trump advocated negotiations between states, favouring economic, political and military blackmail to impose US interests (cf. the threat of reprisals against European companies investing in Iran). "The vandalising behaviour of Trump, who can denounce American international commitments overnight in defiance of established rules, represents a new and powerful factor of uncertainty, providing further impetus towards ‘each against all’. It is a further indication of the new stage in which capitalism is sinking further into barbarism and the abyss of untrammelled militarism."[19] .

Trump's unpredictable decisions, threats and poker tricks had the following effects. They:

     - undermined the reliability of the USA as an ally: Trump's boastful blustering, bluffing and sudden changes of position not only ridiculed the USA, but led to fewer and fewer countries trusting it. In Europe, Trump called NATO into question, openly opposed the EU and, more specifically, Germany's policy;

     - accentuated the decline of the only superpower: the impasse in US policy was vividly accentuated through the actions of the Trump administration. At the G20 in 2019, the isolation of the United States was evident on climate issues and the trade war. Moreover, Russia's involvement in Syria to save Assad set the USA back and reinforced Moscow's military aggressiveness and power to cause trouble in the world, while the USA has been unable to contain China's emergence from outsider status in the early '90s to that of a serious challenger, presenting itself as the champion of globalisation through the expansion. of the "New Silk Roads".

     - destabilised the global situation and increased imperialist tensions, as seen in the Middle East, where America's refusal to engage too directly on the ground exacerbated the centrifugal action of various powers, large and small, from Iran to Saudi Arabia, from Israel to Turkey, from Russia to Qatar, whose divergent imperialist appetites are constantly colliding. Washington's policy has become more than ever a direct factor in aggravating chaos on a global scale. As a result, "The current situation is characterised by imperialist tensions all over the place and by a chaos that is less and less controllable; but above all, by its highly irrational and unpredictable character, linked to the impact of populist pressures, in particular to the fact that the world’s strongest power is led today by a populist president with temperamental reactions."[20] .

However, under the Trump administration, an increasingly clear polarisation against China emerged in US imperialist policy, aimed at containing and breaking the rise of the Chinese challenger. Back in 2011, the Obama administration had already decided to attach greater strategic importance to confronting China than to the war on terror: "This new approach, called the 'Asian pivot', was announced by the American president during a speech to the Australian parliament on November 17, 2011"[21] . Although challenged by the emergence of Islamic State under Obama, the strategic reorientation of American imperialist policy towards the Far East clearly took hold under Trump, despite a last pocket of resistance from the proponents of the "crusade" against "rogue states" such as Iran (Secretary of State Pompeo and J. Bolton). The "National Defense Strategy" (NDS), published in February 2018, stated that "the global war on terror is suspended" while "great power competition" becomes a cardinal orientation[22] . This implied a major shift in American policy:

• The trade war with China intensified, with the aim of slowing down its economic development and preventing it from developing strategic sectors that directly threaten American hegemony.
• The US re-launched the arms race (calling into question the INF and START multilateral arms control agreements) in order to maintain its technological lead and exhaust its rivals (following the proven strategy that led to the collapse of the USSR). A 6th US Army component is created, designed to "dominate space", to counter China's satellite threats.

Be that as it may, "The defence of its interests as a national state now means embracing the tendency towards every man for himself that dominates imperialist relations: the United States is moving from being the gendarme of the world order to being the main agent of every man for himself, of chaos, of questioning the world order established since 1945 under its auspices. "[23] .

4.2. Centrifugal tendencies in the American political system intensify

Trump's arrival in power brought into full view the enormous difficulty the bourgeoisie of the world's leading power has in "managing" its electoral circus and containing the centrifugal tendencies growing within it: "The US bourgeoisie's crisis did not come about as a result of Trump's election. In 2007, the report already noted the crisis of the American bourgeoisie by explaining: ‘It is first and foremost this objective situation - a situation that excludes any long-term strategy on the part of the remaining dominant power - that made it possible to elect and re-elect such a corrupt regime, with a pious and stupid President at its head [Bush junior]. (...), the Bush Administration is nothing more than a reflection of the dead-end situation of US imperialism’ (‘The Impact of Decomposition on the Life of the Bourgeoisie’, a report to the 17th ICC Congress). However, the victory of a populist president (Trump) known for making unpredictable decisions not only brought to light the crisis of the US bourgeoisie, but also highlighted the growing instability of the political apparatus of the US bourgeoisie and the exacerbation of internal tensions."[24] . Trump's populist vandalism therefore only exacerbated already existing tensions within the American bourgeoisie.

A number of factors brought these tensions to a head: (a) The constant need to try and frame the unpredictability of presidential decisions, but above all (b) Trump's option to get closer to Moscow, the old enemy that doesn't hesitate to interfere in the American electoral campaign ("Russiagate"), a prospect totally unacceptable to a majority of the US bourgeoisie, and (c) his refusal to accept the electoral verdict, combine to highlight an explosive political situation within the American bourgeoisie and its growing inability to control the political circus.

(a) a relentless struggle to "contain" the president marked the entire presidency and played out on several levels: pressure exerted by the Republican Party (failed votes on repealing Obamacare), opposition to Trump's plans by his ministers (the Attorney General refusing to resign or the foreign and defence ministers "nuancing" Trump's words), a constant struggle for control of the White House staff by the "generals" (ex-generals McMaster and then Mattis). However, this policy of “containment” did not prevent "slippages", as when Trump made a "deal" with the Democrats to circumvent Republican opposition to raising the debt ceiling;

(b) Trump and a faction of the American bourgeoisie were considering a rapprochement or even an alliance with Putin's Russia against China, a policy that had various supporters within the presidential administration, such as the first Secretary of State Tillerson, the Secretary of Commerce Ross or even the president's son-in-law, Kushner. This orientation, however, met opposition from large sections of the American bourgeoisie and resistance from most state structures (the army, the secret services), who were by no means convinced by such a policy for historical reasons (the impact of the "Cold War" period) and because of Russian interference in the presidential elections ("Russiagate" again). While Trump never wanted to rule out improved cooperation with Russia (for example, he suggested reintegrating Russia into the G7 forum of industrialised countries), the approach of the dominant factions of the American bourgeoisie, embodied today by the Biden administration, has on the contrary always seen Russia as a force hostile to the continued leadership of the United States.

(c) During the presidential elections of November 2020, opposition between bourgeois factions took on an almost insurrectionary tone: accusations of electoral fraud were made on both sides, and finally Trump refused to recognise the election results. On January 6, 2021, at Trump's call, his supporters marched on Parliament, storming it and occupying the Capitol, the "symbol of democratic order", to overturn the announced results and declare Trump the winner. The internal divisions within the American bourgeoisie have sharpened to the point where, for the first time in history, the president up for re-election is accusing the system of the "most democratic country in the world" of electoral fraud, in the best style of a "banana republic".

5. The policy of provocation towards the Chinese challenger

Despite the vandalism and unpredictability of the populist Trump and the growing fragmentation within the American bourgeoisie over how to defend its leadership, the Trump administration adopted an imperialist orientation in continuity and coherence with the fundamental imperialist interests of the American state, which are broadly agreed upon within the majority sectors of the American bourgeoisie: to defend the United States' undisputed rank as the world's leading power by developing an offensive attitude towards its Chinese challenger. This polarisation towards China, described as a "constant threat"[25] , is undoubtedly becoming the central axis of J. Biden's foreign policy. This strategic choice by the United States implies a concentration of American forces for military and technological confrontation with China. If, as global policeman, the USA already exacerbated warlike violence, chaos and every man for himself, the current polarisation towards China is no less destructive - quite the contrary. This aggression is manifested:

- politically, through democratic campaigns in defence of Uighur rights and "freedoms" in Hong Kong, the defence of democracy in Taiwan, or through systematic accusations of espionage and computer hacking against China, with heavy retaliatory measures;

- on the economic front, through laws and decrees such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips in USA Act, which subject exports of products from Chinese technology firms (e.g. Huawei) to the United States to heavy restrictions in terms of protectionist tariffs and sanctions against unfair competition, but which above all impose a block on the transfer of technology and research to Beijing;

- at the military level, through fairly explicit and spectacular demonstrations of force aimed at containing China: a proliferation of military exercises involving the US fleet and those of its allies in the South China Sea, Biden's pledge of military support to Taiwan in the event of Chinese aggression, the establishment of a cordon sanitaire around China through military support agreements (the AUKUS, between the USA, Australia and Great Britain), partnerships clearly directed against China (the Quad involving Japan, Australia and India), but also by reviving bilateral alliances or signing new ones with South Korea, the Philippines or Vietnam.

On the other hand, the considerable fragmentation of the American political apparatus has spread even further, despite the Democratic presidential victory and the presidential nomination of J. Biden. The mid-term elections in 2022, Trump's candidacy for a new term and the tensions between Democrats and Republicans in Congress have confirmed that the fractures between the parties are as deep and exacerbated as ever, as are the rifts within each of the two camps. The weight of populism and the most retrograde ideologies, marked by the rejection of rational and coherent thinking, far from being curbed by campaigns aimed at sidelining Trump, have only weighed more and more deeply and durably on the American political game and constantly tend to hinder the implementation of the offensive against China.

These two trends, the intensification of a polarised offensive aimed at provoking the Chinese challenger on the one hand, and the accentuation of the chaos and every man for himself that this provokes, but also the internal tensions between factions of the American bourgeoisie on the other, mark the two major events in imperialist relations in recent years: the murderous war in Ukraine and the butchery between Israel and Hamas.

5.1. War in Ukraine increases pressure on the Chinese challenger

The war in Ukraine may well have been initiated by Russia, but it is the consequence of the United States' strategy of encircling and suffocating it. With the outbreak of this murderous war, the US has pulled off a masterstroke in intensifying its aggressive policy against potential challengers. "In Washington, many had been waiting a long time for this: an opportunity for America to show off its great-power credentials in a duel with a major competitor, rather than in uncertain operations against poorly armed religious fanatics"[26] . Indeed, this war expresses more far-reaching objectives than a simple halt to Russia's ambitions: "The current American-Russian rivalry is not explained by any fear that Moscow might dominate Europe, but rather by Washington's hegemonic behavior"[27] .

Of course, the immediate aim of the fatal trap set for Russia is to inflict a major weakening of its remaining military power and a radical downgrading of its imperialist ambitions: "We want to weaken Russia in such a way that it can no longer do things like invade Ukraine" (US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin during his visit to Kiev on 25.04.22)[28] . The war is also intended to demonstrate the absolute superiority of American military technology over Moscow's rustic weapons.

Secondly, the Russian invasion tightened the bolts within Washington-controlled NATO, forcing reluctant European countries, especially Germany, to rally under the Alliance banner, since they had tended to develop their own policies towards Russia and ignore NATO, which until a few months ago French President Macron had claimed was "brain dead".

But above all, the Americans' primary objective was undoubtedly to send an unequivocal warning to their main challenger, China ("this is what awaits you if you risk trying to invade Taiwan"). This was the culmination of a decade of increased pressure on the main challenger threatening US leadership. The war weakened China's only partner of interest, the one that could in particular provide it with a military contribution, and furthermore put a strain on Beijing's economic and imperialist expansion project, the New Silk Road, a major axis of which passed through the Ukraine.

For the United States, the hundreds of thousands of civilian and military casualties, the extension of warlike barbarity into Central Europe, the risks of nuclear meltdown and global economic chaos are only negligible "collateral effects" of its offensive to guarantee its continued leadership.

5.2. War in Gaza intensifies every man for himself and disrupts American polarisation towards Beijing

After the surprise attack and barbaric massacres perpetrated by Hamas, and Israel's bloody retaliation, crushing tens of thousands of civilians under shells and bombs, the almost permanent presence of American leaders in Tel Aviv (President Biden visited in person, and Secretary of State A. Blinken and Defence Secretary L. Austin spend almost a week there) underlines the feverishness and perplexity of the American superpower about how best to handle the situation. By exerting permanent pressure on the Israeli government while maintaining contact with Arab governments, they are trying to limit the Israelis' thirst for barbaric vengeance in Gaza or the West Bank and avoid a general conflagration in the region.

Since the Obama era, when the United States began its "Asian pivot", it has not abandoned all ambitions for influence in the Near and Middle East. With the Abraham Accords in particular, Washington worked to establish a system of alliances between Israel and several Arab countries, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to contain Iran's imperialist aspirations, delegating responsibility for maintaining order in the region to the Israeli state. But this was without taking into account the dynamics of increasingly unstable alliances and the deep-seated tendency towards every man for himself. For the Israeli bourgeoisie no longer hesitates to put its own imperialist interests ahead of its traditional allegiance to the United States. While Washington favoured a two-state "solution", Netanyahu and the right-wing factions of the Israeli bourgeoisie, encouraged by Trump, multiplied annexations in the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians completely on the sidelines. They were clearly playing with fire in the region, but were counting on American military and diplomatic support should tensions escalate. As a result, the United States now finds itself backed into a corner by Israel, forced to support Netanyahu's irresponsible policies and to question the "Asian Pivot" strategy, which was precisely designed to extricate the United States from the endless conflicts ravaging the Middle East so that it could focus on containing the Chinese challenger. Today, however, they are obliged to send substantial naval forces to the Eastern Mediterranean, intervene in the Red Sea, and reinforce their contingents in Iraq and Syria.

The Biden administration's wilful reaction shows how little confidence it has in Netanyahu's clique, and how worried it is about the prospect of a catastrophic conflagration in the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a new flashpoint for US imperialist policy, which could prove calamitous if expanded. Washington would then have to assume a considerable military presence and support for Israel, which could only weigh heavily not only on the US economy, but also on its support for Ukraine and, even more so, on its strategy to stem China's expansion. Moreover, the pro-Palestinian rhetoric of Turkey, an "incorrigible" NATO member, will also increase the risk of widening confrontations, as will the virulent criticism of Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Washington is therefore trying to prevent the situation from getting out of hand ... a perfectly illusory ambition in the long term, given the disastrous dynamic into which the Middle East is sinking.

5.3. The explosion of contradictions within its political apparatus undermines US imperialist policy

Meanwhile, the United States is entering a period of electoral campaigning, and the destabilisation of the American political apparatus is accentuating the unpredictability of its political orientations, both internally and externally. Recurrent deadlocks in Congress have confirmed that the fractures between Democrats and Republicans are as deep and exacerbated as ever, as are the rifts within each of the two camps, as evidenced by the complicated election of the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and the debate among Democrats over the impact of J. Biden's advanced age on his possible re-election. At the same time, campaigns aimed at sidelining Trump (e.g. the various lawsuits brought against him), have only served to divide American society ever more deeply and permanently, and make "The Donald" more popular than ever among a sizeable fringe of the American electorate.

Trump's new presidential candidacy for the 2024 elections, still favoured by more than 30% of Americans (i.e., nearly 2/3 of Republican voters) and widely considered the favourite for the Republican nomination, is already bringing a dose of uncertainty to U.S. policy and is playing a role in Washington's positioning in the two conflicts analysed above: in Ukraine, massive military support for Zelensky is now being called into question by the Republican majority's refusal to endorse budgets for Ukraine, and Putin is counting on the fact that a Trump re-election will change the situation on the ground; in Israel, Netanyahu and right-wing factions are counting on the unconditional support of the Republican religious right to counter the policies of the Biden administration, while they too are awaiting the return of the Trump "messiah".

In short, the unpredictable nature of US policy does not encourage other countries to take US promises at face value, and is in itself (in addition to its policy of polarisation) a factor in the intensification of chaos in the future.

Conclusions

Like the confrontation in Ukraine, the Gaza war confirms the dominant trend in the global imperialist situation: a growing irrationality fuelled on the one hand by the tendency of each imperialist power to act for itself, and on the other by the bloody policy of the dominant power, the USA, aimed at countering its inevitable decline by preventing the emergence of any potential challenger.

Whatever the outcome of these conflicts, the Biden administration's current policy of confrontation is far from producing a lull in tensions or imposing discipline between imperialist vultures. Indeed, the policy

  - accentuates economic and military tensions with Chinese imperialism;

  - exacerbates the contradictions between imperialisms, whether in Central Europe or in the Middle East;

   - intensifies the contradictions within the various bourgeoisies, in the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Israel of course, but also in Germany and China.

Contrary to the rhetoric of its leaders, the offensive and brutal policies of the United States are therefore at the cutting edge of military barbarism and the destructive tendencies of decomposition.

For over 30 years, the struggle of American imperialism against its inevitable decline has increasingly been a central factor in heightening tensions and chaos. The initial success of the current US offensive was based on a characteristic highlighted as early as the early 1990s in the ICC Orientation Text "Militarism and [55]Decomposition"[29] , namely the US’s economic and above all military supremacy, which exceeds the sum of potentially competing powers. Today, the USA is exploiting this advantage to the full in its policy of polarisation. However, this orientation has never led to greater order and discipline in imperialist relations - on the contrary, it has multiplied military confrontations, exacerbated every man for himself, sown barbarism and chaos in many regions (Middle East, Afghanistan, Central Europe, etc.), intensified terrorism, provoked huge waves of refugees and multiplied the appetites of small and large sharks alike.

For over 30 years too, the growing political tensions within the US bourgeoisie have been exploited to mystify the struggle of the American proletariat, by attempting to mobilise it in the fight against the "ruling elites", by trying to divide it into "native" and "illegal immigrant" workers, or by trying to mobilise it in defence of democracy against the racist, fascist right. In this context, the workers' struggles of 2022 and 2023 in the USA are a clear expression of the American working class's refusal to be drawn into bourgeois terrain, and of their determination to defend themselves in a united fashion as an exploited class against any attack on their living and working conditions.

20.12.2023 / R.H. & Marsan

By the beginning of the 1890s, the attempts of the ruling class over many years to silence the Social Democratic Party with the help of repression through the Socialist Law had failed. Nevertheless, the rulers had succeeded in steering the activities of the SPD largely onto the parliamentary track, which meant severely neglecting other activities outside election propaganda, thus pushing theoretical efforts into the background. In other words, even if the bourgeoisie could not prevent the growth of the party, the ideological poison of democracy had spread, undermining genuine workers' solidarity and increasingly stifling the party’s fighting spirit. At the same time, a feeling had slowly developed among a considerable part of the party's functionaries, ranging from members of parliament to trade union leaders: don't run the risk of punishment by the bourgeois state, shy away from any confrontation with the ruling class, avoid a new anti-socialist law; in short, duck! 

This development was fostered by the fact that, after the Franco-German war, Germany entered a gigantic race to catch up in industrialisation with its other European rivals and the USA. Moreover, the rapid numerical growth of the working class in the cities, which first had to live and work under miserable hygienic and material conditions before their situation gradually improved, gave rise to the feeling that capitalism could still provide a livelihood for the workers.[1] Blinded by this rising phase of capitalism, with economic crises apparently overcome, certain circles in the SPD began to question its revolutionary programmatic foundations as early as the early 1890s. The rapid economic growth and the resulting reformist illusions provided the breeding ground for increasing opportunism. The manner in which this questioning of the programme and the principles of organisation was inextricably linked, initiating a complex, multi-layered and insidious degeneration process, cannot be described comprehensively in this article. Our aim here is to highlight some of the main features of this process at the organisational level.

Questioning and abandoning the programme

In the appeal of the Social Democratic Reichstag faction, which appeared shortly before the February elections of 1890, it was claimed that "today's society is growing into socialism". The SPD Reichstag member Grillenberger announced in February 1891 that the SPD was not striving for a violent overthrow of the existing order. Socialism would arise as a result of reforms and not as a result of revolution.[2] Bernstein put it like this: "This growing [of the party] into the state, as I have called it elsewhere, distinguishes the party from the sect. The party, however hostile it may be to the order of the state in which it operates, cannot avoid organically integrating itself into the life of that state, otherwise it would be politically sterile. This has been the course of development of German social democracy to date, as has been the course of development of the Socialist Party in all countries where it has achieved greater significance." (Eduard Bernstein, “Party Discipline”, Neue Zeit S. 1216). In the debate on the Erfurt Programme, Friedrich Engels decisively opposed the perspective that "today's society is growing into socialism”. But no matter how vehemently Engels denounced this early and open undermining of the programme, such ideas were nevertheless propagated even more offensively and clearly at the end of the 1890s. In 1898 the mouthpiece of reformism, Eduard Bernstein, published "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie" ("The Prerequisites of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy"), in which he completely renounced the goal of the movement and subordinated everything to the movement itself.

After the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895, Rosa Luxemburg continued these criticisms and comprehensively exposed Bernstein's position and attitude in her pamphlet Sozialreform oder Revolution (Social Reform or Revolution). At the Party Congress of Social Democracy in Hanover in 1899, she said in a speech “on the replacement of capitalist society”: "It is a generally known fact that for over a decade we have had within our ranks a fairly strong tendency in sympathy with Bernstein’s notions, who want to present our current practice as being already socialism, and thus – unconsciously, of course – to transform the socialism for which we are fighting, the only socialism which is not an empty phrase or a figment of the imagination, into a mere revolutionary slogan. Bebel was correct in saying disparagingly that Bernstein’s notions are so confused, so full of implications, that they cannot be grasped in a clear outline without his being able to say that he has been misunderstood. Previously, Bernstein did not write that way. This lack of clarity, these contradictions, should not be attached to him personally, but to the tendency, to the content of his essays. If you follow Party history over the last ten years, and study the transcripts of the Party congresses, you will see that the Bernstein tendency has gradually gotten stronger, but has not yet completely matured. I hope it never will."[3]She emphasized that the party's sinking into the mire was not due to the "bad policies" of the party leadership, but to parliamentarism and the poison of democracy itself. In addition to Rosa Luxemburg as the "voice" of the younger generation, which most resolutely traced the deeper roots of revisionism, some older leaders of the SPD, such as August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, also took a stand against the revisionists.

Around the turn of the century, Bebel was determined to declare war on the revisionists. “The party should know what stage of corruption and betrayal of party interests things have reached.”[4] Social Democracy should continue to advance on the basis of the irreconcilable class struggle against the existing order: "As long as I can breathe and write and speak, things should not change. I want to remain the mortal enemy of this bourgeois society and of this state order”. (ibid). And in 1899, one year before his death, Wilhelm Liebknecht wrote: "I am for the unity of the party - for the national and international unity of the party. But it must be the unity of socialism and the socialists. Unity with opponents, with people who have other goals and other interests, is not a socialist unity.  (...) If we stand firmly on the basis of class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it, we are lost because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism consists in the fact that we conduct a class struggle, that the working class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class and that in capitalist society effective reforms that put an end to class rule and exploitation are impossible. We cannot haggle with our principles, we cannot compromise, we cannot make a deal or a treaty with the ruling system. We must break with the ruling system, fight it to the death. It must fall so that socialism can triumph....[5] But despite this great determination, most of the defenders of the programme lacked the effort to expose the deeper roots. Only Rosa Luxemburg and the few voices around her went into greater depth.

Democratic views undermine unity and discipline

In addition to the programmatic revision, these revisionists also began to undermine the party's organisational foundations. Bernstein, for example, openly pleaded for the toleration of breaches of discipline: "Because before we are party people, we are human beings. (...) Under certain circumstances it may be in the interests of the party and its healthy development not to obey it."[6] In contrast, Rosa Luxemburg stressed that the party could only function through "the unconditional subordination of the individual to the overall will of the organisation as the foundation of our existence as a party (...) And there is no exception, no absolution from the duty of discipline. For discipline either binds everyone in the party, or it is binding on no one."[7] She added: “The sense of social democratic discipline] (...) is the historical and indispensable tool for forging political action for the programme of the Party, in Party congress resolutions and international congress resolutions.”[8]

Discussion club or fighting party?

Heine claimed the right to "freedom of expression", "autonomy" and "free self-determination" in the party. Like Bernstein, Heine justified the constant breach of party discipline in order to avoid "cadaver obedience" to the Party leadership.[9] At the Party congress in Hanover in 1899, Heine demanded the "freedom of unrestricted" criticism, i.e. to say what comes to every member's mind, regardless of whether it agrees with the principles of the organisation or not. Rosa Luxemburg countered: "I said there is not a single party that grants freedom of criticism to such an extent as ours. But if you mean that the Party, in the name of freedom of criticism, should have no right to comment on certain opinions and criticisms of recent times and to declare by majority resolution: we are not on these positions, I must protest against it, because we are not a discussion club, but a political fighting party that must have certain basic views"[10] Kautsky added to this concession to democratic views when, from 1900, he took the view that there must be a "competition of different views" in the Party. In other words, instead of a majority position of the Party there should be co-existence of various positions.

“Mass Party” and the loosening of admission criteria

When the SAPD was founded in Gotha in 1875, the statutes still required members to actively support the party. Around the turn of the century, the opposition between the opportunist and revolutionary wings of social democracy on this question of the statutes became apparent. According to the opportunists the SPD must become a "people's party" that is "open to everyone," because the greatest number of votes is the ultimate goal. The party must therefore not behave like a “sect". The revisionists opposed any adherence to the earlier membership criteria.

One characteristic of the revisionists' demand was for admission criteria as weak as possible or no admission criteria at all. From their point of view, a mass party could and must accept more and more people without active cooperation and without deeper inner conviction. Against the attempt to define the membership criteria more strictly," [Auer] rejected the proposal made by delegates at the Party congress in Mainz as early as 1900 to strengthen the first paragraph of the statutes of the Social Democratic Party by requiring participation in Party work and membership of a Party organisation upon joining the Party. Such demands, Auer claimed, were likely to repel the best people who called themselves Social Democrats from the Party because of the danger of police persecution, etc. "[11] According to the revisionists, active cooperation was no longer necessary. In the case of a mass party that was only geared towards great election successes, one could simply declare one's agreement without actively participating. In reality, the parliamentary focus of the Party's activity led to passivity in the Party's "everyday life" and to the softening of its programme. In the statutes of the SPD, all passages about active cooperation were deleted at the Mainz Party Congress in 1900. No more was said about membership dues - until 1905 there was only talk of permanent "support" through donations.

In addition, the revisionists objected that there was a danger that lists of membership (the SPD had about 385,000 members in 1905) could fall into the hands of the police. For this reason, the statutes of Jena 1905 did not stipulate that every member should participate in "practical work". The danger that the police could proceed repressively against the Party was to some extent exaggerated in order not to oblige the members to participate in the activities.[12] This means that from the turn of the century the Party no longer demanded that members actively participate in Party work. Only a “verbal” commitment to the programme and financial support were required.[13] While in Germany at the turn of the century the question of active cooperation and its definition in the statutes took place against the background of the decline of the Party, this debate took place, as we will see below, in a different context at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903.

Questioning the very essence of the party...

At the same time, the revisionists in the SPD also began to write articles for bourgeois newspapers. Also Party members put themselves forward for official administrative offices in the state- e.g. the SPD member Lindemann ran for the mayor's office in Stuttgart. During the election campaign, he did not present any of the Social Democratic demands.[14] Until then, the party had refused to allow SPD members to hold public, state-bearing offices. Now the revisionists also pleaded for the state budgets to be approved for budget items that corresponded to the interests of the workers (e.g. education, social insurance). Even though this was not yet advocated at the national level for the Reichstag, there were SPD deputies in some parts of Germany (such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) who supported the budgets of the bourgeois government.[15]

While some voices in the Party supported stronger organisational centralisation, others called for a "federation of associations". Vollmar even warned that a centralised form of organisation would copy the "organisation of the state bureaucracy”.

Behind the deputies’ claim to "autonomy" from the Party and for federalism, one could see in reality the abandonment of the SPD's programmatic positions as a workers' party.[16] All these small steps mentioned above on different levels were far more than a "failure of the leaders", as Rosa Luxemburg emphasised: rather they expressed the process of integration of the Party apparatus into the state. 

Until 1899, the SPD was always confronted with the danger of repression through bans and restrictions on the membership and functioning of the Party (until 1899 there could be no contact between the Party sections). Since 1899, this fetter had fallen due to the abolition of the “liaison commandment” (prohibition of any contact between parts of the Party). Because this process of integration of the Party apparatus into the state was most strongly pushed forward by the MPs, the parliamentary fraction once again advocated the control of the Party executive board by the Reichstag fraction, as it had done at the Haller and Erfurt Party Congress in 1890/1891.[17] Engels opposed such measures.

Waning of theoretical efforts

This revisionism was accompanied by a neglect of theoretical work. Luxemburg had already denounced theoretical weakening in her text "Stagnation and Progress in Marxism" (1903). Also Clara Zetkin had reported on September 11, 1899 in a letter to Karl Kautsky that "there is no lively interest in the discussion of fundamental questions among the masses of our party comrades".[18] How little value was placed on theory at the level of the "leading party functionaries" is shown by the selection criteria and the orientation for their work. The following elements were demanded: "Accurate expression, iron energy, tenacious perseverance in the implementation of decisions made..., and at the same time calm and level-headedness... "[19] The willingness and efforts for theoretical elaboration was not even mentioned. And Heine turned against the "emphasis on the theoretical" because it is a "fundamental error of our German social democracy". His focus was above all the "concern for the present". "The main thing is that we grow. This is class struggle. The other things will be catered for by the future.[20] The refusal to learn the lessons of the past and to focus only on the present was an essential feature of revisionism. This was accompanied by a deadening of the party gatherings themselves. Thus “lukewarmness and indolence” in the party was diagnosed and criticized.[21]

Resistance against the rise of revisionism

At the Party congresses around the turn of the century, the struggle of the forces that wanted to fight against the rise of revisionism increased. At the Dresden Party Congress of 1903, for example, the following resolution was presented: "The Party Congress condemns in the strongest terms revisionist efforts to change our tactics, which had been granted and crowned with victory and based on the class struggle, in the sense that instead of conquering political power by overcoming our opponents, a policy of concessions to the existing order of things takes place. The consequence of such a revisionist tactic would be that from a party that works towards the quickest possible transformation of the existing bourgeois into the socialist social order, i.e. revolutionary in the best sense of the word, a party would emerge that is content with reforming bourgeois society. Therefore, in contrast to the revisionist aspirations existing in the party, the Party Congress is convinced that class differences are not diminishing, but constantly intensifying, and it declares:
1) that the Party rejects the responsibility for the political and economic conditions based on the capitalist mode of production and that it therefore refuses any granting of means suitable to keep the ruling class in government;
2. that, according to the Kautsky resolution of the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1900, social democracy cannot seek a share of the power to govern within bourgeois society.

In addition, the Congress condemns any attempt to cover up the ever-increasing class antagonisms that exist, in order to facilitate a leaning toward bourgeois parties."[22]

This resolution was tabled by Bebel, Kautsky and Singer and adopted by 288 votes to 11. Many revisionists who had no courage within the Party to vote against the majority voted hypocritically in favour, only later to defend their positions all the more resolutely. The Party Congresses of 1898-1903 show that parts of the Party had started to fight, i.e. the Party was not yet in decline without opposing forces. The Executive Committee, to which proposals and motions for the fight against the revisionists were submitted by the left wing of the party, increasingly tried to avoid the issue. In the summer of 1904, the leadership issued a special statement with the "urgent request to suspend all 'intra-party disputes in the name of unity'". At the Dresden Party Congress, as Paul Frölich reported in his biography of Rosa Luxemburg, on the one hand revisionism had been verbally rejected, but at the same time a fierce and perfidious attack against Franz Mehring was launched at the Party Congress. One can assume that this attack against Mehring was also incited by the revisionists as a kind of counter-offensive, since Mehring belonged to the camp around Rosa Luxemburg at that time.[23] Lenin denounced the "considerate" and "yielding" way in which the SPD dealt with the revisionists in his pamphlet One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. [24]

Does revisionism fade away or does it have to be fought energetically?

Even though this rejection of government participation and budget approval had initially defied the revisionists, the Executive Committee wanted the revisionists to continue working in the ranks of the Party, even though they clearly undermined and abandoned the programme. Many forces underestimated the danger of revisionism. This reflects the permanent pressure of bourgeois ideology to undermine theoretical gains. Many considered it merely a temporary and not life-threatening phenomenon that could be lived with in a "pluralistic, democratic debate" among "equal" voices. Victor Adler explained: "After all, it is no misfortune that we have two currents in the party; the main thing is only that the other (revisionist) remains pretty much in the minority. "[25] Kautsky believed from 1903 onwards that the danger of revisionism was averted, for example, by the resolution of the Dresden Party Congress quoted above. "Theoretical revisionism as a political factor has been buried" at the Dresden Party Congress, he believed.[26] After Kautsky had tolerated and behaved benevolently towards his former bosom friend Bernstein for years, he cherished hope for him, as his speech at the Lübeck Party Congress in 1901 showed: "Bernstein reminded us that he worked as editor of the Social Democrat for ten years. Yes, for ten years he worked for the paper, to our joy and for our benefit, and I wish nothing more eagerly that he returns to this tradition (...) May he renew the old traditions". [27] There were divergent views among the left on the way in which revisionism should be fought. Bebel conveyed to Kautsky the view that opportunism would die a “natural death”. "What crushes revisionism is the internal and external development of Germany, which destroys all its illusions”.[28]  This shows how much even Bebel was mistaken in analysing the character of revisionism. While on the one hand there were forces in the Party that proposed resolutions against revisionism, on the other hand some of the same forces slowed down or blocked a radicalisation of the struggle. "A motion supported by Kautsky, Luxemburg, Zetkin, among others, to put the question of the general strike on the agenda of the next Party Congress, was rejected by a very large majority”[29].

The chains of centrism

The struggle against revisionism was thus made extremely difficult by the emergence of a centrist current that conciliated toward revisionism.[30]

Karl Kautsky personified this trend. He took a stand against revisionism for a time after Rosa Luxemburg's arrival in Germany in 1898, but gradually sneaked away from this struggle. First of all, he had only reacted after Rosa Luxemburg had "whipped him forward", so to speak. He was reluctant to speak up against his old friend Bernstein, and then began to slowly sabotage the struggle against revisionism.

The comparison between the role of Kautsky, who was regarded as the great authority of marxism after Engels’ death, and Plekhanov, who played an essential role in the spreading of marxism and the workers' movement in Russia, is revealing. Plekhanov openly denounced ‘Mr Bernstein’, but Kautsky was reluctant to take a stand; he made theoretical statements, but looked down on "organisational questions" and he increasingly avoided confrontation with the revisionists. Even if his special personal relationship with Bernstein contributed to holding him back, he distinguished himself above all through his lack of willingness to fight. Instead, he advocated reconciliation with the revisionists and expressed the hope that Bernstein could be brought back on the right course. When Bernstein was attacked at the Party Congress in Hanover in 1899 and in subsequent Party Congresses, Kautsky argued that Bernstein should not be excluded from the Party, as this was only possible with members who were "dishonourable, insult the party or contravene Party decisions. Bernstein does neither one thing nor the other. His attitude is not one of decisive opposition, but of general fuzziness. One cannot force anyone to be consistent."[31] This attitude of whitewashing and downplaying the fact that Bernstein rejected the goal of overthrowing capitalism weakened the determination of the left and strengthened the danger of the revisionists. The devastating role of centrism was to have serious repercussions during the years before the war but also after 1914, as it caused an enormous weakening of revolutionary work in the form of the USPD founded in 1917. Kautsky and the centrists obstructed a larger gathering of left forces because they watered down the antagonisms.[32] With the revisionists and reformists, there was "normally no conflict of interests, no class antagonism, but merely a difference of opinion about the best way to achieve the common goal."[33] Lenin, who recognized Kautsky's character and real role only late, wrote in 1914: "Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote long ago that Kautsky had the 'servility of the theorist', the creepiness, more simply, the creepiness before the majority of the party, before opportunism.” [34]

The breach over the struggles in Russia in 1905

After the first wildcat strikes in Pennsylvania in 1900, Belgium in 1902, Holland in 1903, Hungary in 1904 and many other countries, the revolutionary struggles in Russia in 1905 for the first time produced a new form of struggle - the workers’ councils.[35]

Under the influence of these events, criticism grew stronger, especially in German Social Democracy and later also in the Netherlands, of the almost exclusive focus on parliamentary elections and the unionised struggle. "For a year now, the Reichstag elections have been the keynote and buzzword in all our actions. In this way, the masses are systematically fascinated by the constant repetitions of the election propaganda; they are involuntarily made to have exaggerated hopes, as if the election results meant a kind of new era in the political history of Germany, a turning point in the fate of the class struggle (...) Our party life as the expression of the overall interests of the proletarian class struggle has its manifold sides, which must not be neglected for any temporary tactical purpose. We have tasks that are of a permanent nature, that extend beyond the forthcoming Reichstag elections and must not be postponed under any circumstances"[36] This meant swimming against the stream in the Party, because the spectacular increase in members and votes for the SPD at first sight seemed to confirm the policy of "parliamentary tactics only". For the period between 1878 and 1906, the number of members can only be estimated. Before the Socialist Law it was about 35,000; after the end of the Socialist Law (1890) about 75,000; around the turn of the century about 100,000, after which it rose sharply, but only slowly during the economic crises of 1907-1909 and 1912/1913.[37]

Development of membership 1905-1914

In 1905 the Leipziger Volkszeitung criticised the Party for being too strongly oriented towards parliamentary struggle, saying there was a danger that social democracy would remain a "mere electoral mechanism".

"The more our organisations grow, comprising hundreds of thousands and millions, the more centralism inevitably grows. But the small amount of intellectual and political content, initiative and decision that the organisations develop in the everyday life of the Party is thus transferred entirely to the small circles at the top: to the executive committees of the associations, the district councils and the parliamentarians. What remains for the great majority of the members are the duties to pay dues, to distribute flyers, to vote and to campaign for the elections, to go knocking at the doors and collect newspaper subscriptions and so forth."[38]

While among the revisionists the feeling of the "invincibility" of the Party increased as a result of these quantitative successes, many workers also had the feeling that the Party was becoming more and more powerful thanks to its many seats in parliament. In reality life in the Party itself had on the one hand become increasingly shallow, while on the other there was an ever- closer fusion between the trade union apparatus, parliamentarians and the state apparatus. "Between social democracy and the bourgeois world, a spiritual osmosis was created through which toxins of bourgeois decomposition could freely penetrate the blood circulation of the proletarian party body.” [39] 

Denunciation of revisionism

"The revisionists constantly attack the programme, repeatedly violate the party's principles, but always avoiding a clear and unambiguous definition of their position. (...) [The revisionists] have been fooling around with all the basic principles of the social democratic world views. Some have thrown historical materialism overboard, others the theory of the law of value. The concept of class struggle - they said - needed to be complemented, Marx's theory of crisis, the theory of ground rent has in their eyes become questionable. (...) In German social democracy, we have become in part terribly indifferent to political matters, because the opportunity to develop political actions is so small. This circumstance benefits the revisionists. Despite all their defeats, they have defended their territory, because the organised workers were all too often indifferent to what happened in the editorial offices, in the parliaments, in the city councils. (...) This need for peace then led to the flourishing of revisionism in some Party organs, although the members of the Party section that has to decide on the organ is far removed from revisionism... In a sense, a party within the Party has emerged, a clique has developed. (...) There is a plan behind this. (...) Clique politics were pursued against the will of the overwhelming majority of the party. Ten years ago [1898] the political-theoretical struggle for the Party's principles was started at the Stuttgart Party Congress. In this struggle the revisionists suffered defeat after defeat. Now it is no longer necessary to defend the theoretical principles, but to decide in Nuremberg whether the Party may be raped by the clique. We need to put an unbreakable stop to the tricks of those who want to trample on the formal and moral law in the Party. "[40] Hermann Duncker also pointed out that a power apparatus had developed in the party which became more and more autonomous.  "But the masses are paralysed by the civil servants. Like a noose, the official and functionary body strangles the masses. It is the terrible dark side of the bureaucracy. “[41]

The right wing united

As early as the early 1890s, the right had begun to build closer ties among themselves. Engels spoke of "special bonds", even of a kind of gang.[42] On 6 October 1903 Zetkin wrote to Bebel "The revisionists 'work' apparently according to a masterplan and according to an agreed scheme (...) We are facing a total conspiracy (...) Looking away with silence and trying to cover up and letting grass grow over it would amount to tarnishing the Party with the stigma of this deepest corruption. "[43] At the Dresden Party Congress in 1903, the revisionists held a special conference.[44] Contact between certain circles of the bourgeoisie and leading forces of the parliamentary fraction was also increasingly intensified. "Under the cover of ‘education’ and ‘general human culture’, social democratic parliamentarians met with bourgeois journalists on beautiful winter evenings to ‘recover from the hardships of the profession’ and the ‘political talking shop’."[45] 

Since the turn of the century, leading opportunists had rallied around Heine and Vollmar, among others, who met regularly for "beer evenings" or "Thursday evenings". The increasing number of meetings between representatives of the revisionists and certain capitalist circles had not escaped the attention of the revolutionary forces. Bebel wrote to Karl Liebknecht on 10.11.1908 that these beer evenings "brought together the entire revisionist clique”.[46] In addition to this rapprochement of the right in separate meetings of all kinds (amongst each other in the party or with certain circles of the bourgeoisie), a smear campaign in the SPD was also fanned against the forces fighting against degeneration. Every voice, whether from the ranks of the SPD itself or from abroad, which critically dealt with the revisionists and the Party leadership, was combatted with great determination and in a very perfidious manner.[47] We have documented this in detail in an earlier article. [48]

The SPD - stronghold of international revisionism

The revisionism that had emerged at that time had reached particularly strong proportions and a special significance in Germany due to the charisma and outstanding position of German Social Democracy, which had more than one million members. For a long time, Kautsky was almost regarded as the "Pope of Marxism," and Bernstein appeared internationally as the "mouthpiece” of revisionism. Revisionism was by no means limited to Germany, however: in France, for example, Millerand had joined the French government which contained Gaston, Marquis de Galliffet, the butcher of the Paris Communards in 1871. In Italy, the reformist movement around Turati and the revue La Critica Sociale represented the majority at the Imola Congress in 1902.

The 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party 1903 and the SPD

In other articles of our press, we have dealt in detail with the background and the course of the 2nd Party Congress of the RSDLP[49]. 

As already explained in more detail in this article, it was a time of approaching historical upheavals, the transition from the ascendant to the decadent phase of capitalism. One feature of this process was that the conditions for the existence or formation of a mass party were slowly disintegrating. While in a mass party there could be relatively passive members, a party in the decadent phase of capitalism demanded more active participation than ever before. It was no longer enough to be mainly an election campaigner; instead, the party was to become a numerically small but combative party, dependent on the active commitment of all its members. Even though Lenin could not yet feel this upheaval so clearly during the discussion of the statutes at the 2nd Party Congress in 1903, this change hovered above the party and in this respect the debate anticipated the debate on the new conditions for the party's role that arose barely 20 years later from 1919 onwards[50].

Democratism and hostility to centralisation in the SPD

When the opportunist Wolfgang Heine advocated a defence of local autonomy, Lenin pointed out the parallels in thinking between people like Heine and the Mensheviks. "Wolfgang Heine wrote in an article printed in April 1904 by Sozialistischen Monatshefte against the interference of the ‘appointed authorities’, i.e. the party executive, in the activities of the social democratic organizations. Heine played himself up as a pioneer of the ‘democratic principle’ and rebelled against the allegedly dangerous ‘tendency towards bureaucratisation and centralisation of the party’ (Wolfgang Heine, “Demokratische Randbemerkungen zum Fall Göhre”. In Sozialistische Monatshefte, 1904, No. 4, p. 281-291). Heine borrowed his most important conclusions from Martov's brochure Again in the Minority and his speech at the Second Party Congress in order to play the local party institutions off against the central ones and to warn the party against a ‘doctrinal policy’ in which ‘all important political decisions would be taken from one central office’. He opposed the notion of discipline in the first place. Heine opposed ‘the creation of an all-encompassing large organisation, as centralised as possible, a tactic, a theory.  These warnings against the degradation, ‘deadening’, ‘bureaucratisation’ of the free ideological struggle and the demand for ‘freedom of criticism’ as well as for ‘absolutely individual ideological creativeness’ were the concentrated expression of individualism ..."[51] Within the SPD, the effort to abandon centralisation and undermine the authority of Party Congresses expressed a clear revision and regression. The position adopted at the beginning of the 1890s at the Haller/Erfurt Congress that the sovereignty of the Congress should be implemented by the central bodies of the Congress and that these should be binding on all Party members and instances was rejected here. On the other hand, the insistence on the submission to Party decisions in the ranks of the RSDLP meant a clear step forward from the previously prevailing circle spirit. The revisionists in the SPD and the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP blew the same horn

Reactions in Germany in 1903 to the conflict in the RSDLP: a dispute between people or about principles?

A few weeks after the 2nd Party Congress of the RSDLP, the SPD Party Congress took place, unhindered by any harassment from the police in Dresden.[52] In December 1903, the SPD press reported on this Party Congress for the first time. Half a year later Rosa Luxemburg's criticism of the Bolsheviks' position "Organisational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" appeared[53]. When Lenin answered her a short time later, Kautsky as editor of the Neue Zeit refused to publish his article.[54] The "news of the Russian dispute" would be detrimental to the sympathies of the German Social Democrats for the Russian Social Democrats in both directions. "It is a ‘family dispute’ that has no ‘international significance’, Lenin has begun this ‘sinister dispute’."[55] Kautsky described the dispute between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks as a "personal dispute" as a result of "purely personal hostilities" between the leaders of both fractions. (Kautsky, Letter to Axelrod 14.2.1905). He further claimed "We do not yet know your Lenin, and we cannot believe him just like that "[56] As Lenin later stated, Vorwärts did not bring out a single article with an objective assessment of the Bolsheviks' activity, while in Neue Zeit Mensheviks and Trotsky wrote several disparaging articles.[57] From Kautsky's point of view, the question of party membership was "not a matter of principle". In the columns of the Menshevik Iskra he claimed that the "majority must not impose its will on the minority", but must agree with it on the basis of "the greatest possible mutual concessions". Thus, the position of the Erfurt Party Congress was rejected, according to which Party Congress resolutions were binding and thus minorities had to accept and implement majority resolutions. 

Party support in the SPD for the Mensheviks

Another reason why the SPD party leadership and the wing around Kautsky avoided taking position on the fight in the RSDLP was that the SPD was actually taking sides with the Mensheviks. "If”, Kautsky wrote, "I had to choose between Martov and Lenin, I would speak out in favour of Martov on the basis of all our experience in Germany”. [58] Kautsky intended to publish an article against the Bolsheviks in Iskra. Overall, there were hardly any voices from the SPD supporting the position of the Bolsheviks at that time.

The SPD afflicted by democratism and anti-centralisation tendencies

In addition, Kautsky's profound divergence with the Bolsheviks on organisational issues became apparent: he believed that the principle of autonomy, to which he attributed the successes of German social democracy in the years of the Socialist Law, should become the determining organisational principle of the RSDLP. As developed earlier, a certain autonomy of local Party units was inevitable at the time of the Socialist Law, but since the end of the Socialist Law and especially after the abolition of any restrictions on the functioning of the SPD at the turn of the century, there was no justification for these protective measures of local sections in the form of a certain autonomy from the Party as a whole. In reality, this was a localist, anti-centralisation view that was an expression of the prevailing federalist conceptions in the Second International.

These various aspects (an attempt to play down or conceal divergences, taking sides with the Mensheviks, presenting the question of principles as a dispute between persons, rejection of centralisation, rejection of the point of the statutes demanding active participation in the party) illustrate the regression of parts of the SPD at that time.

At the same time, the statutes of the other parties of the Second International were no clearer regarding membership and centralisation.[59]

The different "objective" conditions between Germany and Russia

While the majority in the SPD did not understand what was at stake at the RSDLP's 2nd Party Congress, and while parts of them had taken position openly for the Mensheviks, one could argue that this perception of the struggle in Russia was shaped by the different objective conditions and thus in a way distorted.

In fact, there were great differences between the situations of the two parties. In Germany, there were signs of a political decline of the party, as evidenced, among other things, by a degenerating Reichstag fraction. The feeble executive committee, which was "pushed" only by the initiative "from below", by the mass of party members, showed increasingly clear revisionist traits and a growing integration into the state. Therefore, in those years Rosa Luxemburg placed the emphasis on mass activity, "initiative from below", "spontaneity", vigilance, independent thinking of the base. She rightly showed a "mistrust" towards a powerful leadership which was increasingly acting in an autonomous manner. In Russia, on the other hand, there was no comparable "oppressive weight" of a central organ, but a struggle where the circle spirit had to be banished by the party spirit and the Congress resolutions had to be respected at all cost. 

While revolutionaries in Russia always struggled with much more drastic repression under the conditions of illegality under the Tsar, and while this illegality did not prevent the Party from making the question of membership and active cooperation a central issue at the 2nd Party Congress in 1903, the objection of the "veteran" SPD leader, Auer, that a commitment to active participation could lead to exposure to the state, was above all an opportunistic excuse, a concession to bourgeois democracy and its pernicious mechanisms.

Implementation of party congress resolutions by the central organ, or rule of the circle spirit?

In our article in IR118[60] we dealt in detail with the divergences between Lenin and Luxemburg and criticised the shortcomings of Rosa Luxemburg's approach. In her article "Organisational Question of Russian Social Democracy" she warned, among other things, against "ultra-centralism"; the party leadership should not be "endowed with such absolute powers" as "Lenin does".[61]In his reply to Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin stressed that he did not defend "ruthless centralism", but the elementary party discipline violated by the Mensheviks. He did not regard the Central Committee as the "real active core of the party", but only defended its statutory rights. He only demanded that the Central Committee represent the direction of the Party majority. Lenin wrote: "our controversy has principally been over whether the Central Committee and Central Organ should represent the trend of the majority of the Party Congress, or whether they should not.” [62]… "she prefers to declaim against mechanical subordination of the part to the whole, against slavish submission, blind obedience, and other such bogeys. I am very grateful to Comrade Luxemburg for explaining the profound idea that slavish submission is very harmful to the Party, but I should like to know: does the comrade consider it normal for supposed party central institutions to be dominated by the minority of the Party Congress? — can she imagine such a thing? — has she ever seen it in any party?

[The Comrade] prefers to grumble against the mechanical subjugation of a part to the whole, against cadaver obedience, against blind subordination and similar ghosts. I am very grateful to comrade Luxemburg for the presentation of the most witty idea that cadaver obedience is very harmful to the party, but I would like to know: does the comrade consider it normal, can she allow it, has she ever seen in any party that in the central authorities, which call themselves party authorities, the minority of the party congress can dominate?” Lenin also replied that "(...)  the time is past when a Party institution could be supplanted by a private circle". [63]

The construction of the organisation - a “spontaneous” mirror of the dynamics in the class or a conscious effort?

In view of the experience with the crushing and paralysing weight of the German party leadership, against which a mobilisation of "the base" was necessary, Luxemburg concluded that "the proletarian army recruits itself only in the struggle and only in the struggle does it become clear about the tasks of the struggle. (...) The great masses must act in their own way, be able to unfold their mass energy, their energy, they must act as masses, act, develop passion, courage and determination."[64] While Rosa Luxemburg was right in 1905 in her analysis of the significance of the mass strike movement and the inner driving force, the spontaneity, of the class, it must be emphasised that the initiative of the class alone is not enough. In order to carry out a revolution successfully, a revolutionary organisation is indispensable, but it does not come about by the spontaneity of the masses alone. It is the result of years, even decades, of tough struggle in which positions and principles must be worked out and defended. Even if Luxemburg agreed to this necessity, her emphasis, marked by experience, especially in Germany, was on the fact that the great mass of party members had to push the "leadership". "The masses must come to the fore in order to push the party's ship forward, then they can confidently look to the future.”[65] And she feared, in the light of German experience, that too strong a “centralist” leadership would only lead to the victory of opportunism. But the roots of opportunism lay not only in bourgeois parliamentarism, whose weight in Germany was much more overwhelming than in Russia. In other words, the dispute between Luxemburg and Lenin was about the question of how the organisation should be built and what the relationship between spontaneity and consciousness in the revolutionary movement was. The revolutionary organisation cannot simply be the "mirror" of the class itself, and its role must not depend on the degree and extent of spontaneity of the working class. The emphasis on the need for spontaneity in Rosa Luxemburg after the mass strike first appeared in 1905, and for the initiative and vigilance of the broad Party masses against a fickle or opportunistic leadership, in whose hands centralisation actually became a tool for strangling the activity of the Party base, was entirely correct, but it must not be placed on the same footing as building the party.[66] There is a danger here of blurring the distinction between class and party.

In a sense, the construction of the organisation must "precede" the action of the class, because revolutionary organisations must not wait until the class is “ready and mature enough" to build the organisation, because the maturation and ability of the class to radicalise also depends on the intervention of the revolutionaries themselves.

Perhaps here we can see deeper weaknesses in the view of Rosa Luxemburg, who, while carrying out a very combative and lucid exposure of the direction being followed by the revisionists of and the strangulation policy of the SPD leadership, neglected the component of active efforts to build the organisation. Even if this was only one aspect of the revolutionaries' weaknesses, as we will see below, there may have been signs of what the GCF diagnosed decades later:

"History was to masterfully confirm Lenin's position. Without going into the examination of other multiple factors of the Russian situation, we can affirm that, if in October 1917 the proletarian revolution triumphed, it is due above all to the realisation of this decisive condition, to the existence of this party that Lenin tirelessly forged for 20 years. On the other hand, 1918 in Germany was to bring the defeat of the revolution, one of the causes of which, and not the least, in spite of the magnificent and heroic combativeness of the masses, was the late formation of the party, hence its inexperience, its hesitation and its inability to lead the revolution to victory. This was the price and the experimental invalidation of Rosa Luxemburg's theory of the spontaneity of the revolutionary movement.”[67]

The leading apparatus feels threatened by the mass strike and the spontaneity of the working class.

Particularly after the 1905 mass strikes in Russia, the SPD and trade union leaders felt that the workers' own initiative, the unfolding of mass strikes, the drawing together of the forces of the working class into workers’ councils, etc., and the lessons and orientations to be drawn from them, especially from Rosa Luxemburg in "Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions," and Pannekoek in "Tactical Differences in the Labour Movement," would become a threat to them. In their view, everything that came from Russia - mass strikes, workers’ councils, the Russian party - especially the Bolsheviks - was not only viewed with suspicion, but also rejected with great arrogance. 

A lack of Fraction work....

In the history of the revolutionary movement there had been setbacks, repression, dispersion, and also the actual dissolution of the Communist League and the First International. The revolutionary movement had also gained experience in the struggle against opportunism, anarchism and adventurism. But never before had a party degenerated, and therefore the revolutionary movement had no experience in the defence of the organisation against it.

How to fight degeneration?

First of all, it was a great challenge to recognise this danger of degeneration. Although Marx, Engels and Bebel had already exposed the first opportunist and revisionist signs in the 1880s, when revisionism took on a more solid form in the 1890s and was virtually elaborated into a programme by Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg was the first to put this development into a deeper theoretical-programmatic framework with her text "Social Reform or Revolution". During that period she most clearly exposed the incompatibility of the revisionist orientation and marxism. At the same time, there was a need to analyse the deeper causes and the challenge posed by the imminent upheaval in the development of capitalism itself, whose ascending phase was coming to an end, and where the first signs of decadence could be seen.

The respective upheavals, such as the gradual integration of the trade union apparatus into the state apparatus and the subjugation of the Party to the trade unions,[68] the emergence of the workers' councils in Russia in 1905 and the new phenomenon of the mass strike, and the identification of a large part of the Party apparatus with the parliamentarians at the head with the state, the blunting of the Party by democratism and the increasing erosion of the willingness to fight - all these slowly recognisable signs were part of a far-reaching and inter-connected transformation. But the revolutionary forces at the time did not succeed in putting these phenomena into a clear context.

The background was the increasing integration of the Party apparatus into the state, indeed the identification of the trade unions and the Party itself with the state. Although this process was most clearly embodied by the leaders, the parliamentary fraction and the trade union functionaries, it was not limited to a few people. That is why no quick, determined expulsion of the revisionists would have solved the problem, as it was the product of a general process of decay in which the conditions of the struggle in society as a whole changed. This could only to be felt as the germ of an idea at that time.

The other parties in the Second International were also not aware of the extent of the process of decline. Since most of the parties were blinded by the SPD's election successes, and the SPD was therefore almost glorified internationally as well, the awareness of this dynamic emerged only very late. In Russia you could find some of the biggest admirers of the SPD.[69]

Nevertheless, the most determined forces had declared an unyielding fight against this process of decline. The clashes at the Hanover Party Congress of 1899 to the Dresden Party Congress of 1903 reflect this determination.

Fraction work before the war

Germany was a main battlefield in the international struggle between revisionism and the defenders of marxism. While we have dealt here in more detail with the reaction in the SPD to developments in the RSDLP, one must actually take into account the situation in the other countries in order to gain a more comprehensive insight. For reasons of space, we have not done so here. However, even during these years of debate on the organisation question, it became clear that a major difference between the RSDLP and the SPD (and essentially the same was true of the other parties in Europe) existed already at that time. With the Bolsheviks and Lenin, a determined pole had crystallised in the RSDLP, one that defended respect for party decisions, whereas in the SPD there were mainly individual voices against opportunism, like that of Rosa Luxemburg or partly still that of Bebel, but they did not appear as a strong, unified force and did not become an effective counter-pole. The Bolsheviks and the left forces in Germany did not differ in their willingness to fight, their intransigence and their lack of compromise. But the left forces in the SPD lacked unity, cohesion and the capacity for joint action.

After revisionism clearly appeared in 1890 at the Haller and Erfurt Party Congress, and it was still resolutely exposed by the left forces and partly kept under control, some comrades of the left wing in the SPD still felt around 1900 that the revisionists had been sufficiently exposed at the Hanover Party Congress in 1899 and in Dresden in 1903. But while revisionism had been officially denounced in party resolutions and rejected by a majority, in reality it had penetrated ever deeper into the SPD through the back door, so to speak.

As mentioned above, the events of 1905, when on the one hand the mass strike of the workers in Russia announced the new conditions of class struggle in decadent capitalism, and on the other hand the aggravation of the danger of war, demonstrated by the war between Japan and Russia and later by mounting tensions between the European powers, were to make clear that increasingly rampant revisionism could only be pushed back by an opposition that had concentrated and fused its forces.[70]

Despite this development, however, neither within the SPD nor at the international level were sufficient steps taken to weld the internationalist and anti-revisionist forces together. At the same time, Lenin remained relatively unknown outside the scope of the Russian party. "This fractional work of Lenin was carried out only within the Russian party, without any attempt to take it to the international level. It is enough to read his speeches at the various congresses to be convinced that this work remained completely unknown outside the Russian sphere.”  [71]

Joint action against the threat of war but not in defence of the organisation

At the Congress of the Second International, held in Stuttgart in 1907, where it was accompanied by a 60,000 strong demonstration against the war, a resolution was adopted against the threat of war, which was jointly drafted by Lenin, Luxemburg and Martov and went beyond the original, hesitant one drafted by Bebel. This testified to the determination of the left, internationalist forces to work together to counter the threat of war across all national borders. But in the parties as a whole, resistance to the danger of war was not further intensified. The same was repeated later at the Congresses in Copenhagen in 1910 and Basel in 1912. In retrospect, one must say that the cooperation of the left forces took place almost exclusively at the Congresses and through these proclamations against the danger of war; in the struggle against revisionism and around the organisation question they remained largely fragmented.

While the growing danger of war demanded more than just joint action and resolutions at congresses and, the divergences on the organisation question prevented the left forces from moving closer together. This was all the more tragic since, as mentioned above, the right and the revisionists had long since moved closer together.

Paul Frölich reports in his autobiography that there were only contacts among each other in individual cities, but there were no cross-city efforts towards a common approach, a welding, let alone centralisation of the opposition within the SPD.[72] One of the lessons learned from the struggle for the organisation at the Hague Congress more than 30 years earlier had been that Bakunin's conspiracy could only be fended off by the decisive action of the General Council of the First International. A loose cooperation is not enough: a solid, well-organised front has to be built up. It’s true that there were approaches towards this at the 1910 Party Congress in Magdeburg or the 1911 Party Congress in Jena, when left-wing delegates came together for special consultations.[73] The left were also more strongly represented in some cities, especially in the editorial offices of the many newspapers and magazines of the SPD, but there were no steps towards a common press. In 1913, after they had been muzzled one after the other, Rosa Luxemburg and other left forces resigned from the Leipziger Volkszeitung, and from December 1913 published Sozialdemokratische Korrespondenz (Social Democratic Correspondence). "The three of us, and I particularly want to emphasise this, are of the opinion that the Party is going through an internal crisis, much, much more difficult than at the time when revisionism was emerging. The word may be hard, but it is my conviction that the Party threatens to fall into decay if it continues like this. In such a situation, there is only one salvation for a revolutionary party: the sharpest, most ruthless self-criticism imaginable. That's why I think the role of the Leipziger Volkszeitung, in accordance with its previous tradition, is that it has to pursue these tasks day after day now." [74]

Looking back, one can see that before the war no network of left forces had been established that could have represented a solid organisational counter-pole and bridge in the dramatic period after 1914, when the party leadership had betrayed internationalism. As a result, the left forces had not learned to cooperate as an independent fraction within the SPD and within the Second International as a whole. In short, while on the one hand the Bolsheviks within the RSDLP fought a relentless struggle against all kinds of opportunist and liquidationist forces, gaining years of important fighting experience for the organisation and also learning how to deal with divergences without the organisation breaking apart, the left forces within social democracy in Germany did not acquire a comparable fund of experience.

In the SPD, "working groups" were formed, but they could never represent the fighting pole that the Bolsheviks had achieved for years within the RSDLP. The left never went beyond some small steps here and there. 

From autumn 1910, "Karl-Marx-Klubs" were founded in some southern German cities, in which left forces came together. The right-wing forces mobilised immediately against their existence. In Stuttgart in 1910, the left succeeded in bringing the Social Democratic Association under their influence. Above all the writings and the appearance of the group around Rosa Luxemburg leaves no doubt that they fought fearlessly, but this resistance remained fragmented and its force of attraction as a counter-pole remained too weak. Certainly, the fact that the SPD had more than a million members favoured the inertia of the masses, who had never acquired this fighting spirit anyway. As a result of this insufficiently discernible counter-pole, there was not a clear demarcation from the centre and the revisionists. While the dogma of unity was still being put forward in the public sphere, the Party was in fact already being torn apart internally. But the internationalist, revolutionary counter-pole could not be distinguished clearly enough, either in the Party or in the class as a whole. In the course of the war, especially in 1917 and 1918, the result was that many workers could not see clearly enough the difference between the SPD, the USPD, and the Spartacists and other revolutionary left forces. In a degenerating organisation, the resistance to this degeneration also demands an independent organisation WITHIN the party, to weld together the most lucid elements and prepare the future. Because these efforts were lacking, in 1914, when it came to organising resistance in conditions of illegality, there were no adequate channels and networks of left forces to discuss, clarify and act. 

They were not prepared for illegality, although the danger of war and the consequent worsening of the conditions for the work of the revolutionaries had been recognised for years. The war also meant  that the fight against the traitors had to be put on a new level![75] The fixation on elections, on parliamentary work, i.e. the whole framework of bourgeois democracy, had led to a certain paralysis and neglect of the experience of revolutionaries from earlier struggles.[76] While the left wing had observed and denounced the increasing opportunist mire and the open rejection of principles, especially when it came to the question of war, the revolutionaries had not really consistently adjusted to this. 

As mentioned above, the left forces in the SPD at the end of the 1890s included leading figures such as Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Kautsky. It quickly became clear, however, that Kautsky wanted to avoid the fight against revisionism, and that he could only be persuaded to take a stand against Bernstein after considerable pressure from Rosa Luxemburg. After 1903-1905 he behaved in a more and more openly centrist manner, while abroad he was regarded for a long time as a theoretical leader, even as the "Pope of Marxism". The demarcation from such "theoretically" renowned, but centrist forces is a difficult undertaking. And personalities known as leaders such as Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had always gained great prestige through their appearance in parliament, proved incapable of leading a determined opposition against the revisionists.[77] Rosa Luxemburg, who resisted the revisionists most fiercely and courageously, and whose programmatic views formed the clearest antithesis to them, was often given a very enthusiastic hearing at meetings despite the whole smear campaign against her [78], but the "best", "clearest" and most well-known leaders are not enough to establish an effective opposition. Organised, joint fraction work is needed. There must be a conscious effort to unite the various forces of resistance. Rosa Luxemburg never formed an independent left current around her. She and her group failed to gather the various forces in Germany around themselves. Was it because she herself perhaps underestimated the necessity of uniting the left forces?[79] Instead, a distance was kept and, in some cases, a certain distrust prevailed among various left forces. There were several factors that played a role. We will discuss some of them below.

The danger of tail-endism

Well into the first decade of the 20th century, the SPD enjoyed a huge international reputation within the Second International, especially in Russia. German Social Democracy was "at the forefront of all social democratic parties in terms of the organisation and unity of the movement, the wealth and content of Marxist literature. "[80] Among other things, because it was the strongest mass party in terms of numbers and the greatest electoral success, it was regarded as a model. Internationally, the impressive numbers of votes here also obscured the fact that the worm was already in the Party’s bud.[81] Most parts of the 2nd International had not seen or had underestimated the SPD's process of degeneration. Experience shows that the idealisation of a part of the workers' movement is always problematic, especially when it turns into a completely uncritical tail-ending. This was partly the case on the part of the Mensheviks towards the right-wing and centrist forces in the SPD, but as mentioned above, Lenin himself was for a long time full of praise for the SPD and for Kautsky in particular. [82]

The policy of the 2nd International towards the Russian Party

We have already referred in other articles to the particularities of the conditions and functioning of the Second International, and shown that a process of decline cannot be halted in one country on its own, but requires the international union of the left forces.

On the programmatic level, there was a very big heterogeneity among the left forces - on the one hand, in the Netherlands and in Germany criticism was voiced of “parliamentarism only" and of the rottenness of the trade unions. These were questions that the revolutionaries in Russia did not particularly focus on, since in Russia itself they were not so directly confronted with the overwhelming weight of parliamentarism and trade union work.

At the organisational level, there was no International Bureau in the International until 1900, and within the 2nd International, apart from the question of war, there was almost no joint cooperation among the left forces.

When, for example, Lenin was severely attacked by the Mensheviks and also by Trotsky after 1903, the divergences between Luxemburg and Lenin certainly prevented her from defending Lenin against the insults and calumnies of the Mensheviks, Trotskyists and Social Revolutionaries. And while the SPD was whipping up a campaign against Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin did not come to her aid. Perhaps he would have behaved differently if he had known the true extent of this campaign. In short, one must speak of a lack of solidarity and an insufficient sense of belonging together among the left in the 2nd International. For example, the "left" forces in the Netherlands acted either mostly only locally or without sufficient coordination with the left voices in the SPD and the 2nd International as a whole.[83] When the struggle at the 2nd Party Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 became known in the 2nd International, the SPD proposed in 1905 that an "attempt at unification" between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks should be undertaken with the help of an "arbitration tribunal”. The Mensheviks associated the proposal of an arbitration tribunal with the hope that the majority position of the Bolsheviks could be defeated. Lenin rejected this approach and insisted that these issues should be decided by a party conference itself and not by an international arbitration tribunal, since they were political tendencies "that are accepted or rejected by the party but cannot be justified or condemned by a party arbitration court".[84] Finally, the SPD proposal of an arbitration court was dropped. Even after it was renewed by the ISB in June 1905, the Bolsheviks again rejected it for the same reasons.

In the almost decade-long confrontations between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, the SPD repeatedly pushed for "reunification" of the two wings, even though their two directions were irreconcilably opposed. 

Even when the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was carried out at the 7th RSDLP Conference in Prague in January 1912, the SPD, and above all the forces around Rosa Luxemburg, were still pushing for the reunification of the two wings.[85] They were thus explicitly opposed to Lenin's position. In March 1912, Vorwärts also published an article in which the Bolsheviks were described as usurpers and dividers. The SPD refused to publish Lenin's answer. Lenin then wrote a pamphlet in German.[86]   

The divergences between the "Left wing" in Poland and the RSDLP on the national question - an aggravating factor

Since the end of the 1890s, a divergence had arisen in the 2nd International around the question of nationalities, which was of particular importance for the relationship between the revolutionaries from Poland and Lithuania and the RSDLP, especially the Bolsheviks. The group around Rosa Luxemburg had been the first to reject the possibility of Poland's national autonomy.[87] The following years were determined by the persistence of these divergences, especially between Lenin and Luxembourg.[88] Although these divergences never prevented the Bolsheviks and the wing around Rosa Luxemburg from defending internationalism, they nevertheless acted as an obstacle in the relationship between the two sides. At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 this question was to be put on the agenda. Due to the debate about the statutes and the question of the circle spirit, however, this debate was not held at the 2nd Party Congress. 

The significance of this divergence for the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the wing around Luxemburg/Jogiches is difficult to assess - at any rate it contributed to the comrades in the SPD, who came from Poland, keeping their distance from the Bolsheviks.[89]

The weight of divergences in dealing with "questions of behaviour” and conflicts in the organisation

The relationship between the left forces from Poland and the Bolsheviks was also hampered by another factor: from 1904 Karl Radek was accused of misconduct in the Polish SDKPL; in the following years he was also accused of further minor misconduct. After the first investigation of the case - the theft of a coat from a comrade - he was expelled from the Polish party years after the crime. Since Radek now lived in Germany and was a member of the SPD, the SPD executive initiated proceedings to expel him from the SPD at the insistence of Luxemburg/Jogiches, among others; but comrades from Bremen resisted. Among them were Frölich, Knief, Pannekoek, i.e. members of the left-wing SPD wing in the Hanseatic city. They set up a commission of inquiry that "acquitted" Radek, in contrast to the SPD Party Conference. In 1913 the Russian party had also investigated Radek's case and "acquitted" him. Thus Radek was considered to be rehabilitated by the Russian party and the Bremen section (or parts of it), but excluded by the SPD leadership and the Central Committee of the Polish Party.[90] Because there was no joint action within the various parties of the Second International, and because no one knew how to proceed with contrary conclusions of investigative commissions on such issues, the relationship between Luxemburg's group, the Bremen Left, and the Bolsheviks, in particular, was made even more difficult.

 Transmission and fighting spirit...

As mentioned before, several gaps in the transmission of experience and fighting spirit had arisen in the development of social democracy:

- the lessons of the Hague Congress (1872) were not followed up;

- the generation of militants who had maintained the organisation at the time of the Socialist Law could not pass this fighting spirit on to the next generation, which was paralysed by the poison of parliamentarism and democracy;

- the lessons of the 1903 Bolshevik struggle were neither understood nor passed on.

Also as mentioned above, as revisionism and opportunism of all kinds gained more and more influence, the young forces around Rosa Luxemburg (who was only 30 years herself at the beginning of the confrontation with Bernstein in 1899) could rely on only a very few supporters. Mostly the old failed the test; the fighting spirit was already broken in many comrades

Despite its almost 40 years of existence, there were no significant basic texts on the organisational question in the SPD. Instead, it had allowed itself to be carried away and absorbed by the possibility of becoming a mass party. The experience in the struggle to defend the organisation was never synthesised and summed up in specific texts. Yet there was no shortage of texts on the history of the organisation, and as early as 1890 a proposal had been made to draw up a history of the Party.[91] But Mehring's book on the History of Social Democracy, published in 1897, or his biography of Marx, or Bebel's My Life offered remarkably few clear statements on the main lessons of the struggle for the organisation. In contrast, in his text "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" Lenin very early and quickly advocated the main lessons of the struggle in the Party. As mentioned above, apart from the criticisms of Rosa Luxemburg, this text remained almost without echo.

Paul Frölich, who had been politicised in the early 1900s and joined the party as a youth, wrote: "It almost seems to me as if there had been a gap between the active party workers who had begun to play a role during the time of the Socialist law and shortly after it was repealed and our generation. (...) We also felt that we were a new generation that looked down on the older generation with a certain cheeky pride."[92]

In 1904 at the Party Congress in Bremen a motion was proposed for the formation of proletarian youth organisations.[93] However, this was rejected due to a lack of support at the Conference. Comrades from Stuttgart called on the same Party Congress in Bremen to improve educational work in the Party and to found proletarian youth organisations.[94] But the problem could not be solved by such methods alone.

The importance of the organisation question as such was underestimated. For example, while the magazine Neue Zeit dealt with a large number of topics, it neglected dealing with fundamental organizational experiences, and in general there was a lack of sources for the organisation question.[95]

The founding of the Party school was intended to serve the education of the (leading) comrades.[96] Although many historical topics were on the agenda, the curriculum did not deal with the organisational struggles.

All in all, therefore, the organisational experiences from the period between the 1870s and 1914 were nowhere recorded in more written detail in the SPD, and the generation whose fighting spirit was still unbroken failed to pass on these experiences. [97]   

Dino

Recently, following an intervention by our militants at meeting of the No War But the Class War committee in Paris[1], where an element of the International Group of the Communist Left sat side by side on the presidium with a member of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, the IGCL commented ironically that the meeting showed that the ICC doesn’t believe a word of our analysis of the “parasitism” of the IGCL[2]. In our article Attacking the ICC: the raison d'être of the IGCL [90], we pointed out this added expression of the parasitic character of this grouping, whose fundamental objective is to attack the political organisations of the Communist Left and to undermine the development of the proletarian political milieu.

Two years ago, we wrote an article dedicated to denouncing the activities of the IGCL (formerly the “Internal Fraction of the ICC”) through the support it has been giving to an attempt to usurp the Communist Left by an adventurer named Gaizka[3], whose trajectory we have exposed. Since then, the IGCL has been multiplying its attacks against the ICC with sole aim of discrediting our organisation and sowing distrust towards it.

This is why we have decided to publish a number of articles in a “dossier” bringing together our different responses to the slanders of the IGCL: an article on the concept of political parasitism as part of the patrimony of the workers’ movement; our denunciation of political adventurism and its support from the IGCL; the revolutionary coherence of our platform; our analysis of the present phase of the decadence of capitalism, the phase of decomposition; our intervention in the world situation, in response both to war and the class struggle; or again, our position of the anarchist milieu on the question of internationalism and its betrayal. These questions are approached in the following articles:

• The marxist foundations of the notion of political parasitism and the fight against this scourge [91]

• The IGCL's pseudo-"critique" of the ICC platform - A sham analysis to discredit the ICC and its political inheritance (the Communist Left) [92]

The following to appear in due course:

• The IGCL tries to discredit the analysis and intervention of the ICC in the present period
• The IGCL’s complicity with adventurism has been verified again
• The ignoble deformations of the IGCL regarding the ICC’s characterisation of anarchism

This series of denunciations of the activities of the IGCL is needed because we can’t leave the slanders and falsifications aimed at the ICC without a reply. We would obviously have preferred to devote our forces to other activities more in line with the world situation, but we find ourselves facing a situation comparable to that the General Council of the First International, facing an internal enemy made up of Bakunin’s Alliance. Today the IGCL is such an “internal enemy” of the Communist Left

The aim of this article is not to engage in a debate on the political validity of our platform - which we are obviously always prepared to do through an honest confrontation with divergent positions - but to re-establish the reality of it by denouncing the approach of the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL) aimed exclusively at discrediting our positions, in particular by presenting them as being influenced by councilism. Such an influence would translate into an "economis", "mechanical", "fatalistic" vision for the ICC, by underestimating struggles for demands, and affecting our conception of the party and of class consciousness, and so on.

Beyond the necessary re-establishment of the truth about our political positions as misrepresented by the IGCL, we highlight how the means and procedures it uses to serve its attempts at denigration are totally alien to the method of the workers' movement and of the Communist Left in particular.

I. The councilist flaws that the IGCL attribute to the ICC’s platform are pure slander

The IGCL tells us that, as soon as it was set up, it undertook "a process of clarification on the ICC platform[1] (...) which it had rejected as being openly councilist"[2].

Such a political diagnosis would be based on various observations already set out in some of the IGCL's texts, a sample of which is given below:

• "The undeniable coherence of the PF of the ICC is based on an economist and fatalist vision that is also coherent with its councilist vision, which is evident in its points on the party and class consciousness"[3].
• "We have underlined the coherence of the ICC platform provided by the distinction between ascendancy and decadence, here essentially reduced to reforms or impossibility of reforms. The resulting unity and clarity in exposing the class frontiers is the strength of the document. The mechanical and economist approach and understanding is its weakness. It is typical of the vulgar materialism proper to councilism, which develops a fatalistic and mechanical vision of history to the detriment of its dynamic – Marxist – vision, which places class struggle at the centre and as the motor of history"[4].

For anyone familiar with the ICC's positions, these "criticisms" are grossly misleading, but not everyone knows the ICC, or some only through the vision given by the prose of the IGCL, which compels us to review the essence of such distortions based on lying about the facts, disguising and distorting positions, and suggesting instead of proving or concretising. Another distortion consists in concealing the political developments of the ICC that clarify the points of our platform[5].

A. In none of its texts does the ICC reduce the change of period from ascendance to decadence to the possibility or otherwise of obtaining reforms.

For as important as the question of whether or not it is possible for the proletariat to obtain reforms in the period of the decadence of capitalism, in our platform the change of period is never reduced to this question, but it is considered from the point of view of the development of the internal contradictions of capitalism (Point 3 of the platform -The decadence of capitalism) and then from the point of view of the implications for the mode of organisation of capitalism (Point 4 -State capitalism) and finally from the point of view of class struggle (Point 6 -The struggle of the proletariat in decadent capitalism). It is in this last point that the question of whether or not it is possible to obtain reforms, which is decisive for basing and understanding the period of decadence, is dealt with:

• the possibility and necessity of revolution;
• the forms taken by the struggle of the proletariat, the relationship of the proletariat to its vanguard and the form taken by the latter.

B. In no way does the ICC underestimate the struggles for immediate demands, on the contrary

Indeed, as the IGCL is well aware, for the ICC, the demand struggle constitutes the granite foundation for the development of the class struggle. Indeed, this is part of the DNA of our organisation, since this conception was already at the heart of the marxist understanding of the precursor group of the ICC, Révolution Internationale in France. Thus RI nouvelle série n° 9 (May-June 1974), in the article "Comment le prolétariat est la classe révolutionnaire [96]", expressed itself in these terms: "The process by which the working class rises to the height of its historic task is not a separate process, external to its daily economic struggle against capital. On the contrary, it is in and through this conflict that the working class forges the weapons of its revolutionary struggle".

Our platform does not deny such a position on our part: "For over half a century the workers have shown less and less interest in participating in the activities of these organs which have become an integral part of the bourgeois state. The workers’ struggles to resist the constant deterioration of their living conditions have tended to take the forms of wildcat strikes outside of and against the unions. Directed by general assemblies of strikers and, in cases where they generalise, co-ordinated by committees of delegates elected and revocable by these assemblies, these strikes have immediately placed themselves on a political terrain in that they have been forced to confront the state in the form of its representatives inside the factory: the trade unions." (Point 7 - Trade unions: organs of the proletariat yesterday, instruments of capital today [97])

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

In the struggle against the brutal attacks of capitalism and especially against the inflation that hits workers as a whole in a general and indiscriminate way, workers will develop their combativity, they will be able to begin to recognise themselves as a class with a strength, an autonomy and a historical role to play in society. This political development of the class struggle will give them the capacity to put an end to war by putting an end to capitalism." (Third Manifesto of the ICC[6])

If we have taken so much space to refute this shameless lie of the IGCL, it is precisely because it is very prejudicial to the understanding - as defended by the ICC - of the process of the development of the class struggle up to the revolution.

C. Nowhere does the ICC sidestep the question of the function of the party

“The last point, the longest of the whole platform, on the organisation of revolutionaries, clearly reveals the contradiction which has inhabited the ICC since its beginnings between its approach and its congenital councilist weaknesses and its desire to reappropriate the lessons of the workers’ movement, particularly of the Communist Left. Admittedly, the party is mentioned as such, formally, abstractly, in fact reluctantly: ‘The organisation of revolutionaries whose most advanced form is the party (…). One can then speak of the party to describe the organisation of the communist vanguard. (…) the proletarian revolution confers the same world-wide and centralised character on the party of the working class…’. But nowhere is the role and function of the party as vanguard and political leadership of the proletariat evoked."

The basis of the necessity and role of revolutionary organisation is present in condensed form in our platform, so that any partial quotation of it, as the IGCL does, necessarily alters its meaning. This is why we reproduce the relevant paragraph in full: "The organisation of revolutionaries (whose most advanced form is the party) is the necessary organ with which the class equips itself to become conscious of its historic future and to politically orient the struggle for this future. For this reason the existence and activity of the party are an indispensable condition for the final victory of the proletariat."

What does the IGCL have to say about this formulation, apart from impressions? Nothing, just wind … and bluff.

Moreover, most of the positions defended in our platform are taken up, developed and clarified in various articles in our press, particularly in the International Review. This is particularly true of the question of the "organisation of revolutionaries", which is amply developed in the fundamental texts of the ICC and of which the IGCL says not a word, even though it is perfectly aware of their existence. Anyone who reads them will be able to convince themselves of the importance we attach to the question of the party, its role, its link with the working class and the process leading to its formation. We therefore urge the reader to verify the validity of our denial by consulting the following texts:

Report on the function of the revolutionary organisation [98]

Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation [99]

On the Party and its relationship to the class [100]

Report on the role of the ICC as a “fraction” [101]

D. The IGCL may well say that it has "gone beyond the councilism of the ICC platform", but that does not prove the validity of its criticisms of our platform.

Far from it!

From the outset, when it was aiming to disrupt the ICC from the inside, until its transformation into the IGCL, the IFICC proclaimed to anyone who would listen that it was the best defender of the ICC's positions, much better than the "opportunist ICC"! And, lo and behold, the IGCL itself realised that the ICC platform was in fact councilist! Is this the last act of the farce?? Nothing of the sort, the bad joke continues. So, they discover that our platform is "based on an economist and fatalist vision which is also consistent with its councilist vision, manifest in its points on the party and class consciousness". They point to the political clarifications provided by their own platform, which "tries to base the coherence and explanation of the class frontiers from and around the question of the party and class consciousness and therefore of the history of the class struggle itself". Even if the falsifiers of the IGCL were really convinced of this, it is not this, nor all their empty criticisms which we have refuted, which supposedly proves the councilism of our conception of the party and of class consciousness. Especially as the IGCL's alleged new source of inspiration is not, from our point of view, the most adequate: "We have not invented anything. We have just been convinced of the political correctness of the principled approach of the successive PFs that the so-called Left of Italy had adopted, in particular in 1945 and in 1952"[7][8].

For its part, as it explains in its platform, the ICC is based on the following approach: "By explaining the unfolding of history through the development of the class struggle, that is to say struggle based on the defence of economic interests within a framework laid down by the development of the productive forces, and by recognising the proletariat as the subject of the revolution which will abolish capitalism, marxism is the only conception of the world which really expresses the viewpoint of that class” (point 1 -The theory of communist revolution [102])".

E. The IGCL invents the "fatalism" of the ICC to mask its own opportunism towards principles

More specifically, it criticises the ICC for having a "a fatalistic and mechanical vision of history to the detriment of its dynamic – marxist – vision, which places class struggle at the centre and as the motor of history".

Since the IGCL has nothing of substance on which to base its criticisms, it proceeds by insinuation, through "may lead to...", when it is not downright open defamation, denigration and slander, all areas in which it has excelled since it went to war against the ICC when its "founders" were still members of our organisation.

On the other hand, what history has taught us is that when opportunism brandishes the criticism of "fatalism" against the positions of the Left, it is to grant itself "flexibility" and "suppleness" with regard to principles. This was the meaning of the criticisms made of Trotsky by Bilan in the 1930s and of the PCInt by Internationalisme in the 1940s. That said, we are far from suggesting that the IGCL can be identified with Trotsky or the PCInt. For all the ICC's criticisms of Trotsky's opportunism and that of the PCInt, our approach is the opposite of that which would in any way identify the IGCL with them. Trotsky and the PCInt, despite their weaknesses, were part of the proletarian camp. On the other hand, the IGCL, since it came into being under the name of the IFICC, has objectively behaved as a defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie through the damage it causes in the milieu of the Communist Left. As we shall see below, the IGCL's complacency towards the principles concerning the union question is also evident.

II. The IGCL does not spare any point of the ICC platform from its "radical" and sometimes openly leftist criticism

If it were simply a question of highlighting the IGCL's "method", the preceding illustrations would be more than sufficient. But it is also a question of defending our platform against attacks on its various points, so we cannot dispense with dealing with other IGCL attacks. In doing so, we will highlight how some of them poorly disguise a clearly leftist orientation.

A. Insufficient criticism of Parliament?

This attack is intended to introduce the idea that the ICC lacks conviction in supporting the Theses on Democracy written by Lenin for the First Congress of the Communist International.

According to point 8 of our platform on “The mystification of parliament and elections [103]", "As the capitalist system entered its decadent phase, parliament ceased to be an instrument for reforms, as the Communist International said at its Second Congress".

On this subject, the IGCL makes the following critical comment: "the theses do not limit the question to the impossibility of reform in decadence, far from it. ‘The attitude of the Communist International towards parliamentarism is determined, not by a new doctrine, but by the change in the role of parliament itself. In the previous epoch parliament performed to a certain degree a historically progressive task as a tool of developing capitalism. Under the present conditions of unbridled imperialism, however, parliament has been transformed into a tool for lies, deception, violence and enervating chatter. In the face of imperialist devastation, plundering, rape, banditry and destruction, parliamentary reforms, robbed of any system, permanence and method, lose any practical significance for the toiling masses.’ As we can see, the International encompasses it in a much broader vision and understanding that is at the forefront political, i.e. at the level of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat under the conditions defined by the imperialist phase of capital"[9].

What the IGCL is quick not to mention here is that Lenin's theses are reproduced in full in the following ICC article "Lenin's Theses on bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship (reprint) [104]"[10]. This reduces to nothing the criticism of an alleged weakness of our position on this question and illustrates once again the devious method of the IGCL. As for the idea that this point of our platform does not take into account the function of Parliament in the new period, it is part of this approach, "Slander boldly, something always sticks" (Francis Bacon), no matter how inconsistent the slander. Indeed, in this section of our platform, we say of Parliament: "The only role parliament could play from then on, the only thing that keeps it alive, is its role as an instrument of mystification. Thus ended any possibility for the proletariat to use parliament in any way. The class cannot gain impossible reforms from an organ which has lost any real political function. At a time when its basic task is to destroy all institutions of the bourgeois state and thus parliament; when it must set up its own dictatorship on the ruins of universal suffrage and other vestiges of bourgeois society, participation in parliamentary and electoral institutions can only lead to these moribund bodies being given a semblance of life no matter what the intentions of those who advocate this kind of activity” (point 8 of the ICC platform: The mystification of parliament and elections [103]).

B. Is the role of state capitalism reduced to the immediate economic necessities of capitalism?

The IGCL writes: "It is regrettable that this passage does not make more explicit the link between state capitalism and the needs of the generalized imperialist war. This tends to reduce the phenomenon of state capitalism to its economic dimension only, whereas it is above all a political response against the proletariat and for the needs of imperialist war"[11]

Contrary to what the IGCL claims, this point in the ICC platform in no way reduces the role of state capitalism to "immediate economic necessities" but takes into account all the contradictions facing capitalism: "In the decadence of capitalism the general tendency towards state capitalism is one of the dominant characteristics of social life. In this period, each national capital, because it cannot expand in an unfettered way and is confronted with acute imperialist rivalries, is forced to organise itself as effectively as possible, so that externally it can compete economically and militarily with its rivals, and internally deal with the increasing aggravation of social contradictions. The only power in society which is capable of fulfilling these tasks is the state " (second paragraph of point 4 of the platform, entitled "State capitalism [105]"). The IGCL was certainly counting on the credulity of the readers of its prose and on their ignorance of the positions of the ICC to smuggle in yet another lie.

C. A too timid defence of the foundation of the Communist International as the world party of the proletariat?

Point 15 of our platform on 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat' reaffirms the need for “the total destruction of the capitalist state” and the use by the proletariat of “its own revolutionary class violence”. But, according to the IGCL, this point "completely ignores the role of the party – the word party is not even used once in this point! – so much for the workers’ insurrection - itself ignored – so much for the exercise of the dictatorship itself.... Admittedly, the party is mentioned, but formally, abstractly, in fact reluctantly: “The organisation of revolutionaries whose most advanced form is the party. (…) One can then speak of the party to describe the organisation of the communist vanguard (…); the proletarian revolution confers the same world-wide and centralised character on the party of the working class…” But the role and function of the party as the vanguard and political leadership of the proletariat is not mentioned anywhere."[12]

In reality, and contrary to these misleading assertions, the ICC in no way minimises the fundamental role played by the party in the success of the Russian revolution (the only victorious revolution), any more than it minimises the role that the future party will be called upon to play in the next revolution. This is borne out by the many articles in various pamphlets we have devoted to this question, which the IGCL is careful to ignore even though it is well aware of their existence. These documents include:

- October 1917, beginning of the proletarian revolution (part 2) [106] The section on ‘Nature and role of the Bolshevik party’;
- October 1917: The greatest revolutionary experience of the working class [107] The section on ‘The councilist current's misconceptions about the nature and role of the Bolshevik Party.’

D. Was it inevitable and unavoidable that the unions would go over to the side of the bourgeoisie simply for economic reasons?

They quote from our platform: "The unions have become bankrupt since ‘as capitalism entered its decadent phase it was no longer able to accord reforms and improvements in living conditions to the working class’. The IGCL comment “Once again, the mechanistic and economist explanation of 'reforms or no reforms' comes back to underpin the fact, which we share, that the unions have become ‘true defenders of capitalism, agencies of the bourgeois state within the working class (…) by the relentless tendency within decadence for the state to absorb all the structures of social life’. As a result, and insofar as the passage of the trade unions into the bourgeois camp would have been mechanically fatal from an economic point of view alone, and not the result of a class confrontation conditioned by the passage into the new historical period, the struggle that the communist minorities waged from 1918 until, roughly speaking, World War II in the trade unions is neglected and rejected"[13]

The IGCL attributes to the ICC the idea that the unions have mechanically gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie. The ICC uses the term "inevitably" and not "mechanically". Moreover, the IGCL introduces the idea that "the passage of the unions into the camp of the bourgeoisie was the product of a balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, played out within these bodies". The only possible interpretation of this passage is that it would have been possible for the working class to maintain the unions as a weapon in its struggle by fighting within them!

This is typical of the opportunist position defended by the degenerating Communist International and which has inspired, and still inspires today, all varieties of leftism. In fact, the only really "inspiring" struggles for the proletariat in relation to the trade union question are those which have called into question this institution as a tool of class struggle, as was the case in particular during the revolution in Germany. This is entirely consistent with the analysis defended by the ICC in point 7 of its platform: "As capitalism entered its decadent phase it was no longer able to accord reforms and improvements in living conditions to the working class. Having lost all possibility of fulfilling their initial function of defending working class interests, and confronted with an historic situation in which only the abolition of wage labour and with it, the disappearance of trade unions, was on the agenda, the trade unions became true defenders of capitalism, agencies of the bourgeois state within the working class. This is the only way they could survive in the new period. This evolution was aided by the bureaucratisation of the unions prior to decadence and by the relentless tendency within decadence for the state to absorb all the structures of social life".

What battles would have made it possible - according to the IGCL - to preserve, even momentarily, the trade union as an instrument of defence of its interests by the proletariat, during the period from 1918 to the Second World War? The IGCL mentions only one of them, and it's worthwhile taking a closer look, especially as it's yet another attempt to muddy the waters on the position of the Communist Left of France on the union question.

III. IGCL rewrites history by muddying the waters

This is done, in particular, on the origins of the Communist Left, the ICC's own history and on our comrade Marc Chirik.

A. An enormous lie about the GCF's position on the union question

The IGCL quotes Internationalisme, the journal of the GCF (Gauche Communiste de France): "We must also combat the tendencies which, starting from the fact of the existence of an extremely strong union bureaucracy, forming a reactionary layer with homogeneous interests opposed to the class interests of the proletariat and to the proletarian revolution, assert that the trade union organisations are obsolete as instruments of anti-capitalist struggle. The communist union fraction is formed by all the militants of the communist organisation belonging to the same union"(Resolution on the union question).

What does this passage prove in relation to the problem that concerns us here, namely the class nature of the unions in decadence? Absolutely nothing, apart from the fact that there was confusion within Internationalisme on the trade union question. On the other hand, we can clearly see the IGCL's outright dishonesty when it conceals from its readers a disturbing reality, in this case the fact that there was an ongoing reflection within the GCF on the nature of the unions, which resulted in the following analysis: "The unions are today completely integrated into the state, they are an appendage of the state with the function of getting the working class to accept the measures of exploitation and the worsening of their conditions of misery. The recent strike movements have shown that this classic means of workers' struggle has ceased to be the exclusive weapon of the proletariat, has lost its essential class nature and can also be used as a means of manoeuvre by one capitalist political faction against another, by one imperialist bloc against another and ultimately in the general interest of capitalism". (“Current Problems of the International Revolutionary Movement”- Internationalisme no. 18 - February 1947).

B. The lies about the ICC's attitude to trade union struggles

Hence, the IGCL hypocritically salutes what it calls the "historic ICC" for having finally been able to understand the true nature of the unions: "we must salute the ability of the historic ICC to clearly understand that the unions have become fully-fledged organs of the bourgeois state and, in the 1980s at least, to draw all the implications from this for its intervention in the real class struggles". It's hypocritical and dishonest, because, as we saw earlier, it was Internationalisme that was responsible for providing important clarifications in relation to Bilan on the trade union question.

So, why this need to praise the intervention of the ICC in the 1980s, which was "Far from expecting a pure struggle liberated from the unions by the grace of the Holy Spirit"?

For two reasons:

1) To spit on the intervention of the ICC in subsequent years, implicitly characterised as the expectation of "a pure struggle liberated from the unions by the grace of the Holy Spirit", which for two decades "prefers to devote itself to the fetish of self-organisation and assemblyism, in the name of the genuine assemblies free of trade unions, to mask its defeatism"[14]. This is the dream of a mythomaniac. The ICC has never abandoned or despised any working class struggle, and the fact of denouncing, as we have done, certain caricatures of "general assemblies" usually convened by the unions inside enterprises is in no way synonymous with desertion, but on the contrary is part of the denunciation of the results of union sabotage and their omnipresence. Contrary to the idea that the IGCL tries to convey, since the struggles of the 1980s the ICC has never denied the fundamental need for class struggle, wherever it is expressed, whatever its strengths and weaknesses. This, once again, is consistent with the importance which the ICC attributes to the immediate defensive struggles of the working class for the development of the class struggle, something which the IGCL has also tried to conceal through fraudulent criticisms which we highlighted earlier.

2) Remaking the history of the ICC in the 1980s by attributing to it positions which were never its own but those of the IBRP at the time: "it [the ICC] then fully understood that the communist vanguard groups and the party had to be at the forefront of the political struggle against the traps and sabotage of the union and leftists and for the political leadership of workers’ struggles". Only a mythomaniac with the aplomb of the IGCL is capable of spouting such nonsense. The ICC has never considered itself to be a party (or a party in miniature) but as a political group with a "function similar to that of a fraction", charged with working towards the foundation of the future party, while building a bridge to it. Similarly, it was always critical of the IBRP’s conception of the "internationalist factory groups" as transmission belts for the party within the working class. Then as now, the ICC has always fought for the working class to organise itself in general assemblies in order to take its struggle into its own hands and to extend it, and it has always fought the action of the unions aimed at sabotaging such class initiatives.

C. The lies that explain this other lie about our alleged renunciation of the fight against the unions

The IGCL claims to have contributed to "advocating - and even defending - the combat against councilism in the 1980s that the ICC had led then conducted"[15]. It is not impossible that at the time some of the militants who were to become the IFICC thugs took part in this combat. On the other hand, it also claims that the ICC has "since rejected this [combat]"[16]. Why does the IGCL lie like this? Possibly to make themselves look good to the ICT, whose predecessor, the IBRP, had justified its sabotage of the Communist Left conferences of the 1970s by attributing "councilism" to the ICC.

The IGCL is incapable of providing the facts of the ICC's alleged renunciation of the fight against councilism, but it does give us an explanation for the "renunciation" itself. According to the IGCL, the cause lies in "the organic break between the Gauche Communiste de France and the ICC": "As it itself had always recognised, the organic break in continuity with the fractions of the Communist Left emerging from the Communist International (IC), in the case of the ICC from the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) and more broadly with the so-called Italian Left, could not be overcome by the mere presence of Marc Chirik, a member of the Italian fraction from 1938 onwards, then of the GCF "[17]. This organic break did indeed constitute a serious handicap which fortunately our comrade Marc Chirik's presence was able to reduce, in particular through the fight against councilism, more precisely centrism vis-à-vis councilism within our ranks. The clarification and homogenisation that took place in our organisation on that occasion enabled the ICC to arm itself against the danger of councilism, whose influence among some young people contributed to the difficulty for them to become politicised. On the other hand, there is one area where the mere presence of our comrade MC was not enough to overcome the weaknesses linked to the break in organic continuity, and that is revolutionary militancy, which is only learned through practice, even if, here too, our comrade MC did his utmost to pass on the lessons of his own experience. Such a weakness within the ICC was reflected in attitudes and approaches that were part of the circle spirit which Lenin rightly criticised at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP and to which he contrasted the party spirit. But worse than the circle spirit is the rotting of the latter into nihilist clannism, and the degeneration of the latter into the worst variety of parasitism, which has tried to inflict maximum damage on the organisation when it has to defend itself against the actions and behaviour of thugs. The IFICC, mother of the IGCL, was the worst incarnation of this approach within the ICC.

D. The IGCL fabricates "a positive contribution" of the IBRP to political clarification within the ICC

We do not deny the capacity for discussion with other proletarian groups for them to be able to participate in the clarification within our ranks. But this is a new invention of the IGCL which is totally impossible from a chronological point of view.

In a recent article addressed to the ICT,[18] the IGCL refers to a "contradictory debate which the PCInt-Battaglia Comunista and the ICC had developed at the end of the 1970s around the question of the historic course" (...) The ICC then recognised, according to the IGCL, "the accuracy of BC's criticism of its position on the revolutionary course", which "made the revolution an open and inevitable path". An elephant's memory or a fabrication on the part of IGCL members? It does not say where or on what occasion this happened. To give more consistency to this "story", the IGCL adds: "it was thanks to this criticism, the accuracy of which the ICC then recognised, that it clarified - changed - its position and described the ‘course’ as ‘towards decisive massive class confrontations’”.

Once again, we must set the record straight in the face of the IGCL's lies. It's true that in our text on The Historic Course, adopted by the 2nd ICC Congress in 1977, we spoke of a "course to revolution", but already in this basic document, the ICC in no way "made revolution an open and inevitable path", since we stated "Our perspective doesn’t foresee the inevitability of the revolution. We aren’t charlatans, and we know quite well in contrast to certain fatalistic revolutionaries, that the communist revolution isn’t “as certain as if it had already taken place”. But, whatever the final outcome of the struggles, which the bourgeoisie is trying to muzzle in order to inflict a series of partial defeats on the class as a prelude to a more definitive defeat, capitalism, right here and now, is unable to impose its own response to the crisis of its relations of production without confronting the proletariat head on." And it was precisely to avoid any ambiguity that, at the beginning of the 1980s, we replaced the phrase "course towards revolution" by "course towards class confrontations". We are not aware of any controversy on this subject between the ICC and BC before we changed our wording. It is perfectly true that there was a criticism by BC/CWO of our analysis entitled "the ICC and the historical course: an erroneous method". But it took place in 1987, several years later, so it cannot have been the "constructive criticism recognised as such by the ICC". Moreover, the IBRP's criticism of the ICC's analysis did not concern the way in which the historical course should be qualified but the very notion of the historical course. [19].

One might ask why the IGCL would be interested in revisiting history in this way. The answer to the question becomes clear when it adds: "much of the criticism that Battaglia Comunista made at the time was correct - we have adopted the concept and, we hope, the method that must accompany it, as against the one that the comrades of the ICT have always judged and labelled as idealist." [20].

The IGCL therefore expressed its agreement with the ICT and paid tribute to its method. If the IGCL had not been a parasitic group of the worst kind, we would have questioned it about its change of position when, at the time of the events, as it was still criticising the vulgar materialism of the ICT with the ICC. Now it is shamelessly pandering to it.

And that is the deeper meaning of its attempt to tear up the ICC platform. It is a question of reinforcing its attitude of sycophancy toward the ICT in order to gain its approval even more. For the IGCL, this is an existential issue: to ensure its legitimacy and to be exonerated for its lies and deceit, it needs the backing of a historic organisation of the Communist Left. As soon as the IFICC was formed, it declared that the IBRP now constituted the decisive force for the constitution of the future world party of the proletariat. It then rejected the analysis of the current period as one of the decomposition of capitalism and the analysis of the phenomenon of political parasitism, two analyses which its members had shared for more than a decade but which the IBRP rejected (and the ICT continues to reject). Today, the IGCL needs to rekindle the flame of its romance with the ICT, particularly after a minor falling out with that organisation[21] and what better way to do so than to take up IBRP's criticism of the ICC's alleged "councillism", to "discover" the major contributions of the IBRP and the ICT for its own clarification of the party question and, finally, to enthusiastically welcome the ICT's initiative in favour of No War But the Class War committees.[22]

ICC 8.8.2023

Marxism and the history of the International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) attest to the validity of the concept of parasitism to characterise destructive behaviour within the political organisations of the proletariat – behaviour totally alien to the methods of the working class.

A. Political parasitism is by no means "an invention of the ICC",
Marxism fought it in the IWA

As highlighted in our Theses on Parasitism[1] - from which many of the following developments are borrowed - parasitism historically emerged in response to the founding of the First International, which Engels described as “the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects” (Engels, Letter to Florence Kelly-Wischnewetzky, 27 January 1873. The IWA was in effect an instrument forcing the various components of the workers' movement to engage in a collective and public process of clarification, and to submit to a unified, impersonal, proletarian, organisational discipline. Indeed, "Drawing the lessons of the revolutions of 1848, the proletariat no longer accepted the leadership of the radical wing of the bourgeoisie, and was now fighting to establish its own class autonomy. But this autonomy required that the proletariat overcome the domination, within its own organisations, of the theories and organisational concepts of the petty bourgeoisie, Bohemian and declassed elements etc.”[2].

But the advance of the proletarian struggle needed this movement, which implied the dissolution on an international scale of all non-proletarian programmatic and organisational particularities and autonomies. It was primarily in resistance to this movement that parasitism declared war on the revolutionary movement. It was the IWA which was the first to be confronted with this threat to the proletarian movement, which identified it and fought against it. It was the IWA, beginning with Marx and Engels, which characterised as parasites those politicised elements which, while claiming to adhere to the programme and organisations of the proletariat, concentrate their efforts on the struggle, not against the ruling class, but against the organisations of the revolutionary class. The essence of their activity is, in fact, to denigrate and manoeuvre against the communist camp, while claiming to belong to it and to serve it. This is summed up in this sentence from the report on the Alliance[3]: “for the first time in the history of the class struggle, we are confronted with a secret conspiracy at the heart of the working class, and intended to sabotage not the existing regime of exploitation, but the Association itself, which represents the most bitter enemy of this regime". As for the recommended remedy, it is unambiguous: “It is time once and for all to put a stop to those internal quarrels provoked every day afresh within our Association, by the presence of this parasitic body.” (The General Council to All the Members of the International Working Men’s Association [122])[4].

B. The resurgence of parasitism since the 1980s

As was the case with the Alliance in the IWA, it is only in periods when the workers' movement passes from a stage of fundamental immaturity to a qualitatively higher, specifically communist level, that parasitism becomes its principal opponent. In the present period, this immaturity is not the product of the youth of the workers' movement as a whole, as it was at the time of the IWA, but above all the result of the 50 years of counter-revolution which followed the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Today, it is this break in organic continuity with the traditions of past generations of revolutionaries which explains, above all, the weight of petty-bourgeois anti-organisational reflexes and behaviour among many elements who claim to be marxists and Left Communists.

Parasitism targets elements in search of class positions who have difficulty distinguishing between genuine revolutionary organisations and parasitic currents. This is why, since the 1990s and especially the 2000s, the action of parasitism has become more destructive. We are currently faced with a multitude of informal groupings, often operating in the shadows, which claim to belong to the camp of the Communist Left, but which devote their energies to fighting the existing marxist organisations rather than the bourgeois regime. As in the time of Marx and Engels, the function of this reactionary parasitic wave is to sabotage the development of open debate and proletarian clarification, and to prevent the establishment of rules of conduct binding on all members of the proletarian camp.

It was significantly fuelled by all the splits which took place in the history of the ICC. Neither motivated nor justified by political differences, these were the result of non-marxist, non-proletarian organisational behaviour, like that of Bakunin in the IWA and the Mensheviks in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, which expressed resistance to organisational discipline and collective principles.

Faced with the working class and the proletarian political milieu, the ICC has never hidden the difficulties it encountered. At the beginning of the 1980s, it expressed itself in these terms: "when a revolutionary organization publicizes its problems and internal discussions, this is a choice dish for all the adversaries waiting to denigrate it. This is also, and even especially the case for the ICC. Certainly, we won't find any jubilation in the bourgeois press over the difficulties that our organisation is going through today: the ICC is still too small, both in its size and in its influence amongst the working masses, for the bourgeoisie to have any interest in talking about it and trying to discredit it. It is preferable for the bourgeoisie to erect a wall of silence around the positions and even the existence of revolutionary organisations. This is why the work of denigrating them, and sabotaging their intervention, is undertaken by a whole series of groups and parasitic elements whose function is to drive away individuals who are coming towards class positions, to disgust them with any participation in the difficult task of developing a proletarian political milieu.." (Resolution adopted by XIth ICC Congress: Combat to Defend and Build the Organization [123], International Review n° 82).

All communist groups have been confronted with the misdeeds of parasitism, but it is the ICC, because it is today the most important organisation in the proletarian milieu, and also the most rigorous in terms of respect for principles and statutes, that is the object of particular attention from the parasitic milieu. The latter included, and in some cases still includes, groups formed and all stemming from the ICC, such as the "Internationalist Communist Group"(ICG) and its splinters like "Against the Current", the now defunct "Communist Bulletin Group"(CBG) or the former "External Faction of the ICC" or the "Internal Faction of the ICC", which a few years later mutated into the "International Group of the Communist Left" (IGCL), all of which were formed from splinters of the ICC.

But parasitism is not confined to such groups. It is also carried by unorganised elements, or those who meet from time to time in ephemeral discussion circles, whose main preoccupation is to spread all sorts of gossip about our organisation. These are often former militants who, yielding to the pressure of petty-bourgeois ideology, did not have the strength to maintain their commitment to the organisation, who were frustrated that the organisation did not "recognise their merits" to the extent that they themselves had imagined, or who could not stand the criticism to which they were subjected. There are also former sympathisers whom the organisation did not want to integrate because it judged that they did not have sufficient clarity or who gave up their commitment for fear of losing their "individuality" in a collective framework (this is the case, for example, of the now defunct "Alptraum Collective" in Mexico or "Kamunist Kranti"in India). In all cases, these are elements whose frustration at their own lack of courage, spinelessness and powerlessness has turned into systematic hostility towards the organisation. These elements are obviously absolutely incapable of building anything. On the other hand, they are often very effective, using their petty agitation and concierge chatter to discredit and destroy what the organisation is trying to build.

C. The main parasitic groups since the 1980s

We will limit ourselves here to the following groups: the Communist Bulletin Group (CBG), the External Fraction of the ICC (EFICC) and the Internal Fraction of the ICC (IFICC).

C.1 The Communist Bulletin Group (CBG)

The struggle against the clans, which the 11th Congress of the ICC had unanimously supported, is transformed by the CBG into a struggle between clans. The central organs are inevitably "monolithic", the identification of the penetration of non-proletarian influences, the primordial task of revolutionaries, is presented as a means of breaking up the "opponents". The methods of clarification of proletarian organisations - open debate throughout the organisation, publication of its results to inform the working class - become the "brainwashing" method of religious sects.

It's not just the ICC that's concerned:

"It is not only the whole present day revolutionary milieu which is being attacked here. It is the entire history and all the traditions of the workers' movement which are being abused.

In reality, the lies and slanders of the CBG are perfectly in line with the campaign of the world bourgeoisie about the alleged death of communism and of marxism. At the center of this propaganda is the greatest lie in history: that the organizational rigor of Lenin and the Bolsheviks necessarily led to Stalinism. In the CBG's version of this propaganda, it is the Bolshevism of the ICC which ‘necessarily’ leads to its alleged ‘Stalinism’. Evidently, the CBG neither knows what the revolutionary milieu is, nor does it know what Stalinism is about" (Political Parasitism: The "CBG" Does the Bourgeoisie's Work [124]; International Review n° 83.

C.2 The External Fraction of the ICC

In an article in our International Review in 1986 we wrote:

"The proletarian political milieu, already strongly marked by the weight of sectarianism, as the ICC has often shown and deplored, has just been ‘enriched' by a new sect. There is a new publication entitled Internationalist Perspectives, organ of the ‘External Fraction of the ICC' (EFICC) that ‘claims a continuity with the programmatic framework developed by the ICC’. This group is composed of comrades who belonged to the ‘tendency' formed in our organisation and who left it at its Sixth Congress[5] to ‘defend the ICC's platform’. We've already met many forms of sectarianism among revolutionaries today, but the creation of an ICC-bis with the same programmatic positions of the ICC constitutes a never - before -attained peak in this domain. They have also reached a peak in the amount of mud thrown at the ICC: only the Communist Bulletin (also formed of ex-ICC members) has gone so far. From its creation, this new group thus places itself on a terrain that only political gangsters (who distinguished themselves by stealing material and funds from the ICC) have exploited with such fervour. Even if the members of the ‘Fraction' have in no way been involved in such acts of gangsterism, we can say that its sectarianism and predilection for gratuitous insults don't augur well for the future evolution of this group and its capacity to make a contribution to the proletariat's efforts to develop its consciousness. In fact, the little games of the EFICC express one thing: a total irresponsibility towards the tasks facing revolutionaries today, a desertion of militant combat" (The “External Fraction” of the ICC [125], International Review n° 45).

C.3 The Internal Fraction of the ICC (2001), which mutated into the IGCL (Internationalist Group of the Communist Left) in 2013, is undoubtedly a further step in ignominy, justifying the dedication of a significant part of this text to it.

The IFICC (ancestor of the IGCL), an extreme form of parasitic grouping

We report here on part of the chain of events which led to the formation of IFICC (Internal Fraction of the ICC), the crystallisation within the ICC of a foreign body, by quoting from a communique to our readers reporting on the actions, within and outside our organisation, of members of our organisation:

“What is a problem however, is the fact that since then a certain number of militants in our French section have adopted a policy of systematically violating our organisational rules. Reacting out of ‘wounded pride’, they adopted an anarchistic attitude of violating the decisions of the Congress, of denigration, slanders, bad faith, and outright lies. After several violations of our organisational rules, some of them serious to the point of forcing the organisation to react firmly, these comrades held a series of secret meetings during August 2001. The organisation has since acquired a copy of the proceedings of one of these secret meetings something the participants would have liked to avoid. These proceedings demonstrated clearly to the other members of our organisation that these comrades were fully aware that they were fomenting a plot against the organisation, demonstrating a total lack of loyalty towards the ICC, which was expressed in particular through:

• the creation of a strategy to deceive the organisation and impose their own policy on it;
• a putschist, leftist approach, which posed the political problems we were confronting in terms of ‘recovering the means of functioning’ (in other words, control of the central organs);
• *the creation of an ‘iron solidarity’ among the participants and against the central organs, clearly turning their backs on the freely accepted discipline of a proletarian organisation” (A parasitic attack intended to discredit the ICC [126], World Revolution n° 253, April 2002)

Since its formation, IFCCI has always presented itself as the best defender of the platform and positions of the ICC, with the exception, however, of the "analysis of the ultimate phase of decadence, that of decomposition", and the "theses on political parasitism". The purpose of the first exception was to be more in tune with the other groups in the proletarian political milieu who did not share the analysis of decomposition. The second made it easier for the IGCL to refute the fact that it was itself a parasitic grouping, even though its members had until then been convinced defenders of the need to fight against parasitism.

A reminder [6] of the IFICC / IGCL group's service records

IFICC members deliberately placed themselves outside our organisation as a result of the following behaviour:

• Repeated breaches of our statutes, in particular the refusal to pay their dues in full and their refusal to commit to respecting them in the future;
• Refusal to appear to defend their behaviour in the organisation in the face of our criticism of it, despite the fact that the ICC had organised an extraordinary conference with this issue specifically on its agenda;
• Theft of money and ICC material (address files and internal documents).

IFICC as a police-like group

In the end, the members of the IFICC were expelled from our organisation, not because of their intolerable behaviour, but because of their activities as informers, which included several acts of snitching. For example, they published on their website the date of an ICC conference to be held in Mexico, attended by militants from other countries. This repugnant act by the IFICC of facilitating the work of the forces of repression of the bourgeois state against revolutionary militants is all the more despicable in that the members of the IFICC knew full well that some of our comrades in Mexico had already, in the past, been direct victims of repression and that some had been forced to flee their countries of origin.

But the snitching behaviour of IFICC members is not limited to this episode. Before and after their exclusion from the ICC, they systematically spied on our organisation and regularly reported on the results in their Bulletin (see in particular IFICC Bulletins no. 14, 18 and 19).

Their sordid collection of information is entirely indicative of the way in which these people conceived their "fraction work" (gossip, police reports). Indeed, the display of such information was also aimed at the ICC as a whole, with a view to putting pressure on its militants by making them understand that they were "under surveillance", that nothing they did would escape the vigilance of the "Internal Fraction".

Just because it emanates from the sick minds of obsessive persecutors doesn't mean that we shouldn't take seriously this kind of work to keep tabs on our organisation and, more specifically, on some of its members.

To conclude on the police-like behaviour of the IFICC, it is worth mentioning its publication of a 118-page text entitled The History of the ICC International Secretariat. According to its subtitle, this text claims to tell the story of "how opportunism gained a foothold in the central organs before contaminating and starting the destruction of the entire organisation...".

This document once again illustrates the police-like nature of IFICC's approach. It explains the alleged "opportunistic evolution" of the ICC by the "intrigues" of a number of evil characters, in particular the "chief's companion" (presented as an agent of the state exerting its control over the "chief"). It is as if the degeneration and betrayal of the Bolshevik Party had been the result of the action of the megalomaniac Stalin and not the consequence of the failure of the world revolution and the isolation of the revolution in Russia. This text is the purest police conception of history, which marxism has always opposed.

But the most odious aspect of this text is the fact that it discloses numerous details about the internal workings of our organisation, which are a godsend for the police.

The IFICC’s "cordon sanitaire" policy against the ICC

Having failed to convince the militants of the ICC of the need to exclude the "leader" and the "leader's companion", this small parasitic group set itself the objective of dragging the other groups of the Communist Left behind its slander in order to establish a cordon sanitaire around the ICC and discredit it (see below the episodes of the "IBRP public meeting in Paris" and the "Circulo"). In fact, it was all the places where the ICC was active (contact meetings, public meetings, etc.) that the IFICC targeted, even though we had forbidden its members access to them because of their snitching activities[7]. While we were enforcing our decision to keep them out of such places, we sometimes had to deal with threats (including a loud threat to slit the throat of one of our comrades) and attacks by these thugs.

The “opportunist degeneration” of the ICC, proclaimed but never demonstrated by the IFICC!

The IFICC presented itself as "the true successor of the ICC", which had undergone an "opportunist" and "Stalinist" degeneration. It declared that it was continuing the work, which it said had been abandoned by the ICC, of defending in the working class the "real positions of this organisation", which were threatened by the development of opportunism within it, primarily affecting the question of its functioning. We have seen in the practice of this group its own conception of respect for the statutes and even for the most elementary rules of behaviour of the workers' movement: claiming adherence to them while in fact furiously trampling them underfoot.

The method, which consists of making insinuations while avoiding the fundamental political problem, appealing to "popular common sense" and the witch-hunting methods of the Middle Ages.

As a result, the ICC has been the target of numerous other accusations by the IFICC, which have not been mentioned until now: the ICC has been stigmatised by "a gradual move away from marxism and a growing tendency to promote (and defend) fashionable bourgeois and petty-bourgeois values - cult of youth, feminism and above all ‘non-violence’)"; the ICC also "plays into the hands of repression".

The IFICC's use of an IBRP public meeting for its own purposes

The IBRP[8] was the target of a daring manoeuvre on the part of IFICC, which consisted in organising a public meeting in Paris on 2 October 2004 on behalf of the IBRP. In fact, it was a public meeting designed to serve the reputation of the IFICC, to the detriment of that of the IBRP, and with a view to attacking the ICC.

The announcement of this meeting by the IBRP indicated that its theme was the war in Iraq. On the other hand, the announcement made by IFICC underlined the importance of its own initiative: "On our suggestion and with our political and material support, the IBRP will be holding a public meeting in Paris (a meeting which, we hope, will be merely the first) in which we call on all our readers to participate ". What emerges from this appeal is the claim that, without this IFICC, this organisation of the Communist Left, which exists on an international scale and has been known for decades, would not have been able to take the initiative and organise the public meeting!

In fact, this parasitic group used the IBRP as a "front man" for its own publicity in order to obtain a certificate of respectability, the recognition of its membership of the Communist Left. And these unabashed thugs did not hesitate to use the address book of ICC contacts (which it had stolen before leaving the organisation) to publicise its call for this public meeting.

IFICC's alliance with an adventurer (citizen B) in 2004

In 2004, the ICC had entered into a political relationship with a small group in Argentina, the NCI (Nucleo Comunista Internacional). At the end of July 2004, a member of the NCI, Mr B., tried a daring manoeuvre: he demanded the immediate integration of the group into the ICC. He imposed this demand despite the resistance of the other comrades in the NCI who, even though they had also set themselves the objective of joining the ICC, felt the need to first carry out a whole in-depth process of clarification and assimilation, as communist militancy could only be based on solid convictions. The ICC rejected this demand, in line with our policy of opposing hasty and immature integrations, which can run the risk of destroying militants and are harmful to the organisation.

At the same time, an alliance had been forged between the IFICC and adventurer B, certainly on B's initiative, in the service of a manoeuvre against the ICC using, unbeknown to them, the NCI. The manoeuvre consisted in circulating within the proletarian political milieu a denunciation of the ICC and its "nauseating methods". This text seemed to emanate indirectly from the NCI, since it was was signed by a mysterious and fictitious "Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas" (or "CCI" for short!), led by citizen B and which, according to him, was supposed to constitute the "political transcendence” of the NCI. These slanders were spread by means of a "Circulo" leaflet distributed by the IFICC on the occasion of the IBRP's public meeting in Paris on 2 October 2004. They were also posted online in various languages on the IBRP website. As well as directly targeting the ICC, the leaflet in question defended the IFICC, totally calling into question a position taken by the NCI on 22 May 2004, which had denounced this group.

The way in which citizen B was led to develop his manoeuvre is typical of an adventurer, of his ambitions and of his total lack of scruples and concern for the cause of the proletariat. The IFICC's use of the services of an adventurer to satisfy its hatred of the ICC and to attempt, through public denigration, to politically isolate our organisation, is worthy of the petty and despicable characters who populate the world of the petty bourgeoisie and the big bourgeoisie.

The IGCL's police-like use of the ICC's internal bulletins

The IGCL, having obtained internal bulletins of the ICC through a means unknown to us, made a big fuss about this event, seeing it as proof of an ICC crisis. The message that these patent snitches were trying to get across was very clear: "there is a 'mole' in the ICC who is working hand in hand with the ex-IFICC! This was clearly police work with no other objective than to sow widespread suspicion, unrest and mischief within our organisation. These were the same methods used by the GPU, Stalin's political police, to destroy the Trotskyist movement from within in the 1930s. These are the same methods used by the members of the ex-IFICC (and in particular two of them, Juan and Jonas, founding members of the "ICGL") when they made "special" trips to several sections of the ICC in 2001 to organise secret meetings and spread rumours that one of our comrades (the "wife of the head of the ICC", as they put it) was a "cop".

ICGL support for Nuevo Curso and Gaizka[9]

The ICC had denounced an attempt to falsify the real origins of the Communist Left by a blog called Nuevo Curso and orchestrated by an adventurer, Gaizka, whose aim is not to help clarify and defend the positions of this current but to "make a name" for himself in proletarian politics. This attack on the historic current of the Communist Left aims to transform it into a movement with blurred outlines, stripped of the rigorous proletarian principles which presided over its formation, which constitutes an obstacle to the transmission to future generations of revolutionaries of the gains of the struggle of the left fractions against opportunism and the degeneration of the parties of the Communist International.

As for the adventurer Gaizka, we have provided a great deal of information on him, which has not yet been refuted, concerning his relations with the world of bourgeois political figures (mainly left-wing but also right-wing). It is a behaviour and a personality trait that he shares with adventurers - even if he is far from having the stature of these characters - better known in history as Ferdinand Lassalle and Jean Baptiste von Schweitzer who operated within the workers' movement in Germany in the 19th century.

It was with great enthusiasm and sycophancy that the IGCL welcomed the entry of the Nuevo Curso blog onto the political scene: "All the positions it defends are very clearly class positions and are within the programmatic framework of the Communist Left (...)". What's more, once our organisation had provided readers with sufficient information to characterise Gaizka (the main leader of Nuevo Curso) as an adventurer with the peculiarity of having maintained relations, in 1992-94, with the most important party of the bourgeoisie in Spain at that time, the PSOE, there was no longer any doubt as to the meaning of Nuevo Curso's approach aimed at distorting the Communist Left. However, it was not this information, available to all (and denied by no one, we repeat) that prevented the IGCL from flying to the aid of the adventurer Gaizka, in the face of the denunciation we made of him: “we should point out that to date we have not noted any provocation, manoeuvring, denigration, slander or rumour, launched by members of Nuevo Curso, even as individuals, nor even any policy of destruction against other revolutionary groups or militants"[10].

It is highly revealing that, in order to rule out any suspicion of adventurism in relation to Gaizka, the IGCL's animator takes as a criterion a set of political traits which characterise himself first and foremost, but not necessarily Gaizka in particular: provocateur, manoeuvrer, denigrator, slanderer, destroyer of reputations, ... As for Gaizka, although he was not of the stature of a Lassalle or a Schweitzer, he "tried to play in the court of the greats" and even managed to gain recognition from a number of them thanks to some of his intellectual abilities, even if he didn’t manage to place himself on an equal footing with the leading figures of the ruling class, as was the case with Lassalle with Bismarck[11].

On his own small scale, Gaizka imagined he could play a role as the representative of a branch of the Communist Left (the Spanish Communist Left), which he had invented himself. For its part “Mr IGCL's” great ambition is to cover the ICC in rubbish.

E. By way of a (provisional) conclusion

To illustrate our analysis of the phenomenon of political parasitism, we have mainly used the example of the IGCL (formerly IFICC). The fact that this organisation constitutes a kind of caricature of parasitism has enabled us both to denounce once again its villainy and malfeasance and also to bring out more clearly the major features which characterise this phenomenon and which can be found in other groups or elements whose activities are part of a parasitic approach, even if in a less obvious and more subtle way. Thus, the IGCL-IFICC is, to our knowledge, the only group which has deliberately adopted an attitude of snitching, of being a conscious agent of capitalist repression. However, in adopting this attitude of conscious (if unpaid) agent of the bourgeois state, this group is merely expressing in the most extreme way the essence and function of political parasitism (and which had already been analysed, as we have seen, by Marx and Engels): to wage, in the name of the defence of the proletarian programme, a determined struggle against the real organisations of the working class. And this, of course, for the greater benefit of its mortal enemy, the bourgeoisie. And if certain groups refrain from the outrages of the IGCL, preferring to practise a "soft", more subtle parasitism, that doesn't make them any less dangerous, quite the contrary.

Just as the true organisations of the proletariat will only be able to assume the role entrusted to them by the workers' movement, as the entire history of the movement has shown, by waging a determined struggle against the opportunist gangrene, they will only be able to live up to their responsibility by waging an equally determined struggle against the scourge of parasitism. Marx and Engels fully understood this from the end of the 1860s, and particularly at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872, even though a large number of marxists who were leading the fight against opportunism, such as Franz Mehring, did not understand the meaning and importance of the fight against Bakunin's Alliance. This is probably one of the reasons (alongside naivety and opportunist shifts) why the question of parasitism is not understood in the proletarian political milieu. But there can be no question of using the weaknesses of the workers' movement as an argument for refusing to see and confront the dangers which threaten the historic struggle of our class. It is fully in the spirit of this sentence of Engels quoted at the beginning of the article that we claim: “It is time once and for all to put a stop to those internal quarrels provoked every day afresh within our Association, by the presence of this parasitic body.”

ICC, 07-08-23

In the first part of this article[1] we traced Jacques Camatte’s political evolution from the Bordigist wing of the communist left to the abandonment of marxism and the theory of the class struggle – into what we term “modernism”. In this part, we will look more closely at this “new” outlook, focusing in particular on one of the best known of his works, The Wandering of Humanity, which first appeared in the journal Invariance (Series 2, number 3) in 1973.

Despotism of capital

The Wandering of Humanity begins with the assertion that “When capital achieves real domination over society, it becomes a material community, overcoming value and the law of value… Capital, which originally depended on the wage relation, becomes a despot”.  

In effect, according to Camatte, capitalism, by “autonomising itself”, by “running away”, has ceased to exist; it has almost turned into a new mode of production. It has “brought about the disappearance of classes” and humanity as a whole is exploited by this strange ghost of capital. Camatte explains further: “During its development capital always tended to negate classes. This has finally been accomplished through the universalisation of wage labour and the formation – as a transitional stage – of what is called the universal class, a mere collection of proletarianised men and women, a collection of slaves of capital. Capital achieved complete domination by mystifying the demands of the classical proletariat, by dominating the proletarian as productive labourer. But by achieving domination through the mediation of labour, capital brought about the disappearance of classes[2], since the capitalist as a person was simultaneously eliminated. The State becomes society when the wage relation is transformed into a relation of constraint, into a statist relation. At the same time the State becomes an enterprise or racket which mediates between the different gangs of capital.

Bourgeois society has been destroyed and we have the despotism of capital. Class conflicts are replaced by struggles between the gangs-organisations which are the varied modes of being of capital. As a result of the domination of representation, all organisations which want to oppose capital are engulfed by it; they are consumed by phagocytes”.

And this incapacity to oppose capital applies not just to political organisations, doomed as we saw in the first part of this article to end up as mere rackets, but to the working class, the proletariat itself: “The proletariat has become a myth, not in terms of its existence, but in terms of its revolutionary role as the class which was to liberate all humanity and thus resolves all social-economic contradictions”.  

Camatte is aware that Marx and his followers insisted that the working class had to go beyond the struggle for reforms within capitalist society, and pinned their hopes on the economic crises which would sooner or later result in the decline of the system. But Camatte argues that by overcoming value, capitalism has also overcome the tendency towards crisis: “The moment when the productive forces were to reach the level required for the transformation of the mode of production was to be the moment when the crisis of capitalism began. This crisis was to expose the narrowness of this mode of production and its inability to hold new productive forces, and thus make visible the antagonism between the productive forces and the capitalist forms of production. But capital has run away; it has absorbed crises and it has successfully provided a social reserve for the proletarians”. Camatte even suggests that Bernstein was one of the first to grasp this possibility, although this unfortunately led to Bernstein becoming an apologist for “the old bourgeois society which capital was about to destroy”.  

And what perspectives does the despot capital therefore offer to humanity? Camatte does not rule out the possibility that it will all end in its destruction. As we pointed out in the first part of this article, Camatte, following Bordiga in particular, was very aware of the growing tendency of capital to destroy the natural environment. “Some production processes carried out over periods of time lead to clashes with natural barriers: increase in the number of human beings, destruction of nature, pollution”. However, Camatte seems to consider that these problems can somehow, like the economic crisis itself, be overcome: “But these barriers cannot be theoretically regarded as barriers which capital cannot supersede”.

We can understand that in 1973 it was less evident that the ravaging of nature by capital would prove to be an increasingly insurmountable problem for capitalism – not least because, far from subjecting the world to a global despotism which could take effective measures to counter-act the destruction of nature, the advancing decay of capitalism has only intensified the deadly competition between national units, compelling each one of them to continue pillaging all the natural resources available to them.

Camatte’s blindness to the inability of capitalism to go beyond brutal competition between its various units is also noticeable in the fact that Wandering has nothing whatever to say about the inter-imperialist competition which, in the form of rivalry between the western and eastern blocs, held out a very concrete prospect of the destruction of humanity through nuclear war. So the catastrophic destruction of humanity seems, to Camatte, less likely than a kind of dystopian, science fiction nightmare. Camatte argues that we are already seeing “the transformation of the mind into a computer which can be programmed by the laws of capital”, paving the way to a future founded on the “production of a perfectly programmable being which has lost all the characteristic of the species homo sapiens”.

These predictions do in a certain sense anticipate the technological developments of the last 50 years: the increasing role of personal computers, mobile phones and the internet as vehicles for ideological intoxication; the beginnings of experiments with microchips inserted into the human body; the increasing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence which has alarmed serious thinkers like Steven Hawking (as well as the likes of Elon Musk… whose billionaire fantasies are certainly part of the problem he is so concerned about[3]) and has prompted them to issue warnings about AI taking over or even destroying humanity.

It’s certainly true that in a society where dead labour dominates living labour, we constantly see the instruments created by human activity becoming increasingly destructive and dangerous: the harnessing of atomic energy is the clearest proof of that. But the present acceleration of the decomposition of the system, the “Whirlwind” of effects (war, ecological crisis, pandemics, etc) which we have described elsewhere[4], pose a much more immediate threat to human survival than the complete robotisation of the species. In particular, the fears expressed by “tech leaders” about the possible weaponisation of AI are certainly real, but this is essentially an aspect of the insane arms race driven by imperialist competition and growing military chaos.

And the present acceleration of capitalist decomposition points to a very different meaning to the idea of capital “running away” – in sum, that its mad forward flight is taking it to the edge of the cliff, to a fall from which there will be no return. In Camatte’s vision there is the notion of capital as an all-powerful entity which can rid itself not only of the contradictions inherent in commodity relations, but even of living human beings. In this sense it has a certain resemblance to the visions of the conspiracy theorists for whom every stage in capital’s road to chaos and self-destruction is explained as yet another part of a global master plan, even if the conspiracists take comfort from personalising this omnipotent power in the form of extra-terrestrial lizards, Illuminati or Jews, a story which in turn reiterates an older, gnostic mythology which holds that this fallen, grossly material world is in the unbreakable grip of a malevolent creator deity, so that salvation can only be attained outside the confines of earthly existence.

The same could be said about capitalism’s capacity to absorb economic crises: in 1973, faced with the elucubrations of the likes of Marcuse, Castoriadis or the situationists, our current had to argue very forcefully to show that the post-war boom was indeed over and capitalism was entering an open crisis of overproduction. Camatte was not wrong in noting the increasing tendency of the state to absorb civil society, and to seek to contain the rivalries between different capitalist enterprises (at least within the confines of the nation). But this is precisely what the communist left is referring to when it argues that state capitalism has become a universal tendency in the period of capitalist decline and it is probably significant that Bordiga, from whom Camatte took a number of ideas, himself never accepted the concept of state capitalism.

For the majority of the communist left, however, it is impossible to understand the bourgeoisie’s response to its historic crisis without using the concept of state capitalism. The state apparatus has become the irreplaceable instrument to deal with the economic contradictions of the system, but the past few decades have shown that the more the ruling class resorts to state measures to contain the impact of these contradictions, the more it merely puts them off to a later date when they explode in an even more dangerous manner, as with the so-called “financial crisis” of 2008, the product of two decades or more of debt-fuelled growth. We should also recall that it was precisely the attempts of the Stalinist model of state capitalism to “assign value” that led to its ultimate collapse.

And this brings us to more fundamental flaw in Camatte’s thesis: the idea that capital has overcome value.

In reality, capital without value is a non-thing, and far from being something that is merely “assigned by capital”, it is the imperious need to expand value which has forced capitalism to occupy and commodify every aspect of human activity and every part of the earth’s geography. The maintenance of this drive has continued throughout what Camatte calls the period of real domination, but which we see as the epoch of capitalist decadence. The need to expand value remains at the root of this process, even if it has required massive state intervention, astronomical levels of debt and fictitious capital, and thus systematic interference with the operation of the law of value itself. Camatte sees this universalising drive as did Marx, but while for Camatte the process leads to the unassailable despotism of capital through the overcoming of value, for Marx this very push contains the seeds of the system’s demise: “This tendency – which capital possesses, but which at the same time, since capital is a limited form of production, contradicts it and hence drives it towards dissolution – distinguishes capital from all earlier modes of production, and at the same time contains this element, that capital is posited as a mere point of transition”[5] Rosa Luxemburg in particular later developed this approach to insist that capitalism’s drive to achieve total, universal domination could never be achieved since the very attempt to do so would unleash all the underlying contradictions of the system – economic, social and political – and this would plunge it inexorably into an age of catastrophe. Against this vision – which in our view has largely been confirmed by the barbaric trajectory of capitalism in the 20th and 21st centuries - The Wandering of Humanity is in part a polemic against the notion of capitalist decadence, in particular as defended by Révolution Internationale, one of the groups that would form the ICC in 1975.

Decline of the capitalist mode of production or decline of humanity?

“The capitalist mode of production is not decadent and cannot be decadent” (Wandering of Humanity).

In the article “Decline of the capitalist mode of product or decline of humanity” (originally published in the same issue of Invariance and included in the Red and Black pamphlet) Camatte quotes from a passage in the Grundrisse which we have had occasion to refer to on several occasions[6], principally to show that the decadence of capitalism should not be equated with a cessation of capitalist accumulation or a complete halt in the development of the productive forces:

“The highest development of this basis itself (the flower into which it transforms itself; but it is always this basis, this plant as flower; hence wilting after the flowering and as consequence of the flowering) is the point at which it is itself worked out, developed, into the form in which it is compatible with the highest development of the forces of production, hence also the richest development of the individuals. As soon as this point is reached, the further development appears as decay, and the new development begins from a new basis”.

But already in 1972, in an article in RI old series, no 7, “Voluntarisme et confusion”, the same passage is used to support the theory of decadence against various groups, mostly of a councilist nature, who denied the connection between revolution and the objective historical conditions – in short, the necessity for a period of decadence. But according to Camatte, who cites the RI article in a footnote, “there is decay because the development of individuals is blocked. It is not possible to use this sentence to support the theory of the decline of the capitalist mode of production”. According to Camatte, “the remainder of Marx’s digression confirms that the decay refers to human beings”.

The attack on the theory of decadence also takes up a major section of Wandering, above all in this paragraph: “It makes no sense to proclaim that humanity's productive forces have stopped growing, that the capitalist mode of production has begun to decay. Such views reveal the inability of many theoreticians to recognize the run-away of capital and thus to understand communism and the communist revolution. Paradoxically, Marx analyzed the decomposition of bourgeois society and the conditions for the development of the capitalist mode of production: a society where productive forces could develop freely. What he presented as the project of communism was realized by capital”.

Camatte’s rejection of decadence theory is quite explicitly linked to a rejection of the “myth” of the proletariat and in the end, a rejection of Marx, who while Camatte generously admits may provide some material for understanding the runaway of capital, never really understood it (or its “real domination”). “Thus Marx’s work seems largely to be the authentic consciousness of the capitalist mode of production” – largely because he developed a dialectic of the productive forces, holding that “human emancipation depended on their fullest expansion. Communist revolution – therefore the end of the capitalist mode of production – was to take place when this mode of production was no longer ‘large enough’ to contain the productive forces”. But since capital has “autonomised itself” and can develop without limit, it has already realised what Marx presented as the project of communism.

It is not easy to orient oneself in the maze of Camatte’s theoretical wanderings, but he seems to be saying not only that Marx was wrong to argue that the conflict between the relations of production and the productive forces provide the objective basis for the communist revolution – thus refuting not only the theory of capitalist decadence, in which such a conflict assumes a permanent character, but also Marx’s general approach to historical evolution, upon which the theory of the ascent and decadence of capitalism is based[7]. For Camatte, maintaining Marx’s arguments actually expresses a capitalist outlook which sees the aim of communism as a society of perpetual quantitative growth – of accumulation in fact.

This is of course true for the Stalinist caricature of communism, but it entirely forgets that for Marx, the development of the productive forces under communism had an entirely different meaning, since it means above all the flowering of the creative possibilities of humanity, not the endlessly spiralling production of things. Camatte seems to recognise this in some ways, since he says that, for Marx in the third volume of Capital and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, “the discontinuity (between capitalism and communism) lies in the fact that the goal of production is inverted… The goal ceases to be wealth, but human beings”. And yet at the same time, Camatte insists that Marx did not really see a discontinuity because he argues for a transitional phase, the phase of proletarian dictatorship, which is “a period of reforms, the most important being the shortening of the working day and the use of the labour voucher”. Here, according to Camatte, we see “Marx’s revolutionary reformism in its greatest amplitude”.

Alternatively, we can see Camatte’s work as the authentic consciousness of the primitivist standpoint which holds that the development of technology (narrowly identified with the concept of the development of the productive forces) is the real cause of humanity’s ills and that it would be better to return to the communism of the hunter gatherers. Camatte denies that his communism is a simple return to the past, to the “nomadism of a type practised by our distant ancestors who were gatherers”, but it is no accident that fully-fledged primitivists like the group around Fifth Estate in the US were so impressed by Camatte’s theories.

Who is the reformist?

But Camatte does continue to talk about the need for communist revolution. Since “one can no longer hold that there is a class which represents future humanity”, since the proletarian project is no more than a programme for the reform of capital, who will make the revolution? Sometimes it appears to be the work of humanity as a whole, since humanity as such is exploited in the period of real domination: “threatened in their purely biological existence, human beings are beginning to rise against capital”. But if humanity itself is in decline, where will the movement towards communism come from?

There is much in Camatte’s description of communism in Wandering that we can accept, mainly because we have already seen in it the work of Marx and other marxists: its dialectical link to the Gemeinwesen of the past, the archaic human community which Marx studied intently in his later years[8]; its general social definition: “communism puts an end to castes, classes and the division of labour”; the relationship it restores between humanity and the rest of nature: “it is not domination of nature but reconciliation, and thus regeneration of nature”. And – a view that seems to be in contradiction with his assertion that communism is not a new mode of production - “human beings in communism cannot be defined as simple users… human beings are creators, producers, users. The entire process is reconstituted at a higher level, and for every individual”. In other words, communism means human beings producing what they need and desire in a qualitatively new way, and for this very reason does not cease to represent a “mode of production”. Camatte is also right to insist that “the struggle against reduction of the amplitude of the revolution is already a revolutionary struggle”, since the proletarian revolution, as Marx insisted from the beginning, is the basis not only for abolishing capitalist exploitation, but also for overcoming all the other oppressions, repressions and divisions that hold humanity in check, so that communism will be the starting point for the full flowering of human potential, a potential which we have so far only seen in glimpses.

But unless you can see a “real movement” in this society against the domination of capital – which marxists consider to be the movement of the working class against exploitation – descriptions of future communism fall back into utopianism, as Bordiga once observed. And when we look a bit more closely at what Camatte perceives as signs of a real movement inside the existing order, we see a real “reformism” emerging.

True he argues, in Wanderings, that “the goal cannot be realised by the establishment of communities which, always isolated, are never an obstacle to capital, can easily be surrounded by capital… Nor can the goal be reached by the cultivation of one’s own individual being, in which one would finally find the real human being”. And yet elsewhere, particularly in the provocatively titled “We must leave this world”[9], which already suggests the possibility of some kind of magical flight out of the present civilisation, he expresses a strong interest in the possibilities that vegetarian communes, regionalists and …anti-vaxxers might form a kind of vanguard of resistance against capital.

And more recently, in the Cercle Marx interview referred to in the first part of this article[10], he expresses a real interest in the Yellow Vests:

“JC: To tell the truth, I know very little about the yellow vest movement. I haven’t studied it. But what I felt at the beginning was important was the fact of totally refusing the world as it is. And it is the need for recognition, and it is pretty extraordinary, the fact that we put on a yellow vest that renders visible, and that they go on the roundabouts shows the problem of being seen. But it cannot open onto something else; it maintains itself in opposition to others”.

Anything but the class struggle! The result of Camatte’s attempt to go beyond the poor old working class struggle and discover the true revolt of humanity reveals itself as a real regression to forms of rebellion which at best dissolve the working class in the “people” and at worst – like the anti-vaxxers of today – have been recuperated by the extreme right wing of capital (hence perhaps his willingness to engage with the dubious Red-Brown alliance advocates of Cercle Marx).

But what betrays this non-revolutionary, even explicitly anti-revolutionary, outlook most clearly is when, at the end of “This World We Must Leave”, he warns against the idea of overthrowing capital through a frontal assault: “One must envisage a new dynamic, for the CMP[11] will not disappear following a frontal struggle of people against their present domination, but by a huge renunciation which implies the rejection of a path used for millenia”  – an argument further advanced in the interview when he warns:

“CM: Do you in a way think that capital has become a totality that no longer has an outside, that no longer has an exterior, and that in relation to this totality class struggle is now only an internal phenomenon to capital, that the real opposition for you becomes that between humanity and capital. The real decisive opposition is no longer between classes?

JC: Yes, and now I go even further, in the sense that we cannot posit an opposition beween humans and capital because when we are in this dynamic, we are still in the dynamic of enmity, and to oppose something is to reinforce it... But I saw that now we can no longer fight against capital. Not because capital is too strong but because it keeps it living.

CM: Fighting against capital inevitably ends up reinforcing it.

JC: Absolutely

CM: So you say that we must irrevocably leave this world. If the world is the place of all places, if the world is now obviously that of capital that has become a totality, how can we leave this world? Do you think you’ve left this world?

JC: Yes. We cannot leave this world materially, but we leave it insofar as we no longer accept its givens. But we are forced to live. But for example, I live here, I don’t vote, it’s been 27 years that I haven’t gone to vote, but I am on good terms with the mayor. That it’s him and not another it’s all the same. That’s that world. And I live on the outside, as far as I can, because it’s obvious that I am caught up by taxes, by this, by that. So by all my thinking process, by all my behavior, I don’t feel myself reproducing this society. But even more than before, with the process of inversion, I move on to something else”.

In fact, this idea of an individual “way out” is already theorised in Wandering, precisely in the passage that precedes his apparent rejection of reaching communism through setting up anti-capitalist communities or cultivating one’s own individual being: “We are all slaves of capital. Liberation begins with the refusal to perceive oneself in terms of the categories of capital, namely as proletarian, as member of the new middle class, as capitalist, etc. Thus we also stop perceiving the other - in his movement toward liberation - in terms of those same categories. At this point the movement of recognition of human beings can begin”. 

In sum: before you can change the world, change yourself. This individualist, idealist vision is perfectly compatible with the notion of the disappearance of the working class which has reached its paroxysm in the phase of capitalist decomposition. And, according to Camatte, the beginning of liberation is not for workers to recognise themselves as part of a class which is antagonistic to capital, to recover their class identity, but exactly the opposite: to join the grand dissolution in which classes have no substance and the class struggle merely reflects our enslavement to the categories of capital.

CDW

Postscript

Once again on the wanderings of Bérard

As we showed in a previous article in this series[12], the influence of modernism in the renascent revolutionary movement of the early 70s was also felt in the “pre-ICC” via the “Bérard tendency”. We recalled that this influence expressed itself both in the rejection of the workers’ struggle for immediate demands, and, at the organisational level, by an opposition to the first attempts to centralise the Révolution Internationale group on a national level. At a meeting of the group in 1973, focused on the necessity to elect a centralising commission, Bérard warned that this initiative would lead to Trotskyist or Stalinist type Central Committee, to a force for bureaucracy. Comrade Marc Chirik countered with a warning to Bérard: that he and his tendency were heading in the direction of Barrot and Camatte, and thus towards the abandonment not only of revolutionary organisation but of the revolutionary class as well. Bérard indignantly rejected this warning.

Not long afterwards, “Une Tendance Communiste” put itself outside the framework of the organisation by publishing its pamphlet La Révolution Sera Communiste ou ne Sera Pas, the one and only public expression of this ephemeral group. In it, there is a section headed “Why Invariance is no longer revolutionary”, which, while recognising that the early Invariance had made some fruitful contributions (such as on the question of formal/real domination), it subsequently entered the realm of ideology with its vision of a revolution made by “humanity”, the consequence of his idea that capital had become a “material community”:

“hence his inability to grasp the real contradictions of the period of historical crisis (the exacerbated tendency towards the real domination of capital coming up against the limits of exchange, the tendency towards the proletarianisation of the whole of humanity counter-acted by the inability of the wage relation to integrate those with nothing to fall back on (the sans-reserves). Capital becomes abstractly ‘unified’, completely abstract and goes beyond itself in the material community ... The absurdity of a combat of ‘humanity’ against ‘capital’ is obviously based on the idea that humanity already exists – and here we have the full reformist, a-classist vision”.

And the text also criticises Camatte’s accompanying idea that any attempt by communist minorities to organise themselves can only lead to a new racket.

As it happens, Bérard at this point was more influenced by Barrot/Dauvé[13] than by Camatte, and was thus able to retain references to the proletariat as the subject of the revolution. It was in fact a kind of half-way house between the position of the communist left that he was leaving behind – in short, Marx’s insistence on the need for the working class to affirm its autonomy in the fight against capitalist exploitation, and to exercise its dictatorship during the period of transition towards communism - and Camatte’s open abandonment of the proletariat. As we showed in the article on the Bérard tendency, this centrist stance was based on the pseudo-dialectical theory of a simultaneous affirmation/negation of the proletariat.

Many of today’s communisers are still residents of this half-way house, but the pull towards Camatte’s pure negation of the class struggle is very strong in the modernist milieu. In the case of Bérard, his subsequent – and very rapid –abandonment of the politics of the communist left, of any organised activity, and his evolution towards a kind of primitivism, fully confirmed Marc’s prediction.

Jacques Camatte is undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the so-called “communisation” current. In developing a marxist critique of the profound errors of this current, we think that it will be useful to provide an account of Camatte’s political wandering from orthodox Bordigism to the total rejection of the “theory of the proletariat” and a theorisation of escape from the class struggle. In our view, while few of the “communisers” have followed Camatte to his ultimate conclusions, in many ways the path he took reveals the real dynamic of the whole tendency.

Our aim here is not to write Camatte’s biography, but to examine his trajectory in the light of a number of his most significant theoretical products.

According to Wikipedia, Camatte, at the age of 18, was already a member of the French Fraction of the Communist Left in 1953[1] – in other words, shortly after the split in the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt) in Italy between the tendency around Damen and the tendency around Bordiga. The French Fraction was later transformed into the French section of the Bordigist International Communist Party (PCI) that published Programme Communiste and Le Proletaire. Camatte was to play an increasing role in the theoretical work of that organisation, while developing a close collaboration with Bordiga. However, by the early 60s he had become dissatisfied with the direction the organisation was following – an activist, trade unionist practice focused around the production of “workers’ papers”. Camatte considered that, since the period remained essentially dominated by the counter-revolution, the tasks of the ICP were above all theoretical – the denunciation of all forms of revisionism and the restoration of the communist programme. In 1966 Camatte broke from the PCI and began the review Invariance, whose “statement of principles” on the inside page of the first series shows a clear continuity with the Bordigist tradition[2]:

“Invariance of the theory of the proletariat:

• Defended in the Communist League (Communist Manifesto 1848) in the IWA (the work of the General Council in London led by Marx); at the time of the Commune; in the IInd International; against the degeneration and failure of the latter (The socialist left in Germany, Bolsheviks, socialist left in Italy – the abstentionist fraction)
• Which triumphed in Russia 1917 and internationally: Moscow 1919, foundation of the IIIrd International; Livorno 1921: the break with democracy
• Defended by the Communist Left against the degeneration of Moscow; against the Sacred Union in the resistance to fascism
• Which must be restored, as well as the Communist Party – organ of the proletarian class – outside of any democratism, careerism, individualism, against immediatism and any revisionist doubt about the doctrine
• The aim of Invariance is the reformation of the Communist Party”

Working Theses: theoretical advances….

Invariance no. 6, published in April 1969 with the title “La Revolution Communiste, Theses de Travail”, is a substantial piece of work, running to over 150 foolscap pages, and it offers us an overview of the main political conclusions and orientations of the review at that moment – which are interesting above all in that they tend to reject some of the holy truths of Bordigism.

It is divided into a number of chapters, dealing with the history of the proletarian movement from its earliest days to the post-WW2 period, including the nature of Stalinist Russia, the colonial question, the economic crisis and the evolution of capitalism

The first chapter, “Brief history of the movement of the proletarian class in the Euro-American area from its origins to our days” confirms that the starting point of Invariance was still the marxist tradition and the theory of the proletariat, which, it argues, was confirmed by the revolutionary wave that followed the First World War; and, at this point at least, seems to be committed to the idea that the future communist revolution is the task of the proletariat alone. It also develops a rather coherent analysis of the succession of the various phases of upsurge and counter-revolution in the history of the proletariat, and in particular of the defeat of the revolutionary wave and the struggle of the communist left against the degeneration of the Communist International. But in contrast to the more “traditional” Bordigists, it does not exclude from the communist left currents like the KAPD, whose theses on the party were to be published along with the Manifesto of the Miasnikov group in Russia in later editions of Invariance: “A fundamental element for the reacquisition of the doctrinal totality is supplied by the contribution of the communist left of Italy. However, many parallel elements may also be necessary: Tribunists, KAPD, various movements referring to the councils, Lukacs…the work of unification implies the rejection of anathemas” (Thesis 1.5.20, p 37).

At the same time, the text lays out its criticisms of the activist and opportunist slide of the official Bordigists.

“In 1962, the PCI believed it possible – following the agitation begun in 1960 and reinforced during the course of that year – to produce a trade union organ: Spartaco …. but when you begin to no longer have a materialist, non-voluntarist approach, error is inevitable. The appearance of this sheet was the first theoretical defeat because it meant abandoning the demand to link in an indissoluble unity immediate action (trade union or other according to the organisations: factory committees, enterprise councils, etc) and the mediate, ‘political’ struggle. All that because with this sheet there was the hope of being more permeable to the class … In 1963, the movement left behind its original positions and placed itself on a level with the Trotskyist movement with which it entered into competition”. Furthermore, “All this also showed the insufficiency of the left’s thesis on the unions from the point when it no longer precisely defined their evolution, their integration into the state and the behaviour of workers towards them: desertion” ( 1.5.10, p33).

We can also note that Invariance’s view of the conditions for the formation of the party began to edge back towards the position of Bilan in the 1930s and the GCF in the 40s, and thus towards the recognition that the “formal” Bordigist party was not really a party at all: “The party can only be reformed through the coming together of two movements: the return of the totality of the theory of the proletariat and the movement towards the unification of the class … its formal existence today is an embarrassment, if only because, at the end of a certain period, and as a result of the prevailing political fog, it tends to take itself for a deus ex-machina and to believe that everything has to go through it, that it must lead everything at the very time when it is least recognised by the real movement” (Invariance 6, 1-5-18-19, p36-37).

This is no doubt a reference to the ridiculous intervention of the PCI in the May 1968 movement, where the Bordigists, despite tending to reject the entire movement as petty bourgeois, could offer nothing more than a call for the masses to rally behind the banner of the Party. By contrast, several passages in the Theses show that the early Invariance saw May 68 as a real rupture with the counter-revolution.

Another positive element of the Theses is the recognition (which it clearly shared with Bordiga[3]) of capital’s growing tendency towards the destruction of nature:

“Marx’s predictions (about the exhaustion of the soil by capitalist agriculture) are being daily verified today. The development of capital presents itself as an immense natural catastrophe: exhaustion of the soil, destruction of flora and fauna. Capital is the reification of man and the mineralisation of nature”, 4.3.3, p 111)

… and retreats

At the same time, the Theses fail to advance beyond some of the most important theoretical weaknesses of the Bordigist tradition:

• In the very notion of marxism as an invariant theory, as a “doctrine” which needs only to be restored[4]. It is certainly true that certain principles of the workers’ movement - such as the necessity for internationalism and political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie – do not change throughout the history of the movement, but they still have to be applied according to specific historical conditions, which means, for example, that in the period of the formation of capital as a world system, marxists could support certain national struggles, whereas this became impossible when the system entered its epoch of decline. The notion of an unchanging programme, unrelated to the historical experience of the working class, derives from an idealist, even religious starting point.
• In the distinction between the formal and the historical party, an idea which emerged as a means of justifying the error of the formation of the PCInt in 1943-5, and of rejecting the concept of the fraction as developed by the Italian Left between the wars. It’s true, as we have noted, that there had been a certain movement in Invariance 6 towards a materialist understanding that the party cannot be formed at any moment in the life of the class; but it fails to engage with Bilan’s contribution on the relationship between fraction and party, so that the partial critique of Bordigist idealism on this question remains stuck in mid-air.
• In the rejection of the theory of capitalism since 1914 as a globally decadent system, and with it, the defence of the notion of the October revolution as a dual revolution: in the view of the Theses, since the proletarian insurrection of October was unable to extend itself internationally, Bolshevik Russia mutated into a kind of bourgeois revolution. This view was fundamentally at odds with the position of the Italian Fraction, which insisted that proletarian revolution becomes possible because the capitalist system enters into its decadent phase as a whole and not region by region[5], excluding all possibility of progressive bourgeois revolutions.
• By the same token, since the Theses argue that there were still areas of the globe where capitalism was still in its youth, we have the idea that not only were “colonial revolutions” still possible, but that they were actually taking place in countries such as Vietnam and Cuba … The Theses talk about the “undeniable merit” of the theories of Castro, Fanon, Césaire (“at the beginning” at least …) and conclude that “the influence, in the west, of ideologies born out of colonial revolutions, as well as the return to outmoded positions of the workers’ movement (a certain messianism in Africa, Latin America and the USA, for example) still express a social renewal. This derives from the disappearance of the proletarian revolution of 1917-23. The proletariat, in the end, on a world scale, accomplished or supported a bourgeois revolution” (, 4.6.12, p132). Similarly, “Maoist ideology has a revolutionary character in China in so far as it presents itself as substitute for the ancient Chinese civilisation (it is this destroying the old superstructures built around the cult of ancestors)” ( 3.4.11, p87). These false and dangerous positions, which entirely underestimated the inter-imperialist character of the violent battles over the ex-colonial regions, were to have their disastrous outcome in the overt support for the Arab states in the imperialist wars in the Middle East by the Algerian group of the PCI and the resulting explosion of the organisation.

On the other hand, perhaps the most significant element, towards the end of the Theses, lies less in the inability to criticise Bordigist dogma, than in a tendency to open the door to certain modernist ideas which were to develop very rapidly in the ensuing period. Thus, in Thesis 4.6.1 we see the beginning of a new “periodisation” of capital, in which the war of 1914 marks not the definitive onset of the decadent epoch of capital, as the Communist International proclaimed, but the passage from the “formal” to the “real domination” of capital, and from there it was but a short step for Camatte to assert that capital had become entirely autonomous and had achieved a total domination over humanity, so that the whole of humanity, rather than the working class, would have to become the subject of the revolution. The step had not yet been taken: “The whole of humanity has a tendency to oppose capital, to revolt against it. But what is the class which can have the maximum of revolutionary coherence, which can have a radical programme for the destruction of capital and at the same time see, describe the future society, communism? It is the proletariat… The working class, by constituting itself as a class, and thus as a party, becomes the historic subject… Man is the negation of capital, but its active, positive negation is the proletariat” (Thesis 4.7.20, p 139).

The transition to modernism

Invariance number 8, covering the period July to December 1969, is entitled “Transition”. The previous issue had continued the “Theses de Travail” and was made up of a whole series of “supporting texts” from the Communist Parties of Italy and the USA, the KAPD, contributions by Pannekoek, Gorter, Lukacs, Pankhurst. In number 8 we find the theses on the party by the KAPD and the interventions of the KAPD during the debate on trade unions at the Third Congress of the Communist International; a 1937 text on the war in Spain by Jehan, defending the position of the Italian Fraction; and two reprints from Programma Comunista – “Relativity and determinism, on the death of Albert Einstein”, no. 9 1955; and “Programme du communisme Integral et theorie marxist de la connaissance”, from the Milan meeting of the PCI in June 1962.  

At one level, therefore, Invariance 8 continued the more open attitude to the different currents of the communist left which we already saw in number 6. But the real significance of the issue is to be found in two short articles at the beginning of the issue: an editorial entitled “Transition” and a second piece entitled “Capitalism and the development of the gang-racket”.

The first begins as follows

“The starting point for the critique of the existing society of capital has to be the restatement of the concepts of ‘formal’ and ‘real domination’ as the historical phases of capitalist development. All other periodisations of the process of the autonomisation of value, such as competitive, monopoly, state monopoly, bureaucratic etc. capitalism, leave the field of the theory of the proletariat, that is, the critique of political economy, to begin with the vocabulary of the practice of social-democracy or ‘Leninist’ ideology, codified by Stalinism.

All this phraseology with which one pretends to explain ‘new’ phenomena really only mystifies the passage of value to its complete autonomy, that is, the objectification of the abstract quantity in process in the concrete community.

Capital, as a social mode of production, accomplishes its real domination when it succeeds in replacing all the pre-existing social and natural presuppositions with its own particular ‘forms of organisation’ which mediate the submission of the whole of physical and social life to its real needs of valorisation. The essence of the ‘Gemeinschaft’ of capital is organisation.

Politics, as an instrument for mediating the despotism and capital, disappears in the phase of the real domination of capital. After having been fully used in the period of formal domination, it can be disposed of when capital, as total being, comes to organise rigidly the life and experience of its subordinates. The state, as the rigid and authoritarian manager of the expansion of the equivalent forms in social relation (‘Urtext’), becomes an elastic instrument in the business sphere. Consequently, the state, or directly, ‘politics’, are less than ever the subject of the economy and the ‘bosses’ of capital. Today, more than ever, capital finds its own real strength in the inertia of the process which produces and reproduces its specific needs of valorisation as human needs in general”.

We have already noted that issue 6 contained some of the premises of the modernist outlook, linked to the theorisation of the transition from formal domination to real domination. But here the “transition” becomes definitive.

As we have noted elsewhere[6], Marx’s concept of the transition from formal to real domination has been widely misinterpreted, notably in modernist circles. In a chapter of Capital that remained unpublished until the 1930s and was not more widely translated and published until the late 1960s “Results of the immediate process of production”, Marx used it to describe the evolution of capital from a phase where its domination over labour remained formal in the sense that it was still marked by precapitalist methods of production, in particular artisanal ones; capital had deprived the individual producer of his or her independence by reducing them to wage labourers, but the actual method of producing remained semi-individual and still included many of the stages of creating the whole product, even when producers were grouped together in centres of “manufacture”. The fully fledged factory system, based on developed machinery, reduced the workers’ activity to a series of fragmented gestures, in other words to subordination to the production line, more and more dispensing with all these artisanal vestiges; this evolution also corresponded from the move from the extraction of absolute surplus value (where the rate of exploitation depended to a large extent to the lengthening of the working day) to the extraction of relative surplus value, which made possible a shorter working day but also a more efficient squeezing of productive labour: “The real subsumption of labour under capital is developed in all the forms evolved by relative, as opposed to absolute surplus value”[7]

For a number of groups, some emerging from Bordigism or heading towards fully fledged modernism, such as Internationalist Perspective, this transition was more or less equivalent to the “old” move from ascendant to decadent capitalism and provided an alternative way of looking at the principal phenomena of the decadent period, such as state capitalism, with some – like Camatte in the Theses de Travail - even seeing the key moment coming in 1914. But as we argued, Marx was clearly talking about a process which was well underway by the mid-19th century and – since as Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in 1913, large areas of the globe were still essentially part of the pre-capitalist world, even if imperialism was more and more destroying the old forms and imposing its political rule on the colonies -  the transition to the modern forms of capitalist exploitation was a process that  continued throughout the 20th century and has still not been completed. So as a means of understanding that capitalism has entered its “epoch of social revolution”, the concept was not adequate, except in so far as a certain level of global capitalist development was evidently necessary for the world revolution to become possible and necessary. But while Marx’s use of the concept had an important, but more restricted implication, for Camatte the concept became the “starting point” for a complete overturning of marxism, for announcing the advent of a world in which capital has become autonomous, has become the “material community”, achieving total domination over humanity and the proletariat, signifying the end of the “myth of the proletariat” as the revolutionary subject.

We will return to some of these ideas in a second part of the article, but no less significant is the short piece on the development of the “gang-racket”, which provides the theoretical basis for the abandonment of any form of proletarian political organisation, and thus for Camatte’s individual flight away from political engagement within the working class:

“With the constitution of capital as a material being and thus as a social community we have the disappearance of capitalism in its traditional personal form, the relative and sometimes absolute diminution of the proletarians and the growth of the new middle classes. Any human community no matter how small is conditioned by the mode of being of the material community. This mode of being flows from the fact that capital can only valorise itself, and thus exist, develop its being, if a particle of itself, while autonomising itself, confronts the social whole, defines itself in relation to the socialised total equivalent, capital. It needs this confrontation (competition, emulation) because it only exists through differentiation. On the basis is formed a social tissue based on the competition between rival ‘organisations’ (rackets).

The various groupuscules are so many gangs which confront each other while having the divinisation of the proletariat as their general equivalent”

The implication, drawn in the editorial headed “Transition”, is obvious: the task of the review Invariance “is thus not to be the organ of a formal or informal group but to fight against all the false ‘theories’ produced in by-gone epochs while simultaneously pointing towards the communist future”.

A review which is not the product of a formal or even an informal group can only be the property of a brilliant individual who has somehow escaped the fate which capital remorselessly imposes on all efforts to come together to fight against capitalist domination. Camatte continued this line of argument with a letter dated 4.9.69 which further developed the “theoretical” foundations of the notion of organisation as a racket, which has subsequently been published as a pamphlet “On organisation” in several languages. The 1972 introduction to this text claims that this position should not be interpreted as a “return to a more or less Stirnerite individualism” and appears to hold out the possibility of some future “union” of revolutionary forces. In our view, however, everything in the text, as well as the whole of Camatte’s subsequent political trajectory, can only confirm precisely this return to the logic of Saint Max’s “egoism” which Marx attacked so acutely in The German Ideology.

The theoretical justification for this relapse is, once again, found in Camatte’s use of the notion of the real domination of capital, which tends to depersonalise the capitalist social relation and replace the reign of the individual capitalist with the anonymous, collective organisation of capital, either through vast “private” corporations or the biggest corporation of all, the state. And indeed, Marx had already noted that in the second half of the 19th century, the capitalist tends to become a mere functionary of capital. Camatte also cites Bordiga’s study of “The economic and social structure in Russia today”, which argues that “The organisation is not only the modern depersonalised capitalist, but also the capitalist without capital because it doesn’t need any”. All this is true and flows from the fundamental marxist precept that capital is inherently an impersonal social relation – and from the recognition, developed most lucidly by the communist left, that the organisation of capitalism through the state has increasingly become part of the mode of survival of the system in its epoch of historical crisis (which, as we have seen, Camatte tends to equate with the period of “real dominaton”). But from here Camatte makes a theoretical leap which neither Marx nor Bordiga would ever have sanctioned.

Thus: “With the passage to real domination, capital created its own general equivalent, which couldn’t be as rigid as it had been in the period of simple circulation. The state itself had to lose its rigidity and become a gang mediating between different gangs and between the total capital and particular capitals”.

From this description – acceptable in certain aspects - of the development of state capitalism we jump to the “political sphere”. And not only the political sphere of the ruling class, but to the political organisations of the proletariat:

“We can see the same sort of transformation in the political sphere. The central committee of a party or the centre of any sort of regroupment plays the same role as the state. Democratic centralism only manages to mimic the parliamentary form characteristic of formal domination. And organic centralism, affirmed merely in a negative fashion, as refusal of democracy and its form (subjugation of the minority to the majority, votes, congresses, etc) actually just gets trapped again in the more modern forms. This results in the mystique of organisation (as with fascism). This was how the International Communist Party evolved into a gang”.

The trick here is to remove the class struggle from the equation. No distinction whatever is made between the political sphere of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat, which ceases to offer any counter-force to the prevailing features of the existing order.

It is certainly true, as both Marx and Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, that capital has an inbuilt need to penetrate every corner of the planet and every sphere of human activity, that its ideological and moral world-views tend to poison everything, not least the efforts of the working class to associate, to organise, to resist, to develop its own theoretical understanding of social reality. And this is why every form of proletarian organisation is subject to the danger of accommodation to capitalist order, to the tendency towards opportunism and degeneration. But if a different form of society remains possible, if communism is still the only human future, then this is because the proletariat, the working class, indeed provides an antidote to the poison of capital, and its organisations are not a mere passive reflection of the dominant ideology but an arena of combat between the proletarian world view and the encroachments of capitalist habits and ideology.

For Camatte, this may once have been true but it is no longer the case. “The proletariat, having been destroyed, this tendency of capital encounters no real opposition and so can produce itself all the more efficiently. The proletariat’s real essence has been denied and it exists only as an object of capital. Similarly the theory of the proletariat, Marxism, has been destroyed, Kautsky first revising it and then Bernstein liquidating it”.

And with one stroke of the pen, the battle of the lefts in the Second and Third International against these attempts to revise and liquidate marxism cease to exist. By the same token, all subsequent efforts by the groups of the communist left to fight for proletarian principles against the penetration of capitalist ideology are doomed to failure and recuperation.

It’s true that the ICP, born out of a current that originated in the resistance to the degeneration of the CI, itself exhibited all the signs of a degenerating organisation; and Camatte has little difficulty showing that the political confusions of the ICP opened the door to bourgeois practises: the theory of organic centralism as a justification for hierarchical, bureaucratic methods, the sectarian vision of itself as the one and only proletarian political organisation to an attitude of competition and denigration of other proletarian currents. In this sense, it’s true that the ubiquity of gang-like behaviour (including its most vulgar forms, such as theft and violence against other proletarians) has become - notably in the phase of capitalist decomposition – a real danger to the existing proletarian political camp. But for Camatte there simply cannot be a proletarian camp any more: “all forms of working class political organisations have disappeared. In their place, gangs confront each other in an obscene competition, veritable rackets rivalling each other in what they peddle but identical in their essence”.

In sum: the very attempt to organise politically against capital is fatally doomed to reproduce capital. So there is no point is fighting it in association with other comrades. Best to retreat into the purity of one’s own individual thought. The ego and his own indeed.

The worst of all this is that Camatte cites the militants of the proletarian movement to justify this course towards political suicide. As with all subsequent communisers, Marx’s reference to the proletariat as embodiment of the real movement towards communism is called upon: rightly, in relation to the organisation of a class movement that could overcome its early, sectarian phase, but with radically false conclusions for the epoch of “real domination”: “In Marx’s time the supersession of the sects was to be found in the unity of the workers’ movement. Today, the parties, these groupuscules, manifest not merely a lack of unity but the absence of class struggle. They argue over the remains of the proletariat. They theorise about the proletariat in its immediate reality and oppose themselves to its movement. In this sense they realise the stabilisation requirements of capital. The proletariat, therefore, instead of having to supersede them, needs to destroy them”.

This would be true, perhaps, if by the groupuscules, Camatte was referring to the organisations of the left of capital, which the proletariat will indeed have to destroy. But by denying the capacity of communist proletarians to come together and fight the influence of bourgeois ideology in its most radical forms, he removes the possibility of the proletariat really confronting and destroying its myriad false representatives, from the trade unions to the Trotskyist or Maoist organisations.

Perhaps, with this idea of the proletariat destroying the obstacles on the path towards communism, Camatte displays a faint nostalgia for the class struggle, to the original impulse which led him towards proletarian militancy. But now that he has gone over to the idea that the proletariat and marxism have been destroyed, his references to Marx, to Luxemburg, and to previous proletarian upsurges (1905, 1917, 1968) ring hollow. These upsurges, he tells us, left the “stupefied, dumbfounded” groupuscules trailing behind the movement; and he goes on to remind us that Luxemburg, basing herself on the experience of the 1905 mass strike, offers us a coherent theory of the creativity of the masses which radically refutes the “Leninist” theory of class consciousness being introduced into the class from the outside (a position which Lenin himself came to reject). But these partial truths are referenced as part of what has become an effort to conceal the essential: that Marx, even when he lived through moments when he was ready to be isolated and limit his organisational life to cooperation with a few other comrades, or Luxemburg in 1914 when she saw that the Second International had become a “stinking corpse”, never ceased fighting for the restoration and revival of the proletarian political organisation, based on their profound conviction in the revolutionary nature of the working class, the class of association, solidarity and consciousness.

It would be one thing if Camatte’s desertion of this fight was no more than an individual flight, an admission that he preferred to cultivate his garden. But the theorisation of this desertion, which has continued for decades and has been continued by Camatte’s progeny in the communisation current, is an active encouragement to others to join the flight, and thus has done incalculable damage to the difficult struggle to construct a proletarian political organisation.

In the second part of this article, we will look further into some of the key texts which aimed to justify Camatte’s desertion of the class struggle, in particular The Wanderings of Humanity.

CDW

Gone are the days when, despite the reality of a world dominated by a system of exploitation that is leading humanity more and more explicitly to its doom, the media persisted in spreading a little optimism to lull the exploited to sleep by suggesting reasons to hope for a better capitalist world. Now, the accumulation of catastrophes of all kinds is such that it makes it much harder to see anything other than hell on earth. Adapting to this situation, propagandist intoxication more and more attempts to confine thinking to 'end of the world' doomsday scenarios and does everything to divert the exploited from the idea that another future is both indispensable and possible, that it is maturing in the bowels of society and that it will be the outcome of the class struggle of the proletariat, if it succeeds in overthrowing capitalism.

Unprecedented chaos and barbarity... is not an inevitability

The world situation, as dramatic and crushing as it is, is not inevitable and can be explained in ways other than by the lies of those who have a vested interest in the perpetuation of capitalism: exploiters of proletarian labour power, politicians of all stripes, democrats of the left and right, populists and those on the far left who are capital's last line of defence.

Capitalism, more than any other mode of production before it, has developed the productive forces that have made it possible, for the first time in human history, to build a society free of necessity, without social classes: communism. In this sense, it represented a progressive stage in the history of humanity. The First World War - with its millions of deaths and destruction the like of which history had never witnessed - signalled the entry of this system into irreversible decline, the perpetuation of which now increasingly threatens the very existence of humanity. With two world wars to its credit, and an uninterrupted succession of increasingly deadly local wars, since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1990 it has entered a new and final stage of its decadence, its final phase, that of the general decomposition of society, of it rotting on its feet. It is only through the materialist and historical framework of decomposition, as the ultimate phase of the decadence of capitalism, that it is really possible to apprehend the ‘end of the world’ phenomena that are invading society and to combat their cause: the persistence of the domination of capitalist relations of production that have become obsolete.

Society is in a state of decomposition across the board, with the development of a generalised mentality of ‘every man for himself’, the growing instability of international ‘regulatory’ structures and political apparatuses, but also an explosion in drug use, criminal activity, religious fanaticism, depression and suicide[1], and a turning away from rational thought. The wave of populism is itself a product of this decomposition, which is increasingly affecting the ability of sections of the bourgeoisie to manage capital ‘rationally’. Two articles in this issue of the International Review illustrate this[2]:  ”How the bourgeoisie organises itself"  [155]in particular the section "The rise of populism: the most spectacular expression of the bourgeoisie's loss of control over its political apparatus” and “The left of capital cannot save this dying system [156]”.

In addition to the social irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie, this decomposition is contributing to the accelerated deterioration of the environment, motivated by the profits obtained by stealing natural resources, and thus to the worsening of climate change, as witnessed by the frequency and scale of climatic disasters around the world.

Clearly, the decomposition of society does not eliminate the fundamental contradictions of capitalism; on the contrary, it only aggravates them. The global economic crisis, back since the end of the 1960s, is inexorably and irreversibly worsening, with manifestations that will be deeper and more destabilising than the 2008 recession, and which will arguably break all the records of the great crisis of 1929 and 1930 (read “This crisis is going to be the most serious of the entire period of decadence [157]” in this issue of the International Review). But at the same time, while inflicting further suffering on humanity, with in particular a considerable reinforcement of the exploitation of the working class, and openly revealing the bankruptcy of capitalism, the economic crisis will provide the ferment for new developments in the class struggle and in the consciousness of the working class.

At the same time, the barbarity of war is spreading uncontrollably and ever more dramatically across every continent. War is currently raging in Ukraine and in the Gaza Strip in the Middle East; the threat of a future confrontation between China and the United States is unabated...[3] The working class has no side to choose in all these wars, whether current or in the making, and must staunchly defend the banner of proletarian internationalism everywhere. For a whole period, the working class will not be able to stand up directly against war. On the other hand, the class struggle against exploitation will take on greater importance because it pushes the proletariat to politicise its struggle, with a view to overthrowing capitalism.

There is no other realistic perspective for humanity. Not only are we confronted with each of the capitalist calamities we have mentioned - decomposition, crisis, war, destruction of the environment - but all these scourges interweave and interact in a kind of ‘whirlwind effect’ with more destructive effects than the simple addition of the scourges considered in isolation from each other.

The class struggle resurfaces on the world stage

While the aspects of society which represent the prospect of the destruction of humanity occupies all the media space, there is another factor at work, in relation to which the bourgeoisie is very discreet: the resumption of the class struggle on a global scale, the development of which represents the only possible future for humanity. Thus, after the considerable difficulties encountered by the class struggle following the political exploitation by the bourgeoisie of the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the proletariat is making its return to the social scene. It took the proletariat three decades, from the 1990s onwards, to digest the disgusting ideological campaign which hammered home, in every possible tone and through the media on every continent, that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes - falsely identified with the future communist society which is its antithesis - signalled the end of the project to build a communist society on a global scale. These campaigns even went so far as to decree the end of the class struggle, of the working class and of history itself. Even if the working class tried to raise its head through certain struggles over the last thirty years, these were considerably limited by the fact that the workers no longer recognised themselves as a class distinct from society, the main exploited class in society, with a project of its own. Yet it was the working class's gradual recovery of its class identity that made possible the emergence of struggles in the United Kingdom, the “Summer of Anger” in 2022, the biggest wave of strikes in that country since 1979. This revival of class struggle carries within it the proletariat's recovery of its own political project, the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a communist society[4].

Articles in the ICC press have illustrated, followed and commented on the most striking expressions of this renewal of class struggle[5]. Since the publication of issue 171 of the International Review alone, major struggles have taken place in Quebec, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Turkey and Northern Ireland. Such struggles are obviously the result of the growing refusal of the working class to put up with worsening exploitation and miserable conditions that go with it (the slogan ‘enough is enough’ voiced by the workers in Britain). Even beyond the immediate awareness of workers in struggle, these movements constitute the beginning of a response to the hell on earth to which capitalism condemns humanity.

The intervention of revolutionaries must be in the vanguard at every level of the struggle of the working class and its awakening to consciousness.

As a product of the historic struggle of the world proletariat, the activity and intervention of revolutionaries are indispensable. This is true at every period in the life of society, from the birth of the workers’ movement to the present day, both in the rise of capitalism and the development of the workers’ movement and in its decline; whether it is by being in the vanguard of the working class struggle to give it direction, during revolutionary periods, or in the worst moments of retreat, resisting politically and being very much in the minority, in order to save and maintain the heritage to be handed down. But it’s also true in all ‘intermediate’ situations, such as the one we are currently experiencing, when there is no possibility of a real influence within the working class and where the function of revolutionaries cannot be that of a party, revolutionary activity is nevertheless essential and indispensable on many levels, in particular with regard to the preparation of the conditions for the emergence of the future party.

In fact, in all circumstances, the activity of revolutionaries is far from being limited to the production of a press or leaflets and their distribution, even if these tasks are indeed essential and very demanding. Thus, as a condition for producing the press, the organisation must have the capacity to comprehend the evolution of the world situation at all levels, which presupposes a permanent collective effort of analysis, which may require a return to the basics, to update and enrich the framework of analysis. As “there can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory”’ (Lenin), and because the world is not static, revolutionaries must bring their political positions to life in the light of reality. This is how, for example, Lenin, aware that the moment favourable to revolution was approaching, undertook to write The State and Revolution[6], which was a continuation and clarification of marxist theory on the question of the state. It was a similar consideration which, in a completely different context, led our organisation to make an analytical effort to understand, at the end of the 1980s, the significance of the accumulation of phenomena of social decomposition, and to show that this was by no means something fortuitous or normal in the life of capitalism, but corresponded to a new phase in the decadence of capitalism, that of its decomposition.

It is this approach that enables the ICC to understand the current dynamics of imperialist conflict, not as a confrontation between two rival imperialist blocs - as was the case in the period 1945 to 1989 - but first and foremost as an expression of every imperialist country's quest for survival in the global arena. As the United States battles for world leadership, it has not hesitated to push Russia into invading Ukraine in order to weaken it considerably and prevent it from supporting China against the United States.

It is also this kind of analysis which enables the ICC to understand and defend the fact that, since the disappearance of the imperialist blocs, the historical alternative is no longer ‘World Revolution or World War’, the two terms being mutually exclusive, in particular because a proletariat which is not defeated globally is an obstacle to its recruitment for war. The two antagonistic dynamics in the present situation are not mutually exclusive: on the one hand, the sinking of society into decomposition, with the disappearance of society and all human life on earth at stake, and on the other, the development of the world class struggle until the proletariat takes power. However, the final outcome of these two dynamics is indeed exclusive to one or the other.

In the proletarian milieu, and certainly among those seeking class positions, there are divergences or questions as to the way in which the historical alternative is posed in the present situation. Some of these divergences have to do with whether or not we recognise the current phase of decomposition of capitalism. The ICC has developed a critique of the ‘vulgar materialist’ approach which underlies the rejection of the notion of the decomposition of capitalism (see the section “The marxist method, an indispensable tool for understanding the present world” in the “Update of the Theses on Decomposition, 2023 [2]” in International Review 170 ) and we can only encourage its critics, as well as its defenders, to engage in debate on this question. But it is not the only issue that needs to be clarified as a matter of priority. Indeed, the development of war tensions requires the utmost clarity and firmness regarding our attitude and intervention in the face of this situation.

The defence of proletarian internationalism as set out in the Communist Manifesto is irrevocable: “Proletarians have no country; proletarians of all countries unite”. However, in the face of the current conflicts, in particular the one in the Gaza Strip, there is a tendency among groups of the Communist Left (the Bordigists) but also within a fringe that shares a certain proximity to class positions, to set aside the intransigent position ‘Proletarians of all countries unite’ in favour of dubious formulas that ‘forget’ the proletariat of the Gaza Strip, dissolving it into the ‘Palestinian people’. Such confusions, which must be discussed and fought against, are very damaging insofar as they open a breach in the principles which the working class must defend to be able to face up to the development of military conflicts which will increase throughout the world[7].

Since its inception, the Communist Left has assumed a leading responsibility in the fight against war at various key moments in history by denouncing the two imperialist camps present: during the Spanish war in 1936, the Republicans on one side and the fascists on the other; during the Second World War: Great Britain, France, Russia and the United States on one side and Germany and Italy on the other, while Trotskyism betrayed the proletariat by defending the democratic camp in Spain and then the camp of Russia and the Allies[8]. But since then, the main groups of the Communist Left have rejected the various requests from the ICC to take a common position on the various conflicts that have bloodied the world since the end of the 1970s. This refusal arises out of sectarianism or opportunism, as was the case with the war in Ukraine, faced with which the International Communist Tendency (ICT), rejected the approach proposed by the ICC, which was totally in line with that of the Communist Left, instead taking the opposite tack, a broad approach blurring the demarcation that should exist between the Communist Left that is effectively fighting against war in general and a whole milieu made up of those who are circumstantially opposed to this or that war[9]. In these circumstances, it is only a small number of groups on the Communist Left who have assumed this internationalist responsibility[10].

Sylunken (20/07/2024)

With the presidential race in the United States and the European elections, the various bourgeois factions in the state apparatus have developed a vast ideological campaign in defence of democracy and its institutions, "threatened" by the rise of populism.

The working class must not give in to the siren song of democracy

Such a campaign, designed to last a long time, represents a real danger for the working class: it could weaken the tendency that has existed within the working class for several decades to turn away from the electoral circus as it became increasingly clear to workers that voting does nothing to defend their living conditions, which are constantly under attack from the state and the bosses, and that the left defends and will always defend the interests of capitalism.

By exploiting the spontaneous rejection of populism, of its assumed xenophobia, of its openly authoritarian discourse – a rejection which exists in a large part of the working class - the bourgeois factions of the left or the right are trying to bring the workers back to the rotten terrain of democracy, through which the bourgeoisie imposes its dictatorship over the whole of society in the most underhand way. The speeches warning that "democracy is threatened" by populism have had a certain effect on people's minds, with a sharp rise in voter turnout in the European elections, particularly in France (first in the European elections, then in the parliamentary elections).

To follow the bourgeoisie on this terrain is to defend interests which are not those of the working class, to choose the defence of one bourgeois camp against another, whereas the only camp that the working class should choose is that of its autonomous struggle against capitalism in crisis and all its war-mongering. This warning is all the more necessary as political chaos and populism are set to become even more important, and with them the bourgeoisie's campaigns to defend its "democracy".

Chaos at work in the United States

Populism and its putrid ideology have long existed in the United States, and for decades the bourgeoisie has been able to prevent them from having too great an influence on the state apparatus. Today, their growing presence seems inexorable and attempts to stop it seem fruitless. Although the most responsible factions of the bourgeoisie are still working to curb its rise to power, as we have seen in France recently, even with Trump's defeat, populism is already and will continue to be a factor in weakening the United States, both within the state apparatus and American society, and internationally. For its part, the discredited Democratic camp, at the head of a state that has stepped up its attacks and was unable to quickly rule out the candidacy of a weakened Biden, is going into the elections with an undeniable handicap. We can therefore expect a merciless confrontation between the Democrats and the Republicans in the next American elections.

The electoral campaign is, in fact, already more violent than the previous one, not only in terms of rhetoric. The hostilities between the two camps have already been punctuated by nothing less than an assassination attempt on Trump. The fact that Trump has escaped this, with incredible self-assurance, makes him appear more powerful than ever, a situation he is sure to exploit to his advantage. And if, for a short time, he tried to play the "national reconciliation" card, adorning himself with the halo of a martyr, he very quickly abandoned it and returned to the posture of demolishing the opposing camp, without worrying about the consequences for the functioning of state institutions in the future. Moreover, a number of the obstacles to his new candidacy that the Democratic camp had put in place, particularly on the legal front, have recently been swept aside by a judicial system, part of which is clearly in Trump's pocket.

Trump's style, built on rhetoric, threats and violence, is nothing new, having already left its mark on previous election campaigns when the incumbent violently contested his defeat, notably by encouraging a mob of his fanatical supporters to storm the Capitol. A new defeat for the Republican camp could give rise to unrest on an even greater scale. In a country where the population is heavily armed, Trump's supporters, whipped into a frenzy for months and fed conspiracy theories, could embark on seditious adventures and spread chaos across the country. Trump's pledge to take revenge on state officials he considers his enemies, replacing 400,000 of them if elected, also augurs post-election unrest. On the other hand, if Trump wins, his policies, which are seen as dangerous to US capital and its imperialist interests, will be challenged within various state bodies such as the army and the secret services.

So the only certainty is that, whatever the outcome of the elections, tensions and chaos are bound to develop in the world's leading power, albeit in different forms and at a different pace depending on whether the Democrats or the Republicans win the next elections. Whatever happens, it will have catastrophic repercussions around the world. With Biden finally giving way to his vice-president Harris, the alternative between the Republicans and the Democrats is no alternative for the working class, which will have to resist this false choice in a very difficult context.

The prospect of a destabilised European Union

Tensions between the states of the European Union are growing, promising here as well the development of instability in the historic heartland of capitalism. The decomposition of capitalism is exacerbating the tendency for states to go it alone and is also at the root of the rise of populism. The factors of division are weighing ever more heavily.

The political upheavals in the United States are having an impact on the strategy of European states, which are facing an uncertain future with regard to America, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine and a menacing Russia. The confrontation between the United States and China, at the heart of global imperialist issues, is exacerbating tensions within the European Union itself: between those countries, such as Poland, which clearly favour the Atlanticist option, and those, such as France, which wish to assert a degree of independence from the United States. Each country is faced with a series of conflicting interests with regard to China, both economic and imperialist.

Tensions have also increased since the start of the war in Ukraine. Even the "Franco-German couple", the driving force behind the European Union, has demonstrated its fragility. Germany, which had been dependent on Russian energy supplies, has suffered from the war on both economic and imperialist levels, with the weakening of its influence over the countries of Eastern Europe.

As the populist factions of the bourgeoisie gained increasing power at the head of governments, their irresponsible management of state affairs openly threatened the unity of the European Union.

Against the backdrop of war and crisis, tensions over the economy and the "common" budget, particularly the energy question (which is closely linked to the military question, especially as regards nuclear energy), have also increased. States are more and more tending to prioritise their own interests to the detriment of European unity.

Avefka (30/07/2024)

Capitalism – the mode of production that reigns over every country on the planet – is dying. In historic decline for over a century, the acceleration of its decay has been more and more visible for the last three decades and especially since the beginning of the 2020s, where its multiple crises – economic, military, ecological – are coming together to create a deadly whirlwind which is significantly exacerbating the threat of the destruction of humanity.

The ruling class in capitalism, the bourgeoisie, has no solution to this nightmarish scenario. Unable to offer any perspective for society, it is caught up in the desperate logic of a decomposing society: every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost! This has become the dominant rule in international relations, expressing itself in the extension of barbaric wars across the planet. But it is also the leading tendency within each nation: the ruling class is more and more divided into cliques and clans, each putting their own interests above the needs of the national capital; and this situation is making it increasingly difficult for the bourgeoisie to act as a unified class and maintain overall control of its political apparatus. The rise of populism in the last decade is the clearest product of this tendency: the populist parties are an embodiment of the irrationality and “no future” of capitalism, with their promulgation of the most absurd conspiracy theories and their increasingly violent rhetoric against the established parties. The more “responsible” factions of the ruling class are concerned about the rise of populism because its attitudes and policies are directly at odds with what’s left of the traditional consensus of bourgeois politics.

To take one example: imperialist strategy. One of the reasons why there is such opposition, within the American ruling class itself, to the return of Trump to the presidency, is that he would undermine the main planks of US policy on key question like strengthening NATO and supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia, while giving a free hand to the most aggressive factions of the Israeli bourgeoisie in the Middle East. Like Trump, Le Pen, Farage and other populists in Europe are also notoriously pro-Russian in their international outlook, which runs counter to the current policies of the most important Western states. With the US Democrats somewhat paralysed over whether or not to replace the aging Biden in time for the November election, a “Second Coming” of Donald Trump seems increasingly likely, opening the prospect of a further acceleration of chaos in international relations.

More generally, populism is the offspring of a growing disillusionment with the “political class”. It feeds off discontent with the venality and corruption of established politicians, their litany of broken promises, and their role in reducing the living standards for the majority of the population. Hence the populists’ claim to express a true rebellion of “the people” against the “elites” and their demagogic demands to improve the living standards of the “native” population by scapegoating and excluding migrants and foreigners.

Election results in Britain and France: a barrier to the populist upsurge?

The results of the elections in Britain and France show that the “responsible” factions of the ruling class are not prepared to lie down and concede defeat to the populists.

The British bourgeoisie has a long-standing reputation as the most experienced and intelligent ruling class in the world, a reputation which has outlasted Britain’s decline as a world power. In the 1980s, for example, the political and economic policies of Thatcherism, and the division of labour between the right in power and the left in opposition, served as an example to follow across the whole western bloc, most obviously in the USA itself. But the last few years have witnessed the Tory party, in its attempts to “contain” the rise of populism, become increasingly infected by it, notably thanks to the Brexit disaster and the incompetence and brazen lying of successive Tory premierships. In the space of less than five years, the Tories have gone from the huge victory of 2019 to the near wipeout of the 2024 elections, which has seen a Labour landslide and the biggest electoral defeat in Tory history. The Conservatives lost 251 seats and this included a number of former cabinet ministers (such as Grant Shapps and Jacob Rees-Mogg) and even a former prime minister (Liz Truss). In numerous constituencies the Tories finished third, behind the Liberal Democrats and, more significantly, Farage’s Reform UK.

In one of his first speeches as PM, Keir Starmer proclaimed that his government would fight to “make you believe again”. Fully aware of the very widespread cynicism towards politicians among the population, the Labour government is selling a vision of strong and stable government in contrast to the chaos of the last few years. It talks about “change” but it is extremely cautious in the promises it is making, and even more cautious about spending its way out of Britain’s economic problems. On foreign policy there will be almost no change at all in the previous government’s support for US and NATO policies towards Ukraine, the Middle East and China.

Labour’s ability to present itself as the new party of order and sensible government is an expression of the remaining intelligence of the British ruling class, its understanding that the Tory policy of controlling populism by injecting a whole number of populist themes into its own body has been a complete failure. In this sense it has added a few bricks to the barrier against the populist upsurge. But even in the UK, this is a very fragile barrier.

For one thing, the Labour landslide was based on a very low turn-out: only 60% of the electorate cast their vote, an indication that cynicism towards the political process remains very widespread. Secondly, it was very clear from the polls that the Labour vote was not founded on any great enthusiasm for its policies but was primarily motivated by a desire to get rid of the Tories. And perhaps most importantly, the Tories’ defeat was in part due to a widescale defection to Reform, boosted by Farage’s decision to take on the leadership of the party and stand in the election. Even though Reform only won 5 seats in parliament, they obtained 14.3% of the vote, putting them third in terms of total votes cast. Farage made it very clear that he didn’t expect to win many seats and that the fight against Labour (and the centre) has only just begun.

The British two-party system, with its “first past the post” principle, has long been advertised as a foundation stone of British political stability, a method of avoiding the turbulence of coalition politics which reigns in the many parliamentary systems based on proportional representation. In this case, the British approach has proved to be an effective block on smaller parties like Reform having a significant presence in parliament. But the two-party system also depends on the stability of the two main parties themselves, and what emerged from the 2024 election was a historic crippling of the Conservatives – a blow from which they may not recover.

Another key indication that we may not be in for a long period of “strong and stable” Labour rule is its attitude to the class struggle. Starmer, Angela Rayner (Deputy Prime Minister) and others may emphasise their personal working class origins, but this is more a counter to the populists’ claims that they “speak for ordinary people” than as a means of presenting Labour as a party of the working class, still less as a “socialist” party. Starmer’s Labour is very much a rehash of Blair’s New Labour, claiming to hold the ground of the “centre-left”, in opposition to the “left wing excesses” of Jeremy Corbyn which cost it dear in 2019. But in between 2019 and 2024 Britain has seen an important revival of class struggles which acted as beacon to workers’ resistance around the world. These struggles have died down but they are still simmering. The present Labour regime would not be well equipped ideologically to respond to a new outbreak of class movements and would find itself rapidly losing credibility as an improvement on the Tories.

In France, as in Britain, we have seen from within the bourgeois political apparatus a rather intelligent response to the rise of populism and the danger of Le Pen’s Rassemblement National winning a majority in parliament. The New Popular Front was cobbled together soon after Macron declared a snap election in response to the successes of RN in the EU elections. It brought together all the main forces of the left: the Socialist and Communist Parties, La France Insoumise, the Greens and some of the Trotskyist groups. After RN’s victory in the first round of the legislatives, they made a deal with Macron’s centre party, Renaissance, not to oppose each others’ candidates in the second round if it meant losing ground to the RN, and the manoeuvre worked: the RN failed to win a majority in the National Assembly

Does this mean that Macron’s gamble of calling the snap election has paid off? In fact, it has created an extremely uncertain situation in French bourgeois politics. Although the left and the centre were able to do a deal against the RN, Macron will face a divided parliament, made up of three main groupings which are in turn split into several sub-groups. This situation is thus still likely to make his job far more difficult than before. In contrast to Britain, France does not have a strong centre-left party because the Socialist Party was totally discredited by its years in power when it rained down attacks on the working class. The French Communist Party is also a shadow of its former self. The most dynamic force in the New Popular Front is La France Insoumise, which touts its working class and socialist credentials, its links to the workers’ struggles against the neo-liberal policies of Macron (for example, it calls for dropping the rise in the pension age to 64, a key issue in the recent strikes and demonstrations in France, and restoring it to 60). LFI is also highly critical of NATO and of the war in the Middle East, which does not make it a reliable supporter of Macron’s foreign policy. All this points to the conclusion that the French barrier against populism and political chaos is perhaps even more fragile than the British.

To some extent, the uncertainty facing the French political apparatus is a reflection of a more historically based weakness of the French bourgeoisie, which has not enjoyed the same political stability as its British counter-part and has been plagued by divisions between particular interests for much longer.  One of the reasons why the Socialist Party lost its credentials as a working class party was its untimely accession to power in the 80s, where it was obliged to carry out some ferocious attacks on the working class, rather than remaining in opposition like the Labour Party in the UK. And this inability to conform to an international strategy of the ruling class was an indication of this historic incoherence of the French ruling class and its political machinery.

The capitalist left against the working class

In France, there was more enthusiasm in the streets for the “defeat” suffered by RN than for the “triumph” of Labour in the UK. The blocking of RN from government meant that some of its more openly repressive and racist policies against immigrants and Muslims would not be put into effect, and this no doubt was felt as a relief to many, above all those from an immigrant background. But this enthusiasm contains real dangers, above all the idea that the left is really on the side of the workers, and that capitalism is only represented by the far right or Macron’s neo-liberalism.

The very fact that the left parties have played such a crucial part in the effort to block the RN is proof of the bourgeois nature of the left. Populism is certainly an enemy of the working class, but it is not the only one, and combining with other parties to bring stability to the existing political apparatus is an action in the service of capitalism and its state. Moreover, since this action is carried out in the name of defending democracy against fascism, it is a means of reinforcing the fraudulent ideology of democracy. Let us not forget the role that the left has played in the past to save capitalism in its hours of need: from World War One when the opportunists of Social Democracy put the interests of the nation above the interests of the international working class and helped recruit the workers for the war fronts; to the German revolution of 1918 when the Social Democratic government acted as the “blood-hound” of the counter-revolution, using the proto-fascist Frei Korps to crush the insurrectionary workers; and most tellingly, to the 1930s when the “original” Popular Fronts helped to prepare the working class for the slaughter of the Second World War, precisely in the same of defending democracy against fascism.

The working class should have no illusion that those who take part in the bourgeois political machine, whether from the right or the left, are there to protect the workers from attacks on their living standards. On the contrary, the only option for a bourgeois government and the parties within it, faced with a capitalist system which is falling apart at the seams, is to demand sacrifices by the working class in the name of defending the national economy and its imperialist interests, up to and including sacrificing themselves on the altar of war. We have already seen this amply demonstrated by Blair’s New Labour government in Britain and Mitterand’s Socialist Party government in France[1].

The defence of workers’ interests lies not in the ballot box or in putting our trust in the parties of the enemy class. It can only be based on the independent, collective struggles of the workers as a class against all attacks on our living and working conditions, and on our very lives, whether these attacks come from the right or the left wings of the ruling class.

Amos

Faced with the total impasse in which capitalism finds itself and the failure of all economic "remedies", the bourgeoisie has no choice but to rush forward by means that can only be military. The aggravation of war and warlike tensions in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and the growing threats in Asia (Philippines, Taiwan, etc.) are the main vectors of a world situation in which war, economic crisis and ecological disaster are worsening and reinforcing each other. The world proletariat is paying the consequences on the front lines in Russia and Ukraine, in Israel and Gaza, in Yemen and the Sahel, etc. In the face of increasing austerity measures to finance the war, misery, insecurity and fear for the future are deepening everywhere. Although the proletariat is reacting more and more through struggle to unbearable economic attacks, there is still a long way to go before the development and politicisation of its struggles make it possible to challenge capitalist domination.

While the polarisation of tensions between the United States and China constitutes the central axis of imperialist tensions in the world, and the various military clashes directly or indirectly linked to this major confrontation, the imperialist dynamic is not one of stable alliances leading to the formation of imperialist blocs with a view to a Third World War. This does not mean, however, that humanity can sleep soundly: the current trend towards uncontrolled imperialist chaos is also a threat to its survival.

Since the collapse of the blocs, the determination of the United States to maintain its position as the world's leading power, and to impose its imperialist order, has been a major contribution to the current imperialist disorder. Following the direction set by the Obama administration, the US bourgeoisie has implemented a policy of a "pivot" towards Asia, weaving a network of economic and military alliances (AUKUS, Quad) to isolate China, on the model of its encirclement of the USSR[1] which contributed to the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Undermining the alliance between Russia and China is an important objective of this policy, which is why the US helped provoke the war in Ukraine in order to "bleed" Russia. [2] Another strand of US imperialism's strategy was the Pax Americana in the Middle East, with the 2020 Abraham Accords which aimed to neutralise Iran and its proxy militias in the region and block the presence of China and its "Silk Roads". The chaos that gripped the region following the bloody attack by Hamas, and Israel's genocidal response, which together risk setting the region ablaze, ran counter to the interests of the United States, which had to mobilise considerable military resources to prevent any destabilisation threatening the order 'guaranteed' by the Abraham Accords.

To add to the confusion, the populist and Democratic factions of the American bourgeoisie defend different imperialist orientations, which would make the outlook even more unpredictable in the event of a Trump victory in the next presidential elections: "Trump vacillates between a desire to project US power abroad and isolationism; recently he has promised to withdraw from NATO, end imports of Chinese goods, deploy the US military on US streets to fight crime and deport immigrants, and ‘oust’ ‘warmongers’ and ’globalists’ from the US government. Other conservative leaders, such as Florida Governor Ron de Santis and businessman Vvek Ramaswamy, express outright hostility to the US honouring its international commitments. Most Republican Party presidential candidates have offered unconditional support to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack [...] On Ukraine, party politicians are divided: just over half of House Republicans voted in September 2023 to end US aid to Kiev's defence against Russian invasion.”[3]

Stalemate in the Ukraine war

After two and a half years, the war appears to have reached a stalemate. The Ukrainian offensive has been a failure and Russia is struggling to advance beyond its positions. Both sides are faced with the need to mobilise more people and resources on the front lines, while the ruins of towns and cities and the losses and deprivation of the population continue to mount.

The cause of this impasse is not that Russia's resistance to the "bloodletting" and its ability to remain a world power have been underestimated. Rather, they have been overestimated. At the root of the current impasse is the spiral of chaos unleashed by the war in Ukraine.

Firstly in Russia itself, where economic growth is in reality the result of the war economy, which eats up all resources and heralds "bread today and hunger tomorrow": “More than a third of Russia's growth is due to the war, with defence-related industries posting double-digit growth rates [...]. The military sector benefits from a disproportionate amount of public spending and also siphons off the civilian workforce, resulting in an abnormally low unemployment rate of 2.9% [...] The interaction between military spending, labour shortages and rising wages has created an illusion of prosperity that is unlikely to last [...] Putin is faced with an impossible trilemma. His challenges are threefold: he must finance his war against Ukraine, maintain his population's standard of living and preserve macroeconomic stability. To achieve the first two objectives, he will have to spend more, which will fuel inflation and prevent the third objective from being achieved.”[4] This scenario of inflation, deteriorating state services (health, education, etc.) and family debt will no doubt change the way Russia's main working class concentrations have experienced the war so far.[5]

What's more, the productivity of the Russian economy and its technological level are so low[6] that the country has to buy arms from North Korea.[7] Added to this is a demographic problem and a shortage of skilled labour, exacerbated by the flight of young technology-sector workers.

But economic problems are not the only ones facing Putin. The Russian Federation has 24 republics (including the occupied territories of Ukraine) from which Putin's government has withdrawn  the prerogatives of autonomy (with the exception of Chechnya), though not without resistance and repercussions (in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Central Asia, as witnessed by the recent Khorasan attack in Moscow). The uneven distribution of the war effort, with selective enlistment in peripheral regions and the withdrawal of resources to concentrate them in Moscow, all adds to tensions and, in the event of the collapse of the Russian army, would create a situation of possible break-up of the Federation and the emergence of multiple warlords armed with nuclear warheads, a nightmarish vision that the other powers, including the United States, want absolutely to avoid... while in fact helping to provoke it. Another element which is straining the cohesion of the bourgeoisie in Russia is the struggle between its different factions. Despite Putin's iron dictatorship, it is clear that Wagner's rebellion and the "accidental" deaths of Prigozhin and Navalny, as well as the successive changes in the military high command, illustrate the reality of harsh conflicts within the state.

In geostrategic terms, Russia has already lost its bid to prevent NATO's eastward expansion, which has seen the integration of Poland and the three Baltic states. Following the war in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for membership. Moreover, Russia's international isolation is making it more dependent on China.

There is no guarantee that, in this chaos, Putin (or anyone else) will not, in desperation, resort to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Impasse in the United States

The United States has consciously pushed Russia into a new offensive in Ukraine, but the prolongation of the war and the stalemate in the conflict are now working against its own interests. First of all, the war is draining economic, military and diplomatic resources that could be used to strengthen the US presence in Asia. It also reinforces the deep divisions within the American bourgeoisie: the Republicans were blocking a $60 billion support package for Ukraine and, for his part, Trump declared that if he were to win the election, he would not continue to support Ukraine. Pursuing this provocative line, he went so far as to say that he would let Russia "do whatever it wants" regarding its intimidation of Europe, even threatening to withdraw the United States from NATO should the European countries fail to increase [8]their military spending. The war is also a source of tension with the European allies, on whom the United States has imposed a policy of sanctions against Russia and increased spending on arms.

However, abandoning support for Ukraine is not a reasonable option for the US bourgeoisie, principally because it would weaken its credibility as an imperialist sponsor and deterrent8- as Taiwan's foreign minister said: "Support for Ukraine is essential to dissuade Xi from invading the island".

Like Russia, not only China but also India and the EU are watching what the United States is going to do and what a new Trump administration might entail. Ukraine is particularly worried. Faced with the risk of a withdrawal of military and financial support for Ukraine, the Biden administration's diplomacy has been intensely active in recent months,[9] starting with the draft security pact with Ukraine that is due to be approved at the next NATO summit in Washington "which would not bind NATO members to mutual defence, but would probably reaffirm long-term support for Ukraine".[10] This follows the decision at NATO's 75th anniversary summit in April to accelerate increases in military spending and to admit Finland and Sweden.[11] In Paris on April 2, US Secretary of State Blinken also urged the EU to "increase arms and munitions production to produce more, faster, and to support Ukraine against Russia [...] the challenges Ukraine faces will not go away tomorrow". The House of Representatives chaired by Mike Johnson (a Trumpist Republican) finally agreed to vote to release aid funds to Ukraine, bowing to pressure from the Biden administration.

The recent summit "for peace in Ukraine" in Bürgenstock, Switzerland (15-16 June) deserves a special mention. Zelensky brought together one hundred delegations, but since the spring, the French, German, British and American delegations compiled a Zero draft which reduced the 10 points initially proposed by Ukraine to four and excluded in particular those referring to the withdrawal of Russian troops and the territorial integrity of Ukraine, limiting themselves to pointing out the nuclear risk and the need not to block food trade. In July, Le Monde Diplomatique published an article based on a report by Foreign Affairs, according to which, since the beginning of the war in March 2022, Western countries had blocked a peace agreement by pushing Ukraine to continue the war until Russia was defeated. According to the article, Putin is quoted as saying that Boris Johnson (then British Prime Minister) called on Ukrainians "to fight until victory is won and Russia suffers a strategic defeat.”[12]

Stalemate in Europe

Washington has imposed its discipline on the European powers by applying sanctions against Russia, financing the war in Ukraine and increasing NATO's military spending, but the EU countries are trying to resist: their delivery of arms and support to Ukraine has been slow and limited, which does not contradict the fact that each country is increasing significantly its own arsenal and military reach. The EU's leading power, Germany, is an explosive concentration of all the contradictions of the unprecedented situation opened by the war in Ukraine. Threatened by the chaos in the East, the end of multilateralism is affecting its export-dependent economic power, forcing it to increase its military spending with a view to rearmament and finally, with the sanctions against Russia having dealt a major blow to its supplies of Russian gas, it is being forced to look for alternative sources of energy. In the current situation, Germany is obliged to submit to American military tutelage which is why, for the time being, it is one of the main supporters of American imperialist policies.

The war has caused divisions within the EU and NATO, between those who defend an openly pro-Putin policy, such as Hungary and Slovakia, and those who, like France, want greater independence from the United States. The recent European elections also showed that in various national capitals, populist factions are defending policies contrary to the interests of the national bourgeoisie as a whole, as in the case of Le Pen's RN in France, which favours greater entente with Moscow, and Salvini's La Lega in Italy. Chinese imperialism is trying to widen this divide by offering support to US dissidents, and Xi Jing Pin has organised selective trips to divide Europe, avoiding certain capitals like Berlin but travelling to Paris.

In any case, the war in Ukraine is forcing the European powers to adopt a policy of rearmament, austerity and sacrifices for the working class. In the EU, a war economy is being erected, with the bourgeoisie justifying it by the threat from Russia. Von der Lyden, the newly re-elected President of the European Commission, declared that "although the threat of war is not imminent, we must prepare for it".

But the working class in the core countries of Western Europe has shown that it is not prepared to accept further sacrifices without a fight. As shown by the "summer of anger" in 2022 in Great Britain, with the slogan "enough is enough", or the fight against the extension of the retirement age in France, we are witnessing a renewed combativeness that will develop in the face of attacks on our living conditions.

From Pax Americana to scorched earth policy

"Mr Biden's efforts to reach an Israel-Saudi normalisation agreement are the latest element in a long-running US campaign to strengthen cooperation between regional players who describe themselves as moderates. The normalisation talks built on the success of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which paved the way for Israel to establish diplomatic relations with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, and opened up unprecedented opportunities for bilateral trade, military cooperation and people-to-people engagement. Openness with Riyadh would have reinforced this trend, placing Iran at a disadvantage even as it sought to secure its own rapprochement with Riyadh.” [13]

The aim of this Pax Americana was to immobilise Iran and its proxy militias[14], as well as establish a trade route from India to prevent the deployment of China's Silk Roads project in the region; at the same time, it would allow military resources to be redirected towards Asia and the China Seas, the primary centre of imperialist tensions. This plan had been based on the recognition of a Palestinian state, demanded by Arab countries, and Saudi Arabia in particular, as a condition for the establishment of relations with Israel. As a result, the Palestinian Authority lost all credibility in Gaza to Hamas, and in the West Bank it proved powerless in the face of the occupation of land by Israeli settlers pushed by the extreme right-wing government and supported by the army. This strategy prevented the establishment of any Palestinian forces in the region and neutralised Iran's interests. Certainly, the previous Trump administration had no qualms about recognising the annexation of the Golan Heights or moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which could only be seen as provocations. All this left no room for anything other than a desperate reaction.

The murderous 7 October mission by Hamas, prepared and supported by Iran, was an attack on this strategy, which turned the whole region upside down. "Several US presidents had hoped to play down America's role in the Middle East without too much cost - in Biden's case, to focus on the challenge of China and the growing threat of Russia. But Hamas and Iran have brought the US back.”[15]

Indeed. The US’s largest aircraft carrier returned to the region's shores at the head of a strike force and a number of special operations selectively punished pro-Iranian militias: "Joe Biden's rapid deployment of US military assets to the region, as well as his diplomatic efforts with Lebanon and other key regional players, avoided the full-scale war that Hamas might have hoped to precipitate. A series of US strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen degraded the capabilities of these groups and signalled to Tehran's partners that they would pay the price for their continued aggression against the Americans. However, the risk of American miscalculation and complacency will increase with time”. [16]

But what Washington could not stop was Israel's whirlwind of revenge. Hamas has lit the fuse to a scorched earth policy in the region, but it is Israel that is carrying it out. The Zionist state stopped obeying US orders a long time ago. Its far-right government has only reinforced this tendency to retaliate.

The United States has supported Israel's murderous response in Gaza (over 38,000 deaths to date), while trying to contain the escalation of open warfare against Iran. But this situation undermines their rhetoric in Ukraine, where they are supporting a country invaded by its neighbour (Russia), while in Gaza, they are in practice supporting Israel's invasion and its extermination of Palestinians. It also undermines their propaganda as the leader of world democracy. Furthermore, the continuation of the war and its extension across the Middle East undermines the path previously favoured by the United States in the region. For this reason, "Washington's most urgent task is to end the war in Gaza” [17]. Whether the US can impose its authority on the region, and in particular restrain Israel's belligerent rampage, is another question.

The head of US diplomacy, Blinken, has already made eight visits to the region since the start of the war, with the aim of building on the alliance with Saudi Arabia. For the first time since 7 October, in March the United States did not veto a ceasefire resolution at the UN, allowing it to pass, albeit on the grounds that it was "non-binding". The Americans also concocted a plan with Qatar and Saudi Arabia for the release of Hamas prisoners, which was approved by the UN Security Council in June. Netanyahu has already ignored other calls for a ceasefire, leading in April to Benny Gantz's resignation from the war cabinet, effectively forcing its dissolution and accepting his call for early elections in September.

Faced with US initiatives to contain Israel's imperialist aspirations and discipline it, the Israeli government is opening up new war fronts  with provocations such as the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed seven commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the attacks on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and recently the attack on Yemen, in an attempt to force Washington to assume its role as regional policeman; but this has been at the risk of setting the region ablaze by fostering war with Iran. For the first time, the Mullahs’ regime in April launched a direct attack against Israel.

The Netanyahu government is also trying to buy time in anticipation of Trump's victory in the forthcoming US elections, after he announced his unwavering support for an Israeli war against Iran. For Netanyahu himself, beyond imperialist interests with the United States, the pursuit of war is also a personal matter, an attempt to save his skin in the face of numerous public protests against him and the threat of being tried for corruption.

The victim of these imperialist manoeuvres is the population of the whole region, exterminated under the fire of the struggle between the imperialist camps, in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia (and now Israel) and in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel.

Africa: the weak link in US imperialism

Global imperialist chaos is taking concrete form in Africa[18] with the intensification of imperialist conflicts resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees and unprecedented famine. The conflicts involve 31 countries and 295 clashes between militias and guerrillas.[19] Washington and the Western powers are finding it increasingly difficult to counter the growing economic and military influence of China and Russia on the continent. The most glaring example is France's loss of position there.

Africa is crucial to the Chinese economy in terms of supplies of basic raw materials for technological development and oil; but above all, through the Silk Roads project, China has strengthened its military and geostrategic presence in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, even though it currently only has a military base in Djibouti. As for Russia, its mercenary troops (Wagner) have been involved in coups d'état in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and recently in the conflict between Congo and Rwanda.

But the nerve centre of imperialist tensions today is the Horn of Africa, which is directly linked to the Middle East conflict and where control of the Red Sea, through which around 15% of world trade passes, is at stake. Iran is trying to influence the region through the Houthis, China through its presence in Djibouti and Russia through its intervention in Sudan. The famine in Sudan (the third largest country in Africa), where 25 million people (15% of the population) need humanitarian aid and from which more than 7 million people have fled, confirms the interaction between war, crisis and ecological disaster on a global scale.

Implications for the proletariat

In the United States, the divisions within the bourgeoisie present the working class with false grounds for reflection and opposition to the war. Trump presents himself as the supporter of workers who don't want to get involved in wars that don't concern them and where their children are dying. But his seemingly ‘pacifist’ scenario is mixed with a defence of the homeland, economic sacrifices to rebuild the economy, a rejection of immigration and rampant xenophobia – all of it an alien terrain for the proletariat. Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, present themselves as the defenders of peace and "international solidarity", while their government is in fact the ‘bad actor’ responsible for the current chaos.

This false choice leads the American proletariat to the bourgeois terrain of anti-racism, anti-populism and the defence of democracy, as we saw during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations or in the mobilisations in opposition to the assault on the Capitol.

It is only on the terrain of the struggle for their living conditions, for their demands, as in the Big Three (car industry) strike or the struggles for education and health in California, that the proletariat is able to fight outside the false alternatives proposed by the bourgeoisie.

In the same way, in the Middle East, the war prevents the expression of an internationalist proletarian struggle against both sides, diverting solidarity with the victims on the ground towards support for the Palestinian or even the Iranian side.

As for the proletariat of Europe, in the region of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, we cannot expect a massive response from it on its class terrain. This includes Russia, even if the continuation of the war means a greater involvement of the central battalions of this part of the proletariat. In the future, the aggravation of the economic and financial crisis will pose, more in Russia than in Ukraine, the conditions for a mobilisation of the proletariat to defend its living conditions.

The workers' struggle in Britain under the slogan "enough is enough", and in other countries such as the United States and France, shows that the proletariat is not prepared to sacrifice itself for war and has been stimulated to reflect on the links between economic crisis and war as well as the disastrous future that capitalism has in store for us.

The impact of the war in the Middle East is, however, a momentary obstacle to the development of class struggle. It favours appeals to choose one of the imperialist camps, to take sides in the war, which the proletariat must reject and fight with the greatest energy.

H.R. (23 July 2024)

Between May 20 and 26th, an “Action Week” in Prague around the theme “Together against capitalist wars and capitalist peace” attracted groups and individuals from a number of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Britain, Argentina… The majority of groups invited were anarchists, workerists or councilists who have taken an internationalist position against the Russia-Ukraine war and – despite many hesitations and confusions – against the other wars ravaging the planet[1]. The organising committee for the event – which seems to have involved two mainly Czech-based groups, Tridni Valka (“Class War”) and the Anti-Militarist Initiative, said in an interview[2] that they had deliberately not invited the principal groups of the Communist Left, who they claim are not interested in debate but only in creating a “mass party” along Bolshevik lines. Nevertheless, the ICC sent a delegation, as did the Internationalist Communist Tendency; also present were comrades close to the Bordigist group that publishes Programma Comunista. Not all the events of the week would be restricted to those formally invited, and for our part we think that the emergence of this opposition to imperialist war is an expression of something deeper taking place in the working class, and communists have a clear responsibility to take part in the process with the aim of clarifying its goals and combatting its illusions.

But while the broad attendance of elements looking for internationalist positions was certainly positive, and their physical concentration in Prague made it possible to develop many contacts and discussions on the margins of the “official” event, it has to be said straight away that the event was very poorly organised and indeed chaotic, even if there were encouraging efforts by a majority of the participants to take control of the proceedings.

One of the factors in this disorder is the profound division within the anarchist movement in the Czech Republic. On the weekend of the “Action Week” there was also an Anarchist Bookfair organised by the Czech Anarchist Federation, which openly defends the Ukrainian war effort and supports the formation of anarchist units in the Ukrainian army. The Bookfair issued a statement distancing itself from the Action Week and the Czech AF put out a leaflet denouncing its participants as “anarcho-Putinists”. The organising committee also argue that these pro-war anarchists have engaged in a number of provocations against internationalists; most critically, they suspect that they contacted the authorities of the venue where the anti-war congress at the weekend was due to be held and told them the real purpose of the meeting, leading to the cancellation of the booking and forcing the organisers to scrabble around for a new venue.

False political conceptions add to the chaos

However, the chaotic nature of the “Action Week” cannot entirely be blamed on the machinations of the pro-war anarchists. The very conception of an Action Week, and the methods of its organisers, were already deeply flawed.

In our view, the primary need for those searching for a real internationalist practice today is for discussion and political clarification around some very fundamental questions: the historic basis of capitalism’s drive towards war and destruction; the counter tendency of the working class struggle for its own interests against the economic crisis in spite of propaganda for national unity; continuing the internationalist tradition of the Zimmerwald Left. While some of the meetings advertised as part of the Action Week contained themes for reflection (such as the relation between capitalist peace and capitalist war, the meaning of revolutionary defeatism, etc), the whole idea of a “Week of Action” could only encourage the immediatist and activist approaches which hold sway over a large number of the participants. This was evident in several of the advertised topics for discussion, such as “how can we aid deserters”, “how can we sabotage the war effort”, and so on. But the pernicious consequences of this activist focus can best be illustrated by recollecting some of the main events of the week.

• The first event of the week, on Monday 20th, was a protest outside the HQ of the STV company which supplies material to the Israeli army. Although the organisers insisted that the protest was not calling for support for Palestinian nationalism, it attracted a number of people waving Palestinian flags and could thus only appear as a small adjunct to the pro-Palestine demos going on around the world, notably in the universities of the USA and Europe. Equally important: while there was no sign of the organising committee, the small number of “Action Week” attendees who took part quickly realised that this was an illegal protest and had their IDs noted by the police. Since most of them were foreign nationals, this could have led to their deportation.
• On Wednesday 22nd, the day the ICC delegation arrived, there was a meeting to discuss the principal theme of capitalist war and capitalist peace. The meeting began over an hour and a half late. There was a presentation by a comrade of Anti-Militarist Initiative and the possibility of intervening in the discussion that followed. But the meeting was not chaired, no notes were taken and there was no formal conclusion, although a comrade of the ICC tried to summarise the main points of the discussion, notably the split between activism and a longer-term approach founded on the real movement of the working class.
• On Thursday the plan was to hold a “Desserts for Deserters” event in a park near the city centre: cakes and snacks would be sold and any proceeds would go to helping deserters from the Ukraine war. Quite a few of the people who had been present the previous evening turned up, but there were no cakes. At this point alarm about the level of disorganisation began to spread and an impromptu meeting took place. The event planned for the Friday had been a street demonstration but after the fiasco on Monday people whose security had already been compromised were entirely unwilling to take part in a march which did not express any wider movement and would further expose them to police surveillance[3]. This was unanimously supported by the meeting, which decided that the priority for the next day was to meet together with the aim of developing a real discussion. A new organising committee was set up and given the task of finding the space for such a meeting. Again, no sign of the official organising committee except for the AMI comrade who seemed to be acting as a kind of intermediary.

Steps towards self-organisation

On the Friday further confusion resulted from the announcement that the original venue for the “Congress” on Saturday and Sunday, the culminating event of the Action Week, had been ruled out. But the “unofficial” organising committee managed to find an adequate venue in the outside area of a café and we were able to hold a reasonably well-organised discussion during the afternoon and early evening. The holding of this “self-organised assembly” was an important step forward given the extreme disorder of the event so far – a small reflection of a wider need within the working class to take things into its own hands and create the possibility of debating and making its own decisions. An agenda was drawn up and it was agreed that it was necessary to start with a discussion of the global situation facing the working class. Here the ICC pointed to the spiral of war and ecological destruction across the planet, the necessity to see all the ongoing wars as part of this process, the need for the same level of clarity on the nature of the war in the Middle East as on the Ukraine war. Having mentioned the night before that one of the groups invited to the week, the Anarchist Communist Group, had fallen into the trap of supporting anti-Israel boycotts, we pointed to the fiasco of the Monday protest to illustrate the danger of this kind of unthinking activism. We also repeated the argument that the real movement against war was less likely to come from proletarians of Israel, Gaza or Ukraine, who had been through a serious defeat, than from the workers in the central capitalist countries who had already shown their refusal to pay for the indirect effects of war (inflation etc). But the capacity of the working class as a whole to understand the link between attacks on their living standards and the drive towards war would take time to develop and could not be speeded up by the substitutionist action of small groups.

In this debate, and the one that followed the next day, it was noticeable that there was a convergence between the interventions of the ICC and the ICT, who met more than once to compare notes on the evolution of the discussion[4]. And given that the delegations of both groups were clearly playing a constructive role in the discussions and in the organisation of the meetings (including the fact that a member of the ICT had agreed to take part in the unofficial organising committee) there was no sign among the participants at these meetings of the hostility to the groups of the communist left which had been openly displayed by the official organising committee.

This did not at all mean that the whole assembly had adopted the positions of the Communist Left. Despite the initial agreement that we need to understand the overall situation before we can start a discussion of “what is to be done”, the effort to do so was constantly being pulled back into speculations about what action can we take tomorrow to block the war drive – networks of counter-information, aid to deserters, etc. The question of the class struggle as the only alternative to war and destruction was held in abeyance by these speculations. Neither was it possible to develop any discussion about a key item on the agenda: what is the meaning of revolutionary defeatism in this period - the ICC has some serious criticisms of this slogan[5] but we will have to raise them on other occasions.

And then came a further disruption. On Friday evening a group of people who said they were not the official organising committee but were speaking on its behalf arrived at the meeting and announced a new venue for the “Congress” on Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, it would only be big enough to accommodate 25 or 30 people, although the Friday meeting had already drawn twice as many. This would no doubt mean excluding the non-invitees (notably the groups of the Communist Left or “Bolsheviks” who, according to one argument, presumably coming from the official organising committee, had taken over the self-organised assembly)[6]. None of the participants at the Friday meeting spoke in favour of such an exclusion, while a considerable amount of distrust was shown towards the official organising committee who still refused to show themselves openly. In a statement on the official website they said that this was normal security procedure, but this didn’t impress comrades whose security had already been exposed by the committee’s ill-advised plans during the week.

The result of all this was further division. On the Saturday, some who had taken part in the Friday meeting decided to go to the new “official” venue, but the majority of the “self-organisers” opted to stay together and meet again the next day. This meant again looking around for a venue, and the one that was found was not as suitable as the one used on the Friday. At this stage we have little information about what happened at the new official venue, although the Anarchist Communist Network have written an article about the week as a whole which contains some information about the discussions that took place[7].

Regarding the official committee’s position on security, we should also make the point that Tridni Valka claims a certain continuity with the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste, although there have been some unstated disagreements between them in the past, and the GCI as such no longer exists. But the GCI was a group which had a very dangerous and destructive trajectory – above all a flirtation with terrorism which posed a serious danger to the whole revolutionary movement[8]. This involved a kind of cloak and dagger approach which Tridni Valka appear to have taken on, and which certainly contributed to the disorganisation of the week and the distrust that many of the participants developed towards them.

What outcomes are possible?

Given this litany of division and disorder, there was a feeling among those involved in the “self-organised assembly” that there needed to be some outcome from the week’s events, if only the possibility of continuing the discussion and taking up the many questions that had not been answered. So, on the Sunday there was a final meeting in a park to decide on what to do next. By this time fatigue and division had reduced the numbers attending this meeting, although it included some of those who had been the most constructive in the discussions so far. A mobile contact group had already been set up and would continue, but this cannot be a vehicle for developing a real discussion, so the decision was taken to set up a website which could publish contributions from all the elements involved (including those who attended the “official” congress at the weekend). The comrades close to Programma also proposed a brief “commitment to class war”, which was a very general statement of opposition to imperialist wars. The majority of those present voted in favour[9]. The ICC delegation said it could not sign it – partly because it contains formulations and slogans we don’t agree with, but mainly because we didn’t feel that the discussions at the meetings had reached a sufficient level of homogeneity for such a joint statement to be issued. Instead, we were in favour of publishing a report on what happened during the week, as well as impressions and reflections by different groups and individuals. In addition, the site could gather and publish information about the current wars that would be hard to come by elsewhere. We will see whether this project comes to fruition.

Despite all its weaknesses and failings, it was important to have taken part in this event. The “real movement” against war is also expressed by minorities searching for clarity, and while we are opposed to forming premature alliances or fronts with groups which still harbour confusions of an activist or even leftist nature, it is absolutely vital for the groups of the Communist Left to be present in such gatherings, retaining their political independence and pushing for clarification based on the historical struggle of the workers’ movement and the indispensable lucidity of the marxist method.

Amos, June 2024

A first balance sheet of our appeals to the Communist Left to make a joint statement on the current imperialist conflicts.

In late February 2022 the ICC proposed a Joint internationalist statement against the imperialist war in Ukraine to the other groups of the Communist Left. These groups are the political descendants of the only proletarian political current that fought against both fascist and democratic imperialist camps in the 2nd World War and thus the only one that can still claim today a continuity in both words and deeds with proletarian internationalism.

In the two years following this statement the ICC also proposed a similar ‘Appeal' to the same groups concerning the war in Gaza that erupted at the end of 2023. (For the sake of brevity we will refer to both of them as joint statements). In this case, the only group to adhere to our Appeal was Internationalist Voice.

What lessons can we draw from this initiative that can guide us in a period in which imperialist carnage will inevitably increase and spread?

Of the six groups addressed, two agreed with the proposed joint statement, with one group, Internationalist Communist Perspective (Korea), whose origins are not in the Communist Left, supporting it.

At first sight then these internationalist initiatives of the ICC don't seem to have been a success since they didn’t lead to a united response of the entire or even majority of the Communist Left currents, a response that would have provided a beacon of genuinely communist internationalism to all those workers looking for their class alternative to the imperialist slaughter.

The lack of short-term success of the ICC initiatives will no doubt confirm the illusions of those who, deriding the initiative as ‘speaking to the converted’, thought that it was possible today to create a wider ‘anti-war movement’ that could put an end to imperialism by ‘doing something now’ and bringing together as many people as possible of whatever political persuasion or probity in a period of working class disorientation on this question of war. The failure of such activist illusions and projects have either led or will inevitably lead to passivity, confusion and ‘burn out’, or worse, to ending up choosing one of other of the imperialist camps - critically of course.

In reality the experience of the ICC initiatives has important longer-term lessons in advancing a political line of work that must lead to the future party of the working class and the overthrow of world capitalism, which is the only way that imperialist war can be brought to an end. In other words success or failure is in the last analysis measured with a historical yardstick, not a short-term impression.

Let’s compare these two ICC initiatives of the last two years to similar internationalist appeals to the Communist Left for common work stretching back to 1979 at the time of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. On all previous occasions between then and now, the ICC’s proposals for a joint internationalist statement had never got off the ground and gone beyond the concept stage, because the principle itself of such a public declaration of unity was summarily rejected or ignored by the other groups.

For the first time, the proposal for a joint statement on Ukraine elicited positive responses from two other groups. After one of these groups, the Istituto Onorato Damen, proposed that the ICC draft such a joint statement; the latter subsequently agreed and the text was printed and distributed by the press of the three groups as a leaflet or articles, and served as the basis for joint public meetings and other interventions[1].

This step forward, miniscule as it may appear, prompted certain other advances which shouldn’t go unnoticed:

• one of the refusers of the joint work - the Internationalist Communist Tendency - for the first time engaged in a lengthy correspondence with the ICC over the validity of their reasons for their refusal, which became a polemic of sorts that was worthy of publication to clarify to a wider readership the responsibilities of the Communist Left as a whole faced with the growth of imperialist war.
• The co-signatories of the Joint Statements agreed to produce a discussion bulletin in which the differences of analysis between the participating groups could be elaborated and confronted. So far two editions of these bulletins have appeared, which have included the contributions of a relatively new Communist Left group - Internationalist Voice.
• The meaning of Zimmerwald and the Zimmerwald left in World War 1 and its connection with internationalism today came under greater scrutiny.
• The Joint Statements threw into relief the nature of a principled internationalist intervention towards individuals and groups who are not part of the Communist Left but who nevertheless are looking for a clear political orientation and seeking to detach themselves from leftism and confusion.
• The atmosphere of solidarity created by adhering to the initiative also allowed the organisation of two online public meetings, one in Italian and one in English, to discuss and clarify the need for the Joint Statement and the tasks of revolutionaries in the face of imperialist war and new world conditions. These meetings also gave rise to an article drawing a balance sheet article of the discussions[2]

Correspondence between the ICC and ICT

This can be read on our website[3]. So it is only necessary to summarise the main arguments. First, the ICT insisted that the differences on the analysis of imperialist war (that is on the marxist explanation for imperialist war and its prospects today) between the groups was too great to allow them to sign the Joint Statement, which they otherwise agreed with. Secondly, they questioned the invitation of the Bordigist groups which go under the name of the International Communist Party and can best be distinguished by the names of their main publications (Programma Comunista, Il Comunista/Le Proletaire, and Il Partito Comunista) to the Joint Statement, and on the other hand regretted the absence of some groups from the list of invitees. Thirdly they wanted a wider movement against the war than the Joint Statement that was restricted to the Communist Left.

The ICC answered that regarding differences of analysis, which are certainly significant, they are still secondary to the fundamental agreement on a common internationalist programme of action between the Communist Left groups. To make secondary differences an obstacle to such joint work is therefore to elevate the interests of one’s own group to the detriment of the needs of the movement as a whole – therefore it is classically sectarian. The final version of the Joint Statement in fact was able to accommodate a difference in the analysis of imperialism between the IOD and the ICC in order to underline the essential class position. A difference quite similar to the one the ICT felt was a key reason for not signing the declaration.

On the second point it was ironic that the sectarian ICT complained that each of the Bordigist groups invited all saw themselves as the one and only internationalist communist party in the world. This was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. In fact the ICT, despite describing itself as a ‘tendency,’ considers that its main component, Battaglia Comunista, is also the Internationalist Communist Party and is therefore hostile to all the other pretenders to this throne.

Regarding those parasitic grouplets claiming adherence to the Communist Left in words who were not invited to sign the joint statement it was quite logical to exclude them, since in practice these various cabals do everything to vilify the Communist Left. But the ICT, in wanting them invited, were therefore opportunistically open to joining with parasitic slanderers and even snitches who have nothing to do with internationalism in deeds. The ICT’s sectarianism toward the rest of the Communist Left - their Bordigist siblings[4], and the ICC - therefore found its natural complement in an opportunism toward those outside of the Communist Left and even hostile to the latter.

The desire of the ICT for a ‘wider movement beyond the Communist Left’ thus limited itself immediately by excluding the majority of the genuinely internationalist milieu in existence today. Subsequently their front No War But the Class War was launched with a more elastic criteria for participation than the Joint Statement and so made itself more amenable to a heterogenous milieu of various anarchists, parasites and even leftists. Its public meetings didn’t extend beyond the confines of this milieu. In fact on one occasion the size of the delegations of the ICC to intervene in these public meetings was its largest component. The NWBCW has proved to be an opportunist bluff whose real purpose was to act as a conveyor belt into the ICT rather than creating a wider audience for authentic internationalism[5].

Discussion Bulletins of the Communist Left

The Joint Statement provided a principled framework of internationalist unity in action, marxist parameters for discussing and clarifying theoretical and analytic differences between the groups. The Bulletins are not therefore a conglomeration of random positions and ideas but essentially a forum for the confrontation of arguments within the Communist Left, that is, a proletarian polemic.

The two bulletins have so far included: relevant correspondence between them concerning the Joint Statement; statements of analysis of the current situation of the imperialist wars in Ukraine and Gaza according to the respective organisations; and most importantly an ongoing polemic on how the contradictions of capitalism translate into imperialist conflict, whether the latter is directly the result of economic ambitions - such as preservation of the hegemony of the dollar, or the control of oil production and distribution - or refracted through a self-destructive dynamic produced by the impasse of capitalism in its historical epoch of decadence. This polemic is of great interest and importance for understanding the prospects and conditions of militarism today. It should be continued.

The relevance of Zimmerwald

The Communist Left, drawing its inspiration from the history of the revolutionary movement of the working class, naturally looks to the nature and meaning of the Zimmerwald movement in World War 1.

Was Zimmerwald intended to create a wide as possible anti-war movement as the ICT pretend, a kind of anticipation of the NWBCW initiative? Zimmerwald was indeed the first indication that the working class was losing its illusions in the imperialist war and confirmed its hopes that there was an alternative way out. But the real, long-lasting significance of Zimmerwald was in the development of an intransigent internationalist line amongst a small minority called the Zimmerwald Left. The latter recognised that WW1 was only the beginning of an entire historic period that would be dominated by imperialist war and require a maximum programme for the working class: civil war, the overthrow of the bourgeois regimes, proletarian dictatorship with a new Communist International to replace the bankrupt, chauvinist 2nd International.

The majority of Zimmerwald was ambivalent or opposed to this programme. Instead, seeing WW1 as a temporary aberration, and hoping for a reconciliation or reconstitution of the 2nd International that had collapsed in 1914, they wanted to exclude or neutralise the ‘trouble makers’ and ‘splitters’ of the left. Eventually the class lines that were implicit in these differences were drawn in 1917 by the October Revolution.

The intervention of internationalists into the anti-war movement today

Only the big bourgeoisie and the nation states that protects their privileges is fully committed to the drive to imperialist war made unavoidable by capitalist development. In terms of society as a whole though, imperialist war has a convulsive effect on other classes. The biggest sufferer of imperialism is the working class, since the military juggernaut threatens to divide and drag it into fratricidal slaughter and turn its poverty into destitution. At the same time an intermediate layer - the petty bourgeoisie, caught between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - foresees the loss of its relatively more secure status as a result of the imperialist maelstrom. In reaction to the latter this layer hopes for a return to normality and peace but sees in the struggle of the working class another threat to its disappearing status, another source of disruption and conflict.

In this situation anti-war sentiments grow both in the proletariat and this intermediate layer, but within this apparently common reaction to imperialism different, antagonistic class interests are concealed. To defend its interests the working class must struggle to detach itself from all the pacifist solutions (however radical they may seem, such as anti-militarism) that are rife amongst the intermediate strata and stand instead on the terrain of its own class struggle that leads the workers towards civil war against the bourgeoisie and capitalism as a whole. The petty bourgeoisie on the other hand, which fundamentally has no historical future, can at best react impotently to imperialist war in various ways and remains trapped in ambiguity. This mixture of a class struggling for consciousness of its internationalist interests and a middle layer that reacts with horror to imperialist barbarism is the social basis for the growth of a political marsh between the Communist Left and the left wing of capital today, that seems to be neither one thing nor the other and is marked by constant contradiction and turmoil.

The intervention of internationalist communists towards this milieu is therefore vital in the acceleration of the development of working class consciousness. The internationalist organisations do not by definition arise spontaneously from this marsh, that as a whole essentially represents political confusion, an obstacle to the development of class consciousness. Authentic internationalist organisations are the product of a historical experience of the revolutionary movement, stretching back to the First World War and before. The existence and intervention of the Communist Left, its political presence, is therefore vital in not only combating the influence of the bourgeoisie within the political marsh, also in exposing the difference of class interests between the proletariat and those of intermediate strata, who, despite their radical opposition to the big bourgeoisie, are essentially backward-looking.

This is the wider importance of the Joint Statement, which in defining the common position of the Communist Left, begun to demarcate, in the midst of a milieu of political confusion, an internationalist reference point.

Conclusion

The last two years and the reaction to the Joint Statements have shown that the historical Communist Left is still fragmented and many of its groups have been unable so far to take united internationalist action against the increase in imperialist war. However, small steps in this direction have been made as we outline above. And only the unification of the communist vanguard, not through compromises or amorphous fronts, but through the real clarification of differences, can arm the proletariat in its fight against capitalism and imperialist war.

Introduction

With the prospect of a new world war looming, the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left warned the proletariat against the siren songs of the bourgeoisie, aimed at  urging it to support one imperialist camp or another. It reminded them that its class interests do not lie in the defence of a homeland, be it “Soviet”, fascist or democratic, but in proletarian internationalism. The Fraction never ceased denouncing the role of recruiting sergeant that the parties that betrayed the working class in 1914, the Socialist parties, were playing once again; but it also denounced the Communist parties (which the Communist Left at the time called centrist parties), who had in turn betrayed the proletarian camp. All their positions and analyses during the thirties converged towards this uncompromising defence of proletarian positions, and this was also the meaning of the Manifesto the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left published in 1935.

Weakened organisationally and disoriented by the outbreak of war[1], the Italian Fraction found itself powerless to develop a response to the war. Reorganising itself politically, it nevertheless had to face conditions of increasing difficulties. Its intransigent opposition to the war and refusal to support any imperialist camp whatsoever forced it to go underground. This resulted in the fragmentation and dispersal of its militants.

The occupation of Belgium and France by Germany, the collaboration between the local police and the Gestapo, which worked hand in hand with the Italian OVRA (political police) in the hunt for political refugees, had a disastrous effect on the Italian and Belgian Fractions. Militants were deported and died in concentration camps. Others, ‘more fortunate’, after a stay in German labour camps were handed over to the Italian police and deported to the islands around Italy, where conditions were less harsh.

Nevertheless, the work of the Italian Fraction and the French Nucleus of the Communist Left resulted in the development of their militant forces in Marseille, Paris and Northern France, leading to the birth of the French Fraction of the Communist Left[2] Posters denouncing imperialist war and all the military camps were put up in several French cities. Leaflets in German, English, Italian and French were thrown onto trains leaving for the front. After the American landings on 6 June 44, a call went out to all soldiers and workers, calling on them to show their class solidarity across borders; to cease fire and lay down their arms; to unite against world capitalism “on the international class front”, with a view to transforming the imperialist war into a civil war, for the triumph of the international revolution.

Manifesto of the Communist Left to the Workers of Europe, June 1944

It will soon be five years that imperialist war has raged in Europe, with all its misery, massacres and devastation.

On the Russian, French and Italian fronts tens of millions of workers and peasants are slaughtering each other for the exclusive interests of a sordid and bloody capitalism, which obeys only these laws: profit, accumulation.

In the course of five years of war, especially the last year - that of the liberation of all peoples, you have been told - many false programmes, many illusions have disappeared, making the mask, behind which the odious face of capitalism has been hidden, fall.

In each country you have been mobilised behind different ideologies, each having the same goal, the same result: to hurl you into the carnage, one against the other, brothers against brothers in misery, workers against workers.

Fascism, National-Socialism, demand "living space" for their exploited masses, but only do so to hide their fierce will to extricate themselves from the profound crisis which undermines their very basis.

The Anglo-American-Russian bloc wanted - so it appeared - to deliver you from fascism in order to give back to you your freedoms, your rights. But these promises were only the bait to make you participate in the war to eliminate - after having first begotten it - fascism, the great imperialist competitor, outdated as a mode of life and domination for capitalism.

The Atlantic Charter, the plan for the New Europe, was only the smokescreen behind which was hidden the conflict's real meaning: a war of bandits with its mournful trail of destruction and massacres, all of whose terrible consequences the working class must bear. Workers

You are told, they would like to make you believe, that this war is not like all the others. You are being lied to. As long as there are exploiters and exploited, capitalism is war, war is capitalism.

The revolution of 1917 was a proletarian revolution; it was the shining proof of the proletariat's political capacity to constitute itself as a ruling class and to move towards the organisation of a communist society. It was the response of the labouring masses to the imperialist war of 1914-1918.

But the leaders of the Russian state have since then abandoned the principles of that revolution, have transformed your communist parties into nationalist parties, have dissolved the Communist International and have helped international capitalism to hurl you into the carnage.

If in Russia, they had remained loyal to the programme of the revolution and of internationalism, if they had constantly called on the proletarian masses to unify its struggles against capitalism, if they had not adhered to that masquerade, the League of Nations, it would have been impossible for imperialism to have unleashed the war.

In participating in the imperialist war together with a group of capitalist powers, the Russian state has betrayed the Russian workers and the international proletariat.

Workers of Germany!

Your bourgeoisie counted on you, on your endurance and your productive power, to win a place for imperialism, to dominate the industrial and agricultural basin of Europe. After turning Germany into a barracks, after making you work for four years at breakneck speed to prepare the engines of war, they have thrown you into all the countries of Europe to everywhere bring - as in each imperialist conflict - ruin and dislocation.

The plan of your imperialism has been foiled by the laws of development of international capitalism which has since 1900 exhausted any possibility of a blooming of the imperialist form of domination, and still more so, of every nationalist expression.

The profound crisis which wastes the world, and particularly Europe, is the insoluble crisis, the death crisis, of capitalist society.

Only the proletariat, through its communist revolution, can eliminate the causes of the distress and the misery of the labouring masses and the workers.

Workers and soldiers!

The fate of your bourgeoisie will now be determined on the terrain of imperialist competition. But international capitalism cannot end the war, because war is its last, its only possibility of survival.

Your revolutionary traditions are profoundly rooted in the class struggle of the past. In 1918, with your proletarian leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in 1923 (despite the opportunism already arising in the Communist International) you engraved on history your revolutionary will and power.

The National-Socialism of Hitler and the opportunism of the 3rd International made you believe that your fate was linked to the struggle against the Treaty of Versailles. This false struggle could only tie you to the programme of your capitalism, which was characterised by a spirit of revenge and the preparation for the present war.

Your interests as workers are only linked to the interests of all the exploited of Europe and of the whole world.

You occupy a critical place to force an end to the monstrous carnage. Following the example of the Italian proletariat, you must undertake the struggle against war production, you must refuse to fight against your brother workers (1). Your revolt must be a manifestation of the class struggle. It must be translated into strikes and upheavals. As in 1918, the fate of the proletarian revolution is dependent on your capacity to break the chains that bind you to the monstrous machine of German imperialism.

Workers, Labourers in Germany

They have deported you to build engines of destruction. For each worker who arrives, a German worker can be sent to the front.

Whatever your nationality, you are one of the exploited.

Your only enemy is German and international capitalism; your comrades are the German workers, and the workers of the whole world. You carry with you the traditions and experiences of the class struggles of your countries and the entire world. You are not "foreigners".

Your demands, your interests, are identical to those of your German comrades. In participating in the class struggle in the factory, at the point of production, you will effectively contribute to breaking the course of the imperialist war.

French workers!

At the time of the strikes in 1936, all the parties manoeuvred to transform your just and legitimate class demands into a demonstration of support for the war which was then being prepared. "The era of prosperity" which the demagogues of the Popular Front presented to you as a full flowering was, in fact, only the profound crisis of French capitalism.

Your ephemeral improvements in living standards and work were not the result of an economic recovery, but were brought about by the need to set the war industry in motion.

The invasion of France has been exploited by all those responsible for the conflict - from the left to the right - to instil in your minds a desire for revenge and hatred against the German and Italian workers, who no more than you bear any responsibility for starting the war, and who, like you bear the terrible consequences of a butchery willed and prepared by all the capitalist states.

The Petain-Laval government speaks to you of a National Revolution. It is the most vulgar lie; the most reactionary method to make you accept without flinching the weight of military defeat for the exclusive benefit of capitalism.

The Algiers Committee (2) holds out before you the return to pre-war abundance and prosperity. Whatever the colour or form of tomorrow's government, the labouring masses of France and the other countries of Europe will pay a heavy war tribute to the Anglo-American-Russian imperialists in the ruins and destruction caused by the two armies in struggle.

French workers!

Too many among you have been led to believe in, to hope for, the well-being brought by the armies, be they English, American or Russian.

The intrigues and contrasts which already manifest themselves within this "trinity" of thieves on the subject of the division of the spoils foreshadows the fact that the conditions imposed on the proletariat will be hard if you do not take the path of class struggle.

Too many among you have made yourselves the auxiliaries of capitalism by participating in the partisans' war, the most extreme expression of nationalism.

Your enemies are neither the German soldier, nor the English or American soldier, but their capitalism which has led them to war, to killing, to death. Your enemy is your own capitalism, whether it is represented by Laval or De Gaulle. Your freedom is linked neither to the fate nor to the traditions of your ruling class, but to your independence as a proletarian class.

You are the children of the Paris Commune, and it is only by inspiring yourselves by it and by its principles that you will succeed in breaking the chains of slavery that link you to the outdated apparatus of capitalist domination: the traditions of 1789 and the laws of the bourgeois revolution.

Workers of Russia!

In 1917, with your Bolshevik Party and Lenin, you overthrew the capitalist regime and established the first Republic of Soviets. Your magnificent class action opened the historic period of the decisive struggle between two opposed societies: the old, the bourgeoisie, destined to disappear under the weight of its contradictions; the new, the proletariat, constituting itself as a ruling class so as to move towards a classless society, communism.

In that period too, imperialist war raged. Millions of workers fell on the battlefields of capitalism. The example of your decisive struggle filled the working masses with the will to put an end to the useless massacre. In breaking the course of the war, your revolution became the programme, the battle flag, for the struggle of the exploited of the world. Capitalism consumed by the economic crisis - aggravated by the war - trembled in the face of the proletarian movement which burst over all of Europe.

Surrounded by the White armies and those of international capitalism which sought to eliminate you by famine, you succeeded in extricating yourselves from the counter- revolutionary embrace; thanks to the heroic support of the European and international proletariat, which took the road of class struggle, the bourgeois coalition was prevented from intervening against the proletarian revolution.

The lesson was decisive: henceforth, the class struggle will develop on the international terrain, the proletariat will form its communist party and its International on the programme confirmed by your communist revolution. The bourgeoisie will direct itself towards the repression of the workers movement and towards the corruption of your revolution and your power.

The present imperialist war finds you not with the proletariat, but against it. Your allies are no longer the workers, but the bourgeoisie. You no longer defend the Soviet constitution of 1917, but the "socialist" fatherland. You no longer have comrades like Lenin and his co-workers, but jackbooted, bemedalled generals, just as in all the capitalist countries - the symbol of bloody militarism, the slayers of the proletariat.

You are told that there is no capitalism in Russia, but your exploitation is the same as the rest of the proletariat, and your labour power disappears into the abyss of the war and into the treasuries of international capitalism. Your freedom is the freedom to be made to kill to help imperialism to survive. Your class party has disappeared, your soviets are eliminated, your unions are barracks, and your links with the international proletariat are broken.

Comrades, workers of Russia!

Among you, as everywhere else, capitalism sows ruin and misery. The proletarian masses of Europe, like you in 1917, await the favourable moment to rise up against the frightful conditions of existence imposed by the war. Like you, they direct themselves against all those responsible for this terrible insanity, whether they be fascists, democrats or Russian. Like you, they try to overthrow the bloody regime of oppression which is capitalism.

Their flag will be your flag of 1917.

Their programme will be your programme, the one your present rulers have taken from you: the communist revolution.

Your state is allied with the forces of capitalist counter-revolution. You must be in solidarity with, you must fraternise with, your comrades in struggle, your brothers; you must struggle at their side to re-establish in Russia and in other countries, the conditions for the victory of the world communist revolution.

English and American soldiers!

Your imperialism is developing its plans for the colonisation and enslavement of all peoples, in order to try and save itself from the grave crisis which envelops all of society.

Already before the war, despite colonial domination and the enrichment of your bourgeoisie you were subjected to unemployment and poverty, those without work numbering in the millions.

Against your strikes for legitimate demands your bourgeoisie did not hesitate to employ the most barbarous means of repression: gas.

The workers of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain have accounts to settle with their own bourgeoisie, which like yours is responsible for the filthy massacre.

You are wanted to play the role of cop; you will be sent against the proletarian masses in revolt.

You must refuse to fire, you must fraternise with the soldiers and workers of Europe.

These struggles are your class struggles.

Workers of Europe!

You are surrounded by a world of enemies. All parties, all programmes, have failed the test posed by the war; all play on your suffering, all unite to save capitalist society from collapse.

The whole band of riffraff in the service of high finance, from Hitler to Churchill, from Laval to Petain, from Stalin to Roosevelt, from Mussolini to Bonomi, is in collaboration with the bourgeois state to preach order, work, discipline, fatherland - in the perpetuation of your enslavement.

Despite the betrayal of the leaders of the Russian state, the formulas, the theses, the predictions of Marx and of Lenin find, in the very perfidy of the present situation, their striking confirmation.

Never has the class division between exploited and exploiters been so clear, so profound.

Never has the necessity to put an end to a regime of misery and blood been so compelling.

With the killing at the front, with the massacres from the air, with five years of restrictions, famine makes its appearance.

The war spreads over the whole continent; capitalism does not know how to, cannot, end this war.

It is not by helping one or the other group of the two forms of capitalist domination that you will shorten the fight.

This time it is the Italian proletariat which has blazed the trail of struggle, of revolt against the war.

As with Lenin in 1917, there is no alternative, no other path to follow outside of the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war.

As long as capitalist rule survives, there will be neither bread, nor peace, nor freedom for the proletariat.

Communist workers!

There are many parties, too many parties. But all of them, even the Trotskyist groups, have fallen into the counter-revolution.

One single party is missing: the proletarian class political party.

The Communist Left alone has stayed with the proletariat, loyal to the programme of Marxism, loyal to the communist revolution. It is only with this programme that it will be possible to give back to the proletariat its organisations, the weapons necessary to its struggle, to victory. These weapons are the new communist party, the new international.

Against all opportunism, against all compromise on the terrain of class struggle, the Fraction (3) calls on you to aid the proletariat in extricating itself from the vice of capitalism. Against the united forces of capitalism, the invincible force of the proletarian class must be built. Workers and soldiers of all countries!

You alone can stop this terrible massacre unprecedented in history.

Workers! In all countries stop the production destined to kill your brothers, your wives, your children.

Soldiers! Cease fire, throw down your weapons! Fraternise beyond the artificial frontiers of capitalism. Unite on the international class front.

Long live the fraternisation of all the exploited!

Down with the imperialist war!

Long live the world communist revolution! Notes:

(1) In 1943, the strikes and class struggle of the proletariat in Italy led to the fall of Mussolini and Italy's call for an armistice. This was the first - and we know today -  the only serious breach that the working class made in the second inter-imperialist butchery (Note by the ICC).

(2) The coalition put together by Anglo-American imperialism, with the participation of De Gaulle, to rule France after its "liberation".

(3) The organisation of the communist Left 

The indignation and concern felt by the working class faced with the proliferation of increasingly destructive imperialist wars is being expressed in small minorities seeking an internationalist response.

But what is internationalism? In the name of internationalism, the leftist groups - mainly the Trotskyists - ask us to choose a camp among the imperialist gangsters. For them, to choose Palestine in the name of the "national liberation of the peoples" would be the most internationalist answer! So, they sell us an “internationalism” which is its opposite, because internationalism means fighting against all imperialist camps, for the international class struggle, for the perspective of world revolution which alone can end war.

There are other views of internationalism: anarchists tend to reduce it to a rejection: rejection of armies, rejection of military service, rejection of wars in general. These visions do not go to the root of the problem, which is the decadence of capitalism and its dynamic of destruction of the planet and of all humanity.

It is therefore necessary, first, to clarify what internationalism is, drawing on the historical experience of the proletariat.

Only the working class can end war by putting an end to capitalism

The struggle against war cannot be left to men of goodwill or peace-loving, wise politicians... the struggle against war is a class question. Only the working class bears with it the communist perspective, the force and the interests that allow it to put an end to war.

That is why we say in our Third International Manifesto "Of all the classes in society, the most affected and hardest hit by war is the proletariat. ‘Modern’ war is waged by a gigantic industrial machine which demands a great intensification of the exploitation of the proletariat. The proletariat is an international class that HAS NO HOMELAND, but war is the killing of workers for the homeland that exploits and oppresses them. The proletariat is the class of consciousness; war is irrational confrontation, the renunciation of all conscious thought and reflection. The proletariat has an interest in seeking the clearest truth; in wars the first casualty is truth, chained, gagged, suffocated by the lies of imperialist propaganda. The proletariat is the class of unity across barriers of language, religion, race or nationality; the deadly confrontation of war compels the tearing apart, the division, the confrontation between nations and populations".

Internationalism is the most consistent expression of the consciousness and historical interest of the proletariat.

We can find the foundation stone of internationalism in the Principles of Communism of 1847, where in point XIX, Friedrich Engels asks, “Is a revolution possible in one only country?” and his answer is clear: “No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilised peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has coordinated the social development of the civilised countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilised countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany. It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace. It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.”

The Communist Manifesto reaffirms and deepens this principle, proclaiming “the proletariat has no fatherland, proletarians of the world unite!”

In the sixties of the 19th century, Marx and Engels combatted the pan-Slavism that opposed the international unity of the working class and argued that the support for certain national wars could accelerate the conditions for world revolution, but not in the name of a so-called “national right”. This was the case with the Civil War in US and the German / French war of 1870. As Lenin said in his pamphlet Socialism and War, written just before the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915: “The war of 1870 was a ‘progressive war’ like those of the French revolution, which while they undoubtedly brought with them all the elements of pillage and conquest, had the historic function of destroying or shaking feudalism and absolutism throughout the old Europe still founded on serfdom"[1].

The Second International faced a clear change in wars that increasingly took on an imperialist character. So, in 1900, in the Paris Congress, it adopted the position that: "the socialist deputies to Parliament in all countries are required to vote against all military and naval expenditure, and against colonial expeditions".

But the increasing gravity of imperialist tensions, expressing the starting point of the decadence of capitalism and the necessity for proletarian world revolution, raised the need to make internationalism not only a defensive position of rejection of war – a position in which the majority of the Second International tended to remain - but to make the fight against war the fight for the destruction of capitalism. That’s why in the Stuttgart Congress (1907), faced with a proposed resolution on war by August Bebel, formally correct but too timid and limited, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Martov proposed an amendment, which in the end was adopted, that insisted on the need “to profit in every way from the economic and political crisis to raise the people and so to precipitate the fall of capitalist rule"

By the same token the Extraordinary Congress of Basel (1912) denounced a possible European war as "criminal" and "reactionary" and declared that it could only "hasten the fall of capitalism by unfailingly provoking the proletarian revolution".

However, the majority of parties of the 2nd International “denounced war above all for its horrors and atrocities, because the proletariat provided the cannon fodder for the ruling class. The Ilnd International's anti-militarism was purely negative (…) In particular, the ban on voting war credits did not resolve the problem of the ‘defense of the country’ against the attack of an ‘aggressor nation’. This is the breach through which the pack of social-chauvinists and opportunists poured”[2]

Faced with the limitations of the majority position in the parties of the Second International, their confusions on the national question and even the colonialism of Hyndman of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, only the Left of the Second International, especially the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxembourg, defended internationalism against imperialist war and were for world proletarian revolution. They made it clear that internationalism is the frontier that separates communists from all parties and organisations that defend capitalist war.

The combat at Zimmerwald

The response to the First World War made a clear demarcation between the internationalism of a small minority in the Social Democratic Parties against the majority chauvinism that destroyed the Second International. The internationalists regrouped in the Zimmerwald conferences that started in Septembe1915.

But Zimmerwald was only a point of departure because it also expressed huge confusion. The Zimmerwald movement was the emanation of the parties of the moribund 2nd International that had collapsed in 1914 and therefore brought together a completely heterogeneous range of forces, united only by a general rejection of the war, but lacking a real internationalist programme.

There were the advocates of an impossible return to a pre-World War I capitalism, who called for "peace" and wanted to confine the struggle to parliament, by abstaining or refusing to vote on war credits (Ledebour of the SPD). There were those who were simply pacifists; there was a wavering centrist wing (Trotsky, Spartacists) and, finally, the clear and determinate minority around Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Zimmerwald Left.

As our article in International Review 155 says: “in the context of Zimmerwald, the right was represented not by the ‘social chauvinists’, to use Lenin’s term, but by Kautsky and his consorts – all those who later formed the right wing of the USPD - whereas the left was made up of the Bolsheviks and the center by Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacus group. The process which led towards the revolution in Russia and Germany was marked precisely by the fact that a large part of the ‘centre’ was won over to the positions of the Bolsheviks”[3].

From the beginning, only the Bolsheviks put forward a genuine and consistent internationalist response defending three key points:

• Only the destruction of capitalism could end imperialist war.
• Only the proletarian class fighting for the world revolution could fulfil this task.
• It was not possible to return to the Second International. A new International, the Third International, was needed and should be founded as soon as possible.

They led a stubborn and steadfast fight around these three points. They were aware of the confusion that reigned in the "Zimmerwald movement" and that this swampy terrain of eclecticism, of the coexistence of "fire and water", led to the disarmament of the anti-war struggle and the weakening of the maturing revolutionary perspective, with the workers in Russia at its head.

It’s true that Bolsheviks signed the compromise Zimmerwald Manifesto in 1915, but this did not mean the acceptance of this confusion, particularly the pacifist tone of the Manifesto, but a recognition that it could, by denouncing the social patriots to the whole working class, be a first step in the adoption of an intransigently internationalist line, leading towards a new International. By retaining their critiques of Zimmerwald centrism the Bolsheviks could continue the necessary process of decantation. Given the results of the Zimmerwald conference, the Bolsheviks adopted the following decisions:

- presenting a much clearer draft of the Manifesto than the adopted draft.

- creating their own press organ which regrouped the Left of Zimmerwald.

- waging an intransigent polemic against the different exponents of the right and centrist wing: Plekhanov, Martov and specially Kautsky’s centrism that was even more dangerous than open social-chauvinism.

Today the Internationalist Communist Tendency and certain parasitic groups pretend to be the followers of Zimmerwald. They put a lot of “likes” to Zimmerwald. However, its meaning has been deliberately obscured or even reversed by the ICT and parasitic elements disguised as internationalists. For the ICT the goal of Zimmerwald was supposedly aimed at regrouping as many as possible of those who were against the war as a practical means of organising the masses. “This is not the time for picking and choosing among those who oppose the war on the basis of a revolutionary programme. In the first place, just as before Zimmerwald, all revolutionary and internationalist energies are worth the effort of regroupment. But more than this, the example of France was significant with the Committee for the Resumption of International Relations (Comité pour la Reprise des Relations Internationales - CRRI), which led the most activity and was the heart of the workers’ opposition to the war. From its inception it regrouped revolutionary syndicalists, as well as militants of the Socialist Party, the section of the International which had failed. Indeed, the raison d'être of the CRRI was its opposition to the war and to the Sacred Union, to bring together different opponents of them, having come from syndicalism, socialism and anarchism”[4] .Clearly this distortion and contempt for the facts is aimed at justifying the opportunism of the No War But the Class War (NWBCW) enterprise[5]. Unlike the Bolsheviks, who despite being in a small minority insisted on the rejection of pacifism, the rejection of the attempt to resuscitate the Second International, and on the struggle for the world party. The guiding principle of the Bolsheviks was to develop a “line of work” for the working class in the epoch of imperialist wars, against the morass of centrist confusion, even if it meant, at the time, numerical isolation.

Zimmerwald was not a collection of “anti-war” elements, as the ICT and parasites claim, even if at the beginning it was still conceived as a grouping within the Social Democratic parties at a time when the latter were still the political reference point of the whole proletariat. The orientation taken by the Bolsheviks was the struggle to overcome this confusion and move towards the formation of the Third International. Zimmerwald was understood to be on a class terrain. But a process of decantation was nevertheless taking place which led the centrists into the counter-revolution, and therefore supporting their own national bourgeoisie, while the intransigent Left remained as the only internationalist proletarian current.

The combat of the Zimmerwald Left was validated in practice by the October proletarian Revolution in 1917 which made the internationalist slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” into a reality. The immediate withdrawal by the new Soviet regime from the Entente imperialist alliance in the midst of the First World War, and the publication of the secret treaties on who would gain what in the event of their victory, sent shock waves through the world bourgeoisie, while the revolutionary upsurge of the European working class was given a tremendous impetus, reflected in the near success of the German revolution and the formation of the Communist International in 1919.

The combat of the Communist Left

If the path of internationalism in the First World War was through the struggle of the Left against the opportunism of the social-chauvinists and centrists, the continuity with that path in the 20s and 30s was through the struggle of the Communist Left against the degeneration of the Communist International in the 20s and subsequently against that of the Trotsky’s Left Opposition in the 30s. The Comintern, because of the isolation and degeneration of the revolution in Russia, more and more capitulated to the social chauvinists of the disinterred Social Democracy, expressed in the policy of United Fronts and Workers’ Governments. The policy of the 3rd International became increasingly the extension of the interests of the Russian state in place of the needs of the international revolution, which contributed to the defeats of the latter in Germany, Britain, China. A policy that was consolidated in the Comintern’s adoption of the nationalist slogan of Socialism in One Country in 1928, and the complete capitulation of the Russian state to the game of world imperialism with the entry of Russia into the League of Nations in 1934.

The Communist Left was the first to oppose this tendency, particularly the tradition of the Italian Communist Left, that was eventually excluded from the Communist Party of Italy and the Communist International. It formed a Fraction in exile and subsequently an international Fraction of the Communist Left.

The combat of Bilan

The defeat of the international revolutionary wave by 1928 opened a course toward another imperialist world war, and it was only the Communist Left which remained true to the internationalist struggle of the revolutionary proletariat, both in the lead-up the Second World War and during and after the war itself.

Bilan drew a clear line of demarcation against the Left Opposition around Trotsky on the key question of the defense of USSR, a position that helped drag the Trotskyist current into supporting the imperialist war:

"We consider that in the event of war the proletariat of all countries, including Russia, would have the duty of concentrating its forces with a view to transforming the imperialist war into a civil war. The participation of the USSR in a war of robbery would not alter its essential character and the proletarian state could only sink under the blows of the social contradictions which such participation would entail. The Bolshevik-Leninists leave the terrain of Marxism when they urge the proletariat to sacrifice its struggle for world revolution in exchange for a defence of the USSR" (Bilan nº 10, August 1934)

Nevertheless, the internationalist litmus test for the revolutionary groups and fractions who had been expelled from the degenerating Comintern was the war in Spain from 1936, where the conflict between the republican and fascist wings of the Spanish bourgeoisie became the terrain for a proxy battle between the contending imperialist powers Britain and France, Russia, Germany and Italy. Yet the Trotskyists who had been excluded from the Communist Parties notably for their attempts to defend internationalism, now, in the name of anti-fascism, defended ‘critically’ the republican side and thus betrayed the proletariat, which they encouraged to choose sides in this inter-bourgeois and inter-imperialist dress rehearsal for the Second World War.

Bilan had to combat this tendency to capitulation that was dragging down the proletarian groups. Its uncompromising loyalty to internationalism led it to a dramatic isolation: only small groups in Belgium or Mexico joined its fight.

The combat of Internationalisme (GCF)

However, the Communist Left itself wasn’t immune from the dangers of opportunism. A minority of the Italian Fraction broke with the latter and its internationalist principles and joined the anti-fascist war in Spain.

And the Second World War found the Italian Fraction in disarray, with its most notable representative, Vercesi, claiming that the proletariat had disappeared and the political struggle for internationalism was no longer viable. It was only with extreme difficulty - caught between the Gestapo and the resistance - that a part of the Italian Fraction managed to regroup in the South of France and proclaim the internationalist positions of the Communist Left, that is against both imperialist camps, whether “fascist” or “anti-fascist” in ideology.

Separately, in 1943, the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt) was formed in Northern Italy, after the overthrow of Mussolini, and continued the internationalist policy of the Communist Left. However, neglecting the critique of the opportunism of the Comintern by the Italian Fraction in exile, and ignoring the aim of learning the lessons of a period of defeat for the proletariat, including internationalist intransigence in front of the war in Spain, the PCInt returned to the policy of “going to the masses” and imagined that it could turn the Partisans in Italy, that is those anti-fascist forces working on behalf of allied imperialism, into genuine internationalists[6].

While the PCInt prematurely abandoned the necessary international fraction work against this opportunist drift, the Communist Left of France (Gauche Communiste de France, which published Internationalisme) resolutely continued the work of the Fraction, elaborated the positions that Bilan had begun to develop. The GCF clearly denounced the false opposition Fascism v Democracy which had been the banner of mobilisation for imperialist slaughter, while after the Second World War and in the face of the new imperialist configuration (the struggle between the USA and the USSR) it denounced the additional means of enlistment for war: the "national liberation" of the "oppressed peoples" (Vietnam, Palestine etc).

We can conclude that only the Communist Left has remained loyal to the proletariat by defending internationalism against the innumerable military massacres that have bloodied the planet since 1914.That is why in our Third International Manifesto we say “In serious historical situations such as far-reaching wars like the one in Ukraine, the proletariat can see who its friends are and who are its enemies. These enemies are not only the major figures such as Putin, Zelensky or Biden, but also the parties of the extreme right, right, left and extreme left, who, with a wide range of arguments, including pacifism, support and justify the war and the defense of one imperialist camp against another.

“The only political current that has survived the defeat of this revolutionary wave and maintained the militant defense of internationalist principle has been the Communist Left. In the thirties, it preserved this fundamental working class line during the Spanish war and the Sino-Japanese war while other political currents like the Stalinists, Trotskyists or Anarchists chose their imperialist camp that instigated these conflicts. The Communist Left maintained its internationalism during the Second World War while these other currents participated in the imperialist carnage that was dressed up as a fight between ‘fascism and anti-fascism’ and/or defence of the ‘Soviet’ Union” (Appeal to the Communist Left).

The critical historical continuity of the communist positions defended and developed during the last century by the Communist Left is the only one capable of providing a body of analysis (nature of capitalism, decadence, imperialism, war economy, capitalist decomposition etc.), a continuity in the debates and in the intervention in the class, a coherence that provides the weapons of struggle for the world communist revolution against all manifestations of capitalist barbarism and above all, imperialist war.

The combat waged by the ICC

Against the infamous carnage in Ukraine the ICC proposed a Common Declaration of the Communist Left which was signed by 3 other groups. In the face of the new imperialist barbarism in Gaza we have made an Appeal to make a common declaration against all imperialist powers, against the calls for national defense behind the exploiters, against the hypocritical pleas for “peace”, and for the proletarian class struggle that leads to the communist revolution.

All the forces of the bourgeoisie (parties, trade unions, institutions such as churches, the UN etc.) call on the proletarians to choose a camp among the imperialist bandits, to accept the terrible sacrifices that the war dynamic of capitalism imposes, in short, to become themselves caught in the machinery of war and destruction that leads to the annihilation of the planet and the whole of humanity. Only the voice of the Communist Left clearly rises up against this concert of the dead.

The Joint Statement and Appeal of the ICC to the sectarian and opportunist proletarian political milieu today is in continuity of the attitude of the Bolsheviks at Zimmerwald towards the centrists. The Communist Left groups are the only minimum solid class terrain for an internationalist perspective today. Yet the Communist Left groups descending from the PCInt refused to sign the common proposals. But if these groups had signed the common statements this would have acted as a political beacon for emerging revolutionary forces and could have opened a more intense process of political decantation. The Joint Statement and Appeal[7] was intended to be an initial step towards the necessary political decantation that the formation of the future party will demand.

The war waged by the bourgeoisie against internationalism

The bourgeoisie needs to silence the internationalist voice of the Communist Left. To this end, it conducts a covert, sly war. In this war it does not openly uses the repressive bodies of the state or the big media. Given the small size, the reduced influence, the division, and dispersion of the groups of the Communist Left, the bourgeoisie uses the services of the parasites.

The parasites claim to be internationalist, rejecting the different sides by grandiloquent declarations, but all their efforts are focused on denigrating, slandering, and denouncing genuinely internationalist groups like the ICC. We are talking about snitches and gangsters like the “International Group of the Communist Left” who use "internationalist" verbiage as their passport to attack communist organisations. Their methods are slander, denunciation, provocation, accusations of "Stalinism" against the ICC. They proclaim that our organisation is "outside the Communist Left" and to "fill the vacuum" they shamelessly flatter the ICT by offering it the throne of the "vanguard of the Communist Left". It is thus a question of creating division within the Communist Left and shamelessly using the sectarianism and opportunism of the ICT to turn it even more strongly against the clearest and most consistent organisation of the Communist Left, the ICC.

The parasitic coterie, a chaotic jumble of groups, and personalities, uses an indigestible rehash of the positions of the Communist Left in order to attack the actual Communist Left, to falsify and denigrate it. This attack comes in different flavours.

On the one hand, there is the blog first called New Course and then disguised as Comunia which tries to pull the wool over our eyes: it uses the confused positions, due to an incomplete break with Trotskyism, of a genuine revolutionary, Munís[8], to present us with a fake Communist Left, completely adulterated and falsified. This enterprise of impersonation promoted by the adventurer Gaizka[9] was for some time unreservedly supported by the parasitic IGCL

Another front in the war against the Communist Left comes from a farce of a conference held in Brussels, where several parasitic personalities and groupuscules have as a “common ground, which no doubt they would prefer to keep under wraps: it is the conviction that marxism and the acquisitions of the Communist Left over the last hundred years are obsolete and must be ‘supplemented’ or even ‘surpassed’ by recourse to various anarcho-councilist, modernist or radical ecologist theories. That's why they call themselves ‘pro-revolutionaries’, seeing themselves as a kind of ‘a friendly association for the spreading the idea of revolution’. Their message is that the working class must ‘start again’ and under the din of wars, the waves of inflation and misery, the orgy of destruction, wait patiently for these ‘pro-revolutionary’ denizens of the salon to use their incredible brains to come up with some idea on ‘how to fight capitalism’"[10].

The opportunism of the ICT on the question on the struggle against the war

The war of the bourgeoisie against internationalism finds a point of support in the sectarian and opportunist position of the ICT.

The ICT denounce imperialist war, reject all sides in the conflicts, and defend the proletarian revolution as the only way out. But this internationalism runs the risk of remaining pure words, because, on the one hand, they refuse to fight against the war in union with the other groups of the Communist Left (for example, by refusing to participate in the Common Declaration proposed by the ICC from the beginning of the war in Ukraine or by also rejecting the Appeal we have made in the face of the war in Gaza). In the same way, giving internationalism an elasticity that ends up breaking or diluting it, it advocates fronts (for example, the NWBCW) which can fit leftist groups that are "internationalist" in the face of one military conflict but chauvinist in response to another, or confused groups that have a false conception of internationalism.

This sectarian and opportunist position is not new - it has almost 80 years of history as we have seen above in relation to the origins of the PCInt. With the historical recovery of the proletariat since 1968, both the Bordigist groups coming from the PCInt and the Damenist branch, predecessor of the present ICT, display on the one hand the sectarianism of refusing any declaration or common action against the imperialist war proposed by the ICC, and on the other hand collaboration with confused groups or groups clearly situated in the terrain of the bourgeoisie.

So, the ICT, with the sectarianism and opportunism that are in its genes, has rejected all the joint action of the Communist Left proposed by the ICC against imperialist war - since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 - up to an including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza!

At the same it has created fronts like the No War But the Class War with the argument that that the field of the Communist Left is too narrow and that it barely reaches the working class.

The alleged “narrowness” of the Communist Left leads the ICT to “widen the field of internationalism” by calling for anarchist, semi-Trotskyist, parasitic groups from a more or less leftist-infested swamp to join NWBCW. Thus, the programmatic identity, the historical tradition, the fierce struggle of more than a century, carried out by the Communist Left is denied by an “enlargement" which, in reality, means dilution and confusion.

But, at the same time, real internationalism is trampled underfoot because these "internationalists" are not always internationalists, they are internationalists against some wars, while against others they keep silent or support them more or less openly. Their arguments against war contain numerous illusions in pacifism, humanism, inter-classism. This can be seen in the ICT's attitude towards the Anarchist Communist Group in Britain (ACG). It welcomes this group's stance on the war in Ukraine, but at the same time "regrets" its contrary position on the war in Gaza.

The ICT in its opportunist eagerness to "unite" all those who say "something against the war" blurs the demarcation that must exist between the Communist Left that effectively fights against the war and all the other fauna:

1. Those who are circumstantially opposed to this or that war (as Bilan said "The character of a war is not given by the specific nature of each of the States participating in it, but results from the character of the conflict as a whole. This fact must impel us to take a unified, general and analogous position for all countries, with regard to war". nº 8, June 1934);
2. Those who oppose war in general. These gentlemen reject that «the working class can know and claim only one type of war: civil war directed against the oppressors in each State and ending in insurrectional victory» (Bilan nº 16, March 1935).

The ICT want to maintain confusion because it argues “What we do not think internationalists should be doing is attacking each other. We have always held the view that old polemics would be resolved or made irrelevant by the appearance of a new class movement”[11].

No! Such an approach is radically antagonistic to that of the Bolsheviks in Zimmerwald. Lenin regarded this meeting of "internationalists in general" as a "puddle" and led an uncompromising struggle to separate the truly internationalist position from this puddle of confusion which blocked the consistent struggle against the war.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks showed that the "Zimmerwald majority" practiced a "façade internationalism"; their opposition to the war was more empty posturing than real combat. By the same token, we must warn against the present internationalism of the ICT. It is true that the ICT has not betrayed internationalism, but its internationalism is becoming more and more formal and abstract, tending to become an empty shell by which the ICT covers up its sabotage of the struggle for the party, its complicity with parasitism, its collaboration with snitches, its growing connivance with leftism.

Como & C.Mir 22-12-23

I.  Prologue

Usually, ICC congresses and the meetings of its International Bureau examine three main themes concerning the international situation and which have the greatest impact on our intervention: the economic contradictions of capitalism, imperialist conflicts and the evolution of the class struggle. That said, an examination of the political life of the class enemy, the bourgeoisie, should never be neglected, not least because it completes our knowledge of the society we are fighting and can also provide keys to understanding those three major topics mentioned above. In a totally reductionist, and therefore false, vision of marxism, the starting point is the economic situation of capitalism, which determines imperialist conflicts and the level of class struggle. We have often shown that reality is not so simple, notably by taking up Engels' quotations on the place of the economy, in the last instance, in the life of society.

This need to examine the political life of the bourgeoisie is present in many of the writings of Marx and Engels. One of the best known and most remarkable texts on this subject is The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In this document, although he refers briefly to the economic situation in France and Europe, Marx sets out to elucidate a sort of enigma: how and through what process could the revolution of 1848 have led to the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, giving full powers to an adventurer, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. In so doing, Marx paints a vivid and profound picture of the political workings of French society at the time. Of course, it would be absurd to transpose Marx's analysis to today's society. In particular, the role played by Parliament today is nothing like that of the mid-19th century. That said, it is fundamentally in the method used by Marx, historical and dialectical materialism, that we can find a source of inspiration for analysing today's society.

The importance of a systematic examination of the political life of the bourgeoisie for an understanding of today's world has been verified on several occasions by the ICC, but it is worth highlighting a particularly significant episode: that of the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union in 1989-90. The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 came as a huge surprise to most proletarian political groups and bourgeois ‘specialists’ who, until the eve of that date, were far from thinking that the difficulties encountered by the countries of the bloc would lead to its sudden and spectacular collapse. However, the ICC had foreseen this major event two months earlier, at the beginning of September 1989, when it drafted the “Theses on the Economic and Political Crisis in the USSR and Eastern Europe [187]” (International Review n°60). These are very clear:

• "... since virtually the only cohesive factor in the Russian bloc is that of armed force, any policy which tends to push this into the background threatens to break up the bloc. Already, the Eastern bloc is in a state of growing dislocation. (...).
  We find a similar phenomenon in the peripheral republics of the USSR (...) The nationalist movements which today are profiting from a loosening of central control by the Russian party (...) [have] a dynamic towards separation from Russia. In the end, if the central power in Moscow does not react, we will see an explosion, not just of the Russian bloc, but also of its dominant power. The Russian bourgeoisie, which today rules the world's second power, would find itself at the head of a second-rate power, a good deal weaker than Germany for example." (Point 18)
• "But however the situation in the Eastern bloc evolves, the events that are shaking it today mean the historic crisis, the definitive collapse of Stalinism, this monstrous symbol of the most terrible counter-revolution the proletariat has ever known. The greatest lie in history is being stripped bare today. In these countries, an unprecedented period of instability, convulsions, and chaos has begun, whose implications go far beyond their frontiers. In particular, the weakening, which will continue, of the Russian bloc, opens the gates to a destabilisation of the whole system of international relations and imperialist constellations which emerged from World War II with the Yalta Agreements.”. (Point 20)
• “The events presently shaking the so-called socialist countries', the de facto disappearance of the Russian bloc, the patent and definitive bankruptcy of Stalinism on the economic, political and ideological level, constitute along with the international resurgence of the proletariat at the end of the sixties, the most important historic facts since the Second World War.” (Point 22)

This ability to predict what was going to happen in the Eastern bloc was not the result of any particular talent for reading crystal balls, but of regular monitoring and in-depth analysis of the situation and nature of the countries in this bloc. [1] [188] It is for this reason that the first part of the theses recalled what we had already written on this question, in order to place the events of 1989 in the context of what we had previously identified, particularly during the workers' struggles in Poland in 1980. The theses cited in particular three articles published in the International Review in 1980-81:

• “The international dimension of workers’ struggles in Poland [189]”, International Review n°24;
• “One year of workers’ struggles in Poland [190]”, International Review n°27;
• “Eastern Europe: Economic crisis and the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat [191]”, International Review n°34.

This is not the place to review these writings, which are easily accessible on our website. We can just recall two important ideas which, among others, guided our analysis of the collapse of the Eastern bloc a decade later:

• "By forcing it into a division of labour to which the Eastern European bourgeoisie is structurally resistant, the proletarian struggles in Poland have created a living contradiction. It is still too early to predict how it will turn out. Faced with a historically unprecedented situation… the task of revolutionaries is to approach the unfolding events in a modest manner.” (International Review n°27).
• "... while the American bloc is perfectly capable of ‘managing’ the ‘democratisation’ of a fascist or military regime when this becomes useful (Japan, Germany, Italy, in the aftermath of the war; Portugal, Greece, Spain, in the 1970s), the USSR cannot accommodate any ‘democratisation’ within its bloc. (...) A change of political regime in a ‘satellite’ country carries with it the direct threat of that country becoming part of the opposing bloc. (International Review n°34)

Today, the examination of the political life of the bourgeoisie retains all its importance. The methodological tool we use for this examination is, of course, our analysis of decomposition, more particularly the question of the loss of control by the ruling class of its political game, of which the rise of populism is a major manifestation. This report will focus on the question of populism for two main reasons:

• On the one hand, this rise of populism has only intensified in recent years;
• On the other, the analyses we have adopted to date on this issue are not without weaknesses; weaknesses that we need to identify and rectify.

II. The rise of populism: the most spectacular expression of the bourgeoisie's loss of control over its political apparatus

a) Populism, a pure product of the decomposition of capitalism

It was only belatedly, at the 22nd Congress of Révolution Internationale (section in France of the ICC) in May 2016, that the ICC began to take the measure of the importance of the populist phenomenon on an international scale. At that same congress, the discussion on the resolution on the situation in France had expressed a lack of mastery and clarity with regard to this question. A motion was adopted insisting on the need to launch a debate throughout the ICC. A year later, the “Resolution on international class struggle [192]” (International Review n°159) adopted by the 22nd Congress of the ICC said of the populist phenomenon: “The current populist upsurge has thus been fed by all these factors – the 2008 economic crash, the impact of war, terrorism and the refugee crisis – and appears as a concentrated expression of the decomposition of the system, of the inability of either of the two major classes in society to offer humanity a perspective for the future.” While this statement contained a valid analysis, other points in the resolution placed greater emphasis, as a determining factor in the development of populism, on its capacity to influence the working class. Moreover, the populist phenomenon was not really assessed in the light of the bourgeoisie's own difficulties since entering the phase of decomposition. These ambiguities reflected the lack of homogeneity that went hand in hand with a tendency within the ICC to ignore the framework defended in the “Theses on Decomposition [1]” (International Review n°107)in order to understand the political life of the bourgeoisie in the  current historical period. This drift was particularly evident in the text “On the question of populism [193]” (International Review n°157) and also in the article “Brexit, Trump, Setbacks for the bourgeoisie which do not augur well for the proletariat [194]” again published in International Review n°157. Formally, these two texts do indeed present populism as an expression of ‘the decomposition of bourgeois political life’: “as such, it is the product of the bourgeois world and its vision of the world - but above all of its decomposition.”[2] For all that, it is striking to note the extent to which the “Theses” do not constitute the starting point of the analysis but only one element of reflection among others [3]. In fact, these two texts place another factor at the heart of the analysis: “The rise of populism is dangerous for the ruling class because it threatens its ability to control its own political apparatus and at the same time maintain the democratic mystification which is one of the pillars of its social domination. But it offers nothing to the proletariat. On the contrary, it is precisely the proletariat’s own weakness, its inability to offer any alternative perspective for the chaos threatening capitalism, that has made the rise of populism possible. Only the proletariat can offer a way out of the dead-end that society finds itself in today, and it will never be able to do so if workers let themselves be taken in by the siren songs of populist demagogues promising an impossible return to a past which, in any case, never existed." [4] Drawing a parallel between the rise of populism and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, the article “On the question of Populism” concludes: "If the proletariat is unable to put forward its revolutionary alternative to capitalism, the loss of confidence in the ability of the ruling class to ‘do its job’ ultimately leads to a revolt, a protest, an explosion of an entirely different kind, a protest that is not conscious but blind, oriented not towards the future but towards the past, that is based not on confidence but on fear, not on creativity but on destruction and hatred." In other words, the main factor in the development and rise of populism in bourgeois politics is what amounts to the political defeat of the working class. [5].

In fact, all the aspects that feed the populist ‘catechism’ (rejection of foreigners, rejection of the ‘elites’, conspiracy theory, belief in the strong and providential man, the search for scapegoats, withdrawal into the 'native' community... ) are first and foremost the product of the miasma and ideological putrefaction conveyed by the lack of perspective in capitalist society (explained in point 8 of the “Theses on Decomposition”), which primarily affects the capitalist class. But the breakthrough and development of populism in the political life of the bourgeoisie was determined above all by one of the major manifestations of the decomposition of capitalist society: “the growing difficulty of the bourgeoisie to control the evolution of the situation on the political level. At the root of this phenomenon is, of course, the ever-increasing loss of control by the ruling class over its economic apparatus, which constitutes the infrastructure of society. (...) The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilise as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’". [Thesis 9]. It is therefore on the basis of the continuing worsening of the economic crisis and the inability of the bourgeoisie to mobilise society for world war that the disintegration of the political apparatus finds its main driving force. This historical groundswell has manifested itself in a growing tendency towards indiscipline, division, every man for himself and, ultimately, the exacerbation of struggles between cliques within the political apparatus. This ferment has provided fertile ground for the emergence of bourgeois fractions with an increasingly irrational discourse, capable of surfing on the most nauseating ideas and sentiments, whose leaders behave like veritable gang leaders vandalising political relations, with the aim of asserting their own interests at all costs, to the detriment of the interests of national capital.

In this way, while the inability of the proletariat to open the way to a perspective other than that of chaos and capitalist barbarism can only reinforce manifestations of decomposition such as populism, it is not the active factor. Moreover, the last two years have given a stinging rebuttal to such an analysis. On the one hand, we have witnessed a very significant revival of workers' struggles, containing a development of reflection and the maturing of consciousness. On the other hand, under the effect of the unprecedented worsening of decomposition, the rise of populism has nevertheless been fully confirmed. In the final analysis, the thesis put forward in the “On the question of Populism” is totally at odds with the ICC's analysis, which identifies two poles in the current historical situation. What's more, it also amounts to denying the analysis of the historical break in the class struggle, and/or to thinking that the development of the workers' struggle can make populist tendencies recede. Finally, it also leads us to underestimate the fact that the bourgeoisie will exploit populism against the working class.

b) The amplification of the populist phenomenon

The victory of ‘Brexit’ in the United Kingdom in June 2016, followed by Trump's rise to power in the United States a few months later, signalled a spectacular breakthrough for populism in the political life of the bourgeoisie. This trend has continued ever since, making populism a decisive and irreversible factor in the evolution of capitalist society.

Several European countries are now governed in whole or in part by populist factions (the Netherlands, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Finland and Austria), while in the rest of Europe populist and far-right parties have continued to climb in the polls and in votes, particularly in Western Europe. According to some studies, populist parties could come out on top in 9 EU countries at the European elections in June 2024. But the scope of the phenomenon clearly extends beyond Europe. In South America, after Brazil, it is now Argentina's turn to experience it with the arrival in power of Javier Milei. But if populism is a general phenomenon, it is important for our analysis to appreciate above all its breakthrough within the core countries, since such a dynamic not only has a destabilising impact on the situation in the countries concerned, but also on capitalist society as a whole. At present, two countries in particular should be the focus of attention: France and the United States.

In France, the RN (National Rally) achieved a historic score in the June 2022 legislative elections, with 89 deputies on the benches of the National Assembly. According to a ‘secret poll’ commissioned by the right-wing party Les Républicains at the end of 2023, the RN could win between 240 and 305 seats in the event of early elections following a possible dissolution of the National Assembly. Similarly, its victory in the presidential elections of 2027 is an increasingly credible scenario. Such a situation would certainly aggravate the political crisis facing the French bourgeoisie. But above all, given the RN's proximity to the Putin faction, it would aggravate divisions within the European Union and weaken its ability to implement its pro-Ukrainian policy. Thus, unlike the German bourgeoisie, which for the moment seems to have found the means to contain the risk of the Afd (Alternative for Germany) coming to power (despite the rise of this formation's influence within the German political game), the French bourgeoisie seems to see its room for manoeuvre increasingly limited due to the strong discredit of the Macron faction, in power for 7 years, but principally due to the exacerbation of divisions within the political apparatus [6].

But it is above all the possible return of Trump to the White House in the presidential elections of November 2024 that would mark a profound worsening of the situation, not only in the USA but in the international situation as a whole. The accentuation of centrifugal forces and the trend towards the loss of global leadership have for many years weighed on the ability of the US state to equip itself with the most appropriate faction to defend its interests, as was the case when the neoconservatives came to power in the early 2000s. The Obama era did not put an end to this trend since Trump's arrival in power in 2017 only exacerbated it. The day after his defeat in January 2021, Adam Nossiter, the Paris bureau chief of the New York Times, said: “In six months, we won't hear any more about him, he'll be nothing away from power”. Over the last four years, the most responsible fractions of the American bourgeoisie have not succeeded in ‘putting him out of business’. Despite numerous legal challenges, smear campaigns and attempts to destabilise those closest to him, Trump's return to the White House in the November 2024 presidential elections is an increasingly likely scenario. His victory in the last Republican primaries even demonstrated the strengthening of Trumpism within the conservative party to the detriment of more responsible fringes.

In any case, a Trump victory would send shockwaves through the international situation, particularly on the imperialist front. By casting doubt on continued support for Ukraine or by threatening to make US protection of NATO countries conditional on their creditworthiness, the US political line would weaken the EU and run the risk of aggravating the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. As regards the war in Gaza, Trump's latest ‘critical’ statements about Netanyahu do not seem to call into question the unconditional support of the Republican religious right for the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Israeli government. What would be the consequences of Trump's victory in this respect?

More generally, the return of the populist banner to Washington would have a major impact on the ability of the bourgeoisie to deal with the manifestations of the decomposition of its own system. Trump's victory could thus mean:

• Another exit from the Paris climate agreement by the second-largest CO2-emitting power.
• An increasingly isolationist and economically aggressive policy.
• A worsening of social violence and the disintegration of the social fabric through the crusade against ‘minorities’.
• Worsening political chaos fuelled by a spirit of revenge and a desire to settle scores both within the Republican party and more broadly within the political apparatus. As Trump said last December on Fox News, “I will not be a dictator, except on the first day”!

However, we must be wary of thinking that all bets are off. On the contrary, the outcome of the presidential election is more unpredictable than ever given the degree of destabilisation of the US political system and the deep and lasting divisions in American society, accentuated both by populist rhetoric and by the Biden administration's anti-Trump campaign.

III.  The various bourgeois strategies for containing populism

Unlike the rise of fascism in the 1930s, populism is not the result of a deliberate will on the part of the dominant sectors of the bourgeoisie. The most responsible sections of the bourgeoisie are still trying to implement strategies to contain it. The “Report on the impact of decomposition on the political life of the bourgeoisie” [68] for the 23rd Congress of the ICC in 2019 (International Review No 164), assessed these different strategies:

• anti-populist politics
• the adaptation of populist ideas
• the formation of populist governments
• rebuilding the left/right divide.

What has been the evolution over the last five years? As the “Resolution on the international situation [10]” at the 25th ICC Congress states, “The rise of populism, oiled by the total lack of perspective offered by capitalism and the development of every man for himself at the international level, is probably the clearest expression of this loss of control, and this trend has continued despite counter-movements by other, more ‘responsible’ factions of the bourgeoisie (e.g. the replacement of Trump, and the rapid dumping of Truss in the UK),” (International Review n°170). Consequently, while the more responsible fractions have not remained inactive, these various strategies have proved less and less effective and cannot constitute a viable and sustainable response.

a) Anti-populist policies (France/Germany/USA)

As mentioned above, the campaign to discredit and eliminate Trump from the presidential race has not yet borne fruit. On the contrary, the various lawsuits that have been brought against him have boosted his overall popularity among a significant section of the American electorate. At the same time, the new candidacy of Biden, aged 81, who has publicly shown clear signs of senility, is clearly not an asset for the American bourgeoisie. All the more so as the government's economic attacks have greatly accentuated its discredit. However, this choice by default (despite disagreements within the Democratic party) expresses a crisis in the renewal of the party's leadership and above all deep divisions within the party's political apparatus, which are having repercussions on the electorate. For example, the dissatisfaction of the Arab community with the US position on the war in Gaza means that there is a risk of defeat in the swing state of Michigan. Similarly, the growing influence of the wokist and identity-based ideology advocated by the party's left wing could lead to a shift away from some minorities and young people, who are more concerned about the deterioration in working and living conditions. In particular, surveys seem to show that part of the African-American electorate could be seduced by Trump.

In France, while the bourgeoisie once again managed to repel the RN in the 2022 presidential elections by re-electing Macron, this tour de force was not without collateral effects. The multiple attacks on the working class since 2017, as well as the lack of experience and amateurism that regularly manifests itself, has only served to increase the executive's already well-developed discredit. The real danger of a large RN victory in the European elections forced Macron to change government by appointing a young and loyal prime minister (G. Attal) who was supposed to lead the anti-RN crusade between now and June. However, this government is experiencing the same difficulties as the previous one, despite the intensification of rhetoric against the RN and even the majority's attempt to recuperate far-right ideas.

But the greatest weakness lies fundamentally in the divisions and the ‘every man for himself’ attitude that is increasingly corrupting the political game, including within the various parties, first and foremost within the presidential camp. The relative majority obtained by the government party in the legislative elections has accentuated the tendency towards centrifugal forces. Faced with the difficulties of forging stable alliances on key reforms, the government is obliged to make regular use of Article 49.3, which allows it to dispense with the vote of the deputies in the Assembly. Similarly, the traditional parties, which were largely scuttled by the bourgeoisie in the 2017 election, remain more fragmented than ever, as in the case of the right-wing party Les Républicains. This heir to the Gaullist party, which has been in power most of the time since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, now has just 62 MPs and is made up of at least three increasingly fractured tendencies. This political crisis could severely handicap the bourgeoisie's ability to put forward a credible candidate capable of fending off Marine Le Pen, whose chances of victory in the 2027 elections have never been stronger. In the meantime, the French bourgeoisie could be faced with other obstacles. What would happen in the event of a stinging defeat for the Macronist list in the European elections? Similarly, the right is now threatening to table a motion of censure if the government decides to raise taxes. The other opposition parties, in particular the RN, would jump on board. Such an outcome would lead to early general elections with an unpredictable scenario, except for the fact that it would accentuate the political chaos in which the French bourgeoisie is immersed.

With regard to Germany, the 2019 report concluded: “the situation is complex and Merkel's relinquishment of the CDU presidency (and therefore in the future of the post of chancellor) heralds a phase of uncertainty and instability for the dominant bourgeoisie in Europe.” The outbreak of war in Ukraine has particularly affected the traditional political line of the German ruling class. Internally, the weakening of the traditional parties (SPD, CDU) has continued, necessitating the formation of coalitions linking the three main parties together at a time when relations are increasingly conflictual. At the same time, Germany is not exempt from the rise of populism and the far right. In fact, the populist AfD party has become Germany's second most popular party. Unlike the RN in France, some of whose positions are showing signs of responsibility, the AfD's political positions (rejection of the EU, xenophobia, openness towards Russia, etc.) are, for the moment, too strongly at odds with the interests of national capital to allow it to be involved at the highest level of government. However, its stance of opposing the government elite and its condemnation as a total opponent of the integrity of the federal state will make it a rallying point for protest voters for a long time to come.

b) The takeover of populist ideas by traditional parties: political developments in the UK.

"Brexit was accompanied by the transformation of the centuries-old Tory party into a populist hodgepodge that relegated experienced politicians to the sidelines and gave government posts to ambitious, doctrinaire mediocrities, who then disrupted the competence of the departments they headed. The rapid succession of Conservative prime ministers since 2016 is testament to the uncertainty at the political helm."[7] The 44 days of political mayhem under Liz Truss's government in September-October 2022 was a vivid illustration of this. While this choice might have represented a break with populist one-upmanship, it was above all marked by the defence of a radically ultra-liberal policy and the fantasy of a ‘global Britain’ that was totally at odds with the global interests of British capital.

Sunak's coming to power, however, signified the attempt to preserve the democratic credibility of state and governmental institutions: “His government, despite the influence of populism, modified certain aspects of the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to circumvent some of the contradictions of Brexit, and joined the European Horizon project, without being able to overcome the flight of the economy. King Charles was sent to France and Germany as ambassador to show Britain's remnants of dignity. Finally, the sacking of Suella Braverman and the appointment of Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary is a further expression of this attempt to limit the growing populist virus within the party, but its future direction and stability remain deeply uncertain, not least because the same virus is an international reality, most notably within the American ruling class."

c) A new left/right divide?

The “Report on the impact of decomposition on the life of the bourgeoisie” stated: “The third strategy envisaged, the refoundation of the left/right opposition to take the wind out of populism's sails, does not seem to have been really implemented by the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, the past few years have been characterised by an irreversible trend towards the decline of the socialist parties.” This trend has been confirmed in recent years. While this evolution is being resisted in some countries (Spain and the UK in particular), the irreversible decline of social democracy and, more generally, of traditional government parties, as well as the difficulty in many European countries of structuring new left-wing formations (La France Insoumise in France, Podemos in Spain, Die Linke in Germany) because of the struggles between cliques that these formations are also experiencing, tends to see the development of increasingly fragile coalitions. This is the case in Spain, for example, where the PSOE is relying on opposing forces to stay in power. On one side the chauvinist Catalan right and on the other the far-left SUMAR party, of which Yolanda Diaz is Deputy Prime Minister. This ‘Frankenstein’ government reflects the fragility of the PSOE, which remains the only force capable of managing separatist tendencies within the central state.

d) The formation of populist governments

The arrival in power of populist and far-right parties is a scenario which could become a major element in the political situation of the bourgeoisie in the years to come without, however, engendering the same consequences everywhere. While the years of power of Trump, Bolsonaro and Salvini have seen a sharpening of political instability, there has also been an ability on the part of other parts of the state apparatus to channel or restrain their most irrational and far-fetched aspirations. This was the case, under Trump for example, with the incessant struggle waged by part of the US administration to control the unpredictability of presidential decisions. Large sections of the bourgeoisie, particularly within the very structures of the State, managed to oppose the temptation of a rapprochement or even an alliance with Russia, thus ensuring that the option of the dominant fractions of the bourgeoisie triumphed. As we saw in the case of Italy, with Salvini's government, it is also possible that the populists could agree to ‘water down their wine’ by abandoning certain measures or scaling down their promises, particularly in the social sphere. This was also demonstrated recently by PVV leader Geert Wilder's decision in Holland to renounce taking power when he was unable to form a coalition.

e) The distinction between populism and the extreme right

The possibility of populist parties coming to power, and the reality of such an event as in Italy, highlights the fact that populism and the extreme right cannot be identified. This country is governed by an alliance between the traditional right (Forza Italia founded by Berlusconi), Salvini's populist Lega and Meloni's neo-fascist-inspired party, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), whose symbol remains the tricolour flame of the former, openly-Mussolinian MSI (Italian Social Movement). There are, of course, important similarities between the Lega and Meloni's party, in particular the xenophobic rhetoric against immigrants, particularly Muslims, which makes them competitors on the electoral stage. At the same time, the motto of Fratelli d'Italia (FI), ‘God, Fatherland and Family’, reveals the traditionalist inspiration of this party, which distinguishes it from the Lega. Indeed, the latter, although it may invoke traditional values, is rather anti-clerical and more ‘anti-system’ than the FI. In France we find this difference between the populist far right, represented by Marine Le Pen's National Rally, and the traditional far right represented by the ‘Reconquête!’ party. [8] It's no coincidence, moreover, that in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections, Reconquête!’s Éric Zemmour came second (behind Macron, who has become the politician most favoured by the bourgeoisie) in the ‘posh quarters’ of Paris, garnering three times as many votes as Marine Le Pen, whereas the latter completely crushed Zemmour in the ‘popular’ localities. And it's true that Le Pen's speeches against Macron's economic policies, such as the abolition of the Wealth Tax and pension reform, go down very badly with the classic bourgeoisie. In fact, with varying degrees of success in different countries, we are witnessing an attempt by certain sectors of the bourgeoisie to capitalise on fears around the issues of immigration, insecurity and Islamic terrorism, which until now have been the mainstay of populism, to give new life to a far right that is ‘presentable’ from the point of view of the ruling class, with a programme more compatible with its interests. Zemmour has always maintained that his economic programme was the same as that of the classical right, represented until now in France by the ‘Les Républicains’ party, heir to the Gaullist party. What he proposed at the time of the 2022 presidential elections was an alliance with this party, with the argument that Marine Le Pen could never win the elections on her own. Zemmour's policy has so far failed, as the RN has moved to the top of the polls and could win the 2027 presidential elections, which is a major concern for the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it is a policy that has succeeded in Italy, since Meloni has demonstrated a remarkable ability to pursue a policy in line with bourgeois interests and has come well ahead of Salvini.

Populism is not a political trend promoted by the most far-sighted and responsible sectors of the bourgeoisie and it has already caused damage to the interests of this class (particularly in the UK) but, among the cards available to the ruling class to try to limit this damage, there is precisely this emphasis on a ‘traditional’ far right to compete with or weaken populism.

IV.  The impact of the ‘gangsterisation’ of society and its penetration of the State.

Since the end of the 1980s, gangsterism and crime, largely fuelled by drug trafficking, have exploded worldwide. This phenomenon, already highlighted in the “Theses on Decomposition”, is accompanied by incredible corruption within the political apparatus: “violence and urban crime have exploded in many Latin American countries and also in the suburbs of certain European cities, partly linked to drug trafficking, but not exclusively. As far as drug trafficking is concerned, and the enormous weight it has taken on in society, including in economic terms, it can be said that it corresponds to the existence of a ‘market’ that is constantly expanding as a result of the growing malaise and despair affecting all sections of the population. As far as corruption and all the manipulations that make up ‘white-collar crime’ are concerned, the last few years have been full of discoveries (such as the ‘Panama papers’, which are just a tiny tip of the iceberg of the gangsterism in which finance is increasingly mired)". (Report on decomposition today [195], International Review n°164, 2017)

It is important to be able to identify the main effects of this phenomenon on the political life of the bourgeoisie. The increasingly obvious collusion between crime and the political fractions of the state apparatus tends to transform the political game into real gang warfare, sometimes against a backdrop of a trend towards the collapse of political institutions. This is certainly the most acute and unbridled form of the tendency to accentuate the divisions and fragmentation of the bourgeois political apparatus. The political situation in Haiti is certainly the most caricatural example. But many other countries in Central and South America have been particularly affected by this phenomenon for decades. Like the internal war that broke out in broad daylight at the beginning of January between the Ecuadorian state and criminal gangs: “The current bourgeois faction that controls the state apparatus is directly linked to Ecuador's most powerful agro-industrial import-export group. Its triumphal entry into the Carondelet Palace began with financial laws that directly benefited this group, with the approval of the PSC and the RC5 (correistas). The result was a country plunged into abject poverty and endemic corruption at all levels of government, penetrated on all sides by the Mexican drug cartels (Jalisco Nueva Generación and Sinaloa) associated with Peruvian and Colombian drug traffickers. The Albanian, Chinese, Russian and Italian mafia are also very present. And a society overwhelmed by national organised crime, the ODGs, linked to the Mexican cartels or the aforementioned mafias." 

It should also be noted that the headlong rush into settling scores between factions has consequences in terms of heightening tensions between nation states. For example, the storming by the Ecuadorian police of the Mexican embassy in Quito on 5 April to dislodge the former vice-president accused of corruption by the Noboa government was a veritable act of vandalism against the rules of bourgeois propriety, which only contributed to diplomatic instability in this part of the world.

The political system in Russia is also particularly marked by the gangsterisation of political relations. Clientelism, corruption and nepotism are the main cogs in the ‘Putin system’. This is a factor that must be taken into account when analysing the risks hanging over the future of the Russian Federation: “from Putin's political survival to that of the Russian Federation and the latter's imperialist status, the stakes arising from the defeat in Ukraine are fraught with consequences: as Russia sinks deeper into problems, there is a risk of settling scores, and even of bloody clashes between rival factions”. (“Report on imperialist tensions [196]”, 25th ICC Congress, International Review n°170). The rebellion of the Wagner group in June 2023, followed by the liquidation of its leader Prigozhin two months later, and the severe repression suffered by the pro-democracy faction (the assassination of Navalny) have fully confirmed the scale of the internal tensions and the fragility of Putin and his inner circle, who do not hesitate to defend their interests by any means necessary, in the manner of a real mafia boss. The central role played by gangsterism in the Russian political system therefore plays an active part in the risk of the Russian Federation breaking up. In the same way, the armed settling of scores within the former Soviet nomenklatura contributed to the profound destabilisation resulting from the implosion of the Eastern bloc. But after more than three decades of decomposition, the consequences of such a dynamic could lead to a much more chaotic situation. The break-up of the federation into several mini Russias and the spread of nuclear weapons in the hands of uncontrollable warlords would represent a veritable headlong rush into chaos on an international scale.

However, while these manifestations of the ideological and political decomposition of society are particularly advanced in the peripheral zones of capitalism, this trend is also increasingly apparent in the central countries:

In democracies, while clashes (sometimes violent) between rival factions are nothing new and are generally expressed within the framework of institutions and ‘respect for order’, they are beginning to take on particularly chaotic and violent forms: “The assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January highlighted the fact that divisions within the ruling class, even in the most powerful country on the planet, are growing deeper and risk degenerating into violent clashes, even civil wars.” (“Resolution on the international situation”, International Review n°170).

Corruption and embezzlement are now ravaging the entire body politic, right up to the highest levels of government, as highlighted by the “Panama Papers” and Qatargate scandals (involving MEPs, parliamentary assistants, NGO representatives and trade unionists). This only serves to further discredit the various political fractions, particularly those who present themselves as the most upright, thus giving credence to the populist anti-elite discourse of 'They are all rotten’.

In the 19th century, Marx pointed out that the most advanced country of the time, England, indicated the direction in which the other European countries would develop. Today, it is in the least developed countries that we find the most caricatural manifestations of the chaos that is sweeping across the planet and increasingly affecting the most developed countries. The observation made by Marx in his day was an illustration of the fact that the capitalist mode of production was still in its ascendant phase. Today's observation that chaos is advancing in society is yet another illustration of the historical impasse in which capitalism finds itself, its decadence and its decomposition.

ICC, December 2023

[1] Obviously, the essence of this framework of analysis had been transmitted to the ICC by comrade MC (“Marc, Part 1: From the Revolution of October 1917 to World War II [197]”; “Marc, Part 2: From World War II to the present day [198]”, (International Reviews 65 & 66) on the basis of reflections that had already taken place in the GCF but also on the basis of reflections that the comrade had carried out as events unfolded.

[2] “On the question of populism [193]”, International Review n°157

[3] The paragraph "Populism and decomposition" only comes in the last third of the contribution.

[4] “Brexit, Trump: Setbacks for the bourgeoisie that do not bode well for the proletariat", International Review n°157.

[5] It should be noted that this analysis was also reflected in certain documents produced and adopted by the ICC. For example, the “Report on the Impact of Decomposition on the Political Life of the Bourgeoisie” (International Review n°164) states, in speaking of populism, that its determining cause is “the incapacity of the proletariat to put forward its own response, its own alternative to the crisis of capitalism”.

[6] See Chapter III of the report.

[7] Resolution on the situation in Great Britain, published internally.

[8] Somewhat paradoxically, this party is led by Éric Zemmour, whose name indicates his Sephardic Jewish origins. To overcome this ‘handicap’ in relation to his traditionalist clientele, who still have sympathies for Marshal Pétain, the leader of the collaboration with Nazi Germany, Zemmour did not hesitate to declare that Pétain had saved Jewish lives (which is contradicted by all serious historians).

For the ICC, “The crisis that has already been unfolding over decades is going to become the most serious of the whole period of decadence, and its historic import will go beyond even the first crisis of this epoch, the crisis which began in 1929. Ripening after more than 100 years of capitalist decadence, with an economy ravaged by the military sector, weakened by the impact of the destruction of the environment, profoundly altered in its mechanisms of reproduction by debt and state manipulation, prey to the pandemic, increasingly suffering from all the other effects of decomposition, it is an illusion to think that in these conditions there will be any easy or durable recovery of the world economy.” (“Resolution on the International Situation” (2021), International Review n°167)

The proletarian political milieu, for its part, underestimates the depth of the crisis: for the PCI (International Communist Party), which concentrates essentially on its financial aspects, the current crisis seems to be no more than a replay of the 1929 crisis. As for the ICT (International Communist Tendency), while empirically it can see certain phenomena of its aggravation, its economist approach, based solely on the downward trend in the rate of profit, obscures the extent of the decline of the capitalist system and the seriousness of the crisis. By continuing to conceive of the crisis as the sequence of cycles typical of the ascendant phase of capitalism, it fails to understand the forms it takes in decadence, or really its consequences and the resulting stakes for the proletariat. Above all, it sees Capital "... generating wars as a means of pursuing the process of accumulation and extortion of surplus-value which is the basis of its existence"[1].

This report bases its assessment of the current severity of the economic crisis on the achievements of marxism and the elements of its evolution since the late 1960s, as set out in various ICC publications.

The crisis is one of overproduction

A. The impasse of the crisis of overproduction is based on capitalist social relations which are too narrow for the extended reproduction of capital[2] and on the limits to solvent extra-capitalist markets

The crisis that resurfaced in 1967 and is still raging today is a crisis of overproduction. At its root is a fundamental cause, the principal contradiction of capitalism from its very beginnings, which has become a definitive obstacle once the productive forces reached a certain level of development: capitalist production does not automatically create the markets necessary for its growth. Capital produces more commodities than can be absorbed by the capitalist relations of production: part of the realisation of its profits, that which is destined to extend the reproduction of capital (i.e. neither consumed by the bourgeois class nor by the proletarian class) must be realised outside these relations, in extra-capitalist markets. Historically, capitalism found the solvent outlets necessary for its expansion first among the peasants and artisans of the capitalist countries, then compensated for its inability to create its own outlets by extending its market to the whole world by creating the world market.

"But by generalising its relations of production across the whole planet and by unifying the world market, capitalism reached a point where the outlets which allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated. Moreover, the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realisation of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion. From being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fetter on the process of capitalist accumulation and thus on the operation of the entire system" (ICC Platform, section on “The Decadence of Capitalism”). "It thus becomes clearer that the two contradictions traced by Marx do not exclude each other but are two sides of one overall process of value production. This ultimately makes it possible for the ‘two' theories of crisis to become one” (“Marxism and Crisis Theories [199]”, International Review n°13, 1978).

On a more immediate level, the open crisis of the late 1960s put an end to two decades of prosperity based on the resumption of the exploitation of extra-capitalist markets (which had slowed down during and between the two world wars) and on the modernisation of the productive apparatus (Fordist methods, introduction of information technology, etc.). The return of the crisis once again opened the way to the historical alternative of world war or generalised class confrontation leading to proletarian revolution.

B. What criteria should be used to assess the seriousness of the crisis?

Faced with the resurgence of the crisis in the 1970s, the organisation retained three criteria to attest to the seriousness of the crisis: the development of state capitalism, the growing impasse of overproduction, and the preparation for war with the development of the war economy.

B1. The development of state capitalism

As an expression of the contradiction between global socialisation and the national basis of the social relations of capitalist production, the universal tendency towards the strengthening of the capitalist state, in all spheres of social life, fundamentally reflects the definitive unsuitability of capitalist social relations for the development achieved by the productive forces. The state is the only force capable of:

- curbing the antagonisms within the ruling class with a view to imposing the unity essential to defend the national capital;

- organising and fully developing on a national scale the cheating of the law of value, to restrict its field of application in order to slow down the disintegration of the national economy faced with of the insurmountable contradictions of capitalism;

- placing the economy at the service of war and organising national capital with a view to preparing for imperialist war;

- strengthening, by means of its repressive forces and an ever-heavier bureaucracy, the internal cohesion of a society threatened with dislocation by the growing decomposition of its economic foundations; imposing, by means of omnipresent violence, the maintenance of a social structure increasingly incapable of automatically governing human relations – relations which are less and less accepted and more and more an absurdity from the point of view of the very survival of society.

B2. The growing impasse of overproduction

There is no solution to overproduction within capitalism; all the policies implemented to mitigate its effects are doomed to failure, and capitalism is constantly confronted with this insurmountable fundamental contradiction. In essence, this contradiction can only be eliminated by the abolition of wage-labour and exploitation. At most, the bourgeoisie can only try to mitigate the violence of the crisis by slowing it down.

The "present situation clearly illustrates what the ICC has always said about the nature of the crisis: that we are dealing with a general crisis of overproduction which in the capitalist metropoles takes the form of an overproduction of commodities, capital and labour power” (“Resolution on the crisis [200]”, International Review n°26, 1981)

This impasse is expressed in the development of inflation, which is fed by the burden of unproductive costs mobilised by the need to maintain a minimum of cohesion in a disintegrating society (state capitalism) and the sterilisation of capital represented by the war economy and arms production. Inflation, which is also fuelled by cheating the law of value (debt, money creation, etc.), is a permanent feature of the decadence of capitalism, and becomes even more important in times of war. An enormous mass of capital, which can no longer be invested profitably, then feeds speculation.

"The whole period of decadence shows that the overproduction crisis implies a displacement of production towards the war economy. To consider this an ‘economic solution’, even a momentary one, would be a serious mistake. The roots of this mistake lie in an inability to understand that the overproduction crisis is a process of self-destruction. Militarism is the expression of this process of self-destruction which is the result of the revolt of the productive process against production relations” (“Conditions for the revolution [201]: Crisis of overproduction, state capitalism, and the war economy”, International Review n°31, 1982)

B3. Preparing for war and building the war economy

"In the decadent phase of imperialism, capitalism can only direct the contrasts of its system towards one outcome: war. Humanity can escape from such an alternative only through proletarian revolution." ("Crises and cycles in the economy of dying capitalism - Part 1” [202]; Bilan No. 10, August-September 1934), International Review n°102, 2000). Indeed, as the economic crisis is prolonged and deepened, it intensifies inter-imperialist antagonisms. For capital, there is only one "solution" to its historical crisis: imperialist war. So, the sooner the various palliatives prove their futility, the more deliberately each imperialist bloc must prepare for a violent repartition of the world market.

B4. Reinforcement of the exploitation of the proletariat

The establishment of a war economy implies the development of production (particularly armaments production) which cannot be usefully employed to increase the value of capital, i.e. which cannot be integrated into the production of new commodities. In this sense, it implies a sterilisation of capital, which must be compensated for by an increase in the surplus value extracted. This compensation is basically achieved by reinforcing the exploitation of the working class.

Balance sheet of the 1970s and 80s: the eruption of decomposition

At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, capitalism reached an impasse: in the Western bloc, the overproduction of goods was reflected in the fall in industrial production, which peaked, particularly in the USA, where recessions brought steel production back to its 1967 level. In the Eastern bloc, there was a shortage of capital, underdevelopment and backwardness of industrial production, and a complete lack of competitiveness of capital on the world market[3]. The myth that the so-called "socialist" countries could escape the general crisis of the system collapsed definitively in the 1980s. Many of the poorest, so-called ‘Third World countries’, had already collapsed by the mid-1970s.

In the American bloc, the economic crisis accelerated the trend towards a strengthening of state capitalism. Not only were measures of Keynesian stimulus on the scale of those taken after the 1929 crisis no longer feasible, but the subsequent stimulus policies also failed. One recession followed another, becoming deeper and deeper.

Each bloc escalated its preparations for a third world holocaust, notably through a considerable increase in arms spending to support inter-imperialist competition. War preparations were also intensifying in terms of the political strengthening of the blocs with a view to imperialist confrontation (but also to confronting the working class).

But for Capital, "While they have made it possible to strengthen the imperialist supremacy of the USA, the arms orders have not saved American industry. On the contrary. Between 1980 and 1987, the role on the world market played by the three key industrial sectors - machine-tools, automobiles and computer technology - has declined respectively from 12.7 to 9%, 11.5 to 9.4% and 31 to 22%. Arms production reproduces neither labour power nor new machinery. It represents a destruction of capital, of wealth, an unproductive puncture which deflates the competivity of the national economy. The two bloc leaders who emerged after Yalta have both seen their economies become less competitive than those of their allies. This is the result of the expenditure they have had to devote to the strength­ening of their military power, which is the guarantee of their position as imperialist leaders and, in the last instance, of their economic strength” (“The crisis of state capitalism: The world economy sinks into chaos [203]”, International Review n°61, 1990).

A. The collapse of Stalinism - the consequences of decomposition

At the turn of the 1980s, as the two fundamental and antagonistic classes of society confronted each other without succeeding in imposing their own decisive response, the contradictions and manifestations of moribund capitalism did not disappear with time. Instead, they were maintained, accumulated and deepened, culminating in the phase of generalised decomposition of the capitalist system which completes and crowns three quarters of a century of agony of a mode of production condemned by history.

The eruption of decomposition resulted in an unprecedented phenomenon: the collapse of an entire bloc outside the conditions of world war or proletarian revolution.

"Overall, this collapse is a consequence of the capitalist world economic crisis; nor should we forget to take account in our analyses of the specificities of the Stalinist regimes as a result of their origins (see our ‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the Eastern bloc countries’ in International Review n°60). However, we cannot fully understand this unprecedented collapse from within of an entire imperialist bloc, in the absence of either world war or revolution, without incorporating into the analytical framework this other unprecedented element: society’s entry into the phase of decomposition that we can see today. The extreme centralisation and complete statification of the economy, the confusion between the economic and political apparatus, the permanent and large-scale cheating with the law of value, the mobilisation of all economic resources around war production, all characteristic of the Stalinist regimes, were well adapted to a context of imperialist war (these regimes emerged victorious from World War II). But they have been brutally confronted with their own limitations as the bourgeoisie has been compelled for years to confront a continually worsening economic crisis without being able to unleash this same imperialist war" (“Theses on Decomposition” [1], International Review n°62, 1990 and International Review n°107, 2001. )

B. The crisis of state capitalism and its significance

“After decades of state capitalist policies carried out under the whip of the imperialist blocs, the current process of the dissolution of the alliances which have hitherto divided up the planet represents, to a certain extent, a victory for the market, a brutal adaptation of imperialist rivalries to economic realities. It symbolises the inability of state capitalist measures to short-circuit ad eternam the remorseless laws of the capitalist market. This failure, which goes well beyond the limits of the former Russian bloc, expresses the incapacity of the world bourgeoisie to deal with the chronic crisis of over­production, with the catastrophic crisis of capital. It shows the growing ineffectiveness of the statist measures which have for decades been employed more and more massively, on the scale of the blocs, and which since the 1930s have been presented as a panacea to the insurmountable contradictions of capitalism as expressed in its market" (“The crisis of state capitalism: the world economy sinks into chaos [203]”, International Review n°61, 1990).

"The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilise as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’. This phenomenon in particular allows us to explain the collapse of Stalinism and the entire Eastern imperialist bloc" (“Theses on Decomposition” [1],ibid).

The ICC recognised that the Western-style model of state capitalism, integrating private capital into a state structure and under its control, is far more efficient, more flexible, more suitable, with a more developed sense of responsibility for the management of the national economy, more mystifying because it is more masked, and above all, it controls an economy and a market that are far more powerful than those of the countries of Eastern Europe. But we also pointed out that the bankruptcy of the Eastern bloc, after that of the "third world", heralded the future bankruptcy of capitalism in its most developed areas. "The spectacle which the USSR and its satellites are offering us today, of a complete rout within the state apparatus itself, and the ruling class’ loss of control over its own political strategy is in reality only the caricature (due to the specificities of the Stalinist regimes) of a much more general phenomenon affecting the whole world ruling class, and which is specific to the phase of decomposition” (“Theses on Decomposition”, ibid).

In the following period, it was also confirmed that vast parts of the world, such as Africa, were economically marginalised on the world market. Despite the prospect of World War 3 receding, militarism continued unabated, and the ravages of war plunged ever larger areas into chaos at the direct instigation of the major powers, led by the USA with its catastrophic interventions in Iraq (1991 and 2001) and Afghanistan (2003).

Globalisation, 1989-2008

A. Globalisation: an attempt to maintain the profitability of capital

However, in the chaotic context of this new historical situation of decomposition, and in a capitalist world profoundly altered by the effects of its decadence, the disappearance of the blocs nevertheless offered an opportunity which was seized, particularly by the major powers led by the USA (as the sole remaining superpower in both economic and military terms), to prolong the survival of the capitalist system.

The attempts made through globalisation to limit the impact of capitalism's contradiction between the social and global nature of production and the private nature of the appropriation of surplus value by competing capitalist nations were fundamentally based on:

- the better exploitation of already existing markets, due to the disappearance of their competitors, swept away by the crisis which underlay of the collapse of the Eastern bloc countries, even if these markets were far from being the El Dorado presented at the time by the bourgeois campaigns.

- In addition, above all, the exploitation of the remaining extra-capitalist markets in a world where the disappearance of the blocs meant the disappearance of the main barriers to their access as long as they were under the tutelage of the enemy. However, not all markets are necessarily solvent, i.e. able to pay for the goods available for sale.

- State action. We no longer see the bloc leader, in the name of the necessary unity of the bloc, imposing the measures to be put in place by each national capital, but the economic and political power of the United States still enables it to blackmail each state into accepting the new rules of the game, on pain of being deprived of the financial windfall necessary for survival in the capitalist arena. States have been the main instruments for organising globalisation, playing a decisive role through their intervention in establishing regulations favouring maximum profitability, defining attractive tax policies, etc.

- The extension on a global scale of the cheating of the law of value by generalising the measures and mechanisms which had begun to be developed under the aegis of the USA within the framework of the Western bloc in the last decade of its existence. This was aimed at combating - by means of a demand artificially financed by debt - the consequences of the narrowness of the markets, which can only affect the profitability of Capital.

The new international organisation of production and trade imposed by the world's leading power essentially took two forms: the free movement of capital and the free movement of labour. These two provisions are closely linked to the fight against the downward trend in the rate of profit, in the context of a shortage of solvent markets.

It is this law which provides the explanation for the export of capital, which appears as one of the specific features of decadent capitalism: “‘the export of capital’, says Marx, ‘is not caused by the impossibility of employing it at home, but by the possibility of placing it abroad at a higher rate of profit’. Lenin confirms this idea (in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), saying that ‘the need to export capital results from the capitalism’s excessive maturity in certain countries, where advantageous investments [our emphasis] are in short supply,” (Bilan, op cit) At the same time, it had the effect of destroying the industrial apparatus of the central countries, as soon as there was the possibility of relocating it elsewhere in the world on more profitable terms.

The race for productivity, designed to compensate for the downward trend in the rate of profit by increasing the amount of profit made, also intensified.

The question of the commodity "labour power" (the living labour from whose exploitation capitalism extracts its surplus value) has played a central role. The disappearance of the blocs allowed the search for available labour power, which could be exploited more profitably, and also favoured the extension of capitalist class relations to areas hitherto outside the field of capitalist production. As a result of the proletarianisation of huge masses of small producers separated from their means of production, the number of wage earners worldwide rose to a total of 1.9 billion workers and employees in 1980, and exceeded 3 billion in 1995. The increasingly drastic exploitation of the labour power of the working class (through the direct or indirect reduction of wages, the intensification of work or the extension of working hours) in all parts of the world in competition with each other, as well as the integration of new labour forces into the capitalist social relations of production, enabled the major powers, for a time, to better achieve expanded accumulation by exporting capital to zones of relocation. Freed from the imperialist corset dividing the world into blocs, capitalism extended its relations of production to the whole planet, right up to its final limits.

On the other hand, the struggle for survival and the unbridled quest for maximum profit have also led to even more devastating and destructive exploitation of the other basis of capitalist wealth: nature. The plundering and predation of nature caused by the need to drive down the price of raw materials has reached such heights that the 'Great Acceleration' of environmental destruction produced by decaying capitalism, especially since the Second World War, has been gathering even more momentum since capitalism entered its final phase of decomposition.

Literally every means of maximising profit for the ruling class has been deployed:

1) The mechanisms of financial capital, occupying a key position, have the logic of draining an increasingly considerable part of the wealth created worldwide towards the ruling class in the central countries.

2) The policy of spoliation, particularly of the other producing classes (petty bourgeoisie), a typical phenomenon of decadence, takes on a new extension and becomes more general "the necessity for finance capital to seek a super-profit, not from the production of surplus value, but by despoiling both the consumers (by raising commodity prices above their value), and the small producers (by appropriating a part of a part of their labour). Super-profit thus represents an indirect tax raised on the circulation of commodities. Capitalism tends to become parasitic in the absolute sense of the term” (“Crises and cycles in the economy of dying capitalism, part 2” [204], Bilan n°11, October-November 1934, republished in International Review n°103, 2000).

3) Speculation, driven by official institutions and governments, is taking on new scope and significance: it is fuelling indebtedness at all levels of the economy by putting ever more exuberant quantities of fictitious capital into circulation (reaching 10 times world GDP in 2007[4]), trapped in 'bubbles' which have the 'good fortune' of making government debt disappear from the accounts, masking inflation and blurring its negative effects.

4) The gangsterisation of the economy; fraud, illegal trade, trafficking, counterfeiting, etc. are taking on an unprecedented scope and dimension with the corruption of sectors of the State, or even at the instigation of States (such as Serbia, North Korea, etc).

B. The emergence of China

It was the unprecedented circumstances of the disappearance of the imperialist blocs that made China's emergence possible: "The stages of China's rise are inseparable from the history of the imperialist blocs and their disappearance in 1989: the position of the communist left affirming the ‘impossibility of any emergence of new industrialised nations’ in the period of decadence and the condemnation of states ‘which failed to succeed in their “industrial take-off” before the First World War to stagnate in underdevelopment, or to preserve a chronic backwardness compared to the countries that hold the upper hand’ was valid in the period from 1914 to 1989. It was the straitjacket of the organisation of the world into two opposing imperialist blocs (permanent between 1945 and 1989) in preparation for the world war that prevented any major disruption of the hierarchy between powers. China's rise began with American aid rewarding its imperialist shift to the United States in 1972. It continued decisively after the disappearance of the blocs in 1989. China appears to be the main beneficiary of ‘globalisation’ following its accession to the WTO in 2001when it became the world's workshop and the recipient of Western relocations and investments, finally becoming the world's second largest economic power. It took the unprecedented circumstances of the historical period of decomposition to allow China to rise, without which it would not have happened.

China's power bears all the stigma of terminal capitalism: it is based on the over-exploitation of the proletarian labour force, the unbridled development of the war economy through the national programme of ‘military-civil fusion’ and is accompanied by the catastrophic destruction of the environment, while national cohesion is based on the police control of the masses subjected to the political education of the One Party and the fierce repression of the populations of Uighur Muslims and Tibet. In fact, China is only a giant metastasis of the generalised militaristic cancer of the entire capitalist system: its military production is developing at a frenetic pace, its defence budget has increased six-fold in 20 years and has been ranked second in the world since 2010" (Point 11, “Resolution on the international situation (2019): Imperialist conflicts, life of the bourgeoisie, economic crisis [33]”, International Review n°164, 2020)

C. The 2008 crisis

The period 1989-2008 was marked by a series of difficulties which demonstrate that globalisation, despite the spectacular upheavals in the hierarchy between economic powers, has not put an end to the tendency towards overproduction and the stagnation of capitalism as evidenced by:

- weaker growth;

- the under-employment or destruction of huge quantities of productive bases;

- the enormous quantity of surplus labour (estimated at between a third and a half of the world's total workforce), unemployed or underemployed, which capitalism is incapable of integrating into production, condemned to languish in the informal sector or on the margins of the capitalist economy;

- major instability and the inability to avert crises: the crisis in the European monetary system in 1993, the Mexican crisis in 1994, the Asian crisis in 1997-98, the crisis in Argentina in 2001, the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2002... with a permanent and growing risk of the implosion of the international financial system (even if, for two decades, capitalism managed to limit crises to certain parts of the world, at the cost of exorbitantly increasing costs and damage to the system);

- the lack of remission of the cancer of militarism, which has continued to suck the lifeblood out of global production, affecting the main parts of the world in different ways: European countries managed to cut their military spending by around half compared to 1989 levels; China did not engage in any conflicts during this period, reserving its economic strength for its emergence as the world's second largest power; but long and costly wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) waged by US imperialism have helped to weaken its economy in relation to its rivals.

In fact, this period was merely an interlude that allowed the capitalist system to preserve its economy somewhat from the effects of its decomposition.

Thus, the worsening of the real state of the economy and the revenge of the law of value led to the financial crisis of 2008, the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929. It erupted in the USA, at the heart of global capitalism, and spread to the rest of the world. The weakening of the dynamics of globalisation, reducing the scope for broad-based accumulation, the burden of military spending and imperialist intervention, and the impasse of overproduction are causing the gigantic Ponzi pyramid of international financial scaffolding based on unlimited general indebtedness of the US state to implode and shatter, with speculation serving as a substitute for global growth to keep the capitalist system alive.

The gigantic, historically unprecedented rescue plans implemented by the central banks of the major powers, and China's role as a driving force, succeeded in stabilising the system and stemming the liquidity crisis, but not in really reviving the economy. The year 2008 marks a turning point in the history of the sinking of the capitalist mode of production into its historic crisis.

D. The end of the last extra-capitalist markets?

This violent explosion of the crisis, which concluded more than two decades of over-exploitation on a global scale, sparing no zone of influence in the world, no market - including extra-capitalist markets - confirms that the capitalist system is now even more completely locked into the situation where the universal hegemony of class relations makes extended reproduction increasingly difficult. Once the world market had been constituted and divided among the powers, the mere trend towards this end had meant the entry of capitalism into its phase of decadence, as Rosa Luxembourg pointed out;

“Thus capitalism expands because of its mutual relationship with non-capitalist social strata and countries, accumulating at their expense and at the same time pushing them aside to take their place. The more capitalist countries participate in this hunting for accumulation areas, the rarer the non-capitalist places still open to the expansion of capital become and the tougher the competition; its raids turn into a chain of economic and political catastrophes: world crises, wars, revolution.

But by this process capital prepares its own destruction in two ways. As it approaches the point where humanity only consists of capitalists and proletarians, further accumulation will become impossible. At the same time, the absolute and undivided rule of capital aggravates class struggle throughout the world and the international economic and political anarchy to such an extent that, long before the last consequences of economic development, it must lead to the rebellion of the international proletariat against the existence of the rule of capital”. (R. Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, An Anti-critique).

The impossibility of a world dominated by capitalist relations

Many of the phenomena already existing in decadence take on a qualitatively new dimension in the period of decomposition, in particular because of the impossibility of capital to offer a perspective: "the bourgeoisie is totally incapable of mobilising society’s different components, including within the ruling class, around any common objective other than a step by step, but doomed, resistance to the advancing crisis (….) This is why today’s situation of open crisis is radically different from its predecessor of the 1930’s" (“Theses on Decomposition”)

As long as each nation has been able to benefit from globalisation, capitalism has generally managed to preserve the capitalist economy from the effects of decomposition. In particular, ‘every man for himself’ has been contained and the law of the strongest tolerated without question. The situation was quite different after 2008, when the 'opportunities' of globalisation closed: the even more obvious inability of the ruling class to overcome the crisis in its mode of production led to an explosion of every man for himself, in relations between nations (with the gradual return of protectionism and the unilateral questioning by the two main powers of multilateralism and the institutions of globalisation) and within each nation.

A. The 'whirlwind' effect of decomposition, an unprecedented factor in the worsening of the economic crisis

The 2020s have seen the effects of decomposition take on a new scale and significance that are powerfully destructive for the capitalist economy. They were ushered in by the global pandemic of Covid 19, a pure product of decomposition which brought the world economy to a standstill, necessitating massive state intervention and spiralling debt. The pandemic was soon followed by the return of war to Europe in Ukraine in 2022, the shockwaves of which continue to shake the capitalist world. Consecrated by the pandemic, the development of every man for himself on an unprecedented scale and the abandonment of any form of cooperation between nations are undermining the entire capitalist system, thus running counter to the lessons drawn from the 1929 crisis regarding the need for relative cooperation between the major nations.

The effects of decomposition are not only accelerating, they are also returning like a boomerang to express themselves most forcefully at the very heart of capitalism, as the combined effects of the economic crisis, the ecological/climate crisis and the imperialist war accumulate, interacting and multiplying their effects to produce a devastating spiral with incalculable consequences for capitalism, hitting and destabilising the capitalist economy and its infrastructure of production ever more severely. While each of the factors fuelling this 'whirlwind' effect of decomposition risks the collapse of states, their combined effects far exceed the mere sum of each of them taken in isolation.

The global disruption of the water cycle is a case in point. As a consequence of global warming attributable to the capitalist system, extreme and long-lasting droughts are the cause of mega-fires; they lead to the desertification of entire areas of the globe, making them uninhabitable, and often giving them over to war. They force populations to migrate; they were one of the causes of the collapse of the Arab states in the Middle East after 2010[5]. Productivity and even the practice of agriculture have been destabilised in the United States, China and Europe. Extreme rainfall and flooding are irreparably ruining entire regions or even states (Pakistan), destroying vital infrastructure and disrupting industrial production. Rising sea levels are threatening 10% of the world's population, as well as conurbations and coastal industrial infrastructure in central countries. Access to water is becoming a crucial strategic issue, leading to tensions and clashes between states over its control.

As the unleashing of militarism in Ukraine shows, war (as a deliberate decision by the ruling class) is the decisive accelerator of chaos and economic crisis, among the various factors in the 'whirlwind effect': increased famine worldwide, disruption of supply chains, shortages, destruction of the Ukrainian economy, environmental destruction, etc.

Decomposition also affects the way in which the ruling class tries to deal with the impasse in its system.

B. Decomposition fuels the headlong rush into militarism

The outbreak of war in Ukraine represents an "epochal change" for capitalism and the central countries: war, with its increasingly irrational character, where each side ruins and weakens itself, is no longer a distant prospect. It is drawing ever closer to the centres of world capitalism and involves most of the major powers. It continues to have profound negative repercussions on the world economic situation and is disrupting all relations between capitalist nations.

While chaos continues to spread in its wake (with the conflict between Israel and Hamas), all states are now preparing for "high-intensity" war: each national capital is reorganising its national economy in order to strengthen its military industry and guarantee its strategic independence. Military budgets are rising fast everywhere, catching up with and even exceeding the proportion of national wealth devoted to armaments at the height of the confrontation between the blocs.

The general sharpening of imperialist tensions, and within them the major conflict between China and the USA, is having profound repercussions on the economic stability of the capitalist system. A tendency towards fragmentation of the world market is developing as a result of the United States' desire to torpedo China's industrial power (which is the basis for the rise of China's military power and desire for global expansion) and to involve its allies in decoupling the Western economies from China by promoting "friend-shoring". The economic decisions taken by the major powers are increasingly determined by strategic considerations that follow imperialist fault lines and lead to major disruptions in global supply and demand.

C. Decomposition aggravates the crisis of state capitalism in the core countries

The mechanisms of state capitalism and its effectiveness are tending to seize up. The seriousness of the deadlock in capitalism and the need to build a war economy are fuelling confrontations within each national bourgeoisie, while the effects of decomposition on the bourgeoisie and society are expressed in the tendency for the ruling class to lose control of its political game. The tendency towards instability and political chaos within the ruling class, as witnessed by the American and British bourgeoisie, affects the coherence, long-term vision and continuity of the defence of the global interests of national capital. The coming to power of irresponsible populist factions (with programmes that are unrealistic for their national capital) weakens the economy and the measures imposed by capitalism since 1945 to avoid the uncontrolled contagion of the economic crisis.

If Western state capitalism has been able to survive its Stalinist rival, it is in the way that an organism with a stronger constitution resists the same disease for longer. Even if the bourgeoisie can still rely on more responsible factions with a greater sense of the state, capitalism today displays tendencies similar to those that caused the downfall of Stalinist state capitalism. In the case of Chinese state capitalism, marked by Stalinist backwardness despite the hybridisation of its economy with the private sector, and rife with tensions within the ruling class, the stiffening of the state apparatus is a sign of weakness and the promise of future instability.

Debt, the main palliative to the historic crisis of capitalism, is not only losing its effectiveness: the weight of debt is condemning capitalism to ever more devastating convulsions. By increasingly restricting the possibility of cheating the laws of capitalism, it reduces the room for manoeuvre of each capital to support and revive the national economy. The role of 'payer of last resort' taken on by governments since 2008 is weakening currencies, while debt servicing is severely restricting governments' ability to invest.

D. The impasse of even more implacable overproduction

The picture painted by the capitalist system confirms Rosa Luxemburg's predictions: capitalism will not experience a purely economic collapse, but will descend into chaos and convulsions:

- the almost complete absence of extra-capitalist markets now alters the conditions under which the main capitalist states must achieve expanded accumulation: increasingly, as a condition of their own survival, this can only be achieved at the direct expense of rivals of the same rank, by weakening their economies. The prediction made by the ICC in the 1970s of a capitalist world that could only survive by reducing itself to a small number of powers still capable of achieving a minimum of accumulation is increasingly becoming a reality.

- The deadlock of overproduction, combined with the anarchy inherent in capitalist production and the increasing destruction of ecosystems, is beginning to cause more and more shortages or disruptions (medicines, agriculture, etc.) because of the inability to generate enough profit to produce them.

- As an expression of this impasse, inflation, instigated by the return of war, is making a spectacular reappearance, destabilising the economy and depriving it of the long-term vision it needs.

- The frantic search for new sites to relocate capital (e.g. in Africa, the Middle East) and to exploit cheaper labour is coming up against the Dantean conditions of chaos and underdevelopment; an obstacle for the Western powers as it is for the Chinese Silk Roads project, which is collapsing.

- Nor does India offer a viable long-term alternative that could play a role equivalent to China's in the 1990s and 2000s; the circumstances that made the 'miracle of China's emergence' possible are no longer present, and such a prospect is now impossible.

- The enormous costs of tackling the ecological crisis and decarbonising the economy far outstrip Capital's ability to make the required level of investment. Many eco-projects are simply being abandoned because the cost of credit is killing their profitability, both in Europe and the United States.

- Despite the considerable slowdown in the development of the productive forces, capitalism is still able to make some advances, for example in medicine, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc. But these advances, deeply perverted by the use made of them by capital, are turning against the working class and humanity. AI, for example, apart from the risk of destroying thousands of jobs with no way of freeing up the workforce to find work elsewhere, is seen by governments as a tool for controlling the population or destabilising their imperialist rivals, and above all as a weapon of war and a tool for destruction (for example, Israel, which boasts of waging the first AI war, sees it as the "key to modern survival"). Some of its developers have warned that AI poses a risk of the extinction of humanity, on a par with other risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.

- The massive shortage of labour in many Western countries is the result of the anarchy of capitalism, generating both overcapacity and shortages, but also of trends towards demographic crisis, towards the collapse in population renewal, which is affecting Western countries and China. Ageing populations in the most developed countries are reducing the working-age population to such a level that every country has to resort to immigration. The massive shortage of labour also reflects the growing inability of education systems to provide the market with a workforce that is sufficiently trained for the level of technical skills required in production, while many sectors are being deserted because of the conditions of exploitation and remuneration that prevail.

United States, Europe, China: the heart of world capitalism hit by the convulsions of the crisis and the effects of decomposition

The 25th Congress of the ICC clearly identified the implications of this historic situation for the major nations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Far from being able to play the role of locomotive for the world economy, China is a ticking time bomb whose destabilisation holds unpredictable consequences for world capitalism" (“Resolution on the International Situation of the 25th ICC Congress” [10], International Review n°170, 2023).

Russia seems to be showing a certain resilience to the sanctions designed to bleed its economy dry. Paradoxically, it has been able to benefit from the backwardness of its economy (already evident before 1989 and typical of decadence), based above all on the extraction and export of raw materials, particularly hydrocarbons, and to take advantage of the "every man for himself" mentality in relations between nations to sell them to China, or via India, in order to mitigate some of the effects of the sanctions. However, this fragile and temporary "asset" will not be able to withstand the gradual strangulation of its industrial capacities forever.

Many countries are on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to honour their debts because of rising interest rates, and victims of capital flight to the United States. The expansion of the BRICS from five to eleven members (including Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) represents an attempt to emancipate themselves from the United States and escape the strangulation of their economies. The introduction of a common currency or the use of China's currency as an alternative to the dollar is unlikely to happen because of the many differences between these countries, particularly as regards their relationship with the Chinese state.

The three main parts of capitalism are sinking into stagflation, with no hope of a real rebound in the capitalist economy; there is the risk of a plunge into recession, which the EU and possibly China are already on the brink of, while the United States is seeking to escape at the expense of its rivals.

The situation of the working class

"The capitalist crisis affects the very foundations of this society. Inflation, insecurity, unemployment, hellish pace and working conditions that destroy workers' health, unaffordable housing… all testify to an unstoppable degradation of working class life and, although the bourgeoisie tries to create all imaginable divisions, granting ‘more privileged’ conditions to certain categories of workers, what we see in its entirety is, on the one hand, what is possibly going to be the WORST CRISIS in the history of capitalism, and, on the other hand, the concrete reality of the ABSOLUTE PAUPERISATION of the working class in the central countries, fully confirming the accuracy of the prediction which Marx made concerning the historical perspective of capitalism and which the economists and other ideologues of the bourgeoisie have so much mocked" (“Capitalism leads to the destruction of humanity... Only the world revolution of the proletariat can put an end to it [205]”, International Review n°169, 2023).

After decades of downward pressure on the price of labour power, labour's share of the wealth created has fallen steadily throughout the world since the late 1970s. Real wages have regressed to pre-1980 levels. A large proportion of the working class now lives below the poverty line or just on the edge of it.

The bourgeoisie boasts that it has managed to curb inflation, but in terms of workers' purchasing power, every proletarian has to pay much more for fuel, food and repayment of their loans, while their wages have been cut by "progressing" well below the rate of inflation, meaning the most basic needs can’t be met.

The extraction of relative surplus-value goes increasingly hand in hand with the extraction of absolute surplus-value, the intensification of work going hand in hand with the lengthening of the working day and the duration of the time of exploitation in the life of each proletarian.

The conditions of exploitation even tend more and more to exceed the physiological limits of proletarians by literally killing workers at work.

Some American states have tried to force employees to work during heatwaves, causing deaths and accidents to soar. In Korea, where death on the job is a widespread phenomenon (as in the rest of South-East Asia), the state's desire to increase the working week from 52 to 69 hours was thwarted by the response of the class.

Every year, accidents at work cause a hecatomb: officially, almost two million workers are killed worldwide, with 270 million injured or maimed.

In many sectors of production, the overworked workforce suffers such accelerated nervous and musculoskeletal wear and tear that they are discarded and join the cohorts of unemployable proletarians well before the legal retirement date.

Finally, situations of virtual slavery of the workforce (particularly in the agricultural sectors of developed countries), debt bondage or forced labour (for example in the industrial fishing sector in China) are commonplace, especially among migrant workers.

With the crisis set to worsen, the economic attacks on the working and unemployed classes are bound to continue.

But enough is enough! Over the last two years, the working class has begun to fight back by taking up the struggle in all the strongholds of the global economy. This historic return to class struggle, after several decades of proletarian passivity, confirms the importance in marxist theory of the role of the crisis and defensive struggles for the future of the workers' struggle: "...the economic attacks (falling real wages, layoffs, increasing productivity, etc) resulting directly from the crisis hit the proletariat (i.e. the class that produces surplus value and confronts capitalism on this terrain) directly and specifically; unlike social decomposition which essentially effects the superstructure, the economic crisis directly attacks the foundations on which this superstructure rests; in this sense, it lays bare all the barbarity that is battening on society, thus allowing the proletariat to become aware of the need to change the system radically, rather than trying to improve certain aspects of it" (Point 17, “Theses on Decomposition”).

ICC December 2023

"How can a class, acting as a class, as it is in capitalist society, achieve the abolition of classes, and therefore of capitalism”? For some, there is only one possible solution to this apparent paradox: "It is not a question of the proletariat triumphing, liberating itself, liberating labour, extending its condition... but of abolishing what it is”[1]. "The self-negation of the proletariat" is the credo of the modernist current that emerged at the end of the 1960s and is also known as the ultra-left current. One might be tempted to say, with Engels, "what these gentlemen lack is dialectic ". How can we eliminate the phase of affirmation of the proletariat during the revolutionary period, and retain only its phase of negation when, as a result of the action of the proletariat itself, classes disappear in the course of the transition from capitalism to communism? Do these two phases not together form a unity and an interrelationship? In other words, how can we separate the culmination, the abolition of classes, from the whole process leading up to it, in this case the constitution of the proletariat as a class and then as a ruling class? Is there not unity between the goal and the means? But it's not just dialectics that these gentlemen lack, as we shall see in this historical review. We will discover that the modernists reject the emancipation of the proletariat - "It is not a question of the proletariat liberating itself" - which is precisely the only means available to humanity to free itself from this stultifying class society. Modernist ideology is bourgeois socialism, which proclaims that the nature of the working class within capitalism is not revolutionary. We will also discover that, in the words of Marx and Engels, "bourgeois socialism only reaches its proper expression when it becomes a mere figure of speech "[2].This was the source from which the communisers drew their inspiration.

The ravages of petty bourgeois ideology and the emergence of modernism

The modernist current emerged during the historical revival of the class struggle at the end of the 1960s. May 1968 in France, the Hot Autumn of 1969 in Italy, the struggles of 1970 in Poland... on every continent, the proletariat launched massive struggles and asserted itself forcefully, breaking with decades of apathy marked by a few short-lived flare-ups. The initial period of intense struggle, covering the years 1970-1980 after the flamboyant '68, cannot be understood without taking into account a number of difficulties faced by the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities. First of all, there was the student agitation which had begun a few years before the workers' revival and which, from Berkeley to the Sorbonne, expressed the weight of the petty bourgeoisie in the movement. Unlike today, the students came overwhelmingly from the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. While the proletarian giant was still asleep, the first signs of the economic crisis made the petty bourgeois very worried about their future. Fever gripped universities around the world, fuelled by the massacres of the Vietnam War and a stifling conservative society. Portraits of Guevara, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh appeared in demonstrations, even though these figures had absolutely nothing to do with the workers' movement[3]. In the petty bourgeoisie, a class with no historical future and totally trapped in the present, talk of revolution concealed a fleeting revolt, a protesting attitude totally alien to the proletarian struggle.

The second major difficulty was the break in the continuity which had previously linked the various successive political organisations in the course of the history of the workers' movement. The counter-revolution which had just ended had been so violent and so long (1923-1968, 45 years!) that it had succeeded in destroying this continuity. The Italian Communist Left, which in the 1930s, through the journals Prometeo, Bilan and Octobre, continued the critical and militant work begun in the 1920s against the degeneration of the Third International, entered into crisis and disappeared during the Second World War, followed in the early 1950s by the disappearance of the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF), which had tried to preserve the lessons and principles of that period. The tradition of communist militancy seemed to have been swallowed up in the sands of oblivion[4].

Finally, the tendency towards state capitalism, a feature of the decadence of capitalism, had known no respite since the Second World War and was making bourgeois democracy ever more totalitarian. This tendency expressed the bourgeoisie's need for increasing state intervention to deal with the permanent economic crisis and maintain social peace while the working class faced a sharp increase in exploitation. The bourgeoisie kept alive all the proletarian organisations that had betrayed it (unions and parties) and put them at the service of capitalism in the form of bodies whose role was to supervise the proletariat. In such a situation, the history of the workers' movement became Hebrew for most young people waking up to political life. The betrayal of Social Democracy in 1914 (through the Sacred Union) or of the Bolshevik party in 1924 (with the proclamation of "socialism in one country") was not seen as the result of a slow historical process of the penetration of opportunism within a proletarian organisation, with a relentless fight by left-wing minorities to try to preserve it, but as a fatality sealed from the outset for any political organisation. In the atmosphere of the 1970s, when libertarian ideas were fashionable, anyone who defended the need for revolutionary organisation was seen as an apprentice bureaucrat, or even a Stalinist.

These three characteristics of the period, and the difficulties they created, explain why the process of politicising workers' struggles was unable to succeed during the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when the revolutionary class had re-emerged on the scene, was once again talking about revolution and seeking to reappropriate its history. The weight of the dominant ideology was bound to affect this new generation of inexperienced proletarians, as well as the politicised elements from different classes, in particular the ideology promoted by the various leftist sects (official anarchism, Trotskyism, Maoism) whose influence was suddenly increased by the massive support of the petty bourgeoisie. Greatly impressed by the awakening of the proletarian giant, they believed in its divine status, then quickly turned away, disappointed that it had not kept its promise of the immediate advent of a world of enjoyment and bliss. The deleterious weight of workerism and immediatism was the consequence.

Modernism is a typical product of this period. As the conditions for the explosion of May '68 were maturing, the artists in the Situationist International (SI), who confused Bohemia with revolution, were calling for a revolution in everyday life. At the same time, Jacques Camatte and his friends were leaving Amadeo Bordiga's International Communist Party (Communist Programme, Le Prolétaire), whose sclerosis seemed to symbolise the impotence of the Communist Left and the failure of the "old workers' movement", a term which the modernists took over from the councilist current. They all called for a new revolutionary theory adapted to the new reality. In short: we had to be "modern". They believed that workers' struggles against the effects of capitalist exploitation were either the expression of a definitive integration into bourgeois society (which they called "consumer society"), or a revolt against work, and they believed in the emergence of a new workers' movement: "The rise in power and above all the change in content of class struggles at the end of the 1960s closed the cycle opened in 1918-1919 by the victory of the counter-revolution in Russia and Germany. At the same time, this new course of struggles threw into crisis the programme-theory of the proletariat and all its problematics. It was no longer a question of knowing whether revolution was a matter for the Councils or the Party, or whether the proletariat was capable of emancipating itself. With the multiplication of ghetto riots and wildcat strikes, with the revolt against labour and the commodity, the return of the proletariat to the forefront of the historical stage paradoxically marked the end of its affirmation.”[5]

Our press of the time contained numerous polemics against the modernist current, in particular to demonstrate that, despite the evolution of capitalism, the working class remained the revolutionary class, and that by focusing on the most obvious manifestations of social alienation the modernists remained blind to the "sources that give them birth and nourish them"[6] .

It should be noted that several modernist groups, such as the Situationist International (René Riesel) and Le Mouvement communiste (Gilles Dauvé), took part in conferences organised by Informations et Correspondance Ouvrières (ICO) in the early 1970s, which were essential forums for discussion and political clarification at the time. The ICO conferences were also attended by councilist groups, elements of the anarchist milieu such as Daniel Guérin (OCL) or Daniel Cohn-Bendit (whom Raymond Marcellin, the Minister of the Interior, had expelled from France), Christian Lagant (Noir et Rouge), and elements of the Communist Left such as Marc Chirik (from Révolution Internationale), Paul Mattick (from the German Communist Left), Cajo Brendel (from the Dutch Communist Left). In this atmosphere of incessant and passionate political discussion, a number of modernists joined the Communist Left (along with most of the councilist elements), mostly because they were convinced by the arguments on the proletarian nature of October 1917.

Some of the modernist elements had in fact recognised themselves in the proletarian political milieu. This does not mean, however, that modernist theory can be described as communist, let alone marxist. Rather, the various groups and individuals of this current belonged to the swamp, that intermediate zone which brings together all those who oscillate between the camp of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie, who are constantly on the way to one camp or the other. Those modernist elements who joined the Communist Left could only do so by breaking with modernism, not because of it. Indeed, as we have shown in previous articles in this series, modernist theory is bourgeois in nature and has its roots in the Frankfurt School, a group of academics at the Institute for Social Research who, in the 1950s, believed they had identified a crisis in marxism and solved the problem by burying it. Some of them, like Marcuse, concluded that the proletariat had been definitively integrated into consumer society, thereby losing its revolutionary class nature. Modernism also has roots in the group Socialisme ou Barbarie (SouB), which failed to complete its break with Trotskyism and ended up rejecting Marxism[7].

Gilles Dauvé is a good example of the sterility of the modernism that emerged in the 1960s. Strongly influenced by SouB, he set about criticising the thesis that was to lead this group to its perdition: this consisted in replacing the opposition between the ruling class and the exploited class by the opposition between the rulers and the ruled, which for SouB was the first step towards abandoning marxism. But in his critique of this thesis, which was based on self-management and enterprise socialism, Dauvé only managed to take the opposite view by advocating the immediate negation of capitalist relations of production. This was tantamount to remaining on the same ground as SouB: "On the contrary, we believe that the destruction of capitalism must not be envisaged from the point of view of management alone, but from the point of view of the necessity/possibility of the demise of exchange, of the commodity, of the law of value, of wage-labour. It's not enough just to manage the economy, we have to turn it upside down; simply managing it is not enough to turn it upside down”[8]. To answer simply with the necessity for the immediate abolition of value was to make a mockery of the world, when what was at stake was to demonstrate that, because of its place in the capitalist mode of production, the proletariat is driven by necessity and by its consciousness to transform its struggles against the effects of exploitation into struggles against the causes of exploitation; that is to say, it is capable, in the course of the process of mass strike and revolution, of transforming itself and society from top to bottom.

Communisers in the putrid swamp of nihilism

No. 84 of Information et Correspondance Ouvrières appeared in August 1969 with a report and documents from the ICO Conference held in Brussels in June 1969. It contained two essential texts: one was written by Marc Chirik, "Luttes et organisations de classe", and would be reprinted in Révolution Internationale old series n° 3 (December 1969) under the title "Sur l'organisation". It represented a decisive stage in the strengthening of the current of the Communist Left, which was to result in 1972 in the unification in France of three groups under the name Révolution Internationale. The other significant text is by Gilles Dauvé, "Sur l'idéologie ultra-gauche", which undertakes a critique of the modernist current which had also developed during the May events. It contains this significant passage: "The Bolshevik bureaucracy had taken control of the economy: the ultra-leftists want the masses to control it. Once again, the ultra-left remained on the terrain of Leninism, content to give a different answer to the same question."[9]

This was a sign that a new current was emerging within modernism. It remained faithful to the self-negation of the proletariat and still considered Marx a "revolutionary reformist", since he advocated the reduction of working hours and the use of labour vouchers. But he felt that Marx had taken a decisive step forward with the notion of the real domination of capital over labour which, according to Dauvé, explains why the proletariat no longer has the means to assert itself in a revolutionary manner[10]. He also took over from Marx the irresistible tendency towards communism. This retained its nature as a movement within capitalism, but for Dauvé it lost its second meaning as the final goal of the struggle for proletarian emancipation. This tendency was seen solely as a process of dissolution of capitalism, and it took on its baptismal name, "communisation". At a time when the IS had just dissolved (1972), this new current began to develop under the impetus of Jacques Camatte, Gilles Dauvé, Michel Bérard and Roland Simon (Intervention Communiste then Théorie Communiste), who broke with the Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils when the latter joined Révolution Internationale.

The communisers, or followers of communisation, were in the process of cutting the last threads linking them at that time to the historical revival of the class struggle. They began by adopting the name of the "ultra-left current". This terminology, the product of the confusion of the time, tried to lump together all those who distanced themselves from leftism, but it had the advantage for the communisers of making credible a kind of continuity/overcoming of the Communist Left. The lessons they drew from this first stage in the historical revival of the class struggle centred on the rejection of "labour": "Revolution meant a revolution of labour, socialism or communism meant a society of labour. And that's what the critique of labour by a minority but dynamic fringe of proletarians rendered obsolete in the 1960s and 1970s."[11]
Indeed, the class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is often presented, in the history of the workers' movement, as a conflict between labour and capital. What the petty-bourgeoisie has trouble understanding is that the proletariat is the representative of labour, which is both alienated labour and exploitation, but also the labour that played a central role in the emergence of humanity. The proletariat is precisely the class of labour because, in order to emancipate itself, it has no other means than to abolish wage-labour, and it cannot do so without radically transforming labour; in other words, moving from class societies to a classless society, from societies of scarcity based on economics to a society of abundance where "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all " (Communist Manifesto). The modernists observe that the proletariat has taken capital as its enemy and they conclude, in the manner of Proudhon, that if it recognises capital as such, it is compromising itself with it and therefore remaining in bourgeois society, and limiting itself to the demand to manage it. Such is the anarchist sleight of hand used by the modernists.

The communisers entered a new phase of development when the initial modernist current entered a crisis at the end of the 1980s. At that time, there was a general dispersal of the modernist movement as a result of petty bourgeois disillusionment. Some opted for radical ecology or practised primitivism, others went off to herd sheep in the Larzac[12], or stood for election on an ecological ticket, while others like Raoul Vaneigem[13] were convinced that the "life instinct" would bring down capitalism. There were those (represented by the Krisis group and Anselme Jappe today) who claimed that, in Capital, class struggle was only a secondary option for Marx and that it was capitalism itself that would spontaneously lead to communism, and others who compromised themselves in negationism and support for Faurisson[14], then rallied to the Gilets Jaunes and systematically extolled the subversive character of the riots.

The communisers tried to react, especially as Camatte, for his part, abandoned all reference to the proletariat and invented his theory of the universal class, which presented humanity itself as the revolutionary subject. While the term communism has two meanings, that of a new mode of production free of classes, national frontiers and the State, and that of a process at work within capitalism itself, "the abolition of existing conditions", which accounts for the increasingly violent clash between the productive forces and the relations of production, both in the economic sphere and in that of the class struggle, they mutilated it and claimed their new invention, one-legged but so modern, "communisation, the abolition of capital without a phase of transition".

The communisers then tried to demonstrate that it was the historical situation itself that had changed. The real domination of capital, globalisation and industrial restructuring had supposedly ruined everything that remained for the proletariat to assert itself. The proletariat remained "potentially" revolutionary, but it was necessary above all to insist on the idea that this potentiality only became a reality through its self-negation. "With the objective of the liberation of labour as a proletarian reappropriation of the productive forces and the movement of value, the very idea of a positively revolutionary nature of the proletariat entered into crisis - and situationist neo-councilism with it. The SI, while putting a non-programmatic content into the forms of the programme - the abolition without transition of wage-labour and exchange, and therefore of classes and the state - retained these forms: the objective and subjective conditions of revolution, the development of ‘technical means’ and the search for consciousness by the proletariat, redefined as the almost universal class of all those dispossessed of the use of their lives."[15] It was a matter of life and death: to survive and to try to divert a few young people in search of revolutionary coherence, we had to reaffirm the existence of a revolutionary proletariat and proclaim loud and clear the need for communism, for a revolution leading to a world insurrection capable of destroying the state. This is how we arrive at Gilles Dauvé's peak of hypocrisy: "The heart and body of capitalism, the proletariat is also the possible vector of communism."[16]

The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the bourgeoisie's intense ideological campaign on the bankruptcy of communism gave rise to a new upsurge in the communisation movement. Under the shock of this campaign, the proletariat suffered a decline in its consciousness and fighting spirit. It had not previously waged a decisive struggle, so it was not defeated, but it was confronted with the loss of its class identity. For the communisers, this was confirmation of their theses: the proletariat had to abandon without remorse its class identity, its nature as an exploited class and its struggles for demands, in order to plunge immediately into revolutionary self-negation. The so-called new workers' movement had to break with what they call programmatism, a term which in fact designates the means and the process leading to the final goal.

In other words, it was a vertiginous step backwards, a return to the situation that preceded the work of the First International, which, against the anarchists, had reminded us that every class struggle is a political struggle and that the emancipation of the proletariat requires the seizure of political power on an international scale, the only lever at its disposal to succeed in dissolving the economic categories of capitalism. The communisers could unashamedly affirm: "With the liquidation of politics by capital which has achieved real domination of society, the anarchist critique of politics can be integrated into communist theory: the self-negation of the proletariat will at the same time be the destruction of all political rackets, united in the capitalist counter-revolution"[17].

The pitiful result of all this fuss is very simple. The communisers had only one idea in mind, to correct Marx with the help of Bakunin, who had first proclaimed the creative virtues of destruction, and who advocated a socialism without transition. We shall persist," said Bakunin, "in refusing to associate ourselves with any political movement which does not have as its immediate and direct aim the complete emancipation of the workers"[18]. What is this " immediate and direct aim " if not the self-negation of the proletariat and the abandonment of the concept of the transition to communism?

Communisers against the dictatorship of the proletariat

We have seen that the communisers are inspired by anarchist nihilism, that, like Bakunin in his time, they have gone to war against all forms of revolutionary organisation, which they present as a racket, that they seek to destroy all reference to the programme, principles, traditions, historical continuity, theory, consciousness and revolutionary perspective of the proletariat. In short, contrary to the childish naivety of the modernists of the 1970s, the communisers today are extremely dangerous for the struggle of the proletariat. They reflect bourgeois society in decomposition and live with it. This is a society where, for the ruling class, all that remains is to manage crisis situations from day to day, to wave the stick of state violence, where the past and the future have disappeared, where thought goes round in circles, chanting a general mistrust of any scientific or political approach. Among the communisers, immediatism has been pushed to the limit, to the point of caricature.

For these gentlemen, communism is not "a new mode of production, but the production of the immediacy of relations between singular individuals, the abolition without transition of capital and all its classes, including the proletariat ", so we must reject the "Leninist or councillist realisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat."[19]
In contrast to this mumbo-jumbo, the rigour of marxism, as a living theory of the proletariat, is a breath of fresh air. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge of bourgeois revolutions, Greek and Roman antiquity[20], and the historical role of the proletariat, Marx forged the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents a fundamental theoretical achievement: "I do not deserve the credit for having discovered the existence of classes in modern society, nor the struggle between them. My originality has consisted in: 1. demonstrating that the existence of classes is linked only to specific historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself represents only a transition towards the abolition of all classes and towards a classless society[21]”.

The wording itself did not appear for the first time until 1850 in the Class struggles in France, but it was already present as a thread in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. After a long period in which the proletariat had mainly mobilised in the struggle for reforms, the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat reappeared where the class conflict had become most acute, in Poland and Russia, where the revolution of 1905 heralded the great revolutionary struggles of capitalist decadence. The Second Congress of the Russian Social democratic Labour Party adopted a programme drafted by Plekhanov and Lenin which, for the first time in the history of social democratic parties, included this principle.

The dictatorship of the proletariat has nothing to do with the various forms of bourgeois totalitarianism found in Russia, China, the United States or France. Above all, it means that a period of transition between capitalism and communism is necessary, for two reasons.

The first is that, for the first time in history, the revolutionary class is also the exploited class. Unlike the revolutionary bourgeoisie, the proletariat has no economic power on which it can rely to gradually build the elements of communist society within capitalism. It can only begin this work outside capitalism. The act of seizing political power is therefore not, as it is for the bourgeoisie, the crowning achievement of a growing economic power within the old society, but the starting point for the proletariat to profoundly modify the organisational forms of social production. Insurrection is therefore the first stage, not the last, of the social transformation that the proletariat is called upon to accomplish. It must first break the political framework of the old society.

The second fundamental reason is that the exhaustion of the conditions of the old society does not necessarily and automatically mean the maturation and completion of the conditions of the new society. Through the increase in the productivity of labour, the concentration and centralisation of capital, and the international socialisation of production, capitalism creates the premises for communism, but not communism itself. In other words, the decline of the old society is not automatically the maturation of the new, but only the condition for that maturation. Quoting Engels' Anti-Dühring, the Italian Communist Left wrote in its review Bilan: "It is clear that the ultimate development of capitalism does not correspond to a 'full blossoming of the productive forces' in the sense that they would be capable of meeting all human needs, but to a situation in which the survival of class antagonisms not only halts the whole development of society but leads to its regression."[22]

Without anything to fall back on, without property, the proletariat has only the political lever at its disposal to transform the world. As historical experience shows, it is capable of doing so thanks to its consciousness and its unity, two gigantic forces materialised by its mass organisation, the workers' councils, and its vanguard, the world communist party. But in order to create a society of abundance, the first condition of human emancipation, it must break down not only the political framework of the old society but also the bourgeois relations of production which impede a new upsurge of productive forces finally freed from the ravages of capitalist industry.

"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."[23] The principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat reminds us that the only force capable of bringing this work to a successful conclusion is a homogeneous historical class at the heart of the contradictions of capitalism: the class of wage-labour. Through its revolutionary practice, the proletariat reveals itself as the last exploited class in human history. "If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”

On the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the extension and culmination of the struggle between the two fundamental classes of society. By taking power, the proletariat asserts that there is no other way, no possible compromise, to get rid of class antagonisms. This revolutionary period is marked by a frank and brutal alternative: it will be either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat has no need to conceal its aims and clearly states to the world that " political power, properly speaking, is the organised power of one class for the oppression of another"[24]; and it has a duty to say this loud and clear in order to lead the whole of humanity towards mastery of its own social forces, breaking with the blind forces of the past.

The conquest of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat remain at the heart of the communist programme. This is the result reached by the scientific theory of marxism: "Even when a society has succeeded in discovering the trail of the natural law which presides over its movement - and the final aim of this work is to unveil the economic law of the movement of modern society - it can neither leapfrog nor abolish by decree the phases of its natural development; but it can shorten the period of gestation, and soften the pangs of childbirth."[25]

When the emergence of workers' councils has created a situation of dual power, the situation can only be resolved by the seizure of power by the proletariat and the demolition of the bourgeois state. The insurrection is the moment of this denouement. The conquest of power has become the absolute priority on which all the forces of the proletariat are concentrated. To try to control or organise production and distribution would be illusory and a dangerous waste of energy as long as this power is not in the hands of the proletariat. It would also be catastrophic to try to force the process by prematurely calling for the conquest of power when the necessary conditions have not been met. Against Gramsci, the Italian Left wrote in its organ Il Soviet in June 1919: "One cannot consider the practical implementation of the socialist programme without always bearing in mind the barrier which clearly separates us in time: the realisation of a precondition, namely the conquest of all political power by the working class. This problem precedes the other, and the process of its resolution is still far from being specified and defined. The concrete study of vital socialist achievements could well lead some people to envisage them outside the atmosphere of proletarian dictatorship which nurtures them, to believe them compatible with the present institutions, and thus to slide towards reformism."[26]

All these principles resulting from historical experience and theoretical work, as we have seen, make no sense to communisers. Every question raised by the revolutionary perspective is answered metaphysically. Let's see how they present, for example, the contradiction between vital needs and the transformation of social relations: "In 1999-2001, some Argentinian piqueteros undertook productions for which the product was not the only objective. A community piquetero bakery made bread, and the act of production was also an element in changing interpersonal relations: absence of hierarchy, practice of consensus, collective self-training... For each participant, ‘the other as such [had] become a need for him’" [Marx]”[27]. The trap of interclassism that was strangling Argentine workers at the time was further aggravated by the state's supervision of the unemployed with the help of Peronist and leftist organisations[28]. The complicity of the communisers with these organs of the bourgeois state provided further confirmation of the bourgeois nature of modernist ideology.

Historical experience: Hebrew for the communisers

The two moments in history when the proletariat was able to seize power, the Paris Commune in 1871 and October 1917 in Russia, provided valuable lessons and made it possible to correct and enrich the proletariat's revolutionary programme. First of all, they fully confirmed what marxist theory had been developing since its birth in the late 1840s. The birth of a new mode of production can only take place through violence, through the brutal confrontation of historical classes. In this process, the superstructure represented by political power and the state played an essential role. They are the instruments through which people make history, and make possible the emergence of a new society that has remained imprisoned in the flanks of the old one.

Once in power, the proletariat organises itself so as not to lose that power and to stimulate revolutionary agitation in other parts of the world. To do this, it begins by dissolving the standing army and the police force and taking over the monopoly of arms. It destroys the bourgeois state, whose bureaucracy and forces of repression have become unfit for revolutionary tasks. And when a new state reappears in the revolutionary period as an inevitable phenomenon because the antagonistic classes and interests have not disappeared, it must take control of this state in order to turn it against the former ruling class and intervene in the economic field. In his notes on a text by Bakunin, Marx describes this revolutionary situation: “It implies that as long as the other classes, above all the capitalist class, still exist, and as long as the proletariat is still fighting against it (for when the proletariat obtains control of the government its enemies and the old organisation of society will not yet have disappeared), it must use forcible means, that is to say, governmental means; as long as it remains a class itself, and the economic conditions which give rise to the class struggle and the existence of classes have not vanished they must be removed or transformed by force, and the process of transforming them must be accelerated by force."[29]

As long as the international power of the workers' councils is not assured, it is certain that the first economic, administrative and legal measures introduced by the semi-state of the transitional period will seem quite insufficient, as the Communist Manifesto already emphasises. The priority is to block the road to counter-revolution, to draw into the movement the middle classes and the unemployed throughout the world. It is impossible to predict how long this stage of the revolution will take, but we do know that it will impose heavy sacrifices on the proletariat. Throughout this time, the need to ensure the functioning of society inevitably implies the persistence of exchange relations with the small peasantry.

With a remarkable spirit of synthesis, Lenin sums up the entire historical trajectory that makes the victory of the proletariat possible: "The utopians tried to 'discover' the political forms under which the socialist reorganisation of society should take place. The anarchists avoided the question of political forms altogether. The opportunists of contemporary social democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as a limit that could not be crossed, and they bowed down to this ‘model’, labelling as anarchism any attempt to break these forms.”[30] The communisers, for their part, pulverise the process of transition from one society to another by totally sidestepping its source: the constitution of the proletariat as a ruling class capable both of ensuring its power over society and of safeguarding its political autonomy and its communist goal.

Despite the limits imposed by the situation at the outset, the proletariat can only win if it steers society towards communism from the outset. It must seize every opportunity to attack the separation between town and country, between industry and agriculture, to attack the capitalist division of labour and all commodified forms, and to redirect all production towards the satisfaction of human needs.

Among the first measures to be taken, on which the revolutionary dynamic will depend, we can indicate the following:
" - The immediate socialisation of the major capitalist concentrations and the main centres of productive activity.
- The planning of production and distribution - the criteria of production must be the maximum satisfaction of needs and no longer accumulation.
- A massive reduction in the working day.
- A substantial increase in the standard of living.
- an attempt to abolish wage-based remuneration and its monetary form.
- a socialisation of consumption and the satisfaction of needs (transport, leisure, meals, etc.).
- The relationship between the collectivised sectors and the still individual sectors of production, particularly in the countryside, should tend towards collective exchange organised through cooperatives, thus abolishing the market and individual exchange”.[31]

An experience as important as October 1917 was bound to have many lessons to teach us, both positive and negative. In particular, concerning the degeneration and failure of the revolution. It was stifled by international isolation, in particular because of the failure of the revolution in Germany. It had to hold out in anticipation of new revolutionary attempts in the central countries of capitalism, while resisting the assaults of the White armies and the coalition of developed countries whose troops landed on Russian territory. This isolation very quickly led to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the rise of opportunism within the Bolshevik party. One of the factors in the degeneration of the revolution was the collusion between proletarian power and the new state created by the revolution[32]. Marx, as his Critique of the Gotha Programme shows, seemed to have solved the problem once and for all: "Between capitalist society and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. To this period also corresponds a phase of political transition, in which the state can be nothing other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

However, the marxist theory of the state had already given us a glimpse of the problem. In his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, Engels wrote: "In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap”

The Russian Revolution demonstrated that the state, far from being a simple "machine" that could change function by changing hands, was above all a product of all the class societies of the past and carried within it every possible form of oppression. None of the revolutionaries of the time had imagined that the bourgeois counter-revolution would emerge victoriously from the very heart of the state, from a state that was nonetheless described as proletarian, and that it would be capable of reconstituting a new Russian bourgeois class ex nihilo by relying on the bureaucracy and its political expression, the Stalinist faction.

The Italian Communist Left made a fundamental contribution to this question in its extremely valuable assessment of the 1930s[33]. The Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) in the 1940s-50s, followed by the International Communist Current, are the only ones to take up, within the current of the Communist Left today, this solid political framework which will enable us to confront tomorrow the complex problems of the period of transition. Let us allow Marc Chirik to sum up these principles: “The transitional society is still a society divided into classes and so there will necessarily arise within it that institution peculiar to all societies divided into classes: the STATE. With all the limitations and precautionary measures with which we will surround this institution (functionaries will be elected and revocable, their consumption will be equal to that of a worker, a unification will exist between the legislative and executive functions, etc.), and which make this state into a 'semi-state', we must never lose sight of the state's historic anti-socialist, and therefore anti-proletarian and essentially conservative, nature. The state remains the guardian of the status quo.

We recognise the inevitability of this institution which the proletariat will have to utilise as a necessary evil in order to: break the resistance of the waning capitalist class and preserve a united administrative, and political framework in this period when society is still rent by antagonistic interests.

But we categorically reject the idea of making this state the standard-bearer of communism. By its own nature ("bourgeois nature in its essence"--Marx), it is essentially an organ for the conservation of the status quo and a restraint on communism. Thus, the state can neither be identified with communism nor with the proletariat which is the bearer of communism. The proletariat is by definition the most dynamic class in history since it carries out the suppression of all classes including. itself. This is why, while utilising the state, the proletariat expresses its dictatorship not through the state, but over the state. This is also why the proletariat can under no circumstances allow this institution (the state) to intervene by violence within the class, nor to be the arbiter of the discussions and activities of the class organs - the councils and the revolutionary party”.[34]

For their part, the communisers, because they have cut the proletariat off from its programme, i.e. from its historical experience and its revolutionary perspective, are incapable of drawing lessons from history. They can offer no revolutionary orientation, only disillusionment, fog and night, disastrous adventures and, finally, defeat. By holding out the prospect of the immediate advent of communism, they play the same destructive role as Bakunin, that parasite of the workers' movement: "Like the early Christians, who took heaven as they imagined it as the model for their organisation, so we are to take Mr. Bakunin’s heaven of the future society as a model, and are to pray and hope instead of fighting. And the people who preach this nonsense pretend to be the only true revolutionaries!”[35]

Adepts of the speculative method, they totally ignore the dialectical method. They are incapable of correctly posing contradictions, of understanding how they can be overcome, and very often invent contradictions that have nothing to do with reality. For example, the so-called contradiction between the working class and the proletariat, that is to say, according to the modernists, between the exploited class which contributes solely to the reproduction of capital and the revolutionary class produced by their imagination. Here's where this leads us in relation to the German Revolution of 1918-1919: "The crushing of the German Revolution by social democracy overturns many conceptions [...]. A whole concept collapsed for these revolutionaries: it was the organised workers' movement itself that faced them as the main counter-revolutionary force, that held the State, that organised the Freikorps... But what's more, at the first Congress of the German Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, it was the SPD that had the majority!”[36]

Here we can clearly see the state of mind of the petty bourgeois protestors of 1968, who thought they saw in the PCF a first step towards class consciousness, instead of seeing in it the expression of state capitalism, which allowed the bourgeoisie to penetrate the proletariat - thanks to the unions, the left-wing parties and the leftists - in order to control it and try to prevent, precisely, any awakening of consciousness, any general movement. In the same way, Social Democracy, which had just crossed over into the bourgeois camp by supporting the imperialist war, is presented here as an emanation of the proletariat. But for 56 years, water has flowed under the bridge. Such an assertion has now become criminal because it perpetuates the confusion between the revolutionary class and the class enemy disguised as a false socialism, a confusion which the proletariat of the time found so hard to shake off and which led it to the massacres of the First World War. The communisers did not stop there, however, and also took part in the gigantic state ideological campaign which tried to pass off Stalinism as communism and confused Stalin with Lenin. This is their small contribution to the efforts of the bourgeoisie to prevent the working class from regaining its class identity and its revolutionary perspective after the setback of the 1990s.

By resuming its struggles of resistance for immediate demands since 2022, the proletariat has once again contradicted the expectations of the communisers. These struggles form the material basis which will enable the proletariat to recover its class identity, to resist the unleashing of regional imperialist wars, to develop its consciousness and to recover its revolutionary perspective. In contrast, the proletariat that runs through the minds of communisers, as it did yesterday in the minds of the petty bourgeois of 1968, is imaginary and fantastical, and has nothing to do with the real historical process. Thanks to his revolutionary method and convictions, Marx had already denounced in advance these pretentious idealists and their pompous rhetoric: “Confronted with the initial outbreak of the Silesian revolt no man who thinks or loves the truth could regard the duty to play schoolmaster to the event as his primary task. On the contrary, his duty would rather be to study it to discover its specific character. Of course, this requires scientific understanding and a certain love of mankind, while the other procedure needs only a ready-made phraseology saturated in an overweening love of oneself.”[37]

Avrom Elberg

The Internationalist Communist Tendency have recently published a statement on their experience with the No War But the Class War committees (NWBCW) which they launched at the beginning of the war in Ukraine[1]. As they say, “There is nothing like an imperialist war for revealing the real class basis of a political framework, and the invasion of Ukraine has certainly done that”, explaining that the Stalinists, Trotskyists have once again shown that they belong to the camp of capital – whether by supporting the independence of Ukraine, or rallying to Russian propaganda about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, the leftists are openly calling on the working class to support one side or the other in a capitalist war which expresses the deepening rivalries between the biggest imperialist sharks on the planet and thus threatens catastrophic consequences of the whole of humanity. The ICT also notes that the anarchist movement has been profoundly divided between those who call for the defence of Ukraine and those who have maintained an internationalist position of rejecting both camps. In contrast to this, the ICT say that “the Communist Left across the world has remained solidly behind the international interests of the working class and denounced this war for what it is”.

So far so good. But we differ profoundly when they then argue that “For our part, the ICT has taken the internationalist position a stage further by trying to work with other internationalists who can see the dangers for the world working class if it does not get organised. This is why we have joined in with the initiative to develop committees at a local level across the world to organise a response to what capitalism is preparing for workers everywhere”

The necessity for polemics

In our view, the ICT’s call for the formation of the No War But the Class War committees is anything but a “stage further” in internationalism or a step towards a solid regroupment of internationalist communist forces. We have already written a number of articles explaining our point of view on this, but the ICT has responded to none of them, an attitude justified in the ICT statement which insists that they don’t want to engage in “the same old polemics” with those who they think have misunderstood their positions. But the tradition of the communist left, inherited from Marx and Lenin and carried on in the pages of Bilan, is the recognition that polemic between proletarian elements is indispensable to any process of political clarification. And in fact, the ICT statement is really a hidden polemic, mainly with the ICC – But by their very nature such hidden polemics, which evade referring to specific organisations and their written statements, can never lead to a real and honest confrontation of positions.

In their statement on NWBCW, the ICT claims that its initiative is in continuity with the approach of the left-wing current in the process initiated by the Zimmerwald conference of 1915, having already made a similar claim in the article “NWBCW and the ‘Real International Bureau’ of 1915: “we believe that the NWBCW initiative conforms to the principles of the Zimmerwald Left”.[2] 

But the activities of the Zimmerwald Left, and above all of Lenin, was characterised by a relentless polemic aimed at a decantation of revolutionary forces. Zimmerwald brought together different tendencies in the workers’ movement in opposition to the war, and there were considerable divergences on a number of questions; the Left was fully aware that a common position against the war, as expressed in the Zimmerwald Manifesto, was not enough. For this reason, the Zimmerwald Left did not hide its divergences with the other currents at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, but openly criticised these currents for not being consistent in their fight against the imperialist war. In and through this debate Lenin and those around him forged a nucleus that would become the embryo of the Communist International.

Our previous criticisms of the NWBCW initiative

As readers can see from the publication of our correspondence with the ICT regarding the ICC’s call for a joint declaration of the communist left in response to the war in Ukraine, the ICT’s refusal to sign and their promotion of NWBCW as a kind of “rival” project severely weakened the capacity of the communist left to act together at this crucial moment. It scuppered the possibility of a coming together of its forces for the first time since the break-up of the international conferences of the communist left at the beginning of the 1980s. The ICT chose to discontinue this correspondence[3].

We have also published an article tracing the actual history of NWBCW in the anarchist milieu in the 1990s[4]. This meant that these groups contained all kinds of confusions, but in our view they did express something real - the response of a small minority critical of the massive mobilisations against the wars in the Middle East and the Balkans, mobilisations that were on a clearly leftist and pacifist terrain. For this reason, we felt it was important for the communist left to intervene towards these formations in order to defend clear internationalist positions within them. By contrast, there are very few such pacifist mobilisations in response to the Ukraine war and the anarchist milieu, as we have already noted, is profoundly divided on the question. Thus we see very little in the various NWBCW groups that has made us question our conclusion to the article: “The impression we get from the groups which we know something about is that they are mainly ‘duplicates’ of the ICT or its affiliates”. In our opinion, this duplication reveals some serious disagreements about both the function and mode of operation of the revolutionary political organisation and its relationship with minorities who situate themselves on a proletarian terrain, and indeed with the class as whole. This disagreement  goes back to the whole debate about factory groups and struggle groups, but we don’t intend to develop it in this article[5].

More important – but also connected to the question of the difference between a product of the real movement and the artificial inventions of political minorities - is our article’s insistence that the NWBCW initiative is based on a wrong assessment of the dynamics of the class struggle today. In present conditions, we cannot expect the class movement to develop directly against war but against the impact of the economic crisis – an analysis which we think has been amply verified by the international revival of struggles which was sparked off by the strike movement in Britain in the summer of 2022 and which, with inevitable ups and downs, has still not exhausted itself.  This movement has been a direct response to the “cost of living crisis” and while it contains the seeds of a deeper and more widespread questioning of the impasse of the system and its drive towards war, we are still a long way from that point. The idea that the NWBCW committees could in some sense be the starting point for a direct class response to the war can only lead to a misreading of the dynamics of the present struggles. It opens to the door to an activist policy which, in turn, will not be able to distinguish itself from the “do something now” positions of the left of capital. The ICT statement insists that its initiative is above all political and that it is opposed to activism and immediatism, and they claim that the openly activist direction taken by the NWBCW groups in Portland and Rome is based on a misunderstanding of the real nature of the initiative. According to the statement, “those who signed up to NWBCW without understanding what it really was about, or rather, who saw it as the extension of their previous radical reformist activity. This happened in both Portland and Rome where certain elements saw NWBCW as something to immediately mobilise a class which was still recovering from four decades of retreat, and which was only just beginning to find its feet in the fight against inflation. Their immediatist and ultra-activist perspective only led to the demise of those committees”.  For us, on the contrary, these local groups grasped better than the ICT that an initiative which has been launched in the absence of any real movement against the war – even among small minorities - can only fall into attempts to create a movement out of nothing.

 A new “United Front”?

We have mentioned that the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which published Bilan, insisted on the need for rigorous public debate between proletarian political organisations. This was a central aspect of their principled approach towards regroupment, opposing in particular the opportunist efforts of the Trotskyists and ex-Trotskyists of the day to resort to fusions and regroupments which were not based on a serious debate around fundamental principles. In our view, the NWBCW initiative is based on a kind of “frontist” logic which can only lead to unprincipled and even destructive alliances.

The statement admits that some openly leftist groups have hijacked the “No War But the Class War” slogan to hide their essential support for one side or the other in the conflict. The ICT insist that they can’t prevent such “false flag” operations. But if you read our article on the opening meeting of the Paris NWBCW committee[6], you will find not only that a considerable part of the participants were advocating openly leftist “actions” under the NWBCW banner, but also that a Trotskyist group which defends the right of Ukraine to self-determination, Matière et Révolution, had actually been invited to the meeting.  Similarly, the Rome NWBCW group seems to have been based on an alliance between the ICT’s affiliate in Italy (which publishes Battaglia Comunista) and a purely leftist group[7].

We should add that the presidium of the Paris meeting was made up of two elements who were expelled from the ICC in the early 2000s for publishing material which exposes our comrades to state repression – an activity we have denounced as snitching. One of these elements is a member of the International Group of the Communist Left, a group which is not only a typical expression of political parasitism, but which was founded on the basis of this police-like behaviour and thus should have no place within the internationalist communist camp.  The other element is now actually the representative of the ICT in France. When the ICT declined to sign the joint declaration, they argued that its definition of the communist left was too narrow, mainly because it excluded groups defined by the ICC as parasitic. In fact, it has been shown very clearly that the ICT would prefer to be publicly associated with parasitic groups like the IGCL than with the ICC, and its current policy, via the NWBCW committees, can have no other result than to give such groups a certificate of respectability and to strengthen their long-standing effort to make the ICC a pariah – precisely because of its defence of the clear principles of behaviour which they have repeatedly breached. 

In some cases, such as in Glasgow, the NWBCW groups seem to have been based on temporary alliances with anarchist groups like the Anarchist Communist Group who have taken up internationalist positions on the Ukraine war but who are linked to groups who are on a bourgeois terrain (eg Plan C in the UK). And recently the ACG has shown that it would rather associate with such leftists than discuss with an internationalist organisation like the ICC, which it excluded from a recent meeting in London without eliciting any protest from the CWO[8]. This does not mean we don’t aim to discuss with genuinely internationalist anarchists, and in the case of KRAS in Russia, who have a proven record of opposing imperialist wars, we asked them to support the joint declaration in whatever way they could. But the ACG affair is yet another example of how the NWBCW initiative recalls the opportunist policy of the United Front, in which the Communist International expressed its willingness to work with the traitors of social democracy. This was a tactic to strengthen communist influence in the working class but its real result was to accelerate the degeneration of the CI and its parties.

The Italian Communist Left was, in the early 20s, a harsh critic of this opportunist policy of the CI. It continued to adhere to the original position of the CI, which was that the social democratic parties, through supporting the imperialist war and actively opposing the proletarian revolution, had become parties of capital. It’s true that their critique of the United Front tactic retained an ambiguity – the idea of the “United Front from Below”, based on the assumption that the trade unions were still proletarian organisations and that it was at this level that Communist and social democratic workers could struggle together.

In their conclusion to the NWBCW statement, the ICT makes the claim that there is a historical precedent for the NWBCW committees in the revolutionary movement: the appeal for a United Proletarian Front launched by the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt) in Italy 1944. This appeal is fundamentally internationalist in content, but why does it talk about a “United Proletarian Front”? And what is meant by the following demand: “The present time calls for the formation of a united proletarian front, i.e., the unity of all those who are against war, whether fascist or democratic.

Workers of all proletarian political formations and without party! Join our workers, discuss class problems in the light of the events of the war and form together in every factory, in every centre, committees of the united front capable of bringing the struggle of the proletariat back to its true class terrain”.

Who were these “proletarian political formations”? Was this in fact an appeal to the rank and file of the former workers’ parties to engage in joint political activity with the militants of the PCInt?

This was not a mere inaccuracy in the 1944 appeal, as demonstrated only a year later when the PCInt's Agitation Committee's published a new 'Appeal', explicitly addressed to the Agitation Committees of the Italian Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party and other organisations of the bourgeois left, calling for their joint action in the factories. We published an account of this in International Review 32. In International Review 34 we published a letter from the PCInt responding to our criticisms of the Appeal. In this letter they wrote:

“was it in fact an error? Yes, it was; we admit it. It was the last attempt of the Italian Left to apply the tactic of the ‘united front at the base' defended by the CP of Italy in 1921-23 against the Third International. As such, we categorize this as a ‘venial sin' because our comrades later eliminated it both politically and theoretically with such clarity that today we are well armed against anyone on this point”.

To which we replied:

“If a proposal for a united front with the Stalinist and social democratic butchers is just a ‘minor' sin what else could the PC Int have done in 1945 for it to fall into a really serious mistake ... join the government? But Battaglia Comunista reassures us: it has corrected these errors quite a while ago without waiting for the ICC and it has never tried to hide them. Possibly, but in 1977 when we just brought up the errors of the PC Int in the war period in our press, Battaglia answered with an indignant letter admitting that there had been mistakes but claiming that they were the fault of comrades who left in 1952 to found Programma Comunista”.

The ICT's continuing defence of the 1944 call for a United Proletarian Front shows that this profound error has not been “eliminated both politically and theoretically”. And the  ‘United Front from Below’ tactic from 1921-23 is still the inspiration for the ICT’s opportunist  No War but the Class War ‘movement’.

The ICT is therefore right on one point about No War But the Class War: it is in continuity with the opportunist call for a ‘United Proletarian Front’ by the PCint in 1944. But it is not a continuity to be proud of since this tactic actively obscures the class line that exists between the internationalism of the Communist Left and the pretend internationalism of leftism, parasitism and the anarchist swamp.  Moreover the NWBCW was intended to be an exclusive alternative to the intransigent internationalism of the Common Statement of the Communist Left, thus weakening revolutionary forces not only by opportunism toward leftism etc, but also by sectarianism toward other authentic groups of the Communist Left .

Amos

Bakunin set up a secret organisation within the International Workingmen’s Association aimed either at taking it under his control or, if that was not possible, at destroying it. The IWA responded to this colossal piece of intrigue by devoting the Hague Congress (1872) to the defence of the organisation against this parasitic attempt to destroy it.

We must remember that this congress took place one year after the Paris Commune, the first time in history that the proletariat had tried to take power; but the crucial importance of defending the revolutionary organisation against the attempts to destroy it was consciously addressed by the IWA by giving it absolute priority and making its work public.

The lessons of this combat are vital. However, they have been totally buried for various reasons. The first is that they were quickly forgotten in the later workers' movement with the sole exception of the Bolsheviks. Franz Mehring - Rosa Luxemburg's sparring partner in the left of Social Democracy - in his biography of Marx presents his fight against Bakunin's conspiracy as a "personal confrontation".

Of course, the numerous authors (historians, Marxologists, political scientists) who have spoken of the Hague Congress have repeated ad nauseam the same refrain: it all came down to a "clash of personalities" or a "struggle between authoritarians and libertarians".

No scientific rigour can be expected from them. However, what is outrageous is that a group like the Internationalist Communist Tendency, which claims to be part of the Communist Left, which claims to fight for the World Party of the proletariat, has published an article on the Hague Congress[1] which repeats the same falsifying clichés that for 150 years have been propagated about that Congress.

Bakunin's trajectory and his entry into the IWA [2]

Who was Bakunin? According to the ICT article a true revolutionary who championed misguided ideas such as pan-Slavism, but "When the 1863 uprising in partitioned Poland broke out, Bakunin volunteered his services, only to be rebuffed. He then tried to make his own way to join the uprising, but the expedition failed, as did the uprising itself - the Polish insurgents were isolated and crushed. These events delivered a blow to Bakunin's pan-Slavist hopes and finally made him reconsider his political ideas". According to the article, this reconsideration led Bakunin to "formulate a new doctrine, characterised by political abstentionism, anti-statism and federalism, which variously went under the names of revolutionary socialism, collectivism and anarchism. He initially looked for supporters among the radicalised followers of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Freemasons, eventually founding a secret society, the International Revolutionary Association. The ‘catechisms’ of that secret society sum up the ideas around which Bakunin attempted to reorganise revolutionaries in an international network".

The General Council of the IWA did not share this assessment: "The denunciations in the bourgeois press, like the lamentations of the international police, found a sympathetic echo even in our Association. Some intrigues, directed ostensibly against the General Council but in reality against the Association, were hatched in its midst. At the bottom of these intrigues was the inevitable International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, fathered by the Russian Michael Bakunin. On his return from Siberia, the latter began to write in Herzen's Kolokol, preaching the idea of Pan-Slavism and racial war, conceived out of his long experience. Later, during his stay in Switzerland, he was nominated to head the steering committee of the League of Peace and Freedom, founded in opposition to the International. When this bourgeois society's affairs went from bad to worse, its president, Mr. G. Vogt, acting on Bakunin's advice, proposed to the International's Congress which met at Brussels in September 1868, that it make an alliance with the League. The Congress unanimously proposed two alternatives: either the League should follow the same goal as the International, in which case it would have no reason for existing; or else its goal should be different, in which case an alliance would be impossible. At the League's congress, held in Bern a few days later, Bakunin made an about-face. He proposed a makeshift programme whose scientific value may be judged by this single phrase: ‘economic and social equalisation of classes’. Backed by an insignificant minority, he broke with the League in order to join the International, determined to replace the International's General Rules by the makeshift programme, which had been rejected by the League, and to replace the General Council by his personal dictatorship. To this end, he created a special instrument, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, intended to become an International within the International."[3] .

Thus, contrary to what the ICT says, Bakunin was not a revolutionary who "evolved his ideas". His changes of position were not based on considerations of lived experience. Much of his career was spent with clearly bourgeois and even reactionary positions (Pan-Slavism, the League for Peace and Freedom), but, sniffing out that the International could fall into his hands, he quickly changed his hat, threw the League for Peace and Freedom into the dustbin and rushed to join the International, inventing for the occasion a "back-up programme" following the criteria of "Groucho Marxism" (Groucho Marx joked "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others"). He was not a sincere revolutionary who “evolved”; he was a political adventurer[4]. Such figures are very destructive for the workers' movement because what drives them is not the struggle for the interests of the class, but their personal ambition to be a "political player" who uses workers' organisations for their spurious ends. Lassalle wanted to make the German labour movement a pawn in his game with Bismark, with whom he even made a secret pact[5]. Bakunin wanted to put the IWA at his own service.

Moreover, it is false that Bakunin adopted an "abstentionist, federalist and anti-statist" programme; his "principles" varied according to circumstances. As we shall see later, he was ultra-centralist when he thought he had the conquest of the IWA within his grasp, but, when he failed, he abandoned this self-interested centralism to wrap himself in the banner of federalism as this proved to be the best instrument to harass an IWA General Council which refused to surrender at his feet.

We are faced with two antagonistic visions. That of the ICT article which paints Bakunin as "a romantic revolutionary with wrong ideas" and that of the IWA General Council which saw him as a scheming and unscrupulous political adventurer. We resolutely choose the second view as it provides a political weapon to defend and build the organisation. The revolutionary organisation is a vital instrument of the proletariat which must not only intervene in its struggles, but also build itself consciously and defend its existence against bourgeois repression and all the instruments at its disposal, such as adventurers, political parasitism, etc.

How did Bakunin join the IWA?

Bakunin finally succeeded in joining the IWA. The article completely ignores the danger that this membership entailed and ignores the fact that Bakunin pretended to adhere to the IWA while smuggling his International Alliance of Socialist Democracy in under his cloak. The General Council rejected this trap: "Whereas: that the existence of a second international body functioning inside and outside the International Workingmen's Association would be the most infallible means of disorganising it; that any other group of individuals resident in any locality would have the right to imitate the Geneva Initiating Group and to introduce, under more or less ostensible pretexts, within the International Workingmen's Association, other international Associations with other special missions; that, in this way, the International Workingmen's Association would very soon become the plaything of intriguers of any nationality and of any party".

Faced with this refusal, Bakunin began to manoeuvre. He pretended to accept the principles of the International and pretended to dissolve the Alliance. He resorted to another deception: he gave the impression to the central organ of the IWA that he had been endorsed by the Swiss Romance Federal Council (which turned out to be false). Armed with these credentials Bakunin set out to conquer the International and went to the Basle congress (1869) with the aim of imposing his programme of the day, based on "the abolition of the right of inheritance", and above all on obtaining the transfer of the General Council to Geneva.

To this end Bakunin showed himself to be the most ultra-centralist. This manoeuvre is not grasped by the ICT article which is "surprised" by it: "more surprisingly, Bakunin also supported a motion to extend the powers of the General Council so that it could suspend any section which acted against the principles of the International".

Nor does the ICT see the instrumentalising manoeuvre behind Bakunin's "programme": "For Bakunin, the abolition of the right of inheritance formed a key point of his programme for the Alliance, a prerequisite for social equality in the society of the future. For Marx, the whole question of the right of inheritance was a juridical distraction which would be resolved with the abolition of private property in the means of production (already approved by the International)".

According to the article there was a "debate" between Marx's position and Bakunin's. This assessment is erroneous: what there was in reality was a rabbit that Bakunin had pulled out of the hat, which the IWA denounced: "the programme of the Alliance, in the tow of a ‘Mohammed without the Koran’, is nothing but a heap of pompously worded ideas long since dead and capable only of frightening bourgeois idiots or serving as evidence to be used by the Bonapartist or other prosecutors against members of the International".

Bakunin did not seek "debate"; his star proposal for the "abolition of the right of inheritance" was a means, combined with ultra-centralism, to take control of the IWA.

Similarly, for the ICT, there was nothing untoward in the attempt to move the General Council to Geneva where it could be "welcomed" by Bakunin. On the contrary, their version is: "the attacks on his person did not stop, as Moses Hess then published a hit piece in October 1869, claiming Bakunin intended to undermine the International and transfer the General Council from London to Geneva. Bakunin responded with an – unpublished – anti-Semitic tirade against ‘German Jews’ who allegedly conspired against him (which even Herzen and Ogarev found excessive). Both out of respect and tactical consideration Bakunin spared Marx, though he incorrectly assumed him to be the mastermind behind all these attacks ".

Here we see that the ICT article clearly takes Bakunin's side and even praises his "personal magnanimity" in "forgiving" Marx. The ICT does not see - or does not want to see - what was at stake, which was Bakunin's manoeuvre to take over the central organ of the IWA by proposing to move the General Council to Geneva. What is a central organ in a proletarian organisation - an instrument for an individual or group to control the organisation? Or an expression of the organisation as a whole which must be defended against the intrigues and ambitions of individuals or groups? The IWA clearly had the latter position, which is the one we revolutionaries must defend, contrary to that of the ICT which only sees "conflicts between individuals".

Bakunin's war against the IWA

The Basel Congress rejected Bakunin's "proposals", which made him change his strategy: since he could not take over the IWA, he now conspired to destroy it.

In the service of this strategy, the extreme centralist from Basel was fast becoming the most ultra-federalist and his new Groucho Marx-style programme was "abstention in politics", but all this was "the sign of the open and unceasing war that the Alliance is waging; not only against the General Council, but again against all the sections of the International, which refuse to adopt the programme of this sectarian and above all the doctrine of absolute abstention in political matters.”[6]

Let us look at the nightmare that Bakunin and his Alliance brought about in the life of the International after 1869. We will highlight some of the most salient episodes.

The Nechayev affair

"Just before the Basle Congress, when Nechayev came to Geneva, Bakunin got in touch with him and founded a secret society among the students in Russia. (...) The great means of propagandising this society consisted in compromising innocent people vis-à-vis the Russian police, by sending them communications from Geneva, under blue envelopes, covered outside, in Russian, with the stamp of the ‘Secret Revolutionary Committee’"[7].

Bakunin had no scruples about joining up with a shady informer who was handing over to the Tsarist torturers people interested in the International. This "bad company" is seen by the ICT as a "mistake" on Bakunin's part, ignoring the fact that as the International's document shows it was he who was using Nechayev. According to the ICT, “Bakunin's fondness for conspiracies blinded him to the scale of the deception and when he finally distanced himself from Nechayev, it was already too late. The likes of Borkheim and Utin now had further ammunition to feed Marx's suspicions”.

In other words, Bakunin was "fond of conspiracies" (sic) and this "blinded" him to Nechayev’s (sic) manoeuvres and by the time he realised it was "too late", which ended up giving "ammunition" to Marx, ill-advised by Berkheim and Utin.

The ICT trivialises the fact that within a communist organisation there are "conspiracy buffs"; this means that for this organisation, which claims to be part of the Communist Left, being a "conspiracy buff" would be an "innocent pastime", a "small defect" of a "great revolutionary" like Bakunin...

This position of the ICT is simply monstrous. That within a bourgeois organisation there are "conspiracy buffs" is standard practice, but that within a communist organisation there are "conspiracy buffs" is something radically incompatible with its principles of functioning and militancy and immediately endangers it.

“Poor Bakunin" did not see the extent of Nechayev’s deceptions according to the ICT. No! The lesson to be learned is that Bakunin had used and encouraged Nechayev, was aware of his disgusting actions, and when the whole affair began to be discovered, it was too late to cover it up. In a communist organisation such "alliances" with shady elements are intolerable, and those who practise them are equally incompatible with communist organisations. This does not appear in the ICT's field of vision and that is why it has no qualms about collaborating with informers and thieves, such as the IGCL riff-raff, to set up the NWBCW committees[8] .

The attack on the General Council using a Romance Federation newspaper

Let us see what version the ICT gives us of this affair which took place in 1870: “The next controversy revolved around the Romance Federation, the Geneva section of the First International, where L’Egalité, edited by followers of Bakunin such as Paul Robin and Charles Perron, had made a number of complaints regarding the work of the General Council. In March 1870 the General Council circulated a response by Marx, which addressed the criticisms. However, Marx seemed to be under the incorrect impression that Bakunin was personally behind this, that having failed to influence the Basel Congress, he was now trying to discredit the General Council. Nikolai Utin, another Russian émigré with a vendetta against Bakunin, now sensed his chance and made a move to take over L’Egalité in the name of Marx. The section split, those in Geneva declaring themselves followers of Marx, those in Jura followers of Bakunin, and both claiming the Romance Federation name”.

According to this explanation, Bakunin's followers, without his knowledge, had attacked the General Council. In his reply, on behalf of the latter, Marx had been "misinformed" and, in addition, a follower of Marx, Utin, wanting a vendetta against Bakunin, provoked a split in the Romance Federation.

The IWA has another, radically different version: "The Alliance commenced at this time a public polemic directed against the General Council, first in the Locle Progres, then in the Geneva Egalité, the official newspaper of the Romance Federation, where several members of the Alliance had followed Bakunin. The General Council, which had scorned the attacks published in Progres, Bakunin's personal organ, could not ignore those from Egalité, which it was bound to believe were approved by the Romance Federal Committee "[9]. In the controversy, the organ L'Egalité accused the General Council of not fulfilling its functions. The latter in a circular clarified that criticism of the functioning of the IWA should not be made in the organisation's public press but should be channelled through the statutory bodies. Otherwise, these "criticisms" would give ammunition to the incessant attacks of the bourgeois press against the International: "When the Romance Federal Committee addresses requests of reprimands to us through the only legitmiate channel, that is to say through its secretary, the General Council will always be ready to reply. But the Romance Federal Committee has no right either to abdicate its functions in favour of l’Egalité and Progres, or to let these newspapers usurp its functions. Generally speaking, the General Council's administrative correspondence with national and local committees cannot be published without greatly prejudicing the Association's general interests. Consequently, if the other organs of the International were to follow the example of Progres and the l’Egalité, the General Council would be faced with the alternative of either discrediting itself publicly by its silence or violating its obligations by replying publicly. l’Egalité joins Progres in inviting Travail (Paris paper) to denounce, on its part, the General Council. That is almost a League of Public Welfare"[10].

To begin with, Bakunin had used his lackeys to launch a public attack on the General Council by fraudulently using L'Egalité, the press organ of the Romance Federation.

The General Council's response, insisting on respect for organisational principles, was that criticism of the General Council should be made through the central body of the Romance Federation and not by publicly airing this criticism behind the organisation's back.

This attack on the General Council had spread to another body in Paris. As the General Council pointed out, a "league" of public attack against it was being forged. The aim was clear: to discredit the central body elected by the Basel Congress, thus destroying the centralisation of the IWA.

Thus the issue at stake was not Utin's personal vendettas against Bakunin, nor an "ill-informed" Marx, but the defence of a method of centralised debate where criticism is not used to discredit the central organs, but to strengthen the whole organisation and the central organ. Where the IWA sees vicious attacks on its central body, the ICT sees "personal vendettas" against Bakunin.

The ICT article is very striking: at every step we see that their main concern is the defence of "poor Bakunin" and that everything concerning the defence of revolutionary organisation, of its centralisation, of the method of criticism and debate, has completely disappeared from their radar.

The sabotage of the Romance Federation Congress

Another episode in Bakunin's conspiracy against the International was the attempt at the congress of La Chaux-des-Fonds to take over the Romance Federation in April 1870.

Let us look at the manoeuvres and intrigues that Bakunin and his altar boys employed: "Although, on their own calculation, the Alliance supporters represented no more than a fifth of the Federation members, they succeeded, thanks to repetition of the Basel manoeuvres, in procuring a fictitious majority of one or two votes, a majority which, in the words of their own organ (see Solidarité of May 7, 1870), represented no more than 15 sections, while in Geneva alone there were 30! On this vote, the French-Switzerland Congress split into two groups which continued their meetings independently. The Alliance supporters, considering themselves the legal representatives of the whole of the Federation, transferred the Federal Committee's seat to Chaux-de-Fonds and founded at Neuchatel their official organ, Solidarité, edited by Citizen Guillaume. This young writer had the special job of decrying the Geneva ‘factory workers’, those odious ‘bourgeois’, of waging war on L'Egalité, the Federation newspaper, and of preaching total abstention from politics. The authors of the most important articles on this theme were Bastelica in Marseilles and Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc in Lyon, the two big pillars of the Alliance"[11].

So we have here :

• Tricks to gain a fictitious majority in the Congress by repeating the manoeuvre that had allowed Bakunin to carry weight at the Congress of Basel.
• Split in the Romance Federation between Bakunin's followers and the majority loyal to the working principles of the International.
• Intrigue to destroy the Romance Federation by creating an improvised "central organ" totally submissive to Bakunin in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
• Attack on the comrades faithful to the functioning of the International by presenting them as "odious bourgeois", the point at which Bakunin's lieutenant, Guillaume, enters the scene.
• The two pillars of the Alliance in Lyon were police officers, Richard and Blanc.

This episode and the clear lessons it provides are ignored by the ICT article which says in passing, referring to the London Conference (1871): "During the conference, Marx delivered a speech in which he criticised the Alliance for not actually having dissolved back in 1869 when it was asked to, and alleged that it existed as a secret society within the First International. He also argued that the Jura section should not use the name of the Romance Federation (though it could go under the name Jura Federation instead), and he singled out Guillaume for having published an appeal in violation of the International’s statutes ".

The Alliance did not make "mistakes" as the ICT claims, but engaged in repugnant attacks against the organisation. The ICT article ignores the precise reason for Marx's denunciation: "On August 10, the Alliance, hardly eager to see its activities looked into by a Conference, declared itself dissolved as from August 6. But, on September 15, it reappeared and requested admission to the Council under the name of the Atheist Socialist Section. According to Administrative Resolution No. V. of the Basel Congress, the Council could not admit it without consulting the Geneva Federal Committee, which was exhausted after its two years of struggle against the sectarian sections. Moreover, the Council had already told the Young Men’s Christian Association that the International did not recognize theological sections"[12].

In other words, the Alliance had pretended to dissolve and then appeared under the guise of the "Section of Atheist Socialists" (!).

Bakunin's conspiracy continued and had taken as its axis the Romance Federation where he had (along with Spain and Italy) a string of followers. From its base of operations at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Bakunin's Alliance was ceaselessly mounting one scandal after another to disorganise the International and paralyse its General Council with constant demands. One of these was that an Alliance delegate, Robin, relentlessly insisted that the General Council convene a private Conference to finally give the "Federation of the Jura" (Bakunin's stronghold around La Chaux-de-Fonds) the upper hand against the Romance Federation.

The proliferation of sectarian sections

As the Basel Congress had marked the impossibility of taking over the IWA "from above", Bakunin now undertook politics "from below" by using his followers as promoters of all kinds of "sections" with an "autonomous" functioning and advocating the most fanciful alternatives as a remedy for the evils of the world. The General Council saw two fundamental political dangers in all this turmoil:

1. The disorganisation of the IWA

The IWA was being dislocated by a chaotic proliferation of groupings, each flying a different banner. Moreover, these groupings, in the hands of Bakunin and the Alliance, devoted themselves from the beginning to the harassment of the General Council by resorting to the most absurd "arguments". For example, the alleged "pan-Germanism" of the General Council. Thus, a press organ was created in a hurry by Bakunin's friends in Switzerland, The Social Revolution, “thought the moment opportune to fan the flames of national hatred, even within the International. It called the General Council a German Committee led by a Bismarckian brain”.

The anti-German agitation continued with a disgraceful action. An "émigré section of the Commune" set up in London with police provocateurs like Pyat, engaged in the denigration of German workers' militants who had opposed the Franco-Prussian war: "The London Conference approved the conduct of the German workers during the [Franco-Prussian] war… Nonetheless, eight days later, on November 23, 1871, 15 members of the ‘French Section of 1871’ inserted in Qui Vive! a ‘protest’ full of abuse against the German workers and denouncing the Conference resolution as irrefutable proof of the General Council’s ‘pan-Germanic idea’. On the other hand, the entire feudal, liberal, and police press of Germany seized avidly upon this incident to demonstrate to the German workers how their international dreams had come to naught "[13].

It is important to note that all the calumnies and intrigue circulated by the followers of the Alliance were immediately echoed in the bourgeois press organs: "Let us note in passing that the Times, that Leviathan of the capitalist press, Progres (of Lyon), a publication of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the Journal de Geneve, an ultra-reactionary paper, have brought the same charges against the Conference and used virtually the same terms as Citizens Malon and Lefrancais"[14].

        2. The resurrection of sects

All the Bakuninist agitation for the creation of sectarian sections within the IWA took the workers' movement back to the epoch of its first steps (1800-1848), dominated by sects. "The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticise social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach, and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature — i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyon workers did not want the St. Simonists, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists and the English trade unionists wanted the Owenites. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they became reactionary. Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany, who after having hindered the proletariat’s organisation for several years ended up becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of science. If the International were to be founded, it was necessary that the proletariat go through this phase.”

Against this setback, encouraged by Bakunin and his multiplication of sectarian sections, the IWA is "the genuine and militant organization of the proletarian class of all countries, united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their class power organized in the state. The International’s Rules, therefore, speak of only simple ‘workers’ societies’, all aiming for the same goal and accepting the same programme, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while having its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses "[15].

The conclusions of the Hague Congress

We have recalled who Bakunin was, his trajectory and the sabotage and disorganisation he had carried out within the IWA. This work of destruction undermined the International from within. The International had to organise its defence and this defence was to:

• denounce the parasitic conspiracy of Bakunin and his Alliance
• affirm the organisational principles of the IWA
• take the necessary measures to defend it against the assault organised by Bakunin.

This was the work of the Hague Congress in September 1872: the whole IWA united against three years of incessant intrigue which prevented it from achieving its aims and led it to paralysis and destruction. The ICT article sees things in a very different, opposite way:

1. It takes the view that there were "political divergences" between Marx and Bakunin: "Marx accepted that the First International, as an organisation, might become obsolete with the development of the class struggle, whereas for Bakunin the First International was the embryo of the future society. Bakunin, although initially approving of the increase in powers of the General Council, came to the conclusion that it should be reduced to a simple correspondence and statistics bureau between autonomous sections. Marx, who saw the General Council as a means to centralise action towards a common goal, responded that he would rather vote for the abolition of the General Council than for a General Council which would only be a letter-box. These were their different basic approaches and they were incompatible. They were soon vulgarised into a conflict between ‘centralists’ and ‘federalists’ (a distinction that Engels publicly rejected) ".

We have already shown that this "debate" was a manoeuvre to destroy the International. That within the International there were different views on centralisation, on the function of the organisation, on the measures to achieve communism; that was obvious. But for this the International had statutes which encouraged debate, as Engels said, "Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’ s minds the insufficiency of their various favourite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative English trade unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their president [W. Bevan] could say in their name: ‘Continental socialism has lost its terror for us’. In fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headway among the working men of all countries".[16]

The intrigues, the sudden and unexplained changes of position, the slander, the secret organisations, the entire practice since 1868 of Bakunin and his followers, did nothing but prevent debate, for they exploited these differences for their own unsavoury ends, mixed them with personal tensions and spurious interests, festered them and made it impossible to clarify them. It was not debate they sought, but disorganisation, division and confrontation within the IWA.

​ 2. The ICT implies that Marx and "his supporters" used underhand methods and alliances in their struggle against Bakunin: “For a number of reasons, it was an ugly finale to the proceedings. At least one of those on the committee investigating the Alliance later turned out to be a Bonapartist spy. And to strengthen the case against Bakunin, the special committee also accused him of theft and intimidation. This was in regard to Bakunin having received the advance to translate Capital but neither completing the project nor returning the money. It was however Nechayev, likely without Bakunin’s knowledge, who then threatened the publisher with violence”

Thus, the "supporters of Marx" did "ugly" things and were carried away by antipathy towards Bakunin and levelled unjust accusations against him. This is not so; it was the whole congress that adopted as the main item on the agenda the investigation into the activities of the Alliance. This decision was actively supported by Proudhonians and other anarchist-oriented tendencies. The Hague Congress was not a struggle between "Marxist authoritarians" and "Bakuninist libertarians", but a fight for the defence of the organisation. As our article on the Hague Congress puts it: "The Congress - with the exception of the Bakuninist minority - resoundingly supported the conclusions of the Commission. In fact, the Commission called for only three expulsions: those of Bakunin, Guillaume and Schwitzguebel, and only the first two were accepted by the Congress, thus disproving the fallacy that the International intended to eliminate, by disciplinary means, an uncomfortable minority. The revolutionary organisations, contrary to the accusations levelled by anarchists and councilists, have no need of such measures, and do not fear, but, on the contrary, have the greatest interest in the most complete clarification through debate. In fact, they only resort to expulsions in very exceptional cases of serious indiscipline and disloyalty. As Johannard pointed out in The Hague: ‘expulsion from the IWA is the most serious and dishonourable condemnation that can befall a man; those expelled can never again belong to an honourable association’" (p. 171) [17].

The target was not the person of Bakunin, but his politics and above all the denunciation of the secret organisation he had set up, "an International within the International"; it was his methods that were to be denounced and eradicated. What was at stake at the Hague congress was not to see whether the supporters of Marx or the supporters of Bakunin would win, but to affirm the organisational principles of the International. A communist organisation cannot function without clear principles of organisation and militancy. This is the crux of the matter which the ICT article scandalously ignores.

With the crushing of the Paris Commune, the IWA found itself in a very dangerous situation: "Jules Favre was demanding from all governments, even the British, the extradition of refugees as common criminals; when Dufaure was proposing to the Rural Assembly a law banning the International, a hypocritical counterfeit of which was later presented by Malou to the Belgians; when in Switzerland a Commune refugee was put under preventive arrest while awaiting the federal government's decision on the extradition order; when hunting down members of the International was the ostensible basis for an alliance between Beust and Bismarck, whose anti-International clause Victor Emmanuel was quite eager to adopt; when the Spanish Government, putting itself entirely at the disposal of the butchers of Versailles, was forcing the Madrid Federal Council to seek refuge in Portugal; at a time, lastly, when the International's prime duty was to strengthen its organisation and to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the governments"[18].

The generalised attack by the European governments was supported within the IWA by the Bakuninist fifth column, "the support which European reaction finds in the scandals provoked by that society at a time when the International is undergoing the most serious trial since its foundation obliges it to present a historical review of all these intrigues "[19]. The Alliance and its machinations were an absolute threat to the IWA; one of the members of the Alliance, Bakunin's lieutenant, Guillaume, went so far as to say with impudence that: "Any member of the International has every right to join any secret society, even Freemasonry. Any investigation of a secret society would simply amount to a denunciation to the police"[20].

From the dawn of the workers' movement the bourgeoisie has waged a war to the death against its communist organisations, both when they are large and influential, and when they are tiny and have little or no influence in the class. The Communist League, once dissolved, was not forgotten by the bourgeoisie who mounted against its militants the monstrous Cologne Trial (1852) Similarly, Marx himself was the object of a campaign of slander orchestrated by Herr Vogt, which forced him to spend a year of work to refute it [21].

The experience of the IWA and that of the last 40 years of the Communist Left sheds light on another means of the bourgeoisie's war against revolutionary organisations: using forces which are not directly created by it, but which by their blind hatred of the communist organisations and what they represent, act admirably in favour of the bourgeoisie. This is the case of the parasites: "The Hague Congress showed that the Bakuninist Alliance was not acting on its own, but as a real coordinating centre of the whole parasitic opposition, which, supported by the bourgeoisie, was acting against the workers' movement.”[22]

In the United States, the Alliance received the support of a sinister, spiritualist-oriented group, that of Victoria Woodhull who, according to an intervention by Marx at the Hague Congress: "West's mandate is signed by Victoria Woodhull who, for years, has been scheming for the presidency of the United States, is the president of the spiritualists, preaches free love, has a banking business, etc. (...) She published the famous appeal to the English-speaking citizens of the United States, in which the IWA was accused of a host of atrocities, and which led to the creation in that country of several sections on a similar basis. It (the appeal) speaks, among many other things, of personal freedom, social freedom (free love), fashion in dress, women's suffrage, universal language, etc. (...) It considers that the women's question should take precedence over the workers' question, and refuses to recognise the IWA as a workers' organisation" [23].

German parasitism, i.e. the Lassalleans who had been expelled from the Association for the Education of German Workers in London, joined this international network of parasitism, through the above-mentioned Universal Federalist Council in London, in which they participated together with other enemies of the workers' movement such as the French radical Freemasons, and the Mazzinists of Italy (...) In Italy, for example, the bourgeoisie set up the Societa universalei razionalisti, which, under the leadership of Stefanoni, devoted itself to attacking the International in that country. Its press published the slanders of Vogt and the German Lassalleans against Marx, and ardently defended Bakunin's Alliance.

"The aim of this whole network of fake revolutionaries was none other than to slander the members of the International, as does the bourgeois press, which they themselves inspire. And, to their shame, they do it by appealing to the unity of the workers"[24] (Duval's Intervention, p. 99).

The lessons of the Hague Congress are compelling:

1. Bakunin and the Alliance were a means of division, disorganisation and confrontation within the IWA.
2. It served as a centre of regroupment of all the forces that, while pretending to "oppose capitalist society" had as their main objective to destroy the organisation that was fighting in the most consistent way against capitalism: the IWA.
3. The bourgeoisie used the fifth column which was the Alliance for its repressive aims to smash the IWA. The crushing of the Commune with more than 30,000 dead was joined by the attempt to crush the proletarian International.
4. The IWA defended itself by affirming proletarian principles of organisation and functioning, appointing a commission of enquiry to expose the conspiracy of Bakunin and his alliance.

These lessons are thrown into the dustbin by the ICT article which concludes: "After a tumultuous session, Bakunin was expelled by a majority vote and from then on, the red and black tendencies of the workers’ movement went their separate ways".

There was no split between the "red tendency" and the "black tendency"! There was no quarrel between Marx and Bakunin, nor were differences of political or organisational conception the cause of the split in the IWA. The real problem was Bakunin's parasitic conspiracy against the International and what the momentous Congress of The Hague in 1872 did was to defend the organisation against this destructive plot.

Why has the ICT published the Hague Congress article?

So we see that the ICT has not written the article on the Hague Congress in order to recover and nourish the historical memory of the proletariat. If that had been its aim, it should have based itself on the documents of the Congress itself, which it does not quote at any point. According to the article itself the aim is: "At this crucial historical juncture, when every day that capitalism continues to survive is a threat to the very existence of humanity, we call on all who see themselves as anarchists devoted to the class struggle to reconsider how things have changed on that long road towards the self-emancipation of the working class since 150 years ago".

There is a trap here; anarchism is a swamp where many political tendencies coexist. The majority are clearly bourgeois, support the war in Ukraine and hold positions such as the national liberation of the Kurdish people of Rojava. Only a minority defends positions situated in the camp of the proletariat. The article does not address this minority, but with obvious opportunism it addresses "anarchists in general" and to keep them happy it whitewashes Bakunin, hides his anti-organisational conspiracy, denigrates Marx and hides the lessons the IWA drew. 

There are two blatant manifestations of opportunism in this behaviour. The first is that of advocating a "discussion" with anarchism while concealing the fact that the majority of this milieu is clearly made up of bourgeois organisations. The second, even more serious, is the whitewashing of characters like Bakunin and his methods which, as the IWA made clear, are incompatible with communist organisations.

Of course, it should be up to the ICT itself to explain the motives behind its article, but another motive is not hidden from us, namely its ongoing collaboration through the NWBCW committees with the parasites, and worse, the police-like snitches of the IGCL. It is evident that, in addition to the blatant flirtation with anarchism, the article on Bakunin also serves to whitewash the IGCL’s behaviour, to give it a "legitimacy", and this is simply scandalous.

C.Mir 24-08-23

As clearly shown in the correspondence that follows - and in our previous articles on the question[1] - the individual Gaizka is demonstrably an adventurer. His websites: Communia, (also known as Emancipación and Nuevo Corso) are part of an attempt to create a bogus ‘communist left' to usurp those existing organisations which are authentic descendants of the Communist Left political lineage, including the International Communist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency[2].

We publish below a correspondence between the latter two organisations on the question of how to - or whether to - expose such an individual and those political parasites who defend them. Should the Communist Left as a whole - irrespectively of the political differences among them – publicly warn all revolutionaries, particularly the younger and less experienced ones, of the dangerous trap represented by the actions of such an adventurer? Or should it maintain a public silence about the latter?

The ICC’s intention in opening this exchange with the ICT was to share and verify the information we had already collected on this individual; warn of the danger he represented; and make a common front to defend the authentic Communist Left.

The differences that emerged between our two organisations was not about the fact of the danger of the adventurism of Gaizka - the ICT completely agrees with the ICC on his falsity and the fraudulence of his project - but on whether to publicise this fact and make common cause with the ICC.

The publication of this correspondence thus serves several purposes.

First, it confirms from another genuinely communist source the adventurist nature of Gaizka that we have already described on our site.

The correspondence also illuminates the political differences of approach to this question between our two organisations, which is of general interest for communists today. In the history of the marxist movement, political correspondence between groups has always been seen as a potential means of clarification in front of the working class. One only has to consult the correspondence of Marx and Engels to better understand their fight, which preceded that of Lenin and Luxemburg against the opportunist degeneration of the German Social Democratic Party during the latter part of the 19th Century.[3] It’s worth pointing out that it was the opportunists of the SPD who tried to keep secret the correspondence by Marx and Engels that was critical of them.

Finally, it allows us to continue the debate. The final letter of the ICT abruptly terminates the correspondence. But as far as the ICC is concerned the problem hasn’t disappeared and it will never be resolved without the conscious intervention of the communist vanguard. It would be completely illusory to think that the problem of adventurism would not interfere dangerously with the fight for the constitution of the future world political party of the proletariat. We therefor invite the ICT, and all those who are sincerely interested in the defence of the Communist Left, to continue the debate in the press.

Following the full publication of this correspondence, with the exception of personal details which ae not pertinent, internet links which don’t function and aspects linked to the international situation, we will add some concluding remarks.

——————————————

26.9.19  ICC > ICT

Dear Comrades,

We are writing to you to request your opinion on the information we shared with your CWO comrade concerning the individual Gaizka who animates the Emancipación/Nuevo Corso tendency.

We met with your comrade nearly six months ago on two occasions in London to present the facts that we had gleaned about Gaizka’s trajectory and to discover your opinion about the harm that this trajectory represents for the Communist Left as a whole. We understood from these meetings that your organisation would in due course give us a definite position from your central organ concerning the significance of the information on Gaizka that we supplied. So far, we haven’t received such a communication from you on this subject. Perhaps it was not clear from our last meeting that we expected a subsequent response from you. So please take this letter as a respectful reminder that we would indeed like to know your opinion on the facts about Gaizka that we gave you.

Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org [231][4] we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

• that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.
• that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.
• that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.

The information on Gaizka that you have from us confirms, in our view, that this false and harmful objective is not the result of naivety, or a genuine political error, but is deliberately designed.

Consequently, we would appreciate receiving, in the near future, your own conclusions about the information on Gaizka that we presented to you.

Fraternally

PS. Your article on Emancipación is misinformed when it states that the ICC has “collapsed” or “disintegrated”. We would like to reassure the comrades of the ICT that, as Mark Twain said, “rumours of our death are greatly exaggerated.”

—————————

01.10.19  ICT > ICC

The ICT IB is meeting next weekend and I will relay this message to them. My worry is that to turn a political critique into an attack on an individual (on whom we have even more evidence) may be counterproductive. We have seen those who argue that the “ICC is a cult” line but even the youngest of our sympathisers can see that with Emancipacion we are here dealing with a real cult with a guru who tolerates no contradiction and will not confront political positions honestly and directly. However, the young ones we hoped to save still remain true believers. We note also the totally opportunist line pursued by the IGCL[5] in this regard. Sometimes to chase these people only gives them a publicity they don’t deserve and undermines the entire CL.

This is my personal opinion but will argue for it in our deliberations,

Internationalist greetings

———————————————

11.10.19 ICC > ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for J’s prompt reply to the ICC letter of 26.09.19 which gives his opinion concerning Gaizka and NC/Emancipación and mentions that the ICT central organ would soon be meeting where this question would be discussed. We look forward to hearing from the ICT after your central organ has reached its decision on the information we supplied to you about this individual.

We were interested to read in J’s reply that you have evidence about Gaizka that wasn’t in the information we supplied to you. We would be glad to know about this additional evidence as we would like to have a complete as possible picture of the activity of this individual. We would also like to know if your evidence complements or modifies our own information in any respect. This additional evidence could be passed onto us in London.

We look forward to hearing from you about both these questions at your earliest convenience.

Fraternally

——————————————

Received from the ICT [between 11-18 October 2019]

An official response is being prepared (summarising our discussions last week) but I have cut and pasted a message from someone re further information on Gaizka and his two female accomplices.

I read your recent text on Nuevo Curso in the web. And I would like to share with you some information that I discovered recently.

I knew some members of Nuevo Curso 2 years ago, when they were starting out. The founding group are members of the cooperative Las Indias. And the soul of the group is a man named Gaizka. He is not a complete unknown.

The group started two years ago by searching for "internationalists" in the social network Twitter, with bots, that is, fake accounts programmed to locate specific people. If we read the statements of its leader in 2014, we can assume that it is a case of recent conversion to communism. And with his creation of a "new Trotskyite-Munisist tradition", which I think is a direct offspring of Gaizka, we can assume that he is a political adventurer. But it is true that he is an adventurer who can do a lot of harm to our cause, because he can attract a lot of young people, thanks to his good use of internet and social networks.

I don't think it adds substantially to what you know (except more colours to the chameleon) - he is a punk, anarchist, communiser etc etc. 

IG 

——————————————

18.10.19  ICT > ICC

Comrades

As promised we discussed your letter in our IB and are entirely in agreement with the substantive passage

“Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org [231]. we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

-    that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.

-    that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.

-    that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.”

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is now to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.”

We can confirm that in the course of our early discussions with them they denied they were aiming to create a separate political organization, but were rather aiming to more broadly educate youngsters in working class history so that they could best decide for themselves what course to take. When some of their young supporters became more inclined towards political organisation, they did ask us not to engage in discussion of serious political issues, instead offering practical cooperation on a “no-questions asked” basis. This was rejected by us and after that they began a series of manoeuvres both to frame their “new tendency” and to break up the discussion between our sympathisers and members in the USA and the groups of Workers’ Offensive and the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction. When we openly stated what their manoeuvres were they abruptly cut off all communication with us. In fact Gaizka (as we shall continue to call him) cannot tolerate any kind of contradiction and automatically freezes out even the most innocent of interlocutors who question any of his assumptions.

However, the question is how to deal with this threat and we think our attack on this dangerous individual has to come through a critique of the organisation he has given birth to both in its political framework and its modus operandi. In this regard we intend to prepare more critiques of the Emancipación project as such, avoiding argumentum ad hominem in the most direct sense but revealing clearly the weak organisational basis on which it operates. We, as always, will go about this in our own way and expect you will do the same. It is probably the best way to deal with the situation since powerful and separate critiques are more likely to reach a wider audience, and of course, we do have a different approach to dealing with those sectarian elements which from time to time appear on the fringes of the Communist Left.

Internationalist greetings

The International Bureau of the ICT

———————————————

26.3.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

We hope none of your comrades have succumbed to the corona virus and are taking all necessary measures of precaution against it. The few militants of the Communist Left in the world are precious for the future of the working class.

It is now two months since we published the article on Gaizka[6] which gave sufficient facts to indicate the suspicious nature of this element and his danger to the authentic Communist Left and the new elements coming toward it.

As you remember we already presented these facts about him to you and we both reached agreement on the serious nature of his threat to the Communist Left, as outlined by you in an email of 18th October 2019.

NC/Gaizka’s response to the article has been a deafening silence; a cowardly approach which is actually symptomatic of his doubtful nature. It would be difficult to believe that he has not noticed the article: if our website metrics are right nearly two thousand people read this article in the first weeks of its appearance.

In fact there has only been one public response to the article – that of the IGCL (also reproduced on Philipe Bourrinet’s Pantopolis Blog). In this response entitled ‘New ICC Attack against the International Proletarian Camp’ the IGCL staunchly defends Nuevo Corso for having “played an active role in the emergence and international regrouping of new revolutionary and communist forces, particularly on the American continent”. Without contesting any of the facts presented in our article, the IGCL alleges that the article is on the “rotten terrain of the personalisation of political issues” and is part of an ICC campaign of “provocation, manoeuvring, denigration, slander or rumour” against revolutionary groups or militants and that “it is aimed at rotting and undermining the international process of political emergence, development, regrouping and clarification that is currently underway”. It concludes that the ICC’s main purpose in the article is “weakening and if possible destroying any attempt, any process of regrouping and fighting for the party””.

We would be interested to know your opinion of these allegations by the IGCL and their support for the dubious Gaizka and Nuevo Corso.

In the email mentioned above you said that you were preparing more critiques of the Emancipación project. Will they be appearing in the near future?

Fraternally

———————————————

12.4.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your mail and we reciprocate your sentiments re safety of all comrades in this period.

The EC of the CWO met on Thursday and discussed your letter but we are confident we speak for the rest of the ICT (which meets next week).

The lack of response to your criticism is probably a good thing. As far as we know only the IGCL supported him. We had already sent them our criticisms of their refusal to recognise what Emancipación has become but they continue to ignore us. We in turn don’t intend to give either of them the oxygen of publicity. We think most people already know what the IGCL is. We have also had an enquiry from the Workers’ Group in the USA (which previously supported Gaizka) asking us if we can confirm the broad outlines of your critique of Gaizka and we have done so at some length. Again we have received no reply but in their enquiry they have become very suspicious of the fact that Gaizka makes no attempt to defend himself from any of the charges.

We are agreed that Gaizka is a political chameleon who operates on his own subjective level and he is in fact the guru of a cult (in this case a real one!). However, our position remains the same as the last time we wrote that we think we should stick to political critiques rather than get involved in argumentum ad hominem (which will always be interpreted as sectarian slander). At some point the organisational issue and the political one will make further comment both necessary and possible, but for now we remain with our political critique of the fantasy that is Emancipación.  We already detect that some of his US followers have fallen away and those that remain are increasingly seen as incoherent.

For now we can see that a whole new generation is coming to communist politics but this is not the time to be diverted by something which could disappear as fast as it appeared. We have a more important task in building the Communist Left response in the face of far more serious diversions which affect many younger people who learn of us only via the distorted prism that is social media, and this is what we will be concentrating on until a new occasion arises which demands a telling political response.

Internationalist greetings

——————————————-

4.5.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email from the EC of the CWO (12.04.20). We were pleased to hear that your comrades and family are unscathed from the virus…

The fact that you replied to a request from the Workers Group in the US confirming the facts about the suspect nature of Gaizka revealed in our article ‘Who’s who in Nuevo Corso’ is a positive step. A pity no reply from them has so far been received.

We know that your position, in distinction from ours, continues to be that making public this information would invite accusations of sectarianism, and that you therefore prefer to criticise the Emancipacíon project from a general political angle at some time in the future. Within this limited approach we think it would be logical to publicly set the record straight in relation to an article the ICT wrote in 2018 welcoming Emancipación as an authentic new group of the Communist Left[7], particularly as in your critical article of the group in 2019 you said that your break with the group “occurred in a way that was not sufficiently public and clear”.[8] In this context, since you have written to the IGCL putting your position on Emancipación, it would be appropriate to publish this letter of clarification.

However, the main reason for our previous letter was to ask for your position on the noxious response of the IGCL to the ICC article on Gaizka. Their denunciation of us goes completely beyond any accusation of sectarianism and alleges that the ICC is slandering Gaizka with gossip in order to destroy the other groups of the Communist Left. You say that “everyone knows what the IGCL is” - presumably that means it is a source of lies and thuggery - in your letter. But you don’t actually tell us what your view is of their support for Gaizka/NC and their denunciation of the ICC in their response. Given the public silence in relation to the IGCL’s denunciation we were hoping - and still are - for a message of solidarity with us against their attack even if only in an email to us.

We think the generally silent reaction to the publication of our article on Gaizka and to the denunciation of us by the IGCL is not a positive sign, even if it confirms, in the case of Gaizka himself, the truth of the facts we have presented on him. Silence allows him to play the hurt victim of a ‘personal attack’ and invite, if not sympathy then neutrality from other groups of the proletarian political milieu and elements coming toward it concerning the dangerous pretence that NC and Emancipación are part of the Communist Left. The IGCL has exploited this silent neutrality to completely invert the truth and present the ICC, instead of the bogus Emancipación project, as attacking the existing Communist Left. 

Making public the nature of such fake communist groups is in our opinion vital for this reason, and silence and neutrality on this question harms the unity and integrity of the real Communist Left and helps the divisive goals of Gaizka, IGCL and co.

You see a danger in giving them the “oxygen of publicity” but the leftcom.org [231] ICT forum recently oxygenated a post of the IGCL on the pandemic without comment[9]. In our opinion the public identification of this political virus, represented by such groups, and making it better known and understood, is the precondition for its eradication. Though very small in size this political virus is designed to attach itself and destroy healthy political organisations. It thrives on the absence of a vaccine and on the passivity of the host toward it, and the illusion that it is only the annual flu to which there is supposedly ‘herd immunity’.

Looking forward to receiving a further response from you to the attack of the IGCL on us.

Fraternally

———————————————

17.5.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your letter of 4 May. We hope your comrades recover without after effects. Since we last wrote one comrade has also been hit by Covid-19 but is young and strong enough to see it off. Thanks for pointing out to us that the IGCL had once again spammed our forum. We had not noticed and it has now been removed as per our standard policy. As to Emancipación, and our previous welcome to it, we think our political response makes it clear already where we now stand. We have an extended correspondence with them which clearly shows their slippery evolution which we will publish if and when appropriate.

We will not agree on our approach to this issue of these small groups claiming to be part of the Communist Left. Annoying though they are, they are not worth our attention. They may be more annoying for you in that they began in or close to the ICC. For us there are far more serious political things which demand our attention. … 

We are quite willing to discuss this issue with anyone including yourselves but we don’t want the CL to be noted for its internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left.

Internationalist greetings

———————————————

I.6.2020  ICC >ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for your letter of 17 May. The Covid pandemic is indeed a catastrophic event for world capitalism accelerating at ‘warp speed’ the existing economic crisis and bringing with it mass unemployment, destitution and premature death to the working class on a scale not seen since the Second World War.

The Communist Left must provide an updated revolutionary perspective for the proletariat that takes the particularities of the present situation into account…

The historical significance of the present situation has to be fully explained to the working class. Only the Communist Left has the programmatic and organisational integrity to reveal, in the current conditions, the immensity of the historic mission of the communist revolution that lies behind the increasing pauperisation of the working class.

Clearly only the Communist Left can fulfil this task both today, to the extent of its limited capacities, and in the future when the world communist party must be created.

We are therefore continuing to devote many articles and leaflets on our website to the situation, in multiple languages. We are increasing the number of virtual meetings to bring the communist perspective to a wider audience for discussion and reflection. There are many aspects for the current situation that remain to be clarified and we are equally preoccupied with analysing them in detail.

Communists must be able to multi-task; a one-dimensional approach to intervention is not adequate. 

Today and in the future, the protection of the integrity of the Communist Left must be incorporated into its intervention. If genuine organisations of the Communist Left can be discredited today by fake groups trying to usurp its traditions like Nuevo Corso, or defamed by thugs and slanderers like the IGCL without any collective public defence of its honour and authenticity, then the credibility of its present intervention and of the future party will be compromised. It’s true that the IGCL is openly defamatory toward the ICC while it is presently stalking the ICT with false flattery. So on the surface it appears that the whole Communist Left is not under attack by the IGCL. But whether filth is thrown in your face or you find it sticking to the bottom of your shoe the net result is ultimately the same: reputational damage. Taking down the posts of the IGCL from your site is welcome, but a more explicit distancing is required.

The task of the defence of the Communist Left is certainly not posed at the same level as the task of orienting the class as a whole with a global perspective. But that doesn’t mean that the latter renders the former unnecessary or unimportant. It is perfectly possible to combine both the necessary work of defending the integrity of the Communist Left camp and provide a class-wide revolutionary perspective, as our website testifies.

The history of the marxist movement shows that the importance of the defence of its own probity can even take precedence on certain occasions over questions of general policy and analysis. Even Engels became impatient when Marx took a year out of the preparation of Capital (1859/60) in order to comprehensively refute the slanders of Karl Vogt[10], but he was later obliged to recognise that the change of priorities was correct. Vogt’s slander that Marx was a blackmailer and in league with the secret police had to be openly and thoroughly condemned. It was necessary, in Marx’s words, to “fight fire with fire”.

The more famous example is the Hague Congress of the IWA which took place just over a year after the defeat of the Paris Commune but was not devoted to this major event in the life of the working class but to the exposure of the secret Alliance and the expulsion of its leader Bakunin. In a period of defeat it was vital to preserve the honour of the 1st International and prevent it from falling into the hands of a cabal led by an adventurer who had accused the legitimate General Council to be a clique of “German Jews”.

Our denunciation of the descendants of Vogt, Lassalle, Bakunin etc today is precisely not an internal battle within the Communist Left, but an external demarcation of the latter from usurpers and serial abusers. The class delineation from them is all the more necessary because the only purpose of their existence is to discredit the authentic Communist Left on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Of course, for the capitalist left the Communist Left has always been sectarian because we denounce the bourgeoisie as a whole. We have no need to try and cater to their deliberate distortions by remaining neutral about the fake communist left. On the contrary we must make the distinction of the Communist Left all the more intransigent and thereby strike two enemies who use similar malign methods against the communist camp.

The obvious counter-part of the clear separation of the Communist Left camp from the capitalist left and the parasitic milieu is its own greater public solidarity and cohesion. The most effective way this camp can prevent its differences appearing as petty squabbles is by affirming its common class basis and by commonly organising discussion of their differences. We remain committed to the perspective behind the Conferences of the Communist Left of the late 1970s even though they were nipped in the bud. The absence of this project in the intervening decades have not improved the standing of the Communist Left camp as a whole; instead, hostile forces around it have been given more political room to operate.

We realise we diverge on this question and we will both continue to urge our different positions. But even though it is clear that you don’t accord the mutual solidarity of the Communist Left the same importance as we do, we still don’t understand why even a minimal statement of solidarity with the ICC against the recent revolting slanders of the IGCL is beyond you, since we can’t believe that such a declaration would break a principle for you.

Let’s hope our precious few militants of the Communist Left continue to remain (relatively) free of the virus.

fraternally

———————————————

June 2020  ICT >ICC

Dear Comrades

Thank you for your letter of 1 June which we discussed in the International Bureau of the ICT.   

Your first paragraph is an expansion of what we briefly said to you in our previous letter but you will find that we are at least agreed on the current situation if you read Reflections on the Coronavirus and Economic Crises [232] and the opening paragraph of The Global Pandemic and Imperialist Competition [233]. However we have once again to emphasise that the current crisis began in the early 1970s (when the post-war boom came to an end) and not in 1989 when you suddenly woke up to the fact that the working class had been in retreat for over a decade (and which we told you repeatedly throughout the 1980s). The postmodernist “solution” that all is chaos and decomposition only has a material basis in the fact that the crisis is getting deeper and the palliatives the capitalists produce only kicks the day of reckoning further down the road and do not solve it. 

We have no doubt the Communist Left has the analysis to understand this – our collective problem is that the wider working class does not and, as yet, is not universally responding to the slow creep towards disaster the system is carrying out. For us this remains the main focus. For us “multi-tasking” means developing the analytical framework of the evolving social reality in front of us, and searching for more and more ways to reach the wider class.

And here we can only repeat that it is counter-productive to engage in what are seen as personalised denunciations of cultish grouplets which have no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class. “Reputational damage” can be self-inflicted and to speak the absolute truth we think that the ICC’s continual defence of petty attacks on such groups has cost not only the ICC but also the entire Communist Left tradition as the mud sticks all around. We do not want to be associated with this method and we have constantly advised you not to go in for argumentum ad hominem. You have ignored our advice and now ask us to support a step we disagreed with before you took it.

These people will expose themselves politically. In fact they are already doing so. You are also obviously not paying attention. The IGCL ceased its “flattery” of the ICT some time ago. They have substituted it for blackmail about the ICT having to live up “to its responsibilities” (i.e. talk to the IGCL). It is a responsibility we have singularly failed to take on. Their utterly opportunist tie up with Nuevo Curso is political reason enough for exposing them as charlatans after all the criticism they have heaped on the various groups of the CL over time. If you had been paying attention you will have also noticed that the Workers’ Group of Detroit (without any contact with us since we wrote to confirm that the ICC’s attack on Gaizka was factually correct) have now broken with the IGCL/NC/WO/GCCF coterie but for political reasons (their non-proletarian denunciation of the demonstrations and riots in the US). But whilst we are at it these are not the only people indulging in slander. Apparently young sympathisers tell us there is a group of ICC sympathisers who slander the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. As they often express opinions which the ICC would not share we do not know how close they are to you but we have not responded for the same reason as always.  They can make their empty comments in a vacuum – our response would be to dignify their youthful games. There is more serious work to be done.

Internationalist greetings

ICT

—————————————

10.07.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email of 17th June. We would like to reply to some of your points in a further letter.

Here we would just like to express our concern when we read in your email that a group of ICC sympathisers has been slandering the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. We cannot find anything about this and would like to have more information from you about it, as we intend to put a stop to any such behaviour.

We were saddened to hear of the tragic death of an ex-sympathiser of the ICT.

Fraternally,

———————————————

July 2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

We have discussed the question of your sympathisers but think that this is an issue for you and will leave you to make your own enquiries with people who are known to you. We have also written to the IGCL to state that whilst we disagree with your decision to ignore our advice over the murky past of comrade Gaizka we also consider their decision to come to his defence as an indication of their failure to defend the CL and have closed all correspondence with them. We also wish to make it quite clear to you that this is our final communication on the IGCL and Emancipación (but we should say we regard both these organisations, and their acolytes, as the product of your methodology). We have nothing to gain from anything other than making a political defence of the CL as and when appropriate. Any future correspondence from you on this issue will be ignored.

Internationalist greetings

——————————

12.08.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Here are some responses to your email of 23.07.20.

As we mentioned in our last letter our own investigations into the apparent slanders of the ICT by ICC sympathisers hadn’t turned up any evidence. If you do not want to specify your sources for this can you please help us by telling us the nature of the slanders in order that we can get to the heart of the problem?

Regarding your letter to the IGCL we of course agree with you that their defence of Nuevo Corso is an attack on the Communist Left. Your private letter to the IGCL about the falsity of NC however still leaves the public to take the latter as an authentic communist left group. A public exposure of this pretence is essential. 

Furthermore while you are cutting off relations with the IGCL in private, this still leaves the public to consider the IGCL as a real revolutionary group.

We also note from your description of your letter to the IGCL that, while you criticised the ICC to them for making the nature of these groups publicly known, you do not seem to have expressed your solidarity with the ICC against the slanders of the IGCL - a declaration we have been asking from you throughout our recent correspondence, to no avail.

We are puzzled by your idea that the ICC shares the same “methodology” as n and the IGCL. Our methodology is diametrically opposed on class lines to that of these two bogus groups. Our goal and method is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the international working class; theirs is to overthrow the existing revolutionary organisations on behalf of the bourgeoisie. We fail to see any convergence between these two basic methods.

You say you will ignore any further correspondence from us on this topic. However, ignoring the problem of these groups won’t make it go away. They will continue on their destructive course, and the genuine Communist Left will continue to be confronted with the need to publicly close ranks against them in order to defend the integrity of the Communist Left camp.

Fraternally

————————————

Commentary

By trying to justify their refusal to denounce the pernicious role of adventurers, the ICT justifies the unjustifiable!

The argument of the ICT presented in its letters is, in essence, that the ICC exposure of adventurers like Gaizka, and the unmasking of their clearly anti-proletarian project, is creating more damage to the Communist Left than the adventurer himself. The exposure of the crime is supposedly worse than the crime itself. This is clearly absurd, implying:

• That we can’t expose adventurers like Gaizka, or even be associated with such an exposure, because it would be to argue ad hominem, ie personally. Yet the ICT has accepted that the nature of his political project or ‘cult’ as they call it, is precisely constructed around his personal ambition as a ‘guru’. To denounce him is to make a political denunciation, which in no way implies a purely personal attack on Gaizka, unconnected to the political project in question. In any case the ICT’s promise, announced in its message of 4.5.20, to make its own political critique of Communia/NC/Emancipación has not yet been fulfilled.
• That the offence is not very serious, and will disappear over time. This is not coherent with the fact that the ICT argues elsewhere that Gaizka constitutes a “dangerous trap” for new communist militants. Two years after this correspondence began his well-resourced project is still running.
• Refusing to see that it is a vital activity for communist organisations to warn other communists against enemies who appear in their midst, as if they didn’t exist, in the desperate hope that they will disappear by themselves.

Such an approach by the ICT, which is already an aberration, leads to other aberrations:

• There is still no public statement of position by the ICT on Communia/Nuevo Corso/Emancipación despite promising to do so in a message of 18.10. 2019.
• The ICT’s argumentation, or lack of it, necessarily ends up publicly excusing the attacks of adventurers and parasites on the Communist Left while damning the ICC for bringing its attention to such enemies.

The ICT is to a large extent aware of the threat posed by adventurers and parasites, as clearly shown by their own letters. But the ICT prefers to do this ‘privately’ while preserving a discreet public silence on the existence of this dangerous phenomenon due to the illusion of achieving a “significant influence” in the life of the working class, and to preserve its fishing permit in the murky pools of adventurism and parasitism.

Furthermore, the ICT harbours a misunderstanding of the specific function of Gaizka: to undermine the ground for the constitution of the future party. The target of Gaizka’s group and its parasitic defenders is not the working class as a whole - it has no political programme for example – but to prevent the germination of the future party and the evolution of new militants in particular. Thus, the Gaizka fraud has had a “significant impact” at the level of the political minorities of the working class, in the USA in particular.

This dual, contradictory approach, inevitably creates the illusion on the one hand that adventurers and parasites are genuine communists, while on the other hand a real organisation of the Communist Left, the ICC, by exposing the fraud, is only “throwing mud”. According to the twisted logic of the ICT, the real enemy is the ICC!

A false vison of the tasks of revolutionaries in the present period

To better understand why the ICT has ended up in this contradictory and harmful conclusion, look at their idea that Gaizka’s “cultish grouplet” has “no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class.” This is true, but the lack of widespread influence in the working class is unfortunately also true of the authentic Communist Left. This is because the general level of the class struggle is still a long way from making such a level of activity possible. In this context, imagining that it is possible to obtain “a significant influence on the life of the class” can only have pernicious consequences. In particular, it can lead to search for such influence by ‘adapting’ the organisation’s political positions and form of intervention to the level of consciousness in the working class at a given moment – in other words making concessions to the illusions and mystifications that weigh on the class, adopting an opportunist approach whose basic characteristic lies in the search for immediate ‘success’ at the expense of the future struggle of the proletariat. And this opportunism can also impact on organisational questions, as shown by the combat of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party. In sum, withdrawing from the defence of political organisational principles by considering them to be “internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left”, is a disengagment from the public defence of the authentic communist organisations that really do exist.

Thus, by maintaining the illusion (for itself and a milieu around it) in the possibility of gaining a significant influence on the proletariat today, the ICT is creating an obstacle to the solid political and organisational preparation for the real future party which will indeed have a “significant influence” on the life of the working class. This illusion is accompanied by the pretension that it is currently in direct competition with the left of capital for winning an influence over the class[11]. This false idea tends to reinforce its opportunist battle to gain “influence”.

The questions and disagreements raised about the attitude needed towards parasitism and adventurism calls for a discussion about the systematic defence of revolutionary organisational principles in the preparation of the future communist party. For the ICC, without the common action of revolutionary organisations for such a principled approach, without a constant combat against opportunism, there is no basis for the successful formation of future generations of communist militants and of the future communist party.

Wars are proliferating and plunging more and more regions of the world into the most appalling barbarity: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Ukraine, Gaza... behind this growing list of countries at war, millions of people are falling, going hungry or trying to flee. Tomorrow, it could be the turn of Kosovo or Taiwan.

Gangsterism also strikes and ravages. In northern Mexico, Venezuela and Haiti, the drugs and prostitution trade is flourishing, leaving a sinister trail of mass murder and rape in its wake.

Poverty is growing everywhere. In a country like the UK, a large proportion of the population no longer has access to dental care. A terrible expression has appeared in the press to describe these people, who number in their millions: "the toothless".

To put it in a nutshell: capitalism threatens the survival of humanity. If the working class does not succeed in overthrowing capitalism, this decadent system will descend into barbarism and death. The only alternative is world proletarian revolution. To achieve this, our class must develop its struggles, its organisation and its consciousness on an international scale.

Since the summer of 2022, under the blows of the economic crisis, the working class has begun to react. The strikes that broke out in the United Kingdom heralded the return of the proletariat to the terrain of struggle. In two years, strikes described by the media as "historic" have taken place in France, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Iceland, Bangladesh... But this is only the beginning, the first step. The proletariat faces a very long road to revolution. It will have to learn through struggle how to unite and organise, how to spot the traps set by the bourgeoisie, how to identify its "false friends": the trade unions and the organisations of the left of capital, which will do everything they can to sabotage the revolutionary process from the "inside". The bourgeoisie is a Machiavellian class; it is even the most intelligent ruling class in history. To preserve its privileges, it will be prepared to commit any crime, any manipulation, any lie. The working class will have to raise its level of consciousness and organisation to match this adversary. What's more, it will have to raise its level of consciousness and organisation to the level of the new society to be established, a world society which, in time, will be classless and borderless, without exploitation or competition, without a state. The proletarian revolution is undoubtedly the highest step humanity has ever taken.

The role of revolutionary organisations

"The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves" (Karl Marx, Statutes of the International Workingmen's Association, 1864).

"In its struggle against the united power of the possessing classes, the proletariat can only act as a class by constituting itself into a political party [...]. This constitution of the proletariat as a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and its supreme end: the abolition of classes". (Idem).

Since then, this formulation has been made more precise through the historic experience of the proletariat which has shown that the political party will take the form of a minority, the party of the vanguard of the class.

The fundamental difficulty of the socialist revolution lies in this complex and contradictory situation: on the one hand, the revolution can only be realised as the conscious action of the great majority of the working class; on the other hand, this realisation comes up against the conditions imposed on the workers in capitalist society, conditions which constantly prevent and destroy the workers' realisation of their historic revolutionary mission. Left to their own internal development, workers' struggles against the conditions of capitalist exploitation can lead at most to explosions of revolt, reactions which are absolutely insufficient for social transformation. To go beyond the experiences of particular struggles, to accumulate the historical experience of the proletariat, to defend and propagate awareness of the aims of the movement, is the crucial political role of the revolutionary party. The party draws its theoretical substance, not from the contingencies and particularism of the economic position of the workers, but from the movement of historical possibilities and necessities. Only the intervention of this factor enables the class to move from revolt to revolution. The party is the indispensable weapon of the proletariat for the final victory, for the success of its revolution.

For the moment, this party cannot exist: the working class is too far from a revolutionary process, its consciousness and its capacity to organise are too weak. The most determined and clearest fraction of the proletariat, that which is conscious of its general and historical aims, can only be grouped together in the form of small revolutionary organisations.

These small revolutionary organisations nevertheless have an immense and crucial role to play in the future. They must organise themselves on the basis of the historical interests of the proletariat in order to give a clear political orientation to the movement and actively promote the development of class consciousness. They must also work now to prepare the foundation of the future party. To do this, they must constantly check the truth of their analyses in the face of changing events, debate and develop their positions, draw essential lessons from the history of the workers' movement, fight against the penetration of the dominant ideology, and defend the forces and positions around which the future party will be built.

The responsibility of the Communist Left

History has shown how difficult it is to build a party that lives up to its responsibilities, a task that requires many and varied efforts. Above all, it requires the greatest possible clarity on programmatic issues and on the principles of organisational functioning, a clarity that is necessarily based on all the past experience of the workers' movement and its political organisations.

At every stage in the history of the workers' movement, the Left has distinguished itself as the best representative of this clarity, making a decisive contribution to the future of the struggle. "It was the Left that ensured continuity between the First and Second Internationals through the Marxist current, in opposition to the Proudhonian, Bakuninist, Blanquist and other corporatist currents. Between the Second and Third Internationals, it was again the Left, which led the fight first against reformist tendencies and then against the 'social-patriots', which ensured continuity during the First World War by forming the Communist International. From the Third International, it was still the Left, and in particular the Italian and German Lefts, which took up and developed the revolutionary gains trampled underfoot by the social-democratic and Stalinist counter-revolution". ("The continuity of the political organisations of the proletariat: the class nature of social democracy", International Review No. 50).

The world communist party, which will be in the vanguard of tomorrow's proletarian revolution, will have to draw on the experience and thinking of all these left currents, of all this historical parentage. It is precisely by being rooted in this tradition, by always striving to respect the essential principles of these currents that, faced with the litmus test of the Second World War, the Communist Left was the only one to remain faithful to internationalism.

Groups of the Communist Left sprang up as early as 1920 in various countries (Russia, Germany, Italy, Holland, Great Britain, Belgium, etc.). They did not all reach the same level of clarity and coherence, and the majority of them were unable to resist the terrible capitalist counter-revolution. They disappeared as victims of the combined action of Stalinist and fascist repression, demoralisation and confusion. In the 1930s, only the most coherent groups managed to survive, and among them the Italian Communist Left was the clearest and most consistent. The Internationalisme group (publication of the Gauche Communiste de France, 1945-52), which grew out of the latter, achieved a critical and coherent synthesis of the widely dispersed work of the various groups of the Communist Left:

• The nature of the USSR: there was nothing proletarian or "socialist" about the Russian state, which expressed no continuity with the October Revolution of 1917, but was, on the contrary, its executioner. The USSR was as capitalist as the United States or Great Britain, a caricature of the universal trend towards state capitalism (total nationalisation of the economy).
• The decadence of capitalism: the system instituted in the USSR was in no way a new mode of production or a more "progressive" form of capitalism but, on the contrary, an expression of the historical decadence of capitalism marked by an infernal chain of two world wars, in between which there was with the most profound economic recession in history and followed by the return of the world economic crisis at the end of the 1960s which has only deepened ever since. Thus, for Internationalisme, the "liberal" capitalism of the West and the extreme state-controlled capitalism of the East constitute the two facets of the same decadent system which the proletariat will have to destroy on both sides.
• "Democracy" and "liberal" capitalism: Internationalisme was clear that the alternative was not between "democracy" and fascism, or between "democracy" and Stalinist totalitarianism, but between capitalist barbarism and world communist revolution, i.e. between the capitalist state, whether totalitarian or "democratic", and the world dictatorship of workers' councils establishing the direct and collective power of the working masses. Internationalisme clarified the fact that "liberal" capitalism in the West was a more efficient and subtle form of state capitalism. Most production was channelled into the war economy but with greater flexibility, using the "free" market through all sorts of manipulations (fiscal, monetary, through credit...).
• The autonomy of the proletariat, the struggle for communist revolution: from all these positions, Internationalisme deduced that capitalism could no longer offer real and lasting improvements in the living conditions of the proletariat. The proletariat's task was to fight for communist revolution. The necessary struggles of resistance against exploitation could no longer be situated in the context of obtaining political and economic reforms within capitalism (as was the case at the time of the Second International, when such objectives were valid insofar as they were conceived as a necessary historical stage and not as the ultimate end of the working class struggle), but in the perspective of a revolutionary offensive for the destruction of capitalism in all countries and the establishment of communism on a world scale. To be able to assert its own perspective, the proletariat had to maintain at all times its class autonomy, without which it would be used as a plaything of the various capitalist gangs in conflict and subjected to the most ferocious exploitation and the most brutal repression. In the same way, the trade union and parliamentary channels, by chaining it to capitalism, reduced it again and again to impotence, division and defeat. The proletariat had to assert itself, including in its immediate struggles, on the terrain of direct mass struggle, of its solidarity and class unity, of the intransigent defence of its demands against the interests of national capital.

These positions of the Communist Left are the necessary starting point for the whole revolutionary process to come. As an expression of the historic struggle of the proletariat, its reappropriation by the working masses is the indispensable condition for its struggle to bring about a revolutionary solution to the hopeless crisis of world capitalism. The future world party, if it wants to make a real contribution to the communist revolution, will have to base its programme and its methods of action on the experience and heritage of the Communist Left.

We thus take up the words of our predecessors: "The historical continuity between the old and the new class party can only be achieved through the channel of the Fraction, whose historical function consists of taking political stock of experience, sifting through Marxist criticism the errors and inadequacies of yesterday's programme, extracting from experience the political principles which complete the old programme and are the condition for a progressive position of the new programme, an indispensable condition for the formation of the new party. At the same time as the Fraction is a place of ideological fermentation, the laboratory of the revolutionary programme in the period of retreat, it is also the camp where the cadres are forged, where the human material is formed, the militants of the future party". (L'Etincelle, paper of the GCF, n° 10, January 1946). 

That's why, in response to the war in Ukraine, the ICC, together with Internationalist Voice and the Istituto Onorato Damen, launched a joint appeal to all the organisations of the Communist Left. Drawing on the legacy of the Zimmerwald conference, the ICC's aim with this appeal was not only to raise the internationalist banner but also, more generally, to defend the historical lineage, principles and functioning of the Communist Left. This Appeal was intended to be, and is, a milestone on the road to revolution and the Party. A milestone to prepare for the future.

The necessary fight against opportunism

This Common Appeal was rejected by the rest of the Communist Left. The various "International Communist Parties" (Programma Comunista, Il Partito Comunsita, Le Prolétaire/Il Comunista) ignored it out of claimed sectarianism. As for the second most important organisation of the Communist Left, the Internationalist Communist Tendency, it preferred the adventure of the No war but the class war committees to this call because, in its view, it was "necessary to look beyond the 'Communist Left'".

The refusal to work together with other groups of the Communist Left defending the historic principles of this current in favour of collaboration with the forces of the "marsh" (the confused zone between proletarian positions and those of the left of the bourgeoisie) has a name: opportunism. This policy is particularly dangerous because it entails the liquidation of all the organisational lessons of which the Communist Left claims to be the fruit. It turns its back on the main responsibility that falls to us, that of preparing the construction of a future party armed with the best of the tradition of the workers' movement, of the struggle of all its successive lefts.

This opportunist dynamic of the ICT leads it today to sweep aside the vital lessons of the struggle of the marxist current within the First international, against the deadly poison of political parasitism represented by the Bakunin tendency, in order to justify its opening up to the current parasitical groups. Worse still, it no longer hesitates to openly collude with an organisation that pursues a systematic policy of snitching, such as the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL, ex-FICCI).

Opportunism, which has historically constituted the most serious danger for proletarian organisations, is an expression of the penetration of foreign, bourgeois and above all petty-bourgeois ideologies. It is distinguished by the fact that it tends to sacrifice the general and historical interests of the proletariat for the benefit of illusory immediate and circumstantial "successes". One of the driving forces of opportunism is impatience, which expresses the vision of a stratum of society condemned to impotence within itself and which has no future on the scale of history. "Opportunism wants to take account of social conditions that have not yet reached maturity. It wants 'immediate success'. Opportunism does not know how to wait, and that is why great events always seem unexpected to it", wrote Trotsky in 1905.

Opportunism is a deadly poison that constantly tries to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionary organisations. To resist it, therefore, we have to fight an equally permanent and determined battle, constantly sharpening the weapon of theory:

• After the Paris Commune of 1871, the revolutionary left wing rose up against the growing forces of opportunism embodied by the Lassalian current, by defending the working class’s organisational principles, notably through Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring. After the Erfurt Congress in 1891, Engels wrote: "Things must be pushed forward. Just how necessary this is shown today by the opportunism that is beginning to spread through a large part of the social-democratic press. [...] This forgetfulness of the great essential considerations before the passing interests of the day, this race for ephemeral successes and the struggle that is waged all around, without any concern for the later consequences, this abandonment of the future of the movement which is sacrificed to the present, all this may have honest motives. But it is and remains opportunism. And ‘honest’ opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all".
• Around 1900, the revolutionary left wing stood up against the opportunism that continued to plague the Second International through Bernstein's current or that of the Mensheviks, by means of an uncompromising and profound struggle, as can be seen in Rosa Luxemburg's Social Reform or Revolution, or Lenin's What is to be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. It was during this struggle that Lenin wrote his famous phrase "Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement", the rest of which is less well known: “This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” It was this opportunism that largely explained the future betrayal of the Social Democratic parties when the First World War broke out!
• From the 1920s onwards, the Bolshevik party gradually fell victim to the opportunism it had initially fought so vigorously against. The isolation of the Russian revolution and the rise of counter-revolutionary forces from within were to manifest themselves first and foremost in this opportunism, which spread throughout the Third International. But there too, a revolutionary left wing would lead the fight. This is precisely where our current, the Communist Left, has its roots. Bordiga was at that time the highest representative of this struggle for proletarian organisational principles. This is what he had to say in 1926 to the Executive of the Communist International: "Experience shows that opportunism always enters our ranks under the mask of unity. It is in its interest to influence the largest possible mass, so it always makes its dangerous proposals under the mask of unity"[1].

By shamelessly wallowing in opportunism today, by turning its back on the successive struggles of the revolutionary left wing since Marx and Engels, the ICT is following in a long tradition, one that has always led to disaster. It has pursued this calamitous policy because, until now, it has refused to criticise its original errors, thereby condemning itself to repeating the same opportunist approach over and over again, only worse. When it was founded in 1943, its ancestor, the Internationalist Communist Party (ICP), uncritically accepted into its ranks:

• elements of the minority of the Italian faction that had gone to fight alongside the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War;
• Vercesi and all those who, during the Second World War, had taken part in the Brussels Anti-Fascist Coalition Committee.

To prepare for the construction of the future party, an indispensable weapon for the success of the revolution, the fight against opportunism by the left wing must continue. This is what the publication of this set of articles introduced by the ICC proposes to do. This is an uncompromising political struggle taking place within the revolutionary camp. We therefore call on all our readers to connect with the historical roots of this struggle, to make this tradition and this defence of proletarian organisational principles their own, and to participate in this preparation for the future. We also call on the ICT to make its own this proletarian principle so well expounded by Rosa Luxemburg: "Marxism is a revolutionary world outlook which must always strive for new discoveries, which completely despises rigidity in once-valid theses, and whose living force is best preserved in the intellectual clash of self-criticism and the rough and tumble of history” Luxemburg The Accumulation of Capital, an Anti-Critique, 1915.

Let's recall how, in 1903, Lenin humorously pointed out the ridiculous wounded pride of the future Mensheviks: "The circle spirit and the striking lack of political maturity, which cannot bear the fresh wind of a public debate, appears here in all clarity [...]. Imagine for a moment that such absurdity, that a quarrel such as the complaint of a ‘false accusation of opportunism’ could have arisen in the German party! The organisation and discipline of the proletariat have long since made it possible to forget this vexatious intellectualism [...]. Only the spirit of the most routine circle, with its logic: a punch in the jaw, or a hand to kiss, if you please, could have raised this crisis of hysteria, this vain quarrel and this split in the Party around a 'false accusation of opportunism'. (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Chapter "Innocent victims of a False Accusation of Opportunism").

International Communist Current, March 2024