If there is one struggle that marxist revolutionaries worthy of the name have always fought to the bitter end, even in the most difficult conditions, it is to save their organisation - whether Party or International - from the grip of opportunism, and to prevent it from falling into degeneration, or worse still into betrayal.

This was the method of Marx and Engels in the First International. It was the method of the "lefts" in the Second International. We should remember that Rosa Luxembtirg, Karl Liebknecht and the Spartakists1 took rime to decide on their break with the old party, whether the German Social-Democracy or with the USPD. At best, they hoped to overthrow the opportunist leadership by winning over the majority in the party. At worst, once there was no longer any hope of reconquering the party, they hoped to take as many militants with them when they split. They went on fighting as long as the smallest spark of life remained in the party, and they could still win over the best elements. This has always been the method, the only method, of marxist revolutionaries. Moreover, historical experience has shown that the "lefts, rather than split, have usually resisted to the point where they were themselves excluded by the old party2. Trotsky, for example, spent more than six years of struggle within the Bolsehvik Party before eventually being excluded.

The combat of the "lefts" within the Third International is especially revealing, inasmuch as it was fought during the most terrible period of the workers' movement: that of the longest and most terrible counter-revolution in history, which began at the end of the 1920s. And yet, it was in the midst of this counter-revolutionary situation, this powerful ebb in the workers' movement, that the militants on the left of the Communist International were to undertake an unforgettable struggle. Some amongst them thought it lost from the outset, but this did not daunt them, or prevent them from going into combat3. And so, while there remained the slightest hope of redressing the party and the Cl, they considered it their duty to try to save what they could from the grip of a triumphant Stalinism. Today, this struggle is at best minimised and at worst completely forgotten by those elements who leave their organisation at the first disagreement, or because of their "wounded honour". This attitude is an offence to the working class, and clearly expresses the contempt of the petty bourgeois for the hard struggle of generations of workers and revolutionaries, sometimes at the cost of their lives, which these gentlemen consider perhaps to be beneath their notice.

The Italian Left not only put tins method into practice, it enriched it politically and theoretically. On the basis of this heritage, the ICC has developed the question on several occasions, and has shown when and how it can happen that the party betrays the class4. An organisation's positions on imperialist war and proletarian revolution allow us to determine whether or not it has irrevocably betrayed the class. As long as the organisation's treason is not yet evident, as long as the party has not passed, arms and baggage, into the enemy camp, the role of true revolutionaries is to fight, tooth and nail, to keep it within the proletarian camp. This is what the left did in the CI, in the most difficult conditions of utterly triumphant counter-revolution.

This policy is still valid today. It is all the easier to undertake today, in a course towards class confrontations, in an altogether easier situation for the struggle of the proletariat and of revolutionaries. In the present historic context, where neither revolution nor world war are on the agenda, it is much less likely that a proletarian organisation would betray5. Any conscious and consistent revolutionary should therefore apply the same method if he thinks his own organisation is degenerating: in other words, he should fight within the organisation to redress it. There should be no question of adopting a petty bourgeois attitude of trying to "save one's own soul", which is the tendency of some armchair revolutionaries whose individualist or contestationist tendencies readily attract them to the sirens of political parasitism. This is why, all those who leave their organisation, accusing it of all manner of faults, and without having fought the fight out to the bitter end - as in the case of RV for example6 - are irresponsible, and deserve to be treated like poor little unprincipled petty bourgeois.

The long struggle of the left in the Communist International

The crisis in the communist movement emerged into the broad light of day during 1923. A few events demonstrated this: after the Third Congress of the Cl, will revealed the growing weight of opportunism, and after repression was unleashed in Russia on Kronstadt, while strikes developed notably in Petrograd and Moscow. At the same time, the Workers' Opposition was created within the Russian Communist Party.

Trotsky summed up the general feeling when he declared that "The fundamental reason for the crisis of the October Revolution lay in the delay of the world revolution"7. And indeed, the delay in the world revolution weighed heavily on the entire workers' movement. The latter was also disoriented by the state capitalist measures taken in Russia under the NEP (New Economic Policy). The latest defeats suffered by the proletariat in Germany put off still further any hope of an extension of the revolution in Europe. Revolutionaries, Lenin among them8, began to doubt the outcome. In I 923, the Russian revolution was being strangled economically by a capitalism that dominated the planet. On this level, the situation of the USSR was catastrophic, and the problem posed to the leadership was whether the NEP should be maintained in its entirety or corrected through help to industry.

The beginning of Trotsky's struggle

Trotsky began his fight9 within the CPSU Politburo, where a majority wanted to maintain the status quo. He disagreed on the question of the economic situation in Russia, and on the CPSU's internal organisation. The divergence was kept within the Politburo, to avoid breaking party unity. It was only made public in the autumn of 1923, in Trotsky's book The New Course10.

Other expressions of opposition also appeared:

- A letter of 15th October 1923, addressed to the Politburo and signed by 46 well-known personalities, including left and opposition communists (Piatakov and Preobrazhensky, but also Ossinski, Sapronov, Smirnov, etc). They called for the convocation of a special conference to take the measures demanded by the situation, without waiting for the Congress;

- The creation of the Democratic Centralism group by Sapronov, Smirnov, and others;

- The reactivation of the Workers' Opposition with Shliapnikov;

- The creation of the Workers' Group of Miasnikov, Kuznezov and others (see the "Manifeste du groupe ouvrier du PCUS", February 1923, published in Invariance no.6, 1975).

At the same time, Bordiga, writing from prison, made his first serious criticism of the CI, in particular on the question of the "United Front", in his "Manifesto to all the comrades of the PCI". On the basis of this disagreement, he asked to be relieved of all his functions as a leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), so as not to have to defend positions with which he disagreed11.

Like Trotsky, Bordiga's attitude was cautious, with a view to developing a more effective political struggle. Two years later, he explained the key to his method in a letter to Korsch (26th October 1926): "Zinoviev and Trotsky are men with a great sense of realism; they have understood that we must still suffer the blows without going onto the offensive". This is how revolutionaries act: with patience. They are capable of conducting a long struggle to arrive at their goal. They know how to suffer blows, to advance cautiously, and above all to work, to draw tile lessons for the future struggles of the working class.

This attitude is a million miles removed from that of the "Sunday revolutionaries”, greedy for any immediate success, or of our "armchair revolutionaries", interested only in "saving their own souls", like an RV who has run away from his responsibilities while complaining all the time that the ICC during the latest internal debates in which he took part has subjected him to a fate worse than Stalin inflicted on the left opposition! Quite apart from its slanderous nature, such an accusation would be laughable were it not so serious. And nobody who knows anything about the left Opposition and its tragic end will believe such a fairytale for an instant.

The crisis of 1925-26

The period that followed the CI's Fifth Congress was characterised by:

- The continued "Bolshevisation" of the CPs, and what has been called the "turn to the right" of the CI. The aim of Stalin and his henchmen was to eliminate the leadership of the French and German parties in particular, in other words those of Treint and Ruth Fischer, which had been Zinoviev's spearhead at the 5th Congress, and which were not prepared to make the turn to the right.

- The "stabilisation'' of capitalism, which for the CI's leadership meant that an "adaptation" was necessary. The report on political activity of the Central Committee to the 14th Congress of the CPSU (December 1925) states: "What we took at one time for a brief pause, has been transformed into a whole period".

Outside the debates of the Congress, the most important event for the workers' movement was the disintegration, at the end of 1925, of the triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, which had led the International and the CPSU since Lenin had been forced to give up political activity. Why did this happen? In fact, the triumvirate's existence was tied to the struggle against Trotsky. Once the latter, and the first opposition movement had been reduced to silence, Stalin no longer needed the "old Bolsheviks" around Zinoviev and Kamenev to take control of the Russian state and party, and of the International. The situation of "stabilisation" gave him the opportunity to change tack.

Although opposing Stalin internal Soviet policy, Zinoviev had expressed the same view on world policy: "The first difficulty lies in the adjournment of the world revolution. At the beginning of the October Revolution, we were convinced that the workers of other countries would come to our rescue in a matter of months, or at worst, of years. Today, sadly, the adjournment of the world revolution is an established fact, it is certain that the partial stabilisation of capitalism represents a whole epoch, and that this presents us with a new, much greater and more complex, series of difficulties".

However, while the leadership of the party and the Cl recognised this "stabilisation"; at the same tune they declared that the vision and policies of the Fifth Congress had been correct. They made a political turn-around without saying so openly.

While Trotsky remained silent, the "Italian Left" adopted a more political attitude by continuing the struggle openly. Bordiga raised the Russian question, and the "Trotsky question" in an article in L'Unita.

The left of the PCI created the "Entente Committee" in order to oppose the "Bolshevisation" of the party (March-April 1925). Bordiga did not join the committee immediately, in order to avoid being expelled from the party by the Gramsci leadership. Only in June did he come round to the views of Damen, Fortichiari, and Repossi. The committee, however, was only a means of organisation, not a real fraction. In the end, the "left" was' forced to dissolve the committee to avoid being excluded from the party, despite holding a majority within it.

In Russia, spring 1926 saw the creation of the Unified Opposition around the first opposition of Trotsky, joined by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Krupskaya, with a view to preparing the 15th Congress of the CPSU.

Stalin's repression increased, striking tins time at the new opposition:

- Serebriakov and Preobrazhensky12 were expelled from the Party;

- others (like Miasnikov, of the Workers' Group) were imprisoned, or on the point of being imprisoned (eg Fichelev, director of the national printing works);

- some of the foremost combatants of the Civil War were thrown out of the army (such as Grunstein, the director of the aviation school, and the Ukrainian Okhotnikov):

- throughout the country, in the Urals, Moscow, Leningrad, the GPU had decapitated the Opposition's local organisation by expelling its leaders from the Party.

Then, in October 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Central Committee of the CPSU.

After 1927, the struggle continues

The capitulation of Zinoviev and his supporters did not prevent the Russian left from continuing the struggle. Neither insults, nor threats, nor expulsion from the Party, could stop these true militants of the working class.

"Exclusion from the Party deprives us of our rights as members of the Party, but it cannot relieve us of the obligations undertaken by each one of us when we entered the Communist Party. Although we have been excluded from the Party, we will nonetheless remain faithful to its programme, its traditions, its banner. We will continue to work to strengthen the Communist Party, and its influence in the working class"13.

Rakovsky gives us here a remarkable lesson in revolutionary politics. This is the marxist method, our method. Revolutionaries never leave their organisations unless they are excluded, and even then they continue the fight to redress the organisation.

During the years that followed, the members of the opposition did everything they could to return to the Party. They were in fact convinced that their exclusion would only be temporary.

In January 1928, however, the deportations began. These were extremely severe, since the deportees were guaranteed no means of subsistence in their assigned residence. Insults and worse descended on the families who remained in Moscow, often losing their right to an apartment. Trotsky left for Alma Ata, followed 48 hours later by Rakovsky's departure for Astrakhan. Still the struggle continued, as the Opposition organised in exile.

Despite a succession of new blows, the members of the opposition and their most notable representative, Rakovsky, continued an untiring struggle despite successive capitulations and Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR.

During this period, the GPU cunningly circulated rumours that Stalin would at last implement the policy of the Opposition. This immediately started to break up the Opposition, a process in which Radek seems to have played the part of provocateur14. The weakest gave up. The Stalinists in power were able to detect the waverers, and to determine the best moment either to strike them down or bring them to capitulate.

Faced with these new difficulties, in August 1929 Rakovsky drew up a declaration: "We appeal to the Central Committee (...) asking it to help us return to the Party by releasing the Bolshevik-Leninists (...) and by recalling Trotsky from exile (…) We are entirely ready to give up fraction methods of struggle and to submit to the statutes of the Party, which guarantee every member the right to defend his communist opinions".

This declaration had no chance of being accepted, firstly because it called for Trotsky's return from exile, but also because it was drawn up in such a way as to reveal Stalin's duplicity and responsibility in the whole business. It achieved its aim. and broke the wave of panic in the ranks of the Opposition. The capitulations stopped.

Despite traps, harassment, and assassinations, Rakovsky and the Opposition centre continued the organised struggle until 1934. Most of them continued their resistance in the camps15.

When Rakovsky abandoned the fight, it was not in the same shameful way as Zinoviev and his followers, for example. Bilan, for one, declared clearly: "Comrade Trotsky (...) has published a note where, after declaring that this is not an ideological and political surrender, he writes: "We have repeated many times that the only path to a restoration of the CP in the USSR is the international one. The case of Rakovsky confirms this in a negative, but striking manner". We express our solidarity with this evaluation (...) of the Rakovsky case, since his last act has nothing to do with the shameful surrender of Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others ...".

An international struggle

The struggle also unfolded at a world level, with the creation of an international left opposition following Trotsky's expulsion from the USSR in 1929.

The CI's 6th Plenum (February-March, 1926) saw Bordiga's last appearance at a meeting of the International. In his speech, he declared: "It is desirable that a left resistance should be formed internationally, against suck dangers from the right; but I must say quite openly that this healthy, useful, and necessary reaction cannot and must not appear in the form of manoeuvre and intrigue, or rumours spread in the corridors".

From 1927 onwards, the struggle of the Italian Left was to continue in exile, in France and Belgium, Those militants who had been unable to leave Italy were in prison, or like Bordiga assigned to residence in the islands. The Left fought on within the communist parties and the CI, despite the fact that many of its militants had been expelled. Its basic aim was to intervene within these organisations, in order to correct an avoidable course towards degeneration. "The communist parties are organs where we must struggle to combat opportunism. We are convinced that the situation will force the leadership to reintegrate us as an organised fraction, unless it should lead to the complete eclipse of the communist parties. We consider this extremely unlikely, but in this case also we will still be able to fulfil our duty as communists"16.

This vision reveals the difference between Trotsky and the Italian Left. In April 1928. the latter constituted a fraction, in response to the resolution of the 9th extended plenum of the CI (9th to 25th February, 1928), which decided that it was not possible to remain a member of the CI while supporting the positions of Trotsky. From that moment, the members of the Italian Left could no longer remain as members of the International, and found themselves obliged to form a fraction.

In its founding resolution, the Fraction assigned itself the following tasks:

"1) the reintegration of all those expelled from the International who support the Communist Manifesto and accept the Theses of the 2nd World Congress;

2) the convocation of the 6th World Congress under the chairmanship of Leon Trotsky;

3) putting on the agenda of the 6th World Congress the expulsion of all those elements who declare their solidarity with the resolutions of the 15th Congress of the CPSU17"18.

Thus, while the Russian Opposition hoped to be reintegrated into the Party, the Italian Left aimed above all to survive as a fraction within the CPs and the International, because it thought that their regeneration now depended on the work as a fraction. "By fraction, we understood the organism which develops the cadres who will ensure the continuity of the revolutionary struggle, and which is called to become the protagonist of the future proletarian victory (...) Against us, [the Opposition] declared that we should not have asserted the necessity of the formation of cadres: since the key to events is to be found in the hands of the centrists, and not of the fractions"19.

Today, this policy of repeated demands to reintegrate the CI (which the Italian Left only abandoned after 1928) might seem incorrect, since it failed to halt the degeneration of the communist parties and the International. But without it, the opposition would have been outside the Cl and its isolation even worse. The members of the opposition would have been cut off from the mass of communist militants, and would no longer have been able to influence their evolution20. It was this method, which the Italian Left was to theorise later, which made it possible to maintain the link with the workers' movement, and to transmit the Left's acquisitions to today's Communist Left, of which the ICC is a part.

By contrast, the isolationist policy of a group like Reveil Communiste21 for example, was to prove catastrophic, and the group did not survive it. It was unable to give birth to an organised current. Above all, it confirmed the classic method and principle of the workers' movement: you do not split lightly from a proletarian organisation; nor without having first exhausted all possibilities and used every means, to clarify tile political divergences, and to convince a maximum of healthy elements.

The lessons drawn by the Italian Left

We have not sketched this broad historical tableau for the pleasure of playing the historian, but to draw the necessary lessons for the workers' movement and our class today. This lengthy exegesis teaches us that "the history of the workers' movement is the history of its organisations" as Lenin said. Today, it is the fashion to split, without any principles, from an organisation for trivial, and to create a new one on the same programmatic foundations. Without having subjected the organisation's programme and practice to a searching critique, it is declared to be degenerating. A brief reminder of the history of the Third International shows us what should be the true attitude of revolutionaries. Unless we have the pretension that revolutionary organisations are unnecessary, or that an individual can discover, all by himself, everything that the organisations of the past have bequeathed to us. We have no such pretension. Without the theoretical and political work of the Italian Left, neither the ICC nor the other groups of the Communist Left (the IBRP and the various PC Is) would exist today.

Obviously, if we identify with the attitude of the Opposition and the Italian Left, we do not do so entirely with the conceptions of the Opposition and of Trotsky.

By contrast, we agree with these ideas put forward by Bilan at the beginning of the 1930s:

"It is perfectly true that the role of the fractions is above all one of educating cadres through lived events, and thanks to a rigorous confrontation of the meaning of these events (...) Without the work of the fractions, the Russian Revolution would have been impossible. Without the fractions, Lenin himself would have remained a bookworm, and would not have become a revolutionary leader.

The fractions are thus the only historical places where the proletariat continues to work for its class organisation. From 1928 to this day, comrade Trotsky has completely neglected this work of construction of the fractions, and consequently has failed to contribute to creating the real conditions for the mass movement"22.

Similarly, we also agree with what the Italian Left had to say about the loss of political organisations during a period of historical reflux of the proletariat (in their case a course towards war during the 1930s), which is not, of course, the case today:

"The death of the Communist International springs from the extinction of its junction: the CI's death knell was rung by the victory of fascism in Germany; this event has historically exhausted its junction, and has demonstrated the ftrst positive result of the centrist policy.

The victory of fascism in Germany means that events are moving in the opposite direction to the revolution, towards world war.

“The Party does not cease to exist, even after the death of the International. The Party does not die, it betrays"23.

All those who, today, declare their agreement with the positions and principles of the Italian Left, and who accuse an organisation of degeneration, have the duty and responsibility to do everything to halt this dynamic and stop it turning to betrayal, as the comrades of Bilan did before them.

But the Italian Left, in criticising Trotsky, also criticised all those unprincipled individuals (or those who did not want to recognise the course of history), who could only think of building new organisations outside those that existed already, or - as we see with the development of parasitism today - of destroying those that they had just left:

"Similarly, as far as the foundation of new parties is concerned [here the Italian Left was thinking of Trotsky, who in 1933 proposed the formation of new parties], the sportsmen of the "great action", instead of building the organisation for political action (...), have made a lot of noise on the necessity for losing not an instant in setting to work (...).

It is obvious that demagogy and ephemeral success are on the side of sport, and not of revolutionary work"24.

We would remind all these fine gentlemen, these new "sportsmen", these irresponsible founders of new sects, these righters of wrongs and of parties who thunder their denunciation of the existing proletarian organisations, of the patient revolutionary work of the Opposition, and above all of the Italian Left during the 1920s and 1930s, to save their organisations and prepare the cadres for the future party, rather than quitting their organisation to "save" themselves.

OR

"Even more than in the economic sphere, the chaos that characterises the period of decomposition exerts its effects on the political relations between states. At the time when the eastern bloc collapsed, ending the system of alliances that emerged from the second world war, the ICC pointed out:

- that, even if this was not realisable in the immediate, this situation put on the agenda the formation of new blocs, one led by the USA, the other by Germany;

- that, in the immediate, it would unleash all the conflicts which the "Yalta order" had kept in a framework "acceptable" to the world's two gendarmes.

Since then, this tendency towards "every man for himself", towards chaos in the relations between states, with its succession of circumstantial and ephemeral alliances, has not been called into question. Quite the contrary. Very soon the tendency towards "every man for himself" predominated over the tendency towards the reconstitution of stable alliances that could prefigure future imperialist blocs, and this was to multiply and aggravate military confrontations" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 12th congress of the ICC, published in International Review no.90).

This is how the ICC, at its 12th congress, defined its vision of the world situation at the imperialist level, a vision which has been illustrated and confirmed on numerous occasions in recent months. The growing instability of the capitalist world has been expressed in particular through a multiplication of murderous conflicts all over the planet. This aggravation of capitalist barbarism is above all the work of the very same great powers who never stop promising us a world of "peace and prosperity" but whose increasingly acute and open rivalries are costing humanity more and more dearly in terms of death, poverty and terror.

Because" since the end of the division of the world into two blocs, the USA has been faced with a permanent challenge to its authority by its former allies" (ibid), it has had to wage a "massive counter-offensive" against the latter and against their imperialist interests in the past period, notably in ex-Yugoslavia and Africa. Despite this, its former allies continue to defy the US, even in its private hunting grounds like the Middle East and Latin America. We cannot deal here with all the parts of the world which are suffering the effects of the tendency towards "every man for himself” and the exacerbation of imperialist rivalries between the great powers. We will only look at a few situations which clearly illustrate this analysis and which have latterly seen some significant developments.

Black Africa: French interests under fire

In the resolution quoted above, we asserted that the world's leading power "has managed to inflict on the country which has defied it most openly, France, a very serious reverse in its own "hunting ground" of Africa". This assertion was based on the evident fact that "after eliminating French influence in Rwanda, it is now France's main bastion on the continent, Zaire, which is about to slip from its grasp with the collapse of the Mobutu regime under the blows of the Kabila "rebellion ", which has received massive support from Rwanda and Uganda, ie from the US".

Since then, the Kabila's hordes have ejected the Mobutu clique and taken over in Kinshasa. In this victory, and in particular in the monstrous massacres of civilian populations which accompanied it, the direct and active role played by the American state, notably through the numerous "advisers" it put at Kabila's disposal, is today an open secret. Yesterday it was French imperialism which armed and advised the Hutu gangs who were responsible for the massacres in Rwanda, in order to destabilise the pro-US Kigali regime; today Washington is doing the same against French interests, through Kabila's Tutsi "rebels".

Zaire has thus passed exclusively into the hands of the US. France has lost an essential pawn, which signifies its complete eviction from the region of the "great lakes".

Moreover, this situation has rapidly led to a chain-reaction of instability in nearby countries which are still under French influence. The authority and credibility of France has suffered a major blow in the region and the US is trying to draw maximum profit from this. Thus, for several weeks, Congo-Brazzaville has been ravaged by the war between the last two presidents, even though both of them were creatures of France. The various efforts to mediate by Paris have met with no success. In the Central African Republic, a country which is now falling into a state of bloody chaos, this same impotence is being revealed. Thus, despite two very muscular military interventions and the creation of an "African Intervention Force" under its control, French imperialism still hasn't managed to impose order in the region. Even more serious is the fact that the Central African president Ange Patasse, another creature of France, is now threatening to run after American aid, an act of defiance towards his current patron. This loss of credit is now starting to spread throughout black Africa, including France's most faithful pawns. More generally, French influence is waning all over the continent, as can be seen for example by the recent annual summit of the Organisation of African Unity, where the two major French initiatives were rejected:

- one concerning the recognition of the new power in Kinshasa, which Paris wanted to delay and submit to various conditions. Under the pressure of the US and its African allies, Kabila has not only won immediate recognition but also economic support in order to "reconstruct the country";

- another concerning the nomination of a new leadership of the OAU: France's candidate was abandoned by his "friends" and had to withdraw his candidature before the vote.

French imperialism is currently suffering a series of reverses at the hands of the USA, and this is a decline of historic proportions in what was once its backyard. "This is a particularly severe punishment for France (...) and it is intended to serve as an example for all the other countries tempted to imitate the latter's stance of permanent defiance"(ibid).

However, despite its decline, French imperialism still has cards to play to defend its interests and reply to the American offensive. To this end it has begun a strategic redeployment of its military forces in Africa. If on this level, as on many others, France is a long way from equality with Washington, this in no way means that it will simply fold its arms. At the very least, it is certain that it will make a real nuisance of itself in order to create difficulties for American policy. The African populations have not sacrificed the last of their blood in the interests of rival capitalist gangsters.

Algeria: behind the massacres, the great powers' sordid interests

Algeria is another country hit by the full force of world capitalism's decomposition, another battleground for the ferocious rivalries of the great powers. For over five years this country has been sinking into an ever more barbaric and bloody chaos. The endless reprisals and massacres of the civilian population, the innumerable outrages which have now reached the country's capital, keep Algeria in a daily state of horror. Since 1992, the beginning of what the media hypocritically call "the Algerian crisis", there is no doubt that the figure of 100,000 killed has been exceeded. If ever a population, and thus a proletariat, has been taken hostage in a war between bourgeois cliques, it's the population of Algeria. It is clear today that those who carry out the daily assassinations, those who are responsible for the death of all these thousands of men, women and children, are the armed bands in the pay of the different warring camps:

- on the one hand, the Islamists, whose hardest and most fanatical faction is the GIA, recruit their forces from a decomposed youth deprived of any future (owing to the dramatic economic situation in Algeria which has thrown the majority of the population into unemployment, poverty and hunger), and then pushes them into the most profound criminality. Al Wasat, the journal of the Saudi bourgeoisie which comes out in London, recognises that "this youth was at first a motor used by the FIS to scare all those who stood in the way of its march to power", but is now more and more escaping its control;

- the Algerian state itself, which is more and more clearly being exposed as being implicated in many of the massacres it attributes to the "Islamic terrorists". The testimonies gathered after the massacre in Rais, a suburb of Algiers (between 200 and 300 deaths) at the end of August are proof, if proof were needed, that the Zeroual regime is anything but innocent: "This lasted from 22.30 to 02.30. The butchers took all the time they needed (...) No help arrived. The security forces were, however, very close by. The first to arrive this morning were the firemen" (quoted in Le Monde). It is clear today that a good part of the carnage perpetrated in Algeria is the work either of the state security forces or the "self defence militias" armed and controlled by these forces. Contrary to what the regime would have us believe, these militias do not have the job of "ensuring the safety of the villages"; they are a means for the state to patrol the population, eliminate opponents and impose order through terror. Faced with this frightful situation, "world opinion", ie that of the big western powers, has begun to express its "emotion".

Thus, when the general secretary of the UN Kofi Annan tried to encourage "tolerance and dialogue" and called for "an urgent solution", Washington, which claimed to be "horrified" by the massacres, immediately gave him its support. The French state, while also manifesting its great compassion, stressed that it" could not interfere in Algeria's affairs". The hypocrisy exhibited by the great powers is staggering but it is less and less capable of masking their responsibility for the horror that has descended on this country. Through various bourgeois Algerian factions, France and the US have been waging a ruthless war since the disappearance of the great imperialist blocs. The stakes in this sordid game is for Paris to keep Algeria in its sphere and for Washington to take it over, or at least to undermine its rival's influence. In this battle, the first blood was scored by American imperialism which secretly supported the development of the Islamist FIS, to the point where, in 1992, it had reached the portals of power. And it was the veritable coup d'etat carried out by the Algiers regime, with the support of its French patron, which warded off this danger, since it went against the interests not only of the bourgeois factions in power but also of the French. Since then the measures taken by tile Algerian state, in particular the banning of the FIS, the hunting down and imprisonment of many of its militants and leaders has led to a reduction in the latter's influence. But while these measures were successful at this level, they are also responsible for the current chaos. They have pushed factions of tile FIS into illegality, guerrilla war and terrorist actions. Today, the frequent and abominable atrocities carried out by the Islamists have discredited them. We can therefore say that the Zeroual regime has achieved its aims and also that French imperialism has managed to resist tile offensive of tile world's leading power and maintain its interests in Algeria. The cost of this "success" is being paid for by the blood of the population. And there will be more to pay. When the US spoke recently about giving all their support to tile "personal efforts" of Kofi Annan, this was an announcement that they are not prepared to give up their interests; this is why Chirac immediately responded by denouncing in advance" any policy of interference in Algerian affairs", making it quite clear that he will defend his backyard tooth and nail.

Middle East: growing difficulties for the Pax Americana

While second-rank imperialisms like France have a hard time conserving their authority in their traditional spheres of influence, and are even suffering setbacks under the hammer blows of the USA, the latter are themselves not spared from problems in applying their policies, even in their own traditional hunting grounds like the Middle East. Since the Gulf War the Americans have maintained an almost exclusive control over this region, but it is now experiencing a growing instability which is calling the "Pax Americana" into question. In our resolution quoted above, we had already underlined a certain number of examples of the increasing challenge to American leadership by some of its vassals in this region, in particular "the almost unanimously hostile reaction towards the US cruise missile attack on Iraq" in the autumn of 1996, even from hitherto "loyal" states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Another significant example was "the coming to power in Israel of the right, which has since done everything it could to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians, which had been one of the great successes of American diplomacy". The situation which has developed since then has strikingly confirmed this analysis. From last March onwards, the "peace process" has been going backwards, with the ending of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations due to the Netanyahu government's continued policy of colonising the occupied territories. Since then, tension has mounted more and more. In the summer it was raised by a number of murderous suicide bombings, in the center of Jerusalem. Attributed to Hamas, they gave the Israeli state the opportunity to reinforce its repression of the Palestinian population and to impose a blockade on the "autonomous territories". In addition, a series of raids by the Israeli army have been launched against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon, leading to more death and destruction. Faced with this rapid deterioration of the situation, the White House dispatched its two principal emissaries, Dennis Ross and Madeleine Albright, one after the other, but without great success. The latter even recognised that she had not found "the best method for keeping the peace process on the rails". And indeed, despite strong pressure from Washington, Netanyahu has remained deaf and is continuing his aggressive policy towards the Palestinians, which is putting into question Arafat's authority and thus his ability to control his own forces. As for the Arab countries, more and more of them have been expressing their displeasure at American policies, accusing the US of sacrificing their interests for Israel's benefit. Among those currently standing up to the US boss is Syria, which is beginning to develop economic and military relations with Tehran and has even re-opened its borders with Iraq. At the same time, what would have been inconceivable not long ago, is happening today; Saudi Arabia the Americans' "most faithful ally" but also the country which up till now has been most opposed to the "regime of tile Mullahs", is renewing its links with Iran. These new attitudes towards Iran and Iraq, two of the main targets of American policy in recent years, can only be seen as acts of defiance, even a slap in the face for Washington.

In this context of sharpening difficulties for their transatlantic rival, the European bourgeoisies are throwing oil on the fire. Our resolution already underlined this point by asserting that the challenge to US leadership is confirmed "more generally [by] the loss of a monopoly of control over the situation in the Middle East, a crucial zone if ever there was one. This has been illustrated in particular by the return in force of France, which imposed itself as the joint supervisor in settling the conflict between Israel and Lebanon ...”. Thus, during the summer, we have seen the European union shadowing Dennis Ross and creating difficulties for US diplomacy. Its "special envoy" proposed the setting up of a "permanent security committee" to enable Israel and the PLO to "collaborate in a permanent rather than intermittent way". More recently, the French minister of foreign affairs, H Vedrine, blew a little bit more on the flames by calling Netanyahu's policies "catastrophic", which was an irnplici t attack on US policy. He also declared loud and clear that "the peace process has been shattered" and "has no perspective". This is to say the least an encouragement to the Palestinians, and all the Arab countries, to turn away from the US and their Pax Americana.

"This is why the success of the present US counter-offensive cannot be considered to be definitive, to have overcome its crisis of leadership". And even if "brute force, manoeuvres aimed at destabilising its rivals (as in mire today), with their procession of tragic consequences, will thus continue to be used by this power" (ibid), its rivals have by no means exhausted their capacity to undermine the USA's hegemony.

Today, no imperialism, not even the strongest, is free from the destabilising actions of its rivals. The old exclusive hunting grounds are tending to disappear. There are no more "protected" zones on the planet. More than ever, the world is being subjected to unbridled competition and the rule of "every man for himself”. And this will only widen and deepen the bloody chaos into which capitalism is sinking.

Elfe 20. 9. 97

In the last issue of the International Review, we published the first part of an article replying to the polemic "Political roots of the ICC's organisational malaise" which appeared in Internationalist Communist Review no. 15, the English language review of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, which comprises the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) and the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt). In this first part, after rectifying a certain number of the IBRP's assertions which bore witness to a lack of acquaintance with our positions, we went back over the history of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, the political current from which both the IBRP and the ICC claim descent. In particular, we showed that the ancestor of the ICC, the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) was much more than a "tiny group" as the IBRP puts it: in reality, it was the real political heir of the Italian Fraction, having based its constitution on the latter's acquisitions. It was precisely these acquisitions which the PCInt left to one side or simply rejected when it was formed in 1943, and even more so at its first congress in 1945. This is what we aim to show in this second part of the article.

For communists, the study of the history of the workers' movement and its organisations has nothing in common with academic curiosity. On the contrary, it is an indispensable means for them to found their programme. on a solid basis, to orient themselves in the current situation and to trace clear perspectives for the future. In particular, examining the past experiences of the working class makes it possible to verify the validity of the positions defended by previous organisations of the class and to draw the lesson from them. Revolutionaries of one epoch do not sit in judgement on their forebears. But they must be capable of drawing out what is still valid in the positions they defended, and at the same time recognising their errors, just as they must be able to recognise the moment when a position which was correct in a certain historical context has become obsolete in changed historical conditions. Otherwise they will have great difficulty in assuming their responsibilities, condemned as they would be to repeating the errors of the past or holding on to anachronistic positions.

Such an approach is ABC for a revolutionary organisation. If we look at their article. the IBRP shares this approach and we consider it very positive that this organisation should, among other aspects, raise the question of its own historical origins (or rather the origins of the PCInt) and of the origins of the ICC. It seems to us that understanding the differences between our two organisations must begin by examining their respective histories. It is for this reason that our response to the IBRP's polemic will focus on this question. We began to do this in the first part of this article with regard to the Italian Fraction and the GCF. Now we will go into the history of the PCInt.

In fact, one of the important points to be established is the following: can we consider, as the IBRP puts it, that "the PCInt was the most successful creation of the revolutionary working class since the Russian revolution"1? If this were the case, we would have to see the actions of the PCInt as exemplary and as the main source of inspiration for communists today and tomorrow. The question posed is this: how do we measure the success of a revolutionary organisation? The response can only be: to the extent that it carries out the tasks that fall to it in the historical period in which it is operating. In this sense, the criteria of "success" to be selected are in themselves significant of the way in which you conceive the role and responsibility of the vanguard organisation of the proletariat.

The criteria for the "success" of a revolutionary organisation

A revolutionary organisation is the expression of, and an active factor in, the process by which the proletariat develops its class consciousness and so undertakes its historic mission of overthrowing capitalism and creating communism. In this sense, such an organisation is an indispensable instrument of the proletariat at that moment of historical leap represented by the communist revolution. When the revolutionary organisation is confronted with this particular situation as was the case with the Communist Parties between 1917 and the beginning of the I 920s, the decisive criterion for evaluating its activity is its capacity to rally around itself, and around the communist programme it defends, the great mass of the workers who are the subject of the revolution. In this sense, we can say that the Bolshevik party fully accomplished its task in 1917 (not only vis-a-vis the revolution in Russia but also the world revolution, since it was also the Bolshevik party that was the main inspiration behind the formation of the Communist International in 1919). From February to October 1917, its ability to link up with the masses in the midst of the revolutionary ferment. to put forward, at each moment in the maturation of the revolution, the most suitable slogans, to act with the greatest intransigence against all the sirens of opportunism - all these were undoubtedly vital factors in its "success".

This said, the role of the communist organisation is not limited to revolutionary periods. If this were the case, such organisations would only have existed in the 1917-23 period, and we would have to question the meaning of the existence of the IBRP and the ICC today. It is clear that outside directly revolutionary periods, communist organisations have the role of preparing the revolution. i.e. contributing in the best possible way to the development of the essential precondition for the revolution: the coming to consciousness of the whole proletariat about its historic goals and the means to attain them. This means, in the first place, that the permanent function of communist organisations (which is thus also their function in revolutionary periods) is to define the proletarian programme in the clearest and most coherent manner. In the second place, and directly connected to the first function, it means politically and organisationally preparing the party will eh will have to be at the head of the proletariat at the moment of revolution. Finally. it means a permanent intervention in the class, according to the means at the organisation's disposal in order to win to communist positions those elements who are trying to break with the ideology and organisations of the bourgeoisie.

To return to "the most successful creation of the working class since the Russian revolution", i.e., according to the IBRP, the PCInt, the question has to be posed: what kind of "success" are we talking about here?

Did it play a decisive role in the action of the proletariat during a revolutionary period, or at least a period of intense proletarian activity?

Did it make vital contributions to the elaboration of the communist programme, in the manner, for example, of the Italian Fraction of the Communist left, from which it claims descent?

Did it lay the solid organisational bases for the formation of the future world communist party, the vanguard of the proletarian revolution to come?

We will begin by responding to this last question. In a letter from the ICC to the PCInt dated 9.6.80, just after the failure of the third conference of the communist left, we wrote:

"How do you explain (...) that your organisation, which was already in existence prior to the revival of the class in 1968, was unable to profit from this revival and extend itself on the international level, whereas ours, practically non-existent in 1968, has since then greatly increased its forces and implanted itself in ten countries?"

The question we posed then remains valid today. Since then, the PCIint has managed to extend itself internationally by forming the IBRP in company with the CWO (which has taken up its essential positions and analyses)2. But we have to recognise that the balance sheet of the PCInt, after more than half a century of existence, is very modest. The ICC has always pointed out and deplored the extreme numerical weakness and limited impact of communist organisations in the present period, and this includes our own. We are not among those who bluff their way around claiming to be the real "general staff” of the proletariat. We leave it to other groups to play at being the "real Napoleon". But having said this, if we base ourselves on the criterion of "success" under examination here, the "tiny GCF", even if it ceased to exist in 1952, comes off far better than the PCInt. With sections or nuclei in 13 countries, 11 regular territorial publications in 7 different languages (including the ones most widely used in the industrialised countries: English, German, Spanish and French), a quarterly theoretical journal in three languages, the ICC, which was formed around the positions and political analyses of the GCF, is today without doubt not only the largest and most extensive political organisation of the Communist Left, but also and above all the one which has known the most positive dynamic of development in the last quarter of a century. The IBRP may well consider that the "success" of the heirs of the GCF, if we compare it with those of the PCInt, is proof of the weakness of the working class. When the combats and consciousness of the latter are more developed, it will surely recognise the positions and slogans of the PCInt and regroup much more massively around it than today. At any rate it's a comforting thought.

In reality, when the IBRP evokes the fabulous "success" of the PCInt, it can't be talking about its capacity to lay down the future organisational bases of the world party (except by taking refuge in speculation about what the IBRP could be in the future). We are thus led to examine another criterion: did the PCInt in 1945-6 (ie, when it adopted its first platform) make a vital contribution to the elaboration of the communist programme?

Here we will not survey all the positions contained in this platform, which certainly contains some excellent things. We will only look at a few programmatic points, already extremely important at that time, on which we do not find a great deal of clarity in the platform. We refer to the nature of the USSR, of so-called "national and colonial liberation struggles", and the union question.

The present platform of the IBRP is clear on the capitalist nature of the society that existed in Russia up till 1990, on the role of the unions as instruments for the preservation of bourgeois order that can in no way be "reconquered" by the proletariat, and on the counter-revolutionary nature of national struggles. However, this clarity is not to be found in the platform of 1945 where the USSR is still defined as a "proletarian state", where the working class is called on to support certain national and colonial struggles and where the unions are still seen as organisations which the proletariat can "reconquer", notably through the creation, under the guidance of the PCInt, of minorities under their leadership3.
During that same period, the GCF had already put into question the old analysis of the Italian Left on the proletarian nature of the unions and had understood that the working class could no longer reconquer these organs. Similarly, the analysis of the capitalist nature of the USSR had already been elaborated during the war by the Italian Fraction reconstituted around the nucleus in Marseilles. Finally, the counter-revolutionary nature of national struggles, the fact that they were no more than moments in the imperialist conflict between the great powers, had already been established by the Fraction during the 1930s. This is why we maintain today what the GCF said to the PCInt in 1946, and which so angers the IBRP. As the latter put it: "The GCF argued that the Internationalist Communist Party was not an advance on the old Fraction of the Communist Left, which had gone into exile in France during the Mussolini dictatorship" (ICR no. 15). On the level of programmatic clarity, the facts speak for themselves4.

Thus, we can't consider that the programmatic positions of the PCInt in 1945 were part of its "success" because a good part of them had to be revised later on, notably in 1952 at the time of the congress which saw the split with the Bordiga tendency, and even later than that. If the IBRP will allow us a little irony, we could say that some of its present positions are more inspired by the GCF than by the PCInt of 1945. So where does the "great success" of this organisation reside? All that remains is the numerical force and the impact it had at a certain moment in history.

It is quite true that between 1945 and 1947, the PCInt had nearly 3000 members and a significant number of workers identified with it. Does this mean that this organisation was able to play a significant role in historical events and direct them towards the proletarian revolution, even if this wasn't the final result? Obviously, we cannot reproach the PCInt with having failed in its responsibilities in the face of a revolutionary situation, because such a situation did not exist in 1945. But this is precisely where the shoe pinches. As the IBRP's article says, the PCInt had "the expectation that workers' unrest would not only be limited to northern Italy as the war drew to a close". In fact, the PCInt was constituted in 1943 on the basis of the resurgence of workers' militancy in the northern Italy, seeing these struggles as the first of a new revolutionary wave that would arise out of the war as had been the case at the end of the first world war. History has refuted this perspective. But in 1943, it was perfectly legitimate to put it forward5. After all, the Communist International and most of the Communist Parties, including the Italian party, had been formed when the revolutionary wave that had begun in 1917 was already on the decline following the tragic crushing of the German proletariat in January 1919. But the revolutionaries of the time were not yet aware of this (and one of the great merits of the Italian Left was precisely to have been among the first currents to have realised that the balance of forces between proletariat and bourgeoisie had been overturned). However, when the conference of late 1945 and early 1946 was being held, the war was already over and the proletarian reactions it had engendered after 1943 had been strangled at birth thanks to a systematic preventive policy on the part of the bourgeoisie6. Despite that, the PCInt did not call into question its previous policies (even if some voices were raised at the conference, noting that the bourgeoisie's grip on the working class had been strengthened). What had been a perfectly understandable error in 1943 was already much less excusable in 1945. However, the PCInt continued along the same path and never questioned the validity of its formation in 1943.

But the most serious thing for the PCInt was not in their error of appreciating the historic period and their difficulty in recognising this error. Much more catastrophic was the way the PCInt developed and the positions it was led to take up, above all because it was trying to "adapt" to the illusions of a working class in retreat.

The formation of the PCInt

When it was formed in 1943, the PCInt declared itself to be tile heir to tile political positions elaborated by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. Moreover, while its main animator, Onorato Damen, one of the leaders of the Left in the 1920s, had remained in Italy since 1924 (most of the time in Mussolini's prisons, from which he was freed during the events of 1942-43)7, it counted in its ranks a certain number of militants of the Fraction who had returned to Italy at the beginning of the war. And indeed, in the first clandestine issues of Prometeo (which had taken on the traditional name of the paper of the Left in the 1920s and of the Italian Fraction in the 30s), published from November 1943, we can find very clear denunciations of the imperialist war, of anti-fascism and of the "partisan" movements8. However, after 1944, the PCInt oriented itself towards agitation among the partisan groups; in June it published a manifesto which called for "the transformation of the partisan groups which are composed of proletarian elements with a healthy class consciousness into organs of proletarian self-defence, ready to intervene in the revolutionary struggle for power". In August 1944, Prometeo no. 15 went even further in such compromises: "The communist elements sincerely believe in the necessity to struggle against Nazi-fascism and think that once this object has been thrown down, they will be able to march towards the conquest of power and the overthrow of capitalism". This was a revival of me idea which had served as a basis for all those who, during the course of the war in Spain, such as the anarchists and Trotskyists, had called on the workers to "first win the victory against fascism, and then make the revolution". It was the argument of those who had betrayed the cause of the proletariat and lined up under the flags of one of the imperialist camps. This was not the case with the PCInt because it remained strongly impregnated by the tradition of the Left of the Communist Party which, faced with the rise of fascism at the beginning of the I 920s, had distinguished itself by its class intransigence. All the same, the appearance of such arguments in the PCInt press showed how far things had gone. Furthermore, following the example of the minority of the Fraction who in 1936 had joined the POUM's anti-fascist militias in Spain, a certain number of the PCInt's militants entered into the partisan groups. But if the minority in the Fraction had broken organisational discipline, this was not the case at all for the militants of the PCInt: they were simply applying the directives of the Party9.

By all the evidence, the will to regroup a maximum number of workers in and around the Party, at a time when the latter were succumbing en masse to "partisanism", led the PCInt to take its distance from the intransigence which it had originally displayed against anti-fascism and the partisans. This is not a "slander" by the ICC in continuity with the "slanders" of the GCF. This penchant for recruiting new militants without too much concern for the firmness of their internationalist convictions was noted by comrade Danielis, who held a post of responsibility in the Turin Federation in 1945 and who was an old member of the Fraction: "One thing must be clear for everyone: the Party has suffered gravely from a facile extension of its political influence - the result of an equally facile activism - on a purely superficial level. I must recount a personal experience which will serve as a warning against the danger of the Party exerting a facile influence on certain strata of the masses, which is an automatic consequence of the equally facile theoretical formation of its cadres (...) One might think that no member of the Party would have accepted the directions of the 'Committee of National Liberation '. Now, on the morning of 25 April (day of the 'Liberation' of Turin) the whole Turin Federation was in arms, insisting on participating in the crowning of six years of massacre, and some comrades from the provinces - still under military discipline - came to Turin to take part in the manhunt (...) The Party no longer existed; it had liquidated itself (Proceedings of the PCInt Congress in Florence, May 1948). By all the evidence, Danielis was also a "slanderer".

Seriously, if words have any meaning, the politics of the PCInt which allowed it to have such a big "success" in 1945 were nothing more than opportunist. Do we need other examples? We can cite this letter dated February 10, 1945 addressed by the PCIn's "Agitation Committee" "to the agitation committees of parties with a proletarian direction and union movements in the enterprises in order to give the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat a unity of directives and organisation (...) To this end, we propose a gathering qf these diverse committees to put forward a common plan" (Prometeo, April 1945)10. The "parties with a proletarian direction" mentioned here are, in particular, the Socialist and Stalinist parties. However surprising this may appear today, it is absolutely true. When we recalled these facts in International Review no. 32, the PCInt replied: "was the document 'Appeal of the Agitation Committee of the PCInt', published in the April 45 issue, an error? Agreed. It was the last attempt of the Italian left to apply the tactic of the "United Front from below" advocated by the CP of Italy in its polemic with the CI in 1921-23. As such, we put it in the category of 'venial sins' because our comrades were able to eliminate it both on the political and theoreticallevel with a clarity which today leaves us quite certain in front of anyone on this point" (Battaglia Comunista no. 3, February 1983).To which we replied: "We can only admire the delicacy and refinement with which BC fixes up its own self-image. If a proposal for a united front with the Stalinist and social democratic butchers is just a 'venial sin', what else could the PCInt have done in 1945 for it to fall into a really serious mistake (...) join the govemment?" (IR34)11). In any case it is clear that in 1944, the politics of the PCInt represented a real step backwards compared to those of the Fraction. And what a step! The Fraction had for some time made an in-depth critique of the tactic of the united front and since 1935 it had not been calling the Stalinist party a "party of proletarian direction", not to mention social democracy whose bourgeois nature had been recognised since the 1920s.

This opportunist policy of the PCInt can be found again in the "openness" and lack of rigour it showed at the end of the war in its efforts to expand. The ambiguities of the PCInt formed in the north of the country were nothing compared to those of the groups in the south who were admitted into the Party at the end of the war. For example, the "Frazione di sinistra dei comunisti e socialisti" formed in Naples around Bordiga and Pistone: right up to the beginning of 1945 this group practised entryism in the Stalinist PCI in the hope of redressing it. It was particularly vague on the question of the USSR. The PCInt also opened its doors to elements from the POC (Communist Workers' Party) which for a certain period had constituted the Italian section of the Trotskyist Fourth International.

We should also recall that Vercesi, who during the war had concluded that there was nothing to be done and who, at the end of the war, had participated in the 'Coalizione Antifascista' in Brussels12, also joined the new party without the latter demanding that he condemn his anti-fascist deviation. On this point O. Damen wrote to the ICC on behalf of the PCInt in autumn 1976: "The Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the PCInt when it was founded, held onto its own bastardised positions until the Party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead wood of Bordigism". To which we replied: "what an elegant way of putting it! He - Vercesi - thought he had to joint? And the Party - what did the Party think of this? Or is the Party a bridge club which anyone can join?" (IR no. 8). It should be noted that in this letter Damen was frank enough to recognise that in 1945 the Party had not yet made the "sacrifices that clarity demanded" since this was only done later, in 1952. We can only note this affirmation which contradicts all the fables about the "great clarity" which presided over the foundation of tile PCInt because this represented, according to the IBRP, a "step forward" from the Fraction13.

The PCInt was no more scrupulous about the members of the minority of the Fraction who, in 1936, had enrolled in the anti-fascist militias in Spain and who had then joined Union Communiste14. These elements were able to integrate into the Party without having to make the slightest criticism of their past errors. On this question, O. Damen wrote in the same letter:

"Concerning the comrades who, during the war in Spain, decided to abandon the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left and to throw themselves into an adventure which took them outside class positions: let us remember that the events in Spain, which simply confirmed the positions of the Fraction, taught a lesson to these comrades and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left". To which we replied: "There was no question of these elements going back to the Communist Left until the Fraction was dissolved and its militants integrated into the PCInt (at the end of 1945). It was never a question of a 'lesson' being learned, or of these militants rejecting their old position and condemning their participation in the anti-fascist war in Spain" (ibid). If the IBRP considers that this is a new "slander" by the ICC, let them show us the documents which prove it. And as we continued: "It was simply that the euphoria and confusion of setting up the party 'with Bordiga' inspired these comrades (...) to join the Party ... The Party in Italy did not ask these comrades to account for their past activities. This was not because of ignorance (...) It was because it was a time to forget 'old quarrels': the reconstitution of the Party wiped the slate clean. A Party which was not very clear about the effect of the Partisan movement on its own militants wasn't likely to have a very rigorous attitude towards what the minority had been doing some years before. Thus it 'naturally' opened its doors to these comrades ... " (ibid).

In fact the only organisation which didn't find favour in tile PCInt's eyes, and with which it didn't want to have any relations, was the GCF, precisely because it continued to base itself on the same rigour and intransigence which had characterised the Fraction in the 1930s. And it's true that the Fraction of that period would only have condemned the mish-mash upon which the PCInt was formed. In fact it was quite similar to the practices of Trotskyism, for which the Fraction had the harshest words to say.

In the 1920s, the Communist Left had opposed tile opportunist orientation of the Communist International from its Third Congress, particularly tile aim of "going to the masses" at a time when tile revolutionary wave was in reflux. This had involved fusion with the centrist currents that had come out of tile Socialist Parties (the Independents in Germany, the "Terzini' in Italy, Cachin-Frossard in France, etc) and the policy of the "United Front" with the SPs. This method of "broad regroupment" employed by the CI to set up Communist Parties was opposed by Bordiga and the Left, who put forward the method of "selection" based on a rigourous and intransigent defence of principles. The CI's policies had tragic consequences, with the isolation and ultimate exclusion of the Left, and the invasion of the parties by opportunist elements who would be the best vectors of degeneration.

At the beginning of tile 1930s, the Italian Left, faithful to its policy of the 1920s, had fought within the International Left Opposition in order to impose the same rigour faced with the opportunist policies of Trotsky, for whom an acceptance of the first four congresses of the CI, and above all of his own manoeuvering tactics were much more important criteria for regroupment than the combats that had been fought within the CI against its degeneration. With such policies, the healthiest elements seeking to construct an international current of the Communist Left were either corrupted, or discouraged, or condemned to isolation. Based on such fragile foundations, the Trotskyist current went through crisis after crisis before passing wholesale into the bourgeois camp during the second world war. For its part, the Italian Left's intransigent position had resulted in its exclusion from the Left Opposition in 1933, with Trotsky betting on a phantom "New Italian Opposition" (NOI) , made up of elements who, at the head the PCI as late as 1930, had voted for the expulsion of Bordiga from the Party.

In 1945, anxious to beef up its membership as much as possible, the PCInt, which claimed to be the heir of the Left, was actually not taking up the politics of the latter towards the CI and Trotskyism, but the very politics that the Left had fought against: a "broad" assemblage based on programmatic ambiguities, regroupment - without asking for any "accounts" - on the basis of militants and "personalities"15 who had opposed the positions of the Fraction during the war in Spain and the world war, an opportunist policy which flattered the workers' illusions in the partisans and in parties which had gone over to the enemy, etc. And to make this assemblage as complete as possible, the GCF had to be excluded from the international left communist current, precisely because it was most loyal to the struggle of the Fraction. At the same time, the only group recognised as a representative of the Communist Left in France was the French Fraction of the Communist Left, mark II (FFGC). It should be recalled that this group was made up of three young elements who had split from the GCF in May 1945, members of the ex-minority of the Fraction excluded during the war in Spain, and members of the ex-Union Communiste which had fallen into anti-fascism at the same time16. Is there not a certain similarity between this and Trotsky's policy towards the Fraction and the NOI?

Marx wrote that "history always repeats itself, the ftrst time as tragedy, the second time as farce", There's a bit of this in the not very glorious episode of the formation of the PCInt. Unfortunately, the events that followed were to show that this repetition by the PCInt in 1945 of the policies fought by the Left in the 20s and 30s had rather dramatic consequences.

The consequences of the PCInt's opportunist approach

When we read the proceedings of the conference of the PCInt, end 1945-beginning 1946, we can only be struck by the heterogeneity which reigned there.

On the analysis of the historical period, which was an essential question, the main leaders were in conflict. Damen continued to defend the "official position" :

"The new course of the history of the proletarian struggle is open. Our Party has the task of orienting this struggle in the direction which will make it possible, during the next, inevitable crisis, for the war and its artisans to be destroyed in time and definitively, by the proletarian revolution" ("Report on the international situation and the perspectives", p 12).

But certain voices noted, without saying it openly, that tile conditions were not favourable for the formation of the party:

" ... what dominates today is the 'fightto-the-end' ideology of the CLN and the partisan movement, and this is why the conditions for the victorious affirmation of the proletarian class are not present. Consequently we can only qualify the present moment as reactionary" (Vercesi, The party and international problems", p 14).

"In concluding this political balance-sheet, it is necessary to ask ourselves if we have to go forward with a policy of enlarging our influence, or whether the situation above all imposes on us, in an atmosphere that is still poisoned, the need to safeguard the fundamental bases of our political and ideological delimitation, to strengthen the cadres ideologically, to immunise them against the bacilli one breathes in the current ambiance, and thus to prepare them for the new political positions that will present themselves tomorrow. In my opinion, it is in the second direction that the activity of the Party has to be oriented in all areas" (Maffi, "Political-organisational relations for northern Italy").

In other words, Maffi advocates the classic work of a fraction.

On the parliamentary question, we can see the same heterogeneity:

"This is why. under a democratic regime, we will use all the concessions we can, to the extent that this situation does not damage the interests (if the revolutionary struggle. We remain irreducibly anti-parliamentarian; but the sense of the concrete which animates our politics makes us reject any abstentionist position determined in advance" (O. Damen, ibid, p 12).

"Maffi, going over the conclusions arrived at by the Party. asked whether the problem of electoral abstentionism should be posed in its old form (participating or not in elections according to whether the situation was moving towards a revolutionary explosion), or whether, on the contrary, in an ambiance corrupted by electoral illusions, it would be better to take up a clearly anti-electoral position, even at the price of isolation. Not to hang on to the concessions made to us by the bourgeoisie (concessions which are not expressions of its weakness but of its strength) but to attach ourselves to the real process of the class struggle and of our Left tradition" (ibid, p 12).

Do we have to point out that Bordiga's left current in the Italian Socialist party during the first world war was known as the "Abstentionist Fraction"?

Again, on the union question, the reporter Luciano Stefanini argued, against the position that was finally adopted:

"The political line of the Party towards the union question is not yet sufficiently clear. On the one hand we recognise the unions' dependency on the capitalist state; on the other hand, we invite the workers to struggle within them and to conquer them from within in order to take them onto class positions. But this possibility is excluded by the capitalist evolution that we mentioned above, the present-day union cannot change its physiognomy as a state organ the slogan of new mass organisations is not valid today, but the Party has the duty of predicting the course of events and indicating to the workers what kind of organs, arising from the evolution of the situation, will be needed as the unitary guide for the proletariat under the direction of the Party. The pretension to obtaining positions of command in the present union organisms in order to transform them must be definitively liquidated". (p18-19).

After this conference, the GCF wrote:

"The new party is not a political unity but a conglomeration. an addition of currents and tendencies which cannot fail to appear and to confront each other. The present armistice can only be very provisional. The elimination of one or other current is inevitable. Sooner or later a political and organisational definition will impose itself" (lnternationalisme no. 7, February 1946).

After a period of intensive recruitment, the definition began to take place. From the end of 1946, the disquiet provoked in the PCInt by its participation in elections (many militants could not forget the abstentionist tradition of the Left) led the Party leadership to publish a statement in the press entitled "Our strength", which called for discipline. After the euphoria of the Turin Conference, many discouraged militants left the Party. A certain number of elements split in order to take part in the formation of the Trotskyist pal, proof that they had no place in an organisation of the Communist Left. Many militants were excluded without the divergences emerging clearly, at least in the public press. One of the main federations split to form the “Autonomous Turin Federation". In 1948, at the Florence Congress, the Party had already lost half its members and its press half its readers. As for the "armistice" of 1946, it was transformed into an "armed peace" which the leaders tried not to disturb, glossing over the main divergences. Thus Maffi said that he "abstained from raising such and such a problem because I knew that this discussion would poison the Party". This did not however prevent the Congress from radically questioning the position on the unions adopted two and a half years before (the position of 1945, which was supposed to represent such shining clarity!). This armed peace finally led to an open confrontation (especially after Bordiga joined the Parry in 1949), leading to the 1952 split between the Damen tendency and the one animated by Bordiga and Maffi which would be the origin of the Programma Comunista current.

As for the “sister organizations” which the PCInt was counting out to constitute an International Bureau of the Communist Left, their outcome is less enviable. The Belgian Fraction ceased publishing L'Intemationaliste in 1949 and disappeared soon afterwards; the French fraction Mark II went through a two-year eclipse, with most of its members leaving, before reappearing Group of the International Communist Left, which was attached to the Bordigist current17.

The "greatest success since Russian revolution" was thus short-lived. And when the IBRP, to support its arguments about this "success", tells us that the PCInt, "despite half a century of further capitalist domination, continues to exist and is growing today", it forgets to point out that the present-day PCInt, in terms of membership and audience within the working class, doesn't have a lot to do with what it was at the end of the last war. Without dwelling on comparisons, we can say that the size of this organisation today is roughly the same as the direct heir of the "tiny GCF", the French section of the ICC. And we do indeed want to believe that the PCInt is " growing today". The ICC has also found in the recent period that there is a greater interest in the positions of the Communist Left, which has expressed itself in particular by a certain number of new members. This said, we do not think that the present growth of the PCInt will allow it to go back quickly to the membership it had in 1945-6.

Thus this great "success" reached the not very glorious situation in which an organisation which went on calling itself a "Party" was actually compelled to play the role of a fraction. What's more serious is that today the IBRP does not draw the lessons from this experience, and above all does not put into question the opportunist method which is one of the reasons that the "glorious success" of 1945 prefigured the "unsuccess" that was to follow18.

This uncritical attitude towards the opportunist deviations of the PCInt at its origins makes us fear that the IBRP, when the class movement is more developed than this today, will be tempted to resort to the same opportunist expedients that we have pointed out. The fact that the IBRP's main "criterion of success" for a proletarian organisation is the number of members and the impact it has at a given moment, leaving aside programmatic rigour and the capacity to lay the bases for a long term work, reveals the immediatist approach it has on the organisation question. And we know that immediatism is the antechamber to opportunism. We can also point to some other, more immediate consequences of the PCInt's inability to criticise its origins.

In the first place, the fact that the PCInt after 1945-6 (when it had become evident that the counter-revolution was still in force) maintained the validity of founding the Party led it to revise radically the whole conception of the Italian Fraction about the relation between party and fraction. For the PCInt, from now on, the on of the party could take place at any moment, independent of the balance of forces between proletariat and bourgeoisie19. This is the position of the Trotskyists, not of the Italian Left, which always considered that the party could only be formed in the wake of a historic revival of the class. But at the same time, revision also meant questioning the idea that there can be determined and antagonistic historical courses: the course towards world war. For the IBRP these two courses can be in parallel rather than mutually exclusive, which results in an inability to analyse the present historical period, as we showed in our article “The CWO and the historic course, an accumulation of contradictions" in IR no.89. This is why we wrote in the first part of the present article: "when we look more closely, the IBRP's present inability to give an analysis of the nature of the historic course derives in large part from its political mistakes on the organisation question. More particularly on the relationship between fraction and party".

To the question why the heirs of the "tiny GCF" succeeded where those of the glorious Party of 1943-5 failed, i.e, in constituting a real international organisation, we propose to the IBRP that it think about the following: because the GCF, and in its wake the ICC, remained faithful to the approach which enabled the Fraction to become, at the time of the shipwreck of the CI, the largest and most fertile current of the Communist Left:

- programmatic rigour as the foundation of an organisation that rejected all opportunism, all precipitation, all policies of "recruitment" on shaky bases;

- a clear vision of the notion of the fraction and its links with the party;

- the capacity to correctly identify the nature of the historic course;

The greatest success since the death of the CI (and not since the Russian revolution) was not the PCInt but the Fraction. Not in numerical terms but in terms of its capacity to prepare the bases for the world party of the future, despite its own disappearance.

In principle the PCInt (and after it the IBRP) present themselves as the political heirs of the Italian Fraction. We have shown in this article how far the PCInt, when it was formed, had distanced itself from the tradition and positions of the Fraction. Since then, the PCInt has clarified a whole series of programmatic questions, which we consider to be extremely positive. Nevertheless it seems to us that the PCInt will only be able to make its full contribution to the constitution of the future world party if it brings its declarations and its actions into line, i.e, if it really reappropriates the political approach of the Italian Fraction. And that means in the first place that it shows itself capable of making a serious critique of the experience of the foundation of the PCInt in 1943-45 instead of eulogising it and taking it as an example to follow.

Fabienne

One of the arguments favoured by bourgeois professors in their endless battle with marxism is their charge that it is a "pseudo-science" somewhat akin to phrenology and similar quackeries. The most sophisticated presentation of this idea can be found in Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, a classic "philosophical" justification of liberalism and the Cold War. According to Popper, marxism's claim to be a science of society is false, because its propositions can be neither verified nor refuted by practical experiment - a sine qua non of any truly scientific investigation.

In fact, marxism does not claim to be "a" science, of the same type as the natural sciences. It recognises that human social relations cannot be subjected to the same precise, controlled examination as physical, chemical or biological processes. What it does affirm is that, as the world view of an exploited class which has no interest in mystifying or occulting social reality, marxism alone is able to apply the scientific method to the study of society and historical evolution. To be sure, history cannot be examined under laboratory conditions. The predictions of a revolutionary social critic cannot be tested by carefully controlled, repeated experimentation. But if we allow for this, it is still possible to extrapolate from the past and present movement of social, economic or historical processes and outline the broad shape of the movement to come. And what is so striking about the gigantic sequence of historical events inaugurated by the First World War is precisely the degree to which they validated the predictions of marxism in the living laboratory of social action.

A fundamental premise of historical materialism was that, like all previous class societies, capitalism would reach a phase in which its relations of production, from being conditions for the development of the productive forces, would become fetters, throwing the whole political and legal superstructure of society into crisis, and initiating an epoch of social revolution. The founders of marxism thus analysed in great depth the contradictions in capitalism's substructure, its economic base, that would impel the system into this historic crisis. This analysis was necessarily a general one and could not arrive at precise predictions about the date of the revolutionary crisis. Despite this, even Marx and Engels sometimes fell victim to revolutionary impatience and were too precipitous in announcing the general decline of the system and thus the imminence of the proletarian revolution. Nor was it always clear what shape this historic crisis would assume. Would the general crisis of the system simply take the form of the cyclical economic depressions that bad marked its ascendant period, only more widespread and without scope for a new revival? Here again, only a general perspective could be put forward. Nonetheless, as early on as the Communist Manifesto, the essential dilemma facing humanity was expressed: socialism or a relapse into barbarism, the emergence of a higher form of human association or the unleashing of all capitalism's inherent tendencies towards destruction - what the Manifesto calls "the mutual ruin of the contending classes".

Towards the end of the 19th century, however, as capitalism entered its phase of imperialism, of unbridled militarism and competition to conquer the remaining non-capitalist areas of the planet, it began to become clear that the disaster towards which capitalism was leading humanity was not merely an economic depression writ large, but a full scale military catastrophe: global warfare as economic competition by oilier means, but increasingly taking on its own insane dynamic, crushing the whole of civilisation under its juggernaut wheels. Hence, in 1887 this remarkable 'prophecy' by Engels:

"No war is any longer possible for Prussia-Germany except a world war and a world war indeed of an extent and violence hitherto undreamt-of. Eight to ten millions of soldiers will massacre one another and in doing so devour the whole of Europe until they have stripped it barer than any swarm of locusts has ever done. The devastation of the Thirty Years War compressed into three or four years, and spread over the whole Continent: famine, pestilence, general descent into barbarism, both of the armies and the mass of the people; hopeless confusion of our artificial system of trade, industry and credit, ending in general bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their traditional elite wisdom to such an extent that crowns will roll by dozens on the pavement and there will be nobody to pick them up; absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all end and who will come out of the struggle as victor; only one result is absolutely certain: general exhaustion and the establishment of the conditions for the final victory of the working class.

That is the prospect when the system of mutual one-upmanship in armaments, driven to extremes, at last bears its inevitable fruits. This, my lords, princes and statesmen, is where in your wisdom you have brought old Europe. And when nothing more remains to you but to open the last great war dance - that will suit us nicely. The war may perhaps push us temporarily into the background, may wrench from us many a position already conquered. But when you have unfettered forces which you will no longer be able to control, things may go as they will; at the end of the tragedy you will be ruined and the victory of the proletariat already achieved or at any rate inevitable" (15 December 1887, in Marx and Engels. Collected Works, Vol 26, p451).

The revolutionary fractions who, in 1914, maintained the principles of internationalism in the face of the war had good reason to recall these words of Engels. In the Junius Pamphlet, Rosa Luxemburg only has to bring them up to date:

"Friedrich Engels once said: 'Capitalist society faces a dilemma, either an advance to socialism or a reversion to barbarism '. What does a 'reversion to barbarism' mean at the present stage of European civilisation? We have read and repeated these words thoughtlessly without a conception of their terrible import. At this moment one glance about us will show us what a reversion to barbarism in capitalist society means. This world war means a reversion to barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the destruction of culture, sporadically during a modern war. and forever. if the period of world wars that has just begun is allowed to take its damnable course to the last ultimate consequence. Thus we stand today, as Friedrich Engels prophesied more than a generation ago, before the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and. as in ancient Rome. depopulation, desolation, degeneration. a vast cemetery; or. the victory of socialism, that is, the conscious struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism. Against its methods. against war. This is the dilemma of world history. its inevitable choice, whose scales are trembling in the balance awaiting the decision of the proletariat. Upon it depends the future of culture and humanity". Luxemburg, building on Engels' foresight, displays her own: if the proletariat did not do away with capitalism, the imperialist war would be only the first in a series of ever-more devastating global conflicts that would ultimately threaten the very survival of humanity. That indeed has been the drama of the 20th century, the most telling proof that, as Lenin put it, "capitalism has outlived itself. It has become the most reactionary brake on human progress" (Lenin, "Reply to questions put by an American correspondent", July 20, 1919).

But if the war of 1914 confirmed this side of the historic alternative - the decadence of the capitalist system, its plunge into regression - the Russian revolution and the international revolutionary wave that followed confirmed with no less clarity the other side: in the terms of the Manifesto of the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919, that the epoch of capitalism's inner disintegration is also the epoch of the communist revolution, and that the working class is the only social force that can put an end to capitalist barbarism and inaugurate the new society. The terrible deprivations of the imperialist war and the disintegration of the Tsarist regime threw the whole of Russian society into turmoil, but within the revolt of a huge population comprised in the majority by peasants and peasants in uniform, it was the working class in the urban centres who created new revolutionary organs of struggle - the soviets, factory committees, Red Guards - which served as a model for the rest of the population; which made the most rapid strides at the level of political consciousness, a development expressed in the spectacular growth in the influence of the Bolshevik party; and which, at each stage of the revolutionary process, took the lead in determining the course of events: in the overthrow of the Tsarist regime in February, in foiling the plots of the counter-revolution in September; in carrying out the insurrection in October. By the same token, it was the working class in Germany, Hungary, Italy and across the globe whose strikes and uprisings put an end to the war and threatened the very existence of world capital.

If the proletarian masses performed these revolutionary feats, it was not because they were intoxicated by some millenarian vision, nor because they had been duped by a handful of machiavellian schemers, but because, through their own practical struggle, their own debates and discussions, they came to see that the slogans and programme of the revolutionary marxists corresponded to their own class interests and needs.

Three years into the definitive opening up of the epoch of the proletarian revolution, the proletariat made a revolution - seized political power in one country and issued a challenge to the order of the bourgeoisie all over the world. The spectre of "Bolshevism", of soviet power, of mutiny against the imperialist war machine caused crowns to fall and haunted the ruling class everywhere. For three years or more it seemed that Engels' prediction would be confirmed in all respects: the barbarism of war would ensure the victory of the proletariat. Of course, as the bourgeois professors never cease to remind us, "it failed", and of course, they add, it was bound to fail because such a grandiose project of liquidating capitalism and creating a human society is simply contrary to "human nature" . But the ruling class of the day did not sit back and wait for "human nature" to take its course. To exorcise the spectre of the world revolution, it linked hands across the world to combine its counter-revolutionary forces, through military intervention against the soviet republic, through the provocation and massacre of the revolutionary workers from Berlin to Shanghai. And almost without exception, the forces of liberalism and social democracy - the Kerenskys, the Noskes and the Woodrow Wilsons, whom the majority of professors point to as the embodiment of a more rational, realisable alternative to the impossible dreams of marxism - were the key leaders and organisers of the counter-revolutionary forces.

Twentieth century quantum physics has found it necessary to recognise a fundamental premise of dialectics: that you cannot study reality from the outside. Observation influences the process you are observing. Marxism never claimed to be a neutral "science of society" because it took a partisan stance from within the process, and by doing so defined itself as a force for accelerating and changing the process. Bourgeois academics may lay claim to impartiality and neutrality but the moment they comment on social reality their partisan interests also become clear. The difference is that while the marxists are part of the movement towards a free society, the professors who criticise marxism never fail to end up apologising for the bloodiest forces of social and political reaction.

  The proletariat on the brink of power   

From being a general, historic perspective, as it had been during the previous century, the communist programme had become very precise. In 1917, the burning question of the day was the question of political power - of the proletarian dictatorship. And it fell to the Russian proletariat to solve this problem, in theory as well as in practise. Lenin's The State and Revolution, The marxist theory of the state and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, written in August -September I 917, has already been referred to many times in these articles, since we have tried not only to re-examine much of its subject matter, but above all to apply its method. If we repeat what we have said before, so be it: some things are well worth repeating. Since State and Revolution has such a crucial place in the evolution of the marxist theory of the state we make no apologies for now making it the essential subject of an article in itself. 

As we showed in the previous article (International Review 90), the direct experience of the class and the analysis of that experience by the marxist minorities had already, prior to the war and the revolutionary wave, laid the essential groundwork for solving the problem of the state in the proletarian revolution. The Paris Commune of 1871 had already led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that the proletariat "could not simply lay hold" of the old bourgeois state but had to destroy it and replace it with new organs of power; the mass strikes of 1905 had demonstrated that the soviets of workers' deputies were the form of revolutionary power most appropriate to the new historical epoch then opening up; Pannekoek, in his polemic with Kautsky had reaffirmed that the proletarian revolution could only be the result of a mass movement which paralysed and disintegrated the state power of the bourgeoisie.

But the weight of opportunism in the workers' movement prior to the war was too great to be dispelled by even the sharpest polemic. What had been learned through events such as the Commune had been unlearned through decades of parliamentarism and legalism, of growing reforrnism in the party and the trade unions. Moreover, the abandonment of the revolutionary outlook of Marx and Engels was by no means restricted to the open revisionists like Bernstein: through the work of the current around Kautsky, the fetishism of parliament and the theorisation of a peaceful, "democratic" road to revolution had actually come to present themselves as the final word of" orthodox marxism" . In such a situation, it could not be until tile positions of the left fractions in the 2nd International fused with the vast movement of the masses that the proletariat's amnesia about its own acquisitions could be overcome. This did not diminish the importance of the "theoretical" intervention of revolutionaries on this question, on the contrary. When revolutionary theory seizes the masses and becomes a material force, both its elucidation and its dissemination become more urgent and decisive than ever.

In an article in International Review 89, tile ICC has recalled the vital importance of the political-theoretical intervention contained in Lenin's April Theses, which showed the party and the working class as a whole the way out of the fog of confusion created by the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, and all the other forces of compromise and betrayal. At the core of Lenin's position in April was his insistence that the revolution in Russia could only be a part of the world socialist revolution; that consequently the proletariat could only continue its struggle against the parliamentary republic that the opportunists and the bourgeois left presented as the finest acquisition of the revolution; that the proletariat had to fight, not for a parliamentary republic, but for the transfer of power to the soviets - for the dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasants.

For their part, Lenin's political opponents, above all those who claimed the mantle of marxist orthodoxy, immediately accused Lenin of anarchism, of seeking to ascend Bakunin's vacant throne. This ideological offensive of opportunism required a response, a reaffirmation of the marxist alphabet, but also a theoretical deepening in the light of recent historical experience. State and Revolution answered this need, providing at the same time one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the marxist method, of the profound inter-action between theory and practise. Lenin had written more than a decade earlier that "there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory". Now, forced to go into hiding in the Finnish countryside by the repression that followed the July Days (see the article on these events in IR 90), Lenin recognised the necessity to delve deep into the classics of marxism, into the history of the workers' movement, in order to clarify the immediate goals of an immensely practical mass movement.

State and Revolution was a continuation and a clarification of marxist theory. But this has not prevented the bourgeoisie (often echoed by the anarchists, as usual) from claiming that the book, with its emphasis on soviet power and the destruction of all bureaucracy, is the product of a temporary conversion by Lenin to anarchism. This can be done from various angles. A sympathetic, leftish historian like Liebman (Leninism under Lenin, London, 1975), for example, talks about State and Revolution as the work of a "libertarian Lenin": the impression being that this expressed Lenin's short-lived enthusiasm for the creatiye potential of the masses in 1917-18, in contrast to the more "authoritarian" Lenin of 1902-3, the Lenin who allegedly distrusts the spontaneity of the masses and advocates a Jacobin style party to act as their general staff. But Lenin's ability to respond to the spontaneous movement, to the creativity of the masses - even to correct his own exaggerations and mistakes in their light - was not limited to 1917. It had already shown itself clearly in 1905 (see the article on 1905 in IR 90). In 1917, Lenin was convinced that proletarian revolution was on the historical agenda and was no longer constrained by the theory of a "democratic revolution" for Russia. This led him to count even more decisively on the autonomous struggle of the working class, but this was a development of his previous positions, not a sudden conversion to anarchism.

Others, more openly hostile approaches to State and Revolution see the book as being part of a machiavellian ruse to get the masses to line up behind his plans for a Bolshevik coup and a party dictatorship. Anarchists and councilists are well-versed in arguments of this ilk. We cannot refute them in detail here: this is part of our overall defence of the Russian revolution, and the October insurrection in particular, against the campaigns of the bourgeoisie (see the article on the October insurrection in this issue). What we can say is that Lenin's intransigent defence of marxist principles on the question of the state, from the moment he returned from exile in April, put him in an extreme minority and there was no guarantee at all that the position he put forward would eventually conquer the masses. Seen in this light, Lenin's machiavellianism becomes positively superhuman and we leave the world of social reality for the fantasies of conspiracy theory. Another approach - unfortunately contained in an article published by Internationalism, now the US publication of the ICC, over 20 years ago, when councilist ideology had a considerable weight on the re-emerging revolutionary groups - is to go through State and Revolution with a fine tooth comb and find "proof' that - unlike Marx's writings on the dictatorship of the proletariat - Lenin's book still expresses the standpoint of an authoritarian who carmot envisage the workers liberating themselves by their own efforts (see Internationalism 3, 'Proletarian dictatorship: Marx v Lenin').

We will not avoid dealing with the weaknesses that do indeed exist in State and Revolution. But we will get nowhere by creating a false dichotomy between Marx and Lenin, any more than by seeing State and Revolution as a point of connection between Lenin and Bakunin. Lenin's book is in complete continui ty with Marx , Engels and the whole marxist tradition before him; and the marxist tradition that followed him has in turn drawn immense strength and clarity from this indispensable work.

The state as an instrument of class rule

The first task of State and Revolution was to refute the opportunists' conceptions about the fundamental nature of the state. The opportunist trend in the workers' movement - particularly the Lassallean wing of the German social democracy - had long been founded on the idea that the state is essentially a neutral instrument which can be used as much for the benefit of the exploited class as to defend the privileges of the exploiters. Many of the theoretical combats waged by Marx and Engels towards the German party were aimed at demolishing the idea of a "people's state", at showing that the state, as a specific product of class society, is in, essence the instrument for the domination by one class over society, and over the exploited class in particular. But by 1917, as we have seen, tile ideology of the state as a neutral instrument which could be appropriated by the workers had assumed a "marxist" guise, particularly at the hands of the Kautskyites. This is why State and Revolution begins and ends with an attack on the opportunists' distortion of marxism: at tile end, with a long critique of Kautsky's main works on the state (and a defence of Pannekoek's polemic against Kautsky); at the beginning, with a justly celebrated passage about the way that the "bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour movement concur in this doctoring of marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie... In these circumstances, in view of the unprecedentedly widespread distortion of marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state" (Lenin, S and R, in Collected Works, p 390-1).

To this end, Lenin proceeds to recall the work of the founders of marxism, Engels in particular, as regards the historical origins of the state. But although Lenin describes this as a work of "excavation" from beneath the rubble of opportunism, his inquiry is of more than archaeological interest. From Engels (Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State) we learn that the state arises as a product of irreconcilable class antagonisms, and serves to prevent these antagonisms from tearing the social fabric apart. But lest anyone conclude that this means that the state is some kind of social referee, Lenin, following Engels, is quick to add that when the state holds things together, it does so in the interests of the economically dominant class. It thus appears as an organ of repression and exploitation par excellence.

In the heat of the Russian revolution this "theoretical" question was of paramount importance. The Menshevik and SR opportunists, who were now increasingly operating as th left flank of the bourgeoisie, presented the state which succeeded the downfall of the Tsar in February 1917 as a kind of "people's state", an expression of tile "revolutionary democracy". The workers should thus subordinate their selfish class interests to the defence of this state, which, with a little persuasion, could surely be adapted to the needs of all the oppressed. By demolishing the foundations of the idea of a "neutral" state, Lenin was preparing tile ground for the practical overthrow of this state. To buttress his arguments against the so-called "revolutionary democrats", Lenin also recalls Engels' pointed words about the limitations of universal suffrage: "Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage an instrument of bourgeois rule. 'Universal suffrage', he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German Social Democracy, is 'the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present day-state '. The petty bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (…) expect just this 'more' from universal suffrage, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage 'in the present-day state' is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people, and of securing its realisation" (CW, p 398-99).

This reminder about the bourgeois nature of the most "democratic" version of the "present day state" was vital in 1917 when Lenin was calling for a form of revolutionary power that could really express the needs of the working masses. But throughout this century revolutionaries have had to make the same reminder. The more direct heirs of the social democratic reformists, today's Labour and Socialist parties, have constructed their whole programme (for capital) on the idea of a benevolent, neutral state that, by taking over major industries and social services, takes on a "public" or even "socialist" character. But this fraud is also ardently peddled by those who claim to be Lenin's heirs, the Stalinists and Trotskyists, who never cease to defend the notion that nationalisations and state welfare provisions are workers' conquests and so many steps towards socialism, even under the "present-day state". These so-called "Leninists" are among the bitterest opponents of the "revolutionary substance" of Lenin's work.

The evolution of the marxist theory of the state

Since the state is an instrument of class rule, an organ of violence directed against the exploited class, the proletariat could not count on it to defend its immediate interests, let alone wield it as a tool for the construction of socialism. Lenin shows how the marxist concept of the withering away of the state had been distorted by opportunism to justify their idea that the new society could come about gradually, harmoniously, through the existing state democratising itself and taking over the means of production, then "withering away" as the material bases of communism were laid down. Again returning to Engels, Lenin insists that what "withers away" is not the existing bourgeois state, but the state that emerges after the proletarian revolution, which by necessity is a violent revolution which has its task the "smashing" of the old bourgeois state. Of course Engels and Lenin both reject the anarchist idea that the state as such could be abolished overnight: as a product of lass society, the final disappearance of any state form could only come about after a more or less long period of transition. But the state of the transition period is not the old bourgeois state. That now lies in ruins and what takes its place is a new kind of state, a semi-state that enables the proletariat to exert its domination over society, but which is already in the process of "dying out". To strengthen and deepen this fundamental position of marxism, Lenin then goes on to examine the actual historical experience of "the state and revolution" and the development of marxist theory in connection with this experience (something that Pannekoek, for all his insight, had neglected to do, leaving himself more open to the opportunist charge of "anarchism").

Lenin's starting point is the beginnings of the marxist movement - the period just before the revolutions of 1848. Re-reading the Communist Manifesto and The Poverty of Philosophy, Lenin argues that in these works the key elements with regard to the state are:

• the proletariat needs to take political power, to form itself into the ruling class, an act generally described as the result of a "more or less veiled civil war" and of the "violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" (Communist Manifesto, cited in CW, p 406- 7);
• the state formed in the revolution to suppress the bourgeoisie will give way to a classless association in which there will be no more need for political power.

Concerning the nature of this "violent overthrow", the exact relationship between the revolutionary proletariat and the existing bourgeois state, it was not of course possible to be precise, given the absence of concrete historical experience. But still Lenin points out that "since the proletariat needs the state as a special form of organisation. of violence against the bourgeoisie, the following conclusion suggests itself: is it conceivable that such an organisation can be created without first abolishing, destroying the state machine created by the bourgeoisie for themselves? The Communist Manifesto leads straight to this conclusion, and it is of this conclusion that Marx speaks when summing up the experience of the revolution of 1848-51" (CW, P 410-411). Consequently Lenin goes on to cite a key passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where Marx denounces the state as "an appalling parasitic body" and points out that prior to the proletarian revolution, "all revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it".

As we mentioned in our article in IR 73, tile 1848 revolutions, as well as for the first time posing the question of "smashing" the bourgeois state, also gave Marx some glimpses of how in tile course of the struggle, the proletariat forms its own independent committees, new organs of revolutionary authority. But the proletarian content of the movements of 1848 was too weak, too immature to answer tile question "with what is tile old bourgeois state machine to be replaced".

Lenin thus moves on to the only previous experience of the proletariat taking power, the Commune of 1871. In considerable detail, he traces the main lessons that Marx and Engels took from the Commune:

• First and foremost, as Marx and Engels express it in their 1872 introduction to the Communist Manifesto: "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that the proletariat cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'''. The revolutionary movement must destroy the existing state and replace it with new organs of power. In the balance sheet of the 1848 revolution, this understanding appeared as a brilliant flash of insight. In their analysis of the Paris Commune, it had become a programmatic principle. For Marx and Engels in 1872, it was significant enough to warrant a rectification of the Communist Manifesto.
• The Commune was tile specific form of this revolutionary "semi-state", a new form of political power that was already in the process of "withering away". Its most important features were:

1. abolition of the standing army and the arming of the people. The need for suppression remained, but this was to be carried out by the majority against the old exploiting minority;
2. to prevent the rise of a new bureaucracy, all officials to be elected and subject to immediate recall; no state official to be paid more than the average workers' wage. Constant supervision of state functions and participation by the masses through direct democracy;
3. overcoming of bourgeois parliamentarism, both by replacing representation (MPs elected for four or five years by amorphous constituencies) with delegation (deputies to the Commune can be recalled at any time by permanently mobilised assemblies), and by tile fusion of executive and legislative functions in one body. Here again, Lenin applied the lessons of the past to tile struggles of the present: the critique of bourgeois parliamentarism, the defence of a higher form of direct democracy, was also a sharp polemic against the "Socialist parliamentarians" of his own day, against tile opportunists who wanted to tie tile workers to the defence of the existing state;
4. the Commune is a centralised form of organisation. Contrary to the backward looking vision of the anarchists, who tried to claim the commune as their model, the Commune did not stand for disintegrating authority into separate local or federal units. While permitting the greatest possible local initiative, the Commune was the form for cementing the unity of the proletariat both at national and international level.

Lenin's historical survey was not able to go beyond the Commune experience. His original intention had been to write a seventh chapter of State and Revolution, demonstrating how "the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, indifferent circumstances and under different conditions, continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx's brilliant historical analysis" (CW p 437). But the acceleration of history deprived him of the opportunity. "I had no time to write a single line of the chapter, I was 'interrupted' by a political crisis - the eve of the October revolution of 1917. Such an 'interruption' can only be welcomed; but the writing of the second part of the pamphlet (The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917') will probably have to be put off for a long time. It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of revolution' than to write about it" (Postscript to the first edition, CW p 497).

In fact, the second part was never written. No doubt that seventh chapter would have been of incalculable value. But Lenin had achieved the essential. The reaffirmation of Marx and Engels' teachings on the question of the state was a sufficient basis for a revolutionary progranune to the extent that the primordial issue was the necessity to smash the bourgeois state and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. But in any case, Lenin's work, as we have already said, was never one of mere repetition. By returning to the past in depth, and with a militant purpose, marxists also take their theoretical insights forward. In this way, State and Revolution made two important clarifications for the communist programme. First, it identified the soviets as the natural successor to the Commune, even though these organs are only mentioned in passing. Lenin was not able to analyse in depth why the soviets were a higher form of revolutionary organisation than the Commune; perhaps he might have developed on Trotsky's insights in his writings about 1905, particularly when the latter points out that the soviets of workers' deputies, being based on workplace assemblies, are a form of organisation best adapted to ensuring the class autonomy of the proletariat (the Commune by contrast had been based on territorial rather than workplace units, reflecting a less mature phase of proletarian concentration). Indeed, later writings by Lenin indicate that this was precisely the understanding he was to acquire1. But even if Lenin was not able to examine the soviets in any detail in State and Revolution, there can be no doubt that he considered them the most appropriate organs for destroying the bourgeois state and forming the proletarian dictatorship: from the April Theses onwards, the slogan "all power to the soviets" was above all the slogan of Lenin and the reforged Bolshevik party.

Secondly, Lenin was able to make some definitive generalisations about the problem of the state and its revolutionary destruction. In the section of the work dealing with the revolutions of 1848, Lenin had posed the question: "is it correct to generalise the experience, observations and conclusions of Marx, to apply them to a field that is wider than the history of France during the three years 1848-51?" (CW, p414). Was the formula "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution on the "destruction" of the state machine valid in all countries? The question was still of extreme importance in 1917 because, despite the lessons Marx and Engels drew about the Paris Commune, even they had left considerable room for ambiguity about the possibility of the proletariat gaining power peacefully through the electoral process in certain countries, those with the most developed parliamentary institutions and the least swollen military apparatus. As Lenin points out Marx specifically mentioned Britain in this context, but also countries like the USA and Holland. But here Lenin was not the least bit afraid to correct and complete Marx's thinking. He did so by using Marx's method: placing the question in its proper historical context: "Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, of the development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has clearly shown an extraordinary strengthening of the 'state machine' and an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military apparatus in connection with repressive measures against the proletariat both in the monarchical and in the freest, republican countries" (CW, p 415). As a result: "Today, in 1917, at the time of the first great imperialist war, this restriction made by Marx is no longer valid. Both Britain and America, the biggest and the last representatives - in the whole world - of AngloSaxon 'liberty', in the sense that they had no militarist cliques and bureaucracy, have completely sunk into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves, and suppress everything. Today, in Britain and America too, 'the precondition for every real people's revolution' is the smashing, the destruction of the 'ready made state machinery'''(CW, p 420-1). Henceforward, there were to be no more exceptions.

The refutation of anarchism

The principal target of State and Revolution was opportunism, which, as we have seen, did not hesitate to accuse Lenin of anarchism the moment he began to insist on the need to smash the state machine. But as Lenin retorted, "the usual criticism of anarchism by present-day Social Democrats has boiled down to the purest philistine banality: 'we recognise the state, whereas anarchists do not!'" (CW, p 443). But while demolishing such stupidities, Lenin also reiterated the real marxist critique of anarchism, basing himself in particular on what Engels had to say in reply to the absurdities of the "anti-authoritarians": a revolution is just about the most authoritarian thing there could possibly be. To reject all authority, all use of political power, is to renounce revolution. Lenin carefully distinguishes the marxist position, which offers a realisable, historical solution to the problem of subordination, to divisions between leaders and led, state and society, from that of anarchism, which offers only apocalyptic dreams of an immediate dissolution of all such problems - dreams which ultimately have a most conservative result: "We are not utopians, we do not 'dream' of dispensing at once with all administration, all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to marxism. And, as a matter of fact, they only serve to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control and 'foremen and accountants '. The subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, ie. to the proletariat ..... (CW, p 430-1).

The economic basis of the withering away of the state

Unlike the anarchists, who wanted the state to vanish as the result of an act of revolutionary will, marxism recognises that a stateless society can only emerge when the economic and social roots of class divisions have been dug up, have given way to the flowering of a society of material abundance. In outlining the economic basis for the withering away of the state, Lenin once again goes back to the classics, in particular Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, from which he draws out the following points:

- the necessity of a transitional period in which the proletariat exercises its dictatorship while at the same time bringing the vast majority of the population into the political and economic management of society;

- economically speaking, this transitional phase can be described as "the lower stage of communism". It is communist society as it emerges from capitalism, still severely marked by many of the defects of the old order. The productive forces have become common property, but there is not yet a condition of material abundance. Consequently, there is still inequality of distribution. The system of labour vouchers advocated by Marx constitutes an inroad against the accumulation of capital, but they reflect a situation of inequality, since some can perform more work than others, some have certain skills which others lack, some have children while others do not, and so on. In sum, there exists what Marx calls "bourgeois right" in matters of distribution - and to protect bourgeois right, there must still exist vestiges of" bourgeois law";

- the development of the productive forces makes it possible to overcome the division of labour and institute a system of free distribution: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". This is the higher phase of communism, a society of real freedom. The state no longer has any material underpinning and withers away; the radical extension of democracy leads to the ultimate extinction of democracy, since democracy itself is a form of state. The administration of people is replaced by the administration of things. It is not a utopia: even in such a stage, for an unspecifiable period, individual excesses may continue, and will need to be prevented; but "no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this; this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilised people, even in modern society, interfere to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted" (CW, p 469). In short, "the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of the community will become a habit" (CW, p 479).

When Lenin was writing State and Revolution, the world was poised on the brink of a communist revolution. The defence of Marx's positions on the economic transformation was no abstraction. It was seen as an imminent, programmatic necessity. The working class was being pushed towards a revolutionary confrontation by burning and immediate need - the need for bread, to end the imperialist slaughter, and so on. But the communist vanguard had no doubt that the revolution could not stop short at the solution of these immediate questions. It would have to go to its ultimate, historical conclusion: the inauguration of a new phase in the history of humanity.

The limits to Lenin's vision

We have already noted that State and Revolution is an incomplete work. In particular, Lenin was unable to develop on the role of the soviets as the "finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat" . But even if the work had not been "interrupted" by the October insurrection, it could still only express the highest point of clarity prior to the experience of the revolution. The Russian revolution itself - and above all its defeat - was to afford many lessons about the problems of the transition period, and we cannot reproach Lenin with failing to solve these questions in advance of the real experience of the proletariat. In future articles we will come back to these lessons from numerous angles but it will be useful to sketch in the three main areas in which subsequent experience was to reveal the inevitable weaknesses and lacunae in State and Revolution

1. State and economy

Although Lenin clearly defends the notion of a communist transformation of the economy - a notion which Marx developed in opposition to the "state socialist" trends in the workers' movement (see lR 79 'Communism versus State Socialism') - his work still suffers from certain ambiguities about the role of the state in the economic transition. We have seen that these ambiguities existed even in the work of Marx and Engels, but during the period of the Second International it was increasingly assumed that the first step on the road to communism was the statification of the national economy, that a fully nationalised economy can no longer be a capitalist one. In various of his writings of the time, while denouncing the "state capitalist trusts" that had become the form of capitalist organisation in the imperialist war, Lenin had a tendency to see these trusts as a neutral instrument, as a kind of stepping stone to socialism, a form of economic centralisation that the victorious proletariat could simply take over wholesale. In a work written in September 1917, Can the Bolsheviks retain state power?, Lenin is more explicit: "Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal services, consumers' societies, and office employees' unions. Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the 'state apparatus , which we need to bring about socialism. and which we take ready-made from capitalism" (1961 Moscow edition, p 20). In State and Revolution a similar idea is expressed when Lenin says that "All citizens become employees and workers of a single country wide state syndicate" ( CW. p 478). It is of course true that the communist transformation does not start from scratch - its inevitable starting point is the existing productive forces, the existing networks of transport, distribution, and so on. But history has taught us to be extremely wary of the idea of simply taking over the economic organisms and institutions created by capital for its own specific needs, above all when they are such archetypal capitalist institutions as the big banks. Most importantly, the Russian revolution and in particular the Stalinist counter-revolution has shown that the simple transformation of the productive apparatus into state property does not do way with the exploitation of man by man - an error definitely present in State and Revolution when Lenin writes that in the first phase of communism "exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production – the factories, machines, land, etc - and make them private property" (CW p 471). This weakness is compounded by Lenin's insistence that there is a "scientific distinction" to be made between socialism and communism (the former being defined as the lower stage of communism), In fact Marx and Engels did not really theorise such a distinction and it is not accidental that Marx in the Gotha Programme talks rather about lower and higher stages of communism, because he wanted to convey the idea of a dynamic movement between capitalism and communism, not of a fixed, 'third' mode of production which is characterised by "public ownership". Finally, and more significantly, Lenin's discussion on the economic transition in State and Revolution does not make explicit the fact that the dynamic towards communism can only get underway on an international scale, leaving room for the notion that at least certain stages of "socialist construction" can be achieved in one country alone.

The tragedy of the Russian revolution is adequate testimony to the fact that even if you statify the whole economy. even if you have a monopoly on foreign trade. the laws of global capital will still impose themselves on any isolated proletarian bastion. In the absence of the extension of the world revolution, these laws will defy any attempts to create the foundations of any “socialist construction", eventually transforming the proletariat's erstwhile bastion into a new and monstrous "state capitalist trust" competing on the world market. And such a mutation can only be accompanied by a political counter-revolution which will leave no trace of the proletariat's dictatorship.

2. Party and Power

It has been noted that Lenin does not say very much about the role of the party in State and Revolution. Is this further proof of Lenin's temporary conversion to anarchism in 1917? Foolish question: the theoretical clarification contained in State and Revolution is itself the preparation for the direct, leading role of the Bolshevik party in the October insurrection. In its' ruthless polemic against those who are injecting bourgeois ideology into the proletariat, it is above all a "party political" document, aiming to win the workers away from these influences and towards the positions of the revolutionary party.

The question, however, remains: on the eve of the worldwide revolutionary wave, how did the revolutionaries (and not just the Bolsheviks) understand the relationship between the party and the proletarian dictatorship? The one reference to the party in State and Revolution does not give us a clear answer to this, since it is phrased ambivalently: "By educating the workers' party, marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organising the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organising their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie" (CW, p 409). It is ambivalent because it is not clear whether it is the party as such which assumes power, or the proletariat, which Lenin often defines as the vanguard of all the oppressed population. A better guide to the prevailing level of comprehension of this question is the pamphlet Can the Bolsheviks retain State power? The main confusion is seen straight away in the title: the revolutionaries of the day, despite their commitment to the soviet system of delegation which had made the old system of parliamentary representation obsolete, were still held back by parliamentary ideology to the extent that they saw that the party which had a majority in the central soviets then formed the government and administered the state. In future articles we will look in more detail at how this conception led to the fatal entanglement of the party with the state, and created an unbearable situation which helped to empty the soviets of their proletarian life, to set the party against the class, and above all, to transform the party from the most radical fraction of the revolutionary class into an instrument of social conservation.

But these developments did not occur autonomously: they were above all determined by the isolation of the revolution and the material development of an internal counter-revolution. In 1917, the emphasis in all Lenin's writings, whether in the pamphlet just mentioned, or State and Revolution, is not on the party exercising the dictatorship, but on the whole proletariat, and increasingly the whole population, taking charge of their political and economic affairs, through their own practical experience, through their own debates, their own mass organisations. Thus when Lenin answers affirmatively that the Bolsheviks can retain state power, it is only on the understanding that the work of a couple of hundred thousand Bolsheviks will be part of a much vaster effort, the effort of millions of workers and poor peasants, who, from day one, are learning to run the state on their own behalf. The real power, therefore, is not in the hands of the party, but of the masses. If the early hopes of the revolution had been realised, if Russia had not been engulfed by civil war, famine, and international blockade, the evident contradictions in this position could have been resolved in the right direction, demonstrating that in a genuine system of elected and revocable delegation, it makes no sense to talk about any party holding onto power.

3. Class and state

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx had described the transitional state as "nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". This identification between the power of the working class and the transitional state is continued by Lenin in State and Revolution when he talks about a "proletarian state" or a "state of armed workers", and when he theoretically underlines these formulae by defining the state as being essentially composed of "bodies of armed men". In short, in the transition period, the state is no more than the workers in arms, suppressing the bourgeoisie.

As we shall see in subsequent articles, this formulation was rapidly shown to be inadequate. Lenin himself had had said that the proletariat needs the state not only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, but also to lead the rest of the non-exploiting population in the direction of socialism. And this latter function, the need to integrate a largely peasant population into the revolutionary process, gave birth to a state which was not only made up of soviets of workers' delegates but also of peasants' and soldiers' soviets. With the start of the civil war, the armed workers' militias, the Red Guards, were not an adequate force to combat the full force of a military counter-revolution. The principal armed force of the soviet state was henceforward the Red Army, again comprised in its majority of peasants. At the same time, the need to combat internal subversion and sabotage gave rise to the Cheka, a special police force which increasingly escaped the control of the soviets. Within weeks of the October insurrection the commune-state had become something rather more than the "armed workers". Above all, with the growing isolation of the revolution, the new state became more and more infested with the gangrene of bureaucracy, less and less responsive to the elected organs of the proletariat and poor peasants. Far from beginning to wither away, the new state was beginning to swallow society whole. Far from bending to the will of the revolutionary class, it became the focal point for a kind of internal degeneration and counter-revolution that had never been seen before.

In its balance sheet of the counter-revolution, the Italian communist left was to pay particular attention to the problem of the transitional state, and one of the principal conclusions reached by Bilan and Internationalisme was that, following the Russian revolution, it was no longer possible to identify the dictatorship of the proletariat with the transitional state. We will return to this question in future articles. For now, however, it is important to point out that, even if the formulations of the marxist movement prior to the Russian revolution suffered from serious weaknesses on this point, at the same time this idea of the non-identification between the proletariat and the transitional state did not come from nowhere. Lenin was fully aware of Engels' definition of the transitional state as no more than a "necessary evil", and throughout the book there is a powerful emphasis on the necessity for the workers to subject all state functionaries to constant supervision and control - particularly those elements of the state who most obviously embody a certain continuity with the old regime, such as the technical and military "experts" which the soviets would be forced to make use of.

Lenin also develops a theoretical foundation for this attitude of healthy proletarian distrust for the new state. In the section on the economic transformation. he explains that because its role will be to safeguard a situation of " bourgeois right", it is permissible to define the transitional state as "the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!". Even if this formulation is useful more as a way of provoking thought than as a clear definition of the class nature of the transitional state, Lenin has grasped the essential: since its task is to safeguard a state of affairs which is not yet communist, the commune-state reveals its basically conservative nature, and it is this which makes it particularly vulnerable to the dynamic of the counter-revolution. And these theoretical perceptions about the nature of the state were to enable Lenin to develop some important insights into the nature of the degenerative process, even when he himself was partly caught up within it: for example, his position on the trade union debate in 1921, when he recognised the need for the workers to maintain organs of defence even against the transitional state, or his warnings about the growth of state bureaucracy towards the end of his life. The Bolshevik party may have succumbed to an insidious demise, and the torch of clarification had to be taken from their hands by the left communist fractions. But there is no doubt that the latters' most important theoretical developments were achieved by taking as their point of departure the gigantic contribution of the Lenin of State and Revolution.

CDW

The next articles in this series will examine the revolutionary programmes drawn up by the communist parties in the period of 1918-20 and the degree to which these programmes corresponded to the actual practise of the working class during the revolutionary wave.

The current year reminds us that history is not the affair of university professors, but a social, class question of vital importance for the proletariat. The main political goal the world bourgeoisie has set itself in 1997 is to impose on the working class its own reactionary, falsified version of the history of the 20th century. To this end it is highlighting the holocaust during World War II, and the October Revolution. These two moments, symbolising the two antagonistic forces whose conflict has mainly determined the evolution of this century, the barbarism of decadent capitalism and the progressive, revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, are presented by bourgeois propaganda as the common fruit of "totalitarian ideologies" and made jointly responsible for war, militarism and terror in the past 80 years. Whereas during the summer the "Nazi-Gold Affair" directed both against the current rivals of the USA, or those who contest their authority (such as Switzerland), and ideologically against the world proletariat (propagating militaristic, bourgeois democratic anti-fascism) remained in the foreground, the bourgeoisie profits from the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution this autumn to deliver the following message: if National Socialism led to Auschwitz, the socialism of Marx which inspired the workers' revolution of 1917 led just as surely to the Gulag, the great terror under Stalin, and the Cold War after 1945.

With its attack against the October Revolution, our exploiters aim to enforce the retreat in proletarian consciousness which they imposed after 1989, with their gigantic lie that the fall of the Stalinist counter-revolutionary regimes was the "end of marxism" and the "bankruptcy of Communism". But today the bourgeoisie wants to go a step further in discrediting the proletarian revolution and the marxist vanguard by linking it, not only to Stalinism, but also to fascism. This is why the year 1997 began, in such a central capitalist country as France, with the first mass media campaign for over half a century directly aimed at the internationalist Communist Left, who were represented as collaborators with fascism by deforming its internationalist position of opposition to all imperialist camps during World War II. Today, in the face of the bankruptcy of its own rotting system, it is the very programme, the historic memory and consciousness of the proletariat which the bourgeoisie wants to wipe off the face of the earth. Above all, it wants to wipe out the memory of proletarian October, the first seizure of power by an exploited class in the history of mankind.

"Respect" for the February, hatred for the October Revolution

As after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the present bourgeois campaign is not an undifferentiated broadside against everything which the Russian Revolution represented. On the contrary, the paid historians of capital are full of hypocritical praise for the "initiative" and even the "revolutionary élan" of the workers and their organs of mass struggle, the workers' councils. They are full of understanding for the desperation of the workers, soldiers and peasants in face of the trials of the "Great War". Above all: they present themselves as defenders of the "true Russian Revolution" against its alleged destruction by the Bolsheviks. In other words: at the heart of the bourgeois attack against the Russian Revolution is the opposing of February to October 1917, opposing the beginning to the conclusion of the struggle for power which is the essence of every great revolution. The bourgeoisie opposes the explosive, spontaneous mass character of the struggles beginning in February 1917, the mass strikes, the millions who took to the streets, the outbursts of public euphoria, and the fact that Lenin himself declared the Russia of this period to be the freest country on earth, to the events of October. Then there was little spontaneity, events were planned in advance, without any strikes, street demonstrations or mass assemblies during the rising, power was taken through the actions of a few thousand armed men in the capital under the command of a Military Revolutionary Committee directly inspired by the Bolshevik party. The bourgeoisie declares: "does this not prove that October was nothing but a Bolshevik putsch?" a putsch against the majority of the population, against the working class, against history, against human nature itself? And this, we are told, was in pursuit of a mad marxist utopia which could only survive through terror, leading directly to Stalinism.

According to the ruling class, the working class in 1917 wanted nothing more than what the February regime promised them: a "parliamentary democracy" pledged to "respecting human rights" and a government which, while continuing the war, declared itself in favour of a rapid peace "without annexations". In other words they want us to believe that the Russian proletariat was fighting for the very same misery which the modern proletariat suffers today! Had the February regime not been toppled in October, they assure us, Russia would today be a country as powerful and prosperous as the USA, and the development of 20th century capitalism would have been a peaceful one.

What this hypocritical defence of the "spontaneous" character of the February events really expresses is the hatred and fear of the October Revolution by the exploiters of all countries. The spontaneity of the mass strike, the coming together of the whole proletariat in the streets and at general assemblies, the formation of workers' councils in the heat of the struggle, are essential moments in the liberation struggle of the working class. "There is no doubt that the spontaneity of a movement is a sign that it has deep and strong roots in the masses and cannot be eliminated", as Lenin remarked (1). But as long as the bourgeoisie remains the ruling class, as long as the political and armed forces of the capitalist state remain intact, it is still possible for it to contain, neutralise and dissolve these weapons of its class enemy. The workers' councils, these mighty instruments of workers' struggle, which arise more or less spontaneously, are nevertheless neither the sole nor necessarily the highest expression of the proletarian revolution. They predominate in the first stages of the revolutionary process. The counter revolutionary bourgeoisie flatters them precisely in order to present the beginning of the revolution as its culmination, knowing well how easy it is to smash a revolution which stops half way. But the Russian Revolution did not stop half way. In going to the end, in completing what was begun in February, it confirmed the capacity of the working class, patiently, consciously, collectively, not only "spontaneously" but in a deliberate, planful, strategic manner to construct the instruments it requires to seize power: its marxist class party, its workers councils galvanised around a revolutionary programme and a real will to rule society, and the specific instruments and strategy of the proletarian insurrection. It is this unity between the mass political struggle and the military seizure of power, between the spontaneous and the planful, between the workers' councils and the class party, between the actions of millions of workers and those of audacious advanced minorities of the class, which constitutes the essence of the proletarian revolution. It is this unity which the bourgeoisie today intends to dissolve with its slanders against Bolshevism and the October insurrection. The smashing of the capitalist state, the toppling of bourgeois class rule, beginning the world revolution: that is the gigantic achievement of October 1917, the highest, most conscious, most daring chapter in the whole of human history to date. October shattered centuries of servility bred by class society, demonstrating that with the proletariat for the first time in history a class exists which is exploited and revolutionary at the same time. A class capable of ruling society, of abolishing class rule, of liberating humanity from its "prehistory" of bondage to blind social forces. That is the true reason why the ruling class to this day, and today more than ever, pours the filth of its lies and slanders on Red October, the "best hated" event of modern history, but the pride of the class conscious proletariat. We intend to demonstrate that the October insurrection, which the scribblers who have become the whores of capital call a "putsch", was the culminating point, not only of the Russian Revolution, but of the whole struggle of our class to date. As Lenin wrote in 1917, "That the bourgeoisie attacks us with such savage hatred is one of the clearest illustrations of the truth, that we are showing the people the correct ways and means to topple bourgeois rule" (2).

The crisis is ripe

On October 10 1917, Lenin, the most wanted man in the country, hunted by the police in all parts of Russia, came to a Central Committee meeting of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd disguised in wig and spectacles, and drafted the following resolution on a page of a child's notebook:

"The Central Committee recognises that both the international situation of the Russian Revolution (the insurrection in the German fleet is the extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of a world-wide socialist revolution, and also the threat of a peace between the imperialists with the aim of strangling the revolution in Russia) - and the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co. to surrender Petersburg to the Germans) - all this in connection with the peasant insurrection and the swing of popular confidence to our party (the elections in Moscow), and finally the obvious preparation of a second Kornilov attack (the withdrawal of troops from Petersburg, the importation of Cossacks into Petersburg, the surrounding of Minsk with Cossacks, etc.) - all this places armed insurrection on the order of the day. Thus recognising that the armed insurrection is inevitable and fully ripe, the Central Committee recommends to all organisations of the party that they be guided by this, and from this point of view consider and decide all practical questions (the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, the withdrawal of troops from Petersburg, the coming-out of Moscow and Minsk)." (3)

Exactly four months previously, the Bolshevik Party had deliberately restrained the fighting élan of the workers of Petrograd, who were being lured by the ruling classes into a premature, isolated show-down with the state. Such a situation would certainly have led to the decapitation of the Russian proletariat in the capital and the decimation of its class party (the "July Days" - see the previous issue of our Review). The party, overcoming its own internal hesitations, was firmly committing itself to "mobilise all forces in order to impress upon the workers and soldiers the unconditional necessity of a desperate, last, resolute struggle to overcome the government of Kerensky" as Lenin already formulated it in his famous article ‘The Crisis Is Ripe'. Already then (September 29) he declared: "The crisis is ripe. The honour of the Bolshevik Party is at stake. The whole future of the international workers' revolution for Socialism is at stake. The crisis is ripe".

The explanation for the completely different attitude of the party in October as opposed to July is given in the above resolution with brilliant marxist clarity and audacity. The point of departure, as always for marxism, is the analysis of the international situation and the evaluation of the balance of force between the classes. As opposed to July 1917, the resolution notes that the Russian proletariat is no longer alone; that the world revolution has begun in the central countries of capitalism: "The maturing of the world revolution cannot be denied. The explosion of anger of the Czech workers was put down with unbelievable brutality, bearing witness that the government is terribly frightened. In Italy too there has been a mass rising in Turin. But most important of all is the rising in the German fleet" (4). It is the responsibility of the Russian working class not only to seize the opportunity to break out of its international isolation imposed until then by the world war, but above all to fan in its turn the flames of insurrection in Western Europe by beginning the world revolution. Against the minority in his own party who still echoed the Menshevik, counter-revolutionary, pseudo-marxist argumentation that the revolution ought to begin in a more advanced country, Lenin showed that conditions in Germany were in fact much more difficult than in Russia, and that the real historic meaning of the Russian insurrection lay in helping the German Revolution unfold: "The Germans have, under woefully difficult conditions, with only one Liebknecht (who moreover is in prison), without press organs, without the right of assembly, without soviets, in face of a gigantic enmity of all classes of the population up until the last well-off peasant against the idea of internationalism, in face of the superb organisation of the imperialist big, middle and petty bourgeoisie, the Germans i.e. the German revolutionary internationalists, the workers in sailors' uniform, have begun a rising in the fleet - with odds of perhaps one to a hundred against them. But we who have dozens of papers, who have freedom of assembly, who have gained the majority within the soviets, we who in comparison to the proletarian internationalists of the whole world have the best conditions, we are going to renounce supporting the German revolutionaries through our insurrection. We are going to argue like Scheidemann and Renaudel: the most sensible thing is to make no insurrection, since when we get gunned down, the world will lose with us such marvellous, sensible, ideal internationalists. Let us adopt a resolution of sympathy for the German insurrectionists, and reject the insurrection in Russia. That will be a genuinely reasonable internationalism" (5).

This internationalist standpoint and method, the exact opposite of the bourgeois-nationalist stand of the Stalinism which developed out of the later counter-revolution, was not exclusive to the Bolshevik party at that time, but was the common property of the advanced Russian workers with their marxist political education. Thus, at the beginning of October, the revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet proclaimed through the radio stations of their ships to the four corners of the earth the following appeal: "In the hour when the waves of the Baltic are stained with the blood of our brothers, we raise our voice: oppressed people of the whole world! Lift the banner of revolt!"

But the world wide estimation of the balance of class forces by the Bolsheviks did not restrict itself to examining the state of the international proletariat, but expressed a clear vision of the global situation of the class enemy. Always basing themselves on a deeply rooted knowledge of the history of the workers' movement, the Bolsheviks knew perfectly well from the example of the Paris Commune 1971, that the imperialist bourgeoisie, even in the midst of its world war, would combine its forces against the revolution.

"Does the complete inactivity of the English fleet in general, and of the English submarines during the Occupation of Osel by the Germans not prove, in connection with the intention of the government to move its seat from Petrograd to Moscow, that between Kerensky and the English-French imperialists a conspiracy has been set up, with the goal of surrendering Petrograd to the Germans, and in this way to strangle the Russian Revolution" asks Lenin, and adds: "The resolution of the soldiers' section of the Petrograd Soviet against the transfer of the government out of Petrograd shows that among the soldiers too the conviction concerning the conspiracy of Kerensky has ripened" (6). In August under Kerensky and Kornilov, revolutionary Riga had already been delivered into the clutches of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The first rumours of a possible separate peace between Britain and Germany against the Russian Revolution alarmed Lenin. The goal of the Bolsheviks was not "peace" but revolution, knowing as true marxists that a capitalist ceasefire could only be an interlude between two world wars. It was this communist insight into the inevitable spiral of barbarism that bankrupt, decadent capitalism held in store for humanity, which now prompted Bolshevism into a race against time to end the war with revolutionary, proletarian means. At the same time, the capitalists began everywhere to systematically sabotage production in order to discredit the revolution. These developments however also contributed to finally destroying in the eyes of the workers the bourgeois patriotic myth of "national defence", according to which bourgeoisie and proletariat of the same nation have a common interest in repelling the foreign "aggressor". It also explains why in October the concern of the working class was no longer to unleash mass strikes, but to keep production going in the face of the bourgeoisie's disruption of its own factories.

Among the decisive factors that pushed the working class towards insurrection was the fact that the revolution was menaced by further counter-revolutionary attacks, and that the workers, in particular the main soviets, were now firmly behind the Bolsheviks - the direct fruit of the most important mass confrontation between bourgeoisie and proletariat between July and October 1917: the Kornilov putsch in August. The proletariat under Bolshevik leadership stopped Kornilov's march on the capital, mainly by winning over his troops and sabotaging his transport and logistics system via the railway, postal and other workers. In the course of this action, during which the soviets were revitalised as the revolutionary organisation of the whole class, the workers discovered that the Provisional Government in Petrograd under the leadership of the Socialist Revolutionary Kerensky and the Mensheviks was itself involved in the counter-revolutionary plot. From this moment on, the class conscious workers grasped that these parties had become a true "left wing of capital" and began to flock to the Bolsheviks.

"The whole tactical art consists in grasping the moment when the totality of conditions are most favourable for us. The Kornilov Rising created these conditions. The masses, which had lost confidence in the parties of the soviet majority, saw the concrete danger of the counter-revolution. They believed that the Bolsheviks were now called on to overcome this danger". (7)

The clearest proof of the revolutionary qualities of a workers' party is its capacity to pose the question of power. "The most gigantic adjustment is when the proletarian party goes over from preparation, propaganda, organisation, agitation, to the immediate struggle for power, to the armed insurrection against the bourgeoisie. All which exists in the party by way of undecided, sceptical, opportunistic, Menshevik elements, stands up against the insurrection". (8)

But the Bolshevik party overcame this crisis, firmly committing itself to the armed struggle for power, thus proving its unprecedented revolutionary qualities.

The revolutionary proletariat on the road to insurrection

In February 1917 a so-called "dual power" situation arose. Alongside and opposed to the bourgeois state, the workers' councils appeared as a potential alternative government of the working class. Since in reality two opposing governments of two enemy classes cannot coexist, since the one must necessarily destroy the other in order to assert itself, such a period of "dual power" is necessarily extremely short and unstable. Such a phase is not characterised by "peaceful coexistence" and mutual toleration. Only in appearance does it represent a social equilibrium. In reality it is a decisive stage in the civil war between labour and capital. The bourgeois falsification of history is obliged to mask the life and death struggle of the classes which took place between February and October 1917 in order to present the October Revolution as a "Bolshevik putsch". An "unnatural" prolongation of this period of dual power necessarily spells the end of the revolution and its organs. The soviets are "real only as organs of insurrection, of revolutionary power. Outside of this task, the soviets are just a toy, inevitably leading to the apathy, indifference and disappointment of the masses, who have rightly got fed up of the endless repetition of resolutions and protests" (9). Although the proletarian insurrection is no more spontaneous than the counter-revolutionary military coup, in the months before October both classes repeatedly manifested their spontaneous tendency towards the struggle for power. The July Days and the Korrnilov Putsch were only the clearest manifestations. The October insurrection itself began in reality, not with a signal from the Bolshevik Party, but with the attempt of the bourgeois government to send the most revolutionary troops, two-thirds of the Petrograd garrison, to the front, and replace them in the capital with battalions more under counter-revolutionary influence. It began, in other words, with yet another attempt, only weeks after Kornilov, to crush the revolution, obliging the proletariat to take insurrectionary measures to save it. "Indeed the result of the rising of October 25 was three-quarters decided, if not more, from the moment when we resisted the moving out of the troops, formed the Military Revolutionary Committee (October 16), appointed our Commissars in all troop formations and organisations, and thus completely isolated not only the command of the Petrograd military district, but the government...From the moment that the battalions, under the orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee, refused to leave the city, and did not leave it, we had a victorious insurrection in the capital" (10). Moreover, this Military Revolutionary Committee, which was to lead the conclusive military actions of October 25, far from being an organ of the Bolshevik party, was originally proposed by the "left" counter-revolutionary parties as a means of imposing the removal of the revolutionary troops from the capital under the authority of the soviets; but it was immediately transformed by the soviet into an instrument not only to oppose this measure, but to organise the struggle for power. "No, the government of the soviets was not a chimera, an arbitrary construction, an invention of party theoreticians. It grew up irresistibly from below, from the breakdown of industry, the impotence of the possessors, the needs of the masses. The soviets had in actual fact become a government. For the workers, soldiers and peasants there remained no other road. No time left to argue and speculate about a soviet government: it had to be realised" (11).The legend about a Bolshevik putsch is one of the fattest lies in history. In fact the insurrection was announced publicly in advance, to the elected revolutionary delegates. Trotsky's speech to the Garrison Conference on October 18 illustrates this. "It is known to the bourgeoisie that the Petrograd Soviet is going to propose to the Congress of Soviets that they seize the power...And foreseeing an inevitable battle, the bourgeois classes are trying to disarm Petrograd... At the first attempt of the counter-revolution to break up the Congress, we will answer with a counter-attack which will be ruthless, and which we will carry through to the end". Point 3 of the resolution adopted by the Garrison Conference read: "The All-Russian Congress of Soviets must take power in its hands and guarantee to the people peace, land and bread" (12). To ensure that the whole proletariat supported the struggle for power, the Garrison Conference decided on a peaceful review of forces, held in Petrograd before the Soviet Congress, centred around mass assemblies and debates. "Tens of thousands brimmed that immense building known as the House of the People... From iron columns and upstairs windows human heads, legs and arms were hanging in garlands and clusters. There was that electric tension in the air which forebodes a coming discharge. Down with Kerensky! Down with the war! Power to the Soviets! None of the Compromisers any longer dared appear before these red hot crowds with arguments or warnings. The Bolsheviks had the floor" (13). Trotsky adds: "The experience of the revolution, the war, the heavy struggle of a whole bitter lifetime, rose from the depths of memory in each of these poverty-driven men and women, expressing itself in simple and imperious thoughts: this way we can go no further, we must break a road into the future". The party did not invent this "will to power" of the masses. But it inspired it and gave the class confidence in its capacity to rule. As Lenin wrote after the Kornilov Putsch: "Let those of little faith learn from this example. Shame on those who say, ‘We have no machine with which to replace that old one which gravitates inexorably to the defence of the bourgeoisie'. For we have a machine. And that is the soviets. Do not fear the initiative and independence of the masses. Trust the revolutionary organisations of the masses, and you will see in all spheres of the state life that same power, majesty and unconquerable will of the workers and peasants, which they have shown in their solidarity and enthusiasm against Kornilovism" (14).

The task of the hour: demolishing the bourgeois state

Insurrection is one of the most crucial, complex and demanding problems which the proletariat must solve if it is to fulfil its historical mission. In the bourgeois revolution, this question is much less decisive, since the bourgeoisie could base its power struggle on its economic and political power already accumulated inside feudal society. During its revolution, the bourgeoisie let the petty bourgeoisie and the young working class do the fighting for it. When the dust of battle settled, it often preferred to place its newly won power in the hands of a now bourgeoisified, domesticated feudal class, since the latter has the authority of tradition on its side. Since the proletariat, on the contrary, has no property and no economic power within capitalist society, it can delegate neither the struggle for power, nor the defence of its class rule once acquired, to any other class or sector of society. It must take power in its own hands, drawing the other strata behind its own leadership, accept the full responsibility, the consequences and risks of its struggle. In the insurrection, the proletariat reveals, and discovers for itself, more clearly than every before, the secret of its own existence as the first and last exploited revolutionary class. No wonder the bourgeoisie is so attached to slandering the memory of October! The primordial task of the proletariat in the revolution, from February on, was to conquer the hearts and the minds of all those sectors who could be won over to its cause, but who might otherwise be used against the revolution: the soldiers, peasants, state functionaries, transport and communications employees, even the indispensable house servants of the bourgeoisie. By the eve of the insurrection, this task had been completed. The task of the insurrection was quite different: that of breaking the resistance of those state bodies and armed formations which cannot be won over, but whose continuing existence contains the nucleus of the most barbarous counter-revolution. To break this resistance, to demolish the bourgeois state, the proletariat must create an armed force and place it under its own class direction and iron discipline. Although led by the proletariat, the insurrectionary forces of October 25 were mainly composed of soldiers obeying its command. "The October revolution was a struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for power, but the outcome of the struggle was decided in the last analysis by the muzhik...What here gave the revolution the character of a brief blow with a minimum number of victims, was the combination of a revolutionary conspiracy, a proletarian insurrection, and the struggle of a peasant garrison for self-preservation. The party led the uprising; the armed detachments of workers were the fist of the insurrection; but the heavy-weight peasant garrison decided the outcome of the struggle" (15). In reality, the proletariat could seize power because it was able to mobilise the other non-exploiting strata behind its own class project: the exact opposite of a putsch. "Demonstrations, street fights, barricades - everything comprised in the usual idea of insurrection - were almost entirely absent. The revolution had no need of solving a problem already solved. The seizure of the governmental machine could be carried through according to plan with the help of comparatively small armed detachments guided from a single centre... The tranquillity of the October streets, the absence of crowds and battles, gave the enemy a pretext to talk of the conspiracy of an insignificant minority, of the adventure of a handful of Bolsheviks... But in reality the Bolsheviks could reduce the struggle for power at the last moment to a ‘conspiracy', not because they were a small minority, but for the opposite reason - because they had behind them in the workers' districts and the barracks an overwhelming majority, consolidated, organised, disciplined" (16).

Choosing the right moment: cornerstone of the struggle for power

Technically speaking, the Communist insurrection is a simple question of military organisation and strategy. Politically, it is the most demanding task imaginable. Most difficult and demanding of all is the task of choosing the right moment to struggle for power: neither too early nor too late. In July 1917, and even in August at the moment of the Kornilov Putsch, when the Bolsheviks still held the class back from a struggle for power, the main danger remained a premature insurrection. By September Lenin was already incessantly calling for immediate preparation of the armed struggle and declaring: now or never! "A revolutionary situation cannot be preserved at will. If the Bolsheviks had not seized power in October and November, in all probability they would not have seized it at all. Instead of firm leadership the masses would have found among the Bolsheviks that same disparity between word and deed which they were already sick of, and they would have ebbed away in the course of two or three months from this party which had deceived their hopes, just as they had recently ebbed away from the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks" (17). This is why Lenin, in combating the danger of delaying the struggle for power, not only exposed the counter-revolutionary preparations of the world bourgeoisie, but above all warned against the disastrous effects of hesitations on the workers themselves, who "are almost desperate". The "hungering" people might start "demolishing everything around them" in a "purely anarchist" manner "if the Bolsheviks are not able to lead them into the final battle. One cannot wait any longer without running the risk of favouring the conspiracy of Rodyanko with Wilhelm and experiencing complete decomposition with a mass flight of the soldiers, if they (who already are almost desperate) become completely desperate" (18). Choosing the right moment also requires an exact estimation not only of the balance of class forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat, but also of the dynamic of the intermediary strata. "A revolutionary situation is not long lived. The least stable of the premises of a revolution is the mood of the petty bourgeoisie. At a time of national crisis the petty bourgeoisie follows that class which inspires confidence not only in words but deeds. Although capable of impulsive enthusiasm and even of revolutionary fury, the petty bourgeoisie lacks endurance, easily loses heart under reverses, and passes from elated hope to discouragement. And these sharp and swift changes in the mood of the petty bourgeoisie lend their instability to every revolutionary situation. If the proletarian party is not decisive enough to convert the hopes and expectations of the popular masses into revolutionary action in good season, the flood tide is quickly followed by ebb: the intermediate strata turn away their eye from the revolution and seek a saviour in the opposing camp." (19).

The art of insurrection

In his struggle to persuade the party about the imperious necessity of an immediate insurrection, Lenin returned to the famous elaboration by Marx (in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany) on the question of the insurrection as a "work of art" which as in the art of war "or other arts is subject to certain rules, the neglect of which lead to the doom of the culprit party". The most important of these rules, according to Marx, are: never stop half way once the insurrection has begun; always maintain the offensive, since "the defensive is the death of every armed rising"; surprise the enemy and demoralise it through daily successes, "even small ones", obliging it to retreat; "in short, according to the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary tactics known to date: de l'audace, de l'audace, encore de l'audace". And, as Lenin noted: "A vast superiority of forces must be concentrated at the decisive point at the decisive moment, since otherwise the enemy, being better trained and organised, will destroy the insurrectionists". Lenin added: "We will hope that when action is decided, the leaders will follow the great legacy of Danton and Marx. The success both of the Russian and of the world revolution depends on two, three days of fighting" (20). To this end the proletariat had to create the organs of its struggle for power, a military committee and armed detachments. "Just as a blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in his naked hand, so the proletariat cannot directly seize the power; it has to have an organisation accommodated to this task. The coordination of the mass insurrection with the conspiracy, the subordination of the conspiracy to the insurrection, the organisation of the insurrection through the conspiracy, constitutes that complex and responsible department of revolutionary politics which Marx and Engels called ‘the art of insurrection'". (Trotsky: History p.1019). It is this centralised, coordinated, premeditated approach which allows the proletariat to smash the last, armed resistance of the ruling class, thus striking a terrible blow which the world bourgeoisie has neither forgiven nor forgotten to this day. "Historians and politicians usually give the name of spontaneous insurrection to a movement of the masses united by a common hostility against the old regime, but not having a clear aim, deliberated methods of struggle, or a leadership consciously showing the way to victory. This spontaneous insurrection is condescendingly recognised by official historians... as a necessary evil the responsibility for which falls upon the old regime. The real reason for their attitude of indulgence is that ‘spontaneous' insurrection cannot transcend the framework of the bourgeois regime (...) What they do reject - calling it ‘Blanquism' or still worse, Bolshevism - is the conscious preparation of an overthrow, the plan, the conspiracy" (21). This is what still infuriates the bourgeoisie the most: the audacity with which the working class snatched power out of its hands. The bourgeoisie - everybody - knew an uprising was being prepared. But it did not know when and where the enemy would attack. In striking its decisive blow, the proletariat profited fully from the advantage of surprise, of itself choosing the moment and terrain of battle. The bourgeoisie hoped and believed its enemy would be naive and "democratic" enough to decide the question of insurrection publicly, in the presence of the ruling classes, at the All-Russian Soviet Congress which had been summoned to Petrograd. There it hoped to sabotage and forestall the decision and its execution. But when the Congress delegates arrived in the capital the insurrection was in full swing, the ruling class already reeling. The Petrograd proletariat, via its Military Revolutionary Committee, handed over power to the Soviet Congress, and the bourgeoisie could do nothing to prevent it. Putsch! Conspiracy! the bourgeoisie cried and still cries. Lenin's reply: No putsch; conspiracy yes, but a conspiracy subordinated to the will of the masses and the needs of the insurrection. And Trotsky added: "The higher the political level of a revolutionary movement and the more serious it's leadership, the greater will be the place occupied by conspiracy in a popular insurrection" (22). Bolshevism a form of Blanquism? This accusation is raised again today by the exploiting classes. "The Bolsheviks were compelled more than once, and long before the October revolution, to refute accusations of conspiratism and Blanquism directed against them by their enemies. Moreover, nobody waged a more implacable struggle against the system of pure conspiracy than Lenin. The opportunists of the international social democracy more than once defended the old Social Revolutionary tactic of individual terror directed against the agents of czarism, when this tactic was ruthlessly criticised by the Bolsheviks with their insistence upon mass insurrection as opposed to the individual adventurism of the intelligentsia. But in refuting all varieties of Blanquism and anarchism, Lenin did not for one moment bow down to any ‘sacred' spontaneity of the masses". To this Trotsky added: "Conspiracy does not take the place of insurrection. An active minority of the class, no matter how well organised, cannot seize the power regardless of the general conditions of the country. In this point history has condemned Blanquism. But only in this. His affirmative theorem retains all it's force. In order to conquer the power, the proletariat needs more than a spontaneous insurrection. It needs a suitable organisation, it needs a plan; it needs a conspiracy. Such is the Leninist view of this question" (23).

Party and insurrection

It is a well known fact that Lenin, the first to be completely clear about the necessity of the struggle for power in October, having put forward several different plans for insurrection, one centred on Finland and the Baltic Fleet, another on Moscow, at one moment advocated that the Bolshevik party, not a Soviet organ, should directly organise the insurrection. Events proved that the organisation and leadership of the rising by a Soviet organ such as the Military Revolutionary Committee, where of course the party had the dominant influence, is the best guarantee for the success of the whole uprising, since the whole class, not just the many sympathisers of the party, felt themselves represented by their unitary revolutionary organs. But Lenin's proposition, according to bourgeois historians, reveals that for him the revolution is not the task of the masses, but the private affair of the party. Why otherwise, they ask, was he so much against waiting for the Soviet Congress to decide the rising? In reality, Lenin's attitude was in complete accordance with marxism and its historically founded confidence in the proletariat masses. "It would be disastrous, or a purely formalistic approach, to want to wait for the uncertain voting of 25th of October. The people have the right and the duty to decide such questions, not through the ballot but through force; the people have the right and the duty, in critical moments of the revolution, to show its representatives, even its best representatives, the right direction, instead of waiting for them. This has been shown by the history of every revolution, and it would be a boundless crime of revolutionaries to let the moment slip away, although they know that the salvation of the revolution, the peace proposals, the saving of Petrograd, the salvation from hunger, the handing over of the soil to the peasants depend on this. The government is tottering. It has to be given the final push, at any price!" (24). In reality, all the Bolshevik leaders were agreed that, whoever carried out the rising, the power just conquered would be immediately handed over to the All Russian Soviet Congress. The party knew perfectly that the revolution was not the business either of the party alone, or of the Petrograd workers alone, but of the whole proletariat. But concerning the question of who should carry through the insurrection itself, Lenin was perfectly correct to argue that this should be done by the class organs best suited to the job, best able to assume the task of political and military planning, and political leadership of the struggle for power. Events proved that Trotsky was right in arguing that a specific organ of the soviets, specially created for the task, and standing directly under the influence of the party, was best suited. But the debate was not one of principle, but concerned the vital question of political efficiency. The underlying concern of Lenin, that the soviet apparatus as a whole could not be charged with the task, since this would fatally delay the insurrection and lead to divulging plans to the enemy, was completely valid. The painful experience of the whole Russian Revolution was necessary for the later clarification within the Communist Left that although the political leadership by the class party, both of the struggle for power and of the proletarian dictatorship is indispensable, it is not the task of the party itself to take power. On this question neither Lenin nor the other Bolsheviks (nor the Spartacists in Germany etc) were completely clear in 1917, nor could they be. But concerning the "art of insurrection" itself, concerning the revolutionary patience and even caution to avoid premature show-downs, concerning the revolutionary audacity necessary to take power, there is nobody today's revolutionaries can learn more from than Lenin. In particular on the role of the party in the insurrection. History proved Lenin right: it is the masses who take power, it is the soviet which provides the organisation, but the class party is the most indispensable weapon of the struggle for power. In July 1917 it was the party which steered the class away from a decisive defeat. In October 1917 it was the party which steered the class down the road to power. Without this indispensable leadership, there would have been no seizure of power.

Lenin versus Stalin

But the October Revolution led to Stalinism!! cries the bourgeoisie, resorting to its "final" argument. In reality it was the bourgeois counter-revolution, the defeat of the world revolution in western Europe, the invasion and international isolation of the Soviet Republic, the support of the developing nationalist bureaucracy in Russia by the world bourgeoisie, against the proletariat and the Bolsheviks, which "led to Stalinism". It is important to recall that during the crucial weeks of October 1917, as during the previous months, a current manifested itself within the Bolshevik party reflecting the full weight of bourgeois ideology, opposing the insurrection, and that even then Stalin was its most dangerous representative. Already in March 1917 Stalin had been the main spokesman of those in the party who wanted to abandon its internationalist revolutionary position, support the Provisional Government and its policy of continuing the imperialist war, and merge with the social-patriotic Mensheviks. When Lenin came out publicly for insurrection in the weeks before the rising, Stalin as editor of the party organ printed his articles with intentional delays, whereas the contributions of Zinoviev and Kamenev against the rising, which were often in breach of party discipline, were published as if they represented the position of Bolshevism - so that Lenin threatened to resign from the Central Committee. Stalin continued pretending that Lenin, in favour of immediate insurrection, and with the party now behind him, and Kamenev and Zinoviev, openly sabotaging the party decisions, were of "the same opinion". During the insurrection itself Stalin the political adventurer "disappeared" - in reality in order to see which side would win before coming out with a position of his own. The struggle of Lenin and the party against "Stalinism" in 1917, against the manipulating, treacherous sabotage of the insurrection (unlike Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were at least open about their opposition) would be renewed within the Party in the last years of Lenin's life, but this time under infinitely more unfavourable historical conditions.

The highest pinnacle of human history

Far from being a banal coup d'Etat, as the ruling class lies, the October Revolution was the highest point attained by humanity in its history to date. For the first time ever, an exploited class had the courage and the capacity to seize power from the exploiters and inaugurate the world proletarian revolution. Although the revolution was soon to be defeated, in Berlin, Budapest and Turin, although the Russian and world proletariat had to pay a terrible price for its defeat - the horrors of counter-revolution, another world war, and all the barbarism which has followed until this day - the bourgeoisie has still not been able to completely wipe out the memory and the lessons of this exalting event. Today, when the decomposed ideology and mentality of the ruling classes, its unbridled individualism, nihilism and obscurantism, the flourishing of reactionary world views such as racism and nationalism, mysticism and ecologism, abandoning the last remnants of belief in human progress, it is the beacon illuminated by Red October which shows the way forward. The memory of October is there to remind the proletariat that the future of humanity lies in its hands, and that these hands are capable of accomplishing the task. The class struggle of the proletariat, the re-appropriation of its own history by the working class, the defence and development of the scientific method of marxism, that is the programme of October. That is today the programme for the future of humanity. As Trotsky wrote in the conclusion of his great History of the Russian Revolution: "The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarised as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind force - in nature, in society, in man himself. Critical and creative thought can boast of its greatest victories up to now in the struggle with nature. The physico-chemical sciences have already reached a point where man is clearly about to become master of matter. But social relations are still formed in the manner of coral islands. Parliamentarism illuminated only the surface of society, and even that with a rather artificial light. In comparison with monarchy and other heirlooms from the cannibals and cave-dwellers, democracy is of course a great conquest, but it leaves the blind play of forces in the social relations of men untouched. It was against this deeper sphere of the unconscious that the October revolution was the first to raise its hand. The Soviet system wishes to bring aim and plan into the very basis of society, where up to now only accumulated consequences have reigned".

Kr. October 1997

Notes 

1) Lenin: The Russian Revolution and the Civil War, Collected Works, vol 26.

2) Lenin: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? ibid

3) Lenin: Resolution on the Insurrection, ibid.

4) Lenin: Letter to  the Bolshevik  Comrades Participating at the Soviet Congress of  the Northern Region, ibid.

5) Lenin: Letter to Comrades, ibid.

6) Lenin: Letter to the  Petrograd City Conference, ibid.

7) Trotsky: The Lessons of October. Written 1924.

8) Trotsky: ibid.

9) Lenin: Theses for the October 8th Conference, CW, vol 26.

10) Trotsky: Lessons of October.

11) Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, p. 930.

12) Trotsky: History, p. 957.

13) Trotsky: History, p. 967.

14) See Lenin: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, and of course his State and Revolution.

15) Trotsky: History, p. 1136.

16) Trotsky: History, p. 1138-39.

17) Trotsky: History, p 1005.

18) Lenin: ‘Letter  to  Comrades'.

19) Trotsky: History. p. 1125.

20) Lenin: ‘Proposals of an Outsider', CW, vol 26.

21) Trotsky: History, p . 1019.

22) Trotsky: ibid.

23) Trotsky: History, p 1020.

24) Lenin: ‘Letter to the Central Committee', CW, vol 26.