Resolution adopted by the 6th ICC Congress on Opportunism and centrism in the period of decadence
1) There is a fundamental difference between the evolution of the parties of the bourgeoisie and the evolution of the parties of the working class. The first, because they are the political organs of a ruling class, are able to act within the working class and some of them indeed do this because they are part of the division of labour amongst the political forces of the bourgeoisie, having been given the particular task of mystifying the proletariat, of controlling and derailing its struggle from the inside. To this end, the bourgeoisie prefers to use former organizations of the working class which have gone over to the bourgeois camp.
On the other hand, the inverse situation of a proletarian organization acting inside the camp of the bourgeoisie can never exist. This is the case for the proletariat, as for any oppressed class, because of the place it occupies in history as an exploited class which can never be an exploiting class.
This reality can therefore be summarized in the following succinct affirmations:
-- there can, must, and will always be bourgeois political organizations acting within the proletariat;
-- there can never exist, as the whole historical experience shows, proletarian political parties acting inside the bourgeois camp.
2) This is not only true for structured political parties. It's also true for the divergent political currents which may arise from within these parties. While members of existing political parties can go from one camp to another and this in both directions (from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie and from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat), this can only be on an individual basis. By contrast, the collective passage of a political organism that is already structured or in formation in the existing parties can necessarily only take place in one direction: from parties of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, and never in the opposite direction: from bourgeois parties to the proletariat. That is to say those in no case can a collection of elements deriving from a bourgeois organization evolve towards class positions without a clear break with any idea of maintaining a continuity with their previous collective activity in the camp of the counter-revolution. In other words: within organizations of the proletariat, there can be formed and can develop tendencies which are moving towards the political positions of the bourgeoisie and which spread bourgeois ideology within the working class. But this is absolutely excluded in organizations of the bourgeoisie.
3) The explanation of the above points resides in the essential fact that the class which is economically dominant in society is also dominant on the political and ideological level. This fact also explains:
-- the influence exerted by the ideology of the bourgeoisie on the immense majority of the working class, an ideology from which, up until the revolution, the majority can only disengage itself in a very partial manner;
-- the vicissitudes and difficulties of the process whereby the class as a whole becomes aware of its interests and above all of its historic being, resulting in the constant movement of its struggles through partial victories and defeats which are expressed in advances and retreats in the extension of its coming to consciousness;
-- the obligatory and ineluctable fact that it is only a small minority of the class which is able to disengage itself sufficiently (but not totally) from the grip of the ruling bourgeois ideology to undertake the systematic and coherent theoretical work, to elaborate the political foundations needed to fertilize the process through which the class becomes conscious, and the development of the immediate and historical struggle of the class;
-- the indispensable and irreplaceable function given to the minorities which the class secretes, a function which cannot be performed by individuals or by little intellectual clubs, but only by elements who have raised themselves to an understanding of the tasks for which the class, in the development of its struggle, has produced them. Only by giving itself a structure, by giving birth to a centralized political organization with a militant activity in the workers' struggle, can this minority, produced by the class, carry out its function of being an active factor, a crucible in which and with which the class forges the weapons it needs for its ultimate victory;
-- the reason why opportunist and centrist currents can manifest themselves within the exploited, revolutionary class and in the organizations of this class, and only in this class and its organizations. In this sense, to talk about opportunism and centrism (in relation to the proletariat) in the bourgeoisie makes no sense, because a ruling class will never willingly renounce its privileges in favour of the class it exploits (this is precisely what makes it a ruling class).
4) There are two sources underlying the appearance of opportunist and centrist tendencies in the working class: the pressure and influence of bourgeois ideology and the difficult process of the maturation of consciousness in the proletariat. This is expressed in particular by the main characteristic of opportunism, which consists of isolating, separating the final goals of the proletarian movement from the means which lead to them, ending up opposing one to another, whereas in fact any calling into question of the means results in a denial of the final goal, just as a any calling into question of the final goal tends to compromise the proletarian character of the means used to attain it. Since these are permanent elements in the historic confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it's clear that opportunism and centrism are dangers which threaten the class in a permanent way, both in the decadent period and the ascendant period. However, just as these two sources are linked together, they are also linked in the way they affect the movement of the class, to the general evolution of capitalism and the development of its internal contradictions. Because of this, the historic phenomena of opportunism and centrism express themselves in a different manner, with greater or lesser degrees of seriousness, according to moments of this evolution and this development.
5) While the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase, directly posing the necessity of the revolution, is a favourable condition that facilitates the maturation of consciousness in the working class, this maturation is not at all something automatic, mechanical, fated.
The period of the decadence of capitalism sees, on the one hand, the bourgeoisie concentrating all of its power of repression and perfecting its methods for imposing its ideology on the class; on the other hand, the consciousness of the proletariat goes through an important, urgent development, seeing that the historic alternative between socialism or barbarism is posed in an immediate manner, in all its gravity: history does not leave the proletariat an unlimited time. The period of decadence, posing the choice between imperialist war and proletarian revolution, socialism or barbarism, not only does not make opportunism and centrism disappear, but makes the struggle of the revolutionary currents against these tendencies even more sharp and bitter, in keeping with what's at stake in the situation.
6) As history has shown, the open opportunist current, because it situates itself on extreme, clear-cut positions, ends up, at decisive moments, passing definitively and irrevocably into the camp of the bourgeoisie. As for the current which situates itself between the revolutionary left and the opportunist right, a heterogeneous current constantly moving between the two and seeking to reconcile them in the name of an impossible organizational unity, it evolves according to the circumstances and vicissitudes of the struggle of the proletariat.
At the time of the oven betrayal of the opportunist current, if it coincides with a resurgence and upward movement of the class struggle, centrism can at the beginning represent a moment of passage by the working masses towards revolutionary positions. Centrism, as a structured current, organized in the form of a party, is, in favorable circumstances, destined to explode, its majority or a large part of it going over to the newly constituted organization of the revolutionary left, as occurred with the French Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of Italy, and the USPD in Germany in 1920-21, after the first world war and the victorious revolution in Russia.
By contrast, in a situation where the proletariat has gone through a series of major defeats, opening a course towards war, centrism is ineluctably condemned to be caught up in the spokes of the bourgeoisie and to go over to the enemy camp just like the open opportunist current.
With all the necessary firmness, the revolutionary party must be able to understand these two possible directions followed by centrism in different circumstances in order to be able to take up an adequate political attitude towards it. Not to recognize this reality leads to the same aberration as proclaiming the impossibility of the existence of opportunism and centrism within the working class in the period of the decadence of capitalism.
7) Concerning this last ‘theory', the whole history of the 3rd International and the Communist Parties is there to show its inanity, to demonstrate how absurd it is. Not only did opportunism and centrism appear within the revolutionary organization, but, strengthened by the defeats and retreat of the proletariat, centrism succeeded in dominating these parties and, after a merciless struggle over a period of years to beat down the oppositions and fractions of the communist left, in expelling the latter from all the Communist Parties. Having emptied these Parties of any class substance, it turned each one of them into organs of their respective national bourgeoisies.
The ‘theory' of the impossibility of opportunist and centrist currents existing within the proletariat in the period of decadence presupposes, in reality, that there is such a thing as a pure proletariat and pure revolutionary parties, absolutely and forever immunized and protected against any penetrations of bourgeois ideology. Such a ‘theory' is not only an aberration but is based on an abstract, idealist vision of the class and its organizations. It resembles the ‘Coue' method (consoling oneself by saying ‘I'm getting better every day') and resolutely turns its back on marxism. Far from strengthening the revolutionary current, it weakens it by obscuring this real danger which threatens it, by turning its attention away from the indispensable vigilance against this danger.
The ICC must fight with all its energy against such ‘theories' in general, and within its own ranks in particular, because they only permit centrism to camouflage itself behind a radical phraseology, which, by vaunting its programmatic ‘purity', can only isolate revolutionary organizations from the real movement of the struggle of their class.