For five years the class struggle has continued to develop world wide. Against the simultaneous and ever deeper attacks with which it is confronted the working class is reacting, demonstrating its militancy and asserting its class struggle in both the so-called developed and under-developed countries.

Confirmation of the world wide development of the class struggle

During 2007, workers' struggles have erupted in many countries.

Egypt. In December 2006 and spring 2007, the 27,000 workers of the Ghazl Al Mahallah factory, some hundred kilometres from Cairo were at the heart of a great wave of struggle. They returned to the fight, in the midst of a powerful wave of struggle, on 23rd September. The government had failed to keep its promise of paying 150 days pay to all the workers, which had put an end to the previous strike. One striker, arrested by the police, declared: "We were promised 150 days pay, we just want to have our rights respected: we are determined to go on to the end". The workers drew up a list of their demands: a £150 Egyptian bonus (this is worth less than 20 euros, while monthly wages vary between £E200 and £E250); no confidence to the union committee and the company's CEO; bonuses to be included in the basic wage without being tied to factory output; increase in food bonuses; a housing bonus; a minimum wage indexed on prices; provision of transport for workers obliged to live a long way from the factory; and an improvement in medical services. The workers of other textile factories, like those of Kafr Al Dawar who had already in December 2006 declared that "We are all in the same boat and embarked on the same journey", once again demonstrated their solidarity and went on strike at the end of September. In the Cairo flour-mills, the workers went on sit-down strike and sent a message of solidarity to support the demands of the textile workers. In the factories of Tanta Linseed and Oil, the workers followed the example of Mahalla by publishing a similar list of demands. These struggles also declared a powerful rejection of the official unions, seen as the faithful bloodhounds of the government and the bosses: "The representative of the official state-controlled union who had come to ask his colleagues to put an end to the strike, is in hospital after being beaten up by angry workers. 'The union only obeys orders, we want to elect our own representatives', explained the workers" (quoted in Libération, 1/10/2007). The government has been forced to offer the workers 120 days bonuses and to promise to sanction the management. But the workers have shown that they no longer trust mere promises; little by little they have gained confidence in their own collective strength and their determination to fight until their demands are satisfied remains intact.

Dubaï. In this Persian Gulf emirate, hundreds of thousands of construction workers, for the most part Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese, are building luxurious hotels and palaces for a hundred euros a month, parked like cattle in sordid lodgings. Struggles had already broken out their in spring 2006, but in October 2007 4,000 of them braved the threat of repression, of losing their jobs and wages, and being expelled from Dubaï for life and took to the street bringing 400,000 other building workers out with them for two days.

Algeria. Faced with growing discontent, the autonomous civil service unions called a national strike of state empployees, especially the teachers, for the 12th and 15th January 2008, against the collapse of purchasing power and the new wage scales for teachers. But the strike also drew in other sectors, including health workers. The town of Tizi Ouzou was completely paralysed and the teachers' strike was especially solid in the towns of Oran, Constantine, Annaba, Bechar, Adrar and Saïda.

Venezuela. In May 2007 the oil workers had already mobilised against lay-offs in a state enterprise. In September they mobilised again during the labour contract negotiations to demand higher wages. May also saw a mobilisation by students against the regime, demanding improvements in living conditions for the poorest of the population and workers. The students organised in general assemblies open to all, with elected strike committees. Each time, the repression meted out by the government of Chavez, "apostle of the Bolivarian revolution", left some dead and hundreds wounded.

Peru. In April, an open-ended strike began in a Chinese company and soon spread to coalmines nationwide, for the first time in 20 years. The Sider Peru company at Chimbote was totally paralysed despite attempts by the unions to isolate and sabotage the strike. The miners' wives demonstrated alongside them, joined by a large part of the local population including peasants and unemployed. Near Lima, the miners of Casapalca sequestrated the mine managers who had threatened them with lay-offs if they left their work. Students from Lima, joined by a part of the population, came to bring food and support for the strikers. In June, a large proportion of the country's 325,000 teachers were mobilised, equally supported by much of the population, despite the best efforts of the unions. Each time, the government reacted with arrests, threats of redundancies, the use of contract workers to replace striking miners, and by organising vast media campaigns to slander the striking teachers.

Turkey. Faced with the loss of wage and job security as a result of privatisation and the transfer of 10,000 jobs to subcontractors, 26,000 workers of Türk Telecom struck for 44 days at the end of the year - the biggest strike in Turkey since the 1991 miners' strike. In the midst of a military campaign against the Kurds on the Iraqi frontier, some "leaders" were arrested and accused of sabotage, even of high treason towards the national interest, and threatened with sanctions and redundancy. In the end, they kept their jobs and a 10% wage rise was negotiated.

Greece. A general strike on 12th December 2007 against the reform of the "special" pension schemes (the retirement age has already risen to 65 for men and 60 for women) involved 700,000 workers (32% of the working population), and brought together state and private employees from the banks, schools, courts, civil service, post office, electricity and telephone industries, hospitals and public transport (metro, trams, ports and airports). More than 100,000 demonstrated in Athens and Thessalonika and in other major towns.

Finland. The bourgeoisie has already gone a long way to dismantling social protection in Finland, where 70,000 health workers (mostly nurses) went on strike for a month in October to demand a rise in wages of at least 24%; wages are so low (between 400 and 600 euros a month) that many are obliged to find work in neighbouring Sweden. 12,800 nurses threatened to resign collectively if the negotiations between the government and the Tehy union failed to give them satisfaction - the government having only proposed a 12% rise. In some hospitals whole wards are still threatened with closure.

Bulgaria. After a one day symbolic strike on the first day of term, teachers came out on an open-ended strike at the end of September to demand pay increases: 100% for secondary school teachers (who earn on average 174 euros per month) and a 5% increase in the national education budget. The strike has ended for the moment following a government promise to review teachers' wages in 2008.

Hungary. Rail workers came out on strike to protest at the closure of unprofitable lines and against the government's reforms of pensions and the health service. On 17th December, the railwaymen also brought out another 32,000 workers from various industries (teachers, health workers, bus drivers, Budapest airport workers). In the end, despite the fact that the Parliament had just voted through the reform, the unions were able to use the mobilisation across industries to stifle the railwaymen's struggle, and called for a return to work the following day.

Russia. Braving the law which makes all strikes of more than 24 hours illegal, the convictions of strikers systematically handed down by the courts, constant police violence, and the use of gangsters against the most militant workers, since last spring a wave of strikes has swept through the country for the first time in ten years, from Western Siberia to the Caucasus. Numerous branches of industry have been affected: building sites in Chechnya, a sawmill in Novgorod; a hospital in the region of Tchita, building maintenance workers in Saratov, fast-food workers in Irkutsk, the General Motors factory at Togliattigrad and a major engineering factory in Carelia. The movement culminated in November with a three-day strike by dockers at Tuapse on the Black Sea, followed by the dockers at three St Petersburg companies between 13th and 17th November. Postal workers went on strike on 26th October as did power company workers during the same month. Train drivers on the railways threatened to strike for the first time since 1988. The complete blackout maintained by the media concerning this wave of strikes provoked by massive inflation and price rises of 50-70% for basic foodstuffs was broken above all by the strike of the Ford workers at Vsevolojsk in the region of St Petersburg on 20th November. The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia which openly works hand in glove with the government and is hostile to strikes of any description, proved unable to play the slightest role in controlling the workers' movement. On the other hand, the management of the major companies, with the help of the Western ruling class, exploited to the hilt the workers' illusions in the "free" or "class-struggle" unionism, encouraging the emergence of new union structures, such as the Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers, created at the initiative of the Ford union committee and grouping independent unions from several major companies such as Avto-VAZ-General Motors in Togliattigrad and Renault-Autoframos in Moscow. It is these new "independent unions" which - by isolating the workers in "their" factory and limiting other workers' expressions of solidarity to messages of sympathy and financial help, led the workers to bitterest defeat. Exhausted and pennyless after a month on strike, they were forced to return to work after winning nothing and on management's terms: a vague promise of negotiations after the return to work.

Italy. On 23rd November, the rank-and-file unions (Confederazione Unitaria di Base - CUB, Cobas, and various inter-branch "class struggle" unions) launched a one-day general strike followed by two million workers against the agreement signed on 23rd July last between the government and the three main union federations (CGIL/CISL/UIL) legalising attacks on job security, and a drastic reduction in pensions and health spending. Some 400,000 people marched in 25 demonstrations around the country, the biggest being in Rome and Milan. All branches were affected, but especially in transport (railways, airports shut down), engineering (the strike was 90% solid at Fiat's Pomigliano plant), and the hospitals. Large numbers of those on strike were young people on short-term contracts (of which there are more than 6 million) and non-unionised workers. Anger at declining purchasing power played an important part in the size of this mobilisation.

Britain. For the first time in more than a decade, postal workers, especially in Liverpool and South London, came out spontaneously in series of strikes against falling real wages and threatened job losses; the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) responded by isolating the workers by restricting their activity to picketing the striking sorting offices. At the same time, the CWU was signing an agreement with management to increase flexibility in jobs and wages.

Germany. The railworkers' "rolling strike" for higher wages lasted 10 months controlled by the train drivers' union GDL (Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokführer). The unions played a major role in dividing the workers, some unions keeping to the legal framework, while others appeared more radical in the readiness to break the law. The media organised a huge campaign to slander the "selfish" strikers, who in fact received a good deal of sympathy from "customers" who are largely other workers increasingly ready to identify with those in struggle against the same "social injustice" that they feel themselves. The number of railwaymen has halved in the last 20 years, while working conditions have deteriorated and wages have been blocked for the last 15 years to the railwaymen are now some of the worst paid workers in Germany (monthly wages of only 1500 euros on average). Under the pressure of the railwaymen a new three-day strike in November was authorised by the courts in parallel with the rail strike in France, which had wide popular support in Germany. This led, in January, to a wage increase of 11% (much less than the 31% demanded and already in part eroded); in an attempt to let off steam, the 20,000 train drivers' working week was reduced from 41 to 40... starting in February 2009.

At the end of 2008 the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia announced the closure of its Bochum plant, laying off 2300 workers and putting another 1700 jobs at risk amongst the subcontractors in the town. The day after the announcement, on 16th January the workers refused to return to work and car workers from the nearby Opel factory, from Mercedes, steelworkers from Hoechst's Dortmund plant, engineers from Herne, and miners from the region all gathered at the Nokia factory gates to bring support and solidarity to their comrades. The German proletariat at the heart of Europe, by systematically drawing on its experience of solidarity and militant struggle, is once again becoming a beacon for the international class struggle. Remember that in 2004 the workers of Daimler-Benz in Bremen had already come out on strike spontaneously against the management's attempts to blackmail them into competing with their comrades at Daimler-Benz' Stuttgart factory threatened with redundancies. A few months later it was the turn of the same Opel workers in Bochum to strike spontaneously against the same kind of management pressure. That is why today the German ruling class has tried to avoid the same expressions of solidarity and mobilisation across branches of industry by focusing attention on this umpteenth case of delocalisation (the Nokia factory is being moved to Cluj in Romania) and orchestrating a huge media campaign (in a united front of government, local and regional deputies, the church and the unions) to accuse the Finnish company of betraying the government after spending all the subsidies it had received to keep the Bochum factory open.

Increasingly, the struggle against redundancies and job losses are being joined by demands for wage rises and against declining buying power, while the working class as a whole is the target of incessant attacks by the ruling class (retirement age raised to 67, redundancy plans, the Agenda 2010 cuts in benefits...). In 2007, the number of strike days lost was the highest since 1993 just after reunification (70% of these were due to the strikes in spring against the contracting out of 50,000 jobs in the telecommunications industry).

France. The potential for the future has been demonstrated above all by the strikes of rail and tram drivers in France during October and November, one year after the struggles in 2006 which forced the government to withdraw the new law (CPE) aimed reducing job security for young people, and where the student youth played a major role. The transport strikes followed on a 5-day strike by Air France cabin crews against the deterioration of their working conditions, indicative of a general rise in militancy and social discontent.

Far from hanging on to a "privileged" pension scheme, the railwaymen demanded a return to retirement after 37½ years of contributions for all. The young workers of the SNCF in particular demonstrated a clear determination to spread the strike and break with the corporatism dividing different categories of railworkers (drivers, mechanics, train crew) which had weighed so heavily on the struggles of 1986-7 and 1995, revealing a strong feeling of solidarity within the working class as a whole.

At the same time, the student movement against the reform of the universities (known as the "Loi Pécresse"), aimed at dividing the universities into a few élite institutions for the bourgeois and "dustbin" universities ending in short-term work contracts for the rest, was a prolongation of the 2006 movement in that its platform of demands included not only the withdrawal of the Loi Pécresse but the rejection of all the government's attacks. Real ties of solidarity were created between students and railworkers and tram drivers, expressed in however limited a form at the strongest moments of the struggle in presence in each others' general assemblies, joint action, and meals taken together.

These struggles confront everywhere the sabotage and division encouraged by the trades unions which are more and more revealing their true function in the service of the bourgeois state, as they are forced to the fore in the attacks on the working class. In the rail and tram workers' struggles of October and November 2007 in France, the unions' collusion with the government was evident. And every union played its part in dividing and isolating the struggles.[1]

United States. The United Auto Workers' union sabotaged the strike at General Motors in September, then at Chrysler in October, negotiating with management the transfer of medical and social coverage to the union in return for the "preservation" of jobs and a four-year pay freeze. This is a real swindle, since in keeping the same number of jobs the management plans to replace permanent full-time workers with temporary workers with lower wages, who will still be obliged to join the union.

This attitude of the union, accepting worse treatment for future hires, is a long way from the determination shown by the New York subway workers in 2005, who struck at great cost to themselves against a proposed deal that would have penalised future generations while leaving today's workers relatively untouched, and who explicitly declared their solidarity not only for their fellow workers but for workers as yet unborn.

The main characteristics of the struggles today

Increasingly, the bourgeoisie is obliged to adopt counter-measures faced with the discredit of the union apparatus. This is why we are seeing the appearance, depending on the country, of rank-and-file unions, or more "radical" unions, or unions claiming to be "free and independent" in order to control the struggles, to hold back the workers' ability to take control of the struggle themselves and above all to prevent any process of reflection, discussion, and rise in consciousness taking place among the workers themselves.

The development of these struggles also confronts a vast hate campaign orchestrated by the ruling class, and an increase in repressive measures. In France, not only was a great campaign organised to play "customers" off against the striking transport workers, to divide the workers amongst themselves and break the impulse towards solidarity, there is a growing attempt to "criminalise" the strikers. On 21st November, at the end of the strike, a whole campaign was mounted around acts of sabotage of rail tracks and overhead catenaries in order to make the workers appear as "irresponsible" or even "terrorists". The same "criminalisation" was directed against the students picketing the universities described as "Khmer rouges" or "delinquants". The same students were the object of violent repression by the police when they cleared the pickets and "unblocked" the occupied universities. Dozens of students were hurt or arrested and summarily sentenced to long prison terms.

These recent struggles entirely confirm the characteristics which we highlighted in the resolution on the international situation adopted by the ICC's 17th Congress in May 2007:[2]

• "...they are more and more incorporating the question of solidarity. This is vitally important because it constitutes par excellence the antidote to the "every man for himself" attitude typical of social decomposition, and above all because it is at the heart of the world proletariat's capacity not only to develop its present struggles but also to overthrow capitalism". Despite all the bourgeoisie's effort to keep the struggles apart, in the struggles in France during October-November the aspiration to solidarity was in the air.
• The struggles express a disillusionment in the future that capitalism offers us: "nearly four decades of open crisis and attacks on working class living conditions, notably the rise of unemployment and precarious work, have swept aside illusions that 'tomorrow things will be better': the older generations of workers as well as the new ones are much more conscious of the fact that 'tomorrow things will be even worse'".
• "Today it is not the possibility of revolution which is the main food for the process of reflection but, in view of the catastrophic perspectives which capitalism has in store for us, its necessity". The reflection on the dead-end of capitalism is more and more a determining element in the ripening of class consciousness.
• "In 1968, the movement of the students and the movement of the workers, while succeeding each other in time, and while they had sympathy for each other, expressed two different realities with regard to capitalism's entry into its open crisis: for the students, a revolt of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie faced with the perspective of a deterioration of its status in society; for the workers, an economic struggle against the beginning of the degradation of their living standards. In 2006, the movement of the students was a movement of the working class". Today, a majority of students are integrated into the working class: most have to work in order to pay for their studies or their lodging, they are constanting confronted with precarious working conditions, unemployment, or dead-end jobs. The two-speed university system under preparation by the government will bring them closer to the proletariat. In this sense, the French students' mobilisation in 2007 confirms that of 2006, which was clearly on a working class terrain and used working class methods: sovereign mass meetings open to all workers.

Today, the process of development in the class struggle is also marked by the development of discussion within the working class, by a need for collective reflection, the politicisation of searching elements which can be seen in the appearance or reactivation of proletarian groups and discussion circles confronted with important events (the outbreak of imperialist conflicts) or after strikes. Throughout the world, there exists a tendency to move towards internastionalist positions. We find a characteristic example in Turkey, where the comrades of the EKS group defend an internationalist position against the war in Iraq and Turkey's intervention there, defending the class positions of the Communist Left there.[3]

Revolutionary minorities have also appeared in less developed countries such as the Philippines and Peru, or in highly industrialised countries where the tradition of the workers' movement is less developed such as Korea and Japan. In this context, the ICC has assumed its responsibilities as can be seen in our recent interventions where we have taken part in, encouraged, or organised public meetings in places as different as Peru, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Japan or South Korea.

"It is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations, and the ICC in particular, to be an active part in the process of reflection that is already going on within the class, not only by intervening actively in the struggles when they start to develop but also in stimulating the development of the groups and elements who are seeking to join the struggle". Within these minorities, the growing echo of the propaganda and positions of the Communist Left will be an essential factor in the politicisation of the working class towards the overthrow of capitalism.

W (19th January 2008)

---

[1] For more information on the unions' sabotage, see the articles published in our French press during November and December 2007 some of which are available in English in World Revolution n°310 (https://en.internationalism.org/wr/310/index [1]).

[2] See International Review n°130, 3rd quarter 2007.

[3] See their leaflet published in World Revolution n°309 and on our web site: https://en.internationalism.org/wr/309/eks-leaflet [2]

The previous article in this series[1] showed how the CNT contributed decisively to setting up the trap of the Spanish Republic and how, at the Madrid Conference (June 1931), the union leaders of the CNT did all they could to complete this marriage between the union and the bourgeois state.

Two factors prevented this marriage at the time:

• the Republican state rejected the CNT's offer and continued its habitual and merciless persecution of CNT militants;
• the proletarian base of the CNT opposed this perspective.

Anarchism took the lead in this resistance, when the majority regrouped to form an organisation, the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federacion Anarquista Iberica - FAI) in 1927. The aim of this article is to assess this attempt to preserve the CNT for the proletariat.

Anarchism and the Republic

The FAI was born out of the struggle against the growing influence of the union wing in the CNT. Although it was officially formed in 1927 in Valencia, it originated in a Committee for anarchist links which called a clandestine Congress in Barcelona in 1925. This Congress was to take position on three points:

1. The need to work towards overthrowing the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Francisco Olaya[2] put it like this: "Is Spanish anarchism able to incite a revolution in the short term without linking itself to the political parties? Basing ourselves on the fierce and frequent persecutions we have experienced, we have to say ‘No', we have to act in concord with the CNT and with those forces that are attempting to overthrow the dictatorship by violent means but without limiting the scope and development of the revolution." So the door was left open to a "tactical" alliance with all bourgeois oppositional forces and in fact the Congress decided to "continue the conspiratorial relationship with Francisco Macia[3], giving him a time limit of 31st July to take decisive action against the regime." It was also decided to "suspend all relationship with the republican Rodrigo Soriano as he is unable to fulfil what he has undertaken to do." One might ask just what sort of undertaking would it have been possible to conclude with this notorious right winger?
2. The need for an anarchist organisation. The Congress proposed to direct its efforts towards the formation of an Iberian Anarchist Federation which included the Portuguese groups.
3. The topic "Syndicalism and Us". According to Olaya, "it was decided to take positive action aimed at progressively accentuating the anarchist ideology of the CNT".

So the anarchist Congress placed itself on the same basis as the unionists that it claimed to combat: it adopted the "tactical" aim of replacing the dictatorship with a liberal regime and making an alliance with the Republican opposition forces. Olaya quotes a declaration by Garcia Oliver[4] during a meeting held at the Paris trade union centre ("Bourse de travail") "that a change of regime is imminent in Spain and that it must be given every support regardless of ideology".

This position of Garcia Oliver was formally rejected by the Marseilles Congress of 1926, which concluded that it was necessary to "break off relations with the political parties and prepare to overthrow the dictatorship in collaboration with the CNT." That is, the "tactical" aim to participate in the "fight against the dictatorship" still stood but at the same time it declared that it would have no relationship with the political parties. On the other hand, contact between its militants and the Republican parties continued even after the formation of the FAI[5].

After the Republic was declared, a long editorial in Tierra y libertad[6] (Earth and Freedom) of 19th April 1931 entitled "The Position of Anarchism on the Republic" welcomed "warmly the creation of the Republic", explicitly welcomed "the new leaders" and formulated a series of demands which, according to Olaya, "coincide with the electoral promises made by many of them." This was the very least they could do as these demands included the suppression of aristocratic titles, a limitation on dividends paid to the share holders of large companies, the closure of convents, monasteries and Jesuit communities! No more nor less than a 100% bourgeois programme to be put into effect... by the much vilified political action!

Far from breaking with the direction of the CNT majority which gave priority to the struggle for a bourgeois regime in Republican form, the anarchist FAI jumped into it feet first! However it maintained the illusion that it could break out of this framework by encouraging the radicalisation of the masses. In doing so it reproduced the classic ambiguity of anarchism in relation to the Republic, an ambiguity that it had already displayed in 1873 with the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874)[7].

The split in the CNT

On 8th June 1931 a Peninsula[8] anarchist plenum was held at which the "comrades" of the peninsula committee were sanctioned for having contacts with "politicians". The Plenum declared it necessary to "direct activities towards revolution and anarchism in the knowledge that democracy is the last refuge of capitalism"[9].

How are we to understand this radical about-turn? Two months previously democracy was welcomed, now it is denounced. In fact it is the very basis of anarchism that obliges it to do one thing and then its opposite. This basis affirms that individuals tend naturally towards liberty and reject any kind of authority. On the basis of such abstract and general principles it is possible to justify the total rejection of any kind of authority or of the state - which makes it possible to understand that democracy is the last refuge of capitalism - while at the same time supporting an authority that "has more respect for individual liberty" or which is "less authoritarian" than the former one, as the Republic pretended to be.

Moreover these "principles" lead to a complete personalisation of political activity. The members of the former peninsula committee were forced to resign because they had had contact with political elements. However no attempt was made to examine the reasons which led them to support what was now rejected; no attempt was made to understand why the central organ, the peninsula committee, pursued a policy that was contrary to the principles of the organisation. The committee members were changed on the principle that "if the creature is dead so is its poison". Such personalisation meant that the struggle against the union sector was not carried out by means of debate and clarification but rather by means of campaigns against those militants who had a different point of view, through attempts to "win over" local or regional committees, administrative measures of expulsion, etc. For most of the CNT militants the fight against the "union" sector is not seen as a struggle for clarity but rather as a war between pressure groups, in which insults, suspicion and prohibitions predominated. Events reached a surprising level of violence. Olaya says that there reigned "within the CNT a civil war atmosphere". On 25th October 1932 "a group of those who had split attacked two CNT militants at their workplace who were opposed to the split. They killed one and seriously wounded the other".

"During the regional union plenum organised at Sabadell during the repression, there was a resounding confrontation between the two tendencies. The reformist 'Trentists' were little by little relieved of their organisational responsibilities. Pestaña and Arin, who signed the Manifesto of the 30, were stripped of their functions on the national committee. The unions linked to the local Sabadell federation withdrew from the regional Congress as a protest against the so-called dictatorship of the FAI. The unions in question, who counted more than 20,000 members, were later expelled by the regional committee. All this led to the organisational split that was at the origin of the 'Oppositional Unions'"[10]. The division was very serious in Catalonia and in the region of Valencia (where there were more members in the oppositional unions than in the official CNT) but there were also serious repercussions in Huelva, in the Asturias and in Galicia.

Although - as we will see later - the CNT was to follow the anarchist orientation, the union sector which made up a large part of the CNT was to function autonomously under the name of the Oppositional Unions up until the definitive regroupment of 1936 (see the next article). The Oppositional Unions acted on the basis of a more or less open collaboration with the UGT (the socialist union) on the principle of unity between unions.

In the period 1931-32 the FAI managed to convince the CNT to take up a revolutionary orientation. Behind this 180° about-face lay a real radicalisation of the workers, day labourers and peasants, who were suffering greatly from the increase in poverty and brutal repression under the Republic. This about-face took place within a situation of total confusion, on the one hand because of the split and the way it came about[11] and on the other because it was not based on any serious reflection, going from a policy of support for the Republic to a vague "struggle for the revolution" without answering collectively some basic questions: what kind of revolution are we fighting for? are the historic conditions ripe internationally? why did both unionists and the FAI support the formation of the Republic? These questions remained unanswered, the CNT's orientation was simply reversed from a right wing "critical" support for the Republic to a left wing position for the "insurrectional struggle for the revolution". The eternal principles of anarchism made it possible to endorse one or the other.

The insurrectional period, 1932-34

The period 1932-1934 has been called the "insurrectional period" by Gomez Casas. The most significant episodes were the attempts at a general strike in 1932, January 1933 and December of the same year. These movements were highly combative, there was an ardent desire to escape from an intolerable situation of poverty and oppression but they remained totally dispersed, each sector of workers confronting the capitalist state in isolation. Of course the army was sent systematically to crush the struggles. The Republic's response was always the same; massacres, massive detentions, incarceration, torture, penal servitude and deportation. The principle victims were naturally the militants of the CNT.

These movements often arose at the initiative of the workers themselves and were labelled by the bourgeoisie an "insurrectional plot perpetrated by the anarchists"[12]. One example is what happened to the strike in Alto Llobregat[13] in January 1932. On the 17th the workers of the Berga textile industry went on strike to protest against the failure to apply an agreement won six months beforehand. The next day other workers and miners in the area (Balsareny, Suria, Sallent, Figols...) struck in solidarity with their comrades. The workers managed to disarm the Somatenes (the auxiliary civil guard of the state forces in Catalonia). By the 22nd January the strike was solid throughout the whole zone. The CNT flag was hoisted above local government headquarters in some places. The Civil Guard shut itself in its barracks so the government sent reinforcements from the Civil Guard stationed at Lerida and Saragossa as well as army units to crush the struggle.

In order to justify the barbarous repression the government launched a campaign to create confusion. It claimed that the strike at Alto Llobrega was the work of the CNT-FAI[14] "it portrayed the confederates [confederates, ie members of the CNT] as infiltrated criminals and spread the repression to Catalonia, the Levant and Andalusia. Hundreds of prisoners were crammed into the holds of ships that were to take them into deportation"[15]. Fransisco Ascaso, one of the leaders of the FAI, was among the detainees. To complete the confusion one the leaders of the organisation, Federica Montseny, attributed the movement to the initiative of the FAI in an article that was to become famous.

The movement made demands and was solid, it was an expression of the workers themselves and as such it was very different from the insurrectional movements created by anarchist groups. However, although it was motivated by solidarity, in particular with the numerous detainees who were victims of the Republican repression, and also by a clear revolutionary will, these movements involved a minority, they were very localised and were foreign to the real dynamic of the workers' struggle and also very dispersed.

The most important insurrectional action began in January 1933 and spread throughout Catalonia and many districts of Valencia and Andalusia. Peirats shows that this movement originated in the continual provocations of the autonomous government in Catalonia, controlled by the "radicals" of the republican Esquerra. These señoritos (gentlemen of good family) had flirted with the CNT in the 20s and had made an agreement more or less secretly with the unionist leaders to support the autonomous government and "turn the CNT into a domestic union like the UGT in Madrid" (Federica Montseny). They were very disappointed when the Trentists were excluded and, with even more fury than their Spanish brothers, tried to "crush the CNT by systematically closing its unions, suppressing its press, a regime of governmental prisons and a terrorist policy of the police and escamots[16]. The Casals de Esquerra[17] were turned into clandestine prisons where the confederated workers were kidnapped, beaten and tortured"[18].

The improvisation and chaos which characterised the organisation of this movement rapidly transformed it into a rout that the Catalonian and state forces together finished off by means of an incredible and immense repression. The climax was the massacre of Casas Viejas perpetrated under the direct order of the Prime Minister Azaña, who gave the direct and famous command:"Leave no wounded or prisoners, shoot at the stomach!"

"The revolutionary movement of 8th January 1933 was organised by the Defence Corps, shock troops formed by the action groups of the CNT and the FAI. These badly armed groups hoped that a few committed groups would be able to infect the people who would then follow them. The general strike in the railways depended on the national federation of this sector which, unfortunately was in a minority relative to the national railway union of the UGT and the strike failed to get off the ground (...). The barracks did not throw open their doors to revolutionary magic. The people remained indifferent or approached the movement with great reservations"[19].

Peirats describes the five phases of these insurrectional actions:

1. "At the agreed time the conspirators infiltrate the houses of 'respectable' citizens likely to possess weapons. They seize the weapons and go out into the streets, calling on the people to revolt. There are no victims. Those who have been disarmed are freed. The social revolution hates vengeance and prisons. Terrified, the people remain neutral. The mayor hands over the keys of the local government building.
2. The barracks of the Civil Guard are besieged and some weapons taken.
3. The revolutionaries declare libertarian communism and turn the local government office into a free commune. The black and red flag is hoisted. The archives and documents detailing property rights are burned in the public square before the curious eyes of on-lookers. Public announcements are made declaring that money, private property and the exploitation of man by man have been abolished.
4. Police and army reinforcements arrive. The insurgents resist more or less until they realise that the movement has not involved the whole of Spain and that they are isolated in their splendid action.
5. As they retreat towards the mountains, the forces of repression continue their manhunt. The macabre epilogue is murder without distinction of sex or age, mass arrests, beatings and torture in police cells..."

This testimony is terribly eloquent. The most combative forces of the Spanish proletariat were mobilised for ridiculous battles that were condemned to be routed. The heroism and the great moral worth[20] of the combatants was brought to nothing by an ideology - anarchism - which produced the very opposite result from that which it was trying to attain. The conscious and collective action of the majority of the workers was substituted by the unreflecting action of a minority; the revolution was not the result of the workers' action but that of a minority who decreed it.

While the FAI was throwing its militants into imaginary battles, the real struggles of the proletariat passed completely unnoticed. In The Spanish Labyrinth Gerald Brenan notes that "the cause of almost all of the CNT strikes was the question of solidarity, that is the strikes broke out around the demand to free the prisoners or against unfair sackings. These strikes were not led by the FAI, they were real and spontaneous demonstrations of the unions"[21].

This disastrous conception of "the revolution"[22] was described in the famous Manifesto of the Thirty written by Pestaña and his friends: "History shows us that revolutions have always been made by daring minorities who have incited the people against the dominant forces. Is it enough for the minorities to want and call for it in order to bring about the destruction of the regime in power and its defensive forces in such a situation? That remains to be seen. Such minorities, joined one fine day by certain aggressive elements or taking advantage of the element of surprise, confront the public forces and provoke a violent event that may lead to the revolution (...) They entrust the victory of the revolution to the capacities of certain individuals and to the hypothetical intervention of the masses who support them when they take to the streets. There is no point in planning anything in advance, or in counting on anything or thinking about anything except flooding into the streets in order to vanquish a colossus: the state (...). Everything is left to chance; all hope is in the unexpected, in faith in the miracles of the Holy Revolution".

The insurrection in the Asturias in October 1934

In the words of Peirats himself, thousands upon thousands of workers were no more than "clusters of tortured flesh scattered throughout the Spanish gaols". The brutality of the repression carried out by the Socialist-Republican alliance did not however stop them from winning the general election of November 1933: "The workers' movement, which had shown some signs of recovery, was hit hard and retreated after the anarchist adventure. On the other hand, the reaction recovered from its fearful hesitation and went onto the offensive with great energy. The anarchists had not managed to draw the masses behind them but their defeat was that of the masses. The government and the reaction understood perfectly; they affirmed themselves and organised themselves openly"[23].

The change in the political situation was also linked to the development in the international situation and, in particular to the perspective of the Second World War, towards which capitalism was inexorably headed. There were two preconditions for war; to crush beforehand those sectors of the proletariat who still had some reserves of combativeness and to enroll the whole of the world proletariat within anti-fascist ideology. Against the fascist offensive, that is the offensive of the imperialist camp composed of Germany and Italy, it was necessary to marshal the workers behind the defence of democracy, that is the opposite camp formed around Great Britain and France. It was the latter camp that the USSR[24] and the United States would later join.

Engaging the proletariat in the defence of democracy and anti-fascism, meant dragging its struggle off its class terrain and towards aims that were foreign to it and that were merely in the service of one of the imperialist camps. With this aim in view, Social-Democracy (abetted by Stalinism from 1934 onwards) used a combination of legal and pacifist means as well as "violent" policies to drag the proletariat towards insurrectional struggles condemned to bitter defeat and followed by barbaric repression.

This international perspective accounts for the dramatic about-face of the PSOE in Spain following its defeat in the elections of 1933. Largo Caballero, who had been no less than Councillor of State to the dictator Primo de Rivera and who had participated in the Republican government from 1931 to 1933[25] as Labour Minister, suddenly became a revolutionary maximalist[26] and adopted the insurrectional policy defended up to then by the FAI.

This cynical manoeuvre mirrored that of the Austrian Social-Democrats, who managed to mobilise the workers of that country for a suicidal insurrection against the pro-fascist Chancellor Dollfuss which ended in a terrible defeat. Largo Caballero undertook to defeat a particularly combative sector of the Spanish proletariat, that of the Asturias. The coming to power of the most pro-fascist section of the current Spanish right - that led by Gil Robles whose slogan was "All power to the leader" - incited the miners of the Asturias to rise up in October 1934. The Socialists had promised them a vast general strike throughout the whole of Spain but they were careful to avoid any solidarity movement in Madrid or in the areas were they were influential.

The workers of Asturia were caught in a trap, from which they could only escape by means of the solidarity of their class brothers in other regions. This could be based not on a struggle against the new right-wing government but rather against the Republican state which it served. The spontaneous attempts to strike which occurred in several places in Spain were blocked and were refused recognition not only by the Socialists but also by the CNT and the FAI: "In fact the FAI and consequently the CNT too, were against the general strike and when their militants participated in the struggle on their own initiative and, as usual, with great heroism they called on them to stop doing so in Barcelona and made no attempt to extend the strike to other regions where they were the predominant force"[27].

In Catalonia the autonomous Esquerra Republicana government took advantage of the situation to organise its own "insurrection", whose aim was to declare "the Catalan state within the Federal Spanish Republic". In order to carry out this grandiose "revolutionary action", they first banned the CNT publication, closed down its centres and arrested its better known militants, one of whom was Durruti. The "strike" was imposed by force of arms by the autonomist police force. The radio of the Catalonian "revolutionary" government did not fail to denounce the "anarchist provocateurs who have sold themselves to the reaction". This terrible confusion reached a magnificent high-point the next day: the Catalonian government surrendered shamefully as soon as it was confronted by two regiments that had remained faithful to Madrid. The reaction of the CNT was pitiful. It declared in a Manifesto: "the movement that broke out this morning must be transformed into popular heroism through proletarian action, without accepting the protection of the public forces, which shame those who authorised it and who lay claim to it. The CNT has been the victim of bloody repression for a long time and can no longer be confined within the limited space that its oppressors have left it. We demand the right to intervene in this struggle and we will take it. We are the best guarantee against fascism and those who claim otherwise are promoting fascism by preventing us from acting"[28].

The trap of anti-fascism

Certain points can be drawn out of the CNT's manifesto very clearly:

• it makes no demonstration of solidarity with the workers of the Asturias;
• it is situated on the very ambiguous basis of a more or less nuanced support for the nationalist movement of the Catalan government, to which it proposes to contribute "popular heroism";
• it nowhere denounces the anti-fascist trap; on the contrary it puts itself forward as the best rampart against fascism and insists on its right to contribute to the anti-fascist struggle.

This manifesto marks a very serious development in its political orientation. Against the whole tradition of the CNT and against the will of many anarchist militants, it abandoned the terrain of workers' solidarity to embrace the terrain of anti-fascism and "critical" support for Catalan nationalism.

It was quite logical for the CNT, as a union, to go onto this anti-worker terrain. Within the framework of the repression and marginalisation for which the Republican state was responsible, it needed desperately a "liberal" regime that would enable it to play a role as a "recognised spokesman". But the FAI was the mouthpiece of anarchism and the propagandist of the struggle "against any form of state" that denounced "any alliance" with political parties; as such

it is harder to see why it supported this orientation.

A deeper analysis makes it possible to understand this paradox. The FAI had made the CNT, a union, into an organisation for the "mobilisation of the masses" which obliged it increasingly to make concessions. It was no longer the logic of anarchist principles that directed the FAI's action; it was more and more the "realities" of unionism, determined by the imperious need to be integrated into the state.

Moreover anarchist principles are not seen as the expression of the aspirations, the general demands and historic interests of a social class, the proletariat. So they are not rooted in the terrain marked out by its historic struggle. On the contrary, they claim to be much "freer". Their terrain is timeless and unhistorical, basing itself on the freedom of the individual in general. The logic of this kind of reasoning is implacable: the interest of the free individual may be the rejection of any kind of authority, of any state and any centralisation or it may be the tactical acceptance of the "lesser evil". So against the fascist danger, that denies all rights simply and strictly, it is preferable to have a democratic regime that formally recognises certain individual rights.

Gomez Casas stresses in his book that "the mentality of the radical part of anarcho-syndicalism saw the process as revolutionary gymnastics by means of which the optimum conditions for social revolution would be obtained" (ibid). This vision considers it essential to maintain the masses in a state of mobilisation, whatever its aim. The "anti-fascist" terrain evidently seemed propitious in order to "radicalise the masses" and conduct them towards the "social revolution", as the "left-wing" socialists of the period advocated. In fact, the anti-fascist vision of Largo Caballero and that of the FAI seemed to converge but their intentions were radically different. Largo Caballero was trying to bleed the Spanish proletariat dry by means of his calls to "insurrection" whereas the majority of the FAI militants sincerely believed in the possibility of the social revolution. On the question of the Republic Largo Caballero declared in 1934 (in complete contradiction with what he had said in 1931): "The working class wants the democratic Republic [not] for its intrinsic virtues, not as an ideal of government but because within its framework the class struggle, that has been stifled by despotic regimes, can obtain its immediate and middle term aims. If this is not so, why should the workers want the Republic and democracy?"[29]. For his part, Durruti said: "We are not interested in the Republic but we accept it as a departure point for a process of social democratisation, on condition of course that this Republic really does guarantee those principles that make freedom and social justice more than empty words. If the Republic disdains the aspirations of the workers, then the slight interest that they have in it will be reduced to nil because this institution would not answer the hopes awoken on 14th April"[30].

How could the 20th century state with its bureaucracy, its army, its system of repression and totalitarian manipulation, be "a departure point for a process of social democratisation"? How in anyone's wildest dreams could it be the guarantor of "freedom and social justice"? The very idea is as absurd as it is illusory...

Conclusion

This contradiction had a long history. When General Sanjurjo rose up against the Republic on 10th August 1932, provoking the mobilisation of the Seville workers under the leadership of the CNT, the latter already saw the struggle as being on an openly anti-fascist terrain. In a manifesto it stated: "Workers! Peasants! Soldiers! A factious and criminal assault of the most shady and reactionary section of the army, of the autocratic and military caste which is bogging Spain down in the most terrible horrors of the dark period of the dictatorship (...) has surprised us all, obscuring our history and our consciousness, burying our national sovereignty in the most deadly of choices"[31].

The proletariat had to block the assassin's hand of General Sanjurjo but its struggle could only follow its class interests, whose perspective represents the interests of the whole of humanity. It was therefore necessary for them to combat both fascism and also its Republican rival. The CNT's manifesto places the emphasis on... national sovereignty! It calls for a choice between dictatorship and the Republic. The Republic that had already assassinated more than one thousand workers and peasants through its repression! The Republic that had filled the prisons and gaols with militant workers, essentially those belonging to the CNT!

The assessment to be made is very clear and we will make it by leaving the last word to our predecessors of the Italian Communist Left: "We will now look at the action of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) which now controls the CNT. After the fall of Azaña it demanded an unconditional amnesty, also valid for the generals of the military pronunciamientos, the friends of General Sanjurjo. It abandoned the CNT workers who had put a stop to the latter's manoeuvres in Seville by telling them not to do anything. In October 1934 it adopted the same position when it wrote that it was a question of a power struggle between Marxists and fascists, which was of no interest to the proletariat and that the latter must wait before intervening until the two had destroyed each other"[32].

The attempt of the FAI to rescue the CNT for the working class was a failure. It was not the FAI that corrected the CNT, it was rather the CNT that that dragged the FAI into the state capitalist trap. This was apparent in 1936 when well-known members of the FAI collaborated in the government in the name of the CNT.

"In February 1936 all the forces within the proletariat shared the same goal: the need to attain victory for the popular front in order to get rid of the right-wing and obtain an amnesty. From social-democracy to the centrist parties[33], to the CNT and the POUM, not forgetting the parties of the Republican left, everyone was agreed to divert the explosion of class conflicts onto the parliamentary arena"[34]

In the next article in the series we will analyse the situation in 1936 and examine the definitive union between the CNT and the bourgeois state.

RR - C.Mir 10-12-07

---

[1] See International Review n°131, "The CNT's contribution to the constitution of the Spanish Republic (1921-1931)"

[2] The anarchist author of the book History of the Spanish workers' movement (2 volumes in Spanish). The quotations translated here are extracts from the second volume.

[3] It is to be noted that Macia was a Catalan nationalist army officer.

[4] Juan Garcia Oliver (1901-1980) was a founder member of the FAI and one of its best-known leaders. In 1936 he was made a minister of the Republic within the government of the socialist Largo Caballero (we will go into this in a future article).

[5] Olaya reveals that in 1928, "the Republicans for their part entered into contact with Arturo Parera, José Robusté, Elizalde and Hernandez, members of the FAI and the Catalan regional committee of the CNT".

[6] A Spanish anarchist newspaper which appeared for the first time in 1888. In 1923 it was suppressed by Primo de Rivera's dictatorship. In 1930 it reappeared as an organ of the FAI.

[7] In his pamphlet, The Bakhuninists at work, Engels shows how the leaders of the Spanish section of the IWA "had been preaching the gospel of unqualified abstention too long to be able suddenly to reverse their line; and so they invented that deplorable way out - that of having the International abstain as a body, but allowing its members as individuals to vote as they liked. The result of this declaration of political bankruptcy was that the workers, as always in such cases, voted for those who made the most radical speeches, that is, for the Intransigents, and considering themselves therefore more or less responsible for subsequent steps taken by their deputies, became involved in them".

[8] ie, the Iberian peninsula

[9] Olaya, ibid.

[10] Gómez Casas, the anarchist author of a History of Spanish Anarcho-syndicalism. We have reproduced extracts from this book in previous articles in this series.

[11] This attempt to adopt a "correct" orientation by means of campaigns of intimidation and bureaucratic manoeuvres gave rise to tragi-comic situations due to the desire of each committee to be "more insurrectional" than the next one. Olaya describes the chaos created by the national committee in October 1932, "when to prove that it was not influenced by the Pestaña tendency, asked the unions in its Circular n°31 if they would agree to ratify or rectify the decisions of the August plenum on the revolutionary general strike". The Levant Committee (Valencia) replied that it was ready for action. This firm reply stopped the national committee in its tracks; it backed down and revoked the order. This angered the Levant Committee, which demanded that a date be fixed to "go out onto the streets" A plenum was therefore convoked and, after a series of zigzags, it was decided that the "general strike" would take place in January 1933 (we will come back to this later).

[12] The Republic's insistent campaigns about the "FAI menace" only served to nourish the myth believed by some FAI militants that they had fomented this or that revolutionary action. Olaya wrote of the declaration of the general strike in Seville which was decided in July 1931 and cancelled two days later: "in reality it was no more than bragging, at the time the FAI was no more than a ghost used by the bourgeoisie to frighten old ladies".

[13] Industrial and mining district in the province of Barcelona.

[14] In fact, although CNT militants certainly played a very active role in the movement, the attitude of the CNT as an organisation was fairly tepid and contradictory. On 21st January "the departmental Plenum called by Emilio Mira, the secretary of the regional committee of the CNT, was held and it decided to send another delegate. Although some delegates were in favour of expressing solidarity with the strikers, the majority abstained on the pretext that they did not have a mandate from their organic base" (Olaya, ibid). This decision was re-examined the next day but was revoked once more on the 24th when a manifesto was adopted calling for an end to the strike.

[15] Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ibid.

[16] The escamots were "Catalonian action groups that expressed xenophobia against anything that was not Catalonian" (Peirats, ibid).

[17] The centres of the escamots.

[18] Peirats, ibid.

[19] Peirats, ibid.

[20] The honesty and uprightness of many FAI militants was proverbial. Buenaventura Durruti, for example never touched the funds entrusted to him even when he had nothing to eat.

[21] Ruedo Ibérico publishers, 1977 Madrid. Brenan is not an author who has links with the workers' movement but he examines the historic period 1931-39 with great honesty, which often enables him to make correct observations.

[22] By denouncing in a caractural way the absurdity of the "insurrectional method" of its opponents in the FAI, those who wrote the Manifesto - who belonged to the unionist wing of the CNT - did not aim to clarify consciousness but rather to reinforce their reformist and capitulatory band wagon.

[23] Munis, Jalones de derrota promesas de Victoria. Munis was a Spanish revolutionary (1911-1988) who broke with Trotskyism in 1948 and approached the positions of the Communist Left. He was a founder member of the group Fomento Obrero Revolucionario (FOR). For an analysis of his work see the International Review n°58. Chapter V of our book 1936:Franco y la Republica masacran al proletariado goes into a critique of his positions on the so-called Spanish revolution in 1936.

[24] We can recall here that there was formerly a secret pact allying the USSR and Hitler from 1939-41.

[25] See International Review n°131, the fourth article in the series.

[26] The Young Socialists venerated him as the "Spanish Lenin".

[27] Bilan, organ of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, "In the absence of a class party", no 14, Dec 1934-Jan 35. This analysis is corroborated by a passage in the book History of the FAI by Juan Gomez Casas: "J.M. Molina states that although the CNT and the FAI were by no means involved in the strike (he was talking about the one in the Asturias in 1934), the committees of these two organisations were in permanent session. He said that 'all these meetings accorded with our own inhibition but without committing one of the most serious and incomprehensible errors in the history of the CNT'. Molina is referring to the position taken by some of the organisms of the CNT for a return to work and the instructions to this effect given to the radio by Patricio Navarro, a member of the regional committee (in Barcelona, the regional Committee that met in plenary session, headed by Ascaso, was obliged to resign)".

[28] Quoted by Peirats, ibid.

[29] Quoted by Bolloten, an author sympathetic to anarchism, in his very interesting work the Spanish Civil War: revolution and counter-revolution.

[30] Juan Gomez Casas, History of the FAI, ibid.

[31] Quoted by Peirats, ibid.

[32] Bilan, n°34, "In the absence of a class party", ibid.

[33] This is the rather ambiguous term by which the Italian Left of the period described Stalinism.

[34] Bilan n°36, Oct-Nov 1936, "The Lesson of the Events in Spain".

In 2007 the ICC held its 17th International Congress. For the first time since 1979, the Congress was able to welcome delegates of other internationalist groups coming literally from the four corners of the earth (from Brazil to Korea). As we have pointed out in the article on the work of the Congress,[1] this was no innovation on our part: the ICC did nothing other than adopt the same approach that had led to its own creation in 1975, and which it had itself inherited - as we will see - from the Communist Left and particularly from the French Communist Left (Gauche Communiste de France, GCF). Whence the interest of the article which we are publishing below, and which is the report originally published in Internationalisme n°23, of a conference of internationalists held in May 1947, just 60 years before our own 17th Congress.[2]

The 1947 conference was called by the Dutch Communistenbond "Spartacus", a "council communist" group which had survived the 1939-45 war despite ferocious repression, especially following its participation in the workers' struggles under the occupation.[3] The conference itself was held at a dark moment for those rare revolutionaries who had remained true to the principles of proletarian internationalism and refused to fight for the defence of bourgeois democracy and Stalin's "socialist fatherland". In 1943 a wave of strikes in Northern Italy had revived hopes that the Second World War II would end in the same way as the First, with a workers' uprising which this time would not only bring the war to an end, but open the way to a new proletarian revolution which would sweep away capitalism and its train of horror for ever. But the ruling class had drawn the lessons of 1917 and World War II ended with the proletariat systematically crushed before it even had the chance to rise: the Italian workers' districts bloodily put down by the German occupiers; the Warsaw rising destroyed by the German army under the benevolent gaze of its soviet adversary;[4] the massive aerial bombardment of the German working class districts by US and British aviation; these are only a few examples. The GCF realised that in this period, the road to revolution was no longer open in the short term: as they wrote in reply to the Communistenbond in preparation for the conference:

"It was in some sense natural that the monstrosity of the war should open eyes and cause new revolutionary militants to appear. As a result in 1945 there began to appear here and there small groups which, notwithstanding their inevitable confusion and political immaturity, nonetheless were sincere in their efforts to rebuild the proletariat's revolutionary movement.

"Unlike the First, the Second World War did not end in a wave of revolutionary class struggle. Quite the contrary. After a few feeble attempts, the proletariat suffered a disastrous defeat which opened a worldwide reactionary course. In such conditions, the weak groups which emerged at the end of the war risked being swept away or broken. We have already seen this process begin, some groups weakening while others have disappeared altogether, such as the 'Communist revolutionaries' in France".[5]

The GCF had no illusions as to the conference's potential: "In a period such as ours' of reaction and retreat, there can be no question of forming new parties or a new International - as the Trotskyists & Co. are doing - for the bluff of such artificial constructions has never achieved anything other than to leave the workers even more confused than before".[6] This did not mean that the GCF thought the conference a waste of time, on the contrary they considered it vital for the very survival of the internationalist groups: "No group has exclusive possession of 'the absolute and eternal truth' and no group alone will be able to resist the pressure of today's terrible historic course. The groups' very existence and their ideological development are directly dependent on the links that they will be able to establish and the exchange of views, the confrontation of ideas, the debate that they are able to establish and develop internationally.

"This task seems to us of primary importance for militants at the present time, and this is why we have pronounced ourselves in favour and are determined to do everything we can to encourage any effort to make contact and to develop meetings and wider correspondence".[7]

The historical context

If for no other reason, this conference was important in that it was the first international meeting of revolutionaries after six terrible years of war, repression and isolation. But in the end, the historical context - the "period of reaction and retreat" - got the better of the initiative of 1947. The results of the conference were meagre in the extreme. In October 1947 the GCF wrote to the Communistenbond to ask them to organise a new conference with a preparatory discussion bulletin, only one issue of which was ever published; the second conference never took place. In the years that followed most of the participating groups disappeared, including the GCF which was reduced to a few isolated comrades who maintained their ties as best they could through correspondence.[8]

Today the historical context is very different. After years of counterrevolution, the wave of struggles that followed May 1968 in France marked the revolutionary class' return to the historical stage. These struggles were unable to rise to the level demanded by the extent of capitalism's attacks during the 1980s, and came to an abrupt halt with the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. The 1990s were a very difficult period of discouragement and confusion for both the working class and its revolutionary minorities. But with the new millennium, things began to move again: on the one hand, the last few years have seen a development of workers' struggles increasingly on the basis of the fundamental question of solidarity. At the same time, the presence of the groups invited to the ICC's Congress bears witness to the growing development of a truly world wide political reflection among the small minorities which uphold an internationalist vision and which are trying to develop contacts amongst each other.

In this situation, the experience of 1947 is alive and up to date. Like a seed that has remained hidden in the winter soil, it bears a potential for today's internationalists. In this short introduction, we want to highlight the main lessons which we think should be drawn from the conference and from the GCF's participation in it.

The need for political criteria for participation

Ever since 1914 and the betrayal of the socialist parties and the unions, even more since the 1930s when the communist parties went the same way, followed by the Trotskyist groups in the 1940s, there has been a proliferation of groups and parties which claim to be working class, but whose reason for existence is in reality nothing other than to support the domination of the capitalist class and its state. This is why the GCF wrote in 1947: "It is not a matter of discussions in general, but of meetings which will make it possible for revolutionary proletarian groups to discuss together. This necessarily implies a discrimination on the basis of political ideological criteria. To avoid any ambiguity and to avoid as much as possible remaining vague on the matter, it is absolutely necessary to make these criteria as clear as possible".[9] The GCF identified four key criteria:

1. The exclusion of the Trotskyist current because of its support for the Russian state and its participation in the imperialist war of 1939-45 on the same side as the democratic and Stalinist imperialist powers.
2. The exclusion of those anarchists (in particular the French Anarchist Federation) who had taken part in the "Frente Popular" and the capitalist republican government in Spain during 1936-38, as well as the Resistance during 1939-45 under the banner of anti-fascism.
3. The exclusion of all those groups who, under whatever pretext, had taken part in World War II.
4. Recognition of the necessity of the "violent destruction of the capitalist state", and so of the historic importance of the 1917 October revolution.

Following the conference, the criteria proposed by the GCF in its letter of October 1947 are reduced to two:

1. "The determination to struggle for the proletarian revolution, through the violent destruction of the capitalist state for the establishment of socialism.
2. "The condemnation of any acceptance of or participation in the second imperialist war, with all that this implies of ideological corruption of the working class, such as the ideologies of fascism or anti-fascism along with both their national derivatives (the maquis, national and colonial liberation) and their political aspect (defence of the USSR, the democracies, or of European national socialism)".

As we can see, these criteria are focused on the two questions of war and revolution: in our opinion they remain wholly valid today.[10] What has changed, however, is the historical context in which they are posed. For the generations who are coming to political activity today, World War II and the Russian revolution are far-off events known only from history books. They remain critical for the revolutionary future of the working class and determining for a profound commitment to the revolutionary cause. But for today's generation, in the immediate the question of revolution is posed through the necessary denunciation of wars throughout the world: Iraq, the Israeli-Arab conflict, Chechnya, nuclear tests in North Korea, etc.; in the immediate, the question of revolution is posed more through the denunciation of fraudulent imitations of the Chavez variety than directly in relation to the Russian revolution of 1917.

In the same way, there is no danger today of fascism being used to enrol the mass of the working class for imperialist war, even though some countries (notably those of the ex-Eastern bloc) still suffer from the presence of fascist gangs which terrorise the population and pose a real problem for revolutionaries. As a result anti-fascism cannot in present conditions be a major means of controlling the proletariat ideologically, as it was during the 1939-45 war when it was used to draw workers in behind the defence of the democratic state, even if it can still be used to distract the workers from the defence of their own class interests.

The attitude towards anarchism

An important discussion, both before and during the conference itself, was the attitude to adopt towards anarchism. For the GCF it was clear that "like the Trotskyists or any other movement which has participated (or participates) in imperialist war under the pretext of defending a country (Russia) or defending one form of bourgeois rule against another (defence of the Republic and democracy against fascism), the anarchist movement had no place in a conference of revolutionary groups". The exclusion of anarchist groups was thus determined not by the fact that they were anarchist, but by their attitude towards imperialist war. The distinction is an important one and is illustrated by the fact that the conference was in fact presided by an anarchist (as we can read in a "correction" to the report published in Internationalisme n°24).

The heterogeneity of the anarchist current is such that today the question can no longer be posed in such simple terms. Under the same denomination of "anarchist" we can find groups which differ from the Trotskyists on the sole question of the "party" while at the same time supporting the whole range of Trotskyist demands (right down to the demand for a Palestinian state!), and truly internationalist groups with which communists can perfectly well not only discuss but undertake a common activity on the basis of internationalism.[11] In our opinion, there can be no question today of rejecting discussion with groups or individuals simply because they describe themselves as "anarchists".

Some further points

In conclusion, we want to emphasise three other significant aspects of the conference:

• The first is the absence of any grandiose and empty declarations: the conference remained modest as to both its importance and its capacities. This does not mean that the GCF at the time rejected any possibility of adopting common positions, quite the contrary. But after six years of war, the conference could be no more than a first contact where inevitably, "the discussions were not advanced enough to justify any kind of vote or resolution". Revolutionaries today must be able both to keep in mind a clear vision of their enormous responsibilities, and at the same time remain extremely modest as to their means and their capacities given the tasks that lie before them.
• The second is the importance accorded to the union question. Although from our standpoint, the union question has been settled long since, this was not yet the case for the GCF, which in 1947 had only just taken on board the positions of the Dutch and German lefts on this question. But in 1947 as today, behind the union question lies the much wider problem of "how to struggle?". This problem of "how to struggle" and the attitude to adopt towards the unions remains a burning one for workers and militants throughout the world today.[12]
• Thirdly, we want to repeat the passage that we quoted at the beginning of this article: "No group has exclusive possession of 'the absolute and eternal truth' (...) The groups' very existence and their ideological development are directly dependent on the links that they will be able to establish and the exchange of views, the confrontation of ideas, the debate that they are able to establish and develop internationally". This is our watchword for the years to come, and this is one of the reasons that the ICC's 17th Congress gave such importance to the question of the culture of debate.[13]

ICC, 6th January 2008

(Note: in the text below, the footnotes at the end of the text are from the original, the notes included immediately after the article were added to clarify certain historical points)

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An international conference of revolutionary groups

On 25th and 26th May an International Conference took place to develop contacts between revolutionary groups. It was not just for security reasons that this Conference was not announced with great fanfare, as are the Stalinist and Socialist meetings. The participants at the Conference were very much aware that the proletariat is living through a terrible period of reaction and that they themselves are very isolated, as is inevitable in a period of social reaction. Nor are they given to the spectacular bluffs that are so much to the taste - to the very bad taste - of all the Trotskyist groups.

This Conference did not try to set itself immediate concrete aims which it would have been impossible to realise in the present situation. Nor did it try to set up some artificial structure in the guise of an International or to make inflammatory proclamations to the proletariat. Its sole aim was to make initial contact between dispersed revolutionary groups, to allow a confrontation of their respective ideas on the present situation and on the perspectives for the proletariat's struggle for its emancipation.

By calling this Conference, the Communistenbund "Spartacus" of Holland (better known as the Council Communists) [i] have broken the harmful isolation in which most revolutionary groups find themselves and have made it possible to clarify a certain number of questions.

The Participants

The following groups were represented at the Conference and participated in the debates:

• Holland: the Communistenbund "Spartacus";
• Belgium: the groups in Brussels and Ghent related to "Spartacus";
• France: the French Communist Left (GCF) and the "Prolétaire" group;
• Switzerland: the "Class Struggle" group.[14]

Moreover there were comrades belonging to various revolutionary groupings who participated in the debates of the Conference either in person present or through written interventions.

We draw attention to a long letter from the "Socialist Party of Great Britain", addressed to the Conference, in which it explains at length its specific political positions.

The FFGC[15] also sent a short letter in which it wished the Conference "good work" but said that it was unable to participate for lack of time, and because of urgent work.[ii]

The work of the Conference

The following agenda was adopted as a framework for discussion at the Conference.

1. The present period.
2. New forms of the proletarian struggle (from the old forms to the new ones).
3. The tasks and organisation of the revolutionary vanguard.
4. State dictatorship of the proletariat - workers' democracy.
5. Concrete questions and conclusions (agreement for international solidarity - contacts - information to be shared internationally, etc).

This first Conference was not well enough prepared, had too little time, and the agenda proved to be much too ambitious to be completed. Only the first three points of the agenda were taken up adequately. Each point gave rise to interesting debates.

Obviously it would be presumptuous to expect this exchange of views to reach a unanimous position and the participants at the Conference never had such pretensions. However we can say that the debates, which were passionate at times, revealed a greater agreement than we might have expected.

On the first point of the agenda concerning the general analysis of the present period of capitalism, the majority of the interventions rejected Burnham's theories concerning the immediate possibility of revolution and the need to lead it, they also rejected the idea that capitalist society is able to continue by means of an eventual development of production. The present period was characterised culturally and politically as that of state capitalism.

The question of whether organisational forms like the unions and activity such as participation in electoral campaigns can still be used by the proletariat in the present period gave rise to a lively and very interesting debate. It is to be regretted that the tendencies who still advocate these forms of class struggle and who do not realise that these outworn and outdated forms can only be anti-proletarian today - the PCI of Italy specifically - were not present at the Conference to defend their position. The Belgian Fraction and the autonomous Federation of Turin were there but the conviction of these groups in these positions, that they defended until recently, is now so shaken and unsure that they preferred not to speak on these points.

Therefore the debate did not take up whether it is possible to use unionism and electoral participation as forms of proletarian struggle, it discussed exclusively around the question of the historical reasons, the explanation of why it is impossible to use these forms of struggle in the present period. On the question of the unions the debate broadened out; the discussion was not specifically on the organisational form as such, which is only a secondary aspect. It investigated rather the goals that determine the struggle for corporatist and partial economic demands in the present conditions of decadent capitalism, in which they cannot be realised and can still less serve as a platform to mobilise the class.

The question of Workers' Councils or Committees as a new form of unitary organisation of the workers, reveals its full significance and becomes meaningful when linked tightly and inseparably with the goals presented to the proletariat today. This goal is not economic reform within the framework of the capitalist system but social transformation against the capitalist system.

The third point - tasks and organisation of the revolutionary vanguard - raised the problems of whether or not it is necessary to form a political class party, of what the role of such a party would be in the struggle for the emancipation of the class and of the relationship between the class and such a party, but unfortunately could not be deepened to the extent we would have wished.

A brief discussion was only able to allow the different tendencies to give a general outline of their positions on this point. However everyone felt that this was a decisive question both in order to make it possible to close the gap between the various revolutionary groups, as well as for the future and the success of the proletariat in its struggle for the destruction of capitalist society and the creation of socialism. This question, which we consider fundamental, was barely touched on and requires further discussion in order to deepen it and elaborate the issues more precisely. However it is important to note that at this Conference, although there were divergences on the importance of the role of an organisation of conscious revolutionary militants, it did emerge that the Council Communists, as well as the others present, do not deny the need for such an organisation to exist - whether it is called Party or not - if socialism is to triumph in the end. This is a point held in common, whose importance cannot be over-estimated.

There was not enough time at the Conference to take up the other points on the agenda. A short but very important discussion took place towards the end about the character and function of the anarchist movement. It was during the discussion about the groups to be invited to the next conferences that we were able to bring out the social-patriotic role of the anarchist movement during the 1939-45 war, in spite of its hollow revolutionary phraseology. We also pointed out that its participation in the partisan struggle for "national and democratic liberation" in France, in Italy and even today in Spain is a logical continuation of its participation in the bourgeois "republican and anti-fascist" government and in the imperialist war in Spain in 1936-38.

Our position that the anarchist movement, as well as the Trotskyists and any other tendency that participated in the imperialist war in the name of the defence of a nation state (the defence of Russia) or of one form of bourgeois domination against another (the defence of the Republic or of democracy against fascism) has no place in a conference of revolutionary groups, was supported by the majority of the participants. Only the representative of the "Prolétaire" advocated the invitation of certain non-official tendencies within anarchism or Trotskyism.

Conclusion

As we have already said, the conference ended without having got through the whole agenda, without having taken any practical decisions and without having voted any resolutions. It could not have been otherwise. This was not so much to avoid the religious ceremonial, as some comrades called it, at the end of every Conference which consists of an obligatory final vote on resolutions that do not mean much. In our view it was rather because the discussions were not sufficiently developed to make a vote possible on any resolution or to justify it.

The sceptical or those of ill-will may think: "So the Conference was no more than a meeting taking up the same old discussions and is of no further interest". Nothing could be further from the truth. We think, on the contrary, that the conference was indeed of interest and that its importance will emerge in the future in terms of the relationship between the various revolutionary groups.  We must bear in mind that for the last 20 years these groups have lived in isolation, cloistered and closed in on themselves. This has inevitably produced in all of the tendencies a spirit of the chapel or sect; so many years of isolation means that each group has developed its own way of thinking, of reasoning and of expressing itself, which often makes it incomprehensible to the other groups. Half the time this is the reason why there are so many misunderstandings and such incomprehension between groups. There is above all a need to open oneself up to the ideas and arguments of others and to submit one's own ideas to the criticism of others. This is an essential condition for the existence of living revolutionary thought and it is this that makes this kind of conference so very interesting.

The first step, the least dramatic but the most difficult, has been made. All the participants at the conference, including the Belgian Fraction which agreed to participate only after a great deal of hesitation and a lot of scepticism, expressed their satisfaction and were pleased with the fraternal atmosphere and the seriousness of the discussion. Everyone said that they wanted to convoke another Conference soon, one that would be broader and better prepared, and that they wanted to continue the work of clarification and mutual confrontation.

This is a positive outcome which raises the hope that, by continuing along this path, revolutionary militants and groups will be able to go beyond the present phase of dispersal and so manage to work more effectively for the emancipation of their class. This is the class that has the mission to save the whole of humanity from the terrible and bloody destruction that is in the making and towards which decadent capitalism is dragging us.

Marco

Notes

[i] In the newspaper Libertaire of 29th May there is an article full of fantasy about this conference. The author, who signs himself AP and who passes for the Libertaire's expert on the history of the workers' movement, really does take too many liberties with history. He presents this Conference - which he did not attend and about which he knows absolutely nothing - as a Conference of Council Communists. In fact the latter, who indeed called the Conference, participated with the same status as all the other tendencies.

AP is not content to take liberties with past history, he also feels authorised to write in the past tense about history that is to come. Just like those journalists who recounted in advance and in detail Goering's execution, little dreaming that he might have the bad taste to commit suicide at the last moment, the Libertaire's historian, AP announces the participation of anarchist groups in the conference, although there were none.

It is true that the Libertaire was invited to attend but it refused and was right to do so in our opinion. The anarchist movement is now a current that is completely alien to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. This is shown by the participation of the anarchists in the Republican government and in the imperialist war in Spain in 1936-38, the continuation of their policy of class collaboration with any Spanish bourgeois political formation abroad under the pretext of struggling against fascism and Franco, their ideological and physical participation in the "resistance" against "foreign" occupation. The anarchist movement therefore had no place at this conference and it was a mistake to invite it.

[ii] The "urgent work" of the FFGC expresses eloquently how it feels about having contact with other revolutionary groups. What exactly is the problem of the FFGC; "lack of time" or lack of interest and understanding of the importance of contact and discussion between revolutionary groups? Or could it be that it is too embarrassed to confront its positions with those of other groups because of its lack of political orientation (both for and against participation in elections; for and against working in the unions; for and against participation in anti-fascist committees, etc...).

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[1] See International Review n°130

[2] The other texts quoted in this introduction are published in full in our pamphlet La Gauche communiste de France (available in French only).

[3] See our book The Dutch and German communist left, notably the penultimate chapter. The Communistenbond Spartacus originated in the "Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front" which participated energetically in the Dutch workers' struggle of 1941 against the persecution of Jews by the Nazi occupying forces, and distributed leaflets calling for fraternisation inside German army barracks during the war.

[4] It was Churchill's decision to "let the Italians stew in their own juice". Stalin stopped the Red Army's advance for several months on the other side of the Vistula river from Warsaw, until the German repression was complete.

[5] Published in Internationalisme n°23, emphasis in the original. The "Communistes révolutionnaires" originated in the RKD, a group of Austrian Trotskyist refugees in France. They were the only delegates to the 1938 Périgny congress to oppose the formation of the 4th International, which they considered "adventurist".

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] This is not the place to write the post-war history of the Communistenbond Spartacus (see the last chapter of our book on The Dutch and German communist left). We will limit ourselves to a few major milestones: soon after the 1947 conference, the Communistenbond adopted a much more clearly "councilist" orientation, along the same lines as the old GIC (Groepen van internationale communisten) on the organisational level. In 1964 the group split to form the "Spartacusbond" and the group around the review Daad en Gedachte ("Deed and thought") inspired notably by Cajo Brendel. The Spartacusbond took an activist turn after 1968 and disappeared in 1980. Daad en Gedachte followed the logic of its councilist positions to their conclusion and disappeared in 1998 for lack of contributors to the review.

[9] Ibid.

[10] We adopted the same approach in 1976 when the Battaglia Comunista group launched an appeal for a conference of groups of the Communist Left, but without proposing any criteria for participation. We replied positively to the appeal, while at the same time insisting "For this initiative to be successful, for it to be a real step towards the rapprochement of revolutionaries, it is vital to clearly establish the fundamental political criteria which must serve as a basis and framework, so that discussion and confrontation of ideas are fruitful and constructive..." (see International Review n°40, "The constitution of the IBRP, an opportunist bluff").

[11] The ICC, for example, has engaged several times in discussions and even in common activity with the Moscow-based KRAS-AIT.

[12] See for example the article on our web site on the struggles in the MEPZA in the Philippines.

[13] See in particular our articles on the 17th Congress of the ICC and on the culture of debate in International Review n°130 and n°131.

[14] A "Correction" published in Internationalisme n°24 points out the presence of the "Autonomous section of Turin" of the PCI (ie. the "Partito Comunista Internazionalista" not the Stalinist CP). The section wrote in particular to correct the impression given in the report of certain of its positions: the Section "has declared itself autonomous precisely because of its disagreements on the electoral question and on the key issue of the unity of revolutionary forces".

[15] The so-called "French fraction of the Communist left" had broken with the GCF on an unclear political basis which had much more to do with personal animosities and resentments. See our pamphlet for more details.

In 1915, as the hideous reality of the European war became ever more apparent, Rosa Luxemburg wrote "The crisis of social democracy", a text better known as the "Junius pamphlet" from the pseudonym under which Luxemburg published it. The pamphlet was written in prison and was distributed illegally by the Internationale group which had been formed immediately after the outbreak of the war. It was a savage indictment of the positions adopted by the leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The day hostilities began, on 4 August 1914, the SPD had abandoned its internationalist principles and rallied to the "Fatherland in danger", calling for the suspension of the class struggle and for participation in the war. This was a shattering blow to the international socialist movement, because the SPD had been the pride and joy of the whole Second International; instead of acting as a beacon of international working class solidarity, its capitulation to the war effort was seized on as a justification for similar acts of betrayal in other countries. The result was the ignominious collapse of the International.

World War One: a turning point in history

The SPD had been formed as a marxist party in the 1870s, symbolising the growing influence of the current of "scientific socialism" within the workers' movement. In appearance, the SPD of 1914 retained its commitment to the letter of marxism even as it trampled on its spirit. Had not Marx, in his day, consistently warned against the threat posed by Tsarist absolutism, the main bulwark of reaction throughout Europe? Had not the First International been formed at a rally to support the struggle for Polish independence from the Tsarist yoke? Had not Engels, even while warning of the danger of war in Europe, still expressed the view that German socialists would have to adopt a "revolutionary defencist" position in the event of a Franco-Russian aggression against Germany? And now the SPD was calling for national unity at all costs in the face of the main danger facing Germany - the might of Tsarist despotism, whose victory, it said, would undo all the political and economic gains won by the working class through years of patient and tenacious struggle. It thus presented itself as the legitimate heir of Marx and Engels and their resolute defence of all that was progressive in European civilisation.

But in the words of Lenin, another revolutionary who had no hesitation in denouncing the shameful treason of the "Social-Chauvinists": "Whoever refers to Marx's attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie and forgets Marx's statement that ‘the workers have no fatherland', a statement that applies precisely to the epoch of reactionary, obsolete bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, shamelessly distorts Marx and substitutes the bourgeois for the socialist point of view".[1] Luxemburg argued along exactly the same lines. The war was not the same kind of war that had been seen in Europe in the middle part of the previous century. Such wars had been short, limited in space and limited in their goals, and mainly fought between professional armies; and, what's more, for the greater part of the century since 1815 and the end of the Napoleonic wars, the continent of Europe had experienced an unprecedented era of peace, economic expansion, and steadily rising living standards. Furthermore, such wars, far from ruining their antagonists, had more often served to accelerate the overall process of capitalist expansion, by clearing away feudal obstacles to national unification and enabling new nation states to establish themselves as a framework suited to the development of capitalism (the French revolutionary wars and the wars fought around the issue of Italian unity being clear cases in point).

Such wars - national wars which could still play a progressive function for capital itself - were a thing of the past. In its murderous destructiveness - 10 million men perished on the battlegrounds of Europe, almost all of them in the confines of a bloody and futile stalemate, while millions of civilians also perished, largely as a result of the misery and famine imposed by the war; in its global implications as a war between world-spanning empires, and hence with its virtually unlimited goals of conquest and of utter defeat of the enemy; in its character as a "total" war which mobilised not only millions of conscripted proletarians at the fronts, but also the sweat and sacrifice of millions more workers in the industries at the rear, this was a war of a new type, dumbfounding all the predictions of the ruling class that "it would all be over by Christmas". The monstrous carnage of the war was of course greatly intensified by the vastly developed technological means at the disposal of the antagonists, and the fact that the latter had already far outpaced the tactics and strategies evolved in the traditional schools of war further increased the rate of slaughter. But the barbarity of the war expressed something far deeper than the simple technical development of the bourgeois system. It was an expression of a mode of production that had entered a fundamental and historical crisis, revealing the obsolescent nature of capitalist social relations and posing the human species with the stark alternative: socialist revolution or a relapse into barbarism. Hence one of the most oft-quoted passages from the Junius pamphlet:

"Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism'. What does ‘regression into barbarism' mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration - a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes".

This epochal change had rendered obsolete Marx's arguments in favour of support for national independence (which, in any case, he had already declared to be a dead letter in the advanced countries of Europe after the Paris Commune). There could no longer be a question of looking for the most progressive national cause in this conflict, because national struggles had themselves lost all progressive function, had become mere instruments of imperialist conquest and of capitalism's career towards catastrophe:

"The national program could play a historic role only so long as it represented the ideological expression of a growing bourgeoisie, lusting for power, until it had fastened its class rule, in some way or other, upon the great nations of central Europe and had created within them the necessary tools and conditions of its growth. Since then, imperialism has buried the old bourgeois democratic program completely by substituting expansionist activity irrespective of national relationships for the original program of the bourgeoisie in all nations.  The national phase, to be sure, has been preserved, but its real content, its function, has been perverted into its very opposite. Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialistic rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic wars".

Not only had the "national tactic" changed - everything else had also been profoundly altered by the war. There was no going back to the previous era in which social democracy had patiently and systematically struggled to establish itself, and the proletariat as a whole, as an organised force within bourgeois society:

"One thing is certain. The world war is a turning point. It is foolish and mad to imagine that we need only survive the war, like a rabbit waiting out the storm under a bush, in order to fall happily back into the old routine once it is over. The world war has altered the conditions of our struggle and, most of all, it has changed us. Not that the basic law of capitalist development, the life-and-death war between capital and labour, will experience any amelioration. But now, in the midst of the war, the masks are falling and the old familiar visages smirk at us. The tempo of development has received a mighty jolt from the eruption of the volcano of imperialism. The violence of the conflicts in the bosom of society, the enormousness of the tasks that tower up before the socialist proletariat - these make everything that has transpired in the history of the workers' movement seem a pleasant idyll".

These tasks were enormous because they demanded more than a stubborn defensive struggle against exploitation - they called for an offensive, revolutionary  struggle to do away with exploitation once and for all, to "establish in the social life of man a conscious thought, a definite plan, the free will of mankind". Rosa's. insistence on  the opening of a radically new epoch in the struggle of the working class was soon to become the commonly-agreed guideline of the international revolutionary movement which reconstituted itself from the ruins of social democracy and which, in 1919, founded the world party of the proletarian revolution - the Communist International. At its First Congress in Moscow, the CI famously proclaimed in its platform: "A new epoch is born! The epoch of the break-up of capitalism, of its internal collapse. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat". And it likewise agreed with Rosa that if the proletarian revolution - which at that point was reaching its zenith throughout the globe, following the October insurrection in Russia and the revolutionary tide that was sweeping through Germany, Hungary and many other countries - was not able to overthrow capitalism, humanity would be plunged into another war, indeed into an epoch of unending war that would put the whole future of human culture into question.

Nearly 100 years later, capitalism is still here and, according to the official propaganda, it is the only possible form of social organisation. What has become of Luxemburg's dilemma between socialism and barbarism? Again, sticking to the ideological mainstream, socialism has been tried and found wanting in the 20th century. The bright hopes raised by the Russian revolution on 1917 have been dashed on the rocks of Stalinism and buried alongside the latter's corpse when the eastern bloc collapsed at the end of the 1980s. Not only has socialism turned out to be at best a utopia and at worse a nightmare; even the struggle of the working class, which the marxists said was its essential foundation, has disappeared in the amorphous fog of a "new" form of capitalism sustained not by an exploited producer class but by an infinite mass of consumers and an economy which is often more virtual than material. 

Or so we are told. No doubt Luxemburg, if she could return from the dead, would be somewhat surprised to find that capitalist civilisation still rules the planet; in another article we will look more closely at the ways in which the system has managed to keep itself alive despite all the difficulties it has endured this past century. But if we abandon the distorting spectacles of the dominant ideology and look with a minimum of seriousness at the course that century has taken, we will see that the prognosis offered by Luxemburg, together with the majority of revolutionary socialists at the time, has been validated. This epoch - in the absence of the victory of the proletarian revolution - has already been the most barbaric in human history and brings with it the threat of an even deeper descent into barbarism, whose ultimate consequence could be not only the "collapse of civilisation" but the extinction of human life on the planet. 

The epoch of wars and revolutions

In 1915, only a minority of socialists stood clearly against the war. Trotsky joked that the internationalists who gathered that year at Zimmerwald could all fit into one taxi. But Zimmerwald itself was a sign of something stirring in the ranks of the international working class. By 1916 disaffection with the war, both at the battlefronts and at the rear, was becoming increasingly overt, as exemplified by strikes in Germany and Britain and the workers' demonstrations in Germany that greeted the release from jail of Luxemburg's comrade Karl Liebknecht, whose name had become synonymous with the slogan "the main enemy is at home". In February 1917 revolution broke out in Russia, bringing an end to the reign of the Tsars; but far from being a Russian 1789, a new if belated bourgeois revolution, February merely paved the way to October: the seizure of power by the working class organised in soviets, and proclaiming that this insurrection was merely the first blow struck for the world revolution that would not only end the war but end capitalism itself.

The Russian revolution, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks insisted over and over again, would stand or fall with the world revolution. And at first, its call to arms seemed to have been answered: mutiny in the French army in 1917; revolution in Germany in 1918, sending the bourgeois governments of the world scurrying to conclude a hasty peace lest the spectre of Bolshevism spread any further; soviet republics in Bavaria and Hungary in 1919; general strikes in Seattle and Winnipeg, tanks to answer workers' unrest on the Clyde in the same year; occupation of the factories in Italy in 1920. This was a striking confirmation of the CI's notion that the new era was the era of wars and revolutions. Capitalism, by dragging humanity into the path of the military juggernaut, was also calling forth the necessity for the proletarian revolution.

But the consciousness reached by the most dynamic and far-sighted elements of the working class, the communists, rarely coincides with the levels reached within the class as a whole. The majority of the working class did not yet understand that there was no going back to the old era of peaceful and piecemeal reforms, They wanted above all an end to the war and although they had to force this demand on the bourgeoisie, the latter was able to profit from the idea that it would be possible to go back to the status quo ante bellum, albeit with a number of changes presented as gains by the workers: in Britain, "homes fit for heroes", votes for women, and Clause Four in the Labour programme, promising the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. In Germany, where revolution had already assumed material form, the promises were more radical, using terms like socialisation and workers' councils alongside the abdication of the Kaiser and the granting of a republic based on universal suffrage.

Almost universally, it was the social democrats, the German "labour party", those tried and trusted specialists of the struggle for reforms, who sold these illusions to the workers, illusions that enabled them to declare that they were on the side of the revolution even while calling on proto-fascist gangs to massacre the truly revolutionary workers of Berlin and Munich, along with Liebknecht and Luxemburg themselves; and at the same time, they supported the economic strangulation and military offensive against the Soviet power in Russia with the specious justification that the Bolsheviks had forced the hand of history by leading a revolution in a backward country where the working class was only a minority, thus offending the sacred principles of democracy.

In short, through a mixture of guile and brutal repression, the revolutionary wave was beaten back in a series of separate defeats. Cut off from the oxygen of world revolution, the revolution in Russia began to suffocate and devour itself, a process symbolised by the disaster of Kronstadt, where discontented workers and sailors demanding new soviet elections were crushed by the Bolshevik government. The "victor" thrown up by this process of internal degeneration was Stalin, and its first victim was the Bolshevik party itself, finally and irrevocably transformed into an instrument of a new state bourgeoisie which had abandoned all pretence of internationalism in favour of the fraudulent notion of "socialism in one country".

Capitalism thus survived the scare of the revolutionary wave, despite aftershocks like the general strike in Britain in 1926 and the Shanghai workers' uprising in 1927. It proclaimed its firm intention to go back to normal. During the war, the principles of profit and loss had been temporarily (and partially) suspended as virtually all production was geared towards the war effort, and the central state machine took direct control over whole sectors of the economy. In a report to the Third Congress of the Communist International, Trotsky noted how the war had introduced a new mode of functioning for the capitalist system, based essentially on state manipulation of the economy and the generation of vast mountains of debt, of fictitious capital:

"Capitalism as an economic system is, you know, full of contradictions. During the war years these contradictions have reached monstrous proportions. To obtain the resources required for war, the state resorted primarily to two measures: first, issuance of paper money; second, flotation of loans. Thus an ever-increasing amount of the so-called ‘valuable paper' (securities) entered into circulation, as the means whereby the state pumped real material values out of the country in order to destroy them in the war. The greater the sums expended by the state, i.e., the more real values it destroyed, the larger the amount of pseudo-wealth, of fictitious values accumulated in the country. State-loan paper has piled up mountain-high. Superficially it might seem that a country had grown extremely rich, but in reality the ground was being cut under the economic foundation, shaking it apart, bringing it to the verge of collapse. State debts have climbed to approximately 1,000 billion gold marks, which adds up to 62 percent of the present national wealth of the belligerent countries. Before the war, the world total of paper and credit money approximated 28 billion gold marks, today the amount is between 220 and 280 billion, i.e., ten times as much. And this, of course, does not include Russia, for we are discussing only the capitalist world. All this applies primarily, if not exclusively, to European countries, mainly continental Europe and particularly Central Europe. On the whole, as Europe kept growing poorer and poorer - as she has to this very day - she became and is still becoming encased in ever-thicker layers of paper values, or what is known as fictitious capital. This fictitious capital-paper currency, treasury notes, war bonds, bank notes, and so on - represent either mementos of deceased capital or expectations of capital yet to come. But at the present time they are in no way commensurate to genuine existing capital. However, they function as capital and as money and this tends to give an incredibly distorted picture of society and modern economy as a whole. The poorer this economy becomes, all the richer is the image reflected by this mirror of fictitious capital. At the same time, the creation of this fictitious capital signifies, as we shall see, that the classes share in different ways in the distribution of the gradually constricting national income and wealth. National income, too, has become constricted, but not to the same extent as the national wealth. The explanation for this is quite simple: The candle of capitalist economy was being burned at both ends".

Such methods were a sign that capitalism could only operate through flouting its own laws. The new methods were described as "war socialism", but in fact they were a means for preserving the capitalist system in an era when it had become obsolete, and were thus a desperate rampart against socialism, against the rise of a higher mode of social production. But while "war socialism" was seen as essential for winning the war, it was effectively dismantled afterwards.

The post war period confirmed another fundamentally new characteristic of the imperialist war. Whereas the wars of the 19th century had usually "made sense" economically, resulting in an important surge of development for the winning side, the gigantic material costs of the world war led to the decline and in some cases even the economic ruin of both victors and vanquished. A fitful period of reconstruction began in war-ravaged Europe in the early 20s, but the economies of the Old World remained sluggish: the spectacular rates of growth that had been achieved by the first capitalist countries in the period before the war were not seen again. Unemployment became a permanent fixture in countries like Britain, while Germany's economy, bled white by vicious reparations, broke all previous records for inflation, and was kept afloat almost entirely by credit.

The main exception was America, which had flourished during the war by acting as what Trotsky in the same report termed Europe's quartermaster. It now definitively emerged as the world's most powerful economy and flourished precisely because its rivals had been laid low by the gigantic cost of the war, the post-war social turmoil, and the effective disappearance of the Russian market. For America above all this was the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties: the images of the Flapper and the Model T mass produced in Henry Ford's factories reflected the reality of dizzying rates of growth. Having reached the end of its internal expansion, and greatly benefiting from the stagnation of the old European powers, American capital and commodities now began to invade the globe, sweeping both into Europe and into the underdeveloped and often still pre-capitalist regions. From being a net debtor in the 19th century, the US became the world's leading creditor - it was mainly American loans which kept Germany afloat during the 1920s. Although US agriculture was to a great extent left behind by the boom, there was a discernable rise in the consuming power of the urban and proletarian population. All this was apparently the proof that you could go back to the world of laisser-faire capitalism which had brought such extraordinary expansion in the 19th century. The re-assuring philosophy of Calvin Coolidge had triumphed. Thus the president addressed Congress in December 1928:

"No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquillity and contentment, harmonious relations between management and wage earner, freedom from industrial strife, and the highest record of years of prosperity. In the foreign field there is peace, the good will which comes from mutual understanding, and the knowledge that the problems which a short time ago appeared so ominous are yielding to the touch of manifest friendship. The great wealth created by our enterprise and industry, and saved by our economy, has had the widest distribution among our own people, and has gone out in a steady stream to serve the charity and the business of the world. The requirements of existence have passed beyond the standard of necessity into the region of luxury. Enlarging production is consumed by an increasing demand at home, and an expanding commerce abroad. The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism".

Famous last words! In 1929 came the crash. The feverish growth of the US economy came up against the inherent limits of the market, and many of those who had believed in unlimited growth, in capitalism creating its own markets forever, and had invested their savings on the basis of this mythology, were now jumping from high buildings. Furthermore, this was not a crisis the like of which had punctuated the 19th century, crises so regular during the first half of that century that it was possible to talk about a "decennial cycle". In those days, after a brief period of slump, new markets were found across the world, and a new and even more vigorous phase of growth set in; furthermore in the period from the 1870s to 1914, characterised by an accelerated imperialist thrust to conquer the remaining non-capitalist regions, the crises that struck the centres of the system were far less violent than they had been in capitalism's youth, despite the talk of a "Long Depression" between the 70s and the 90s, which to some extent reflected the beginning of the end of Britain's world economic supremacy .   

But in any case there was no comparison whatever between the commercial problems of the 19th century and the world slump that set in during the 1930s. It was on a qualitatively different level: something fundamental in the conditions of capitalist accumulation had changed. The depression was world wide - from its nub in the USA it then hit Germany, which had become almost totally dependent on the US, and the rest of Europe. The crisis was equally devastating in the colonial or semi-dependent regions, which had been largely compelled by their major imperialist "owners" to produce primary products needed in the metropoles. The sudden plunge in world prices spelt ruin for the majority of these regions.

A measure of the scale of this crisis can be seen in the fact that while world production had declined by around 10% as a result of the First World War, it fell by no less than 36.2% as a result of the Crash.[2] In the US, which had greatly benefited from the war, the fall in industrial production was as much as 53.8%. Estimates for the resulting unemployment figures vary but Sternberg's source puts it at 40 million in the main capitalist countries. The fall in world trade was equally catastrophic, dropping to as much as a third of its pre-1929 levels. But the most important difference of all between the slump of the 1930s and the crises of the 19th century was that there was no longer any "automatic" process leading to a new cycle of growth and expansion towards what remained of the non-capitalist areas of the globe. The bourgeoisie soon realised that the "hidden hand" of the market would not be picking up the economy from the floor in the near future. It thus had to jettison the naïve liberalism of Coolidge and his successor Hoover and recognise that from now on the state had to intervene despotically in the economy to preserve the capitalist system. This recognition was theorised above all by Keynes, who understood that the state had to prop up failing industries and generate an artificial market to make up for the inability of the system to develop new ones: this was the meaning of the massive "public works" undertaken in Roosevelt's New Deal, the support given to the new CIO trade unions in order to facilitate the boosting of consumer demand, and so on. In France the new policies took the form of the Popular Front. In Germany and Italy, they appeared as fascism and in Russia as Stalinism. The underlying meaning was the same. The new epoch of capitalism was the epoch of state capitalism.

But state capitalism does not exist in each country in isolation from the rest. On the contrary, it is determined to a large extent by the necessity to centralise and defend the national economy as a whole against other competing nations. In the 30s, this had an economic side - protectionism was seen as a means of defending your own industries and markets from the encroachments of other country's industries and markets; but it had a much more significant military side because economic competition was aggravating a slide towards another world war. State capitalism is in essence a war economy. Fascism, which boasted loudly about the benefits of war, was the most overt expressions of this tendency. Under the Hitler regime, German capital responded to its dire economic situation by embarking on a frenzied course of rearmament. This had the "benefit" of rapidly reabsorbing unemployment, but this was not the aim of the war economy in itself; rather it was to prepare for a new violent division of markets. Similarly, the Stalinist regime in Russia, with its ruthless subordination of proletarian living standards to the development of heavy industry, was also geared towards making Russia a world military power to be reckoned with, and as with Nazi Germany and militarist Japan (which had already embarked on a campaign of armed conquest through its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the rest of China in 1937), the "success" of these regimes in resisting the effect of the slump was directly linked to their willingness to subordinate all production to the needs of war. But the development of a war economy was also the real secret of the massive programme of public works in the countries of the New Deal and Popular Front, even when these countries were much slower to directly re-adapt their factories towards the massive production of weapons and war-materiel.

Victor Serge once described the period of the 30s as "midnight in the century".  No less than the 1914-18 war, the economic crisis of 1929 had confirmed the senility of the capitalist mode of production. Here, on a scale far greater than anything seen in the 19th century, we had that "epidemic which in all previous epochs would have seemed absurd - the epidemic of overproduction".[3] Millions went hungry and were thrown into enforced idleness in the most industrialised nations of the world not because the factories and fields could not produce enough, but because they were producing "too much" for the market to absorb. It was a new confirmation of the necessity for the socialist revolution.

But the proletariat's first attempt at carrying out the verdict of history had been definitively defeated by the late 20s and everywhere the counter-revolution was triumphant. It plunged the most terrifying depths precisely in those countries where the revolution had risen the highest. In Russia it took the form of the labour camps and mass executions; the deportation of entire populations, the deliberate starvation of millions of peasants; Stakhanovite super-exploitation in the factories. At the level of culture it took the form of the repudiation of all the social and artistic experimentation of the revolution's early years and the return to the most philistine bourgeois habits and officially imposed Socialist Realist "taste".

In Germany and Italy the proletariat had been closer to revolution than in any other western European countries, and the consequence of their defeat was the imposition of a brutal police regime. Fascism was a vast bureaucracy of informers, the savage persecution of dissidents and social and ethnic minorities, most classically of the Jews in Germany. The Nazi regime trampled on hundreds of years of culture and wallowed in occultist and pseudo-scientific theories about the civilising mission of the Aryan race, burning books containing un-German ideas and exalting the virtues of blood, soil and conquest. Trotsky saw the destruction of culture in Nazi Germany as a particularly eloquent proof of the decadence of bourgeois culture:

"Fascism has opened up the depth of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing up from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the psychology of National Socialism" ("What is National Socialism?", 1933).

But precisely because fascism was a concentrated expression of the decline of capitalism as a system, it was a pure mystification to think that it could be fought without fighting capitalism as a whole, as the various brands of "anti-fascism" argued. This was demonstrated very clearly in Spain in 1936: the workers of Barcelona responded to the initial coup d'Etat led by the rightist general Franco with their own methods of class struggle - general strike, fraternisation with the troops, arming of the workers - and paralysed the fascist offensive in the space of days. The moment they handed their struggle over to the democratic bourgeoisie incarnated in the Popular Front, they were lost, dragged into an inter-imperialist contest which proved to be the general rehearsal for an even greater massacre. As the Italian left soberly concluded, the war in Spain was a terrible confirmation of its prognosis that the world proletariat had been defeated; and since the proletariat was the only obstacle to capitalism's drive to war, the course was now open to a new world war.

A new stage of barbarism

Picasso's painting of Guernica is rightly celebrated as a ground-breaking depiction of the horrors of modern war. The indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population of this Spanish town by German planes supporting Franco's armies still had the power to shock because it was a relatively new phenomenon. Aerial bombing of civilian targets during the First World War had been minimal and largely ineffective. The vast majority of those killed during that war were soldiers on the battlefronts. The second world war showed that capitalism in decline was increasing in its capacity for barbarism because this time the majority of those killed were civilians: "The total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II, irrespective of political alignment, was roughly 72 million people. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including about 20 million due to war related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including about 5 million prisoners of war".[4] The most terrifying and concentrated expression of this horror was the industrialised murder of millions of Jews and other minorities by the Nazi regime, shot in batch after batch in the ghettos and forests of eastern Europe, starved and worked to death as slave labourers, gassed in hundreds of thousands at Auschwitz, Belsen or Treblinka. But the civilian death tolls from the bombing of the cities by both sides were proof that this Holocaust, this systematic murder of the innocent, was a generalised feature of this war. Indeed at this level the democracies certainly outdid the fascist powers, as the "carpet bombing" and "firebombing" of German and Japanese cities made the German Blitz seem amateurish in comparison. The symbolic culminating point in this new method of mass slaughter was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in terms of civilian deaths, the "conventional" bombing of cities like Tokyo, Hamburg and Dresden were even more deadly. 

The dropping of the atomic bomb by the US opened up a new era in two ways. First, it confirmed that capitalism had become a system of permanent war. Because if the atomic bomb signalled the final collapse of the Axis powers, it also opened up a new war front. The real target of Hiroshima was not Japan, already on its knees and suing for peace terms, but the USSR. It was a warning to the latter to moderate its imperialist ambitions in the Far East and Europe. Indeed, "the US joint chiefs of staff produced a plan to atom-bomb the twenty chief Soviet cities within ten weeks of the end of the war".[5] In other words the use of the atomic bomb ended the Second World War only to draw the battle lines for the third. And it also brought a new and frightful significance to Luxemburg's warning about the "inevitable consequences" of the period of unlimited wars. The atomic bomb demonstrated that the capitalist system now had the capacity to end human life on earth.

The years 1914-1945 - which Hobsbawm describes as "the Age of Catastrophe" - thus provide clear confirmation of the diagnosis that capitalism had become a decadent social system, just like ancient Rome or feudalism before it. The revolutionaries who had survived the persecution and demoralisation of the 30s and 40s, and who had stood up for internationalist principles against both imperialist camps before and during the war, were few in number; but for most of them this was a given. Two world wars and the immediate threat of a third, and a world economic crisis of unprecedented scale had seemed to confirm it once and for all.

In the ensuing decades, however, doubts began to creep in. Certainly the survival of capitalism meant that mankind now lived under the permanent threat of annihilation. Throughout the next 40 years, even if the two new imperialist blocs did not pull mankind into another world war, they remained in a state of unending conflict and hostility, fighting a series of proxy wars in the Far East, Middle East and Africa; and, on several occasions, especially during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, they brought the planet close to the brink of catastrophe.  It has been officially estimated that up to 20 million people were killed during these wars and some estimates put it much higher.

These wars ravaged the underdeveloped parts of the world, and throughout the post war period these regions faced dire problems of poverty and malnutrition. However, in the main capitalist countries, there was a spectacular boom, which in retrospect bourgeois experts have named the "thirty glorious years". Growth rates matching or even surpassing those seen during the 19th century, steady rises in wages, the institution of welfare and health services under the benevolent guidance of the state.... By the 1960s in Britain, the working class was being told by British PM Harold Macmillan that "you've never had it so good", and among the sociologists, new theories flourished about capitalism transmuting into a "consumer society" which had "embourgeoisified" the working class with a never ending conveyor belt of televisions, washing machines, cars and package holidays. For many, including some in the revolutionary movement, this period invalidated the notion that capitalism had entered its decadent phase and proved its capacity for almost unlimited growth. "Radical" theorists like Marcuse began to look elsewhere than the working class for a subject of revolutionary change - to the peasants of the third world or the rebellious students of the capitalist centres.

A society in decomposition

We will return to a closer examination of the real bases for the post-war boom, in particular, looking at the means that capitalism in decline has adopted to stave off the immediate consequences of its contradictions. However, those who declared that capitalism had finally abolished these contradictions were to be revealed as superficial empiricists by the end of the 1960s, when the first symptoms of a new economic crisis appeared in the main western countries. By the mid 70s, the illness was explicit: inflation began to ravage the main economies, prompting a flight away from the Keynesian methods of using the state power to directly shore up the economy that had worked so well during the previous decades. The 80s were thus the decade of Thatcherism and Reaganism - which basically meant letting the crisis find its real level and allowing the sicker industries to go to the wall. Inflation was cured by recession. Since then we have been through a series of mini-booms and mini-recessions, and ideologically Thatcherism lives on in the project of neo-liberalism and privatisations, but behind all the rhetoric about a return to Victorian economic values of free enterprise, the role of the capitalist state remains as crucial as ever, manipulating economic growth through all kinds of financial manoeuvres, all which are predicated on a growing mountain of debt, symbolised above all by the fact that the USA, whose rise to global ascendancy was marked by the transition from being a debtor to a creditor nation, now staggers under a debt of over $36 trillion.[6] "This mountain of debts which are accumulating not only in Japan but also in the other developed countries constitutes a real powder keg that could have major destabilising effects in the long term. Thus, a rough estimate of the world debt for the entirety of economic agencies (states, companies, households and banks) oscillates between 200% and 300% of world production. Concretely, that signifies two things. On the one hand, that the system has advanced the monetary equivalent of two to three times the value of world production in order to mitigate its crisis of overproduction; and on the other hand, that it would be necessary to work two to three years for nothing to repay this debt. While such massive debt can still be borne by the more developed economies, it is by contrast about to strangle the "emerging" countries one by one. This phenomenal debt on a world level is historically without precedent and shows what a dead-end the capitalist system has reached - but also reveals its capacity to manipulate the law of value in order to ensure its survival."[7]

And while the bourgeoisie asks us to place our confidence in all kinds of snake-oil remedies such as the information economy and various "technological revolutions", the dependence of the entire world economy on debt is building up underground pressures that are bound to have volcanic consequences in the future. Occasionally we get a glimpse: the sudden stalling of the eastern Tigers and Dragons in 97 was perhaps the most significant. Again, we are at this moment told that the spectacular growth rates being experienced in India and China are the way of the future. But in the next breath they can hardly conceal their fears that all this will end badly. China's growth, after all, is based on cheap imports to the west, and the west's capacity to consume them is based on massive debt.... so what happens when the debts are called in? And underneath the debt-fuelled growth of the last two or more decades the fragility of the whole enterprise is revealed by some of its more evidently negative features: the virtual deindustrialisation of whole swaths of the western economy, creating a multitude of unproductive, and very often precarious jobs, increasingly linked to the most parasitic areas of the economy; the growing poverty gap, not only between the central capitalist countries and the world's poorest regions, but also within the most advanced economies; the evident inability to really absorb mass, permanent unemployment, whose real scale is hidden by a very large box of tricks (training schemes that lead nowhere, constant reclassifying of the meaning of unemployment, etc).

Thus on the economic level capitalism has by no means overcome its tendency towards catastrophe. The same remains true at the imperialist level. When the eastern bloc suddenly collapsed at the end of the 80s, dramatically ending four decades of "Cold War", the US president George Bush Senior famously announced the beginning of a New World Order of peace and prosperity. But because decadent capitalism is permanent war, imperialist conflicts can change their line-up but they do not go away. We saw that in 1945 and we have seen it since 1991. Instead of the relatively "disciplined" conflict between the two blocs, we have a much more chaotic war of each against all, with the sole remaining super-power, the US, more and more resorting to military action to try to impose its declining authority. And yet each display of its undoubted military superiority has only succeeded in accelerating opposition to its hegemony. We saw this after the first Gulf war in 91: although it temporarily compelled its former allies Germany and France to support its crusade against Saddam, within a couple of years it became evident that the old discipline of the western bloc had disappeared forever: in the Balkans wars first Germany (through its support for Croatia and Slovenia) then France (through its continued support for Serbia while the US switched its support to Bosnia) found themselves effectively fighting a proxy war against the US. Even America's "lieutenant", the UK, was also on the opposite side on this occasion, backing Serbia until it was able to forestall the US bombing offensive no longer. The recent "war against terror" - prepared by the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11 2001 by a suicide commando that had very likely been manipulated by the US state, another striking expression of the barbarism of today - has further exacerbated these divergences, with France, Germany and Russia forming a coalition of the unwilling to oppose the US invasion in Iraq. And the consequences of the 2003 invasion have been even more disastrous. Far from consolidating US control over the Middle East and thus securing the USA "Full Spectrum Dominance" as dreamed about by the Neo-Conservatives in and around the Bush administration, the invasion has plunged the entire region into chaos, with instability growing in Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile the imperialist equilibrium has been further undermined by the emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear powers, possibly soon to be joined by Iran, which in any case has vastly increased its imperialist ambitions following the downfall of its great rival Iraq; by the increasingly hostile stance assumed by Putin's Russia towards the west; by the growing weight of Chinese imperialism in world affairs; by the proliferation of "failed states" and "rogue states" in the Middle East, the Far East and Africa; by the spread of Islamic terrorism on a world scale, sometimes at the service of this or that imperialist power, but often acting as an unpredictable power in its own right... The world is thus not a less dangerous place since the end of the Cold War, but a more dangerous one. 

And if throughout the 20th century we have been increasingly aware of the dangers posed to human civilisation by economic crisis and imperialist war, it is only in the last few decades that we have really become conscious of a third dimension of the disaster that capitalism has in store for mankind: the ecological crisis. This mode of production, spurred on by increasingly feverish competition for every last market opportunity, must continue to spread into every corner of the globe, to plunder the resources of the entire planet at whatever cost. But this frenzied "growth" is more and more and more revealed as a cancer on the body of the planet Earth. In the last two decades, the scale of this threat has gradually seeped into public awareness, because even if what we are seeing now is the culmination of a much longer process, the problem is beginning to move onto a much higher level. The pollution of the air, the rivers and the seas by industrial and transport emissions, the destruction of the rainforests and numerous other wild habitats, the extinction or threatened extinction of countless animal species, are reaching alarming levels, and are now coming together around the problem of climate change, which threatens to inundate human civilisation in a succession of floods, droughts, famines and plagues. And climate change itself could set off a self-expanding spiral of disaster, as recognised by, among others, the distinguished physicist Stephen Hawking. In an ABC News interview in August 2006, Hawking explained, "The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of methane, trapped as hydrates on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so further global warming. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."

The threats of economic, military and ecological collapse are not separate either - they are intimately linked. Above all, it is evident that capitalist nations facing economic ruin and severe ecological pressures will not peacefully suffer their own disintegration, but will be pushed towards military solutions at the expense of other nations.

More than ever, the alternative between socialism or barbarism stands before us. And just as the first world war, in Luxemburg's words, was already barbarism, the danger facing humanity, and in particular its only source of salvation, the proletariat, is that it will be engulfed in the growing barbarism spreading across the planet before it can react and develop its own solution.

The ecological crisis poses this danger very clearly: the proletarian class struggle can hardly influence it until the working class has seized power and is in a position to reorganise production and consumption on a world scale. And yet the longer the revolution is delayed the greater the danger that the destruction of the environment will undermine the material basis for the communist transformation. But the same can be said for the social effects of the current phase of decadence. In the cities there is a growing tendency for the working class to lose its class identity, for a generation of young proletarians to fall victim to the mentality of the gang, to irrational ideologies and nihilistic despair. The consequence is again that it could become too late for the proletariat to reconstitute itself as a revolutionary social force.

And yet the proletariat must never forget its real potential. The bourgeoisie has certainly always been aware of it. In the period leading up to the First World War, the ruling class anxiously awaited the response of social democracy, knowing that it would have been impossible to dragoon the workers into the war without its active support. This ideological defeat denounced by Rosa was the precondition for unleashing the war; and the proletarian recovery after 1916 was what brought the war to an end. Inversely, it was the defeat and demoralisation after the retreat of the revolutionary wave which opened the course towards the Second World War, even though it took a long period of repression and ideological intoxication before the working class could be mobilised for this second round of slaughter. And the bourgeoisie was well aware of the need to take preventative action to snuff out the danger of a repetition of 1917 at the end of the war. This "class consciousness" was above all displayed by that "Greatest Ever Briton", Winston Churchill, who had learned well from his role of helping to smother threat of Bolshevism in 1917-20. Following the mass strikes of the workers of Northern Italy in 1943, it was Churchill who formulated the policy of letting the Italians "stew in their own juice", delaying the Allied advance from the south to allow the Nazis to crush the Italian workers; it was also Churchill who understood best the sinister meaning of the terror bombing of Germany in the last phase of the war: it was aimed at strangling any possibility of revolution in the place where the bourgeoisie feared it the most.

The world-wide defeat and counter-revolution lasted for four decades. But it did not mean the final end of the class struggle as some had begun to argue. With the reappearance of the crisis at the end of the 60s, a new generation of proletarians struggling for their own demands made its inconvenient appearance: the "events" of May 68 in France, officially remembered as a "student uprising", were only able to bring the French state to edge of the abyss because the revolt in the universities had been accompanied by the biggest general strike in history. Over the next few years, Italy, Argentina, Poland, Spain, Britain and many other countries saw further massive movements of the working class, frequently leaving the official representatives of "Labour", the unions and parties of the left, trailing in their wake. The "wildcat" strike became the norm as against the "disciplined" union mobilisation, and workers began to develop new forms of struggle to escape the numbing grip of the trade unions: general assemblies, elected strike committees, massive delegations to other workplaces. In the gigantic strikes of 1980 in Poland, the workers used such forms to coordinate their struggle across the level of an entire country.

The struggles of the period 1968-1989 very often ended in defeat as far as their immediate demands are concerned. But there is no question that if they had not taken place, the bourgeoisie would have had a free hand to impose a far greater attack on the living standards of the working class, above all in the advanced centres of the system. And above all, the refusal of the proletariat to pay for the effects of the capitalist crisis also meant that it would not be willing to march tamely off to another war, even though the re-emergence of the crisis also led to a noticeable sharpening of tensions between the two great imperialist blocs from the 1970s onwards, and particularly in the 1980s. Imperialist war is implicit in the economic crisis of the system, even if it represents not a "solution" to the crisis but an even greater plunge into ruin. But to go to war, the bourgeoisie must have a pliant, ideologically loyal proletariat, and this it did not have. Perhaps this was demonstrated most plainly in the eastern bloc: the Russian bourgeoisie, most pushed towards a military solution by economic collapse and growing military encirclement, came to realise that it could not rely on its own proletariat to serve as cannon fodder in war against the West, especially after the mass strikes in Poland in 1980. It was this impasse which led to the implosion of the Eastern bloc in 89-91.

The proletariat, however, was unable to develop its own, and genuine solution to the contradictions of the system: the perspective of a new society. Certainly May 68 raised this question on a massive scale and gave rise to a new generation of revolutionaries, but these remained in a tiny minority. As the impact of the economic crisis became more and more overt, the vast majority of the workers' struggles of the 70s and 80s remained on the defensive, economic level, and decades of disillusionment with the "traditional" parties of the left had implanted within the ranks of the working class a deep suspicion towards any kind of politics.

We thus reached a kind of stalemate in the battle between the classes: the bourgeoisie had no future to offer mankind, and the proletariat had not rediscovered its own future. But the crisis of the system does not stand still and the result of the stalemate is a growing decomposition of society at all levels. At the imperialist level, this resulted in the disintegration of the two imperialist blocs, and so the perspective of world war came off the historical agenda for an indefinite period. But as we have seen, this now exposed the proletariat and humanity to a new danger, a kind of creeping barbarism which in many ways is even more pernicious.

Humanity is indeed at the crossroads. The years and decades ahead of us could be the most crucial in its entire history, because they will determine whether human society is going to be plunged into an unprecedented regression or even total extinction, or whether it will take a leap onto a new level of organisation, where mankind is at last in control of its own social powers, and is able to create a world in harmony with its needs. 

It is our conviction as communists that it is not too late for the latter alternative - that the working class, despite all the material and ideological blows it has suffered in the last few decades, is still capable of resisting, and is still the only force that stands in the way of a final descent into the abyss. Indeed since 2003, there has been a discernable development of workers' struggles all over the world; and at the same time we are witnessing the emergence of a whole new generation of groups and elements who are questioning the essential bases of the present social system and who are seriously looking at the prospects for a fundamental social change. In other words, we are seeing signs of a real maturation of class-consciousness.

Faced with a world in chaos, there is no shortage of false explanations for the present crisis.   Religious fundamentalism, whether of the Muslim or Christian variety, as well as a whole host of occultist and conspiratorial explanations of history, are flourishing today precisely because the signs of an apocalyptic end to the present world civilisation are increasingly hard to deny. But these regressions to mythology serve only to reinforce passivity and despair, because they invariably subordinate man's capacity for self-activity to the fateful decrees of powers reigning over man. The most characteristic expression of these cults is therefore the Islamic suicide bomber whose actions are the epitome of despair, or the American evangelists glorying in war and ecological destruction as so many harbingers of a coming Rapture. And while "common-sense" bourgeois rationalism laughs at the absurdities of the fanatics, it includes in its mockery all those who, for the most rational and scientific reasons, are becoming increasingly convinced that the present social system cannot and will not go on forever. Against the ranting of the religious cults, and the blank denials of facile bourgeois optimism, it is more than ever vital to develop a coherent and consistent understanding of what Rosa called the "dilemma of world history". And, like Rosa, we are convinced that such an understanding can only be grounded in the revolutionary theory of the proletariat - in marxism, and the materialist conception of history. It is to this general theoretical framework that we now turn [18] .              

Gerrard

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[1] "Socialism and War", chapter 1, 1915.

[2] This figure excludes the USSR. Figures from Sternberg, Capitalism and Socialism on Trial, 1951, p 277-281

[3] Communist Manifesto.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties [19]

[5] Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, p 233, citing Walker, The Cold War, 1993, p 26-7.

[6] Sum estimated for the third trimester of 2003 by the council of governors of the Federal Reserve and other government agencies. According to the same course, the debt has risen by 23 times since 1970 when it stood at 1.630 thousand billion dollars.

[7] "The reality of ‘economic prosperity' laid bare by the crisis", International Review n°114.

The following article was originally published in the November-December 1936 edition of Bilan (n°37), the theoretical journal of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. It is the fourth article in the series "Problems of the Period of Transition" by the Belgian comrade who signed his contributions "Mitchell". The previous three have been published in the last three issues of the International Review.

The article takes as its starting point the proletarian revolution in Russia - not as a rigid schema applicable to all future revolutionary experiences, but as a living laboratory of the class war, requiring critical assessment and analysis in order to provide reliable lessons for the future. Like most of the best marxist works, it presents itself as a polemical debate with other interpretations of this experience, judged to be inadequate, dangerous or frankly counter-revolutionary. In the last category it places the Stalinist ("centrist", to use the somewhat misleading term still used by the Italian left at the time) argument that socialism was being constructed in the confines of the USSR. The article does not dwell long on refuting this claim - it is sufficient to show that the theory of "socialism in one country" is incompatible with the most fundamental principles of internationalism, and that the practice of "building socialism" in the USSR required the most ferocious exploitation of the proletariat. More significant is the article's criticisms of the views put forward by the Trotskyist opposition, which shared with the Stalinists the idea that the "workers' state" in the USSR could prove its superiority to the established capitalist regimes by engaging in economic competition with them - indeed Mitchell points out that Stalin's post-1928 programme of rapid industrialisation had actually been plagiarised from the policies of the Left Opposition.

For Mitchell and the Italian left, the proletarian revolution can only begin a real economic transformation in the direction of communism once it has conquered political power on a world scale. It was therefore an error to judge the success or failure of the revolution in Russia on the basis of the economic policies it undertook; at best, the victorious proletariat in one country could only conduct a holding operation at the economic level, focusing all its energies on the political extension of the revolution to other countries. The article is highly critical of any notion that the measures put through under the heading of "war communism" represented a real advance towards communist social relations. For Mitchell, the virtual disappearance of money and the forced requisitioning of grain in the years 1918-20 were no more than contingent necessities forced on the proletarian power by the harsh reality of the civil war, and were accompanied by a dangerous bureaucratic distortion of the soviet state. In Mitchell's view, it would be far more accurate to look at the "New Economic Policy" of 1921, despite its various flaws, as a more "normal" model of a transitional economic regime in one country.

The polemical element of the text also extends to other currents in the revolutionary movement. The article takes up the debate with Rosa Luxemburg, who had criticised the agrarian policy of the Bolsheviks in 1917 ("land to the tiller"), but who in Mitchell's view had underestimated the political necessity of the Bolsheviks' recognition of the seizure of land by the small peasants as a way of strengthening support for the dictatorship of the proletariat. It also returns to the discussion with the Dutch internationalists of the GIK which we commented on in the last issue of the International Review. In this text Mitchell argues that the Dutch comrades' exclusive focus on the problem of workers' management of production led them to conclude falsely that the principle of centralism was the main cause of the revolution's degeneration, while at the same time entirely evading the problem of the transitional state, which in the marxist outlook is an inevitability as long as classes have not been abolished.

In the concluding part of the article, dealing with the problem of the "proletarian state", Mitchell shows both the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian Left's framework of analysis. Mitchell reiterates the principal conclusion the Italian Left drew from the Russian experience in this regard, which to us remains one of its most important contributions to marxist theory: the understanding that while the transitional state is an unavoidable "scourge" that the working class will have to utilise, for this very reason the proletariat cannot identify itself with this state, but will have to maintain a permanent vigilance to ensure that it does not turn against it, as had been the case in Russia.

On the other hand, the article also reveals some of the inconsistencies in the positions of the Italian left of the time. Their keen awareness of the necessity for the communist party led them to defend the notion of the "dictatorship of the party", a view that ran counter to their insistence on the need for the party and other proletarian organs to remain independent of the transitional state. And Mitchell also insists that the existing soviet state in Russia still had a proletarian character, despite its counter-revolutionary orientation, because it had eliminated the private ownership of the means of production. In the same sense, he does not consider the new bureaucracy to be a new bourgeoisie. This position, in some ways close to the analysis developed by Trotsky, did not however lead to the same political conclusions: unlike the Trotskyist current, the Italian left always placed the international interests of the working class above all other considerations and rejected any defence of the USSR, which they already saw as being integrated into the sordid game of world imperialism. Furthermore, we can already see in Mitchell's article elements that would eventually make it possible for the Italian left to arrive at a more consistent characterisation of the Stalinist regime. Thus, in a previous section of the article, Mitchell warns that "collectivisation" or nationalisation was by no means a socialist measure in itself, even quoting Engels's prescient passage about state capitalism. It would take some years and some searching debates for these inconsistencies to be ironed out by the Italian left, partly through discussion with other revolutionary currents such as the German/Dutch left. Nevertheless, the article provides further proof of the depth and rigour of the Italian left's approach to the development of the communist programme.

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Bilan n°37, November-December 1936

IV: Some elements of a proletarian administration

The Russian revolution of October 1917 must without doubt be regarded as a proletarian revolution because it destroyed a capitalist state from top to bottom and replaced bourgeois domination with the first fully achieved proletarian dictatorship (the Paris Commune having merely created the premises for such a dictatorship).[1] It is on this basis that it has to be analysed by marxists, as a progressive experience (despite its later counter-revolutionary evolution), as a step along the way that leads to the emancipation of the proletariat and the whole of humanity.

Material and political conditions for the proletarian revolution

From the considerable mass of material accumulated by this gigantic event it is not yet possible, given the state of our research, to put forward definite orientations for future proletarian revolutions. But a confrontation with certain theoretical notions, with certain marxist deductions from historical reality, will make it possible to arrive at the fundamental conclusion that the complex problems posed by the attempt to construct a classless society must be intimately linked to a series of principles founded on the universality of bourgeois society and its laws, and on the predominance of the international class struggle.

Moreover, the first proletarian revolution did not, contrary to expectations, break out in the richest countries, the most materially and culturally developed ones, countries "ripe" for socialism, but in a backward semi-feudal area of capitalism. From which we derive the second conclusion - although it's not an absolute - that the best conditions for revolution came together in a situation where a material deficiency corresponded to a lesser capacity of the ruling class to cope with social conflicts. In other words, political factors prevailed over material factors. Such an affirmation, far from being in contradiction with Marx's thesis about the conditions needed for the advent of a new society, merely underlines the profound significance we accorded to this factor in the first chapter of this study.

The third conclusion, the corollary of the first, is that the essentially international problem of the building of socialism - the preface to communism - cannot be resolved in the framework of one proletarian state, but only on the basis of the political defeat of the world bourgeoisie, at least in the vital centres of its rule, the most advanced countries.

While it is undeniable that a national proletariat can only undertake certain economic tasks after installing its own rule, the construction of socialism can only get going after the destruction of the most powerful capitalist states, even though the victory of a "poor" proletariat can take on a huge significance if it is integrated into the process of development of the world revolution. In other words, the tasks of a victorious proletariat with regard to its own economy are subordinated to the necessities of the international class struggle.

It is noteworthy that while all genuine marxists have rejected the theory of "socialism in one country", most of the criticisms of the Russian revolution have focused essentially on the modalities of the construction of socialism, looking at economic and cultural criteria rather than political ones, and forgetting to go to the logical conclusions imposed by the impossibility of any kind of national socialism.

This is a key question because the first practical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat has to dissipate the fog, which still surrounds the notion of socialism. And an essential lesson of the Russian revolution is surely - and this in the most exacerbated form, given that we are talking about a backward economy - the historic necessity for a proletarian state, temporarily isolated, to put very strict limits on its programme of economic construction.

The global balance of forces determines the rhythm and modalities of the construction of socialism

The rejection of "socialism in one country" can only mean that it cannot be a question of the proletarian state orienting the economy towards a productive development that will encompass all areas of manufacture, that will respond to the most varying needs and build up an integrated economy, so that, juxtaposed to other similar economies, this will make up world socialism. At the most it is a question - and this only after the victory of the world revolution - of developing the branches of each national economy which have a specific function and can be integrated as such into the future communist society (it is true that capitalism has realised this in a very imperfect way through the international division of labour). With the less favourable perspective of a slow-down in the revolutionary movement (the situation of Russia in 1920-21), it is a question of adapting the processes of the proletarian economy to the rhythm of the world-wide class struggle, but only in the sense of strengthening the class rule of the proletariat as a reference point for the new revolutionary upsurge of the international proletariat.

Trotsky in particular has often lost sight of this fundamental line, even though he has sometimes made it clear that for him the proletarian objective is not the realisation of integral socialism, but only the preparation of the elements of a world socialist economy as a means of politically strengthening the proletarian dictatorship.

In fact, in his analyses of the development of the Soviet economy, while beginning from the correct premise that this economy is dependent on the capitalist world market, Trotsky often approaches the question as if it was a "match" at the economic level between the proletarian state and world capitalism.

While it is true that socialism can only affirm its superiority as a system of production if it produces more and better than capitalism, such a historical verification can only be established after a long process that has taken place in the world economy, after a bitter struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and not as the result of a clash between a proletarian economy and the capitalist economy, since it is certain that on the basis of economic competitiveness, the proletarian state would inevitably be obliged to resort to capitalist methods of the exploitation of labour which would prevent any transformation of the social content of production. Fundamentally, the superiority of socialism cannot reside in its capacity to produce more "cheaply" - although this is certainly the consequence of an unlimited expansion of labour productivity - but has to express itself through the disappearance of the capitalist contradiction between production and consumption.

Trotsky, it seems to us, has definitely supplied centrism with theoretical weapons by starting off from such criteria as "the economic race with world capital"; "the allure of development as a decisive factor", "the comparison between rates of development", "the criterion of the pre-war level", etc, all of which bear a strong resemblance to the centrist slogan about "catching up with the capitalist countries". This is why the monstrous industrialisation which has been founded on the misery of the Russian workers, while being the direct product of centrist policies, is also the "natural" child of the Russian "Trotskyist" Opposition. What's more this position of Trotsky is the result of the perspectives he traced for the evolution of capitalism after the retreat of the international revolutionary struggle. Thus his whole analysis of the Soviet economy as it evolved after the NEP is, by his own admission, deliberately abstracted from the international political factor: "it is necessary to find practical solutions for the immediate period, by taking into account, as much as possible, all the factors in their momentary conjunction. But when it comes to perspectives of development for a whole epoch, it is absolutely necessary to separate the ‘salient' factors, that is to say, the political factors above all" (Towards capitalism or towards socialism?). Such an arbitrary method of analysis naturally leads one to examining the problems of the management of the Soviet economy "in themselves" rather than in function of the evolution of the world balance of class forces.

The question that Lenin posed after the NEP: "which one will win?" is thus transposed from the political terrain - where he had placed it - to the strictly economic terrain. The emphasis was put on the necessity to bring prices in line with those on the world market through reducing the sales price (and thus, in practice, essentially through reducing the paid part of labour, i.e. wages). Which amounts to saying that the proletarian state should not limit itself to putting up with a certain exploitation of labour power as an unavoidable evil, but on the contrary should adopt policies that sanction an even higher level of exploitation by making this the determining element of the economic process, which would thus acquire a capitalist content. In the end, the question goes back to the idea of a kind of national socialism from the moment you envisage the prospect of "outdoing" capitalist production on the world market with the products of the socialist economy (i.e. the USSR), when you see it as a battle between "socialism" and "capitalism". With such a point of view, it is evident that the world bourgeoisie can rest assured about the future of its system of production.

Here we want to open a parenthesis in order to try to establish the real theoretical and historical significance of those two crucial phases of the Russian revolution: "war communism" and the NEP, the first corresponding to the extreme social tension of the civil war, the second to the end of the armed struggle and to a situation of reflux in the world revolution.

War communism and the NEP

This examination seems all the more necessary in that, regardless of their contingent aspects, these two social phenomena could well reappear in other proletarian revolutions with an intensity and a rhythm in line with the level of capitalist development of the countries in question. It is therefore necessary to determine their exact location in the period of transition.

It is certain that "war communism" in its Russian version would not be characteristic of a "normal" proletarian administration. It was not the product of a pre-established programme, but a political necessity imposed by the irresistible pressure of the armed class struggle. Theory had to temporarily give way to the necessity to crush the bourgeoisie politically; this is why economics had to be subordinated to politics, but this took place at the price of the collapse of production and trade. Thus in reality the policies of "war communism" more and more entered into conflict with the theoretical premises developed by the Bolsheviks in their programme for the revolution - not because this programme was shown to be mistaken, but because its very moderate character, the fruit of "economic reason" (workers' control, nationalisation of the banks, state capitalism) encouraged the bourgeoisie to take up armed resistance. The workers responded with massive and accelerated expropriations which the decrees on nationalisation merely codified. Lenin issued a cry of alarm about this economic "radicalism", predicting that the proletariat could not win at this level. In effect, in the spring of 1921, the Bolsheviks had to recognise not that the workers had been beaten but that they had failed in their involuntary attempt to create socialism by force of arms. "War communism" had essentially been a coercive mobilisation of the economic apparatus aimed at avoiding famine in the proletariat and feeding the combatants. It was essentially a "communism" of equal consumption which had no real socialist substance. The method of requisitioning agricultural surpluses could only cause a considerable drop in production; the levelling of wages resulted in a collapse in labour productivity; and the authoritarian and bureaucratic centralism imposed by the circumstances was a real deformation of rational centralism. As for the stifling of exchange (which was accompanied by a flourishing of the black market) and the practical disappearance of money (payment in kind and free services), this was a product of the civil war and the collapse of any real economic life. They were not the measures of a proletarian administration which has taken the historic conditions into account. In sum, the Russian proletariat paid for the crushing of its class enemy through an economic impoverishment which a victorious revolution in the highly developed countries would have attenuated considerably by enabling it to "leap over" certain phases of development, even if it would not have profoundly altered the meaning of "war communism".

Marxists have never denied that the civil war - whether it precedes, accompanies, or follows the seizure of power by the proletariat - will contribute to a temporary lowering of the economic level, because they now know just how much this level can fall during an imperialist war. Thus in the backward countries, the rapid political dispossession of an organically weak bourgeoisie was and will be followed by a long struggle aimed at disorganising the new power if this bourgeoisie still has the ability to draw strength from broad social layers (in Russia, it was the vast peasantry, uncultured and lacking in political experience, which provided this source). At the same time, in the developed capitalist countries where the bourgeoisie is politically and materially powerful, the proletarian victory will very probably follow rather than precede a more or less long phase of bitter, violent and materially disastrous civil war. On the other hand the phase of "war communism" after the revolution could well be short-lived in such countries.

The NEP, considered from an absolute standpoint, and especially as it was placed in brutal opposition to "war communism", undoubtedly appeared as a serious backward step towards capitalism through the return to the "free" market, to "free" small production, to money.

But this "retreat" was established on real bases if we examine the actual economic conditions behind it. In other words, the NEP (independent of its accentuated features and specifically Russian elements) should be seen as a re-establishment of the "normal" conditions for the evolution of a transitional economy. For Russia, it was a return to the initial programme of the Bolsheviks, even though the NEP, coming after the juggernaut of the civil war, had to go well beyond it.

In sum, the NEP, separated from its contingent elements, is the form of economic administration which any other proletarian revolution will have to resort to.

Such is the conclusion imposed on those who don't make the possibilities of proletarian administration depend on the prior abolition of all capitalist categories and forms (an idea which derives from idealism, not marxism) and who, on the contrary, recognise that this administration will have to deal with the inevitable, but temporary survival of certain expressions of bourgeois servitude.

It is true that in Russia the pursuit of an economic policy adapted to the historic conditions for the transition from capitalism to communism was carried out in the heaviest and most threatening social climate, resulting from a phase of downturn in the international revolution and an internal degree of distress expressed by famine and the total exhaustion of the workers and peasants. This is why its particular historic traits tended to hide the general significance of the Russian NEP.

Under the pressure of events, the NEP represented the sine qua non for maintaining the proletarian dictatorship which it was effectively safeguarding. For this reason it was not the result of a capitulation by the proletariat: it did not involve any political compromise with the bourgeoisie but was merely an economic retreat aimed at re-establishing the original starting point for a progressive evolution of the economy. In reality, the class war, by displacing itself from the terrain of the armed struggle to the terrain of economic struggle, by taking on other forms, less brutal, more insidious, but equally redoubtable, was not at all destined to attenuate, on the contrary.

For the proletariat, the essential thing is to constantly strengthen itself in liaison with the fluctuation of the international struggle. In its general acceptance of the transitional phase, the NEP generated agents of the capitalist enemy - no more and no less than the transitional economy itself - to the extent that it was not maintained on a firm class line. It is always the political activity of the proletariat which remains decisive. Only on this basis can we analyse the evolution of the Soviet state. We will come back to this.

The economic programme of a proletarian revolution

In the historic limits assigned to the economic programme of a proletarian revolution, its fundamental points can be summarised as follows: a) the collectivisation of the means of production and exchange already "socialised" by capitalism; b) the monopolisation of foreign trade by the proletarian state, a decisively important economic weapon; c) a plan for production and for the distribution of the productive forces based on the structural characteristics of the economy and the specific function it is called on to assume in the worldwide socialist division of labour, but which can also strengthen the material position of the proletariat at the economic and social level; d) a plan for liaison with the world capitalist market, based on the monopoly of foreign trade and aimed at obtaining the means of production and objects of consumption which it lacks, and which must be subordinated to the fundamental plan for production, with both directives being able to resist the pressures of the world market and prevent it from integrating the proletarian economy into itself.

It is evident that while the progress and realisation of such a programme depends, to a certain extent, on the degree of the development of the productive forces and the cultural level of the mass of workers, the essential question remains the political strength of the proletariat, the solidity of its power, the balance of forces at the national and international level, even if there can never be any disassociation between the material, cultural and political factors, which are closely interpenetrated. But, we repeat, when it comes for example to the mode of appropriation of social wealth, while collectivisation is a juridical measure as necessary for the installation of socialism as was the abolition of feudal property for the installation of capitalism, it does not automatically result in the transformation of production. Engels has already put us on guard against the tendency to see collective property as a social panacea, when he showed that within capitalist society "the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution" (Anti-Duhring). And Engels adds that the solution lies in the grasping the nature and function of the social forces acting on the productive forces, in order to then subordinate them to the will of all and transform the means of production from "despotic masters to docile servants".

It is obvious that the political power of the proletariat alone can determine this collective will and ensure that the social character of property is transformed, that it loses its class character.

The juridical effects of collectivisations can be singularly limited by a backward economic structure and this makes the political factor even more decisive.

In Russia there was an enormous mass of elements capable of engendering a new capitalist accumulation and a dangerous class differentiation. The proletariat could only have prevented this through a highly energetic class policy, the only one that could have kept hold of the state for the proletarian struggle.

It is undeniable that with the agrarian problem, the problem of small industry constitutes a key issue for the proletarian dictatorship, a heavy legacy left by capitalism to the proletariat, and one which can't be eliminated by decree. We can even affirm that the central problem posed to the proletarian revolution in all capitalist countries (except perhaps for Britain) is the implacable struggle against the small producers of commodities and the small peasants, a struggle made even harder by the fact that it cannot be a question of expropriating these social layers through violence. The expropriation of private production is only economically realisable in relation to the enterprises which are already "socialised" and not to the individual enterprises which the proletariat is still not capable of running at a lower cost and making more productive, and which it can only control through the means of the market; this is a necessary point of transition between individual and collective labour. Furthermore, it is impossible to envisage the structure of the proletarian economy in an abstract manner, as a juxtaposition of pure types of production, based on opposing social relations, "socialist", capitalist or pre-capitalist, and which evolve solely on the basis of competition. This is the thesis of centrism which it got from Bukharin, and which holds that everything that is collectivised ipso facto becomes socialist, so that the petty bourgeois and peasant sectors will inevitably be led into the fold of "socialism". But in reality, each sphere of production more or less bears the imprint of its capitalist origins and there is not a juxtaposition but an interpenetration of contradictory elements, combating each other under the pressure of the class struggle, developing in a very bitter manner, even if in a less brutal form than during the period of open civil war. In this battle, the proletariat, basing itself on collectivised industry, must have the aim of subjecting to its control, to the point of annihilating them completely, all the social and economic forces of capitalism, which have already been overcome politically. But it cannot commit the deadly error of believing that, because it has nationalised the land and the basic means of production, it has erected an impassable barrier to the activity of bourgeois agencies: the whole process, both political and economic, continues in a dialectical manner and the proletariat can only direct it towards the classless society on condition of reinforcing itself internally and externally.

The agrarian question

The agrarian question is certainly one of the essential elements of the complex problem of the relationship between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie posed after the revolution. Rosa Luxemburg showed very rightly that "even in the West, under the most favourable conditions, once we have come to power, we too will break many a tooth on this hard nut before we are out of the worst of the thousands of complicated difficulties of this gigantic task!".

It is thus not a question of settling this question, even in its basic lines, and we will limit ourselves to posing the fundamental elements: the complete nationalisation of the land and the fusion of agriculture and industry.

The first is a perfectly realisable juridical act that can be accomplished immediately after the seizure of power, parallel with the collectivisation of the large-scale means of production, whereas the second can only be the product of a process throughout the economy, a result of the worldwide socialist organisation. These are not therefore two simultaneous acts, but can only be staggered in time, with the first conditioning the second, eventually resulting in the socialisation of agriculture. In itself the nationalisation of the land or the abolition of private property in land is not a specifically socialist measure. In fact it is essentially bourgeois, the final act of the bourgeois democratic revolution.

Together with the equal enjoyment of the land, it constitutes the most extreme, revolutionary stage of this revolution, but while being, to use Lenin's expression, "the most perfect foundation from the standpoint of the development of capitalism, it is at the same time the agrarian regime which is the most supple basis for the passage to socialism". The weakness of the criticisms Rosa Luxemburg made of the agrarian programme of the Bolsheviks (The Russian Revolution) concerns precisely these points: in the first place, she didn't underline that "the immediate seizure and distribution of the land by the peasants", while having absolutely nothing in common with a socialist society - we agree with this entirely - nevertheless represented an inevitable and transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, above all in Russia, although she does admit that this was "the shortest, simplest, most clean-cut formula to achieve two diverse things: to break down large land-ownership, and immediately to bind the peasants to the revolutionary government. As a political measure to fortify the proletarian socialist government, it was an excellent tactical move", which given the situation was obviously the most fundamental issue. In the second place, she did not make it clear that the slogan "land to the peasants", taken by the Bolsheviks from the programme of the Socialist Revolutionaries, had been applied on the basis of the integral suppression of private property in land and not, as Luxemburg declares, on the basis of the passage from large landed property to a multitude of small individual peasant properties. It is not correct to say (we only have to look at the decrees on nationalisation) that the division of the land was extended to the large technically developed exploitations, since they actually formed the structure of the "sovkozes", although it has to be admitted that these were not a major element of the agrarian economy as a whole.

Let us say in passing that Luxemburg, in drawing out her own agrarian programme, says nothing about the integral expropriation of the land, which was clearly seen as a link to further measures. She only foresees the nationalisation of large and medium-sized property.

Finally, in the third place, Luxemburg confines herself to showing the negative side of the division of the land (an inevitable evil), to denouncing the fact that it would not do away with "but would increase social and economic inequality among the peasantry and aggravate class oppositions", when it was precisely the development of the class struggle in the countryside which allowed the proletarian power to consolidate itself by drawing towards it the rural proletarians and semi-proletarian peasants, and which formed the social premise for extending the influence of the proletariat and ensuring its victory in the countryside. Rosa Luxemburg undoubtedly underestimated this political aspect of the agrarian problem and the fundamental role that has to be played by the proletariat based on its political domination and the possession of large-scale industry.

It would be pointless to ignore the fact the Russian proletariat faced an extremely complex situation. Because of the extreme dispersion of the small peasants, the effects of nationalisation were very limited. We should not forget that the collectivisation of the soil does not necessarily lead to that of the means of production attached to it. In Russia this was true of only 8% of the latter, while the remaining 92% remained in the private possession of the peasants; by contrast, in industry, collectivisation reached 89% of the productive forces, including 97% of the railways and 99% of heavy industry (the situation in 1925).

Although agricultural tools only represent about a third of the total amount of equipment, they constituted a favourable basis for the development of capitalist relations, given the enormous mass of the peasants. And it is obvious that, from the economic point of view, the central method for containing and reabsorbing this development could only be the organisation of large-scale industrialised agriculture. But this was subordinated to the general problem of industrialisation and consequently to the problem of aid from the proletariat of the advanced countries. In order to avoid getting stuck in the dilemma: perish or provide tools and consumer goods to the small peasants, the proletariat - while trying as much as possible to maintain a balance between agricultural and industrial production - had to devote the major part of its efforts towards the class struggle, both in the country and in the towns, always with the perspective of linking this to the international revolutionary struggle. Allying itself with the small peasants in order to struggle against the peasant capitalists, while at the same time trying to eliminate small-scale production, the precondition for creating a collective production: such was the apparently paradoxical task imposed on the proletariat vis-à-vis the villages.

For Lenin, this alliance alone would be able to safeguard the proletariat until other sections of the proletariat rose up. It did not imply a capitulation to the peasantry but was the only condition for overcoming the petty bourgeois hesitations of the peasants, who oscillated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat because of their economic and social situation and their inability to develop an independent policy, and thus for pulling them into the process of collective labour. "Annihilating" the small producers did not mean crushing them violently, but, as Lenin said in 1918, "helping them to move towards an ‘ideal' capitalism, since equal enjoyment of the soil is capitalism taken to its highest ideal as far as the small producer is concerned; at the same time, they have to feel for themselves the defects of this system and thus realise the need to go over to collective cultivation". It was not surprising that during the three terrible years of civil war, the experimental method had not brought a "socialist" consciousness to the Russian peasants. If they supported the proletariat to defend their land against the Whites, this was at the cost of their economic impoverishment and vital requisitions by the proletarian state.

And the NEP, while re-establishing a more normal field of experience, also restored "freedom and capitalism", but this worked above all in favour of the peasant capitalists, a huge ransom which made Lenin say that with the tax in kind, "the kulaks can push in places where they could not push before". Under the leadership of centrism, which was incapable of resisting this pressure from a renascent bourgeoisie on the economic apparatus, the state organs and the party, the middle peasants were encouraged to enrich themselves and to break with the poor peasants and the proletariat, with the results that we now see. A perfectly logical coincidence: 10 years after the proletarian insurrection, the shift in the balance of forces towards the bourgeois elements corresponded to the introduction of the 5 Year Plans, whose realisation depended on an unprecedented level of exploitation of the proletariat.

The Russian revolution tried to resolve the complex problem of the relationship between the proletariat and the peasantry. It failed not because a proletarian revolution could not succeed in a situation where only a bourgeois revolution was on the agenda, as the likes of Otto Bauer or Kautsky claimed, but because the Bolsheviks did not arm themselves with the principles of administration founded on historical experience, which would have ensured them economic and political victory.

But because it brought out the importance of the agrarian question, the Russian revolution contributed to the historic acquisitions of the world proletariat. We should add that the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International on this question can no longer be maintained in their entirety, and that in particular the slogan "land to the peasants" must be re-examined and limited in its significance.

And, inspired by the works of Marx on the Paris Commune, further developed by Lenin, marxists have succeeded in making a clear demarcation between centralism as a necessary and progressive form of social evolution and the oppressive centralism crystallised in the bourgeois state. While basing themselves on the first, they fight for the destruction of the second. It is on this indestructibly materialist position that they scientifically refuted anarchist ideology. And yet the Russian revolution breathed new life into this celebrated controversy, which seemed to have been dead and buried.

There have been many critiques which see the origins of the counter-revolutionary evolution of the USSR in the fact that economic and social centralism was not abolished and replaced by a system of "self-determination" by the working masses. This amounts to demanding that the social consciousness of the Russian proletariat should have jumped over the transitional stage; at the same time, there is a call for the immediate suppression of value, of the market, of wage differentials and other vestiges of capitalism. In other words, there is a confusion between two notions of centralism, which are absolutely opposed to one another, and a return, whether deliberate or not, to the typically anarchist opposition to "authoritarianism" as a way of navigating the transition period. It is an abstraction to oppose the principle of autonomy to the principle of authority; as Engels remarked in 1873, these are two very relative terms linked to historical evolution and the process of production.

The economic and political centralism of the dictatorship of the proletariat

On the basis of an evolution which goes from primitive communism to imperialist capitalism and which "returns" to civilised communism, the organic forms of capitalist "cartelism" and "trustification" push away the forms of primitive social autonomy, laying the basis for the "administration of things", which is actually an "anarchic" form of organisation even if it is prepared by a system where authority persists, but "kept to strict limits as long as the conditions of production make it inevitable" (Engels). The essential thing is not to try to leap over stages in a utopian manner, or to believe that you can change the nature of centralism and the principle of authority by changing the name. The Dutch internationalists, for example, have not escaped an analysis based on anticipating social reality and the theoretical convenience such an analysis provides (cf their work cited earlier).

Their critique of centralism in the Russian experience is made all the "easier" by the fact that it relates uniquely to the phase of "war communism" which engendered a bureaucratic dictatorship over the economy, whereas we know that, later on, the NEP favoured a wide economic "decentralisation". It is argued that the Bolsheviks "wanted" to suppress the market (we know that this wasn't at all the case) by replacing it with the Supreme Council of the Economy, and thus they bear responsibility for transforming the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship over the proletariat. Thus for the Dutch comrades, because, as a result of the necessities of the civil war, the Russian proletariat had to impose an extremely centralised and simplified economic and political apparatus, they lost control of the dictatorship, even though, at the same time, they were politically exterminating the enemy class. Unfortunately the Dutch comrades don't spend any time on this political aspect of the question, which for us is fundamental.

At the same time, by repudiating the dialectical analysis and leaping over the problem of centralism, they have ended up changing the meaning of words, since what they are looking at is not the transitional period, which is the only one of interest to marxists from the point of view of solving practical problems, but the higher sage of communism. It is then easy to talk about "a general social accounting based on an economic centre to which all the currents of economic life flow, but which has no right of directing production or deciding on the distribution of the social product". And they add that "in the association of free and equal producers, the control of economic life does not emanate from personalities or offices but results from the public registration of the real course of economic life. This means that production is controlled by reproduction". In other words, "economic life is controlled by itself through average social labour time".

With such formulations, the solutions to the problems of proletarian management cannot advance at all, since the burning question posed to the proletariat is not to work out the mechanisms that regulate communist society, but to find the way that leads towards it.

The Dutch comrades have, it's true, proposed an immediate solution: no economic or political centralism, which can only take on an oppressive form, but the transfer of management to enterprise organisms which would coordinate production through a "general economic law" (?). For them, the abolition of exploitation (and thus of classes) does not take place through a long historic process involving the ceaseless growth of participation by the masses in social administration, but in the collectivisation of the means of production, provided that this involves the right of the enterprise councils to dispose of the means of production and the social product. But apart from the fact this is a formulation which contains its own contradiction - since it boils down to opposing integral collectivisation (property of all, and of no one in particular) with a kind of restricted, dispersed collectivisation between social groups (the shareholders' society is also a partial form of collectivisation) - it simply tends to substitute a juridical solution (the right to dispose of the enterprises) for another juridical solution, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. But as we have already seen, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is simply the initial condition for the social transformation (even though full collectivisation is not immediately realisable), and the class struggle will continue as before the revolution, but on political bases which will allow the proletariat to impose the decisive direction.

The analysis of the Dutch internationalists undoubtedly moves away from marxism because it never puts forward the fundamental reality that the proletariat is forced to put up with the "scourge" of the state until classes have disappeared, that is, until the disappearance of world capitalism. But to underline such a historic necessity is to admit that state functions are still temporarily mixed up with centralisation, even though this takes place after the destruction of the capitalist apparatus of oppression and is not necessarily opposed to the development of the cultural level of the working masses and their capacity to take charge. Instead of looking for the solution to this development in the real context of historical and political conditions, the Dutch internationalists have tried to find it in a formula for appropriation which is both utopian and retrograde and which is as not clearly distinct from "bourgeois right" as they imagine. What's more, if one admits that the proletariat as a whole is in no way prepared "culturally" to solve "by itself" the complex problems of social administration (and this reality applies as much to the most advanced proletariat as to the least cultured), what then is the exact use of the "right to dispose" of the factories and production?

The Russian workers did effectively have the factories in their hands and they were not able to run them. Does this mean that they shouldn't have expropriated the capitalists and taken power? Should they have "waited" to be schooled by western capitalism and acquire the culture of the English or German workers? While it is true that the latter are a hundred times more qualified to confront the gigantic tasks of proletarian administration than were the Russian worker in 1917, it is also true that they were not able, in the pestilential ambiance of capitalism and bourgeois ideology, to develop an "integral" social awareness which would have permitted them to solve "by themselves" all the problems posed, something which can only fully appear in a higher phase of communism. Historically, it is the party which concentrates this social awareness and it can only do this on the basis of experience; in other words, it does not bring fully worked out solutions but elaborates them in the fire of the social struggle, after (above all, after) as well as before the revolution. And in this colossal task, far from opposing itself to the proletariat, the party is a part of it, since without the active and growing collaboration of the masses, it will become the prey of enemy forces. "Administration by all" is the touchstone of any proletarian revolution. But history poses a precise alternative: either we make the socialist revolution "with men as they are today and who cannot do without subordination, without control by foremen, without accounting" (Lenin, State and Revolution) or there will be no revolution.

The duality of the state in the period of transition in marxist analysis

In the chapter dealing with the transitional state, we already recalled that the state owes its existence to the division of society into classes. In primitive communism, there was no state. In the higher form of communism, there will also be no state. The state will disappear with the subject that gave rise to it: class exploitation. But as long as the state exists, it conserves its specific traits and cannot change its fundamental nature. It cannot cease to be a state, that is to say, an oppressive, coercive, corrupting organism. What changes in the course of history is its function. Instead of being the instrument of the slave masters, it became that of the feudal lords, then of the bourgeoisie. It is the perfect instrument for conserving the privileges of a ruling class. This isn't threatened by its own state, but by new privileges developing in society with the rise of a new exploiting class .The political revolution which followed was the juridical consequence of a transformation of the economic structure that had already got underway, the triumph of a new form of exploitation over the old one. This is why the new revolutionary class, on the basis of the material conditions which it had founded and consolidated inside the old system, could without shame or distrust base itself on the state, which it only had to adapt and perfect in order to organise and develop its own mode of production. This is all the more true for the bourgeois class which is the first in history to rule on a world scale and whose state is the most concentrated form of all the means of oppression built up in the course of history. There is no opposition but an intimate, indestructible link between the bourgeoisie and its state; and this solidarity does not stop at national frontiers. It goes beyond them because it has its roots in the international capitalist system.

By contrast, with the foundation of the proletarian state, the historical relationship between the ruling class and the state is modified. It is true that the proletarian state, built on the ruins of the bourgeois state, is still the instrument for the domination of the proletariat. However, this domination is not aimed at the preservation of social privileges whose material bases were laid down inside bourgeois society, but at the destruction of all privileges. The new state expresses a new relation of domination, that of the majority over the minority, and a new juridical relationship (collective appropriation). On the other hand, because it remains under the influence of the climate of capitalist society (because there can be no simultaneity in the revolution), it is still the representative of "bourgeois right". This still lives on, not only in the social and economic processes, but also in the heads of millions of proletarians. It is here that the duality of the transitional state is revealed: on the one hand, as a weapon directed against the expropriated class, it reveals its "strong" side; on the other hand, as an organism called upon not to consolidate a new system of exploitation, but to abolish all exploitation, it exposes its "weak" side because by nature and by definition it tends to become the pole of attraction for capitalist privileges. This is why, while there can be no antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, such an antagonism does indeed arise between the proletariat and the transitional state.

This historic problem has its negative expression in the fact that the transitional state can quite easily be led to play a counter-revolutionary role in the international class struggle, even when it maintains a proletarian character if the social classes upon which it was built have not been modified. The proletariat can only stand against the development of this latent contradiction through the class politics of its party and the vigilant existence of its mass organisations (trade unions, soviets, etc), through which it has to exert an indispensable control over the activity of the state and to defend its specific interests. These organisms can only disappear along with the necessity which gave rise to them, i.e. the class struggle. Such a conception is inspired entirely by the teachings of marxism, since the notion of the proletarian "antidote" within the transitional state was defended by Marx and Engels as well as by Lenin, as we have already pointed out.

The active presence of proletarian organisms is the condition for keeping the proletarian state in the service of the workers and for preventing it from turning against them. To deny the contradictory dualism of the proletarian state is to falsify the historic significance of the period of transition.

Certain comrades consider, by contrast, that during this period there has to be an identification between the workers' organisations and the state. (cf comrade Hennault's "Nature and Evolution of the Russian State, Bilan p.1121). The Dutch internationalists go even further when they say that since "labour time is the measure of the distribution of the social product and the whole of distribution remains outside any ‘politics', the trade unions have no function in communism and the struggle for the amelioration of living conditions will have come to an end" (p 115 of their work).

Centrism also starts off from the conception that since the soviet state is a workers' state, any demands raised by the workers become an act of hostility towards "their" state, therefore justifying the total subordination of the trade unions and the factory committees to the state mechanism.

If we now say, on the basis of the previous considerations, that the soviet state has conserved its proletarian character, even if it is being directed against the proletariat, is this just a subtle distinction which has nothing in common with reality, and which we ourselves repudiate because we reject the defence of the USSR? No! And we think that this thesis has to be maintained above all because it is justified from the point of view of the theory of historical materialism; secondly, because the conclusions we have to draw about the evolution of the Russian revolution are not vitiated in their premises by the fact that we reject the identity between the proletariat and the state and say that there should be no confusion between the character of the state and its function.

If the soviet state is no longer a proletarian state, what is it? Those who deny this have not succeeded in showing that it is a capitalist state. But do they fare any better by talking about a bureaucratic state and discovering that the Russian state is a ruling class original in history and linked to a new mode of production and exploitation? In fact, such an explanation turns its back on marxist materialism.

Although the bureaucracy has been an indispensable instrument in the functioning of any social system, there is no trace in history of a social layer that transformed itself into an exploiting class on its own account. There are however many examples of all-powerful bureaucracies within a society, but they were never confounded with the classes acting on production, except as individuals. In Capital, Marx, examining the colonisation of India, shows that the bureaucracy appeared there in the shape of the East India Company; that the latter had economic links with circulation - not with production - whereas it really did exert political power, but on behalf of the metropolitan capitalism.

Marxism has supplied a scientific definition of class. If we hold to it, we have to affirm that the Russian bureaucracy is not a class, still less a ruling class, given that there are no particular rights over production outside of the private ownership of the means of production, and that in Russia collectivisation still exists in its basics. It is also true that the Russian bureaucracy consumes a large portion of social labour. But this is true of any form of social parasitism and this should not be confused with a class exploitation.

While it is undeniable that in Russia the social relations express a colossal exploitation of the workers, this does not derive from the exercise of any right of property, group or individual, but from a whole economic and political process, of which the bureaucracy is not the cause, but only an expression, and in our view a secondary one, since this evolution is above all the product of the policies of centrism which has shown itself incapable of containing the impetus of the forces of the enemy both within Russia and on the international level. It's here that the originality of the social context in Russia lies - in an unprecedented historical situation: the existence of a proletarian state within a capitalist world.

The exploitation of the proletariat grows in proportion to the pressure of non-proletarian classes on the state apparatus, then on the party apparatus, and consequently on the politics of the party.

There is no need to explain this exploitation through the existence of a bureaucratic class living from the surplus labour pillaged from the workers, but through the influence of the enemy on the party which had integrated itself into the state machine rather than continuing its political and educational role among the masses. Trotsky (in The Third International after Lenin) underlined the class character of the pressures that were more and more being exerted on the party, and the growing links between these pressures - from the bourgeois intellectuals, the petty bourgeoisie, the kulaks - and the state bureaucracy; pressure as well from the world bourgeoisie, acting through all these forces. This is why the roots of the bureaucracy and the germs of political degeneration are to be sought in the social phenomenon of the interpenetration of the party and the state as well as in an unfavourable international situation, and not in "war communism", which took the political power of the proletariat to its highest level, nor in the NEP, which was the expression of a compromise and of a more normal regime for a proletarian economy. Souvarine, in his text "Apercu sur le bolshevisme", reversed the real relationship between the party and the state by arguing that the party was exerting a machine-like grip over the whole state apparatus. He quite correctly characterised the Russian revolution as a "metamorphosis in the regime that took place unbeknownst to its beneficiaries, without any premeditated intent or preconceived plan, through the triple effect of the general lack of culture, the apathy of the exhausted masses and the efforts of the Bolsheviks to overcome the chaos" (p245).

But if revolutionaries are to avoid falling into a kind of fatalism, diametrically opposed to marxism, derived from the idea of the "immaturity" of the material conditions and the cultural incapacities of the masses, if they are to reject the conclusion that the Russian revolution was not a proletarian revolution (when the historical and objective conditions for the proletarian revolution existed then and exist now on a world scale, which is the only valid basis for posing the question from the marxist point of view), then they have to focus their attention on the central issue: the political factor, i.e., the party, the indispensable instrument for the proletariat at the level of historic necessity. They would also have to conclude that in a revolution the only possible form of authority for the party is the dictatorial form. The terms of the problem cannot be rewritten by positing a kind of irreducible opposition between the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party, because that would mean turning one's back on the proletarian revolution itself. We repeat: the dictatorship of the party is an inevitable expression of the transitional period, whether in a country that has been highly developed by capitalism or in the most backward of colonies. The fundamental task for marxists is precisely, on the basis of the gigantic experience of the Russian revolution, to examine the political bases on which this dictatorship can be maintained in the interests of the proletariat, i.e. how the proletarian revolution can and must flow into the world revolution.

Unfortunately, the "fatalists" have never tried to deal with this problem. If little progress has been made towards a solution to this question, the difficulties lie as much in the painful isolation of the weak revolutionary nuclei today as in the enormous complexity of the problem. The essential question posed here is the relationship between the party and the class struggle, and within this context, the question of the party's mode of organisation and internal life.

The comrades of Bilan are right to attach so much importance in their research to two activities of the party, which they see as fundamental to the preparation of the revolution (as the history of the Bolshevik party has shown): the fractional struggle inside the party and the struggle within the mass organisations. The question is to know whether these forms of activity must disappear or transform themselves radically after the revolution, in a situation where the class struggle does not attenuate in the least, but develops in other forms. What is evident is that no organisational method or formula can prevent the class struggle from having its repercussions within the party, through the growth of tendencies or fractions.

The "unity at any price" of the Russian Trotskyist opposition, like the "monolithism" of centrism, fly in the face of historical reality. By contrast the recognition of fractions seems to us to be much more dialectical. But this simple affirmation does not in itself resolve the problem; it simply poses it or rather puts it in its proper context. The comrades of Bilan are certainly agreed that a few lapidary phrases don't constitute a solution. What remains to be examined is how the struggle of fractions and the opposition between programmes that goes with it can be reconciled with homogeneous leadership and revolutionary discipline. In the same way we have to look at how the liberty of fractions inside the union organisations can coincide with the single party of the proletariat. It's no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the future proletarian revolution depends on the answers to these questions.

(To be continued)

Mitchell

---

[1]. The scepticism declared today by certain internationalist communists can in no way undermine our conviction about this. Comrade Hennaut in Bilan n°34 (p1124) coldly proclaims that "the Bolshevik revolution was made by the proletariat but it was not a proletarian revolution". Such an assertion is quite stupefying when you consider that this "non-proletarian" revolution succeeded in forming the most formidable proletarian weapon that has ever threatened the world bourgeoisie - the Communist International.

In the previous articles in this series[1] we have shown how the FAI tried to stop the definitive integration of the CNT into the structures of capitalism. This effort failed. The FAI's insurrectional policy (1932-33) which tried to correct the CNT's serious opportunist deviations, as well as those of the FAI itself, which were expressed through their active support for the creation of the Republic in 1931[2]. led to a terrible haemorrhaging of the forces of the Spanish proletariat, by squandering them in dispersed and desperate struggles.

In 1934 however there was a fundamental change: the PSOE made a spectacular about face and, led by Largo Caballero, along with its companion union , the UGT, raised the flag of the "revolutionary struggle" pushing the workers of Asturias into the dreadful trap of the October insurrection. The Republican state used a new orgy of death, torture and prison deportations, which matched the savage repression meted out in previous years, to liquidate this movement.

This change should not be seen through the prism of events in Spain. It needs to be clearly placed in the evolution of the world situation. Following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the massacres of workers became more widespread. In Austria the Social Democrats -the left hand of Austrian capital- pushed the workers into a premature insurrection; a defeat that allowed the right hand - the supporters of Nazism- to perpetuate a pitiless massacre. 1934 was also the year in which the USSR signed accords with France integrating it with full honours into imperialist "high society" something that was formally recognised by its admission into the League of Nations (the predecessor of the UN). In this year the Communist Party also made a radical change: the "extremist" policy of the "Third Period", a crude parody of "class against class", was replaced overnight by the "moderate" policy of helping the Socialists to form the inter-classist Popular Fronts that subordinated the proletariat to the "democratic" bourgeois fractions in order to achieve the "ultimate" aim of "stopping the rise of fascism".

Workers Alliances, tool of the anti-fascist front

This international atmosphere provided a context within which the CNT, as well as the FAI, was driven towards full integration into the capitalist state by its adoption of anti-fascism along with the other "democratic" forces.

Anti-fascist ideology was turned into a whirlwind that smashed the last reserves of proletarian consciousness and sucked up proletarian organisations whilst leaving those who managed to maintain a class position in terrible isolation. This ideology in the conditions of the period - the defeat of the proletariat, development of strong regimes as a way of installing State capitalism - best served the "democratic" bourgeoisie preparations for the march towards the generalised war the broke out out in 1939; for which the Spanish struggle from 1936 was the prelude.

We are not going to analyse this ideology here,[3] rather we are going to investigate how its adoption effected the CNT and FAI and sucked them into betraying the proletariat in 1936. The way was opened by the Workers Alliances. These Alliances were presented as the means for advancing workers unity through agreements and cartels between different organisations.[4] The lure of "workers' unity" led to the trap of "anti-fascist" unity which lined up the proletariat behind the defence of bourgeois democracy in order, supposedly, "to stop the rise" of rampant fascism. The Madrid Workers' Alliance (1934) openly proclaimed: "first and foremost, the struggle against fascism in all its forms and the preparation of the working class for the implantation of federal socialist peace in Spain, is the most pressing need".[5]

The opposition unions of the CNT[6] tried to present themselves as unions pure and simple, leaving behind "the anarchist nonsense" as they said, by actively participating in the Workers Alliances, hand in hand with the Stalinist PC, the organisations of the Left Opposition, and from 1934, the UGT-PSOE. Within the CNT and FAI on the other hand there were strong hesitations which undoubtedly expressed a proletarian instinct.

These hesitations however were progressively dissipated due to widespread poisonous atmosphere generated by anti-fascism, as well as by the spade work carried out by wide sections of the CNT itself and the Socialist Party's efforts at seduction.

The CNT's Asturian Region was at the forefront of the struggle to defeat this resistance. The October 1934 Asturian insurrection was prepared before hand by a pact between the regional CNT and UGT-PSOE.[7] The PSOE hardly took part in the arming of the strikers and marginalised the CNT, the Asturian region nevertheless stubbornly preserved the Workers Alliance. At the decisive Zaragoza Congress,[8] this region's delegate recalled that: "a comrade wrote an article in "CNT"[9] recognising the necessity for the Alliance with the Socialists in order to carry out the revolution. A month later another plenum was held and this called for sanctions to be applied in relation to the article. At the time we said we were in favour of the criteria used in this article. And we affirm our point of view about the advisability of drawing the socialists from power in order to make them take the revolutionary road. We sent them communications against the anti-socialist position taken by the National committee in a manifesto".[10]

For his part Largo Caballero[11] in a speech in Madrid put out feelers towards the CNT and FAI "[I say] to those workers nuclei that we were wrong to struggle against them. Their purpose, like ours, is a regime of social equality. They accuse us of nurturing the idea that the state is above the working class. We do not think they have really studied our ideas. We want the disappearance of the state as a means of oppression. We want to turn it into a merely administrative entity" (quoted in Olaya, op cit. Page 866).

As we can see this seduction was pretty crude. He appears to be talking about the "disappearance of the State" but what was being said in reality is that the state can be reduced to a "merely administrative entity". An illusion also used by democrats, who tell us that the democratic state is not "a means of oppression" but rather an "administration". According to this myth only dictatorial states are "organs of oppression".

This flattery, despite coming from such an unattractive individual as Largo Caballero[12] increasingly bedazzled the CNT and FAI. In 1934 a Plenum was held on fascism which according to the report began by clearly denouncing the PSOE and the UGT but ended up leaving the door open to an understanding with them: " This is not to say, of course, that if these organisations (the UGT and PSOE) were pushed by circumstances to carry out an insurrectional action we would be passive by-standers, nothing of the sort (...) at such a moment we would be able to give the anti-fascist movement the stamp of our principles, our libertarian principles".[13]

Anarchism -along with marxism- has always defended the principle that all states, whether democratic or totalitarian, are authoritarian organs of oppression. This principle was spectacularly thrown into the dustbin with the idea of the possibility of "stamping" the anti-fascist movement with the same principle, a movement whose very foundation is to choose, to defend, the democratic form of state, that is, the most devious and cynical variant of this authoritarian organ of oppression!

This progressive abandoning of principles caused by trying to combine antagonistic positions spread increasing confusion, undermined convictions and with increasing force opened the workers' movement up to "anti-fascist unity". The opposition unions added to this from 1935 by beginning a campaign aimed at drawing closer to the CNT through the idea of re-unification based upon anti-fascist unity with the UGT.

This pressure became increasingly powerful. Peirats shows that "the Asturian drama had been nurturing the Alliancists programme within the CNT. Alliancism began to be propagated in Catalyuna one of the confederal regions most addicted to abstentionism".[14] The PSOE and Largo Caballero turned up their siren songs, Peirats records how "for the first time in many years Spanish Socialism publicly invoked the name of the CNT and brotherhood in the proletarian revolution" (idem). Reticence about any policy of alliance remained, however the position of agreement with the UGT was increasingly becoming the majority one within the CNT. It was seen as a means of avoiding the "principle of apoliticism". The UGT thus became the Trojan Horse for enrolling the CNT in an anti-fascist alliance with all the "democratic" fractions of capital. The CNT's and FAI's leaders were able to save face because they maintained the "principle" of refusing all pacts with the political parties. Anti-fascism did not enter by the front door of political agreements -so loudly rejected- but sneaked in through the back door of union unity.

The February 1936 elections

These elections, which are presented as being "decisive" in the struggle against fascism, ended up by eradicating all the resistance that remained in the CNT and FAI.

On the 9th January the secretary of the CNT's Catalunya regional Committee sent a circular to the unions calling a regional Conference in the Meridiana cinema, Barcelona, on the 25th "in order to discuss two concrete questions: 1st What should the CNT's position be on the question of the alliance with institutions that have a workerist complexion, without joining them" and 2nd What concrete and definitive attitude must the CNT adopt faced with the elections" (Peirats,op cit. page 106). Peirats says that, the majority of delegates , "saw the CNT's criteria of the anti-electoral position more as a question of tactics than as a principle" and that "The discussion revealed a state of ideological vacillation" (idem).

The positions favourable to abandoning the CNT's abstentionist tradition became increasingly stronger. Miguel Abós from the Zaragoza region declared in a meeting that "to fall into the torpor created by an abstentionist campaign would be the same as fermenting the Rights victory. And we all know the bitter experience of two years of persecution carried out by the Right. If the Right wins, I assure you that the furious repression unleashed in Asturias will be spread throughout Spain" (quoted in The Zaragoza Congress, a book previously cited about the Congress, page 171).

These interventions systematically distorted reality. The barbaric repression carried out by the capitalist left between 1931-33 was forgotten and only the Rights repression of 34 remembered. The repressive nature of the capitalist state whatever fraction was governing was carefully veiled over, avoiding the minimum of analysis, whilst the monopoly of repression was exclusively attributed to the fascist branch of capital. The CNT swept away by anti-fascism, which poses an analysis as irrational and aberrant as that of fascism, clearly decided to support the bourgeois state by voting for the Popular Front whose programme Solidaridad Obrera had denounced as a "a profoundly conservative document" that clashes with the "revolution spirit that oozes from the Spanish skin".[15] This crucial step was expressed in the Manifesto issued by the National Committee 2 days before the election where we can read:

"We, who do not defend the Republic, but who give no quarter in the struggle against fascism, will contribute all the forces that we dispose of to defeating the historical executioners of the Spanish proletariat (...). The uprising [of the military] is subordinated to the outcome of the elections. The theoretical and preventative plan will be able to be put into practice if the left wins the elections. Furthermore, without a doubt we can say that, faced with the armed insurrection of the legions of tyranny, there will be an unstinting agreement with the anti-fascist forces, energetically working for the defensive action of the masses to be directed towards a true social revolution, under the auspices of Libertarian Communism".[16]

The declaration had enormous repercussions since it was made at a very opportune moment, only two days before the election: it clearly influenced the vote of many workers. The CNT's complicity in the enormous electoral swindle perpetuated against the Spanish proletariat allowed the triumph of the Popular Front, and at the same time, meant its unconditional adherence to the anti-fascist movement.

The FAI clearly shared the CNT's attitude, Gómez Cases in his history of the FAI (page 179 English Edition) says that: "The position ‘On the Elections' also merits some comments. The F.A.I. reaffirmed its traditional anti-parliamentary and anti-electoral position in its relation at the F.A.I. national plenum. However, its campaign was very different from that of 1933 and there was practically no abstention from voting. Referring to the coincidence that C.N.T. and F.A.I. militants would take no risk with an anti-electoral strategy, Santillan himself told us that "the initiative for this change came from the F.A.I. Peninsular Committee, which was in a secure underground and could have for the riskiest offensive action".

If in 1931 the juggling act of the the syndicalist section of the CNT., aimed at securing participation in the elections met strong opposition (form other sectors and the FAI), now the whole CNT -supposedly freed from the syndicalist sector that had gone along with the Opposition unions- and the FAI without much fuss went much further in their support for the Popular Front. A new government that did all it could to delay the amnesty for more than 30000 political prisoners (many of them militants of the CNT[17]), continued the repression of striking workers with the same ferocity as the previous right-wing government and, stopped the re-employment of those workers who had been thrown out of work.[18] The government that the CNT had supported as supposedly leading the struggle against the advance of fascism retained all of the generals with ambitions to carry out a coup -amongst them the astute Franco - who later became the great dictator.

The CNT and FAI stabbed the proletariat in the back. We said in the last article of this series that the CNT had prepared to consummate its marriage with the bourgeois state at its 1931 Madrid Congress but that his had been delayed. They consummated it now! Proof of this, and one which the leaders of the CNT and FAI were very aware of- was given by Buenaventura Durruti on the 6th March -less than a month after the February electoral massacre concerning the new government's repression of the strikes by transport and water workers in Barcelona. In this Durruti -seen as one of the most radical militants of the CNT- launched the typically complicit reproaches often made by the syndicalists and opposition parties: "We say to the men of the Left that we were the ones who brought about your triumph and that we are the ones carrying out two conflicts that ought to be solved immediately". In order to leave no doubt he recalled the services rendered to the new government: "The CNT, the Anarchists, following the recent electoral victory, are in the street -the gentlemen of the Esquerra know it- in order to stop the functionaries who do not want to accept the popular will. Whilst they occupy the ministries and positions of command, the CNT has to be in the street in order to stop the victory of a regime that we all repudiate".[19]

These comments were quoted by the Puerto de Sagunto delegation which was one of the few at the Zaragoza Congress to dare to show any critical reflection "After listening to these words, How can anyone still doubt the torturous, preposterous and calloborationist conduct of, if not all, a large part of the Confederal Organisation? Durruti's words appear to show that the Cataluyna Organsation in a matter of days has been turned into the honorary guard of the Catalan Esquerra".

The Zaragoza Congress: the triumph of syndicalism

Held in May 1936 this congress has been presented as the triumph of the most extreme revolutionary positions because of the adoption of the famous Resolution on libertarian communism.

We will analyse this resolution more fully in another article but here we are going to look at the development of the congress, analysing the atmosphere that dominated it and considering the resolutions and results. From this point of view, the congress marked the unarguable victory of syndicalism and the sealing of the CNT's integration into bourgeois politics through anti-fascism (which we have dealt with above). The proletarian tendencies and positions that tried to express themselves were decisively silenced and weakened by phraseology about unity around the "social revolution" and the "implanting of libertarian communism", syndicalism, anti-fascism and unity with the UGT.

One of the few delegations that expressed the minimum of lucidity at the congress was that from Puerto de Sagunto, which we have already quoted, who warned - with hardly any backing from other delegations- that "The organisation, between October to now, has radically changed, the anarchist sap that runs through its arteries, if it has not totally disappeared has been greatly reduced. If there is not a healthy reaction, the CNT will take giant steps towards the most castrated and annoying reformism. Today the CNT is not the same as that of 1932 and 1933, neither in revolutionary essence or vitality. The morbid agents of this policy have made their mark on the organisation. It has been obsessed about gaining increasing numbers of members without stopping to examine the problems that many of these individuals have caused. Ideological development has been completely forgotten and all that matters is numerical growth, despite the first being more essential the second".[20]

The CNT of Zaragoza had nothing to do with that of 1932-33 (which had already been weakened as a proletarian organisation, as we demonstrated in a previous article in this series) but, above all, it had nothing in common with the CNT of 1910-23 when it was a living organism, dedicated to the everyday struggles and reflection of the working class, along with the struggle for an authentic proletarian revolution. Now it was simply a union totally polarised by anti-fascism.

At the Congress the delegation of the CNT's railway union could tranquilly say without meeting the least opposition that "as railway workers we will solve our problems just as other workers have done, through asking for improvements, but we should never take this for the beginning of a revolutionary movement" (Minutes page 152).

This declaration was made in relation to the balance sheet of the insurrectional movements of December 1933 (which had been deprived of the strengthening that a railway strike could have given it because the union called it off at the last moment), demonstrates that syndicalism: imprisons each section of workers in "their problem" trapping them in the structures of capitalist production and thus undermining class solidarity and unity. The union slogan " that each sector deals with its own problems first" represents the "workerist" way of entangling workers in solidarity with capital and thus breaking all class solidarity as a class.

The Gijón delegation flagrantly denied the most elemental solidarity with the exiled CNT victims of the repression of the 1934 Asturias insurrection (see page 132 of the minutes, op cit). The National Committee made no comment upon this serious lack of solidarity, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years before. Clearly embarrassed by this the Fabril de Barcelona delegation tried to silence this question through a diplomatic proposition:

"We have sufficiently strong reasons for closing this debate in a completely satifactory way. The Asturian region has drawn a line under this incident since the ex-exiles are present at this congress as delegates. Moreover if there is a letter of the National Committee where support and aid are not advised there is another later one that goes back on this position.[21] The delegates who pose this problem want us to recognise them as comrades and to give them our entire confidence. The congress satisfies this request and the question is resolved."

This abandoning of the most elemental workers' solidarity expressed such a really incredible attitude that the Segunto delegation denounced it : "We protest about the paragraph refering to the management of the National Committee about the government and we say that the Vagos and Maleantes law[22] should not be applied to the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. However what we have to ask for is the abrogation of this law. It is not right to think that something that is bad for us is good enough for others" (Minutes page 106).

At the congress one could hear an intervention praising, advising, recommending that "in relation to strikes there has not been the necessary prudence that would have saved energies in order to channel them towards other struggles. This defect could be corrected by directing the workers to make demands of the bourgeoisie that have gone through the Sections and the Industrial Relations Committees in order to allow the situation to be studied and thus avoiding the disorderly calling of strikes" (Minutes, page 196, Hospitalet delegation). That is to say, the demand that had been the spearhead of the syndicalists struggle in 1919-23: the regulation of strikes through the "peer organs". This is the same idea of the mixed panels with which the Republican/Socialist government of 1931-33 had tried to straight jacket strikes and the CNT itself.

These were the typical expressions of the union mentality which tries to control and dominate workers' struggles through sabotaging them from within. When workers seek to defend their demands, the unions talk pessimistically about "unfavourable conditions" and craftily insists upon "not wasting energies". However, when the unions call for struggles this is done in order to dampen down workers combativity or to lead them to bitter defeat, and accompanied by exaggerated optimism about the possibility of success and reproach workers for their "meanness" if they do not join in.

One of the most of the most flagrant expressions of this trade union mentality was the resolution adopted by the congress on unemployment. It made more or less correct points about the causes of unemployment and correctly insisted that "the proletariats suffering will only be ended by the social revolution" (page 217). However, this remained a hollow phrase negated by the "minimum programme" that proposed "36 hour week", "the abolition of piece-work", "obligatory retirement at 60 for men and 40 for women of 70% of wages" (idem). Leaving to one side the stinginess of these proposals the problem is the thinking behind the minimum programme, is based on the illusion that there can be a dynamic towards regulated improvements within capitalism. Syndicalism could not escape from this illusion since this was the essence of its activity: to work within the relations of capitalist production in order to improve workers' conditions, something that was possible in the ascendant period of capitalism but impossible in its decadent epoch.

There was an even worse resolution however and one which did not give rise to any criticism at the Congress. In its preamble it tranquilly affirmed that:

"England has tried unemployment benefits but this was an absolute failure, since parallel with the poverty of the obliging masses with outrageous subsides, it lead to the economic ruin of the country since it had to parasitically maintain millions without work on sums which, though not fabulous, represented a significantly importance investment of the country's economic reserves on philanthropic works".[23]

The same congress that dedicated part of its work to defining the "social revolution" and "libertarian communism" also took up a preoccupation for safeguarding the national economy, which classified as parasitic the payment of unemployment benefits and lamented the waste of the nation's resources on " philanthropic works"!

How could an organisation that called itself "worker" call unemployment benefits "parasitic"? Could it not understand the basic ABC that unemployment benefits had already been paid for by many hours of work by them or their brothers and sisters still in work and in no way represents philanthropy? These laments have more to do with the politics of the Right and the bosses than unionists or the politics of the Left who distinguish themselves precisely from the Right by being more guarded and not usually saying what they think or expressing it in a deceitful way.

However this does not mean we are at all surprised that a union which was rhetorically preparing to "carry out the social revolution" adopts such things. Unions have no other playing field than the national economy and its aim -even more than that of its associate adversaries, the bosses- is the defence of the whole of its interests. Trade unionism only proposes to gain improvements within the relations of capitalist production. In the historic period of capitalism's expansion this allowed it to be a weapon of the class struggle. In the global context of strong contradictions workers conditions could be improved and the prosperity of the economy could develop in parallel. However, in the period of decadence this is no long possible: in a society marked by permanent crisis, moves towards war and war itself, the salvation of the national economy demands as its unavoidable condition the sacrifice of workers and a more or less permanent increase in their exploitation.

In 1931, the split of the unionist tendency organised in the Opposition Unions, lead the anarchists to believe that the danger of syndicalism had disappeared. They appeared to think: kill the dog put an end to rabies. But reality was very different: the blood that coursed through the CNT's veins was syndicalist and the syndicalist mentality far from being weakened was increasing reinforced. The activism of the 1932-33 insurrectional period was as dangerous mirage. From 1934 the reality was that: syndicalism and anti-fascism -mutually reinforcing each other- were inexorably imposed definitively trapping the CNT -and with it the FAI- in the cogs of the bourgeois state. The delegation of Various Officies of Igualada bitterly recognised this: "many of those who see themselves as staunch defenders of the CNT's positions have unconsciously and inadvertently turned us into mere sponsors of an increasingly bourgeois republican government" (Minutes page 71).

The Zaragoza congress dedicated a good part of its sessions to re-uniting with the opposition unions. Despite the exchange of numerous mutual recriminations which were accompanied by the rhetorical change of "welcomes" and "hand shakes" the terrain that lead to this re-unification was that of syndicalism and anti-fascism. The Anarchists sector - in order to deceive themselves and others - highlighted the proclamations about the "social revolution" and adopted with hardly any discussion the famous resolution on libertarian communism . This repeated the same manoeuvre that they had criticised the Syndicalists for in 1919 and afterwards in 1931: wrapping up syndicalist politics and collaboration with capital in the attractive wrapping paper of the "rejection of politics" and "revolution".

The two parts were re-united on the terrain of capitalism. Therefore the delegate of the Valencia Opposition could challenge the report on reunification without meetings hardly any objections..

In way of conclusion

The spectacular events that took place from July 1936 in which the CNT was the main protagonist: demobilising and sabotaging the workers' struggles in Barcelona and other parts of Spain in response to the Fascist uprising, its unconditional support for the Catalan Generalitat and participation, at first indirectly and then openly in this government; the sending of ministers to the Republican government are well known.[24]

These facts clearly show the CNT's treason. But they are not a storm that suddenly appeared from a blue sky. Throughout this series we have tried to show why this terrible and tragic situation of the loss for the proletariat of an organisation born from its own efforts took place. It is not a question of destroying a great myth or revealing a grand lie but of examining with a global and historical method the processes that led to this betrayal. The series on revolutionary syndicalism and within that the series of articles on the CNT,[25] has tried to provide the materials for opening up a discussion that will allow us to draw lessons to arm ourselves with faced with the struggles to come. Confronted with the tragedy of the CNT we can -as the philosopher said- neither laugh or cry but only understand.

RR and C. Mir 12.3.08

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[1] See the 5th article of this series in International Review n°132: "Anarchism fails to prevent the CNT's integration into the bourgeois state (1931-32) [33]".

[2] See the 4th article of this series in International Review n°131: "The CNT's contribution to the constitution of the Spanish Republic (1921-31) [34]".

[3] We have published different texts that can be consulted, some of these were written by the few revolutionary groups which resisted the "anti-fascist" tide during that period.

[4] It is necessary to underline that workers unity cannot be achieve through the agreement of political and union organisations. The experience of the 1905 Russian Revolution showed that workers unity is achieved in a direct way, through massive struggle and has its organisational source in the general assembles and when the revolutionary situation unfolds through the formation of workers' councils.

[5] From Olaya's Historia del movimiento obrero español (1900-1936), Vol 2 page 877. The references for these books are found in the second article on the CNT.

[6] A split that last from 1931 to 1936 lead by openly syndicalist elements in the CNT. See the fifth article in our series.

[7] This pact was hidden from the National Committee before it was put in place.

[8] Held in May 1936. See more above.

[9] The second newspaper besides the legendary Solidaridad Obrera.

[10] Page 163 of The Zaragoza Conferderal Congress, ZYX Edition, 1978.

[11] For many years he was the main leader of both the PSOE and the UGT.

[12] He had been Minister of Labour in the 1931-33 Republian-Socialist government, responsible for innumerable workers deaths and before that had been a state advisor to the dictator Primo de Rivera.

[13] Olaya op cit page 887.

[14] From The CNT in the Spanish revolution, vol 1 page 106. See bibliographical references in the first part of this series

[15] The articles appeared on the 17-1-1936 and 2-4-1936.

[16] Cited by Peirats op cit page 113.

[17] We should remember that this amnesty for the syndicalist prisoners was one of the most repeated motives given by the CNT and the FAI for its vigorous support for the Popular Front.

[18] We would add to this that the Agrarian Reform , a timed and stingy law , was not what was promised and between February and July the "Popular" government practically maintained a state of emergency and brutal press censorship which effected the CNT above all.

[19] Cited in the minutes of the Zaragoza Congress of the CNT, page 171.

[20] Minutes of the Zaragoza Congress, op cit, page 117.

[21] This according to the minutes of the congress caused uncertainty and confusion. During the debate, the National Committee affirmed "all we said was that we could not advise class solidarity".

[22] This odious and repugnant law which gave the government enormous repressive powers was adopted by the "very democratic" "workers'" Spanish Republic.

[23] Minutes page 215, op cit.

[24] We have analysed this in our book: Franco y La República masacran a los trabajadores.

[25] The first began with International Review n°118 whilst the second commenced in n°128.

Times are hard for the world economy! Not only has it still to get over last year’s sub-prime crisis in the US housing market, the overall situation of the capitalist economy has never seemed so dangerous since the late 1960s: despite all the efforts of the ruling class to fend it off, the crisis is back with a vengeance. The US housing crisis has been transformed into an international financial crisis, with alarms going off everywhere as American and European banking and financial institutions appear to be threatened with insolvency.[1] Those financial institutions that were in danger of bankruptcy have only survived thanks to state intervention, and there is a real fear that many financial institutions which up to now had been considered safe, may find themselves in danger of bankruptcy and so creating the conditions for a major financial crash. The crisis of confidence gripping the international banking system has aroused serious concern among many fractions of the world ruling class that there is a real danger of the whole system seizing up, making it impossible for companies and households to get the credits (even at higher prices) on which the economy’s activity depends. There is a risk that a full-blown financial crash be combined with a whole series of other “economic disasters” which are by no means accidents, but which on the contrary are expressions of a violent return of an economic crisis which the bourgeoisie has been trying to stave off by every means possible:

A forecast slowdown in economic activity, or even a recession in the case of some countries, such as the United States. The bourgeoisie managed to overcome successive crises since the 1970s thanks to an ever-growing mountain of debt, which brought ever more meager results. Will it be possible to hold off recession once again without new and greater injections of debt, with all the risks that implies for the stability of the world’s banking and credit mechanisms.

The decline in share values, punctuated by the occasional abrupt fall, has shaken confidence in the foundations of the whole system of speculation. The successes of stock exchange speculation, which made it possible to hide much of the difficulties of the world economy in particular by contributing in large part to the rise in company profitability since the mid-1980s, also created the myth that equity values could only go on rising no matter what ups and downs affected the economy.

The weight of military spending is an increasingly intolerable burden on the economy, as we can see clearly in the case of the USA. And yet this weight cannot be reduced at will. It is the consequence of the growing weight of militarism in social life, where each nation is increasingly pushed into military adventures at the same time as it is confronted with ever more insurmountable economic difficulties.

The return of inflation doubly haunts the bourgeoisie. On the one hand it threatens to reduce trade as a result of more and more unpredictable fluctuations in prices. At the same time, it is easier for workers to spread the struggle to other branches of industry when the fight concerns the defense of wages eaten away by inflation than when it concerns the threat of redundancy for example. Yet the only means for holding back inflation – reduction in credit and state spending – would only make the recession worse if they were put into operation.

Consequently, the present situation is not just a worse remake of all the crises since the 1960s, it concentrates them all in one explosive bundle which has given the economic disaster a whole new quality, much more likely to lead to a calling into question of the whole system. Another sign of the times is that whereas up to now it is America that has played the part of locomotive to draw the world economy out of recession, the only direction that the USA seems likely to draw the world today, is over the cliff and into recession.

The deepening economic crisis in the United States

When it comes to the economic situation in the U.S., George Bush is the most optimistic man in America—he may be the only optimist in America.[2] February 28th, even though he acknowledged the risk of an economic slowdown, the President declared, “I don’t think we’re headed for a recession… I believe that our economy has got the fundamentals in place for us… to grow and continue growing, more robustly that we’re growing now. So we’re still for a strong dollar.” Two weeks later, on March 14th, the President reaffirmed his optimistic outlook before a meeting of economists in New York City where he expressed confidence in the “resilient” American economy. He did this on the very day that the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan Chase were forced to collaborate on an emergency bailout plan for Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank, after it suffered a run on the bank reminiscent of the Great Depression; that crude oil prices hit a record high $111 per gallon, despite the fact that supply far exceeds demand; that the government announced that mortgage foreclosures rose 60 percent in February; and that the dollar hit a record low against the Euro. Bush’s denial of reality notwithstanding, it is clear that the appearance of prosperity that accompanied the housing boom and real estate economic bubble of the last few years has given way to a full-blown economic catastrophe in the world’s most powerful economy, thus putting the economic crisis in the forefront of the international situation.

The housing crisis is symptomatic of a chronic crisis of the system.

Ever since the first signs that the housing boom was coming to an end at the beginning of 2007, bourgeois economists began debating the odds of a recession in the US economy. Just three months ago, at the beginning of 2008, the predictions ranged considerably, stretching from the ‘pessimists’ who thought that a recession had already started in December, to the ‘optimists’ who were still expecting a miracle that would avoid it. In the middle, hedging their bets, were the uncommitted experts saying that the economy “could literally go either way.”

Things have gone so bad so fast in the last two months that, except for Bush, there is no more room for optimism or ‘centrism.’ The consensus is now that the good times have come to an end. In other words the American economy is now in recession or, at best, in the edge of one.

However this bourgeois recognition of American capitalism’s troubles has little value for understanding the real state of the system. The bourgeoisie’s official definition of an economic recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The National Bureau of Economic Research uses different, slightly more useful criteria, defining recession as a significant, protracted decline in activity that cuts across the economy, affecting measures like income, employment, retail sales and industrial production. On the basis of these definitions, the bourgeoisie can’t identify a recession until it has been underway for a while, often until the worst of it is already past. Thus according to some estimates one will have to wait until late this year to know if there is a recession, or, the date of its beginning.

In this sense the recession predictions that fill the pages of economic sections of newspapers and magazines are very misleading. In the last instance they only contribute to hiding the catastrophic state of American capitalism that can only get worse in the months to come regardless of when the economy officially enters in recession.

What is important to emphasize is that the present slump is far from reflecting a supposedly “healthy” American economy that is simply going through a troubled phase in an otherwise normal business cycle of expansion and bust. What we are witnessing are the convulsions of a system in a chronic state of crisis that can only buy ephemeral moments of “health” by toxic remedies that only aggravate the next catastrophic collapse.

This has been the history of American capitalism - and global capitalism- since the end of the sixties with the return of the open economic crisis. For the last four decades through official expansions and busts, the overall economy has only kept a semblance of functionality thanks to systematic state capitalist monetary and fiscal policies that the government is obliged to apply to fight the affects of the crisis. However the situation has not remained static. During these decades of crisis and state intervention to manage it, the economy has accumulated so many contradictions that today there is a real threat of an economic catastrophe, the likes of which we have not seen in the history of capitalism.

The bourgeoisie bought its way out of the burst of the technology/internet bubble in 2000/01 by creating a new bubble based, this time, on real estate. Despite the fact that companies in key industries in the manufacturing sector– the auto and air line industries for instance— continue going bankrupt, the real estate boom for the last five years gave the semblance of an expanding economy. Now the boom has transformed itself into the present bust that has shaken the whole edifice of the capitalist system and which will still have future repercussions that no one can yet predict.

According to the latest data about the real estate crisis, activity related to private housing is in total disarray. New home construction has already fallen by around 40 percent since its peak in 2006; sales have fallen even faster, dragging prices down with it. Home prices have dropped by 13 percent nation-wide since the peak in 2006 with predictions that they will fall by another 15 to 20 percent before hitting bottom. The real estate boom has left a huge inventory of vacant unsold homes— about 2.1 million, or about 2.6 percent of the nation’s housing supply. And the glut is bound to increase as the wave of foreclosures continues to broaden, hitting even borrowers with supposedly good credit. Last year’s foreclosures were mostly limited to the so-called sub-prime mortgages—loans given to people with essentially no means to repay. Nearly one-fourth of such loans were in default by last November. Although default rates on loans given to people with relatively good credit are much lower, they are also rising. In November, 6.6 percent of these loans were either delinquent, in foreclosure, or had been repossessed. In a sign of worse things to come, this spike in foreclosures is happening even before many mortgages have reset to higher interest rates. The declining real estate values that have accompanied the crisis means that many people hold mortgages that exceed the current value of their homes, which means that they couldn’t even recoup their losses if they sold their homes. This creates a situation in which in is more financially sensible to walk away from their mortgage obligations and declare bankruptcy.

The bursting of the real estate bubble is wreaking havoc in the financial sector. So far the crisis in real estate has generated over 170 billion dollars in losses at the world’s largest financial institutions. Billions of dollars in stock market value have been wiped out, rocking Wall Street. Among the big names that lost at least a third of their value in 2007 were Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Moody’s, and Citigroup.[3] MBIA, a company that specializes in guaranteeing the financial health of others, lost nearly three-quarters of its value! Several of yesterday’s high-flying mortgage related companies have gone bankrupt.

And this is only the beginning. As foreclosures accelerate in the coming months banks will be counting new losses and the credit crunch already in place will tighten up even more, impacting further other sectors of the economy.

From the housing crisis to the credit crunch

Moreover, the financial crisis related to the mortgages is only the tip of the iceberg. The same reckless lending practices that were dominant in the mortgage market were also the norm in the credit card and auto loan industries, where problems are also increasing. And here lies the essence of today capitalist “health”. Its little dirty secret is the perversion of the mechanism of credit as a way to buy its way out of a lack of solvent markets to sell its commodities. Lending is no longer a promise of repayment with a profit backed up by some material reality (i.e., collateral) that can stimulate capitalist development. It has essentially become a way of keeping the economy artificially afloat and preventing the collapse of the system under the weight of its historic crisis. Already in the 1980’s the financial crisis that followed the bust of the Latin American economies that were weighed down by huge debts that they had no means to repay had demonstrated the limits of credit as a remedy to deal with the crisis. The same lesson could have been learned in 1997 and 1998 at the time of the collapse of the Asian tigers and dragons, and Russia’s default on its debt. In fact the housing bubble itself was a reaction to and an effort at overcoming the burst tech/internet bubble. One can justly pose the question, what is the next bubble going to be?

Yet there is another aspect of the present financial crisis. This is the rampant speculation that accompanied the real estate bubble. What we are talking about is not small time speculation by an individual investor buying a house and quickly flipping it to make a quick buck from the fast appreciation of the value of the property. This is peanuts. What really counts is the big time speculation that all the major financial institutions engaged in through the securitization and selling of mortgage-debt on the stock market. The exact mechanisms of these schemes are not completely but from what is known they look very much like the age old ponzi schemes. In any case, what this monstrous level of speculation shows is the degree to which the economy has become a “casino economy” where capital is not invested in the real economy, but instead it is used to gamble.

The crisis reveals the bluff of liberalism and the crisis of state capitalism

The American bourgeoisie likes to present itself as the ideological champion of free market capitalism. This is nothing but ideological posturing. An economy left to function according to the laws of the market has no place in today’s capitalism, dominated by omnipresent state intervention. This is the sense of the “debate” within the bourgeoisie on how to manage the present economic mess. In essence there is nothing new being put forward. The same old monetary and fiscal policies are applied in hope to stimulate the economy.

For the moment what is being done to alleviate the current crisis is more of the same— the application of the same old policies of easy money and cheap credit to prop up the economy. The American bourgeoisie’s response to the credit crunch is yet more credit! The Federal Reserve has cut its interest rate benchmark 5 times since September and seems posed to do so once more at its next scheduled meeting in March. In a clear recognition that this medicine is not working the Fed has steadily increased its intervention in the financial markets offering cheap money – $200 billion in March, on top of another multibillion package offered last December— to the financial institutions that are short on cash.

For their part the White House and Congress moved quickly as well in passing a so-called ‘economic stimulus package”, in essence approving rebates for families and tax breaks for businesses and passing legislation geared towards easing the mortgage defaults epidemic and reviving the battered housing market. However given the extent of the housing and financial crisis there is even growing consideration of proposals for a massive bailout by the State of the whole housing debacle, the price tag of which would make the huge $124.6 billions bailout by the State of the Saving and Loans industry in 1990 look insignificant.

What these efforts by the State to manage the crisis will amount to remains to be seen. What is evident is that more than ever the bourgeoisie has less margin of maneuver for its economic policies. After decades of managing the crisis, the American bourgeoisie presides over a very sick economy. The monstrous public and private national debt, the federal budget deficit, the fragile financial system, and the huge trade deficit, all these make more difficult for the bourgeoisie to deal with the collapse of its system. In fact so far the traditional government medicine to jolt the economy has failed to produce any positive results. On the contrary it seems to be aggravating the illness that it is intended to cure. Despite the Fed’s moves to easy the credit crunch, stabilize the financial sector and revive the mortgage market, credit is in short supply and expensive, the Wall Street rollercoaster ride continues unabated with wild swings and an overall downward tendency, and rising mortgages rates are not helping to alleviate the housing slump. Furthermore the Fed’s policy of cheap money is contributing to the downward plunge of the dollar, which every week is hitting new lows against the Euro and other currencies and driving up prices of key commodities like oil. This rising price of energy, food and other commodities at the same time of a sharply slowed down economic activity are fueling fears among the “experts” about the prospect of a period of “stagflation” for the American economy. Today rising inflation is already squeezing consumption of people trying to survive on fixed incomes and obliging the working class and other sectors of the population to tighten their belts.

Attacks on the US working class

The March 7 announcement by the U.S. Labor Department that 63 000 jobs were lost nationwide during the month of February sent jitters around the bourgeois world. Surely not because of concerns for the lot of laid-off workers but because this sharp decline in employment confirmed the economists’ worst nightmares of a worsening crisis. It was the second consecutive decline in employment and the third straight drop for the private sector. However in a kind of sick joke at the expense of unemployed workers, the overall unemployment rate declined from 4.9 to 4.8 percent. How is this possible? The reason is nothing but a clever statistical trick used by the bourgeoisie to underreport the number of unemployed. For the U.S. government, you are only unemployed if you are out of job, have actively looked for one in the last month and are ready to work at the moment of the survey. Thus the official unemployment rate significantly understates the jobs crisis. It ignores millions of “discouraged” American workers who have lost their jobs and have given up on the possibility of finding a new one and haven’t applied for a new job in the previous 30 days at the time of the survey, or who want to join the workforce but are too discouraged to try because the job situation remains so bleak or simply are not willing to work for half the wage rate that they had in their recent lost job, or millions of underemployed workers who want to work fulltime but are forced to work part-time because there are no fulltime jobs available. If these workers were included the unemployment statistics, the rate would be significantly higher. To further underreport unemployment, since 1983, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s statistical sleight of hand, U.S.-based military personnel have bee considered part of the domestic workforce (previously unemployment was calculated based on the civilian workforce only). This maneuver adds nearly two million man and women “employed” by the U.S. military to the denominator used to calculate the unemployment rate, artificially lowering the rate.

The present economic slump is bringing an avalanche of lay-offs across all sectors of the economy, but one has to say that the now defunct housing boom was not a paradise for the working class. Income, pensions, health care, working conditions, all continued to deteriorate while the housing market was booming. This fact has led even some bourgeois economists to point out that this was a ‘jobless’ and ‘wageless’ recovery. But even this recognition falls short of presenting the whole picture. The reality is that for the working class, working and living conditions have continued to deteriorate for the last four decades of open economic crisis, expansions and busts not withstanding. As this crisis worsens during the present economic slump there is nothing in store for the working class but more misery as the bourgeoisie tries to make it bear the impact of its economic difficulties.

The dire conditions facing the American economy portends a bleak economic picture on the global level. The world’s biggest, most powerful economy will surely bring its trading partners down with it. There is no economic engine that can compensate for the American plunge and keep the global economy afloat. The credit crunch will undermine world trade, the collapse of the dollar will slash exports to the U.S. aggravating the economic situation in country after country, and the attacks on the proletariat’s standard of living will increase everywhere. If there is one bright spot, it is that all of this will accelerate the return of the proletariat to reclaiming the class struggle against capitalism, as it is forced to defend itself against the ravages of the capitalist crisis.

The perspective of the acceleration of the capitalist crisis brings with it the promise of a development of the class struggle: in it, the proletariat will have to go beyond the steps forward it has already made since the historic recovery of the struggle at the end of the 1960s.

ES/JG March 14, 2008

In spring 2005, the ICC launched an internal debate focused on the underlying causes of the economic boom that followed World War II;[1] this period remains an outstanding exception within the history of capitalism's decadence, achieving spectacular and then historically unprecedented overall growth rates for the world economy.[2]      

Elements of this debate had already been posed within our organisation, in particular concerning the economic role played by the two world wars and by the war economy in general, centred essentially on the key question of whether the destruction caused by war was in some way responsible for the post-war booms after 1918 and 1945. Indeed, this had led to the appearance of certain contradictions between various ICC texts on the question. As the debate got under way, it quickly became clear that if - as some argued - the destruction caused by war could not be said to open new markets (since the reconstruction that followed the wars took place entirely within the sphere of the existing capitalist economy), then this in turn opened a much broader problem: what other coherent explanation could account for the post-war boom that followed 1945? Although the debate is still ongoing, and the different positions continue to represent, up to a point, "work in progress", we consider nonetheless that their outlines are sufficiently clear for us to present them to comrades outside the organisation with a view to encouraging debate among all those interested in the positions of the Communist Left.

One might imagine that events prior to and since the post-war boom had sufficiently demonstrated its exceptional nature, for a debate on the subject to be of purely academic interest. We consider it critical nonetheless, since these questions go to the core of the marxist understanding of the historically limited character of the capitalist mode of production, the system's entry into decadence and the insoluble nature of the present crisis. In other words, they concern one of the main objective foundations of the proletariat's revolutionary perspective.

The context of the debate: certain contradictions in our analyses

The debate on the economic implications of war in capitalism's decadence is not new to the ICC, and had indeed already been posed in the workers' movement, notably by the Communist Left. Our pamphlet on The Decadence of Capitalism[3] explicitly developed the idea that the destruction provoked by the wars in the phase of decadence, and in particular the world wars, could constitute an outlet for capitalist production, by creating a market based on post-war reconstruction:

"...the external outlets have contracted rapidly. Because of this, capitalism has had to resort to the palliatives of destruction and arms production to try to compensate for rapid losses in ‘living space'." (Section 5: "The turning-point of the 1914-18 war")

 "Through massive destruction with an eye to reconstruction, capitalism has discovered a way out, dangerous and temporary but effective, for its new problems of finding outlets.

During the first war, the amount of destruction was not ‘sufficient' (...) In 1929, world capitalism again ran into a crisis situation. As if the lesson had been well-learned the amount of destruction accomplished in World War II was far more intense and extensive (...) a war which for the first time had the conscious aim of systematically destroying the existing industrial potential. The ‘prosperity' of Europe and Japan after the war seemed already foreseen by the end of the war, (Marshall Plan, etc...)" (Section 6: "The cycle of war-reconstruction").

A similar idea is present in other texts of the organisation (notably in the International Review) as well as among our predecessors in the Italian Left: in an article published in 1934 by Bilan we read, for example, that "The slaughter that followed formed an enormous outlet for capitalist production, opening up a ‘magnificent' perspective (...) While war is the great outlet for capitalist production, in ‘peacetime' it is militarism (i.e. all the activities involved in the preparation for war that realises the surplus value of the fundamental areas of production controlled by finance capital" (Bilan n°11, 1934, ‘Crises and cycles in the economy of capitalism in agony' republished in International Review n°103).

Other ICC texts, written both before and after The Decadence of Capitalism was published, developed a very different analysis of the role of war in the period of decadence, harking back to the report on the international situation at the July 1945 conference of the Gauche Communiste de France, for whom war "was an indispensable means for capitalism, opening up the possibilities of ulterior dev­elopment, in the epoch when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up through violent methods. In the same way, the downfall of the capitalist world, which has historically exhausted all the possibilities for development, finds in modern war, imperialist war, the expression of this downfall which, without open­ing up any possibility for an ulterior develop­ment, can only hurl the productive forces into an abyss and pile ruins upon ruins at an ever-increasing pace".

The report on the course of history adopted at the ICC's 3rd Congress[4] refers explicitly to this passage from the GCF's text, as does the article ‘War, militarism and imperialist blocs in the decadence of capitalism', published in 1988,[5] which emphasises that "what characterises all these wars, like the two world wars, is that unlike those of the previous century, at no time have they permitted any progress in the development of the productive forces, having had no other result than massive destructions which have bled dry the countries in which they have taken place (not to mention the horrible massacres they have provoked)".

The framework of the debate

These questions are important because they give a theoretical foundation and coherence to the general political framework of a revolutionary organisation. They are nonetheless different from those class lines which separate the proletariat from the bourgeoisie and its hangers-on (internationalism, anti-working class nature of the trade unions, impossibility of taking part in parliamentary elections, etc.). The different analyses that have evolved during the debate are thus all entirely compatible with principles contained in the ICC's own platform.[6]

The critique of certain ideas contained in The Decadence of Capitalism has moreover been undertaken with the same method and general analytical framework that the ICC has used both when the pamphlet was written and since:[7]

1. The ICC stands by the Communist International's recognition that World War I had opened a new "epoch of wars and revolutions", based on the fact that capitalism could no longer escape from the insurmountable contradictions assailing its system. The workers' movement had to understand the expressions and political consequences of this change in period.
2. When we analyse the dynamic of the capitalist mode of production over a whole period, we must begin by studying, not the different sectors of capitalism (nations, enterprises, etc), but the world capitalist entity taken as a whole; it is the latter which provides the key to understanding each one of its parts. This was the method Marx used in studying the reproduction of capital, when he made it clear that "To rid the general analysis of purely incidental elements, it is necessary to treat the commercial world as a single nation" (Capital Volume One).
3. "Contrary to what the idolaters of capital claim, capitalist production does not create automatically and at will the markets necessary for its growth. Capitalism developed in a non-capitalist world, and it was in this world that it found the outlets for its development. But by generalising its relations of production across the whole planet and by unifying the world market, capitalism reached a point where the outlets which allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated. Moreover, the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realisation of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion. From being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fetter on the process of capitalist accumulation and thus on the operation of the entire system" (ICC Platform).
4. It fell to Rosa Luxemburg, on the basis of a critical appraisal of Marx's work, to develop the thesis that the enrichment of capitalism as a whole depended on the exchange of commodities with pre-capitalist economies ("foreign markets"), i.e. economies that practiced commodity exchange but had not yet adopted the capitalist mode of production: "In real life the actual conditions for the accumulation of the aggregate capital are quite different from those prevailing for individual capitals and for simple reproduction. The problem amounts to this: If an increasing part of the surplus value is not consumed by the capitalists but employed in the expansion of production, what, then, are the forms of social reproduction? What is left of the social product after deductions for the replacement of the constant capital cannot, ex hypothesi, be absorbed by the consumption of the workers and capitalists-this being the main aspect of the problem-nor can the workers and capitalists themselves realise the aggregate product. They can always only realise the variable capital, that part of the constant capital which will be used up, and the part of the surplus value which will be consumed, but in this way they merely ensure that production can be renewed on its previous scale. The workers and capitalists themselves cannot possibly realise that part of the surplus value-which is to be capitalised. Therefore, the realisation of the surplus value for the purposes of accumulation is an impossible task for a society which consists solely of workers and capitalists".Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, ‘The Reproduction of Capital and its Social Setting'). The ICC has essentially adopted this position, which does not mean that there cannot exist within our organisation other positions which criticise Luxemburg's economic analysis, as we will see in particular with one of the positions in the present debate. Her analyses met with opposition in her own day, not only from the reformist currents which considered that capitalism was not doomed to provoke growing catastrophes, but also from revolutionary currents, in particular Lenin and Pannekoek, who considered that capitalism was a historically obsolete mode of production although their explanations were different from Luxemburg's.
5. The phenomenon of imperialism derived precisely from the need for the developed countries to have access to pre-capitalist markets: "imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment". (Accumulation of Capital: ‘Protective Tariffs and Accumulation')
6. The historically limited nature of these extra-capitalist outlets constitutes the economic basis of the decadence of capitalism. The First World War was the expression of such a contradiction. Once the world had been divided up between the great powers, those who were left the worst off in terms of colonial possessions had no choice but to try to re-divide the world by military force. Capitalism's entry into its period of decline signified that the contradictions which beset the system were now insurmountable.
7. State capitalism is the way the bourgeoisie, in the period of decadence, uses various palliatives to hold back the descent into the crisis, to attenuate its most brutal expressions, in order to avoid a repetition of what happened in 1929.
8. In the period of decadence, credit constitutes an essential means through which the bourgeoisie tries to make up for the lack of extra-capitalist markets. The accumulation of an increasingly uncontrollable global debt, the growing insolvency of the different capitalist sectors and the threat of a profound destabilisation of the world economy are both a consequence and a demonstration of the limits on credit.
9. A typical expression of the decadence of capitalism, at the economic level, is the development of unproductive expenditure. This expresses the fact that the development of the productive forces is increasingly held back by the insurmountable contradictions of the system: military expenditure (arms, military operations) to face up to the world wide exacerbation of imperialist tensions; the expenses poured into maintaining and equipping the forces of repression, whose role in the last instance is to deal with the class struggle; advertising, a weapon of the commercial struggle to sell on a glutted market, etc. From the economic point of view, such expenses express a pure loss for capital.

The positions emerging from the debate

Within the ICC, there exists a position which, though compatible with our political platform, is in disagreement with numerous aspects of Rosa Luxemburg's contribution on the economic foundations of the crisis of capitalism.[8] For this position, the foundations of the crisis are to be found in another contradiction highlighted by Marx: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. While rejecting conceptions (held notably by the Bordigists and councilists) which imagine that capitalism can automatically and eternally generate the expansion of its own market as long as the rate of profit is sufficiently high, it emphasises that the basic contradiction of capitalism is not located in the limits of the market as such (i.e. the form in which the crisis manifest itself) but in the barriers to the expansion of production.

The essentials of the debate around this position have been substantially taken up in polemics with other organisations (even if there are differences in the positions involved) with regard to the saturation of the market and the falling rate of profit.[9]

The other positions expressed in this debate, and which are introduced below, are all based on the analyses of Rosa Luxemburg, and consider the lack of sufficient extra-capitalist markets to play a central role in the crisis and decadence of capitalism.

 The critique developed within the organisation of certain contradictions contained within the Decadence pamphlet (notably that post-war reconstruction could in itself make continued accumulation possible by in some way compensating for the lack of markets outside the capitalist system) did not therefore abandon the text's underlying analytical framework. Quite the contrary, it should be considered as a development in the continuity of that framework.

The first of the positions presented here (under the title ‘War economy and state capitalism') though critical of certain aspects of our pamphlet (arguing that it lacks rigour in certain areas and makes no reference to the Marshall Plan in explaining the reconstruction properly so called), still basically adheres to the idea that the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s is determined by the global context of imperialist relations and the establishment of a permanent war economy in the wake of the Second World War.

The two other positions presented here are much more critical of the Decadence pamphlet's analysis of the post-war boom. The first of these (under the title ‘Extra-capitalist markets and debt') re-evaluates and accords a greater significance to these two factors, which have already been analysed by the ICC previously.[10] These two factors are considered sufficient to explain the prosperity of the post-war boom.

The second (under the heading ‘Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism'), starts from the same premise as our pamphlet on decadence - the relative saturation of the markets in 1914 with regard to the needs of accumulation on a world scale - and develops the idea that the system responded to this after 1945 by installing a variant of state capitalism based on a three-fold (Keynesian) repartition of the enormous gains in productivity (Fordism) between profits, state revenues and real wages.   

The following sections of this article provide a brief overview of these three positions.[11] In future we will publish more developed expressions of the different positions, or of others that may appear in the debate.

War economy and state capitalism

The point of departure for this position was already made explicit by the Gauche Communiste de France in 1945. The GCF considered that by 1914 the extra-capitalist markets which had supplied capitalism with its necessary field of expansion during its ascendant period were no longer able to play this role: "This historic period is that of the decadence of the capitalist system. What does this mean? The bourgeoisie, which before the first imperialist war lived and could only live through a growing extension of its production, arrived at a point in its history where it could no longer realise this extension (...) Today apart from unusable remote countries, from the derisory ruins of the non-capitalist world, insufficient for absorbing world production, it finds itself master of the world; there are no longer any extra-capitalist markets in front of it, able to serve as new markets for its system. Thus its apogee was also the point at which its decadence began".[12]

Economic history since 1914 is the history of the efforts of the capitalist class, in different countries and at different moments, to overcome this fundamental problem: how to continue to accumulate the surplus value produced by the capitalist economy in a world that has already been divided up by the great imperialist powers and whose market is incapable of absorbing the whole of this surplus value? And since the imperialist powers can no longer expand except at the expense of their rivals, as soon as one war ends they have to prepare for the next one. The war economy has become the permanent way of life of capitalist society; "War production does not aim to solve an economic problem. At its origin is the necessity for the capitalist state to defend itself against the dispossessed classes and to maintain their exploitation by force, and by force to ensure its economic positions and enlarge them at the expense of other imperialist states (...) war production has thus become the crux of industrial production and the principal economic field of society".[13]

The period of post-war reconstruction is a particular moment in this history.

Three economic characteristics of the world in 1945 need to be underlined here:

• firstly, there was the enormous economic and military preponderance of the USA, something more or less without precedent in the history of capitalism. The USA alone represented half of world production and held nearly 80% of world gold reserves. It was the only belligerent country whose productive apparatus came out of the war intact: its gross national product had doubled between 1940 and 1945. It had absorbed all the capital accumulated by the British Empire over years of colonial expansion, plus a good part of the French Empire's as well;
• secondly, there was a keen awareness among the ruling classes of the Western world that it was vital to raise working class living standards if they were to avoid social upheavals that could be used by the Stalinists and thus by the rival Russian bloc. The war economy thus integrated a new aspect, which our predecessors in the GCF were not really aware of at the time: the various social allocations (health, unemployment  benefit, pensions, etc) which the bourgeoisie - and above all the bourgeoisie of the Western bloc - put in place at the beginning of the reconstruction period in the 1940s;
• thirdly, state capitalism which, before the Second World War, had expressed a tendency towards autarchy on the part of the different national economies, was now locked into a structure of imperialist blocs which determined the economic relations between states (the Bretton Woods system for the American bloc, COMECON for the Russian bloc).

During the Reconstruction, state capitalism evolved in a qualitative manner: the part played by the state in the national economy became preponderant.[14] Even today, after 30 years of so-called ‘liberalism', state expenditure continues to represent between 30 and 60% of the GNP of the industrialised countries.

This new weight of the state represented a transformation of quantity into quality. The state was no longer just the ‘Executive Committee' of the ruling class; it was also the biggest employer and the biggest market. In the USA, for example, the Pentagon became the main employer in the country (between three and four million people, both civilian and military). As such, it plays a critical role in the economy and makes it possible to exploit existing markets to the hilt.

The setting up of the Bretton Woods framework also made it possible to establish credit systems that were more sophisticated and less fragile than in the past: consumer credit developed and the economic institutions set up by the American bloc (IMF, World Bank, GATT) made it possible to avoid financial and banking crises.

The enormous economic preponderance of the USA enabled the American bourgeoisie to spend without limit in order to ensure its military domination in the face of the Russian bloc: it sustained two bloody and costly wars (in Korea and Vietnam); Marshall-type plans and foreign investment financed the reconstruction of the ruined economies of Europe and Asia (notably in Korea and Japan). But this enormous effort - determined not by the ‘classic' functioning of capitalism but by the imperialist confrontation which characterises the decadence of the system - ended up by ruining the American economy. In 1958 the American balance of payments was already in deficit and in 1970 the USA only held 16% of world gold reserves. The Bretton Woods system was taking in water on all sides, and the world plunged into a crisis from which it has not emerged to this day.    

Extra-capitalist markets and debt

Far from developing the productive forces in a manner comparable to capitalism's ascendancy, the period of the post-war boom was characterised by an enormous waste of surplus value which was a sign that there are barriers to the development of the productive forces, expressing the decadence of the system.

The reconstruction that took place after the First World War opened a phase of prosperity which lasted only a few years, during which, as before the outbreak of the conflict, sales to extra-capitalist markets constituted the necessary outlet for capitalist accumulation. Even though the world had been divided up between the great industrial powers, it was still far from being dominated by capitalist relations of production. Nevertheless, the capacity of absorption of these extra-capitalist markets had become insufficient in relation to the mass of commodities produced by the industrialised countries, so that the recovery rapidly broke down on the reefs of overproduction with the crisis of 1929.

Very different was the period opened up by the reconstruction after the Second World War, surpassing the best economic indicators of the ascendant period. For more than two decades, a sustained growth was founded on the most important gains in productivity in the history of capitalism, due in particular to the perfecting of assembly lines (Fordism) and the automation of production, which were generalised as widely as possible.

But it is not enough to produce commodities; you also have to find outlets on the market for them. The sale of the commodities produced by capitalism serves to cover the renewing of worn-out means of production and of labour power (workers' wages). It thus ensures the simple reproduction of capital (i.e. without augmenting the means of production or consumption), but it must also finance unproductive expenses, which go from arms expenditure to the upkeep of the capitalists, and also include numerous other costs which we will come back to. Finally, if there is a positive balance, it can be devoted to the accumulation of capital.

Within the sales annually achieved by capitalism, the part which can be devoted to the accumulation of capital, and which thus participates in its real enrichment, is necessarily limited because it is the balance left over after all the obligatory expenses. Historically, it represents only a small percentage of the wealth produced annually[15] and corresponds essentially to the sales realised through trade with extra-capitalist markets (internal or external).[16] This is effectively the only way that allows capitalism to develop (apart from the pillage, whether legal or not, of the non-capitalist economies), i.e. not to find itself in a position where "capitalists are exchanging among themselves and consuming their own production", which, as Marx said "does not at all permit the valorisation of capital": "How could there otherwise be a shortage of demand for the very commodities which the mass of the people lack, and how would it be possible for this demand to be sought abroad, in foreign markets, to pay the labourers at home the average amount of necessities of life? This is possible only because in this specific capitalist interrelation the surplus-product assumes a form in which its owner cannot offer it for consumption, unless it first reconverts itself into capital for him. If it is finally said that the capitalists have only to exchange and consume their commodities among themselves, then the entire nature of the capitalist mode of production is lost sight of; and also forgotten is the fact that it is a matter of expanding the value of the capital, not consuming it."[17]

With capitalism's entry into decadence, the extra-capitalist markets tend to be more and more insufficient, but they did not simply disappear and their viability depended, as in ascendancy, on the progress of industry: the extra-capitalist markets are less and less able to absorb the growing quantities of commodities produced by capitalism. The result is overproduction, and along with it, the destruction of a part of production, unless capitalism is able to use credit as a palliative to this situation. But the more the extra-capitalist markets become rare, the less the palliative of credit can be repaid.

Thus the solvent outlet for growth in the post-war years was constituted by a combination of the exploitation of those extra-capitalist markets which still existed and the use of debt, given that the former were not able to absorb the whole of the supply. There is no other way (except once again the pillage of extra-capitalist wealth) for capitalism to expand, in this period as in any other. As a result, the post-war boom already made its own small contribution to the formation of the current mass of debt which will never be repaid and which constitute a real Sword of Damocles hanging over capitalism's head.

Another characteristic of the post-war years is the weight of unproductive expenses in the economy. They make up an important part of state expenses which, from the end of the 1940s on and in most of the industrialised countries, increased considerably. This was a consequence of the historical tendency towards state capitalism, notably the weight of militarism in the economy which stayed at a high level after the world war, and also of Keynesian policies aimed at artificially boosting demand. If a commodity or a service is unproductive, it means that its use value is no longer integrated into the process of production[18] by taking part in the simple or enlarged reproduction of capital. We also have to consider as unproductive those expenses that relate to demand within capitalism but not necessary for simple or enlarged reproduction. This was the case in particular with the wage increases at rates sometimes approaching those of the increases in productivity which some categories of workers ‘benefited' from in certain countries, through the application of the same Keynesian doctrines. The paying out of a wage that is more than what is strictly necessary for the reproduction of labour power is, just as with the miserable payments given to the unemployed or the state's unproductive expenses, essentially a waste of capital which cannot contribute to the valorisation of global capital. In other words, the capital involved in unproductive expenses, whatever they are, is sterilised.

The creation by Keynesianism of an internal market capable of providing an immediate solution to finding outlets for massive industrial production gave the illusion of a lasting return to the prosperity of the ascendant phase of capitalism. But since this market was totally disconnected from the needs for the valorisation of capital, its corollary was the sterilisation of a significant portion of capital. Maintaining it was achieved through a conjunction of highly exceptional factors which could not last: the sustained growth in the productivity of labour which, while financing unproductive expenditure, was sufficient to create a surplus for the continuation of accumulation; the existence of solvent markets - whether extra-capitalist or the result of debt - made it possible to realise this surplus.

A growth in the productivity of labour comparable to that of the Thirty Glorious Years has not been achieved since. However, even if that were to happen, the total exhaustion of extra-capitalist markets, the fact that we are reaching the limits of the possibility of re-launching the economy through new increases in world debt, which is already gigantic, show the impossibility of such a  period of prosperity repeating itself. 

Contrary to the analysis contained in The Decadence of Capitalism, the reconstruction market is not a factor that can explain post-war prosperity. At the end of the Second World War, the restoration of the productive apparatus did not constitute in itself an extra-capitalist market nor did it create new value. It was to a large extent the result of a transfer of wealth already accumulated in the USA towards the countries in need of reconstruction, since the financing of the operation was done through the Marshal Plan, made up essentially of gifts from the US Treasury. Nor can the reconstruction market be invoked to explain the short phase of prosperity that followed the First World War. This is why the schema ‘War-reconstruction/prosperity', although it corresponds empirically to the reality of capitalism in decadence, does not amount to an economic law in which there exists a reconstruction market capable of enriching capitalism.

Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism

The analysis we make of the driving forces behind the post-war boom originates in a series of objective observations, the principal ones being the following:

World production per inhabitant during the ascendant phase of capitalism[19] and industrial growth rates continued to increase, reaching their high point on the eve of the First World War. At this moment the markets which had supplied capitalism with its field of expansion reached saturation point relative to the needs of accumulation on an international scale. This was the beginning of the phase of decadence which has included two world wars, the greatest crisis of overproduction of all time (1929-33), and a massive brake on the growth of the productive forces (both industrial production and world production per inhabitant was almost halved between 1913 and 1945: declining respectively by 2.8% and 0.9% per year).

This in no way prevented capitalism from going through a formidable phase of growth following World War II: world production per inhabitant trebled, whereas industrial production more than doubled (respectively 2.9% and 5.2% a year). Not only were these rates much higher than they had been during the ascendant period, but real wages grew more than four times more rapidly (they multiplied by four whereas they had hardly doubled during a period twice as long, 1853 to 1913)!

How could such a ‘miracle' come about? 

• neither through a residual extra-capitalist demand since it was already insufficient in1914 and had further diminished after that;[20]
• nor through state debts or budget deficits since they fell very sharply during the post-war period;[21]
• nor through credit which only grew significantly after the return of the crisis;[22]
• nor through the war economy since it is unproductive: the most militarised countries perform the worst and vice versa;
• nor through the Marshall Plan whose impact was limited in extent and in duration;[23]
• nor through the destruction of war since the destruction that followed World War I had not engendered any prosperity;[24]
• nor through the growing weight of the state in the economy, since although it more than doubled in the period between the wars it didn't have this effect:[25] in 1960 its level (19%) was lower than in 1937 (21%) and also it includes a large number of unproductive expenses.

The ‘miracle' and its explanation lie elsewhere, all the more so because: (a) the economies were exhausted at the end of the war (b) the buying power of all the economic actors was at its lowest (c) the latter were all heavily in debt (d) the enormous power acquired by the US was based on an unproductive world economy and there were major difficulties in reconverting it and (e) the miracle nevertheless took place despite the sterilisation of growing masses of surplus value in unproductive expenditure!

In reality, this mystery is not really one if we combine Marx's analyses of the implications of the gains in productivity[26] and the contribution of the communist left on the development of state capitalism in decadence. This period was characterised by:

a) Gains in productivity never seen in the whole history of capitalism, gains which were founded on the generalisation and maintenance of assembly line production (Fordism).

b) Very considerable rises in real wages, full employment and the setting up of an indirect wage made up of various social allocations. Furthermore it was the countries where these raises were the highest that performed the best, and vice versa.

c) The taking in charge of whole portions of the economy by the state and a very high degree of intervention by the latter in capital/labour relations.[27]

d) All these Keynesian policies were to a certain extent organised at the international level through the OECD, the GATT, the IMF, the World Bank, etc.

e) Finally, unlike other periods, the post-war boom was characterised by growth centred on the developed economies (i.e. with relatively little exchange between the countries of the OECD and the rest of the world) and without any significant relocation of production to low-wage economies despite the very high rises in real wages and full employment. In effect, globalisation and relocations are phenomena which only appear from the 1980s and above all the 90s.

Thus, by guaranteeing in a coercive and proportional manner the three part repartition of the gains in productivity between profits, taxes and wages, Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism was able to ensure the completion of the cycle of accumulation between a geared-down supply of goods and services at falling costs (Fordism) and a growing solvent demand, since it was indexed on these same gains in productivity (Keynesianism) The markets thus being guaranteed, the return of the crisis appeared in a new fall in the rate of profit which, following the exhaustion of the Fordist gains in productivity, fell by half between the end of the 1960s and 1982.[28] This drastic drop in the profitability of capital led to a dismantling of the post war policies in favour of a deregulated state capitalism at the beginning of the 1980s. While this turn-around allowed for a spectacular re-establishment of the rate of profit, as a result of the compression of wages, the resulting fall in solvent demand ensured that the rate of accumulation and of growth were at a low water mark.[29] From then on, in a hitherto structural weakness in productivity gains, capitalism has been forced to put pressure on wages and conditions of work in order to guarantee a rise in profits, but in so doing, it further reduced its solvent markets. These are at the root of:

a) endemic overcapacity and overproduction,

b) the increasingly frenetic use of debt to palliate the reduced demand,

c) relocations in the search for cheaper labour power,

d) globalisation to export to the maximum,

e) constant financial instability resulting from the speculative investment of capital which no longer has outlets for expansion.

Today the rate of growth has fallen to its level between the wars, and a re-make of the post-war years is now impossible. Capitalism is doomed to sink into growing barbarism.

Not being able to present them as such, the roots and implications of this analysis will be developed later, since they require a review of certain of our analyses in order to arrive at a wider and more coherent understanding of the functioning and limits of the capitalist mode of production.[30]

A debate open to the internationalist movement

Like our predecessors in Bilan or the Gauche Communiste de France, we do not claim to be the holders of "an absolute and eternal truth"[31] and are well aware that the debates that arise inside our organisation can only benefit from critical and constructive contributions from outside it. This is the reason that all contributions addressed to us are welcome and will be taken into account in our collective reflection.

ICC

 

 

---

 

[1] This period is often referred to in France as "Les Trente Glorieuses" (the "30 Glorious Years"); the expression was coined (and was the title of a book) by Jean Fourastié, an economist who worked under Jean Monnet on the French government's planning commission set up in 1945.

[2] Between 1950 and 1973, world GNP per inhabitant increased at an annual rate of around 3%, whereas between 1870 and 1913 the increase was 1.3% (Angus Maddison, L'économie mondiale, OECD, 201, p.284)

[3] Published in 1981 as a collection of articles from our press.

[4] Third Congress of the ICC, International Review n°18, 1979

[5] International Review n°52

[6] Despite the fact that its militants varied in their theoretical explanation of the situation which had led to the outbreak of World War I, the Communist International had no difficulty in recognising both that World War I had created an entirely new situation, and that this had profound political implications for the class struggle. See the article on ‘The theory of decadence [40]' in International Review n°123.

[7] Notably through the publication in the International Review of the series ‘Understanding the decadence of capitalism' in particular the article in n°56, as well as the presentation to the resolution on the international situation from the 8th Congress of the ICC with regard to the weight of debt (published in International Review n°59, 1989).

[8] This minority position has existed for a long time inside our organisation - comrades who defend it now already did so when they joined the ICC - and it has not prevented those who hold it from participating in all our activity, both intervention and theoretical-political elaboration. This vindicates the ICC's decision not to make the analysis of the economic crisis (saturation of markets or the falling rate of profit) a condition for joining the organisation.

[9] See in particular the article ‘Reply to the CWO on war in the phase of capitalist decadence' published in International Review n°127 and 128. Nevertheless, as we will see later, in the present debate there exists a certain convergence between this position and the one termed ‘Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism' which is presented below. These two positions recognise the existence of the internal market within capitalist relations of production as a factor in the prosperity of the period of the ‘Thirty Glorious Years' and analyse the end of this period as being the product of the contradiction which engenders the fall in the rate of profit.

[10] The idea of a more thorough exploitation of extra-capitalist markets was already presented in The Decadence of Capitalism. It is taken up and underlined in the 6th article in the series ‘Understanding the decadence of capitalism' in International Review n°56, where the factor of debt is also put forward; the notion of a ‘reconstruction market' on the other hand is not considered in these articles.

[11] There have been different nuances within each of the three positions which we cannot present in this article for lack of space. As the debate evolves they may appear in future contributions.

[12] Internationalisme n°1, January 1945, ‘Theses on the international situation'.

[13] Internationalisme, ‘Report on the international situation', July 1945.

[14] For the US alone, the expenses of the Federal state, which represented only 3% of GNP in 1930, went up to about 20% of GNP during the 50s and 60s.

[15] As an example, during the period 1870-1913, sales to extra-capitalist markets represented an average annual percentage of 2.3% of world production (a figure calculated in relation to the evolution of global production between these two dates. Source: OECD [41]). Given that this is an average figure, it is obviously less than the reality of the years which saw the strongest growth, as was the case before the First World War.

[16] On this point, it's not so important whether the final destination of the sales is productive or not, as in the case of arms.

[17] Capital Vol III, 15, ‘Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law, Excess Capital and Excess Population'

[18] To illustrate this fact, it is enough to consider the difference in final use between, on the hand, a weapon, an advert, a course in trade union training and, on the other hand, a tool, food, school or university courses, medical care, etc.

[19] From 0.53% a year between 1820 and 1870 to 1.3% between 1870 and 1913 (Angus Maddison, L'économie mondiale, OECD 284).

Annual growth rate of world industrial production
1786-1820	2,5 %
1820-1840	2,9 %
1840-1870	3,3 %
1870-1894	3,3 %
1894-1913	4,7 %
W.W. Rostow, The World Economy p662

 

 

[20] Very important in the birth of capitalism, the internal buying power of these outlets in the developed countries only represented between 5 and 20% in 1914, and had become marginal by 1945: between 2% and 12% (Peter Flora, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe 1815-1975, A Data handbook, Vol II, Campus, 1987) As for access to the third world, it was amputated by two thirds by the withdrawal from the world market of China, the eastern bloc, India and various other underdeveloped countries. As for trade with the remaining third, it fell by half between 1952 and 1972 (P Bairoch, Le Tiers-Monde dans l'impasse; 391-392)!

[21] The figures are published in International Review n°114.

[22] The figures are published in International Review n°121.

[23] The Marshall Plan had a very weak impact on the American economy: "After the Second World War...the percentage of American exports in relation to the whole of production fell by a no means insignificant degree. The Marshall Plan in itself did not bring about any considerable changes" (Fritz Sternberg, Le conflit du siècle  p.577). The author concluded that it was the internal market that was decisive in the recovery.

[24] The facts and the argument are developed in our article in International Review n°128. We will return to this since, in conformity with Marx, the devalorisation and destruction of capital does make it possible to regenerate the cycle of accumulation and to open new markets. However, a detailed study has led us to conclude that this factor was relatively weak in impact, limited in time and to Europe and Japan.

[25] The total part played by public expenditure in the GNP of the OECD countries went from 9% to 21% between 1913 and 1937 (cf International Review n°114).

[26] In effect, productivity is simply another expression of the law of value - since it represents the inverse of labour time - and it is at the basis of the extraction of relative surplus value so characteristic of this period.

[27] The part played by public expenses in the countries of the OECD more than doubled between 1960 and 1980: from 19% to 45% (International Review n°114).

[28] Graphs in International Review n°115, 121 and 128

[29] Graphs and figures in International Review n°121 as well as in our analysis of the growth in East Asia [42].

[30] The reader can nonetheless find a number of factual elements, as well as certain theoretical developments in our various articles in International Review n°114, 115, 121, 127, 128, and in our analysis of the growth of east Asia, all available on the website.

[31] "No group is in exclusive possession of an absolute and eternal truth" as the GCF put it. See our article ‘Sixty years ago: a conference of internationalist revolutionaries [43]' in International Review n°132.

In January 1969, at the inauguration of his first Presidency of the United States, Richard Nixon declared: “We have learnt finally to manage a modern economy in a way to assure its continued growth”. With hindsight one can see to what degree such optimism has been cruelly refuted by reality: from the beginning of his second term, hardly four years later, the United States would have their worst recession since the Second World War, which would be followed by other increasingly serious recessions. But it must be said that in the domain of unfounded optimism, Nixon had been preceded by another head of state far more experienced that him: General de Gaulle, President of the French republic since 1958 and leader of the ‘Free French’ during the Second World War. The great man in his wishes to the nation had declared: “l greet the year 1968 with serenity”. One didn’t have to wait four years for this optimism to be swept away; four months sufficed for the serenity of the General to give way to the greatest disarray. It is true that de Gaulle had to face not only a particularly violent and massive student revolt but also and above all, the biggest strike in the history of the international working class movement. Needless to say that 1968 was not a ‘serene’ year for France: it was even, and remains to this day the stormiest since the Second World War. But it was not only France which saw important shocks during this year, far from it. Two authors that one cannot suspect of ‘franco-centrism’ the Briton David Caute and the American Mark Kurlansky are clear on this subject: “1968 was the most turbulent year since the end of the Second World War. The series of uprisings affected America and Western Europe, and included Czechoslovakia; it put the post-war world order in question”[1]

“No year has yet resembled 1968 and there will probably never be another like it. In a time when nations and cultures were still separated and very distinct (…) a spirit of rebellion caught fire spontaneously in the four corners of the globe. There had been other years of revolution: 1848, for example, but contrary to 1968, the events were restricted to Europe...”[2]

Forty years after this ‘warm year’, when certain countries have devoted massive editorial and televisual attention to this subject, it is up to revolutionaries to return to the principal events of this year, not to make a detailed or exhaustive account[3] but to draw out the real significance of them. In particular it is up to them to judge a very common idea today that also appears on page 4 of the jacket of Kurlansky’s book: “Whether historians or politicos, specialists in human sciences agree that there was a world before and a world after 1968.”

Let us say immediately that we entirely share this judgment but certainly not for the same reasons that are generally invoked: ‘sexual liberation’, ‘women’s liberation’, rejection of the ‘authoritarian’ family, the ‘democratisation’ of certain institutions (like the University), new artistic forms, etc. In this sense, this article proposes to show what for the ICC really changed in the year 1968.

Besides a series of serious enough facts (such as for example the Tet offensive of the Vietcong in February which, if it was finally repulsed by the American army, showed that the latter would never win the Vietnam war or even the intervention of Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia in August) what marked 1968 as Caute and Kurlansky underline, is this ‘spirit of rebellion that caught fire spontaneously in the four corners of the globe’. And in this questioning of the dominant order, it is important to distinguish two components of unequal scale and also of unequal importance. On the one hand, the student revolt hit nearly all the countries of the Western Bloc and even affected in a certain way the countries of the Eastern Bloc. On the other hand, the massive struggle of the working class which in this year, fundamentally only touched a single country, France.

In this first article, we are going to only tackle the first of these components not because they are the most important, far from it, but because it preceded, for the most part, the second which revealed a historic significance going far beyond that of the student revolts.

The student movement in the world…

It was in the biggest world power, the United States, that from 1964 witnessed the most massive and significant movements of this period. More precisely, it was in Berkeley University, North California that student protest took on a massive character for the first time. The demands that initially mobilised the students came from the ‘free speech movement’ in favour of free political expression (notably against the Vietnam War and racial segregation) in the surrounds of the university. Faced with the recruiters of the American army who were doing a good business, the student radicals wanted to be able to make propaganda against the war in Vietnam and also against racial segregation (it was a year after the ‘civil rights march’ of 28th August 1963 to Washington where Martin Luther King had made his famous speech ‘I have a dream’). At first the bourgeoisie reacted with extreme repression, notably by sending police against the ‘sit-in’, a peaceful occupation of the premises, making 800 arrests. Finally, at the beginning of 1965, the university authorities authorised political activities in the university which went on to become one of the principal centres of student protest in the United States. At the same time, it was with the slogan of “cleaning up the disorder at Berkeley” that Ronald Reagan was, against all expectations, elected Governor of California at the end of 1965. The movement developed massively and radicalised in the years following, around protest about racial segregation, for the defence of women’s rights and above all against the war in Vietnam. At the same time as young Americans, above all students, fled abroad in numbers in order to avoid being sent to Vietnam, the majority of universities in the country were affected by anti-war movements. At the same time, there were also outbursts in the black ghettos of the major towns (the proportion of young blacks among soldiers being sent to Vietnam was much higher than the national average). These protest movements were often repressed with ferocity; thus, at the end of 1967, 952 students were sentenced to heavy prison terms for refusing to leave for the front and 8th February 1968, three students were killed in South Carolina during a demonstration for civil rights.

The movements achieved their greatest scale in 1968. In March the black students of the Howard University in Washington occupied the premises for 4 days.

From April 23 to April 30, 1968, Columbia University in New York was occupied in protest against the contribution of its departments to the activities of the Pentagon and in solidarity with the inhabitants of the neighbouring black ghetto of Harlem. One of the elements which radicalised the discontent was also the assassination of Martin Luther King, the 4th April, which were followed by numerous and violent riots in the black ghettoes of the country. The occupation of Columbia was one of the peaks of student protest in the United States which set off new confrontations. In May, 12 universities went on strike to protest against racism and the war in Vietnam. California flared up during the summer with violent confrontations between students and the police at the University of Berkeley for two nights, which led the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, to a state of emergency and curfew. This new wave of confrontations would see its violent moments between the 22 and 30 August in Chicago, with real riots at the Democratic Party Convention.

The revolts of American students spread during the same period to numerous other countries. On the American continent itself it was Brazil and Mexico where the students were the most mobilised.

In Brazil, anti-government and anti-American demonstrations punctuated the year 1967. 28th March 1968 the police intervened in a student meeting and killed one of them, Luis Edson, and several were seriously injured, one dying some days later. The funeral of Luis Edson, the 29th March, led to an important demonstration. From the University of Rio de Janeiro, which went on unlimited strike, the movement spread to the university of Sao-Paulo, where barricades were erected. New demonstrations took place in the whole country on 30th and 31st March. On 4th April, 600 people were arrested in Rio. Despite the series of repressions and arrests the demonstrations were almost daily until October.

Some months after Mexico was affected. At the end of July the student revolt broke out in Mexico and the police replied with tanks. The police chief of the ‘federal district’ of Mexico justified the repression in the following way: it was a question of blocking ‘a subversive movement’ which ‘tends to create an ambiance of hostility toward our government and our country on the eve of the 19th Olympic Games’. The repression continued and intensified. 18th September the city university was occupied by the police. 21st September 736 people were arrested during new confrontations in the capital. 30th September the University of Veracruz was occupied. 2nd October, finally, the government (using paramilitary forces without uniforms) fired on a demonstration of 10000 students on the Place of Three-Cultures in Mexico. This event remembered as the ‘massacre of Tlatelolco’ ended up in at least 200 deaths, 500 seriously wounded and 2000 arrests. President Diaz Ordaz thus saw to it that the Olympic Games could take place in ‘calm’ from 12th October. However, after the respite of the Games, the students took up the movement again for several months.

The American continent was not alone in being touched by this wave of student revolts. In fact all continents were affected.

In Asia, Japan was the stage of particularly spectacular movements. Violent demonstrations against the United States and the war in Vietnam led mainly by the Zengakuren (National Union of Autonomous Committees of Japanese Students) took place from 1963 and continued throughout the 60s. At the end of spring 1968 the student protest covered the schools and universities. A slogan was launched ‘turn the Kanda (the university quarter of Tokyo) into the Latin Quarter’. In October the movement, reinforced by the workers, reached its peak. On 9th October, in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, violent clashes between police and students ended in 80 wounded and 188 arrests. The anti-riot law was actively restored and 800,000 people took to the streets to protest this decision. In reaction to the intervention of the police in the University of Tokyo to end its occupation, 6000 students went on strike on 25th October. The University of Tokyo, the last bastion still in the hands of the movement, fell in mid-January 1969.

In Africa, two countries, Senegal and Tunisia were in the forefront.

In Senegal, the students denounced the right wing orientation of government and the neo-colonial influence of France and demanded the restructuring of the University. 29th May 1968 the general strike of students and workers was severely repressed by Léopold Sédar Senghor, member of the ‘Socialist International’ with the help of the army. The repression caused one death and 20 wounded at the University of Dakar. On the 12th June a demonstration of students and pupils in the suburbs of Dakar claimed another victim.

In Tunisia, the movement began in 1967. On the 5th June in Tunis during a demonstration against the United States and Great Britain, accused of supporting Israel against the Arab countries, American Cultural Centre was trashed and the British Embassy was attacked. A student Mohamed Ben Jennet was arrested and condemned to 20 years in prison. On the 17th November the students demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. From the 15th to the 19th March they went on strike and demonstrated to obtain the release of Ben Jennet. The movement was repressed by a series of arrests.

..in Europe…

But it was in Europe that the student movement saw the most important and spectacular developments.

In Great Britain things kicked off in October 1966 in the very respectable ‘London School of Economics’ (LSE) one of the Meccas of bourgeois economic thought, where the students protested against the new director because of his links with the racist regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa. The LSE continued to be affected by protests, for example in March 1967 there was a five-day sit-in against disciplinary action that led to an experimental ‘free university’ copying American examples. In December 1967 there were sit-ins at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the Holborn College of Law and Commerce, both demanding student representations in the institution’s decision-making process. In May and June 1968 there were occupations at Essex, Hornsey College of Art, Hull, Bristol and Keele leading to further protests in Croydon, Birmingham, Liverpool, Guildford, and the Royal College of Arts. The most spectacular demonstrations (which involved a whole range of different people and different causes) were a series around the Vietnam War: in March and October 67, in March 68 and in the most massive and celebrated demonstration in October 1968, all of which involved violent clashes with the police with hundreds of injuries and arrests outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, London.

In Belgium, from the month of April 1968, the students took to the streets several times to proclaim their opposition to the war in Vietnam and demanded that the functioning of the university system be recast. On the 22nd May they occupied the Free University of Brussels, declaring it ‘open to the population’. They vacated the building at the end of June, after the decision of the University Council to take account of some of their demands.

In Italy from 1967 the students increased their occupations of universities and clashes with the police became regular. The University of Rome was occupied in February 1968. The police evacuated the building and the students repaired to the faculty of architecture in the Villa Borghese. Violent confrontations, known as the ‘Battle of Valle Giulia’, occurred with the forces of order, who charged the students. At the same time there were spontaneous movements of anger and revolt in the industries where unionism was weak (Marzotto factory in Venetia), which led the unions to decree a day of general strike in industry which was massively followed. Finally the elections of May brought an end to this movement which had begun to decline after the spring.

Franco’s Spain saw a wave of workers strikes and university occupations from 1966. The movement reached its peak in 1967 and continued throughout 1968. Students and workers showed their solidarity, as on the 27 January 1967 when 100,000 workers demonstrated in reaction to the brutal repression of a day of demonstration in Madrid, which pushed the students, holed up in the economic sciences building to fight the police for 6 hours. The authorities repressed the protestors with every means: the press was controlled; the militants of the movements and clandestine unions were arrested. On the 28th January 1968 the government installed a ‘university police’ in each university. That didn’t prevent the student agitation from resurging against the Francoist regime and also against the war in Vietnam which constrained the authorities to shut ‘sine die’ the University of Madrid in March.

Of all the countries of Europe it was in Germany that the student movement was the most powerful.

An ‘extra-parliamentary’ opposition was formed here at the end of 1966, notably in reaction to the participation of Social Democracy in government, basing itself in particular on the more and more numerous student assemblies held in the universities and animated by discussions on the means and goals of the protest. Following the example of the United States numerous university discussion groups emerged; a ‘critical university’ was formed as a pole of opposition to the ‘established’ bourgeoisie universities. An old tradition of debate of discussions in general public assemblies was revived. Even if many students were attracted by spectacular actions, the interest for theory, for the history of the workers movement resurfaced and with this interest the courage to envisage the overthrow of capitalism. Many elements expressed the hope for the emergence of a new society. From this moment, on the world level, the movement of protest in Germany was considered as the most active in the theoretical discussions, the most profound in these discussions and the most political.

Alongside this reflection numerous demonstrations took place. The war in Vietnam was obviously the main motive for the latter in a country where the government gave its full support to American military power but also which had been particularly marked by the Second World War. On the 17th and 18th February an international congress against the Vietnam war was held in Berlin followed by a demonstration of some 12000 people. But these demonstrations, starting in 1965 also denounced the development of the police character of the state, particularly through the plans for exceptional laws for the state to impose martial law in the country and intensify repression. The SPD, which had joined the CDU in 1966 in a ‘grand coalition’ government, remained faithful to its policy of 1918-19 when it led the bloody crushing of the German proletariat. On the 2nd June 1967 a demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin was repressed with the greatest brutality by the ‘democratic’ German state which maintained the best relations in the world with this bloody dictator. A student, Benno Ohnesorg, was shot dead in the back by a uniformed policeman (who would be acquitted). After this assassination repulsive campaigns of slander against the protest movements intensified, particularly against their leaders. The mass circulation tabloid Bild-Zeitung demanded ‘Stop the terror of the young reds now’. During a pro-American demonstration organised by the Berlin Senate on 21st February the participants proclaimed ‘Enemy of the people number one – Rudi Dutschke’ the main spokesman of the protest movement. A passer by, resembling ‘Rudi the Red’ was grabbed by the demonstrators who threatened to kill him. A week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, this campaign of hate reached its peak with the attempted assassination of Dutschke on the 11th April by an excitable youth, Josef Bachmann, notoriously influenced by the hysterical campaigns unleashed by the press of Axel Springer, owner of Bild-Zeitung.[4] Riots followed that took this sinister individual and his press group as their main target. For several weeks before attention was turned toward France, the student movement in Germany strengthened its role as a reference point for the movements which touched most of the countries of Europe.

…and in France

The major episode of the student revolt in France began on the 22 March 1968 at the University of Nanterre, in western suburb of Paris. In itself, what happened that day was nothing exceptional: protesting against the arrest of a student of the extreme left from Nanterre suspected of being involved in an attack against the American Express offices in Paris during violent demonstrations against the Vietnam War, 300 of his comrades held a meeting in an amphitheatre and 142 of them decided to occupy a room of the University Council in the administrative building overnight. It wasn’t the first time that the students of Nanterre had demonstrated their discontent. Thus, just a year before at this university, we’d already seen a fight between students and police over the free movement of students in the university residence - allowed to the girls, but forbidden to the boys. On March 16 1967, an association of 500 residents, the ARCUN, decreed the abolition of the domestic rule that, amongst other things, treated the students, even the older ones (older than 21 at this time), as minors. Following which, on March 21 1967, on the demand of the administration, the police had surrounded the girls’ residence with the plan of arresting 150 boys who were found there and who were barricaded in on the top floor of the building. But, the following morning, the police themselves had been encircled by several thousand students and had finally received the order to leave without touching the student barricades. But these incidents, as well as other demonstrations of student anger, notably against the ‘Fouchet Plan’ for university reform in the autumn of 1967, were short-lived. March 22 1968 was something else entirely. A few weeks later, a succession of events led not only to the strongest student mobilisation since the war, but above all the biggest strike in the history of the international workers’ movement: more than 9 million workers on strike for almost a month.

For communists, contrary to the majority of speeches that were already being dished out, it wasn’t the student agitation, as massive and ‘radical’ as it was, which constituted the major fact of the ‘events of 68’ in France. It was rather the workers’ strike which, by far, occupied this place and which took on a considerable historical significance. We are going to treat this question in the columns of our press in other articles. Here, we want to limit ourselves to examining the students’ struggles of this time and to drawing out their significance.

From March 22 to May 13 1968

Before leaving, the 142 occupants of the Council room decided, so as to maintain and develop the agitation, to constitute the March 22 Movement (M22). It was an informal movement, composed at the beginning of Trotskyists of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire (LCR) and some anarchists (including Daniel Cohn-Bendit), joined at the end of April by the Maoists of the Union des Jeunesses Communistes Marxistes-Leniniste (UJCML), and which brought together over some weeks, more than 1,200 participants. The walls of the university were covered with posters and graffiti: “Professors, you are old and so is your culture”, “Let us live”, “Take your dreams for reality”. The M22 announced a day of ‘university criticism’ for March 29, following similar action from German students. The dean decided to close the university until April 1 but the agitation restarted when the university reopened. In front of 1000 students, Cohn-Bendit declared: “We refuse to be the future cadres of capitalist exploitation”. The majority of teachers reacted in a conservative fashion: on April 22, 18 of them, including those of the “left”, demanded “measures and means so that the agitators can be unmasked and sanctioned”. The dean adopted a whole series of repressive measures, notably giving free rein to the police in the passages and paths of the campus, while the press was unleashed against the “madness”, the “small groups” and the “anarchists”. The French Communist Party fell into line: April 26, Pierre Juqin, a member of the Central Committee, held a meeting in Nanterre: “The agitators are preventing the sons of workers from passing their exams”. He couldn’t finish and had to flee. In Humanity of March 3, Georges Marchais, number 2 in the Communist Party, said in his turn: “These false revolutionaries must be energetically unmasked because objectively they serve the interests of Gaullist power and the great capitalist monopolies”.

On the campus at Nanterre, scuffles became more and more frequent between the students of the extreme-left and fascist groups of the Occident group, coming from Paris to ‘beat up the Bolshies’. Faced with this situation the dean decided on May 2 to again close the university, which was ringed by the police. The students of Nanterre decided that the following day they would hold a meeting in the courtyard of the Sorbonne in order to protest against the closure of their university and the disciplinary proceedings against 8 members of the M22, including Cohn-Bendit.

There were only 300 at the meeting: the majority of students were actively preparing for their end of year exams. However, the government, which wanted to finish with the agitation, decided to strike a blow and occupy the Latin Quarter and encircle the Sorbonne with police. The police entered the university, something which hadn’t happened for centuries. The students, who had fallen back into the Sorbonne, obtained assurance that they would be able to leave without hindrance but, while the girls were able to go freely, the boys were systematically led into the prison vans, from which they escaped. Rapidly, hundreds of students assembled on the square of the Sorbonne and insulted the police. Tear gas began to rain down: the area was taken but the students, more and more numerous now, began to harass the groups of police and their wagons. The confrontations continued for four hours during the evening: 72 police were wounded and 400 demonstrators arrested. The following days, police completely surrounded the approaches to the Sorbonne while four students were sent to prison. This policy of firmness, far from stopping the agitation, gave it a massive character. From Monday May 6, confrontations with the forces of the police deployed around the Sorbonne alternated with more and more sustained demonstrations called for by the M22, the UNEF and the SNESUP (union of head teachers) and regrouped up to 45,000 participants to the cries of “Sorbonne to the students”, “cops out of the Latin Quarter” and above all “free our comrades”. The students were joined by a growing number of schoolchildren, teachers, workers and unemployed. The processions quickly crossed over the Seine and covered the Champs-Elysees, close to the Presidential Palace. The Internationale reverberated under the Arc de Triomphe where one usually heard La Marseillaise or the Last Post. The demonstrators also prevailed in some towns of the provinces. The government wanted to give a token of good will by reopening the university of Nanterre on May 10. That evening, tens of thousands of demonstrators were to be found in the Latin Quarter in front of the police surrounding the Sorbonne. At 2100 hours, some demonstrators began to build barricades (there were about sixty of them). At midnight, a delegation of 3 teachers and 3 students (including Cohn-Bendit) was received by the rector of the Academie de Paris but, while agreeing to reopen the Sorbonne, he could make no promises about freeing the students arrested on May 3. At two in the morning, the CRS led the assault on the barricades after spraying copious amounts of tear gas. The confrontations were extremely violent provoking hundreds of wounded on both sides. More than 500 demonstrators were arrested. In the Latin Quarter, numerous inhabitants demonstrated their sympathies by welcoming demonstrators into their homes and throwing water onto the street in order to protect them from the tear gas and offensive grenades. All these events, and notably the witnesses to the brutality of the forces of repression, were being followed on the radio, minute by minute, by hundreds of thousands of people. At six in the morning, ‘order reigned’ in a Latin Quarter that seemed to have been swept by a tornado.

On Saturday May 11, indignation was immense in Paris and the whole of France. Processions formed spontaneously throughout the country, regrouping not only students but also hundreds of thousands of demonstrators of all origins, notably many young workers or parents of students. Everywhere universities were occupied; in the streets and squares, people discussed and condemned the attitude of the forces of repression.

Faced with this situation, the Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, announced in the evening that from Monday May 13 the police would be withdrawn from the Latin Quarter, that the Sorbonne would be reopened and the imprisoned students would be freed.

The same day, all the centres of the trade unions, including the CGT (which up until then had only denounced the ‘leftist’ students), and even some police unions, called for a strike and demonstrations for May 13, so as to protest against the repression and against the policy of the government.

On May 13, every town in the country saw the most important demonstrations since World War II. The working class was massively present at the side of the students. One of the most used slogans was: “Ten years, that’s enough!” with reference to the date of May 13 1958 which had seen the return of De Gaulle to power. At the end of the demonstrations, practically all the universities were occupied, not only by the students but also by many young workers. Everywhere, anyone could speak. Discussions were not limited to questions about universities and repression. They began to confront all the social problems: conditions of work, exploitation, the future of society.

On May 14 discussions continued in many firms. After the immense demonstrations the day before, with the enthusiasm and feelings of strength that emanated from them, it was difficult to carry on as if nothing had happened. In Nantes, the workers of Sud-Aviation, carried along by the youngest workers, a spontaneous strike broke out and they decided to occupy the factory. The working class began to take up the reins.

The significance of the student revolts in the 60s

What characterised all these movements, above all, was obviously the rejection of the war in Vietnam. But while the Stalinist parties, allied to the regimes of Hanoi and Moscow should logically have been found at their head, at least in the countries where they had a significant influence, as was the case in the anti-war movements during the Korean War at the beginning of the 1950s, this wasn’t the case at all. On the contrary these parties had practically no influence and were often in complete opposition to these movements.[5] It was one of the characteristics of the student movements at the end of the 1960s which revealed their profound significance.

It is this significance that we are going to try and draw out now. And to do it, it is clearly necessary to recall what were the principal themes of the student mobilisation of this period.

The themes of the student revolts in the 60s in the United States

If the opposition to the war undertaken by the United States in Vietnam was the most widespread and activating theme in all the western countries, it’s certainly not by chance, evidently, that it’s first of all in the United States that student revolt developed. American youth was confronted in a direct and immediate fashion by the question of war since it was it that was sent abroad to defend the ‘free world’. Tens of thousands of young Americans paid with their lives for the policies of their government, hundreds of thousands amongst them returned from Vietnam with wounds and handicaps, millions were marked for life because of the horror that they lived through. Outside of the horror that they found themselves in, and which is characteristic of all warfare, many among them were confronted with the question: what are we doing in Vietnam? Official speeches said that they were there to defend ‘democracy’, the ‘free world’ and ‘civilisation’. But the reality that they lived through contradicted these speeches in a flagrant fashion: the regime that they were charged with protecting, the one in Saigon, had nothing either ‘democratic’ nor civilised about it: it was a dictatorial and particularly corrupt military regime. On the ground, American soldiers had difficulty understanding that they were defending ‘civilisation’ when they were asked to act as barbarians, terrorising and massacring poor, unarmed peasants, women, children and the old included. But it wasn’t just the soldiers there who felt revolted by the horrors of the war; it was also the case for a growing part of American youth. Not only were young men in fear of having to go to war and young women afraid of losing their companions; everyone became more and more informed by the returning ‘veterans’ or simply through the television channels of the barbarity that the war represented.[6] The crying contradiction between government speeches on the ‘defence of democracy’ and its actions in Vietnam fed a revolt against the authorities and the traditional values of the American bourgeoisie.[7]This revolt fed, in the first instance, the hippy movement, a pacifist and non-violent movement which raised the slogans ‘Flower Power’ and ‘Make Love Not War’. It’s probably not by chance if the first student movement of any scale took place at Berkeley University, in the suburbs of San Francisco which was the hippy Mecca. The themes, and above all the means, of this mobilisation still had some points in common with this movement: use of the non-violent ‘sit-in’ in order to claim ‘Free Speech’ for political propaganda within the University, notably for ‘civil rights’ for blacks and to denounce the presence of the army on the campus and its efforts to enlist students. However, as in many other countries subsequently, and notably in France, 1968, the repression that was unleashed at Berkeley (800 arrests) constituted an important factor in the ‘radicalisation’ of the movement. From 1967, with the foundation of the Youth International Party by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who moved away from non-violence, the movement of revolt was given a ‘revolutionary’ perspective against capitalism. The new ‘heroes’ of the movement were no longer Bob Dylan or Joan Baez, but figures such as Che Guevara (who Rubin had met in 1964 in Havana). The ideology of this movement was more confused. It bore anarchist ingredients (the cult of liberty, notably sexual liberty, as well as the copious consumption of drugs) but also stalinist ingredients (Cuba and Albania were considered as exemplary). The means of action borrowed greatly from the anarchists, such as derision and provocation. Thus one of the first actions of the Hoffman-Rubin axis was to throw phoney banknotes around in the New York stock exchange, provoking a rush to grab them. Similarly, at the Democratic Convention of summer 68, it presented a pig, Pigasus, as candidate for President of the United States[8] at the same time as preparing for a violent confrontation with the police.

To sum up the principal characteristics of the movement of revolt that agitated the United States during the 1960s, you could say that it presented itself as a protest against the war in Vietnam, against racial discrimination, against inequality between the sexes and against the traditional values of America.

The majority of its protagonists showed themselves to be the rebellious children of the bourgeoisie; this movement had no proletarian class character. It wasn’t by chance that one of its ‘theoreticians’, the professor of philosophy Herbert Marcuse, considered that the working class had been ‘integrated’ and that the forces of revolution against capitalism were to be found among other sectors such as the black victims of discrimination, the peasants of the Third World or rebellious intellectuals.

In the majority of other western countries, the movements that agitated the student world during the 60s showed a strong resemblance to those of the United States: rejection of American intervention in Vietnam, revolt against authority in general and in the universities in particular, against traditional morals, notably sexual morals. That is one of the reasons why the Stalinist parties, symbols of authoritarianism, had no echo within these revolts whereas they were party to the denunciation of American intervention in Vietnam against the forces armed by the Soviet bloc and called themselves ‘anti-capitalist’. It is true that the image of the USSR had been greatly tarnished by the repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the portrait of Brezhnev wasn’t a ‘pin-up’. The rebels of the 1960s preferred to display in their rooms posters of Ho Chi Minh (another old apparatchik, but more presentable and ‘heroic’) and more still the romantic visage of Che Guevara (another Stalinist party member, but more ‘exotic’) or Angela Davis (also a member of the US Stalinist party, but who had the double advantage of being both black and a woman, a ‘good looker’ like Che Guevara).

This form, both anti-Vietnam War and ‘libertarian’, was especially prevalent in Germany. The main spokesman of the movement, Rudi Dutschke, came from the GDR, under Soviet tutelage where, as a very young person, he was opposed to the repression of the Hungarian Uprising. His ideological references were the ‘Young Marx’ of the Frankfurt School (of which Marcuse was a part), and also the Situationist International (which included the group Subversive Aktion, which the SI’s Berlin section was based on in 1962).[9]

In fact in the course of discussions which developed after 1965 in the German universities, the search for a ‘real anti-authoritarian marxism’ had a great success, which explains the numerous texts of the councilist movement that were republished at this time.

Class nature of the 60s student movements

The French student slogans (see box), like the majority of others put forward in other countries, clearly indicate that the student movement of the 60s had no proletarian class nature, even if in several places (as in Italy and evidently in France) there was a will to establish a bridge with the struggles of the working class. This approach also manifested a certain condescension towards the workers, mixed with a fascination with these mythic beings, the blue collar proletarians, heroes of readers who had half digested some of the classics of marxism.

Fundamentally, the student movement of the 1960s was of a petty-bourgeois nature, one of its clearest aspects being the will to ‘change life immediately’.

The ‘revolutionary’ radicalism of the avant-garde of this movement, including the cult of violence promoted by certain of its sectors, was also another illustration of its petty-bourgeois nature.[10] In fact, the ‘revolutionary’ preoccupations of the students of 1968 were incontestably sincere but were strongly marked by Third Worldism (Guevarism and Maoism), or else anti-fascism. It had a romantic vision of the revolution without the least idea of the real development of the movement of the working class that would lead it. In France, for the students who believed themselves ‘revolutionaries’, the movement of May 68 was already The Revolution, and the barricades that went up day after day were presented as the inheritors of those of 1848 and of the Commune of 1871.

One of the components of the student movement of the 60s was the ‘conflict between generations’, the very important cleavage between the new generation and those of its parents, which was the subject of all kinds of criticisms. In particular, given that this generation had worked hard to get out of its situation of poverty, even famine, resulting from the Second World War, it was reproached for only concerning itself with its material well being. From this came the success of fantasies about the ‘consumer society’ and slogans such as “Never work!” Descended from a generation that had submitted to the full force of the counter-revolution, the youth of the 1960s reproached its parents for its conformism and its submission to the demands of capitalism. Reciprocally, many parents didn’t understand and were loath to accept that their children despised the sacrifices that they had made in order to give them a better life than their own.

However, there existed a real economic element in the student revolt of the 60s. At this time, there was no real threat of unemployment or of problems of finding a job as is the case today. The principal concern that then affected student youth was that it would not be able to acquire the same social status as that of previous university graduates. In fact, the generation of 1968 was the first to be confronted, in a somewhat brutal manner, with the phenomenon of proletarianisation of the middle strata abundantly studied by sociologists at the time. This phenomenon had begun some years earlier, even before the open crisis had manifested itself, following a palpable increase in the number of university students. This increase came from the needs of the economy but also from the will of parents to provide their children with an economic situation superior to their own, and the possibility of doing so. It was, among other things, this ‘massification’ of the student population which provoked a growing malaise with the authoritarian structures and practices inherited from a time when the universities were mainly frequented by the elite.

However, if the student movement that began in 1964 developed in a period of ‘prosperity’ for capitalism, it was no longer the same from 1967 where the economic situation began to seriously degrade, strengthening the malaise of student youth. This is one of the reasons that allows us to understand why the movement of 1968 reached its heights. It is what allows us to explain why, in May 1968, the movement of the working class took the reins.

That is what we will look at in the next article.

Fabienne, April 2008.

Asian Growth: an expression of the crisis and decadence of capitalism

Up to now capitalism has shown a conspicuous inability to develop the countries where two-thirds of humanity live. Now, with the incredible economic growth in India and China - and throughout East Asia generally - we hear it shouted from the roof tops that from henceforth it will be able to develop more than half the world and that it would be able to go even further if only all the constraints imposed on it were to be eliminated. If wages and working conditions were to be levelled down to those obtaining in China, it is claimed, then growth in the West would also rise to 10% a year.

This raises theoretical and ideological questions of great importance: does the development in East Asia represent a renewal of capitalism or is it no more than a stray occurrence in its on-going crisis? To answer this question we will consider the phenomenon throughout the whole of the sub-continent, though we will examine China more closely as it is the most publicised and the most representative example.

Some questions for revolutionary theory posed by development in the Asian sub-continent

1) In 25 years of economic crisis and ‘globalisation'[1] (1980-2005), Europe has increased its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by a factor of just 1.7, the United States by 2.2 and the world by 2.5. India, on the other hand, has managed to increase it four-fold, developing Asia six-fold and China ten-fold. This means that the latter has developed 4 times more rapidly than the international average and it has done so during a period of crisis. Therefore, over the last two decades, growth in the Asian sub-continent has cushioned the continual fall in the growth rate of international GDP per head of population. This has been uninterrupted since the end of the 1960s: 3.7% (1960-69); 2.1% (1970-79); 1.3% (1980-89); 1.1% (1990-1999) and 0.9% for 2000-2004)[2]. The first question to ask therefore is: will this region of the world escape the crisis that is undermining the rest of the world economy?

2) It took the United States fifty years to double its per capita income between 1865 and the First World War (1914): China has managed to do so in half the time and in the midst of the decadent period and the capitalist crisis. Although 84% of the Middle Empire was rural in 1952, the number of workers in China's industrial sector is now 170 million, that is, 40% greater than in all of the countries of the OECD (123 million). This country is becoming the workshop of the world and employment in the tertiary sector is increasing at a very rapid rate. The transformation of the employment structure is one of the fastest ever to have taken place in the history of capitalism.[3] China has already become the fourth largest economy in the world if its GDP is calculated using the exchange rate of the dollar and it is in second place if the calculation is made in terms of parity in buying power[4]. These facts must obviously lead us to ask if this country is experiencing a genuine primitive accumulation and an industrial revolution, such as occurred in the developing countries during the XVIII and XIX centuries. To put it another way: is it possible for new capitalist countries to emerge during the period of capitalist decadence? Moreover, is it possible for a country to catch up with the others, as was the case during the ascendant period? If China's present rate of growth were to continue, in less than two decades, it would become one of the largest world powers. This is what the United States and Germany did in the XIX century, when they managed to catch up with and overtake England and France, in spite of the fact that they had begun to develop later.

3) The development of China's GDP is also the most dramatic in the entire history of capitalism. It has had an average annual increase of between 8 and 10% over the last 25 years of world-wide crisis. China's growth even exceeds the records attained during the period of prosperity following the war, when Japan grew at a rate of 8.2% per annum between 1950 and 73 and South Korea by 7.6% per annum between 1962 and 1990. What's more, at present this rhythm is much faster and more stable than that of its neighbours who were industrialised earlier (South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong). So is China experiencing its own equivalent of the post-1945 economic boom?

4) Moreover, China is not content to simply produce and export basic goods or to re-export goods produced in its workshops for low wages. It is tending more and more to produce and export goods that have a high level of added value, such as electronics and transport equipment. Does this mean that we are about to see a technological development in China similar to that in the NIC (Newly Industrialised Countries: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore)? Will China, like them, be able to reduce its dependence on exports and start to develop its internal market? In other words, are India and China no more than shooting stars that will eventually burn out or will they become new major players on the world stage?

5) The rapid formation of an enormous bastion of the international working class in the Asian sub-continent, although young and inexperienced, raises numerous questions about the development of the class struggle in this part of the world and about its influence on the balance of forces between classes at an international level. The increase in the number of class conflicts and the emergence of political minorities are clear signs of this[5]. On the other hand, the low wages and very precarious working conditions in East Asia are used by the bourgeoisie in the developed countries to blackmail (by threatening to re-locate) and to depress wages and working conditions.

These questions can only be answered and the real sources, contradictions and limitations of growth in Asia be assessed, if they are considered within the general context of the evolution of capitalism at an historic and international level. This means that the present development in East Asia must be placed within the framework of the decadent period of capitalism that began in 1914 (Part 1) and in terms of the dynamic of the crisis that re-emerged internationally at the end of the 1960s (Part 2). This alone will enable us to draw out the essential elements relating to Asian growth (Part 3) and these are the analytical axes that will be developed in this article[6].

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[1] Read our article "Behind the ‘globalisation' of the economy: the aggravation of the capitalist crisis" in n°86 of this Review.

[2] Sources: World Bank: World Development Indicators 2003 (version on line) and International Economic Perspectives 2004.

[3] Table 1: Different branches' share of produced value and employment (%)

	Primary (agriculture)	Secondary (industry)	Tertiary (services)
	Value	Employment	Value	Employment	Value	Employment
1952	51	84	21	7	29	9
1978	28	71	48	17	24	12
2001	15	50	51	22	34	28
Source : China Statistical Yearbook, 2002.

 

[4] This calculation method is more reliable in as far as it is based on a comparison of the price of a basketful of goods and standard services in the various countries, rather than just on the value of the respective currencies in terms of the exchange of goods on the world market.

[5] We refer the reader to our Report on the Conference in Korea, at which there met together a number of groups and elements whose basis is proletarian internationalism and the Communist Left (International Review n°129) and to the internet site of a new internationalist political group which has appeared in the Philippines and which sees its political affiliation as being with the groups of the Communist Left (see our internet site).

[6] Our 17th International Congress (see International Review n°130) devoted a significant part of its work to the economic crisis of capitalism; dealing specifically with the present growth in certain ‘emerging' countries such as India and China, as this seems to contradict the analysis made by our organisation, and by Marxists in general, about the definitive bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production. It made the decision to publish articles deepening this question in its press, especially the International Review. The present text is a concretisation of this orientation and we think that it makes a valuable contribution to understanding growth in China within the framework of the decadence of capitalism. However the discussions that are taking place at present within our organisation, about the mechanisms that enabled capitalism to experience a spectacular level of growth after the Second World War, are taking up the question of how to understand the present dynamism in the economies of certain ‘emerging' countries, China in particular. This article raises a point of disagreement in that it defends the idea that the wage mass could constitute a soluble outlet for capitalist production, as long as it is not ‘compressed' to a minimum. This is expressed in the following formulation concerning the present ‘globalisation' which "is deformed in that it lowers the wage mass and restrains the basis of accumulation internationally". This is not the opinion presently held by the majority in the central organ of the ICC. The majority holds, for reasons that we cannot go into here, that if capitalism is led to ‘benefit' the working class with a buying power greater than that which is strictly necessary for it to reproduce its labour power, the increased consumption of the workers does not in any way benefit accumulation in a lasting way.

It is 90 years since the proletarian revolution reached its tragic culmination point with the struggles of 1918 and 1919 in Germany. After the heroic seizure of power by the Russian proletariat in October 1917, the central battlefield of the world revolution shifted to Germany. There, the decisive struggle was waged and lost. The world bourgeoisie has always wanted to sink these events into historical oblivion. To the extent that it cannot deny that struggles took place, it pretends that they only aimed at "peace" and "democracy" - at the blissful conditions presently reigning in capitalist Germany. The goal of the series of articles we are beginning here is to show that the revolutionary movement in Germany brought the bourgeoisie in the central country of European capitalism close to the brink of the loss of its class rule. Despite its defeat, the revolution in Germany, like that in Russia, is an encouragement to us today. It reminds us that it is not only necessary but possible to topple the rule of world capitalism.

This series will be divided into 5 parts. This first part will be devoted to how the revolutionary proletariat rallied to its principle of proletarian internationalism in the face of World War I. Part two will deal with the revolutionary struggles of 1918. Part three will be devoted to the drama around the formation of a revolutionary leadership, concretised in the founding congress of the German Communist Party at the end of 1918. Part four will examine the defeat of 1919. The last part will deal with the historical significance of the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and the heritage of these revolutionaries for us today.

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I. Defeat and disarray

The international revolutionary wave which began in opposition to World War I, took place only a few years after the greatest political defeat which the workers' movement had ever suffered: the collapse of the Socialist International in August 1914. Understanding why this war could take place, and the reasons for the failure of the International, is thus essential in order to comprehend the nature and the course of the revolutions in Russia, and in particular in Germany.

The road to war

Since the beginning of the 20th century, world war was in the air. The great imperialist powers had been hectically preparing it. The workers' movement had been predicting it, and warning against it. But at first its outbreak was delayed - by two factors. One of them was the insufficient military preparation of the main protagonists. Germany, for instance, was completing the construction of a war fleet capable of competing with Great Britain, the ruler of the ocean waves. It had to convert the island of Heligoland into a high sea naval base and finish off the canal it was constructing between the North Sea and the Baltic etc. As the first decade of the century drew to a close, these preparations neared their conclusion. This gave the second factor of delay all the more prominence: the fear of the working class. The existence of this fear was no mere speculative hypothesis of the workers' movement. It was expressed openly by the main representatives of the bourgeoisie. Von Bülow, a leading political figure of the German state, declared that it was mainly the fear of Social Democracy which was making the ruling class postpone the war. Paul Rohrbach, the infamous propagandist of the openly imperialist, pro-war circles in Berlin, wrote: "Unless an elementary catastrophe takes place, the only thing which can compel Germany to keep the peace is the hunger of those without bread." General von Bernhardi, a prominent military theoretician of the time, warned, in his book On Contemporary War, that modern warfare is an audacious risk on account of its need to mobilise and discipline millions of people. Such insights were based not on theoretical considerations alone, but on the practical experience of the first imperialist war of the 20th century between major powers. This war - between Russia and Japan - had given birth to the revolutionary movement of 1905 in Russia.

Such considerations nourished hopes within the workers' movement that the ruling class would not dare go to war. These hopes helped to cover over the divergences within the Socialist International at the very moment when the need for proletarian clarification required their open debate. The fact that none of the different currents within the international socialist movement "wanted" war created an illusion of strength and unity. However, reformism and opportunism were not opposed to imperialist war on principle, but simply feared the loss of their legal and financial status in the event of its outbreak. The "marxist centre" around Kautsky, for its part, dreaded war mainly because it would destroy the illusion of unity within the workers' movement which it was out to defend at all costs.

What spoke in favour of the capacity of the working class to prevent the outbreak of world war was above all the intensity of the class struggle in Russia. There, the workers had not taken long to recover from the defeat of the 1905 movement. On the eve of World War I, a new wave of mass strikes was gathering momentum in the Tsarist Empire. To a certain extent, the situation of the working class there resembled that of China today - a minority of the total population, but highly concentrated in modern factories financed by international capital, brutally exploited in a backward country lacking the political control mechanisms of bourgeois parliamentary liberalism. With an important difference, the Russian proletariat had been brought up in the socialist traditions of internationalism, whereas the Chinese workers today are still suffering from the nightmare of the nationalist-stalinist counter-revolution.

All of this made Russia a threat to capitalist stability.

But Russia was not typical of the international balance of class forces. The heart of capitalism, and of imperialist tensions, was located in western and central Europe. The key to the world situation was to be found, not in Russia, but in Germany. This was the country which was most challenging the world order of the old colonial powers. And it was the country with the strongest, most concentrated working class with the most developed socialist education. The political role of the German working class was illustrated by the fact that there the main trade unions had been founded by the socialist party, whereas in Great Britain - the other leading capitalist nation in Europe - socialism appeared to be a mere appendage of the trade union movement. In Germany, the day-to-day workers' struggles were traditionally placed in the light of the great socialist final goal.

At the end of the 19th century there began however the process of the de-politicisation of the socialist unions in Germany, their "emancipation" from the socialist party. The trade unions openly contested the existence of a unity between movement and final goal. The party theoretician Eduard Bernstein only generalised this endeavour with his famous formulation: "the movement is everything, the goal is nothing". This putting in question of the leading role of Social Democracy in the workers' movement, of the primacy of the goal over the movement, brought the socialist party, the SPD, into conflict with its own trade unions. After the mass strikes in 1905 in Russia, this conflict intensified. But it ended with a victory of the trade unions over the party. Under the influence of the "centre" around Kautsky - which wanted to maintain the "unity" of the workers' movement at all costs - the party decided that the question of the mass strike was to be the affair of the trade unions.[1] But the mass strike contained the whole question of the coming proletarian revolution! In this way, the German and the international working class was politically disarmed on the eve of World War I.

The declaration of their non-political character was the preparation of the trade union movement for its integration into the capitalist state. This gave the ruling class the mass organisation it needed to mobilise the workers for war. This mobilisation in the heartlands of capitalism would in turn be enough to demoralise and disorient the workers in Russia - for whom Germany was the main point of reference - and thus break the momentum of mass struggles there.

The Russian proletariat which engaged in mass movements from 1911 on, already had recent experiences of economic crises, of wars and of revolutionary struggles behind it. Not so in western and central Europe. There world war broke out at the end of a long phase of economic development, of real improvements in working class conditions, of rising wages and falling unemployment, of reformist illusions. A phase during which major wars could be restricted to the peripheries of world capitalism. The first great world economic crisis of declining capitalism did not break out until 15 years later - in 1929. The phase of the decadence of capitalism began, not with an economic crisis, as the workers' movement had traditionally expected, but with the crisis of world war. With the defeat and isolation of the left wing of the workers' movement on the question of the mass strike, there was no longer any reason for the bourgeoisie to postpone its headlong rush into imperialist war. On the contrary: any delay could now be fatal to its plans. Waiting could now only mean: waiting for the economic crisis, for the class struggle, for the revolutionary consciousness of its gravedigger to develop!

The collapse of the International

Thus, the path to world war was opened. Its outbreak led to the explosion of the Socialist International. On the eve of the war, Social Democracy organised mass protest demonstrations and meetings throughout Europe. The SPD leadership in Germany sent Friedrich Ebert (a future murderer of the German revolution) to Zürich in Switzerland with the party funds, to prevent their confiscation, and the ever vacillating Hugo Haase to Brussels to organise the international resistance to war. But it was one thing to oppose the war before it had broken out. Quite another to take a position against it once it had become a reality. And here, the vows of proletarian solidarity solemnly taken at the international congress at Stuttgart 1907 and renewed in 1912 in Basle turned out, to a large extent, to have been lip service. Even some of the left wing proponents of apparently radical immediate actions against the war - Mussolini in Italy, Hervé in France - now went over to the camp of chauvinism.

Everyone was surprised by the extent of the fiasco of the International. It is well known that Lenin at first believed the German party press declarations in favour of war to be police forgeries aimed at destabilising the socialist movement abroad. The bourgeoisie itself seems to have been surprised by the extent to which Social Democracy betrayed its principles. It had been banking mainly on the trade unions to mobilise the workers, and had reached secret agreements with its leadership on the eve of war. In some countries, important parts of Social Democracy actually did oppose the war. This shows that the political opening of the path to war did not automatically mean that the political organisations of the class would betray. All the more striking was the failure of Social Democracy in the leading belligerent countries. In Germany, in some cases even those most resolutely opposed to war initially failed to raise their voices. In the Reichstag Fraction in parliament, where 14 members were against voting for the war credits, 78 in favour, even Karl Liebknecht at first submitted to the traditional fraction discipline.

How to explain this?

To this end we must of course first of all situate events in their objective context. Here, the change in the fundamental conditions of the class struggle though the entry into a new epoch of wars and revolutions, of the historic decline of capitalism is decisive. Through this context we can fully comprehend that the passing over of the trade unions into the camp of the bourgeoisie was historically inevitable. Since these organs, expressions of a particular, immature stage of the class struggle, were never revolutionary by nature, in a period in which the effective defence of the immediate interests of any part of the proletariat implied a logic towards revolution, they could no longer serve their class of origin, and could only survive by joining the enemy camp.

But what explains so completely the role of the trade unions already proves to be incomplete when we examine the case of the Social Democratic parties. It is true that with World War I these parties lost their old centre of gravity around the mobilisation for elections. It is also true that the change of conditions removed the basis for mass political parties of the working class in general. In the face of war as well as revolutions, a proletarian party has to be able to swim against the tide, and even in opposition to the dominant mood in the class as a whole. But the main task of a working class political organisation - the defence of its programme, and in particular of proletarian internationalism - does not change with the new epoch. On the contrary, it becomes even more important. So although it was an historical necessity that the socialist parties entered into crisis with the world war, and even that whole currents infested by reformism and opportunism would betray and join the bourgeoisie, this still does not fully explain what Rosa Luxemburg called "the crisis of Social Democracy".

It is also true that such a fundamental historical change necessarily provokes a programmatic crisis, old and tested tactics and even principles suddenly becoming out of date, such as the participation in parliamentary elections, the support for national movements or for bourgeois revolutions. But here we should keep in mind that many revolutionaries of the day, although they did not yet understand these new programmatic and tactical implications, nevertheless were able to remain true to proletarian internationalism.

Any attempt to explain what happened on the basis of the objective conditions alone will end up seeing everything which happens in history as having been inevitable from the onset. This point of view puts in question the possibility of learning from history, since we in turn are also the product of our own "objective conditions". No marxist in their right mind would deny the importance of these objective conditions. But if we examine the explanation which the revolutionaries of the day themselves gave for the catastrophe of socialism in 1914, we find that they underlined above all the importance of the subjective factors.

One of the main reasons for the downfall of the socialist movement lay in its illusory feeling of invincibility, its mistaken conviction of the certainty of its own future victory. The Second International based this conviction on three essentials of the development of capitalism which had already been identified by Marx. These were: the concentration of capital and productive power on one hand and of the dispossessed proletariat on the other; the elimination of the intermediary social layers which blur the main class contradiction; and the increasing anarchy of the capitalist mode of production, in particular in the form of economic crisis, driving the gravediggers of capitalism to put the system in question. These insights were perfectly valid in themselves. Since these three preconditions for socialism are the product of objective contradictions which unfold independently of the will of any social class, and in the long term inevitably impose themselves, they nevertheless gave rise to two very problematic conclusions. Firstly that the victory of socialism is inevitable. Secondly that its victory can only be prevented if the revolution breaks out prematurely, if the workers' movement gives in to provocations.

These conclusions were all the more dangerous for being profoundly - but only partly - true. Capitalism does inevitably produce the material preconditions for the revolution and for socialism. And the danger of being provoked by the ruling class into premature confrontations is very real. We will see the whole tragic importance of this latter question in the third and the fourth part of this article series.

But the problem with this schema of the socialist future is that it left no place for the new phenomenon of imperialist wars between modern capitalist powers. The whole question of world war did not fit into this schema. We have already seen that the workers' movement recognised the inevitability of the ripening of a war long before it actually broke out. But for Social Democracy as a whole, this recognition did not at all lead to the conclusion that the victory of socialism was no longer inevitable. These two portions of the analysis of reality remained separated from each other in a way which can appear almost schizophrenic. Such an incoherence, although it can be fatal, is not unusual. Many of the great crises and disorientations in the history of the workers' movement resulted from this problem of being locked in the schemas of the past, of consciousness lagging behind the evolution of reality. We can cite the example of the support for the provisional government and the continuation of the war by the Bolshevik Party after the February 1917 Revolution in Russia. The party had fallen victim to the schema of a bourgeois revolution bequeathed from 1905, and which revealed its inadequacy in the new context of world war. It took Lenin's April Theses and weeks of intensive discussion to find a way out of this crisis.

Friedrich Engels, shortly before his death in 1895, was the first to begin to draw the necessary conclusions from the perspective of a generalised war in Europe. He declared that it would pose the historic alternative between socialism and barbarism. Here, the inevitability of the victory of socialism is openly put in question. But not even Engels could immediately draw all the conclusions from this insight. He thus failed to recognise that the appearance of the oppositional current of "Die Jungen" ("the Youngsters") in the SPD was - for all its weaknesses - a genuine expression of justified discontent with a framework of activities (mainly oriented towards parliamentarism) which had become largely insufficient. Engels, in the face of the last crisis of the German party before his death, threw in his weight with those who defended the maintenance of the party status quo in the name of patience and the need to avoid provocations.

It was Rosa Luxemburg who, in her polemic against Bernstein at the turn of the century, was to draw the decisive conclusion from Engels' vision of "socialism or barbarism": Although patience remains one of the prime virtues of the workers' movement, and premature confrontations have to be avoided, the main danger, historically, is no longer that the revolution comes too early, but that it may come too late. This viewpoint puts the whole emphasis on the active preparation of the revolution, on the central importance of the subjective factor.

This blow against the fatalism which was beginning to dominate the Second International, this restoration of revolutionary marxism, was to become one of the hallmarks of the whole revolutionary left opposition before and during World War I.[2]

As Rosa Luxemburg was to write in her Crisis of Social Democracy: "Scientific socialism has taught us to recognise the objective laws of historical development. Man does not make history of his own volition, but he makes history nevertheless. The proletariat is dependent in its actions upon the degree of ripeness to which social evolution has advanced. But again, social evolution is not a thing apart from the proletariat; it is in the same measure its driving force and its cause as well as its product and its effect."

Precisely because it has discovered objective laws of history, for the first time ever a social force - the class conscious proletariat - can apply its will in a deliberate manner. It can not only make history, but consciously influence its course.

"Socialism is the first popular movement in the world that has set itself a goal and has established in the social life of man a conscious thought, a definitive plan, the free will of mankind. For this reason Friedrich Engels calls the final victory of the socialist proletariat a stride by mankind from the animal kingdom into the kingdom of liberty. This step, too, is bound by unalterable historical laws to the thousands of rungs of the ladder of the past with its torturous sluggish growth. But it will never be accomplished if the burning spark of the conscious will of the masses does not spring from the material conditions that have been built up by past development."

The proletariat must "learn to take hold of the rudder of society to become, instead of the powerless victim of society, its conscious guide."[3]

For marxism the recognition of the importance of objective historical laws and economic contradictions - denied or ignored by anarchism - and of the subjective elements belong together.[4]

They are inseparably linked and influence each other reciprocally. We can see this in relation to the most important factors in the gradual undermining of the proletarian life of the International. One of these was the undermining of solidarity within the workers' movement. This was of course greatly favoured by the economic expansion which preceded 1914, and the reformist illusions this engendered. But it also resulted from the capacity of the class enemy to learn from its experience. Bismarck introduced social insurance schemes (along with his Anti-Socialist Laws) in order to replace solidarity between workers by their individual dependence on what later became the "welfare state". And when Bismarck's attempt to defeat the workers' movement by outlawing it had failed, the imperialist bourgeoisie which replaced his government at the end of the 19th century reversed tactics. Realising that workers' solidarity often thrives under conditions of repression, it withdrew the Antisocialist Laws, instead repeatedly inviting Social Democracy to "constructively participate" in "political life" (i.e. the running of the state), accusing it of a "sectarian" renouncing of the "sole practical means" of gaining real improvements for the workers.

Lenin showed the link between the objective and subjective levels in relation to another decisive factor in the putrefication of the main socialist parties. This was the degradation of the struggle for the liberation of humanity to an empty everyday routine. Identifying three currents within Social Democracy, he highlighted the second current - "the so-called centre, consisting of people who vacillate between the social chauvinists and the internationalists of action" and characterised them as follows. "The centre - these are people of routine, eaten up by rotten legality, corrupted by the atmosphere of parliamentarism etc, functionaries used to a cosy job and quiet work. Considered historically and economically, they represent no particular layer, they are but a transitional expression between the period of the workers' movement from 1871 to 1914 which is behind us (..) to a new period, which has objectively become necessary since the first imperialist world war, which has inaugurated the era of socialist revolutions."[5]

For marxists at the time, the "crisis of social democracy" was not something taking place outside of their own field of activity. They felt personally responsible for what had happened. For them, the failure of the workers' movement of the day was also their own failure. As Rosa Luxemburg put it "We have the victims of the war on our conscience".

What was remarkable about the collapse of the Socialist International is that it was not in the first instance the product either of programmatic inadequacy or of a wrong analysis of the world situation.

"The international proletariat suffers, not from a dearth of postulates, programmes and slogans, but from a lack of deeds, of effective resistance, of the power to attack imperialism at the decisive moment."[6]

For Kautsky, the failure to uphold internationalism had proven the impossibility of doing so. His conclusion: the International is essentially a peace time instrument, which must be set aside in times of war. For Rosa Luxemburg, as for Lenin, the fiasco of August 1914 was above all the result of the erosion of the ethics of proletarian international solidarity within its leadership.

"Then came the awful, the incredible fourth of August 1914. Did it have to come? An event of such importance cannot be a mere accident. It must have its deep, significant, objective causes. But perhaps these causes may be found in the errors of the leader of the proletariat, the social democracy itself, in the fact that our readiness to fight has flagged, that our courage and our convictions have forsaken us." (our emphasis)

II: The turning of the tide

The collapse of the Socialist International was an event of world historic importance, and a cruel political defeat. But it did not constitute a decisive i.e. irreversible defeat of a whole generation. A first indication of this: the most politicised layers of the proletariat remained loyal to proletarian internationalism. Richard Müller, leader of the group of the revolutionäre Obleute, the factory delegates in the metal industry, recalled: "To the extent that these broad popular masses, already before the war, had been educated, under the influence of the socialist and trade union press, to definite opinions about the state and society, it turned out that they, although at first not openly, directly rejected the war propaganda and the war."[7] This in strong contrast to the situation in the 1930s, after the victory of Stalinism in Russia and Fascism in Germany, when the most advanced workers got drawn onto the political terrain of nationalism and the defence of the (imperialist) "anti-fascist" or "socialist" fatherland.

The completeness of the initial mobilisation for war was thus not the proof of a profound defeat, but of a temporary overpowering of the masses. This mobilisation was accompanied by scenes of mass hysteria. But these expressions must not be confused with an active engagement of the population such as was once witnessed during the national wars of the revolutionary bourgeoisie in the Netherlands or France. The intense public agitation of 1914 had its roots first of all in the mass character of modern bourgeois society, and in the unprecedented means of propaganda and manipulation at the disposal of the capitalist state. In this sense, the hysteria of 1914 was not quite new. In Germany it had already been witnessed at the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But it was given a new quality through the evolution in the nature of modern warfare.

The madness of imperialist war

It seems that the workers' movement underestimated the power of the gigantic political, economic, social and psychological earthquakes produced by the world war. Events of such a colossal scale and violence, beyond the control of any human force, are bound to stir up extreme emotions. Some anthropologists believe that war awakens an instinct of defence of one's own "preserve", something which human beings have in common with other species. This may or may not be the case. What is certain is that modern war stirs up age old fears which slumber in our collective historical memory, passed on over generations by culture and tradition, consciously and unconsciously: the fear of death, starvation, rape, expulsion, exclusion, deprivation, enslavement. The fact that modern generalised imperialist warfare is no longer more or less restricted to military professionals, but involves whole societies, and introduces weaponry of an unprecedentedly destructive power, cannot but augment the panic and instability it produces. To this must be added the profound moral implications. In world war, not only a particular caste of soldiers, but millions of working people drafted into the army are called upon to kill each other. The rest of society, behind the front, is supposed to work towards the same end. In such a situation, the basic morality which makes any human society possible no longer applies. As Rosa Luxemburg put it: "Every people which sets out to commit organised murder is transformed into a horde of barbarians."[8]

All of this produced, at the moment the war broke out, a veritable mass psychosis, and a generalised pogrom atmosphere. Rosa Luxemburg recounts how the populations of whole cities were transformed into a crazed mob. The germs of all the barbarism of the twentieth century, Auschwitz and Hiroshima included, were already contained in this war.

How should the workers' party have reacted to the outbreak of war? By proclaiming the mass strike? By calling on the soldiers to desert? Nonsense, replied Rosa Luxemburg. The first task of revolutionaries here is to resist what Wilhelm Liebknecht, referring to the experience of the war of 1870, once described as a hurricane of human passions. "Such outbreaks of the ‘popular soul' are astounding, stunning, crushing in their elemental fury. One feels powerless, as before a higher power. It is a real force majeure. There is no tangible opponent. It is like an epidemic, in the people, in the air, everywhere. (...) So it was no small thing at that time to swim against the current."

In 1870 Social Democracy swam against the current. Rosa Luxemburg's comment: "They stuck to their posts, and for forty years social democracy lived upon the moral strength with which it had opposed a world of enemies."[9]

And here she comes to the point, the crux of her whole argumentation. "The same thing would have happened now. At first we would perhaps have accomplished nothing but to save the honour of the proletariat, and thousands of proletarians who are dying in the trenches in mental darkness would not have died in spiritual confusion, but with the one certainty that that which has been everything in their lives, the international, liberating social democracy is more than the fragment of a dream. The voice of our party would have acted as a wet blanket upon the chauvinistic intoxication of the masses. It would have preserved the intelligent proletariat from delirium, would have made it more difficult for imperialism to poison and to stupefy the minds of the people. The crusade against the social democracy would have awakened the masses in an incredibly short time. And as the war went on (...) every live, honest, progressive and humane element in the masses would have rallied to the standard of the social democracy."

The conquest of this "unparalleled moral prestige" is the first task of revolutionaries in face of war.

Impossible for the likes of Kautsky to understand these concerns with the last thoughts of the proletarians in uniform before their death. For him, to provoke the anger of the mob and the repression of the state, once the war had actually broken out, would be nothing but an empty gesture. The French socialist Jaures once declared: The International represents all the moral strength in the world. Now, many of its former leaders no longer knew that internationalism is no empty gesture, but the life and death question of world socialism.

The turning point and the role of revolutionaries

The failure of the socialist party led to a truly dramatic situation. Its first result was to make possible the apparently indefinite perpetuation of the war. The military strategy of the German bourgeoisie was entirely based on avoiding a two front war, on achieving a rapid victory over France in order to then throw all its forces eastwards to make Russia surrender. Its strategy against the working class had the same basis: taking it by surprise and clinching victory before it had time to regain its orientation.

By September 1914 (the First Battle of the Marne) the overrunning of France, and with it the whole strategy of rapid victory, had completely failed. Not only the German, but the world bourgeoisie was now trapped in a dilemma which it could neither back out of nor leave behind it. There ensued unprecedented massacres of millions of soldiers, completely insane even from the capitalist point of view. The proletariat itself was trapped, without any immediate perspective of ending the war through its own initiative. The danger which thus arose was that of the destruction of the most essential material and cultural precondition for socialism: the proletariat itself.

Revolutionaries relate to their class as a part relates to the whole. Minorities of the class can never replace the self activity and creativity of the masses. But there are moments in history at which the intervention of revolutionaries can have a decisive influence. Such moments arise in a process towards revolution, when the masses are struggling for victory. Here it is decisive to help the class find the right path, sidestep the traps of its enemy, avoid being too early or too late for its rendezvous with history. But they also arise at moments of defeat, when it is vital to draw the right lessons. But here we must differentiate. In face of a crushing defeat, this work is decisive only in the long term, in passing on these lessons to future generations. In the case of the defeat of 1914, the decisive impact revolutionaries could have was as immediate as during the revolution itself. This is not only because the defeat suffered was not definitive, but also due to the conditions of world war, which, by making the class struggle literally a life or death question, gave rise to an extraordinary acceleration of politicisation.

In face of the hardships of war, it was inevitable that the economic class struggle would develop and immediately take on an openly political character. But revolutionaries could not content themselves with waiting for this to happen. The disorientation of the class, as we have seen, was above all the result of the default of its political leadership. It was thus the responsibility of all that remained revolutionary within the workers' movement to itself initiate the turning of the tide. Even before the strikes on the "home front", long before the revolts of the soldiers in the trenches, revolutionaries had to go out and affirm the principle of international proletarian solidarity.

They began this work in parliament, by denouncing the war and voting against the war credits. This was the last time when this tribune would be used to revolutionary ends. But this was accompanied, from the beginning, by illegal revolutionary propaganda and agitation, and participation in the first demonstrations for bread. But the paramount task of revolutionaries was still to organise themselves to clarify their standpoint, and in above all to re-establish contact with revolutionaries abroad, to prepare the foundation of a new International. But by May Day 1916, the Spartakusbund, the nucleus of the future Communist Party, for the first time felt strong enough to take to the streets openly and massively. It was the day on which traditionally the workers' movement celebrated its international solidarity. The Spartakusbund called demonstrations in Dresden, Jena, Hanau, Brunswick and above all in Berlin. There 10,000 assembled at Potsdamer Platz to hear Karl Liebknecht denounce the imperialist war. A street battle broke out in a vain attempt to prevent him being arrested.

The May Day protest at Potsdamer Platz deprived the internationalist opposition of its best known leader. Other arrests followed. Liebknecht was accused of irresponsibility and even of wanting to place his own person in the limelight. In reality, his May Day action had been decided collectively by the Spartakusbund leadership. It is true that marxism criticises empty gestures like acts of terrorism or adventurism. It counts on the collective action of the masses. But the gesture of Liebknecht was more than an act of individual heroism. It embodied the hopes and aspirations of millions of proletarians in face of the insanity of bourgeois society. As Rosa Luxemburg was later to write:

"Let us not forget this, however. The history of the world is not made without grandeur of spirit, without lofty morals, without noble gestures."[10]

This grandeur of spirit swiftly spread from the Spartakusbund to the metal workers. June 27th 1916, Berlin, the eve of the trial against Karl Liebknecht, arrested for public agitation against the war. A meeting of factory delegates was scheduled to take place after the illegal protest demonstration called by the Spartakusbund. On the agenda: solidarity with Liebknecht. Against the resistance of Georg Ledebour, the only representative of the opposition group within the Socialist Party (SPD) present, action was proposed for the following day. There was no discussion. Everyone stood up and left in silence.

The next morning at 9 o'clock the turners switched off the machines in the big armaments plants in the German capital. 55,000 workers from Löwe, AEG, Borsig, Schwarzkopf downed tools and assembled outside their factory gates. Despite the military censorship, the news spread like a fire across the empire: the armaments workers out in solidarity with Liebknecht! As it turned out, not only in Berlin, but also in Brunswick, on the shipyards in Bremen etc. Even in Russia there followed acts of solidarity.

The bourgeoisie sent thousands of strikers to the front. The trade unions started a witch hunt in the factories in search of the "ring leaders". But hardly any of them were arrested, so great was the solidarity of the workers. Internationalist proletarian solidarity against imperialist war: this was the beginning of the world revolution, the first political mass strike in the history of Germany.

But even more rapidly, the flame lit on the Potsdamer Platz had spread to revolutionary youth. Inspired by the example of their political leaders, this youth, even before the experienced metal workers, instigated the first major strike against the war. In Magdeburg, and above all in Brunswick, which was a bastion of Spartakus, the illegal May Day protests of 1916 escalated into an open strike movement against the government decision to pay part of the wages of the apprentices and young workers onto a compulsory savings account which could be used to finance the war effort. The adult workers came out in support. On May 5th the military authorities had to withdraw this attack in order to prevent a further extension of the movement.

After the battle of Jutland in 1916, the first and only major confrontation between the British and the German navy throughout the war, a small group of revolutionary sailors planned to take over the battleship Hyäne and take it to Denmark as a "demonstration to the whole world" against the war.[11] Although these plans were denounced and foiled, they announced the first open revolts in the war fleet which followed at the beginning of August 1917. They began around questions concerning the treatment and conditions of the crew. But soon, the sailors delivered an ultimatum to the government: either you end the war or we go on strike. The state responded with a wave of repression. Two of the revolutionary leaders, Albin Köbis and Max Reichpietsch, were executed.

But already in mid-April 1917 a wave of mass strikes had taken place in Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Halle, Brunswick, Hanover, Dresden and other cities. Although the trade unions and the SPD leadership, which no longer dared to openly oppose the movement, tried to restrict it to economic issues, the workers in Leipzig had formulated a series of political demands - calling in particular for the ending of the war - which were taken up in other cities.

Thus, the ingredients of a profound revolutionary movement were present by the beginning of 1918. The April 1917 strike wave was the first mass intervention of hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the country, defending their material interests on a class terrain and directly opposing the imperialist war. At the same time, this movement was inspired by the beginning of the Russian Revolution in February 1917, openly declaring its solidarity with it. Proletarian internationalism had seized the hearts of the working class.

On the other hand, with the movement against the war, the proletariat had begun to again produce its own revolutionary leadership. By this we mean not only the political groups such as the Spartakusbund or the Bremen Left who went on to form the KPD at the end of 1918. We also mean the emergence of highly politicised layers and centres of the life and struggle of the class, linked to the revolutionaries and sympathising with their positions. One of these centres was to be found in the industrial cities, in particular in the metal sector, crystallising in the phenomenon of the Obleute, the factory delegates. "Within the industrial working class there was a small nucleus of proletarians, who not only rejected the war as such, but were also willing to prevent its outbreak by all means; and when it broke out, they considered it their duty to end it by all means. They were few in number. But they were all the more determined and active people. They constituted the counterpoint to those who went to the front in order to die for their ideals. The struggle against the war in the factories and offices was not as covered in fame as the struggle on the front, but it brought with it the same dangers. Those who took up and waged this struggle were motivated by the highest ideals of humanity."[12]

Another of these centres was to be found among the new generation of workers, the apprentices and young workers with no other perspective than to be sent to die in the trenches. The nucleus of this fermentation was located in the socialist youth organisations, which, already before the war, had been characterised by the revolt against the "routine" which had begun to characterise the older generation.

Within the armed forces, where the revolt against the war took much longer to develop than on the "home front" a political advanced post was also established. As in Russia, this political centre of resistance arose among the sailors, who had a direct connection to the workers and the political organisations in their ports of call, and whose job and conditions in every way resembled those of the factory workers from whom they generally originated. Moreover, many of them were recruited from the "civilian" merchant fleets, young men who had travelled all over the world and for whom international fraternity was not a phrase, but a way of life.

Moreover, the emergence and multiplication of these concentrations of political life was marked by an intense theoretical activity. All the eye witness accounts from this period stress the extraordinarily high theoretical level of the debates at the different illegal meetings and conferences. This theoretical life found expression in Rosa Luxemburg's Crisis of Social Democracy, Lenin's writings against the war, the articles of the review Arbeiterpolitik in Bremen, but also in scores of leaflets and declarations circulated in strict illegality, and which belong to the most profound and courageous products of human culture which the 20th century has brought forth.

The stage was being set for the revolutionary storm against one of the strongest and most important bastions of world capitalism.

Steinklopfer

 

Part Two of this series will deal with the revolutionary struggles of 1918. They begin with the mass strikes of January 1918, and the first attempt to form workers' councils in Germany, and culminate in the revolutionary events of November 9 which brought World War I to an end.

 

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[1] Decision of the Mannheim Party Congress of 1906.

[2] In his memoirs from the proletarian youth movement, Willi Münzenberg, who was in Zürich during the war, recalled Lenin's point of view. "Lenin explained to us the mistake of Kautsky and his theoretical school of falsified marxism, which expects everything from the historical development of economic relations and almost nothing from the subjective factors of acceleration of the revolution. As opposed to this, Lenin stressed the significance of the individual and masses in the historic process. He placed in the foreground the marxist thesis that human beings, in the framework of the given economic relations, make their own history. This stressing of the personal value of individual human beings and groups in the social struggles made the greatest impression on us and spurred us to the greatest imaginable efforts." Münzenberg, Die Dritte Front ("The Third Front") p. 230.

[3] ibid p. 268, 269. We have slightly corrected the English translation.

[4] While correctly defending, against Bernstein, the reality of the tendency towards the disappearance of the intermediary layers, and towards crisis and pauperisation of the proletariat, the Left however failed to recognise the extent to which capitalism, in the years before World War I, had temporarily been able to attenuate these tendencies. This lack of clarity expressed itself for instance in Lenin's theory of the "workers aristocracy" according to which only a privileged minority, and not broad sectors of the class had gained substantial wage increases over longer periods. This led to underestimating the importance of the material basis for the reformist illusions which helped the bourgeoisie to mobilise the proletariat for war.

[5] Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution.

[6] Luxemburg, The Crisis of Social Democracy ("Junius Pamphlet") January 1916. Taken from Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Pathfinder Press 1970. p. 324

[7] Richard Müller, Vom Kaiserreich Zur Republik p.32. ("From the Empire to the Republic", part one of Müller's trilogy on the history of the German Revolution).

[8] ibid. p. 326.

[9] ibid p. 317, 318

[10] Rosa Luxemburg, Against Capital Punishment. November 1918, ibid p. 398.

[11] Dieter Nelles, Proletarische Demokratie und internationale Bruderschaft - Das abenteuerliche Leben des Hermann Knüfken. p. 1 (Nelles: Proletarian Democracy and International Fraternity - The Adventurous Life of Hermann Knüfken).

[12] Müller, ibid p. 33

In International Review n° 132 we looked at the development of workers' struggles which have been breaking out simultaneously all over the world in response to the worsening economic crisis and the growing attacks on proletarian living standards. The latest convulsions of the world economy, the scourge of inflation and the food crisis, can only further aggravate the poverty of the most poverty-stricken social layers in the peripheries of capitalism. This situation, which reveals the impasse reached by the capitalist system, has provoked hunger riots in numerous countries, at the same time as workers' struggles for wage increases, above all in response to the spiralling cost of basic foodstuffs. With the deepening crisis, hunger riots and workers' struggles can only become more and more general and simultaneous. These revolts against poverty are products of the same thing: the crisis of capitalist society, its inability to offer humanity any future and even to ensure the immediate survival of a significant part of it. However, they do not both contain the same potential. Only the struggle of the proletariat on its own class terrain can put an end to poverty and generalised famine by overthrowing capitalism and creating a new society without poverty, hunger and war.

The food crisis shows the bankruptcy of capitalism

The common denominator of the hunger riots which since the beginning of the year have exploded virtually all over the world is the surge in the price of foodstuffs or their desperate scarcity, which have struck the poor and working populations of numerous countries. To give a few particularly clear figures, the price of maize has quadrupled since summer 2007, the price of grain has doubled since the beginning of 2008, and in general food prices have increased by 60% in two years in the poorer countries. It is a sign of the times that the devastating effects of the 30-50% increase in food prices at a world level have violently affected not only the populations of the poor countries but also those of the "rich" ones. Thus, for example, in the USA, the world's leading economic power, 28 million Americans could no longer survive without the food distribution programmes run by municipal and federal authorities.

At this very moment, 100,000 people are dying of hunger every day across the world; a child under 10 is dying every five seconds; 842 million people are suffering from chronic malnutrition and are being reduced to the status of invalids. And right now, two out of the six billion human beings of the planet (i.e. one third of humanity) are in a daily fight for survival because of the rise in the cost of basic foodstuffs.

The experts of the bourgeoisie  - the IMF, the FAO, the UN, the G8 etc - have announced that such a state of affairs is only temporary, when in fact it is not only becoming chronic but is due to get worse, with the dizzying increase in the price of basic necessities and their growing scarcity across the planet. At a time when the productive capacities of the planet would make it possible to feed 12 billion human beings, millions and millions are dying of hunger because of the laws of capitalism, the system that dominates the world: a system of production aimed not at satisfying human need but at generating profit; a system totally incapable of responding to the needs of humanity. Furthermore, all the explanations of the current food crisis we are being given converge in the same direction, pointing to the method of production that obeys blind and irrational laws:

1. The surge in oil prices which is increasing the cost of transporting food etc. This phenomenon is indeed an aberration typical of the system, not a factor external to it.

2. The significant growth in the demand for food, the result of a certain increase in the buying power and of the new eating habits of the middle classes in the "emerging" countries like India and China. If there is an ounce of truth in this explanation, it is a significant mark of the real nature of an "economic progress" that increases the consuming power of some only to condemn millions of others to die of hunger because of the resulting penury on the world market

3. Frenzied speculation on agricultural products. This is also a pure product of the system and its economic weight is all the more important given that the real economy is prospering less and less. Some examples: cereal stocks are the lowest they have been for thirty years, and speculation mania is more and more focused on foodstuffs in the hope of finding some good investments at a time when there's nothing to be gained in the property market. At the Chicago Stock exchange, "the volume of contracts being exchanged over soya, grain, maize, beef, pork and even living cattle" (Le Figaro, 15/4/08) went up by 20% in the course of the first three months of this year.

4. The growing market in biofuels, spurred on by the rising cost of oil and which is also the object of frenzied speculation. This new source of profit is at the root of the explosion of this kind of cultivation at the expense of food crops. Numerous countries that produce basic necessities have turned whole swathes of their agricultural economy over to biofuel production, on the pretext of fighting against the greenhouse effect. This has drastically decreased the production of basic necessities and dramatically increased their cost. This is the case with Congo Brazzaville which is extensively developing sugar cane for biofuels when its population is sinking into hunger. In Brazil, where 30% of the population live below the poverty line and have great difficulty feeding themselves, agricultural policy is increasingly geared towards biofuel production.

5. Trade war and protectionism, which are also characteristic of capitalism, when imposed on the agricultural sector, mean that the most productive forms of agriculture in the industrialised countries, often thanks to government subsidies, are exporting an important part of their produce to the countries of the "Third World",[1] thus ruining the peasantry of these regions, and rendering them incapable of meeting the food needs of the local population. In Africa, for example, many local farmers have been ruined by European exports of chicken and beef. Mexico can no longer produce enough basic necessities to feed its population, so that it now has to import 10 billion dollars worth of foodstuffs.    

6. The irresponsible use of the planet's resources, driven by the hunt for immediate profit, is leading to their exhaustion. The over-utilisation of fertilisers damages the balance of the soil, so that the International Rice Research Institute foresees a threat to rice production in Asia in the medium term. Unrestrained fishing in the oceans is leading to a dearth of many species of edible fish. 

7. As for the consequences of the warming of the planet, in particular floods and droughts, they are rightly pointed to as reasons for the fall in production in certain cultivable areas. But this too in the last instance is the result of the effects that capitalist industrialisation has had on the environment, at the expense of the immediate and the long term needs of humanity. Thus, the recent heat waves in Australia have led to severe damage and a significant drop in agricultural production. And the worst is in front of us since according to calculations a one degree Celsius rise in temperature will result in a 10% fall in the production of rice, grain and maize. Initial researches indicate that an increase in temperature will threaten the survival of many animal and plant species and will reduce the nutritional value of many plants.

Famine is not the only consequence of the aberrant way capitalism exploits the earth's resources. Thus, the production of biofuels leads to the exhaustion of cultivable land. Furthermore, this "juicy" market leads to crazy and anti-natural behaviour: in the Rocky Mountains, in the USA, where growers have already devoted 30% of their maize crop to the manufacture of ethanol, the gigantic investment in the production of "energy" maize in soils unsuitable for it leads to an incredible waste of fertiliser and water for very poor results. Jean Ziegler explains: "To produce a full 50 litre tank of ethanol, you have to burn 232 kilos of maize"; and to produce a kilo of maize, you need 1000 litres of water! According to recent studies, not only is the "pollution" balance sheet for biofuels negative (recent research shows that it produces more air pollution than normal fuel), but their global ecological and economic consequences are disastrous for the whole of humanity. What's more, in many regions of the world, the soil is increasingly polluted or even totally poisoned. This is the case for 10% of Chinese soil; this is a country where every year 120,000 peasants die from cancers linked to the pollution of the soil.

All the explanations given us about the food crisis contain a small element of truth. But none of them itself constitutes an explanation. When it comes to the limits of its system, above all when this expresses itself in the form of an open crisis, the bourgeoisie has no choice but to lie to the exploited, who are the first to suffer its consequences, in order to hide the necessarily transitory nature of capitalism, as with all previous systems of exploitation. To a certain extent it is also forced to lie to itself as a social class, to avoid having to face the fact that its reign has been condemned by history. What is so striking today is the contrast between the bourgeoisie's assurances and its inability to make any credible response to the food crisis.

The different explanations and solutions proposed - apart from their cynical and hypocritical character - all correspond to the immediate interests of this or that fraction of the ruling class to the detriment of others. Some examples: at the last summit of the G8 the main leaders of the world invited the representatives of the poor countries to react to the hunger revolts by proposing an immediate cut in customs' duties on agricultural imports. In other words, the first thought of the spokesmen of the great capitalist democracies is to take advantage of the crisis by increasing their own export opportunities! The European industrial lobby made a fuss over the agricultural protectionism of the European Union being responsible, among other things, for ruining subsistence agriculture in the "Third World". And why? Feeling threatened by competition from Asian industry, it wants to reduce agricultural subsidies in the EU as being above its means. As for the agricultural lobby, it sees the hunger revolts as proof of the need to increase the same subsidies. The EU seized on the occasion to condemn the orientation of agricultural production towards "renewable energy"...in Brazil, one of its main rivals in this sector.        

Capitalism has, like no other previous system, developed the productive forces to the point where it would be possible to establish a society where all human needs would be met. However, the enormous forces it has set in motion, as long as they are imprisoned by the laws of capital, not only cannot be used for the benefit of the great majority, but actually turn against it: "In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously did. And what is the result? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses...Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planed way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for mankind in the specifically biological aspect".[2] Since capitalism entered its phase of decline, not only does the wealth it produces not contribute to the liberation of the human species from the reign of necessity, but it threatens its very existence. Thus, a new danger now threatens humanity: generalised famine, which only recently was being dismissed as a nightmare of the past. In fact, as illustrated by the warming of the planet, since all productive activity - including the production of food - is subjected to the blind laws of capital, it is the very basis of life on earth that is being put into question, above all through the squandering of its resources,

The difference between hunger riots and the riots in the suburbs

It is the most impoverished masses of the "Third World" who are being hit by abject scarcity. The looting of shops is a perfectly legitimate reaction faced with an unbearable situation where the survival of yourself and your family is at stake. In this sense, the hunger riots, even when they provoke destruction and violence, should not be put at the same level as the urban riots (like that in Brixton in Britain in 1981 and those in the French suburbs in 2005) or race riots (like those in Los Angeles in 1992).[3]

Although they also trouble "public order" and result in material damage, the latter, in the final analysis, only serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, which is perfectly capable of turning them not only against the rioters themselves but also against the whole of the working class. In particular, these manifestations of desperate violence  (in which elements of the lumpen-proletariat are often involved) always provide the ruling class with the opportunity to strengthen its apparatus of repression through increasing police patrols of the poorest areas where working class families live.

These types of riot are a pure product of the decomposition of the capitalist system. They are an expression of the despair and feelings of "no future" that it engenders and this is expressed in their totally absurd character. This was the case for example with the riots which blazed across the French suburbs in 2005 when the young people didn't unleash their actions in the rich neighbourhoods inhabited by their exploiters but in their own neighbourhoods which became even more difficult to live in as a result. The fact that it was their own families or neighbours who were the main victims of their depredations reveals the blind, desperate and suicidal character of these riots. It was the cars of workers living in the neighbourhoods that were burned, or the schools and colleges attended by their brothers and sisters or the children of their neighbours which were destroyed. And precisely because of the absurdity of these riots the bourgeoisie was able to make use of them and turn them against the working class. Their massive exposure in the media enabled the ruling class to make as many workers as possible see the young rioters not as victims of capitalism in crisis, but as "thugs". Apart from the fact that these riots made it possible to step up a witch hunt of immigrant youth, they undermined any possibility of solidarity among the working class towards these young people excluded from production, deprived of any perspective for the future and subjected to the permanent pressure of police harassment. 

For their part, the hunger riots are first and foremost an expression of the bankruptcy of the capitalist economy and of the irrationality of its system of production. This is now taking the form of a food crisis which is hitting not only the most disenfranchised layers in the "poor" countries, but more and more wage workers, including those in the so-called "developed" countries. It's not by chance that the majority of workers' struggles developing today all over the planet put forward wage rises as their key demand. Galloping inflation, the spiral in the price of basic necessities, the fall in real wages and of retirement pensions eaten away by inflation, the precariousness of employment and the waves of redundancies - these are all manifestations of the crisis and contain all the ingredients for ensuring that the question of hunger, of the struggle for survival, is more and more being posed within the working class. Already several inquiries have shown that the supermarkets and high streets where workers do their shopping are less and less able to sell their products and are being forced to reduce their orders.

And it is precisely because the question of the food crisis is already hitting the workers of the "poor" countries (and will more and more affect those in the central countries) that the bourgeoisie will have the greatest difficulty in exploiting the hunger riots against the proletarian class struggle. Generalised want and famine - here is the future that capitalism has in store for the whole of humanity and this future is being highlighted by the hunger riots which have broken out recently in a number of countries.      

Obviously, these riots are also reactions of despair by the most impoverished masses of the "poor" countries, and in themselves they do not contain any perspective for the overthrow of capitalism. But unlike the urban and racial riots, hunger riots are a concentrated form of all the absolute misery which capitalism is imposing on ever larger portions of humanity. They show the fate that awaits the whole working class if this mode of production is not overthrown. In this sense, they contribute to the process through which the proletariat becomes aware of the irredeemable bankruptcy of the capitalist economy. Finally, they show the cynicism and ferocity with which the ruling class responds to explosions of anger by those who loot shops to avoid dying of hunger: repression, tear gas, truncheons and machine guns.

What's more, unlike the riots in the suburbs, these riots are not a factor of division in the working class. On the contrary, despite the violence and destruction that may be involved in them, hunger riots tend to give rise to spontaneous feelings of solidarity on the part of the workers, given that they are among the first to be affected by the food crisis and are finding it harder and harder to feed their families. In this sense, the hunger riots are much more difficult for the bourgeoisie to exploit by setting workers against each other or creating divisions within the poorer neighbourhoods.

Faced with hunger riots, only the workers' struggle can offer a perspective

Even so, although in the "poor" countries we are seeing a simultaneous development of hunger riots and workers' struggles against capitalist misery, these are two parallel movements of a very different nature.

Even if workers may be led to participate in hunger riots by pillaging shops, this is not the terrain of the class struggle. It is a terrain in which the proletariat is inevitably drowned amidst other "popular" strata, the poorest and most marginalised. In this kind of movement, the proletariat can only lose its class autonomy and abandon its own methods of struggle: strikes, demonstrations, general assemblies.

Moreover, hunger riots are only a flash in the pan, a revolt that has no tomorrow and which can in no way solve the problem of famine. They are no more than an immediate and desperate reaction to the most absolute misery. Once the shops have been emptied by looting, there's nothing left, whereas the wage rises that result from workers' struggles can be maintained for longer (even if they will eventually be overtaken). It is obvious that in the face of the famine now hitting the populations of the countries at the periphery of capitalism, the working class cannot remain indifferent; all the more so because in these countries the workers themselves are being hit by the food crisis and are finding it increasingly difficult to feed their families on their miserable wages.

The present manifestations of the bankruptcy of capitalism, in particular the surge in prices and the food crisis, will more and more tend to level downwards the living conditions of the proletariat and the most impoverished masses. Because of this, workers' struggles in the "poor" countries can only multiply at the same time as the hunger riots. But while hunger riots don't offer any perspective, workers' struggles are the starting point for the workers to develop their strength and their own perspective. The only way for the proletariat to resist the increasingly violent attacks of capital is to preserve its class autonomy and develop its own struggles and solidarity. In general assemblies and massive demonstrations it needs to put forward demands that are common to all and integrate solidarity with the famished masses. In these demands, workers must not only demand wage rises and cuts in the price of basic foodstuffs: their platform of demands should also include free distribution of the vital minimum for the most deprived, the unemployed and those who have no way of earning a living.

It's only by developing its own methods of struggle and strengthening its class solidarity with the oppressed and famished masses that the proletariat can rally behind it the non-exploiting strata of society.

Capitalism has no perspective to offer humanity except increasingly barbaric wars, increasingly tragic catastrophes, and growing poverty for the great majority of the world population. The only possibility for society to get out of the barbarism of the present world is the overthrow of the capitalist system. And the only force capable of doing this is the world working class. It is because, up till now, the working class has not found the strength to affirm this perspective through the massive development and extension of its struggles, that growing masses of the population in the "Third World" have been forced to engage in desperate hunger riots. The only real solution to the "food crisis" is the development of proletarian struggles towards the world communist revolution, which will make it possible to provide a perspective and a meaning to hunger revolts. The proletariat can only lead the other non-exploiting strata behind it if it affirms itself as a revolutionary class. It is by developing and unifying its struggles that the working class will be able to show that it is the only force capable of changing the world and bringing a radical solution to the scourge of famine, but also to the problem of war and all the expressions of despair produced by the rotting of society on its feet.

Capitalism has brought together the conditions for abundance but, as long as this system is not overthrown, it can only lead to an absurd situation where the overproduction of commodities goes along with scarcity of the most elementary goods.

The fact that capitalism is no longer capable of feeding whole swathes of humanity is a clarion call to the proletariat to assume its historical responsibilities. It is only through the world communist revolution that it will be able to lay the bases of a society of abundance where famine will be forever eradicated from the planet.

ICC, 5th July 2008

 

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[1]. The term "Third World" was invented by the French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, in the midst of the Cold War, originally to describe countries which were not tied directly either to the western bloc or the Russian bloc; but this meaning has been virtually abandoned, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it was equally used to describe countries that had the lowest levels of economic development, in other words the poorest countries on the planet, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. And it's obviously in this sense, which is more current than ever, that we still use it.

 

[2]. Engels, Introduction to Dialectics of Nature, Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25, p351. Lawrence and Wishart.

 

[3]. On the race riots in Los Angeles, see our article "Faced with chaos and massacres, only the working class has an answer" in International Review n° 70. On the riots in the French suburbs in the autumn of 2005, see "Social riots; Argentina 2001, France 2005...Riots or revolution?" in International Review n°124 and "Theses on the students' movement in Spring 2006 in France" in International Review n° 125.

 

Faced with all the lies about the events of May ‘68, it is necessary for revolutionaries to re-establish the truth, to draw the real lessons of these events and prevent them being buried under an avalanche of flowers and wreaths.

That's what we have begun to do in publishing the previous article[1] that retraced the first component of the "events of ‘68", the student revolt. We are turning here to the essential component of the events: the movement of the working class.

This first article concluded: "May 14, discussions continued in many firms. After the immense demonstrations of the previous evening (in solidarity with the student victims of repression), with the enthusiasm and feeling of strength that came out of them, it was difficult to go back to work as if nothing had happened. In Nantes, the workers of Sud-Aviation, led by the youngest among them, unleashed a spontaneous strike and decided to occupy the factory".

This is the point at which we take up the story.

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The general strike in France

The extension of the strike

In Nantes, it was the young workers, the same age as the students, who launched the movement; their reasoning was simple: "if the students, who can't pressurise with strikes, have the strength to knock back the government, the workers can also make it retreat". For their part, the students of the town came to show solidarity with the workers, mingling with the pickets: fraternisation. Here, it was clear that the campaigns of the PCF[2] and the CGT[3] warning against "leftist provocateurs in the pay of the bosses and the Interior Ministry" had only a feeble impact.

In total, there were 3,100 strikers on the evening of May 14.

May 15, the movement reached the Renault factory at Cléon, in Normandy as well as two other factories in the region: total strike, unlimited occupation, locking up the management and the red flag on the gates. At the end of the day, there are 11,000 strikers.

May 16, the other Renault factories join the movement: the red flag at Flins, Sandouville, le Mans and Billancourt. That evening there were only 75,000 strikers in total, but Renault joining the struggle is a signal: it's the biggest factory in France (35,000 workers) and for a long time the saying was: "When Renault sneezes, France catches a cold".

On 17 May 215,000 were on strike: the strike was beginning to spread across France, especially in the provinces. It was a totally spontaneous movement; the unions were just following it. Everywhere, the young workers were at the forefront. There were numerous cases of fraternisation between students and young workers: the latter went to the occupied faculties and invited the students to come and eat at their canteens.

There were no specific demands. It was just a general feeling of being fed up. On the walls of a factory in Normandy it said, "Time to live and with dignity!" On that day, afraid of being outflanked from below and also by the CFDT,[4] which was much more involved in the early strikes, the CGT called for the extension of the strike. It had "jumped on the bandwagon" as was said at the time. Its communiqué wasn't known about till the next day.

On the 18 May, a million workers were on strike by midday, even before the CGT line was known about. By the evening it was 2 million. By Monday 20 May there were 4 million on strike and 6 and a half million the day after that.

On 22 May, there were 8 million workers on indefinite strike. It was the biggest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. It was much more massive than the two previous benchmarks: the May 1926 General Strike in Britain (which lasted a week) and the May-June strikes in France in 1936.

All sectors were involved: industry, transport, energy, post and telecommunications, education, administration (several ministries were completely paralysed), the media (national TV was on strike, with workers denouncing the censorship imposed on them), research labs, etc. Even the undertakers were out (it was a bad idea to die in May ‘68!). Even professional sports people joined the movement: the red flag flew over the building of the Fédération Française de Football. The artists didn't want to be left out and the Cannes Festival was interrupted on the initiative of the film directors.

During this period the occupied faculties (as well as other public buildings, like the Odéon Theatre in Paris) became places of permanent political discussion. Many workers, especially the younger ones but not only them, took part in these discussions. Some workers asked those who defended the idea of revolution to come and argue their point of view in the occupied factories. In Toulouse, the small nucleus which went on to form the ICC's section in France was invited to expound its ideas about workers' councils in the occupied JOB factory. And the most significant thing was that this invitation came from militants of the CGT and the PCF. The latter had to negotiate for an hour with the permanent officials of the CGT, who had come from the big Sud-Aviation factory to "reinforce" the JOB strike picket, to get authorisation to allow the "leftists" to enter the factory. For more than six hours, workers and revolutionaries, sitting on rolls of cardboard, discussed the revolution, the history of the workers movement, soviets, and even the betrayals...of the PCF and the CGT.

Many discussions also took place in the street, on the pavements (the weather was good all over France in May ‘68!). They arose spontaneously; everyone had something to say ("We talk and we listen" as one slogan had it). Everywhere there was an atmosphere of festival, except in the rich neighbourhoods where fear and hatred were building up

All over France, in the neighbourhoods and in or around certain big enterprises, "Action Committees" were formed. Within them there were discussions about how to wage the struggle, about the revolutionary perspective. They were generally animated by leftist or anarchist groups but many more were brought together outside of these organisations. At ORTF, the state radio and television station, an Action Committee was created by Michel Drucker,[5] and the hard-to-describe Thierry Rolland[6] was also part of it.

The reaction of the bourgeoisie

Faced with such a situation, the ruling class underwent a period of disarray, expressed in muddled and ineffective initiatives.

Thus, on May 22, the National Assembly, dominated by the right, discussed (before rejecting it) a motion of censure tabled by the left two weeks earlier: the official institutions of the French Republic seemed to live in another world. It's the same for the government that took the decision to forbid the return of Cohn-Bendit who had been to Germany. This decision only increased discontent: May 24 saw multiple demonstrations, notably denouncing the prohibition of Cohn-Bendit: "Frontiers mean fuck all!" "We are all German Jews!" Despite the cordon sanitaire of the CGT against the "adventurers" and "provocateurs" (that's to say the "radical" students) many young workers join up with the demonstrations.

In the evening, the President of the Republic, General de Gaulle, gave a speech: he proposed a referendum so that the French could pronounce on "participation" (a sort of capital and labour association). He couldn't have been further from reality. This speech fully revealed the disarray of the government and the bourgeoisie in general.[7]

In the street, demonstrators listened to the speech on portable radios, anger still mounting: "His speech is shafting us!" Confrontations and barricades were mounted throughout the night in Paris and several provincial towns. There were numerous windows broken, some cars burnt, which had the effect of turning part of public opinion against the students who were seen as "hooligans". It's probable, moreover, that among the demonstrators were mixed in Gaullist militias or plain-clothes police in order to "stir things up" and frighten the population. It is clear that a number of students thought they were "making a revolution" by throwing up barricades and burning cars, symbols of the "consumer society". But above all these acts expressed the anger of the demonstrators, students and young workers, in the face of the risible and provocative responses of the authorities to the biggest strike in history. An illustration of the anger against the system was the setting alight of that symbol of capitalism, the Paris Bourse.

It was only the following day that the bourgeoisie finally took effective initiatives: on Saturday May 25 the Ministry of Labour (Rue de Grenelle) opened negotiations between unions, bosses and government.

Straightaway, the bosses were ready to give much more than the unions imagined: it's clear that the bourgeoisie was afraid. The Prime Minister, Pompidou presided: on Sunday morning he had an hour-long one to one session with Seguy, boss of the CGT:[8] the two main people responsible for the maintenance of social order in France needed to discuss without witnesses the means to re-establish this order.[9]

The night of May 26/27 the "Grenelle Accords" were concluded:

7% wage increases for all from June 1st; then 3% from October 1st;

increase of the minimum wage in the region of 25%;

reduction of patients' contributions from 30% to 25% (not paid for by social security);

union recognition within the firm;

a series of vague promises of negotiations, notably on the length of the working day (which was 47 hours a week on average).

Given the importance and strength of the movement, it was a real provocation:

the 10% would be wiped out by inflation (which was quite high during this period);

nothing on safeguards against inflation in the wage packet;

nothing concrete on reduction of the working week; they talked about aiming at "the progressive return to 40 hours" (already officially obtained in 1936!); in the time scale proposed by the government it will take... 40 years!

the only workers who would gain significantly were the poorest workers (dividing the working class by pushing them back to work) and the unions, rewarded for their role as saboteurs.

On Monday May 27 the "Grenelle Accords" were unanimously rejected by the workers' assemblies.

At Renault Billancourt, the unions organised a grand "show" amply covered by television and radio: coming out of negotiations, Seguy said to journalists: "The return to work won't be long" and he hoped that the workers at Billancourt would give the example. However, 10,000 of them, meeting at dawn, decided to continue the movement even before the arrival of the union leaders.

Benoit Frachon, "historic" leader of the CGT (who had been present at the negotiations of 1936) declared: "The Grenelle accords will bring millions of workers a comfort that they couldn't have hoped for": this was greeted by a deadly silence!

Andre Jeanson, of the CDFT, expressed satisfaction with the initial vote in favour of continuing the strike and talked of solidarity of the workers with the students in struggle, bringing the house down.

Seguy, finally, presented "an objective account" of what "had been gained at Grenelle": whistles then general booing for several minutes. Seguy then made an about turn: "If I judge from what I hear, you will not let it happen": applause but in the crowd you could hear remarks like "He's fucking us about".

The best proof of the rejection of the "Grenelle Accords": the number of strikers increased still more on May 27 to reach 9 million.

This same day at the Charléty Stadium in Paris, a big meeting took place called by the student union UNEF, the CDFT (which went one better than the CGT) and the leftist groups. The tone of the speeches was very revolutionary: it was a question of giving an outlet to growing discontent against the CGT and the French Communist Party. Aside from the leftists there was the presence of social democratic politicians like Mendes-France (old boss of the 50s government). Cohn-Bendit made an appearance (he'd already been at the Sorbonne the night before).

May 28 was the day the parties of the left began their games:

In the morning, François Mitterand, President of the Left Democratic and Socialist Federation (which brought together the Socialist Party, the Radical Party and divers small groups of the left) held a press conference: considering that there was a vacancy for power, he announced his candidature for the Presidency of the Republic. In the afternoon, Waldeck-Rochet, boss of the PCF, proposed a government with "Communist participation": it was important for them not to allow the social democrats to exploit the situation solely for their own benefit. This was relayed the next day, May 29, through a large demonstration called by the CGT demanding a "popular government". The right immediately cried "a communist plot".

This same day, we had the "disappearance" of General de Gaulle. There were rumours that he had withdrawn but, in fact, he went to Germany to make sure of the support of the army through General Massu who commanded the occupation troops in Germany.

May 30 constituted a decisive day in the bourgeoisie taking the situation in hand. De Gaulle made a new speech: "In the present circumstances, I will not withdraw (...) I am today dissolving the National Assembly..."

At the same time in Paris, an enormous demonstration in support of De Gaulle took place on the Champs-Élysées. It mobilised those from the posh and wealthy districts and rural areas, thanks to army trucks. The "people" came, the wealthy, the well-heeled, and the bourgeois; representatives of religious institutions, high level bureaucrats imbued with their "superiority", small businessmen trembling for their shop windows, old combatants embittered by attacks on the French flag, veterans of French Algeria and the OAS,[10] young members of the fascist group Occident, the old nostalgic for Vichy (who, however, detested de Gaulle); this whole, beautiful world came to proclaim its hatred for the working class and its "love of order". In the crowd, alongside the old combatants of "Free France", you could hear chants like "Cohn-Bendit to Dachau!"

But the "party of order" couldn't be reduced to those who demonstrated on the Champs- Élysées. The same day, the CGT called for negotiations branch by branch in order to "ameliorate the acquisitions of Grenelle": it was the tactic of dividing the movement so as to finish it off.

The return to work

Elsewhere, from this date (it was a Thursday), the return to work began to take place, but slowly because on June 6 there were still six million on strike. The return to work was made in a dispersed fashion:

May 31: steel in Lorraine, textiles in the north,

June 4: weapons manufacturers, insurance,

June 5: EDF,[11] coal mines,

June 6: post, telecommunications, transport (in Paris, the CGT pushed the return to work: in each depot the union leaders announced that other depots had returned to work, which was not true);

June 7: primary teachers;

June 10: the police forces occupy the Renault factory at Flins: a student charged by the police falls into the Seine and drowns;

June 11: intervention of the CRS[12] at the Peugeot factory at Sochaux (second largest in France); 2 workers are killed.

We then see new demonstrations of violence throughout France: "They have killed our comrades!" At Sochaux, facing the determined resistance of the workers, the CRS evacuated the factory: work only resumed 10 days later.

Fearing that the indignation would only re-launch the strike (3 million still remained on strike), the unions (with the CGT at their head) and the parties of the left led by the PCF, insistently called for a return to work "so that the elections can take place and complete the victory of the working class". The Communist Party daily, l'Humanité, headlined: "Strong with their victory, millions of workers go back to work".

The systematic appeal for a strike by the unions from May 20 now has its explanation: they had to control the movement in order to provoke the return of the less combative sectors and demoralise the others.

Waldeck-Rochet, in his speeches on the electoral campaign declared that: "The Communist Party is the party of order". And, little by little, bourgeois order returned:

June 12: secondary teachers return;

June 14: Air France and merchant marine;

June 16: the Sorbonne is occupied by the police;

June 17: chaotic return at Renault Billancourt;

June 18: de Gaulle frees the leaders of the OAS who were still in prison;

June 23: first round of the legislative elections with gains for the right;

June 24: return to work at the Citroën Javel factory (Krasucki, number two of the CGT, spoke at an assembly calling for an end to the strike);

June 26: Usinor Dunkirk goes back;

June 30: second round of the elections with a historic victory for the right.

One of the last firms to go back to work was the ORTF on July 12: numerous journalists didn't want to return to the restrictions and censorship that they submitted to before from the government. After the return, many of them would be sacked. Order returned throughout, including with the news items that the state judged useful to broadcast to the population.

Thus, the greatest strike in history ended in defeat, contrary to the affirmations of the CGT and of the PCF. A crushing defeat sanctioned by the return in force of the parties and of the "authorities" that had vilified the movement. But the workers' movement has known for a long time that: "The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers" (Communist Manifesto). Also, beyond their immediate defeat, the workers in France, in 1968, gained a great victory, not for themselves but for the whole of the world proletariat. That is what we are going to look at in the next part of this article where we are going to try to show the fundamental causes, as well as the world and historic stakes, of France's "merry month of May". 

 

The international significance of the May ‘68 strike

In the majority of the numerous books and television programmes on May 1968 that have occupied the media recently, the international character of the student movement that affected France during the course of this month has been underlined. Everyone knows, as we've also underlined in our previous article, that the students in France were not the first to mobilise massively; that they had, in a manner of speaking, "jumped on the bandwagon" of a movement that began in the American universities in Autumn 1964. From the United States, this movement affected the majority of the western countries, and in Germany 1967 it went through its most spectacular developments, making the students of this country the reference point for other European countries. However, the same journalists or historians who are happy to underline the international breadth of student protest in the 60s in general don't say a word about the workers' struggles that unfolded all over the world during this period. Evidently, they couldn't simply ignore the immense strike that was so obviously the most important aspect of the "events" of ‘68 in France: it would be difficult for them to blot out the greatest strike in the history of the workers' movement. But, if they talk about it, this movement of the proletariat is seen as a sort of "French exception".

In reality, and perhaps even more than the student movement, the movement of the working class in France was an integral part of an international movement and one can only really understand it in this international context

France was no exception

It's true that in May ‘68 in France there existed a situation that wasn't found in any other country, except in a very marginal fashion: a massive movement of the working class developing from a student mobilisation. It is clear that the student mobilisation, the repression that it suffered - and which fed it - and the final retreat of the government after the "night of the barricades" of May 10/11, played a role, not only in unleashing the movement, but also in the breadth of the workers' strike. That said, if the proletariat of France entered such a movement, it was surely not "to do the same as the students", but because of the profound and generalised discontent that existed within the class, and also because it had the political strength to engage in the fight.

This fact is not in general hidden in the books and TV programmes dealing with May ‘68: it's often recalled that, from 1967, workers undertook important struggles, the characteristics of which broke with those of the preceding period. In particular, whereas the very limited strikes and union days of action did not arouse any great enthusiasm, we saw some very hard, very determined struggles facing a violent repression from the bosses and the state, and with the unions being outflanked on several occasions. Thus, from the beginning of 1967, important confrontations occurred at Bordeaux (the Dassault aviation factory), at Besançon and in the Lyonnaise region (occupation and strike at Rhoda, strike at Berliet leading to a lock-out and to the occupation of the factory by the CRS), in the mines of Lorraine, in the naval dockyards of Saint-Nazaire (which was paralysed by a general strike on April 11).

It was in Caen, Normandy, that the working class engaged in one of the most important combats before May ‘68. On January 20 1968, the unions at Saviem (trucking) launched the order for an hour-and-a-half strike; but the workers, judging this action insufficient, spontaneously struck on the 23rd. Two days later, at four in the morning, the CRS dispersed the strike picket, allowing the management and "scabs" to enter the factory. The strikers decided to go to the town centre where workers from other factories also on strike joined them. At eight in the morning, 5000 people peacefully converged on the central square: the Gardes mobiles[13] charged them brutally, even firing on them. On January 26, workers from all sectors of the town (including teachers) as well as numerous students, demonstrated their solidarity: a meeting in the central square brought together 7,000 people by 6 o'clock. At the end of the meeting the Gardes mobiles charged in order to evacuate the square but were surprised by the resistance of the workers. The confrontations lasted through the night; there were 200 wounded and dozens of arrests. Six young demonstrators, all workers, got prison sentences of 15 days to 3 months. But far from the working class retreating, this repression only provoked the extension of the struggle: January 30 saw 15,000 on strike in Caen. On February 2nd, the authorities and the bosses were obliged to retreat, calling off the repression and increasing wages by 3 to 4%. The following day, work restarted but, under the impulsion of the younger workers, walkouts continued at Saviem for a month.

Saint-Nazaire in April ‘67 and Caen in January ‘68 were not the only towns to be hit by general strikes of the whole working population. It was also the case with towns of lesser importance such as Redon in March and Honfleur in April. These massive strikes of all the exploited of one town prefigured what would happen in mid-May in the whole country.

You couldn't say that the storm of May 1968 had broken out from a clear, blue sky. The student movement had set the land on fire, but it was ready to burst into flames.

Obviously the "specialists", notably the sociologists, tried to show the causes of this French "exception". They talked in particular about the raised tempo of industrial development of France during the 1960s, transforming this old agricultural country into a modern industrial power. This fact explained the presence and the role of an important number of young workers in the factories who were often ill-adjusted. These young workers, frequently coming from a rural milieu, weren't unionised and found the barracks discipline of the factory difficult. They also generally received derisory wages even when they had professional certificates. This situation helps us to understand why it was the youngest sectors of the working class who were the first to engage in combat, and equally why the majority of the important movements that preceded May ‘68 took place in the west of France, a rural region relatively lately industrialised. However, these explanations by the sociologists fail to explain why it wasn't only the young workers that entered into struggle in May ‘68 but the very great majority of the working class of all ages.

The international significance of the May ‘68 strike in France

In fact, behind a movement of such breadth and depth as May ‘68, there were much more profound causes that went beyond, very far beyond, the framework of France. If the whole of the working class of this country launched itself into a general strike, it's because all its sectors had begun to be hit by the economic crisis which, in 1968, was only at its inception, a crisis that wasn't "French" but of the whole capitalist world. It's the effects in France of this world economic crisis (growth of unemployment, freezing of wages, intensification of production targets and attacks on social security) that to a large extent explains the workers' combativity in this country from 1967:

"In all the industrial countries of Europe and the USA, unemployment is developing and the economic prospects are becoming gloomy. Britain, despite a multiplication of measures to safeguard equilibrium, was finally forced to devalue of the pound in 1967, dragging along behind it devaluations in a whole series of countries. The Wilson government proclaimed a programme of exceptional austerity: massive reductions of public spending... wage freeze, reduction of consumption and imports, efforts to increase exports. On January 1st 1968, it was the turn of Johnson [US president] to raise the alarm and announce indispensably severe measures in order to safeguard economic equilibrium. In March, a financial crisis of the dollar broke out. The economic press became more pessimistic each day, more and more evoking the spectre of the 1929 crisis (...) May 1968 appears in all its significance for having been one of the most important reactions of the mass of workers against a deteriorating situation in the world economy".[14]

In fact, particular circumstances saw the proletariat in France leading the first widespread battle against the growing attacks launched by capitalism in crisis. But, quite quickly, other national sectors of the working class entered the struggle in their turn. From the same causes come the same effects.

At the other end of the world, in Argentina, in May 1969, there took place what is remembered as the "Cordobazo". On May 29, following a whole series of mobilisations in the workers' districts against the violent attacks and repression by the military junta, the workers of Cordoba had completely overrun the forces of the police and the army (even though they were equipped with tanks) and were masters of the town (the second largest in the country). The state was only able to "re-establish order" the following day thanks to massive troop deployments.

In Italy, at the same time, there was a movement of workers' struggles, the most important since the Second World War. Strikes began to multiply at Fiat in Turin, first of all in the principle factory of the town, Fiat-Mirafiori, spreading to other factories of the group in Turin and the surrounding areas. On July 3 1969, at the time of a union day of action against an increase in rents, workers' processions, joined by those of students, converged toward the Mirafiori factory. Violent scuffles broke out with the police. They lasted practically the whole night and spread to other areas of the town.

From the end of August, when the workers returned from holidays, strikes took off again at Fiat, but also at Pirelli (tyres) in Milan and in many other firms.

However, the Italian bourgeoisie, learning from the experience of May ‘68, wasn't taken aback as the French bourgeoisie was a year earlier. It was absolutely necessary for it to prevent the profound social discontent from turning into a generalised conflagration. It's for that reason that its union apparatus took advantage of the expiry of collective contracts, notably in steel, chemicals and building, in order to develop its manoeuvres aimed at dispersing the struggles and fixing the workers on the objective of a "good contract" in their respective sectors. The unions used the tactic of so-called "linked" strikes: one day metal workers on strike, another for chemical workers, yet another for those in building. Some "general strikes" were called but by province or even by town, against the cost of living and the raising of rents. At the level of the workplace, the unions advocated rolling strikes, one factory after another, with the pretext of causing as much damage as possible to the bosses with the least cost to the workers. At the same time, the unions did what was necessary to take control of a base that tended to escape them: whereas, in many firms, the workers, discontented with traditional union structures, elected workshop delegates, these latter were institutionalised under the form of "factory councils" presented as "rank and file organs" of a unitary trade union that the three confederations, CGIL, CISL and UIL said they wanted to construct together. After several months in which the workers' combativity exhausted itself in a succession of "days of action" by sectors and "general strikes" by province or town, collective contracts of sectors were signed successively between the beginning of November and the end of December. And it was a little before the signature of the last contract, the most important since it concerned the private steel sector, the avant-garde of the movement, that a bomb exploded on November 12 in a bank in Milan, killing 16 people. The attack was attributed to anarchists (one of them, Guiseppe Pinelli, died in the custody of the Milanese police) but it was learned much later that it could be traced to certain sectors of the state apparatus. The secret structures of the bourgeois state had lent a strong hand to the unions in order to sow confusion in the ranks of the working class at the same time as strengthening the means of state repression.

The proletariat of Italy wasn't alone in mobilising during autumn 69. On a lesser, but still significant scale, German workers came into struggle when in September wildcat strikes broke out against the signing of agreements by the unions for "wage moderation". The workers were supposed to be "realistic" faced with the degradation of the German economy, which, despite the post-war "miracle", wasn't spared the difficulties of world capitalism that had started to develop after 1967 (the year that the German economy saw its first recession since the war).

This awakening of the proletariat in Germany, even if it was quite tentative, had a particular significance. On one hand, this was the most important and most concentrated sector of the working class in Europe. But above all, this proletariat had in the past, and will have in the future, a position of prime importance within the world working class. It was in Germany that the fate of the international revolutionary wave was played out, which, from October 1917 in Russia had threatened capitalist domination throughout the world. The defeat suffered by the German workers during their revolutionary attempts between 1918 and 1923 opened the door to the most terrible counter-revolution of its history. And it was where the revolution went furthest, Russia and Germany, that this counter-revolution took the deepest and most barbarous forms: Stalinism and Nazism.

The immense strike of May ‘68 in France, then the Hot Autumn in Italy gave proof that the world proletariat was coming out of this period of counter-revolution. It was confirmed by the German workers' struggle of September 1969, and on a still more significant scale, by the struggle of the Polish workers on the Baltic during winter 1970-71, which obliged the authorities, after a brutal initial repression (300 deaths), to step back and abandon the price increases of basic goods that had provoked the workers' anger. The Stalinist regimes constituted the purest incarnation of the counter-revolution: it was in the name of "socialism" and of the "interests of the working class" that the latter suffered the worst terrors of all. The "hot" winter of the Polish workers proved that here, where the counter-revolution maintained its heaviest weight, i.e. in the "socialist" regimes, the class struggle was back on the agenda.

We can't enumerate all the workers' struggles that, after 1968, confirmed this fundamental change of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat at a world level. We will only give two examples, those of Spain and Britain.

In Spain, despite the ferocious repression exercised by the Francoist regime, workers' combativity expressed itself in a massive fashion during the year 1974. The town of Pamplona, in Navarre, saw a number of strike days per worker higher than that of the French workers of 1968. All industrial regions were hit (Madrid, Asturias, Basque Country) but it was in the immense workers' concentrations of Barcelona that strikes took their greatest extension, touching all the firms in the region, with exemplary manifestations of workers' solidarity (often, a strike unfolded in one factory solely in solidarity with the workers of other factories).

The example of the proletariat in Britain is equally very significant since this was the oldest proletariat in the world. Throughout the 1970s, it led massive conflicts against exploitation (with 29 million strike days in 1979, workers in Britain are in second place statistically behind workers in France in 1968). This combativity even obliged the British bourgeoisie to twice change Prime Minister: in April 1976 (Callaghan replaced Wilson) and, at the beginning of 1979 (Callaghan was toppled by Parliament).

Thus, the fundamental historical significance of May 1968 is neither found in "French specificities", nor in the student revolt, nor in a "moral revolution" that we are told about today. It is in the emergence of the world proletariat from the counter-revolution and its entry into a new historic period of confrontations against capitalist order. In this period, proletarian political currents, that previously had been eliminated or reduced to silence by the counter-revolution, began to develop - including the ICC.

The international resurgence of revolutionary forces

The ravages of the counter-revolution in the communist movement

At the beginning of the 20th century, during and after the First World War, the proletariat engaged in titanic battles. In 1917, it overthrew bourgeois power in Russia. Between 1918 and 1923, in the principal European country, Germany, it undertook numerous struggles in order to achieve the same aim. This revolutionary wave reverberated throughout the world wherever a developed working class existed, from Italy to Canada, from Hungary to China.

But the world bourgeoisie succeeded in containing this gigantic movement of the working class and it didn't stop there. It unleashed the most terrible counter-revolution in the whole history of the workers' movement. This counter-revolution took the form of an unimaginable barbarity, of which Stalinism and Nazism were the two most significant representatives, precisely in the countries where the revolution went furthest, Russia and Germany.

In this context, the Communist Parties that had been at the vanguard of the revolutionary wave were converted into parties of the counter-revolution.

When the socialist parties, faced with imperialist war in 1914, betrayed the working class, this gave rise to currents within these parties that were determined to pursue the defence of proletarian principles: these currents had been instrumental in the foundation of the communist parties. In turn, when the latter also betrayed, we saw the appearance of left fractions committed to the defence of real, communist positions. However, while those who had struggled within the socialist parties against their opportunist slide and betrayal had gained strength and a growing influence in the working class, to the point where they were able to found a new International after the Russian revolution, it was nothing like this for the left currents that came out of the communist parties, because of the growing weight of the counter-revolution. Thus, although at the beginning they regrouped a majority of the militants in the German and Italian parties, these currents progressively lost their influence in the class and the greater part of their militant forces, or were scattered into multiple small groups, as was the case in Germany even before the Hitler regime had exterminated them or sent the last militants into exile.

In fact, during the 1930s, aside from the current animated by Trotsky more and more eaten up by opportunism, the groups who continued to defend revolutionary positions, such as the Group des Communistes Internationalistes (GIC) in Holland (that advocated "Council Communism" and rejected the necessity for a proletarian party) and the Left Fraction of the Italian Communist Party (which published the review Bilan) only counted some dozens of militants and no longer had any influence over the course of the workers' struggle.

Contrary to the first, the Second World War didn't result in an overthrow of the balance of forces between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Quite the contrary. Learning from the historic experience and with the precious support of the Stalinist parties, the bourgeoisie was careful to kill at birth any new uprising of the proletariat. In the democratic euphoria of the "Liberation", the groups of the communist left were still more isolated than they were in the 1930s. In Holland, the Communistenbond Spartacus picked up from the GIC in the defence of councilist positions, positions that were equally defended from 1965 by Daad en Gedachte, a split from the Bond. These two groups did much publishing work although they were handicapped by the councilist position that rejected the role of an organisation of the avant-garde of the proletariat. However, the greatest handicap was from the ideological weight of the counter-revolution. This was also the case in Italy where the constitution in 1945, around Damen and Bordiga (two old militants of the Italian Left in the 1920s) of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (which published Battaglia Comunista and Prometeo), didn't fulfil the promise its militants expected. Although this organisation counted 3000 militants at its foundation, it progressively weakened, a victim of demoralisation and splits, notably the one in 1952 which led to the formation of the Parti Communiste International (which published Programma Comunista). The causes of these splits also lay in the confusion that reigned over the regroupment of 1945, which was made on the basis of the abandonment of a whole series of acquisitions elaborated by Bilan in the 1930s.

In France, the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF), which had been formed in 1945 in continuity with the positions of Bilan (but also integrating a certain number of programmatic positions of the German and Dutch Left) and which published 42 numbers of the review Internationalisme, disappeared in 1952. In the same country, outside of some elements attached to the Parti Communiste International, who published le Proletaire, another group defended class positions up until the 1960s with the review Socialisme ou Barbarie (SouB). But this group, coming out of a split from Trotskyism after the Second World War, progressively and explicitly abandoned marxism, which led to its disappearance in 1966.

We can also cite the existence of other groups in other countries. But what marked the situation of currents that continued to defend communist positions during the course of the 1950s and beginning of the 60s, was their extreme numerical weakness, the confidential character of their publications, their international isolation, as well as various political regressions. These led either to their disappearance pure and simple or into a sectarian withdrawal, as was notably the case with the Parti Communiste International that considered itself to be the only communist organisation in the world.

The renewal of revolutionary positions

The general strike of 1968 in France, then the different massive movements of the working class, which we've mentioned previously, put the idea of communist revolution, back on the agenda in numerous countries. The lie of Stalinism, which presented itself as "communist" and "revolutionary", had begun to fall apart. This evidently profited the currents who denounced the USSR as deviating from the ideals of the ‘Socialist Fatherland', such as the Maoists and Trotskyists. The Trotskyist movement, particularly because of its history of struggle against Stalinism, went through a second youth from 1968 and came out of the shadows cast up to then by the Stalinist parties. Its ranks were swollen in a spectacular fashion, notably in countries like France, Belgium and Britain. But since the Second World War this current had ceased to be part of the proletarian camp, above all because of its position on the defence of the alleged "workers' gains" in the USSR,  i.e. the defence of the imperialist camp dominated by this country. In fact, the workers' strikes that developed from the end of the 60s showed the anti-working class role of the Stalinist parties and the unions. They also showed the electoral and democratic farce as instruments of bourgeois domination and this led to numerous elements around the world turning towards political currents which, in the past, had most clearly denounced the role of the unions and parliamentarism and which had better incarnated the struggle against Stalinism - the currents of the communist left.

Following May 68, the writings of Trotsky were distributed massively. Also those of Pannekoek, Gorter[15] and Rosa Luxemburg who, shortly before her assassination in January 1919, was one of the first to warn her Bolshevik comrades of certain dangers that menaced the revolution in Russia.

New groups appeared that drew on the experience of the communist left. In fact, the elements who understood that Trotskyism had become a sort of left wing of Stalinism turned much more towards councilism than towards the Italian Left. There were several reasons for this. On one hand, the rejection of the Stalinist parties often accompanied the rejection of any idea of the communist party; and the fact that the Bordigist current (the sole descendent of the Italian Left that had any real international extension) defended the idea of the taking of power by the communist party and defended the idea of  "monolithism" in its own ranks, strengthening mistrust towards the historic current of the Italian Left. At the same time, the Bordigists completely overlooked the historic significance of May 68, seeing only the student dimension.

While new groups inspired by councilism began to appear, those who had existed beforehand experienced an unprecedented success, seeing their ranks strengthen in a spectacular fashion at the same time as being capable as acting as a pole of reference. This was particularly the case for the group Informations et Correspondances Ourvieres (ICO) coming out of a split from SouB in 1958. In 1969, this group organised an international meeting in Brussels attended by Cohn-Bendit, Mattick (an old militant of the German Left who had emigrated to the United States where he published diverse councilist reviews) and Carlo Brendel, animator of Daade en Gedachte. However, the success of "organised" councilism didn't last long. Thus, ICO pronounced its self-dissolution in 1974. The Dutch groups ceased to exist as their main animators grew too old or passed away.

In Britain, the group Solidarity, inspired by the positions of Socialisme ou Barbarie, after a success similar to that of the ICO, underwent a split and exploded in 1981 (although the group in London continued to publish a magazine up to 1992). In Scandinavia, the councilist groups which had emerged after 1968 were capable of organising a conference in Oslo in September 1977, but it didn't lead to much.

In the final account, the current which developed the most during the course of the 1970s was the one which attached itself to the positions of Bordiga (who died in July 1970). It benefited largely through an influx of elements coming out of the crises that had hit certain leftist groups (notably the Maoists) in this period. In 1980, the International Communist Party, was the most important and influential group of the communist left at the international level. But this opening out of the Bordigist current to elements strongly marked by leftism led to its explosion in 1982, reducing it to a myriad of small sects.

The beginning of the International Communist Current

In fact, the most significant long term expression of this renewal of positions of the communist left has been our own organisation.[16] It was first constituted 40 years ago, in July 1968 in Toulouse, with the adoption of a first declaration of our principles by a small group of elements who had formed a discussion circle the year beforehand with a comrade, RV, who had entered political life in the group Internacionalismo in Venezuela. This group had been founded in 1964 by Marc Chirik who had been the main animator of the Gauche Communiste de France (1945-52), after having been a member of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left from 1938 and having entered into militant life from 1919 (at the age of 12), first of all in the Palestinian Communist Party and then the French Communist Party.

During the general strike of May 1968, elements of the discussion circle published several leaflets signed Movement for the Founding of Workers Councils ((MICO) and undertook discussions with other elements which then finally formed the group that published Revolution Internationale from the end of September 1968. This group made contact and discussed with two other groups belonging to the councilist movement. One was l'Organisation conseilliste de Clermont-Ferrand and the other published Cahiers du communism de conseils and was  based in Marseilles.

Finally, in 1972, the three joined together in order to constitute what was going to become the section in France of the ICC and which began the publication of Revolution Internationale (new series).

This group, in continuity with the policy undertaken by Internacionalismo and Bilan, engaged in discussions with different groups who had appeared after 1968, notably in the United States (Internationalism). In 1972, Internationalism sent a letter to about twenty groups claiming links with the communist left, calling for the constitution of a network of correspondence and international debate. Revolution Internationale responded warmly to this initiative while proposing that the perspective should be of holding an international conference. Other groups belonging to the councilist movement also gave a positive response. For their part, groups claiming the heritage of the Italian Left were either deaf, or judged this initiative premature.

On the basis of this initiative several meetings took place between 1973 and 1974 in England and France,  involving World Revolution, Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers' Voice, the first two coming out breaks with Solidarity and the last coming out of a break with Trotskyism.

Finally, this cycle of meetings ended in January 1975 with the holding of a conference where the groups sharing the same political orientation - Internacionalismo, Internationalism, Revolution Internationale, World Revolution, Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy) and Accion Proletaria (Spain) - decided to unify within the International Communist Current.

The Current decided to pursue this policy of contacts and discussions with other groups of the communist left. This led it to participate in the 1977 Oslo conference (at the same time as Revolutionary Perspectives) and to respond favourably to the initiative launched in 1976 by Battaglia Comunista with a view to holding an international conference of groups of the communist left.

The three conferences that took place in 1977 (Milan), 1978 (Paris) and 1980 (Paris) aroused a growing interest among elements claiming links with the communist left but the decision by Battaglia Comunista and the Communist Workers' Organisation (coming out of a regroupment of Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers' Voice in Britain) to henceforth exclude the ICC sounded the death knell for this effort.[17] In a certain way, the sectarian closing up of BC and the CWO (who regrouped into the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party in 1984), at least towards the ICC, was an indication of the exhaustion of the initial impulsion given to communist left by the historical resurgence of the world proletariat after May 1968.

However, despite the difficulties that the working class has met these last decades, notably the ideological campaigns on the "death of communism" after the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, the world bourgeoisie has not succeeded in inflicting a decisive defeat on it. That is shown by the fact that the current of the communist left (represented principally by the IBRP[18] and above all by the ICC) has maintained its positions and is now experiencing a growing interest in them from elements who, with the slow reappearance of class combats since 2003, are turning towards a revolutionary perspective.

Fabienne (July 6 2008)

 

 

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[1]. International Review n° 133.

 

[2]1. French Communist Party

 

[3]. Confederation Generale du Travail. The most powerful main union, notably among the workers of industry and transport as well as public sector workers. The French Communist Party controls it.

 

[4]. Confederation francaise democratique du Travail. This main union was at first of Christian origins but at the beginning of the ‘60s, it rejected references to Christianity and was strongly influenced by the Socialist Party as well as by the small Unified Socialist Party (now disappeared).

 

[5]. Broadcaster of animation.

 

[6]. Sports commentator of unbridled nationalism.

 

[7]. The day after this speech, local authority workers in many areas announced that they would refuse to organise a referendum. Similarly, the authorities didn't know how to print the ballot papers: the national print works was on strike and private printers who weren't on strike refused: the bosses didn't want any more trouble from their own workers.

 

[8]. Georges Seguy was also a member of the political bureau of the PCF.

 

[9]. It was later learnt that Chirac, Secretary of State for Social Affairs, had also met (in a granary!) Krasucki, number two of the CGT.

 

[10]. Organisation armee secrete: a clandestine group of military and partisans for the maintenance of France in Algeria which showed itself at the beginning of the 60s through terrorist attacks, assassinations and even an attempt to assassinate de Gaulle.

 

[11]. Electricite de France: electrical supply company.

 

[12]. Compagnies republicaines de Securite: national police force specialising in the repression of street demonstrations.

 

[13]. Forces de la Gendarmerie nationale (ie, the army) having the same role as the CRS.

 

[14]. Revolution Internationale (old series)  n° 2, Spring 1969.

 

[15]. The two principal theoreticians of the Dutch Left.

 

[16]. For a more complete history of the ICC, read our articles "Construction of the revolutionary organisation: 20 years of the International Communist Current" (International Review n° 80) and "30 years of the ICC: learning from the past to build the future" (International Review n° 123).

 

[17]. Regarding these conferences see our article "The international conferences of the Communist Left (1976 - 1980) - Lessons of an experience for the proletarian milieu" in International Review n° 122.

 

[18]. The fact that the IBRP has grown less compared to that of the ICC is principally down to its sectarianism as well as its political opportunism regarding regroupment (which has led it to build on sand). On this subject see our article ‘An opportunist policy of regroupment that will only lead to ‘abortions'' (International Review n° 121).

 

In the first part of this series [65], published to mark the 90th anniversary of the proletarian revolutionary attempt in Germany, we examined the world historic context within which the revolution unfolded. This context was the catastrophe of World War I, and the failure of the working class and its political leadership to prevent its outbreak. Although the early years of the 20th century were marked by the first manifestations of a general tendency towards the development of mass strikes, apart from Russia, these movements were not yet powerful enough to undermine the weight of reformist illusions. As for the organised, internationalist workers movement, it turned out to be theoretically, organisationally and morally unprepared for a world war which it had long predicted would take place. Prisoner of its own schemas of the past, according to which the proletarian revolution would be the more or less inevitable  product of capitalist economic development, it had adopted as a kind of implicit assumption the idea that the primordial task of socialists was to avoid premature confrontations, passively allowing the objective conditions to ripen. With the exception of its revolutionary left opposition, the Socialist International failed - or refused - to take into account the possibility that the first act of the period of decline of capitalism would be world war rather than world economic crisis. Above all, by ignoring the signals of history, the urgency of the approaching alternative of socialism or barbarism, the International completely underestimated the subjective factor in history, in particular its own role and responsibility. The result was the bankruptcy of the International in the fact of the outbreak of war, and the chauvinistic frenzy of part of its leadership, in particular the trade unions. The conditions for the first attempt at a world wide proletarian revolution were thus determined by the relatively sudden and cataclysmic descent of capitalism into its phase of decadence, into world imperialist war, but also by an unprecedented catastrophic crisis of the workers movement.

It soon became clear that there could be no revolutionary response to war without the restoration of the conviction that proletarian internationalism is not a tactical issue, but the most "sacred" principle of socialism, the one and only "fatherland" of the working class (as Rosa Luxemburg put it). We thus saw, in the previous article, how Karl Liebknecht's public declaration against the war on May Day 1916 in Berlin, no less than the internationalist socialist conferences held during the same period, such as those at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and the widespread feelings of solidarity which they inspired, were indispensable turning points towards revolution. In the face of the horrors of the war in the trenches, and the pauperisation and intensified exploitation of the working masses on the "home front", wiping out all the acquisitions of decades of labour struggle at one go, we saw the development of the mass strike and the maturation of politicised layers and centres of the working class capable of leading a revolutionary assault. 

The responsibility of the proletariat to end the war

Understanding the causes of the failure of the socialist movement in face of war was thus the main concern of the previous article, just as it was a leading preoccupation of revolutionaries during the first phase of the war. This is clearly expressed in Rosa Luxemburg's Crisis of Social Democracy, also known as the "Junius Pamphlet". At the heart of the events dealt with in this second article, we find a second decisive question, a consequence of the first: Which social force will bring the war to an end, and in which manner?

Richard Müller, one of the leaders of the "revolutionary delegates", the Obleute in Berlin, and later one of the main historians of the revolution in Germany, formulated the responsibility of the revolution as being to prevent: "The foundering of culture, the liquidation of the proletariat and of the socialist movement as such".[1]

As was so often the case, it was Rosa Luxemburg who posed the world historic question of the day in the clearest manner. "What will be after the war, which conditions and which role await the working class, depends entirely on how peace comes about. Should it result merely from the mutual exhaustion of the military powers, or even - which would be worse - through the military victory of one of the warring sides, should it in other words come without the participation of the proletariat, with social calm within the different states, then such a peace would only seal the world historic defeat of socialism in war. (...) After the bankruptcy of the 4th August 1914, the second decisive test for the historic mission of the working class is as follows: Will it be able to end this war which it was unable to prevent, not to receive peace from the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie as the work of cabinet diplomacy, but to conquer it, to impose it on the bourgeoisie?"[2]

Here, Rosa Luxemburg describes three possible scenarios of how the war might come to an end. The first is the ruin and exhaustion of the warring imperialist parties on both sides. Here, she recognises from the outset the potential for the deadlock of capitalist competition in the epoch of its historic decline to lead to a process of rotting and disintegration - if the proletariat is unable to impose its own solution. This tendency towards the decomposition of capitalist society was to become fully manifest only decades later, with the "implosion" of the Russian led imperialist block and the Stalinist regimes in 1989, and the ensuing decline of the leadership of the remaining US American super-power. She already realised that such a dynamic is, in itself, not favourable to the development of a revolutionary alternative.

The second is that the war would be fought out to the bitter end, resulting in the total defeat of one of the two opposing blocks. In this case, the main result would be the inevitable cleavage within the victorious camp, producing a new line up for a second, even more destructive world war, which the working class would be even less able to oppose.

In both cases, the result would be not a momentary, but a world historic defeat of socialism for at least one generation, which might, in the long term, undermine the very possibility of a proletarian alternative to capitalist barbarism. Revolutionaries at that time already understood that the "Great War" had opened a process with the potential to undermine the confidence of the working class in its own historic mission. As such, the "crisis of social democracy" constituted a crisis of the human species as such, since only the proletariat is the bearer, within capitalism, of an alternative society.

The Russian Revolution and the mass strike of January 1918

How to end the imperialist war by revolutionary means? The eyes of the true socialists of the whole world were turned towards Germany for answers to this question. Germany was the main economic power of continental Europe, the leader - in fact the only major power - of one of the two contesting imperialist blocks. And it was the country with the largest number of educated, socialist trained, class conscious workers, who in the course of the war increasingly rallied to the cause of internationalist solidarity.

But the proletarian movement is international by nature. The first answer to the above question was given, not in Germany, but in Russia. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in world history. It helped to transform the situation in Germany as well. Until February 1917, with the beginning of the upheaval in Russia, the goal of the class conscious German workers was to develop the struggle to an extent obliging governments to sue for peace. Even within the Spartakusbund,[3] at the moment of its foundation on New Years Day 1916, nobody had believed in the possibility of an imminent revolution. In the light of the Russian experience, by April 1917 the clandestine revolutionary circles in Germany had come to the conclusion that the goal was not only to end the war, but in so doing to topple the whole regime. Soon, the victory of the revolution in Petrograd and Moscow in October 1917 clarified, for these circles in Berlin or Hamburg, not so much the goal as the means to that end: armed insurrection organised and led by the workers' councils.

Paradoxically, the immediate effect of Red October on the broad masses in Germany was something like the opposite. A kind of innocent euphoria about approaching peace broke out, based on the assumption that the German government could not but accept the hand of "peace without annexations" being reached out from the east. This reaction shows to what extent the propaganda of what had become the "socialist" war mongering party, the SPD - that the war had been foisted on an unwilling Germany - still held sway. As far as the popular masses were concerned, the turning point in the attitude towards the war induced by the Russian Revolution only came three months later, with the peace negotiations between Germany and Russia at Brest-Litovsk.[4] These negotiations were followed intensely by workers throughout Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Their result - the imperialist Diktat of Germany and its occupation of large parts of the western regions of what had become the Soviet Republic, savagely suppressing the revolutionary movements there in the process - convinced millions of the correctness of the slogan of Spartakus: the main enemy is "at home", it is the capitalist system itself. Brest gave rise to a gigantic mass strike, which began in Austria-Hungary, centred on Vienna. It immediately spread to Germany, paralysing economic life in over twenty major cities, with half a million workers on strike in Berlin. The demands were those of the soviet delegation at Brest: immediate ending of war, without annexations. The workers organised themselves through a system of elected delegations, by and large following the very concrete proposals of a leaflet of the Spartakusbund drawing the lessons from Russia. The eye-witness report of the SPD daily Vorwärts,  writing for the January 28th 1918 issue, described how the streets of Berlin had been deserted and shrouded in fog that morning, so that the outline of the buildings, indeed of the world seemed vague and distorted. When the masses took to the streets in silent determination, the sun came out and drove away the fog, the reporter wrote.

Divisions and divergences within the strike leadership

This strike gave rise to a debate within the revolutionary leadership about the immediate goals of the movement, but which increasingly touched the very heart of the question of how the proletariat could end the war. The main centre of gravity of this leadership lay at the time within the left wing of the social-democracy which, after being excluded from the SPD[5] because of its opposition to the war, formed a new party, the USPD (the "Independent" SPD). This party, which brought together most of the well known opponents to the betrayal of internationalism by the SPD - including many hesitant and wavering, more petty bourgeois than proletarian elements - also included a radical revolutionary opposition of its own, the Spartakusbund:  a fraction with its own structure and platform. Already in the summer and autumn of 1917 the Spartakusbund and other currents within the USPD began to call for protest demonstrations in response to mass discontent and growing enthusiasm for the revolution in Russia.  This orientation was opposed by the Obleute, the "revolutionary delegates" in the factories, whose influence was particularly strong in the armaments industry in Berlin. Pointing to the masses' illusions about the "will for peace" of the German government, these circles wanted to wait until discontent became more intense and generalised, and then give it expression in a single, unified mass action. When, during the first days of 1918, calls for a mass strike from factories all over Germany were reaching Berlin, the Obleute decided not to invite the Spartakusbund to the meetings where this central mass action was prepared and decided on. They feared that what they called the "activism" and "precipitation" of Spartakus - which in their eyes had become dominant in this group since its main theoretical mind, Rosa Luxemburg, had been sent to prison - could constitute a danger to the launching of a unified action throughout Germany. When the Spartakists found out about this, they launched a summons to struggle of their own, without waiting for the decision of the Obleute.

This mutual distrust then intensified in relation to the attitude to be adopted towards the SPD. When the trade unions discovered that a secret strike leadership committee had been constituted, which did not contain a single member of the SPD, the latter immediately began to clamour for representation. On the eve of the January 28 strike action, the majority at a clandestine meeting of factory delegates in Berlin voted against this. Nevertheless, the Obleute, who dominated the strike committee, decided to admit delegates of the SPD, arguing that the social-democrats were no longer in a position to prevent the strike, but that their exclusion would create a note of discord and thus undermine the unity of the coming action. Spartakus strongly condemned this decision.

The debate then came to a head in the course of the strike itself. In face of the elementary might of this action, the Spartakusbund began to plead for the intensification of the movement in the direction of civil war. The group believed that the moment might already have come to end the war by revolutionary means. The Obleute strongly opposed this, preferring to take responsibility themselves for an organised ending of the movement, once it had reached what they considered to be its culmination point. Their main arguments were that an insurrectional movement, even were it to succeed, would remain restricted to Berlin, and that the soldiers had not yet been won over to the side of the revolution.

The place of Russia and Germany in the world revolution

Behind this dispute about tactics lay two much more general and profound questions. One of them concerned the criteria for judging the ripeness of conditions for revolutionary insurrection. We will return to this question in the course of this series.

The other related to the role of the Russian proletariat in the world revolution. Could the toppling of bourgeois rule in Russia immediately inspire a revolutionary uprising in central and western Europe, or at least oblige the main imperialist protagonists to end the war?

The very same discussion took place in the Bolshevik Party in Russia, both on the eve of the October insurrection and on the occasion of the peace negotiations with the German imperial government at Brest-Litovsk. Within the Bolshevik Party, the opponents of signing any treaty with Germany, led by Bukharin, argued that the main motivation for the proletariat to take power in October 1917 in Russia was to trigger off the revolution in Germany and the west, and that to sign a treaty with Germany now would be tantamount to abandoning this orientation. Trotsky adopted an intermediary position of stalling for time which did not really resolve the problem. The proponents of the need to sign a treaty, such as Lenin, in no way contested the internationalist motivation of the October insurrection. What they contested was that the decision to seize power was based on the assumption that the revolution would immediately spread to Germany. On the contrary: the advocates of insurrection had pointed out at the time that the immediate extension of the revolution was not certain, and that the Russian proletariat was thus risking isolation and unheard of suffering by taking the initiative to begin the world revolution. Such a risk, Lenin in particular had argued, was justified, because what was at stake was the future, not only of the Russian but of the world proletariat; the future, not only of the proletariat, but of the whole of humanity. This decision should therefore be taken in full consciousness and in the most responsible manner. Lenin repeated these arguments in relation to Brest: the Russian proletariat was morally justified to sign even the most unfavourable treaty with the German bourgeoisie in order to gain time, since it was not certain that the German revolution would begin immediately.

Isolated from the world in her prison cell, Rosa Luxemburg intervened in this debate with three articles - "The Historical Responsibility", "Towards Catastrophe", and "The Russian Tragedy". Written in January, June and September 1918 respectively - which constitute three of the most important of the famous underground "Spartakus Letters". Here, she makes clear that neither the Bolsheviks nor the Russian proletariat could be blamed for the fact that they had been forced to sign a treaty with German imperialism. This situation was the result of the absence of the revolution elsewhere, above all in Germany. On this basis, she was able to identify the following tragic paradox: although the Russian Revolution was the highest peak conquered by humanity to date, and as such a turning point in history, its first immediate effect was not to shorten, but to prolong the horrors of world war. And this for the simple reason that it freed German imperialism from the obligation to wage war on two fronts.

If Trotsky believes in the possibility of an immediate peace under the pressure of the masses in the west, she writes in January 1918, "then we have to pour a lot of water into Trotsky's foaming wine". And she continues: "The first result of the cease-fire will only be that German troops will be transferred from the east to the west. In reality this is already taking place".[6] In June she drew a second conclusion from this dynamic: Germany had become the gendarme of the counter-revolution in eastern Europe, massacring the revolutionary forces from Finland to the Ukraine. Paralysed by this development, the proletariat was "acting dead". In September 1918 she then explains that the world war is threatening to engulf revolutionary Russia itself. "The iron circle of the world war, which seemed to have been broken in the east, is once again relentlessly encompassing the whole world: the Entente is advancing with Czech and Japanese troops from the north and east as a natural, inevitable consequence of Germany's offensive from the west and south. The flames of the world war are leaping across Russian soil and at any moment may engulf the Russian Revolution. To withdraw from the world war - even at the price of the greatest sacrifices - is something which, in the final analysis, it is simply impossible for Russia to do"[7]

Rosa Luxemburg clearly recognised that the immediate military advantage which Germany gained through the Russian Revolution would also, for some months, contribute to tipping the balance of class forces in Germany in favour of the bourgeoisie. Although the revolution in Russia inspired the German workers, although the "robbers peace" imposed by German imperialism after Brest robbed these workers of many of their illusions, it would take almost a year for this to mature into an open rebellion against imperialism.

The reason for this is connected to the specific nature of a revolution in the context of world war. The "Great War" of 1914 was not only slaughter on a scale never before witnessed; it was also the most gigantic organised economic, material and human operation in history hitherto seen. Literally millions of human beings, as well as all the resources of society, became cogs in an infernal machine, the very size of which defied human imagination. All of this gave rise to two intense feelings within the proletariat; hatred of war on the one hand, and a feeling of powerlessness on the other. Under such circumstances, it takes immeasurable sufferings and sacrifices before the working class can recognise that it alone is the force able to end war. Moreover, this process takes times and unfolds in an uneven, heterogeneous manner. Two of the most important aspects of this process are the recognition of the real, robber like motivations of the imperialist war effort, and of the fact that the bourgeoisie itself does not control the war machine, which as a product of capitalism has become independent of human will. In Russia 1917, as in Germany and Austria-Hungary 1918, the recognition that the bourgeoisie was not able to end the war even when it was heading for defeat, turned out to be decisive.

What Brest-Litovsk and the limits of the mass strikes in Germany and Austria-Hungary in January 1918 revealed was above all this: that the world revolution could be initiated in Russia, but that only a decisive proletarian action in one of the main belligerent countries - Germany, Britain or France - could put a stop to the war.

The race to end the war

Although the German proletariat was "playing dead" as Rosa Luxemburg put it, it's class consciousness continued to mature during the first half of 1918. Moreover, from the summer of that year on, the soldiers began for the first time to become seriously infected by the bacillus of revolution. Two factors in particular contributed to this. In Russia, the German rank and file prisoners of war were freed and given the choice of remaining in Russia to participate in the revolution, or returning to Germany. Those who chose the latter were of course immediately sent back to the front as cannon fodder by the German army. But they carried the news of the Russian Revolution with them. In Germany itself, thousands of leaders of the January mass strike were punished by being sent to the front, where they carried the news of the growing working class revolt against the war. But it was the growing recognition of the futility of the war and the inevitability of the defeat of Germany that was decisive in changing the mood in the army.

With the autumn of that year there thus began something which only a few months beforehand would have seen unthinkable: A race against time between the class conscious workers on the one hand, and the leaders of the German bourgeoisie on the other, to determine which of the two great classes of modern society would put an end to this war.

On the side of the German ruling class, two major problems within its own ranks had initially to be resolved. One of them was the complete inability of many of its main representatives to even conceive of the possibility of the defeat that was staring them in the face. The other was how to sue for peace without irreparably discrediting the very heart of its own state apparatus. Concerning this latter question, we have to keep in mind that in Germany the bourgeoisie was brought to power, and the country unified, not by a revolution from below, but through the military, first and foremost the royal Prussian army. How to admit defeat without putting in question this pillar and symbol of national strength and unity?

September 15: the western allies broke through the Austrian-Hungarian front in the Balkans.

September 27: Bulgaria, an important ally of Berlin, capitulated.

September 29: The commander in chief of the German army, Erich Ludendorff, informed the high command that the war was lost, that it was only a matter of days or even hours before the whole military front collapsed.

In fact, the description Ludendorff gave of the immediate situation on the front was somewhat exaggerated. We do not know if he himself fell into panic, or if he deliberately painted a picture blacker than reality in order to have the German leadership accept his proposals. At all events, his proposals were accepted: capitulation and the instalment of a parliamentary government.

With this course of action, Ludendorff wanted to forestall a total German defeat, and to take the wind out of the sails of revolution. But he had an additional aim. He wanted the capitulation to be declared by a civilian government, so that the military could continue to deny its defeat in public. He was preparing the terrain for the Dolchstosslegende, the myth of the "stab in the back", according to which a victorious German army was vanquished by a treacherous enemy behind the lines. But this enemy, the proletariat, could not of course be mentioned by name. This would only cement the growing abyss separating bourgeois and proletariat. For this reason, a scapegoat had to be found, to be blamed for "misleading" the workers. Given the specific history of western civilisation in the past two thousand years, the most suitable victim of such a scape-goating was close at hand: the Jews. It was thus that anti-Semitism, already on the rise, above all in the Russian Empire, in the years before the great war, returned to the centre stage of European politics. The road to Auschwitz begins here.

October 1st 1918: Ludendorff and Hindenburg demanded an immediate peace offer to the Entente.[8] At the same moment, a national conference of the most intransigent revolutionary groups, the Spartakusbund and the Bremen Left, called for reinforced agitation among the soldiers, and for the formation of workers' councils. By this time, hundreds of thousands of army deserters were on the run behind the front. And, as the revolutionary Paul Frölich was later to write (in his biography of Rosa Luxemburg), there was a new attitude of the masses which could be seen in their eyes.

Within the camp of the bourgeoisie, the efforts to end the war were held up by two new factors. For one thing, none of the ruthless leaders of the German state, who never hesitated to send millions of their own "subjects" to certain and senseless death, had the courage to inform the Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, that he would have to renounce his throne. For another, the opposing side in the imperialist war, kept thinking of new excuses to postpone a ceasefire, since they were not yet convinced of the immediate likelihood of revolution and of the danger this posed to their own rule. The bourgeoisie was losing time.

But none of this prevented it from preparing the bloody repression of the revolutionary forces. In particular, it had already chosen those parts of the army which, returning from the front, could be used to occupy the main cities.

Within the camp of the proletariat, revolutionaries more and more intensely prepared an armed rising to end the war. The Obleute in Berlin initially fixed November 4, and then November 11 as the day of insurrection.

But in the meantime, events took a turn, which neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat had expected, and which had a profound influence on the course of the revolution.

Mutiny in the navy, dissolution of the army.

In order to fulfil the conditions for a ceasefire stipulated by its war opponents, the government in Berlin stopped all navy military operations, in particular submarine warfare, on the 20th of October. A week later it declared its willingness to agree a cease-fire without conditions.

In the face of this beginning of the end, officers of the war fleet on the north German coast went mad. Or rather, the madness of their age old caste - defence of honour, the tradition of the duel, of demanding or granting "satisfaction," was brought to the surface by the madness of modern imperialist war. Behind the backs of their own government, they decided to embark with the war fleet for the great sea battle against the British Navy which they had been awaiting in vain throughout the war. They preferred to die in honour rather than surrender without a battle. They assumed that the sailors and crew - 80,000 lives in all - under their command would be ready to follow them.[9]

This however was not the case. The crew mutinied against the mutiny of their commanders. At least some of them did. During one dramatic moment, ships which had been taken over by their crews, and ships where this was not (yet) the case, had their guns targeted against each other. Then the mutinous crews surrendered, probably to avoid shooting at their own colleagues.

But this was not yet what triggered off the revolution in Germany. What was decisive was that part of the arrested crew were brought as prisoners to Kiel, where they were likely to be condemned to death as traitors. The other sailors, who had not had the courage to join in the original rebellion at high sea, now fearlessly expressed their solidarity with their colleagues. But above all, the whole working class of Kiel came out in solidarity, fraternising with the sailors. The Social Democrat Gustav Noske, sent to mercilessly crush the uprising, arrived in Kiel on November 4 to find the city in the hands of armed workers, sailors and soldiers. Moreover, mass delegations had already left Kiel in all directions to summons the population to revolution, knowing full well that they had crossed a threshold after which there was no way back: Victory or certain death. Noske was completely taken aback, both by the speed of events, and by the fact that the rebels of Kiel greeted him as a hero.[10]

Under the hammer blows of these events, the mighty German military machine finally disintegrated. The divisions flooding back from Belgium, which the government planned to use to "restore order" in Cologne, deserted.

On the evening of the 8th of November, all eyes were turned towards Berlin, the seat of government, and the point where the main armed forces of the counter-revolution were concentrated. It was rumoured that the decisive battle would be fought in the capital the following day.

Richard Müller, leader of the Obleute in Berlin, later recalled. "On November 8th I stood at Hallisches Tor.[11] Heavily armed infantry and machine gun columns and light field artillery were being moved in endless rows towards the city centre. The human material seemed to consist of cut-throats. It had been used with "success" already to crush the Russian workers and peasants, and in Finland. There was no doubting that it was intended to use them in Berlin to drown the revolution in blood." Müller goes on to describe how the SPD was sending out messages to all of its functionaries, instructing them to oppose the outbreak of the revolution by all means. He continues. "Since the outbreak of the war I had been at the head of the revolutionary movement.

Never, even in face of the worst setbacks, had I ever doubted the victory of the proletariat. But now, as the decisive hour approached, I was gripped by a feeling of apprehension, a great worry about my class comrades, the proletariat. I myself, in face of the greatness of the hour, felt myself to me shamefully small and weak."[12]

The November Revolution: the proletariat ends the war

It has often been claimed that the German proletariat, on account of the culture of obedience and submission which, for historic reasons, dominated the culture in particular of the ruling classes of that country for several centuries, is incapable of revolution. The 9th of November 1918 disproves this. On the morning of that day, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from the great working class districts which encircle the government and business quarters on three sides, moved towards the city centre. They planned their routes to pass the main military barracks on their way to try and win over the soldiers, and the main prisons, where they intended to liberate their comrades. They were armed with guns, rifles and hand grenades. And they were prepared to die for the cause of the revolution. Everything was planned on the spot and spontaneously.

That day, only 15 people were killed. The November Revolution in Germany was as bloodless as the October Revolution in Russia. But nobody knew or even expected this in advance. The proletariat of Berlin showed great courage and unswerving determination that day.

Midday. The SPD leaders Ebert and Scheidemann were sitting in the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, eating their soup. Friedrich Ebert was proud of himself, having just been summoned by the rich and the nobles to form a government to save capitalism. When they heard noises outside, Ebert, refusing to allow a mob to interrupt him, silently continued his meal. Scheidemann, accompanied by functionaries who were afraid the building was going to be stormed, stepped out on the balcony to see what was going on. What he saw was something like a million demonstrators on the lawns between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. A crowd which fell silent when it saw Scheidemann on the balcony, thinking he had come to make a speech. Obliged to improvise, he declared the "free German republic". When he got back to tell Ebert what he had done, the latter was furious, since he had been intending to save not only capitalism, but even the monarchy.[13]

Around the same moment the real socialist Karl Liebknecht was standing on the balcony of the palace of that very monarchy, declaring the socialist republic, and summoning the proletariat of all countries to world revolution. And a few hours later, the revolutionary Obleute occupied one of the main meeting rooms in the Reichstag. There, they formulated the appeals for delegates to be elected in mass assemblies the next day, to constitute revolutionary workers and soldiers councils.

The war had been brought to an end, the monarchy toppled. But the rule of the bourgeoisie was still far from being over.

After the victory: civil war

At the beginning of this article, we recalled the stakes of history as formulated by Rosa Luxemburg, concentrated in the question: which class would end the war? We recalled the three possible scenarios for the war to be ended: by the proletariat, by the bourgeoisie, or by mutual exhaustion of the warring parties. The events show clearly that in the end, it was the proletariat which played the leading role in ending the "Great War". This fact alone illustrates the potential might of the revolutionary proletariat. It explains why the bourgeoisie to this very day shrouds in silence the November Revolution of 1918.

But this is not the whole story. To a certain extent, the events of November combined the three scenarios depicted by Rosa Luxemburg. To a certain extent, these events were also the product of the military defeat of Germany. By the beginning of November 1918 it really was on the verge of total military defeat. Ironically, only the proletarian uprising spared the German bourgeoisie the fate of military occupation, obliging the Allies to call a halt to the war to prevent the spreading of the revolution.

November 1918 also revealed elements of "mutual ruin" and exhaustion, above all in Germany, but also in Britain and France. In fact it was only the intervention of the United States on the side of the Western allies from 1917 onwards which tipped the scales in their favour, and opened a way out of the lethal deadlock in which the great European powers were trapped.

If we mention the role of these other factors, it is not in order to minimise the role of the proletariat. They are important to take into consideration because they help to explain the character of events. The November Revolution gained victory as an irresistible force. But this was also because German imperialism had already lost the war, because its army was in full decomposition, and because not only the working class, but broad sectors of the petty bourgeoisie and even the bourgeoisie now wanted peace.

On the day after its great triumph, the population of Berlin elected workers' and soldiers' councils. These in turn appointed, alongside their own organisation, what was considered to be a kind of provisional socialist government formed by the SPD and the USPD under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert. That same day, Ebert sealed a secret agreement with the new military leadership to crush the revolution.

In the next article, we will examine the forces of the revolutionary vanguard in the context of the beginning of the civil war and on the eve of the decisive events of the world revolution.

Steinklopfer, July 2008.

---

[1]. Richard Müller: Vom Kaiserreich Zur Republik ("From Empire To Republic"),  Part I of his trilogy on the German Revolution.

 

[2]. Rosa Luxemburg: "Liebknecht". Spartakusbriefe N°1. September 1916.  In German: Luxemburg Werke Vol. 4, p. 216, 217.

 

[3]. The Spartakusbund began as a tiny illegal grouping founded amongst others by Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring. It published the illegal Spartakusbriefe (Spartacus letters) and was to provide the nucleus of the KPD founded at the end of the war.

 

[4]. The Brest-Litovsk treaty was signed on 3rd March 1918 between Germany and its allies, and the new Soviet Republic. The negotiations lasted three months. See also our article "The communist left in Russia, 1918-1930" in International Review n°8.

 

[5]. The German Socialist Party which had supported participation in the war.

 

[6]. "Die geschichtliche Verantwortung" ("The historic responsibility") in Luxemburg Werke Vol. 4, p. 375.

 

[7]. "The Russian Tragedy" in Rosa Luxemburg, Selected political writings (Jonathan Cape, 1972).

 

[8]. The Franco-British alliance, so-called from the "Entente cordiale" which was a series of agreements signed on 8th April 1904 between the United Kingdom and France.

 

[9]. The Kamikaze actions of the Japanese air force in World War I, and the suicide bombing of Islamic fundamentalists thus have their European predecessors.

 

[10]. See the analysis of these events by the German historian Sebastian Haffner in: 1918/19, Eine deutsche Revolution  (1918/19, a German Revolution).

 

[11]. Overhead and underground station of the Berlin public transport system, to the south of the city centre.

 

[12]. Richard Müller "Vom Kaiserreich Zur Republik" p. 143.

 

[13]. Anecdotes of this kind, from inside the camp of the counter-revolution, can be found in the memoirs of leading Social Democrats of the hour.  Philipp Scheidemann: Memoiren eines Sozialdemokraten. ("Memoirs of a Social Democrat"). 1928. Gustav Noske: Von Kiel bis Kapp - Zur Geschichte der deutschen Revolution. ("From Kiel to Kapp - On the History of the German Revolution"). 1920.

 

In the first part of this series [66] , we looked at the pattern of world wars, revolutions, and global economic crises that are the manifestations of capitalism's entry into its epoch of decline in the early part of the 20th century, and which have posed mankind with the historic alternative: the advent of a higher mode of production or a relapse into barbarism. But to understand the origins and causes of the crisis facing human civilisation, only a theory that encompasses the entire movement of history will suffice. But general theories of history are no longer much in favour among official historians, who, as the epoch of capitalism's decline unfolded, have been increasingly at a loss to offer any overview, any real insight into the sources of the spiral of catastrophes that have marked this period. Grand historical visions are frequently dismissed as the province of 19th century German idealist philosophers like Hegel, or over-optimistic English liberals who, in the same era, developed the idea of history as a continuous story of progress from darkness and tyranny to the marvellous freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the modern constitutional state.

In fact this incapacity even to consider the historical movement as a whole is characteristic of a class which no longer stands for historical progress and whose social system can offer no future to humanity. The bourgeoisie could look back, and forward, on a large scale, when it was convinced that its mode of production represented a fundamental advance for humanity in comparison to previous social forms, and when it could regard the future with the increasing confidence of an ascendant class. The horrors of the first half of the 20th century dealt a death-blow to this confidence. Not only did symbolic place-names like the Somme and Paschendale, where tens of thousands of young conscripts were butchered in the First World War, or Auschwitz and Hiroshima, synonymous with the mass murder of civilians by the state, or equally symbolic dates like 1914, 1929 and 1939, call into question all prior assumptions about progress, above all at the moral level; they also alarmingly suggested that the present order of society might not be as eternal as it had once seemed. In sum, faced with the prospect of its demise - either through the collapse of its order into anarchy or, which for the bourgeoisie amounts to the same thing, through its overthrow by the revolutionary working class - bourgeois historiography prefers to put on blinkers, losing itself in the narrow empiricism of brief time-spans and local events, or to develop theories like relativism and post-modernism, which reject any notion of a progressive development from one epoch to another and any attempt to uncover a pattern of development in human history. Furthermore, this repression of historical consciousness is reinforced every day in the sphere of popular culture, reinforced by the desperate needs of the market: everything of value must be now and new, coming from nowhere and going nowhere.

Given the small-mindedness of much of the established learning, it is little wonder that so many of those who still pursue the quest to grasp the pattern of history as a whole are seduced by the snake-oil salesmen of religion and occultism. Nazism was an early manifestation of this trend - a farrago of occultist theosophy, pseudo-Darwinism, and racist conspiracy theory which offered a catch-all solution to all the world's problems, effectively removing any further need for thought. Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, or the numerous conspiracy theories about the secret societies who manipulate history, play the same role today. Official bourgeois reason not only fails to offer any answers to the problems of the social sphere - it has largely given up even asking the questions, leaving the field free for unreason to cook up its own mythological solutions.

The ruling wisdom is to some extent aware of all this. It is prepared to recognise that it has indeed suffered a loss of its old self-confidence. Rather than positively singing the praises of liberal capitalism as the finest achievement of the human spirit, it now tends to portray it as the best of a bad bunch, flawed certainly, but greatly preferable to all the forms of fanaticism that appear to be arrayed against it. And in the camp of the fanatics it not only ranges fascism or Islamic terrorism, but also marxism, now definitively refuted as a brand of utopian messianism. How many times have we been told, usually by third-rate thinkers who have the air of saying something new: the marxist view of history is merely an inversion of the Judaeo-Christian myth of history as a story of salvation; primitive communism is the Garden of Eden, future communism the paradise to come; the proletariat is the Chosen People or the Suffering Servant; the communists are the prophets. But we are also told that these religious projections are far from harmless: the reality of "marxist rule" has shown where all such attempts to realise heaven on earth must end up: in tyranny and labour camps, the mad project to mould imperfect mankind to its vision of perfection.  

And indeed, to support this analysis, we have the apparent trajectory of marxism in the 20th century: who can deny that Stalin's GPU reminds us of the Holy Inquisition, or that Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other Great Leaders have been turned into new gods? But this evidence is deeply flawed. It rests upon the greatest perjury of the century: that Stalinism equals communism, when in fact it is its total negation. If Stalinism is indeed a form of the capitalist counter-revolution, as all genuinely revolutionary marxists hold, then the argument that the marxist theory of history must lead inevitably towards the Gulag must be put into question.

And we can also respond, as Engels did in his writings on the early history of Christianity, that there is nothing strange about the similarities between the ideas of the modern workers' movement and the sayings of the Biblical prophets or the early Christians, because the latter also represented the strivings of oppressed and exploited classes and their hopes for a world based on human solidarity instead of class domination. Because of the limitations imposed by the social systems in which they appeared, these early communists could not go beyond a religious or mythic vision of the classless society. This is no longer the case today, because historical evolution has made communist society a rational possibility as well as an urgent necessity. Thus rather than viewing modern communism in the light of old myths, we can understand old myths in the light of modern communism.

For us, marxism, historical materialism, is nothing if not the theoretical outlook of a class which, for the first time in history, is both an exploited class and a revolutionary class, a class which carries a new and higher social order in itself. Its effort and indeed its need to examine the pattern of the past and the perspectives for the future can thus be unclouded by the prejudices of a ruling class, which is always, in the end, compelled to deny and obscure reality in the interests of its system of exploitation. Marxist theory is also, in contrast to the poetical strivings of previous exploited classes, founded on a scientific method. It may not be an exact science in the same category as some of the natural sciences, because it cannot shrink humanity and its vastly complex history into a series of repeatable laboratory experiments - but then the theory of evolution is also subject to similar constraints. The point is that marxism alone is capable of applying the scientific method to the study of the existing social order and to the social orders that preceded it, rigorously using the best scholarship that the ruling class can offer but going beyond them and adumbrating a higher synthesis.

Preface to the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy

In 1859, while deeply involved in the work that would give rise to Capital, Marx wrote a brief text that gives a masterly summary of his entire historical method. It was in the Preface to a work called Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, a work which in itself was largely superseded or at least overshadowed by the appearance of Capital. Having given us a condensed account of the development of his thought from his first studies in law to his present preoccupation with political economy, Marx comes to the nub of the matter - the "guiding principles of my studies". Here the marxist theory of history is summarised with masterly precision and clarity. We therefore intend to examine this passage as closely as possible in order to lay the bases for a real understanding of the epoch in which we are living.                    

We have included the most crucial passage from this text in full as an appendix to this article, but from here we intend to look in detail at each of its component parts. 

Relations of production and forces of production

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life"

Marxism is frequently caricatured by its critics, conventionally bourgeois or pseudo-radical, as a mechanistic, "objectivist" theory which seeks to reduce the complexity of the historical process to a series of iron laws over which human subjects have no control and which drags them like a juggernaut to a fatefully determined ultimate result. When not being told that it is another form of religion, we are informed that marxist thought is a typical product of the 19th century's uncritical worship of science and its illusions in progress, which sought to apply the predictable, verifiable laws of the natural world - physical, chemical, biological - to the fundamentally unpredictable patterns of social life. Marx is then portrayed as the author of a theory of inevitable and linear evolution from one mode of production to another, leading inexorably from primitive society, through slavery, feudalism and capitalism to communism. And this entire process is all the more predetermined because it is supposedly caused by a purely technical development of the productive forces.

As with all caricatures, there is a grain of truth in this picture. It's true, for example, that during the period of the Second International, when there was a growing tendency for the workers' parties to become "institutionalised", there was an equivalent process at the theoretical level, a vulnerability to the dominant conceptions of progress and a certain tendency to envisage "science" as a thing in itself, detached from the real class relations in society. Kautsky's idea of scientific socialism as an invention of the intellectuals which then had to be injected into the proletarian mass was one expression of this tendency.  It is even more the case that, in the 20th century, when so much of what had once been marxism now became an open apology for the capitalist order, mechanistic visions of historical progress now became officially codified. There is no clearer demonstration of this than in Stalin's primer of "Marxism-Leninism", the History of the CPSU (Short Course) where the theory of the primacy of the productive forces is put forward as the materialist view of history:

"The second particularity of production is that its changes and its development always begin with changes and developments in the productive forces and, above all, the instruments of production. The productive forces are, consequently, the most dynamic and revolutionary element in production. First, the productive forces of society modify themselves and develop; then, in relation to and in conformity with these modifications, the relations of production between men, the economic relations, are also modified".

This conception of the primacy of the productive forces coincided very neatly with the fundamental project of Stalinism: to "develop the productive forces" of the USSR at the expense of the proletariat and with the aim of making Russia a major world power. It was entirely in Stalinism's interest to present the piling up of heavy industrial plant that took place during the 1930s as so many steps towards communism, and to prevent any inquiry into the underlying social relationship behind this "development" - the ferocious exploitation of the class of wage labourers, in other words, the extraction of surplus value with a view to the accumulation of capital.  

For Marx, this whole approach is negated by the first lines of the Communist Manifesto, which presents the class struggle as the dynamic force in historical evolution, in other words, the struggle between different social classes ("freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman") over the appropriation of surplus labour. It is negated no less plainly in the opening lines of our citation from the Preface: "in the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations..." It is human beings of flesh and blood who "enter into definite relations",  who make history, not "forces of production",  not machines, even if there is necessarily a close connection between the relations of production and the productive forces that are "appropriate" to them. As Marx puts it in another famous passage from the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past".

Note carefully: in conditions not of their own choosing; men enter into definite relations "independent of their will". So far, at least. Under the conditions which have predominated in all hitherto existing forms of society, the social relations which human beings form among themselves have been more or less unclear to them, more or less clouded by mythological and ideological representations; and by the same token, with the advent of class society, the forms of wealth that men engender through these relations tend to elude them, to become an alien force standing above them. In this view, human beings are not passive products of their environment or of the tools that they produce to satisfy their needs, but at the same time they are not yet masters of their own social forces or of the products of their own labour.

Social being and social consciousness

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness... In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production".

In sum, men make history, but not yet in full consciousness of what they are doing. Hence, when studying historical change, we cannot content ourselves with studying the ideas and beliefs of an epoch, or with examining the modifications in the systems of government or law; to grasp how these ideas and systems evolve, it is necessary to go to the fundamental social conflicts that lie behind them.   

Again: this approach to history does not dismiss the active role of consciousness, of belief and of legal/political formations, their real impact on the social relations and the development of the productive forces. For example, the ideology of the slave-holding class of antiquity was one in which labour was held in utter contempt, and this attitude played a direct part in preventing the very considerable scientific advances made by Greek thinkers from translating itself into the practical development of science, into the invention and actual putting into general operation of tools and techniques that would have increased the productivity of labour. But the underlying reality behind this barrier was the slave mode of production itself: it was the existence of slavery at the heart of classical society's creation of wealth which was the source of the slaveholder's contempt for labour and their understanding that if you wanted to increase the surplus product, you had to supply more slaves.

In later writings, Marx and Engels had to defend their theoretical approach from both open critics and misguided supporters who interpreted the dictum that "social being determines social consciousness" in the crudest possible way, for example, by pretending that it meant that all members of the bourgeoisie were fatally determined to think in one way because of their economic position in society, or even more absurdly, that all members of the proletariat are bound to have a clear consciousness of their class interests because they are subject to exploitation. Such reductionist attitudes were precisely what led Marx to claim that "I am not a Marxist". There are numerous reasons why, among the working class as it exists in the "normality" of capitalism, only a minority recognise their real class situation: not only differences in individual histories and psychologies, but, more fundamentally, the active role played by the dominant ideology in preventing the dominated from grasping their own class interests - a dominant ideology which has a far longer history and effect than the immediate propaganda of the ruling class, since it is deeply internalised in the minds of the exploited "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living", as Marx phrased it straight after the passage from the 18th Brumaire about men making history in conditions not of their choosing.  

In fact, Marx's comparison between the ideology of an epoch and what an individual thinks about himself, far from expressing Marx's reductionism, actually shows a psychological depth: it would be a poor psychoanalyst who showed no interest in what a patient was telling him about his feelings and convictions, but it would be an equally poor one who stopped short at the patient's immediate awareness of himself, ignoring the complexity of hidden and unconscious elements in his overall psychological profile. The same goes for the history of ideas or "political" history. They can tell us much about what was happening in a past epoch, but in themselves they only give us a distorted reflection of reality. Hence Marx's rejection of all historical approaches which remain at the surface appearance of events:

"In the whole conception of history up to the present this real basis of history has either been totally neglected or else considered as a minor matter quite irrelevant to the course of history. History must, therefore, always be written according to an extraneous standard; the real production of life seems to be primeval history, while the truly historical appears to be separated from ordinary life, something extraterrestrial. With this the relation of man to nature is excluded from history and hence the antithesis of nature and history is created. The exponents of this conception of history have consequently only been able to see in history the political actions of princes and States, religious and all sorts of theoretical struggles, and in particular in each historical epoch have had to share the illusion of that epoch. For instance, if an epoch imagines itself to be actuated by purely "political" or "religious" motives, although "religion" and "politics" are only forms of its true motives, the historian accepts this opinion. The "idea," the "conception" of the people in question about their real practice, is transformed into the sole determining, active force, which controls and determines their practice. When the crude form in which the division of labour appears with the Indians and Egyptians calls forth the caste-system in their State and religion, the historian believes that the caste-system is the power which has produced this crude social form".[1]

Epochs of social revolution

We now come to the passage from the Preface that most clearly leads to an understanding of the present historical phase in the life of capitalism:  "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal term - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."

Here again Marx shows that the active element in the historical process is the social relationships that human begins enter into to produce the necessities of life. Looking back over the movement from one social form to another, it becomes evident that there is constant dialectic between periods in which these relations give rise to a real development of the productive forces, and periods in which these same relations become a barrier to further development. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels showed that capitalist relations of production, emerging out of decaying feudal society, acted as a profoundly revolutionary force, sweeping away all the stagnant, static forms of social and economic life that stood in its way. The necessity to compete and produce as cheaply as possible compelled the bourgeoisie to constantly revolutionise the forces of production; the ceaseless necessity to find new markets for its commodities forced it to invade the whole globe and create a world in its image.

In 1848, capitalist social relations were clearly a "form of development", and they had as yet only established themselves firmly in one or two countries. However, the violence of the economic crises of the first quarter of the 19th century initially led the authors of the Manifesto to conclude that capitalism had already become a fetter on the development of the productive forces, placing the communist revolution (or at least a rapid transition from bourgeois to proletarian revolution) on the immediate agenda.

"In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them".[2]

With the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and the enormous expansion of world capitalism that got underway in the ensuing period, they were to revise this view, even if they could still understandably be impatient for the advent of the long-awaited era of social revolution, the day of reckoning for the arrogant order of world capital. But what is central to this approach is the basic method: the recognition that a social order could not be swept away until it had definitively entered into conflict with the development of the productive forces, precipitating the whole society into a crisis which was not a momentary one, not a crisis of youth, but an entire "era" of crisis, of convulsion, of social revolution; in other words, a crisis of decadence.    

In 1858, Marx again returned to this question: "The proper task of bourgeois society is the creation of the world market, at least in outline, and of the production based on that market. Since the world is round, the colonisation of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan would seem to have completed this process. For us, the difficult question is this: on the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character. Will it not necessarily be crushed in this little corner of the earth, since the movement of bourgeois society is still, in the ascendant over a far greater area?"[3]

What's interesting about this passage is precisely the questions it poses: what are the historic criteria for determining the passage to an epoch of social revolution under capitalism? Can there be a successful communist revolution as long as capitalism is still a globally expanding system? Marx was premature in thinking that the revolution was imminent in Europe. In fact, in a letter to Vera Zasulich about the problem of Russia, written in 1881, he again seems to have modified his view: "the capitalist system is past its prime in the West, approaching the time when it will be no more than a regressive social regime".[4] Thus over 20 years later than 1858, the system is still only "approaching" its "regressive" period even in the advanced countries. Again, these express the difficulties Marx faced given the historic situation in which he lived. As it turned out, capitalism still had before it one last phase of real global development, the phase of imperialism, which would also usher in a period of convulsions on a world scale, indicating that the system as a whole, and not simply one part of it, had plunged into its crisis of senility. However, Marx's preoccupations in these letters show how seriously he took the problem of basing a revolutionary perspective on deciding whether or not capitalism had reached this stage.   

Abandoning outworn tools: the necessity for periods of decadence

"No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

"Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation."

In this next passage, Marx further stresses the importance of basing a perspective for social revolution not on the purely moral abhorrence inspired by a system of exploitation, but on its inability to develop the productivity of labour and, in general, the capacity of human beings to satisfy their material needs.

The argument that a society never expires until it has worn out all capacity for development has been used to argue against the idea that capitalism has reached its period of decadence: capitalism has clearly grown since 1914 and we can't say it is decadent until all growth ceases.  It's true that a great deal of confusion has been caused by theories such as Trotsky's in the 1930s, who asserted that the productive forces had ceased to grow. Given that capitalism was in the throes of its greatest ever depression at the time, this view seemed plausible; furthermore, the idea that decadence is marked by a complete halt in the development of the productive forces, and even a regression, can to some extent be applied to previous class societies where the crisis was always the result of underproduction, an absolute inability to produce enough to sustain society's basic needs (and even in those systems, the process of "descent" was never without phases of apparent recovery and even vigorous growth). But the basic problem with this view is that it ignores the fundamental reality of capitalism - the necessity for growth, for accumulation, for the expanded reproduction of value. As we shall see, in the system's decadence, this necessity can only be met by tampering more and more with the very laws of capitalist production, but as we shall also see, the point will probably never be reached when capitalist accumulation becomes absolutely impossible. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in The Anticritique, such a point was "a theoretical fiction, because capital accumulation is not just an economic but also a political process".[5]  Furthermore, Marx had already posited the notion of growth as decay: "The highest development of this basis itself (the flower into which it transforms itself; but it is always this basis, this plant as flower; hence wilting after the flowering and as a consequence of the flowering) is the point at which it is itself worked out, developed, into the form in which it is compatible with the highest development of the forces of production, hence also the richest development of individuals. As soon as this point is reached, the further development appears as decay, and the new development begins from a new basis".[6]

Capitalism has certainly developed sufficient productive forces for a new and higher mode of production to arise. In fact from the moment the material conditions for communism have been developed, the system enters into decline. By creating a world economy - fundamental for communism - capitalism also reached the limits of its healthy development. The decadence of capitalism is thus not to be identified with a complete cessation of production, but by a growing series of convulsions and catastrophes which demonstrate the absolute necessity for its overthrow. 

Marx's main point here is the necessity for a period of decadence. Men do not make revolutions for mere pleasure, but because they are obliged by necessity, by the intolerable suffering brought about by the crisis of a system. By the same token, attachment to the status quo is deeply rooted in their consciousness, and it can only be the growing conflict between that ideology and the material reality they face that will lead men to challenge the prevailing system. This is above all true for the proletarian revolution, which for the first time requires a conscious transformation of every aspect of social life. 

Revolutionaries are sometimes accused of adhering to the idea of "the worse the better": the idea that the more the masses suffer, the more they are likely to be revolutionary. But there is no mechanical relation between suffering and revolutionary consciousness. Suffering contains a dynamic towards reflection and revolt, but it also contains one that can wear down and exhaust the capacity for revolt, or else it can just as easily lead to the adoption of utterly false forms of rebellion, as the present growth of Islamic fundamentalism shows. A period of decadence is necessary to convince the working class that it needs to construct a new society, but on the other hand an indefinitely prolonged epoch of decadence can threaten the very possibility of a revolution, dragging the world through a spiral of disasters that serve only to destroy the accumulated productive forces, and in particular, the most important productive force of all, the proletariat. This is indeed the danger posed by the final phase of decadence, the phase we refer to as decomposition, which has in our view already begun.

This problem of society rotting on its feet is particularly acute in capitalism because, in contrast to previous systems, the maturation of the material conditions for the new society - communism - does not coincide with the development of new economic forms within the shell of the old social order. In the decline of Roman slavery, the development of feudal estates was often the work of members of the old slave-owning class who had distanced themselves from the central state in order to avoid the crushing burdens of its taxes. In the period of feudal decadence, the new bourgeois class arose in the towns - which had always been the commercial centres of the old system - and set about laying the foundations of a new economy based on manufacturing and trade. The emergence of these new forms was both a response to the crisis of the old order and a factor pushing more and more towards its final demise.

With the decline of capitalism, the productive forces it has set in motion certainly enter into growing conflict with the social relations under which it operates. This is expressed above all in the contrast between capitalism's enormous productive capacity and its inability to absorb all the commodities it produces: in short, in the crisis of overproduction. But while this crisis makes the abolition of commodity relations more and more urgent, and the operation of the laws of commodity production more and more distorted, it does not result in the spontaneous emergence of communist economic forms. Unlike previous revolutionary classes, the working class is a propertyless, exploited class, and cannot build its own economic order inside the framework of the old. Communism can only be the result of a more and more conscious struggle against the old order, leading to the political overthrow of the bourgeoisie as the precondition for the communist transformation of economic and social life. If the proletariat is unable to raise its struggle to the necessary heights of consciousness and self-organisation, then the contradictions of capitalism will lead not to the advent of a higher social order, but to "the mutual ruin of the contending classes."  

Gerrard, July 2008

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Appendix

Preface to the Introduction to the Critique of Political economy

The complete passage from the Preface is as follows:

The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm [67]

 

 

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[1]. The German Ideology. Part I. "Feuerbach", Chapter I.1 "Ideology in general, German ideology in particular"

 

[2]. Communist Manifesto, Chapter I, "Bourgeois and Proletarians".

 

[3]. Marx to Engels, 8 October 1858, Collected Works, Vol. 40, p.347, Lawrence and Wishart.

 

[4]. Cited in Shanin, Late Marx and the Russian Road, KP, p103). See Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 362, footnote c for a slightly different translation.

 

[5].  p146, Monthly Review Press, 1972.

 

[6]. Grundrisse p 541. Penguin edition

 

This is the concluding section of the series on "Problems of the period transition" published in Bilan between 1934 and 1937.This article appeared in Bilan n° 38 (December/January 1936/7). It is the continuation of a theoretical debate that the Italian left communists were extremely keen on developing, since they saw it as key to drawing the lessons from the defeat of the Russian revolution and thus for preparing the ground for a successful revolution in future. As we have mentioned in the introduction to the previous article in the series, the debate was very wide-ranging: the article that follows refers to the Trotskyist current, the Dutch internationalists, and even to disagreements between Mitchell (a member of the minority of the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes which went on to form the Belgian Fraction of the Communist Left) and "the comrades of Bilan", who in his view did not place sufficient emphasis on the problem of the economic transformation following the proletarian seizure of power.

Whether or not this was the case, Mitchell's text poses a number of important questions about the economic policy of the proletariat, particularly with regard to overcoming the domination of production over consumption which is characteristic of the capitalist social relation, and to the intimately related problem of eliminating the law of value. We will not try to address these questions here, but will return to them in a subsequent article, which will go in more depth into the differences between the Italian and Dutch left communists, since to this day this debate remains a fundamental starting point for approaching the problem of how the working class can do away with capitalist accumulation and create a mode of production geared to the real needs of humanity.

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Bilan no 38, December 1936 - January 1937

It remains for us to examine some of the norms of economic administration which, in our view, condition the relationship between the party and the masses, the basis for strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It's true that any system of production can only develop on the basis of enlarged reproduction, i.e. the accumulation of wealth. But a type of society is expressed less by its external forms and manifestations than by its social content, by the motivation for producing, i.e. by the class relations. In the evolution of history, the two processes, internal and external, are engaged in a constant contradiction. The development of capitalism has shown that the progress of the productive forces also engenders its opposite, the regression in the material conditions of the proletariat, a phenomenon which is expressed in the contradiction between use value and exchange value, between production and consumption. We have already noted that the capitalist system is not progressive by nature, but by necessity, spurred on by accumulation and competition. Marx underlined this contrast by saying that "the development of the productive forces only has any importance to the extent that it increases the surplus labour of the working class and not to the extent that it diminished the time necessary for material production" (Capital, Book X).

Beginning from an observation that is valid for all types of society, i.e. that surplus labour is inevitable, the problem is thus essentially concentrated on the mode of appropriation and of destruction of surplus labour, the mass of surplus labour and its duration, the relation between this mass and the total labour, and finally the rhythm of its accumulation. And immediately we can bring out another remark by Marx: "the real wealth of society and the possibility of the continual enlargement of the process of reproduction do not depend on the duration of surplus labour, but on its productivity and the more or less advantageous conditions in which this productivity is set to work" (Capital Book XIV). And he adds that the fundamental condition for the advent of the "realm of freedom" is the reduction in the working day.

These considerations enable us to grasp the tendencies that have to be imprinted in the evolution of a proletarian economy. It also allows us to reject the conception that sees the growth of the productive forces as the absolute proof of "socialism". This is a conception defended not only by Centrism but also by Trotsky: "liberalism pretends not to see the enormous progress of the Soviet regime, i.e. the concrete proofs of the incalculable advantages of socialism. The economists of the classes who have been dispossessed by it pass over in utter silence its rhythms of industrial development, unprecedented in world history" (Lutte de classes, June 1930).

We have already noted at the beginning of this chapter that this question of "rhythm" is at the forefront of the preoccupations of Trotsky and his Opposition, when in fact it does not at all correspond to the mission of the proletariat, which consists of modifying the motivation for production and not of accelerating its rhythm on the back of the impoverishment of the proletariat, exactly as under capitalism. The proletariat has all the less reason to be attached to the factor of "rhythm" given that this has to be seen on an international scale; the rhythm of production taking place in the USSR at present is as nothing compared to the contribution that the most advanced capitalist technology would bring to a world socialist economy.  

The reorientation of production towards consumption

When we pose the necessity to change the motive for production, gearing it towards the needs of consumption, as a primordial economic task, we are obviously talking about a process and not about an immediate result of the revolution. The very structure of the transitional economy, as we have already shown, cannot engender any such economic automatism, since the survival of "bourgeois right" means the subsistence of certain social relations of exploitation and labour power still to a certain extent retains the character of a commodity. The politics of the party, stimulated by the workers' struggles for immediate demands through their trade union organisations, must precisely tend to overcome the contradiction between labour and labour power, which has been developed to an extreme by capitalism. In other words, the capitalist use of labour power for the accumulation of capital must be replaced by the "proletarian" use of this labour power for purely social ends, which will facilitate the political and economic consolidation of the proletariat.

In the organisation of production, the proletarian state must be inspired above all by the needs of the masses, developing the branches of production which can respond to those needs, obviously in relation to the specific material conditions that prevail in the economy in question.

If the economic programme that has been elaborated remains in the framework of building the world socialist economy, and thus remains tied to the international class struggle, the proletarian state will be all the more able to confine its tasks to developing consumption. On the other hand, if this programme takes on an autonomous character which aims directly or indirectly at a form of "national socialism", a growing part of the surplus labour will be siphoned off into the construction of enterprises which in the future will have no justification in the international division of labour; at the same time these enterprises will inevitably be obliged to produce the means for the defence of the "socialist society" under construction. We will see that this is exactly what has happened in the Soviet Union.

It is certain that any improvement in the material situation of the proletarian masses depends in the first place on the productivity of labour, and this in turn depends on the technical level of the productive forces, and consequently on accumulation. In the second place it is linked to the output of labour that corresponds to the organisation and discipline within the labour process. Such are the fundamental elements that exist in the capitalist system as well, with the characteristic that the concrete results of accumulation are diverted from their human destination to the benefit of accumulation "in itself"; the productivity of labour does not translate into objects of consumption, but into capital.

It would be pointless to hide that the problem is far from being solved by proclaiming a policy aimed at enlarging consumption. But you have to begin by affirming it, because it is a major directive which is irreducibly opposed to the one that pushes first and foremost towards industrialisation and accelerated growth, inevitably sacrificing one or several generations of workers (Centrism[1] has declared this openly). A proletariat that has been "sacrificed", even for objectives that may seem to correspond to its historical interests (though the reality of Russia demonstrates that this is not at all the case) cannot constitute a real strength for the world proletariat. It can only be turned away from the latter under the hypnosis of national objectives.  

Continuing on the basis of the internationalist considerations we have developed, we thus have to affirm (unless we want to fall into abstraction) that the economic tasks of the proletariat, from the historical point of view, are primordial. The comrades of Bilan, animated by the correct concern to show the role of the proletarian state on the global terrain of the class struggle, have singularly restricted the importance of the question, by arguing that "the economic and military domains[2] can only be accessory questions, questions of detail, in the activity of the proletarian state, whereas they are essential for an exploiting class" (Bilan p 612). We repeat: the programme is determined and limited by the world policies of the proletarian state, but having established this, the proletariat can still not invest too much vigilance and energy into searching for a solution to the redoubtable problem of consumption, which still conditions its role as a "simple factor in the struggle of the world proletariat".

In our view the comrades of Bilan make another mistake[3] when they make no distinction between a form of administration that tends towards the "building of socialism" and a socialist administration of the transitional economy, declaring that "far from envisaging the possibility of a socialist administration of the economy in a given country and the international class struggle, we must begin by proclaiming that such a socialist administration is impossible". But what is a policy which aims at improving the living conditions of the workers if not a truly socialist one, seeking precisely to overturn the capitalist process of production. In the period of transition, it is perfectly possible to develop this new economic course towards a production based on need even while classes still exist.

But the fact remains that the motivation of production does not depend solely on adopting a correct policy, but above all on the proletariat's organisations exerting pressure on the economy and adapting the productive apparatus to its needs. Furthermore the amelioration of living conditions does not fall from the sky. It is a result of the development of productive capacity, whether that is the consequence of an increase in the mass of social labour, a greater output, through better organisation of the labour process, or through an increase in labour productivity thanks to the use of more powerful means of production.

As regards the mass of social labour - if we take the number of workers to be constant - we have said that it is given by the length and intensity of the use of labour power. Now, it is precisely these two factors, linked to the falling value of labour power as a result of its greater productivity, which determines the degree of exploitation imposed on the proletariat in the capitalist regime.

In the transitional phase, labour power still conserves its character as a commodity to the extent that wages are directly linked to its value. By contrast, it throws off this character to the extent that wages moves towards the equivalent of the total labour provided by the worker (once the surplus labour earmarked for social needs is deducted).

Unlike the policy of capitalism, a truly proletarian policy seeking to increase the productive forces can certainly not be based on surplus labour that derives from a greater length of intensity of social labour, which in its capitalist form constitutes absolute surplus value. On the contrary it has to be linked to the rhythms and duration of labour that are compatible with the existence of a real dictatorship of the proletariat; it must therefore preside over a more rational organisation of labour, over the elimination of any wasted social activity, even if in this domain the possibilities of increasing the mass of useful labour are quickly exhausted.

In these conditions, "proletarian" accumulation must find its essential source in labour that has become available through a higher level of technique.

This means that increasing the productivity of labour poses the following alternative: either the same mass of products (or use values) determines a reduction in the total volume of labour consumed, or, if the latter remains constant (or even if it diminishes depending on the level of technical progress), the quantity of products to be distributed will increase. But in both cases, a diminution in relative surplus labour (relative that is to the labour strictly necessary for the reproduction of labour power) can perfectly well be conjoined to greater consumption and thus to a real rise in wages and not fictional ones as in capitalism. It is in the new use of productivity that we will see the superiority of proletarian administration over capitalist administration, rather than competition over production costs, since on this basis the proletariat will inevitably be beaten, as we have already indicated.        

In effect it is the development of the productivity of labour which has precipitated capitalism into its crisis of decadence where, in a permanent manner (and no longer only through cyclical crises) the mass of use values is set against the mass of exchange values. The bourgeoisie is overcome by the immensity of its production and yet is pushed towards suicide by a huge mass of unsatisfied needs.

In the period of transition, the productivity of labour is of course still a long way from responding to the formula "to each according to his needs", but the possibility of using it fully for human ends overturns the givens of the social problem. Marx already noted that although it was well below its theoretical maximum, the increasing productivity of labour was basic to capitalism. But after the revolution it will be possible to reduce, then suppress, the capitalist antagonism between the product and its value, provided that the proletarian policy tends not to reduce wages to the value of labour power - a capitalist method which diverts technical progress to the benefit of capital - but to more and more elevate it above this value, on the basis of the development of productivity.   

It is obvious that a certain fraction of relative surplus labour cannot return directly to the worker, given the basic necessities of accumulation without which there can be no technical progress. And once again we are faced with the problem of the rhythm and rate of accumulation. And while it appears to be a question of measurement, any arbitrary element will be excluded on a principled basis that defines the economic tasks of the proletariat.

The determination of the rhythm of accumulation

Furthermore, it goes without saying that determining the rate of accumulation is based on economic centralism and not on the decision of the producers in their enterprises, as in the view of the Dutch internationalists (p 116 of their work). What's more they do not seem very convinced of the practical value of such a solution, since they bring it in immediately after affirming that "the rate of accumulation cannot be left to the free choice of the separate enterprises and it is the general congress of the enterprise councils that will decide on the obligatory norms", a formula which seems to be a kind of disguised centralism.

If we apply this to what has happened in Russia, we can see all the more clearly the fraud of Centrism, which claims that the suppression of the exploitation of the proletariat flows directly from the collectivisation of the means of production. We can see that the economic processes in the Soviet Union are those of the capitalist economy; even if they begin from a different basis they have ended up flowing towards the same outlet: imperialist war. Both have unfolded on the basis of a growing extraction of surplus value which is not returned to the working class. In the USSR, the labour process is capitalist in substance, if not in its social aspects and in the relations of the production. There is a drive to increase absolute surplus value, obtained through the intensification of labour, which has taken the form of "Stakhanovism". The material conditions of the workers are in no way linked to the technical improvements and the development of the productive forces, and in any case the relative participation of the proletariat in the patrimony of society is not increasing but diminishing. This is a phenomenon analogous to what the capitalist system has always engendered, even in its most prosperous periods. We lack elements to establish the extent to which there is a real growth of the absolute part that goes to the workers.

Moreover, the USSR practises a policy of wage reductions, which tends to substitute unqualified workers (coming from the immense reserves of the peasantry) for qualified workers, who are also the most class conscious.

To the question of how this enormous mass of surplus labour becomes congealed, we are given the facile answer that a major part goes to the bureaucratic "class". But such an explanation is disproved by the very existence of an enormous productive apparatus which remains collective property, and in comparison to which the beefsteaks, automobiles and villas of the bureaucrats cut a small figure! The official statistics and others, as well as the inquiries, confirm that there is an enormous and growing disproportion between the production of means of production (tools, buildings, public works, etc) and the objects of consumption destined for the "bureaucracy" and for the worker and peasant masses. If it was true that the bureaucracy is a class which disposes of the economy and appropriates surplus labour, how are we to explain how the latter is to a large part transformed into collective wealth and not private property? This paradox can only be explained by discovering why this wealth, while still remaining within the Soviet community, goes against it in the way that it is distributed. Let's note that today we are seeing a similar phenomenon within capitalist society, i.e. that the major part of the surplus value doesn't end up in the pockets of the capitalists but is accumulated in the form of goods which are only private property from the juridical point of view. The difference is that in the USSR this phenomenon doesn't take on a capitalist character properly speaking. The two evolutions also start from a different origin: in the USSR it doesn't arise out of an economic antagonism, but a political one; from a split between the Russian proletariat and the international proletariat; it develops under the banner of the defence of "national socialism" and of its integration into the mechanisms of world capitalism. By contrast, in the capitalist countries, the evolution is determined by the decadence of the bourgeois economy. But the two social developments end up in a common objective: the construction of war economies (the Soviet leaders boast of having set up the most formidable war machine in the world). This, it seems to us, is the answer to the "Russian enigma". This explains why the defeat of the October revolution does not come from an overturn in the relations between classes within Russia, but on the international arena.

Let's now examine the policies that are orienting the course of the class struggle towards imperialist war rather than the world revolution.

The exploitation of the Russian workers in the service of the war economy

For certain comrades, as we have already said, the Russian revolution was not proletarian and its reactionary evolution was determined in advance by the fact that it was carried out by a proletariat which was culturally backward (even though, at the level of class consciousness, it was in the vanguard of the world proletariat) and which was obliged to take over a backward country. We will limit ourselves to opposing such a fatalist attitude by referring to that of Marx with regard to the Commune: although the latter expressed a historical immaturity of the proletariat vis-à-vis the taking of power, Marx nevertheless saw its immense importance and drew fertile lessons from it, the precise lessons that would inspire the Bolsheviks in 1917. While acting in the same way towards the Russian revolution, we don't deduce from this that future revolutions will be photographic reproductions of October. What we do say is that the fundamental traits of the October revolution will indeed be found in these revolutions, recalling what Lenin meant when he talked about the "international value of the Russian revolution" (Left Wing Communism). A marxist does not "repeat" history but interprets it to forge the theoretical weapons of the proletariat, to help it avoid errors and finally triumph over the bourgeoisie. To search for the conditions that would have placed the Russian proletariat in a position to have won a definitive victory is to give the marxist method of investigation all its value by adding a new stone to the construction of historical materialism.

While it's true that the retreat of the first revolutionary wave led to the temporary isolation of the Russian proletariat, we think that it's not there that we have to look for the decisive cause of the evolution of the USSR, but in the interpretation which was subsequently made of the events, and in the false perspectives about the evolution of capitalism that derived from this. The conception of the "stabilisation" of capitalism naturally engendered the theory of "socialism in one country" and consequently the "defensive" policy of the USSR.

The international proletariat became the instrument of the proletarian state, a force to defend it against imperialist aggression, while the world revolution faded into the background as a concrete objective. If Bukharin still talked about the latter in 1925 it was because "for us the world revolution has this importance, that it is the only guarantee against interventions, against a new war"

He thus elaborated the theory of the "guarantee against interventions", which the CI took up as it became the expression of the particular interests of the USSR and no longer the interests of the world revolution. The "guarantee" was no longer sought in linking up with the international proletariat but in modifying the character and content of the relations between the proletarian state and the capitalist states. The world proletariat remained only as a point of support for the defence of "national socialism".

As regards the NEP, basing ourselves on what we said previously, we don't think that it offered a specific terrain for an inevitable degeneration, although it did give rise to a very considerable recrudescence of capitalist ambitions among the peasantry in particular; and, under Centrism, the alliance with the poor peasants (the smytchka), which Lenin saw as a means to strengthen the proletarian dictatorship, became a goal, at the same time as a union was forged with the middle peasants and the kulaks.

Contrary to the opinion of the comrades of Bilan, we also don't think that we can infer from Lenin's declarations about the NEP that he would have advocated a policy of separating the economic evolution of Russia from the course of the world revolution.

On the contrary, for Lenin, the NEP was a "holding" policy, a policy of respite, until the revival of the international class struggle: "when we adopt a policy that has to last for many years, we don't forget for a moment that the international revolution, the rapidity and the conditions of its development, can change everything". For him it was a question of re-establishing a certain economic balance, making concessions to capitalist forces without which the dictatorship would have collapsed, but not of "calling for class collaboration with the enemy with the aim of building the foundations of the socialist economy".

By the same token it is incorrect to say that Lenin was a partisan of "socialism in one country" on the basis of one apocryphal document.

On the other hand, the "Trotskyist" Russian opposition is helping to accredit the opinion that the key struggle is the one between the capitalist states and the Soviet state. In 1927 it saw an imperialist war against the USSR as inevitable, at the very time that the CI was tearing workers away from class positions and hurling them onto the front of the defence of the USSR, simultaneously presiding over the crushing of the Chinese revolution. On this basis the Opposition is getting involved in the preparations of the USSR - the "bastion of socialism" - for war. This position means theoretically sanctioning the exploitation of the Russian workers in order to build a war economy (the Five Year Plans). The Opposition is even going so far as to agitate the myth of the unity of the party "at any cost" as a precondition for the military victory of the USSR. At the same time it makes equivocal statements about the "the struggle for peace" (!) by considering that the USSR should try to "put off the war", even to pay a ransom while "preparing the economy, the budget etc to the maximum with a view to war", and considers that the question of industrialisation is decisive for ensuring the technical resources needed for defence (Platform).

Subsequently Trotsky, in his Permanent Revolution, took up this thesis of industrialisation at the quickest possible pace as a guarantee of "external threats" while also serving to raise the living standards of the masses. We know that the "external threat" comes not from a "crusade" against the USSR, but through its integration into the front of world imperialism; and at the same time that industrialisation in no way implies a better existence for the proletariat, but the most frenzied exploitation with the aim of preparing for imperialist war.

In the next revolution, the proletariat will win, independently of its cultural immaturity and its economic deficiencies, provided that it bases itself not on the "building of socialism" but on the extension of the international civil war.

Mitchell,

(republished August 2008)

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[1]. It should be noted that at the time Bilan published this contribution the whole of the Italian left still qualified the Stalinist policy that guided the Communist International as "Centrism". It was only later, notably by Internationalisme after the war, that the current coming from the Italian left clearly qualified Stalinism as counter revolutionary. We refer the reader to the critical presentation of these texts published in International Review nº 132.

 

[2]. We agree with the comrades of Bilan that the defence of the proletarian state cannot be posed on the military terrain but on the political level, through its links with the international proletariat

 

[3]. Which may be just a question of formulation, but it is still important to raise it since it is connected to their tendency to minimise economic problems.

 

This summer has witnessed yet another outburst of military barbarism. Just as the principal countries were counting their medals at the Olympic Games, terrorist attacks hit the Middle East, Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Turkey and India. In less than two months, 16 such attacks followed each other in a macabre dance that left scores of dead among the urban populations. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there is full-scale war.

But this militarist barbarism was at its height in Georgia.

Once again, the Caucasus was aflame. At the very moment that Bush and Putin were taking part in the opening of the Olympics, so-called symbol of peace and reconciliation between nations, the Georgian president Saakashvili, the protégé of the White House, and the Russian bourgeoisie, sent their troops off to slaughter the civilian population.

This war between Russia and Georgia resulted in a veritable ethnic cleansing on each side, with several thousands deaths, mostly civilians.

As ever, it was the local populations (whether Russian, Ossetian, Abkhazian or Georgian) who were taken hostage by all the national factions of the ruling class.

On both sides, the same scenes of killing and horror. Throughout Georgia, the number of refugees, stripped of everything they owned, reached 115,000 in one week.

And as in all wars, each camp accused the other of being responsible for the outbreak of hostilities.

But it is not just the direct protagonists who are responsible for this new war and these new massacres. The other states who are now shedding hypocritical tears about the fate of Georgia have their hands soaked with blood from the worst kinds of atrocities, whether we're talking about the US in Iraq, France in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, or Germany, which, by backing the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, helped unleash the terrible war in ex-Yugoslavia in 1992.

If today the US is sending warships to the Caucasus region, in the name of ‘humanitarian aid', this is certainly not out of any concern for human life, but simply to defend its imperialist interests.

Are we heading towards a third world war?

The most striking thing about the conflict in the Caucasus is the increasing military tension between the great powers. The two former bloc leaders, Russia and the US, once again find themselves in a dangerous head-to-head: the US Navy destroyers who have come with ‘food aid' for Georgia are only a short distance away from the Russian naval base of Gudauta in Abkhazia and the Georgian port of Poti which is occupied by Russian tanks.

This is all very nerve-wracking and one might legitimately ask not just what is the aim of this war But even whether it could unleash a third world war?

Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the Caucasus region has been an important geostrategic bone of contention between the great powers. The present conflict has been building up for some time. The Georgian president, an unconditional partisan of Washington, took over a state which from its creation in 1991 had been supported by the US as a bridgehead for Bush Senior's ‘New World Order'.

By laying a trap for Saakashvili, into which he duly fell, Putin has used the occasion to re-establish his authority in the Caucasus; but this was in response to the encirclement of Russia by NATO forces which has been under way since 1991.

Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, Russia has been more and more isolated, especially since a number of former Eastern bloc countries (like Poland) joined NATO.

But the encirclement became intolerable for Moscow when Ukraine and Georgia also asked to join NATO.

Above all, Russia could not accept the plan to set up an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow knew perfectly well that behind this NATO programme, supposedly directed against Iran, Russia itself was the real target.

The Russian offensive against Georgia is in fact Moscow's first stab at breaking the encirclement.

Russia, having just re-established its authority in the Caucasus thanks to the costly and murderous war in Chechnya, has taken advantage of the fact that the US, with its troops bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, had its hands too full to launch a military counter-offensive.

However, despite the worsening military tension between Russia and the USA, the perspective of a third world war is not on the agenda today.

There are today no imperialist blocs, no stable military alliances as was the case before the two world wars of the 20th century or during the Cold War.

By the same token, the face-off between the US and Russia does not mean that we are entering a new Cold War. There's no going back and history does not repeat itself.

In contrast to the dynamic of imperialist tensions between the great powers during the Cold War, this new head-to-head between Russia and the US is marked by the tendency towards ‘every man for himself', towards the dislocation of alliances, characteristic of the phase of the decomposition of the capitalist system.

Thus the ‘ceasefire' in Georgia can only legitimate the victory of the masters of the Kremlin and Russia's superiority on the military level, involving a humiliating capitulation by Georgia to the conditions dictated by Moscow.

And Georgia's ‘patron', the US, has also suffered a major reverse here. While Georgia has already paid a heavy price for its allegiance to the US (a contingent of 2000 troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan), in return Uncle Sam has been able to offer no more than moral support to its ally, issuing vain and purely verbal condemnations of Russia without being able to raise a finger to offer practical help.

But the most significant aspect of this weakening of US leadership resides in the fact that the White House had to swallow the ‘European' plan for a ceasefire - worse still, a plan dictated by Moscow.

While the USA's impotence was evident, Europe's role shows the level that ‘every man for himself' has reached. Faced with the paralysis of the US, European diplomacy swung into action, led by the French president Sarkozy who once again represented no one but himself in all his comings and goings, following a policy that was entirely short-term and devoid of any coherence.

Europe once again looked like a snake pit with everyone in it pursuing diametrically opposed interests. There was not an ounce of unity in its ranks: on one side were Poland and the Baltic states, fervent defenders of Georgia (because they suffered over half a century of Russian domination and have much to fear from a revival of the latter's imperialist ambitions) and on the other was Germany, which was one of the most fervent opponents of Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO, above all because it wants to block the development of American influence in this region.

But the most fundamental reason that the great powers cannot unleash a third world war lies in the balance of forces between the two main social classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Unlike the periods which preceded the two world wars, the working class of the most decisive capitalist countries, notably in Europe and America, is not ready to serve as cannon fodder and sacrifice itself on the altar of capital.

With the return of the permanent crisis of capitalism at the end of the 1960s and the historic resurgence of the proletariat, a new course towards class confrontations was opened up: in the most important capitalist countries the ruling class can no longer mobilise millions of workers behind the defence of the nation.

However, although the conditions for a third world war have not come together, this is no reason to underestimate the gravity of the present situation.

The war in Georgia has increased the risk of destabilisation, of things running out of control, not only on the regional level, but also on the world level, where it will have inevitable implications for the balance of imperialist forces in the future. The ‘peace plan' is just a bluff. It contains all the ingredients of a new and dangerous military escalation, threatening to create a series of flash-points from the Caucasus to the Middle East.

With the oil and gas of the Caspian Sea and the central Asian countries, some of which are Turkish-speaking, Iran and Turkey have interests in this region, but the whole world is involved in the conflict. Thus, one of the objectives of the USA and some Western European countries in supporting a Georgia independent from Moscow is to deprive Russia of the monopoly of Caspian Sea oil supplies towards the west thanks to the Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey. There are thus major strategic interests at stake in this region. And the big imperialist brigands can all the more easily use people as cannon fodder in the Caucasus given that the region is a mosaic of different ethnicities. This makes it easy to fan the fire of nationalist war.

At the same time, Russia's past as a dominant power still exerts a very heavy weight and contains the threat of even more serious imperialist tensions. This is what lies behind the anxiety of the Baltic states, and above all of Ukraine which is a nuclear-armed military power of quite another stature to Georgia.

Thus although the perspective is not of a third world war, the dynamic of ‘every man for himself' is just as much the expression of the murderous folly of capitalism: this moribund system could, in its decomposition, lead to the destruction of humanity by plunging it into bloody chaos.

Faced with the bankruptcy of capitalism, what is the alternative?

In the face of all this chaos and military barbarism, the historical alternative is more than ever ‘socialism or barbarism', world communist revolution or the destruction of humanity. Peace is impossible in capitalism; capitalism carries war within itself. And the only future for humanity lies in the proletarian struggle for the overthrow of capitalism.

But this perspective can only become a reality if the workers refuse to serve as cannon-fodder for the interests of their exploiters, and firmly reject nationalism.

Everywhere the working class must put into practice the old slogan of the workers' movement: ‘The workers have no country. Workers of all countries unite!'

It is obvious that the proletariat cannot remain indifferent to the massacre of civilians and the unleashing of military barbarism,.It must show its solidarity with its class brothers in the countries at war, first of all by refusing to support one camp against the other, and secondly by developing its own struggles against its own exploiters in all countries. This is the only way it can really fight against capitalism, prepare the ground for its overthrow and for the construction of a new society without national frontiers and wars.

This perspective of the overthrow of capitalism is no utopia because everywhere capitalism is proving itself to be a bankrupt system.

When the Eastern bloc collapsed, Bush Senior and the whole of the ‘democratic' Western ruling class promised us a ‘New World Order' (to be set up under the aegis of the USA), a new era of peace and prosperity.

The entire world bourgeoisie engaged in gigantic campaigns about the so-called ‘failure of communism', trying to make the workers believe that the only possible future was Western-style capitalism with its ‘market economy'.

Today it is becoming more and more evident that it is capitalism that is failing, notably the world's leading power which has now become the locomotive dragging the whole capitalist economy towards the abyss (see our editorial in International Review n°133).

This failure is visible day after day in the increasing degradation of working class living standards, not only in the ‘poor' countries but also in the ‘rich' ones.

Just to take the USA as an example, unemployment there is rising rapidly and today 6% of the population is without work. Since the beginning of the ‘subprime' crisis, two million workers have been evicted from their houses because they can no longer keep up with their mortgage payments (and between today and the beginning of 2009, another million are facing the same threat).

And this is not even to mention the poor countries: with the increase in the price of basic foodstuffs, the most deprived strata are faced with the horror of famine. This is why hunger riots have broken out world wide this year - in Mexico, Bangladesh, Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines....

Today, with the facts staring them in the face, the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie can no longer conceal the truth. The shops are full of new books with alarmist titles. And above all, the declarations of the people in charge of the main economic institutions can no longer hide their anxiety:

"We are faced with one of the most difficult economic and fiscal environments we have ever seen" (the President of the US Federal Reserve, 22nd August).

"For the economy, the crisis is a tsunami on the horizon" (Jacques Attali, French economist and politician, Le Monde, 8th August).

"The present conjuncture is the most difficult for several decades" (according to HSBC, one of the world's biggest banks, cited in Libération 5th August).

The perspective for the development of the class struggle

In reality, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes did not show the failure of communism, but its necessity.

The collapse of state capitalism in the USSR was in fact the most spectacular demonstration of the historic failure of world capitalism. It was a first great shockwave expressing the whole system's bankruptcy. Today a second shockwave is hitting the world's most powerful ‘democratic' power, the United States.

With the aggravation of the economic crisis and of military conflicts, we are witnessing an acceleration of history.

But this acceleration is also being expressed at the level of the workers' struggle, even if this does not appear in such a spectacular way.

If you took a still photograph of the situation, you might think that nothing was happening and that the workers were not moving. The workers' struggles don't seem to be adequate to the task at hand and the future looks grim.

But this is only the visible part of the iceberg.

In reality, as we have emphasised many times in our press, the struggles of the world proletariat have taken on a new dynamic since 2003[1].

The struggles that have been developing in the four corners of the world have been marked in particular by the search for active solidarity and the entry of the younger generation into the proletarian combat (as we saw in particular with the struggle of the French students against the CPE in the spring of 2006).

This dynamic shows that the working class has rediscovered the path of struggle, a path that was momentarily erased by the huge campaigns about the ‘death of communism' following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes.

Today the aggravation of the crisis and the deterioration of working class living standards can only push the workers to develop their struggles, to seek for solidarity, to unify across the world.

In particular, the spectre of inflation which is once again haunting capitalism, with the dizzying increase in prices accompanied by a fall in incomes (wages, pensions, etc) can only contribute to the unification of workers' struggles.

But two questions in particular will play a part in the proletariat becoming conscious of the bankruptcy of the system and the necessity for communism.

The first question is hunger and the generalisation of food shortages, which reveals beyond the shadow of a doubt that capitalism can no longer feed humanity and that we therefore have to move on to a new mode of production.

The second fundamental question is the absurdity of war, the murderous folly of capitalism which is destroying more and more human lives in endless slaughter.

It is true that, in an immediate sense, war creates fear and the bourgeoisie does all it can to paralyse the working class, to inject into it a feeling of powerlessness and to make it believe that war is just a fatality you can do nothing about. But at the same time the involvement of the great powers in military conflicts (especially in Iraq and Afghanistan) is provoking more and more discontent.

With American forces bogged down in Iraq, there is a growing anti-war feeling in the US population. We have seen this expressed in ‘public opinion' surveys, and it was the same in France after the French bourgeoisie paid homage to the 10 French troops killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on 18th August.

But alongside the discontent within the population at large, there is a deep process of reflection going on within the working class.

The clearest sign of this is the emergence of a new proletarian political milieu which has developed around the defence of internationalist positions against war (notably in Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, Russia and Latin America).[2]

War is not a fatality that leaves humanity powerless. Capitalism is not an eternal system. War is not all that capitalism bears within itself. It also bears the conditions for going beyond it, the germs of a new society without national frontiers and thus without wars.

By creating a world working class, capitalism has given birth to its own gravedigger. Because the exploited class, unlike the bourgeoisie, has no antagonistic interests to defend, it is the only force in society which can unify humanity by building a world based on solidarity and the satisfaction of human need.

There is still a long way to go before the world proletariat will be able to raise its struggles to the level demanded by the gravity of the present situation. But in the context of the acceleration of the world economic crisis, the dynamic of the class struggle today, as well as the entry of new generations into the movement, show that the proletariat is on the right road.

Today internationalist revolutionaries are still a small minority. But they have the duty to carry on a debate to overcome their differences and make their voices heard as clearly as possible wherever they can. It is precisely by being able to carry out a clear intervention against the barbarity of war that they will be able to regroup their forces and contribute to the proletariat becoming aware of the necessity to wage an offensive against the fortress of capital.

SW (12.9.08)

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[1] See in particular the following articles ‘Against the world wide attacks of crisis-ridden capitalism: one working class, one class struggle' (International Review n°132) and ‘17th Congress of the ICC: resolution on the international situation' (International Review n°130)

[2] As well as the resolution on the international situation from the 17th ICC Congress, the reader can also consult, also in International Review n°130, ‘17th Congress of the ICC: the proletarian camp reinforced worldwide'

"In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society".[1]

This brief passage, spanning virtually the whole of written history, could give rise to several books worth of interpretation. For our purposes, we will look at two aspects: the general question of historical progress, and the features of ascendancy and decadence in social formations prior to capitalism.

Is there any progress?

We have noted that one of the effects of the catastrophes of the 20th century has been a general scepticism about the idea of progress, a notion which had seemed much more self-evident in the 19th century. This has led some ‘radical' souls to conclude that the marxist vision of historical progress is itself just one of these 19th century ideologies which serve as an apology for capitalist exploitation. Although often presenting themselves as new, such criticisms often dredge up the rather worn arguments of Bakunin and the anarchists, who demanded that revolution be possible at any time, and accused the marxists of being vulgar reformists for arguing that the epoch of revolution had not yet dawned, requiring the working class to organise itself in the long term for the defence of its living conditions inside the existing social order. The anti-progressivists sometimes begin as ‘marxist' critics of the notion that capitalism is decadent today, insisting that very little has changed in the life of capital since the days Marx was writing about it, except perhaps on a purely quantitative level - bigger economy, bigger crises, bigger wars. But the more consistent ones quickly get rid of the whole burden of historical materialism altogether, insisting that communism could have come about in any previous epoch of history. Indeed the most consistent of all are the primitivists who argue that there has been no progress in history at all since the emergence of civilisation, and indeed since the discovery of agriculture which made it possible: all this is seen as a terrible wrong turn given that the happiest epoch of human life was the nomadic hunter-gatherer stage. Such currents can only logically anticipate with yearning the final collapse of civilisation and the culling of humanity so that a return to hunting and gathering could once again be practicable for the few survivors.

Marx was certainly ‘rigid' about the idea that it was capitalism alone which had paved the way for the overcoming of social antagonisms and the creation of a society which allowed humanity to develop to the full. As he goes on to say in the Preface: "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism".

Capitalism was for the first time creating the preconditions for a world communist society: by unifying the entire globe around its system of production; by revolutionising the instruments of production to the point where a society of abundance was finally possible; and by giving birth to a class whose own emancipation could only come through the emancipation of the whole of humanity - the proletariat, the first exploited class in history to contain the seeds of a new society within itself. For Marx it was inconceivable that mankind could have overleaped this stage in history and given rise to a durable, global communist society in the epochs of despotism, slavery or serfdom.

But capitalism did not appear out of nowhere: the succession of modes of production prior to capitalism had in turn paved the way for it, and in this sense the whole development of these antagonistic, i.e class-divided, social systems had represented a progressive movement in human history, resulting at last in the material possibility of a classless world community. There is thus no basis for reclaiming the heritage of Marx and simultaneously rejecting the notion of progress as bourgeois.

However, there is indeed a bourgeois version of progress, and, opposed to it, a marxist one.

To begin with, whereas the bourgeoisie tended to see all history leading inexorably towards the triumph of democratic capitalism, an upward, linear march in which all previous societies were in all respects inferior to the present order of things, marxism affirmed the dialectical character of the historical movement. In fact, the very notion of ascent and decline of modes of production means that there can be regressions as well as advances in the historical process. In Anti-Duhring, talking about Fourier and his anticipation of historical materialism, Engels draws attention to the link between the dialectical view of history and the notion of ascent and decline: "Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of the history of society (...) Fourier, as we see, uses the dialectic method in the same masterly way as his contemporary, Hegel. Using these same dialectics, he argues against the talk about illimitable human perfectibility, that every historical phase has its period of ascent and also its period of descent, and he applies this observation to the future of the whole human race" ("Socialism: utopian and scientific").

What Engels is saying here is that there is nothing automatic about the process of historical evolution. Like the process of natural evolution itself, "human perfectibility" is not programmed in advanced. As we will see, there can in fact be social dead-ends, analogous to the dinosaurs - societies which not only decline, but disappear utterly, giving rise to nothing new from within themselves.

Furthermore, even when progress does take place, it generally has a profoundly contradictory character. The destruction of artisan production, in which the producer is still capable of gaining satisfaction both from the process of production and the end product of it, and its replacement by the factory system with its mind-numbing routines, is a clear case in point. But Engels explains this most forcefully when describing the transition from primitive communism to class society. In Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, having shown both the immense strengths and inherent limitations of tribal life, Engels comes to the following conclusions about how we should view the advent of civilisation:

"The power of this primitive community had to be broken, and it was broken. But it was broken by influences which from the very start appear as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral greatness of the old gentile society. The lowest interests - base greed, brutal appetites, sordid avarice, selfish robbery of the common wealth - inaugurate the new, civilized, class society. It is by the vilest means - theft, violence, fraud, treason - that the old classless gentile society is undermined and overthrown. And the new society itself, during all the two and a half thousand years of its existence, has never been anything else but the development of the small minority at the expense of the great exploited and oppressed majority; today it is so more than ever before".

This dialectical view is also directed towards the future communist society, which in Marx's beautiful passage in the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, is described as "a return of man to himself, but a return become conscious and accomplished with all the wealth of previous development". In the same way, the communism of the future is seen as a rebirth, on a higher level, of the communism of the past. Engels thus concludes his book on the origins of the state with an eloquent phrase taken from the anthropologist Lewis Morgan, anticipating a communism that "will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes".

But with all these qualifications, it is evident from the Preface that the notion of progress, of "progressive epochs", is fundamental to marxist thought. In the grandiose vision of marxism, beginning (at least!) from the emergence of mankind, to the appearance of class society, to the development of capitalism, and to the great leap into the realm of freedom that awaits us in the future, "the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end" (Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy). Seen from this distance, as it were, it becomes evident that there is a real process of development: at the level of man's capacity to transform nature through the development of more sophisticated tools; at the level of mankind's subjective understanding of himself and the world around him; and thus, at the level of man's capacity to release his slumbering powers and live a life in accord with his deepest needs.

The succession of modes of production

Primitive communism to class society

When Marx provides a "broad outline" of the principal modes of production which have succeeded each other in history, it is by no means meant to be exhaustive. To begin with it only mentions "antagonistic" social forms, i.e the main forms of class society, and does not mention the various forms of non-exploiting society which preceded them. Furthermore, the study of pre-capitalist social forms in Marx's day was in its infancy, so that it was simply not possible to provide an inclusive list of all hitherto existing societies. Indeed, even in the state of present-day historical knowledge, this task remains extremely difficult to complete. In the long period between the dissolution of the original primitive communist social relations, which had their clearest shape among the nomadic hunters of the palaeolithic, and the fully formed class societies which make up the historical civilisations, there were numerous intermediate and transitional forms, as well as forms that simply ended in a historical dead-end, but our knowledge of them remains very limited[2].

The non-inclusion of primitive communist and pre-class societies in the Preface does not at all mean that Marx did not consider it important to study them, on the contrary. From the very beginning, the founders of the historical materialist method recognised that human history begins not with private property, but with communal property: "The first form of ownership is tribal [Stammeigentum] ownership. It corresponds to the undeveloped stage of production, at which a people lives by hunting and fishing, by the rearing of beasts or, in the highest stage, agriculture. In the latter case it presupposes a great mass of uncultivated stretches of land. The division of labour is at this stage still very elementary and is confined to a further extension of the natural division of labour existing in the family (The German Ideology, written in 1847).

When these insights were confirmed by later research - notably the work of Lewis Henry Morgan on the tribes of North America - Marx was extremely enthusiastic, and indeed spent a large part of his later years delving into the problem of primitive social relations, specifically in relation to the questions posed to him by the revolutionary movement in Russia (see the chapter ‘Past and future communism' in our book Communism is not a nice idea but a material necessity). For Marx, Engels and also Rosa Luxemburg, who wrote extensively about this in her Introduction to Political Economy (1907), the discovery that the original forms of human relations were based not on egoism and competition but on solidarity and cooperation, and that centuries and even millennia after the advent of class society there was still a profound and persistent attachment to communal social forms, particularly among the oppressed and exploited classes, was for them a ringing confirmation of the communist outlook and a powerful weapon against the mystifications of the bourgeoisie, for whom the lust for power and property are inherent in human nature.

In Engels' Origins of the Family Private Property and the State, in Marx's Ethnographic Notebooks and Luxemburg's Introduction to Political Economy there is thus a profound respect for the courage, morality and artistic creativity of the "savage" and "barbarian" peoples. But there is no idealisation of these societies. The communism practised in the earliest forms of human society was not engendered by the idea of equality, but out of necessity. It was the only possible form of social organisation in conditions where man's productive capacities had not yet given rise to a sufficient social surplus to support a privileged elite, a ruling class.

Primitive communist relations in all probability emerged with the development of mankind, a species whose capacity to transform his environment to satisfy his material needs marked him off as distinct from all other inhabitants of the animal kingdom. They allowed human beings to become the dominant species on the planet. But if we can generalise from what we know of the most archaic form of primitive communism, found among the Aborigines of Australia, the forms of appropriation of the social product, being entirely collective[3], also held back the development of individual productivity, with the result that the productive forces remained virtually unchanged for millennia. In any case, changing material and environmental conditions, such as the increase in population, at some point made the extreme collectivism of the first forms of human society increasingly untenable, an obstacle to the development of techniques of production (such as pastoralism and agriculture) that could feed larger populations or populations now living in changed social and environmental conditions[4].

As Marx notes "the history of the decline of primitive communities has yet to be written. All we have so far are some rather meagre outlines...(but) the causes of their decline stem from economic facts which prevented them from passing a certain stage of development" (First draft of letter to Vera Zasulich, 1881). The passing of primitive communism and the rise of class divisions does not escape the general rules outlined in the Preface: the relations that human beings created to satisfy their needs become increasingly unable to fulfil their original function, and are therefore plunged into a fundamental crisis, with the result that the communities they sustain either disappear altogether or replace the old relations with new ones better able to develop the productivity of human labour. We have already seen that Engels insisted that, at a certain historical moment, "The power of this primitive community had to be broken, and it was broken". Why? Because "Man was bounded by his tribe, both in relation to strangers from outside the tribe and to himself; the tribe, the gens, and their institutions were sacred and inviolable, a higher power established by nature, to which the individual subjected himself unconditionally in feeling, thought, and action. However impressive the people of this epoch appear to us, they are completely undifferentiated from one another; as Marx says, they are still attached to the navel string of the primitive community".

In the light of anthropological evidence we may well contest Engels' affirmation that the people of tribal societies are so entirely lacking in individuality. But the insight behind this passage remains valid: that in number of key moments and key regions, the old communal methods and relations proved became a fetter on development, and, however contradictory it may seem, the gradual rise of individual property, class exploitation, and a new phase in man's self-alienation, all became "factors of development".

The ‘Asiatic' mode of production

The term ‘Asiatic mode of production' is controversial. Engels unfortunately omits to include the concept in his seminal work on the rise of class society, Origins of the Family, even though Marx's work already contained numerous references to it. Later on, Engels' error was compounded by the Stalinists who virtually outlawed the concept altogether, advancing a very mechanistic and linear view of history as everywhere moving through phases of primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. This schema had distinct advantages for the Stalinist bureaucracy: on the one hand, long after the bourgeois revolution had passed from the agenda of world history, it enabled them to discern the rise of a progressive bourgeoisie in countries like India and China once they had been baptised ‘feudal'; and on the other, it allowed them to avoid embarrassing criticisms of their own form of state despotism, since in the concept of Asiatic despotism, the state, and not a class of individual property owners, directly ensures the exploitation of labour power: the parallels with Stalinist state capitalism are evident.

However, more serious researchers, such as Perry Anderson in an appendix to his book Lineages of the Absolutist State argues that Marx's characterisation of Indian and other contemporary societies as forms of a definite ‘Asiatic mode' was based on faulty information and that the concept has in any case been made so general as to lack any precise meaning.

Certainly, the epithet ‘Asiatic' is confusing in itself. To a greater or lesser extent, all the first forms of class society took on the forms analysed by Marx under this heading, whether in Sumeria, Egypt, India, China, or in more remote regions such as Central and South America, Africa and the Pacific. It is founded on the village community inherited from the epoch prior to the emergence of the state. The state power, often personified by a priestly caste, is based on the surplus product drawn from the village communities in the form of tribute, or, in the case of major construction projects (irrigation, temples, etc) of obligatory labour dues (the ‘corvee'). Slavery may exist but it is not the dominant form of labour. We would argue that while these societies displayed many significant differences, they are united at the level which is most crucial in the classification of an "antagonistic" mode of production: the social relations through which surplus labour is extracted from the exploited class

When we turn to examining the phenomenon of decadence in these social forms, there are, as with ‘primitive' societies, a number of specific characteristics, in that these societies seem to display an extraordinary stability and rarely if ever ‘evolved' into a new mode of production without being battered from the outside. It would however be a mistake to see Asiatic society as lacking in history. There is a vast difference between the first despotic forms that emerged in Hawaii or South America, which are much closer to their original tribal roots, and the gigantic empires that developed in India or China, which gave rise to extremely sophisticated cultural forms.

Nevertheless the underlying characteristic - the centrality of the village community - remains, and provides the key to the ‘unchanging' nature of these societies.

"Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity; and a portion of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind.... The simplicity of the organisation for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name-this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the economical elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky". [5]

In this mode of production, the barriers to the development of commodity production were far stronger than in ancient Rome or feudalism, and this is certainly the reason why in regions where it dominated, capitalism appears not as an outgrowth of the old system but as a foreign invader. It is equally noticeable that the only ‘eastern' society which to some extent developed its own independent capitalism was Japan, where a feudal system was already in place.

Thus in this social form, the conflict between the relations of production and the evolution of the productive forces often appears as stagnation rather than decline, since while dynasties rose and fell, consuming themselves in incessant internal conflicts, and crushing society under the weight of vast, unproductive, ‘Pharaonic' state projects, still the fundamental social structure remained; and if new relations of production did not emerge, then strictly speaking periods of decline in this mode of production do not actually constitute epochs of social revolution. This is quite consistent with Marx's overall method, which does not posit a unilinear or predetermined path of evolution for all forms of society, and certainly envisages the possibility of societies reaching a dead-end from which no further evolution is possible. We should also recall that some of the more isolated expressions of this mode of production collapsed completely, often because they reached the limits to growth in a particular ecological milieu. This seems to have been the case with the Mayan culture, which destroyed its own agricultural base through excessive deforestation. In this case, there was even a deliberate ‘regression' on the part of a large part of the population, who abandoned the cities and returned to hunting and gathering, even though a memory of the old Mayan calendars and traditions was still assiduously preserved. Other cultures, such as the one on Easter Island, seem to have disappeared entirely, in all probability through irresolvable class conflict, violence and starvation.

Slavery and feudalism

Marx and Engels never denied that their familiarity with the primitive and Asiatic social formations was extremely limited by the state of contemporary knowledge. They were much more confident in writing about ‘ancient' society (ie the slave societies of Greece and Rome) and European feudalism. Indeed, the study of these societies played a significant role in the elaboration of their theory of history, since they provided very clear examples of the dynamic process through which one mode of production succeeded another. This was evident in Marx's early writings (The German Ideology) where he locates the rise of feudalism precisely in the conditions brought about by the decline of Rome

"The third form of ownership is feudal or estate property. If antiquity started out from the town and its little territory, the Middle Ages started out from the country. This different starting-point was determined by the sparseness of the population at that time, which was scattered over a large area and which received no large increase from the conquerors. In contrast to Greece and Rome, feudal development at the outset, therefore, extends over a much wider territory, prepared by the Roman conquests and the spread of agriculture at first associated with it. The last centuries of the declining Roman Empire and its conquest by the barbarians destroyed a number of productive forces; agriculture had declined, industry had decayed for want of a market, trade had died out or been violently suspended, the rural and urban population had decreased. From these conditions and the mode of organisation of the conquest determined by them, feudal property developed under the influence of the Germanic military constitution. Like tribal and communal ownership, it is based again on a community; but the directly producing class standing over against it is not, as in the case of the ancient community, the slaves, but the enserfed small peasantry".

The very term decadence frequently evokes images of the later Roman empire - of orgies and emperors drunk with power, of gladiatorial combats witnessed by huge crowds baying for blood. Such pictures certainly tend to focus on the ‘superstructural' elements of Roman society but they do reflect a reality unfolding at the very foundations of the slave system; and thus revolutionaries like Engels and Rosa Luxemburg felt justified in pointing to the decline of Rome as a kind of portent of what lay in store for humanity if the proletariat did not succeed in overthrowing capitalism: "the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration - a great cemetery" (Junius Pamphlet).

Ancient slave society was a far more dynamic social formation than the Asiatic mode, even if the latter did make its own contribution to the rise of ancient Greek culture and thus to the slave mode of production in general (Egypt in particular being looked up to as a venerable repository of wisdom). This dynamism flowed to a large extent from the fact that, as the contemporary saying had it, "everything is for sale in Rome": the commodity form had advanced to the point where the old agrarian communities were more and more a fond memory of a lost golden age, and a mass of human beings had themselves become commodities to be bought and sold in the slave markets. Production by large armies of slaves, even when there remained large areas of the economy where productive work was still carried out by small peasants or artisans, more and more assumed a key role in the central foci of the ancient economy - the great landed estates, public works, and the mines. This great ‘invention' of the ancient world was, for a considerable period of time, a formidable ‘form of development', allowing the free citizens to be organised into mighty armies which, by conquering new lands for the empire, added fresh supplies of slave labour. But by the same token there clearly came a point at which slavery was transformed into a definite fetter on further development. Its inherently unproductive nature lay in the fact that it gave the producer absolutely no incentive to give the best of his productive capacities, nor the slave-owner any incentive to invest in developing better techniques of production, since a supply of fresh slaves was always a cheaper option. Hence the extraordinary gap between the philosophical/scientific advances made by the class of thinkers whose leisure was founded on a platform held up by slaves, and the extremely limited practical application of the theoretical or technical advances that were made. This was the case, for example, with the water-mill, which played such a crucial role in the development of feudal agriculture. It was actually invented in Palestine at the turn of the first century AD, but its use was never generalised throughout the Empire. At a certain point, therefore, the incapacity of the slave mode of production to radically augment the productivity of labour made it increasingly impossible to maintain the vast armies required to fuel it. Rome overreached itself, caught into an insoluble contradiction that expressed itself in all the familiar features of its decline.

In Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, the historian Perry Anderson enumerates some of economic, political and military expressions of this clogging up of Roman society's productive force by the slave relation in the early 3rd century: "by mid century, there was a complete collapse of the silver coinage, while by the end of the century, corn prices had rocketed to levels 200 times over their rates in the early Principiate. Political stability degenerated apace with monetary stability. In the chaotic fifty years from 235 to 284, there were no less than 20 Emperors, eighteen of whom died violent deaths, one a captive abroad, the other a victim of the plague - all fates expressive of the times. Civil wars and usurpations were virtually uninterrupted, from Maximus Thrax to Diocletian. They were compounded by a devastating sequence of foreign invasions and attacks along the frontiers, stabbing deep into the interior (...) Domestic political turmoil and foreign invasions soon brought successive epidemics in their train, weakening and reducing the populations of the Empire, already diminished by the destruction of war. Lands were deserted, and supply shortages in agrarian output developed. The tax system disintegrated with the depreciation of the currency, and fiscal dues reverted to deliveries in kind. City construction came to an abrupt halt, archeologically attested throughout the Empire; in some regions, urban centres withered and contracted" (p 83-84).

Anderson goes on to show how, in response to this profound crisis, the Roman state power, based fundamentally upon a reorganised and expanded army, swelled to vast proportions and achieved a certain stabilisation that lasted up to a hundred years. But since "the swelling of the state was accompanied by a shrinkage of the economy...." (p 92), this revival merely paved the way to what he calls "the final crisis of Antiquity", imposing the necessity to progressively abandon the slave relation. An equally key factor in the demise of the slave mode of production was the generalisation of revolts by slaves and other exploited and oppressed classes throughout the Empire in the 5th century AD (such as the so-called ‘Bacuadae' uprisings), which took place on a far wider scale than the Spartacus rebellion of the first century - although the latter is justly remembered for its incredible audacity and the profound yearning for a better world which inspired it.

The decadence of Rome thus corresponded precisely to the formula of Marx, and took on a clearly catastrophic character. Despite recent efforts of bourgeois historians to present it as a gradual and imperceptible process, it manifested itself as a devastating crisis of under-production in which society was less and less able to produce the basic necessities of life - a veritable regression in the productive forces, in which numerous areas of knowledge and technique were effectively buried and lost for centuries. This was not a one-way slide - as we have noted the great crisis of the third century was followed by a relative revival that was not ended until the final wave of barbarian invasions - but it was inexorable.

The collapse of the Roman system was the precondition for the emergence of new relations of production as a major stratum of landowners took the revolutionary step of eliminating slave labour in favour of the colonus system - the forerunner of feudal serfdom, in which the producer, while being directly compelled to work for the landowning class, is also given his own plot of land to cultivate. The second ingredient of feudalism, mentioned by Marx in the passage from The German Ideology, was the barbarian, ‘Germanic' element, combining the emerging hierarchy of a warrior aristocracy with the remnants of communal ownership, which was stubbornly maintained by the peasantry. A long period of transition ensued, in which slave relations had not yet entirely disappeared and the feudal system gradually asserted itself, reaching its true ascent only in the first centuries of the new millennium. And while as we have noted in various areas (urbanisation, the relative independence of art and philosophical thought from religion, medicine, etc) the rise of feudal society represented a marked regression with regard to the achievements of Antiquity, the new social relations gave both lord and serf a direct interest in increasing the yield of their share of the land and permitted the generalisation of a number of important technical advances in agriculture: the iron plough and the iron harness that allowed it to be horse-drawn, the water mill, the three field system of crop rotation, etc. The new mode of production thus permitted a revival of the cities and a new flourishing of culture, expressed most graphically in the great cathedrals and universities that emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries.

But like the slave system before it, feudalism also began to reach its ‘external' limits:

"Within the next hundred years (of the 13th century), a massive general crisis struck the whole continent...The deepest determinant of this general crisis probably lay...in a ‘seizure' of the mechanisms of reproduction of the system at a barrier point of its ultimate capacities. In particular, it seems clear that the basic motor of rural reclamation, which had driven the whole feudal economy forwards for three centuries, eventually over-reached the objective limits of both terrain and social structure. Population continued to grow while yields fell on the marginal lands still available for conversion at the existing levels of technique, and soil deteriorated through haste or misuse. The last reserves of newly reclaimed land were usually of poor quality, wet or thin soil that was more difficult to farm, and on which inferior crops such as oats were sown. The oldest lands under plough were, on the other hand, liable to age and decline from the very antiquity of their cultivation...." (Anderson, p 197).

As the expansion of feudal agrarian economy came up against these barriers, disastrous consequences ensued in the life of society: crop failure, famines, collapse of grain prices combined with soaring prices of goods produced in the urban centres:

"This contradictory process affected the noble class drastically, for its mode of life had become ever more dependent on the luxury goods produced in the towns...while demesne cultivation and servile dues from its estates yielded progressively decreasing incomes. The result was a decline in seigneurial revenues, which in turn unleashed an unprecedented wave of warfare as knights everywhere tried to recoup their fortunes with plunder. In Germany and Italy, this quest for booty in a time of dearth produced the phenomenon of unorganised and anarchic banditry by individual lords...In France, above all, the Hundred years' War - a murderous combination of civil war between the Capetian and Burgundian houses and an international struggle between England and France, also involving Flanders and the Iberian powers - plunged the richest country in Europe into unparalleled disorder and misery. In England, the epilogue of final continental defeat in France was baronial gangsterism of the Wars of the Roses...To complete a panorama of desolation, this structural crisis was over-determined by a conjunctural catastrophe: the invasion of the Black Death from Asia in 1348".

The Black Death, wiping out up to a third of the European population, hastened the final demise of serfdom. It brought about a chronic shortage of labour in the countryside, forcing the noble class to shift from traditional feudal labour dues to the payment of wages; but at the same time the nobility tried to hold the clock back by imposing draconian restrictions on wages and the movement of labourers, a Europe-wide tendency classically codified in the Statute of Labourers decreed in England immediately after the Black Death. The further result of this noble reaction was to provoke widespread class struggle, again most famously given shape by the huge Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381. But there were comparable uprisings all over Europe during this period (the French ‘Jacquerie', labourers' revolts in Flanders, the rebellion of the Ciompi in Florence, and so on).

As in the decline of ancient Rome, the mounting contradictions of the feudal system at the economic level thus had their repercussions at the level of politics (wars, social revolts) and in the relationship between man and nature; and all of these elements in turn accelerated and deepened the general crisis. As in Rome, the general decline of feudalism was the result of a crisis of underproduction, the inability of the old social relations to allow the production of the basic necessities of daily existence. It is important to note that although the slow emergence of commodity relations in the towns acted as a dissolving factor on feudal bonds, and were further accelerated by the effects of the general crisis (wars, famines, the Black Death), the new social relations could not really take wing until the old system had entered into a state of self-contradiction which resulted in a grave decline in the forces of production:

"One of the most important conclusions yielded by an examination of the great crash of European feudalism is that - contrary to widely received beliefs among Marxists - the characteristic ‘figure' of a crisis in a mode of production is not one in which vigorous (economic) forces of production burst triumphantly through retrograde (social) relations of production, and promptly establish a higher productivity and society on their ruins. On the contrary, the forces of production typically tend to stall and recede within the existent relations of production; these must then first be radically changed and reordered before new forces of production can be created and combined for a globally new mode of production. In other words, the relations of production generally change prior to the forces of production in an epoch of transition, and not vice versa" (p 204). As with the decline of Rome, a period of regression in the old system was a precondition for the flourishing of a new mode of production.

Again, as in the period of Roman decadence, the ruling class sought to preserve its tottering system by increasingly artificial means. The passing of savage laws to control the mobility of labour and the tendency of rural labourers to escape to the towns, the attempt to rein in the centrifugal tendencies of the aristocracy through the centralisation of monarchical power, the use of the Inquisition to impose a rigid ideological control over all expressions of heretical and dissident thought, the debasing of the coinage to ‘solve' the problem of royal indebtedness... all these trends represented the attempt of a dying system to postpone its final demise, but they could not prevent it. Indeed, to a large extent, the very means used to preserve the old system were transformed into bridgeheads of the new system: this was the case, for example, with the centralising monarchies of Tudor England, who were in great part creating the necessary conditions for the emergence of the modern capitalist nation state

Much more clearly than in the decadence of Rome, the epoch of feudal decline was also an epoch of social revolution in the sense that that a genuinely new and revolutionary class came out of its entrails, a class with a world outlook that challenged the old ideologies and institutions, and a mode of economy that found the feudal relation an intolerable obstacle to its expansion. The bourgeois revolution made its triumphant entry onto the stage of history in England in the 1640s, even if had to wait over a century and a half before its subsequent and even more spectacular victories in France in the 1790s. This long time-frame was a possibility for the bourgeois revolution because it is the crowning political point of a long process of economic and social development inside the shell of the old system, and because it followed different rhythms in different nations.

The transformation of ideological forms

"In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out".

All class societies are maintained by a combination of outright repression and the ideological control exerted by the ruling class through its numerous institutions: family, religion, education, and so on. Ideologies are never a purely passive reflection of the economic base, but contain their own dynamic which at certain moments can actively impact on the underlying social relations. In affirming the materialist conception of history, Marx was obliged to "distinguish" between the "material transformation of the economic conditions" and the "ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict" because hitherto the prevailing approach to history had been to emphasise the latter at the expense of the former.

When analysing the ideological transformations that take place in an epoch of social revolution, it is important to remember that while they are ultimately determined by the economic conditions of production, this does not happen in a rigid and mechanical way, not least because such a period is never one of pure descent or debasement, but is marked by an increasing clash between contradictory social forces. It is characteristic of such epochs that the old ruling ideology, corresponding less and less to a changing social reality, tends to decompose and give way to new world-outlooks which can serve to actively inspire and mobilise the social classes opposed to the old order. In the process of decomposing, the old ideologies - religious, philosophical, artistic - frequently succumb to pessimism, nihilism, and an obsession with death, while the ideologies of rising or rebellious classes are more often optimistic, life-affirming, looking forward to the dawn of a world radically transformed.

To take one example: in the dynamic period of the slave system, philosophy tended, within the limits of the day, to express mankind's efforts to "know thyself" in Socrates immortal phrase - to grasp the real dynamic of nature and society through rational thought, without the intermediary of the divine. In its period of descent, philosophy itself tended to retreat into the justification of despair or of irrationality, as in Neoplatonism and its links to the numerous mystery cults that flourished in the later Empire.

This tendency cannot be grasped in a one-sided manner however: in periods of decadence the old religions and philosophies were also confronted with the rise of new revolutionary classes or the rebellion of the exploited, and these generally also took on a religious form. Thus, in ancient Rome, the Christian religion, though certainly influenced by the eastern mystery cults, began as a protest movement of the dispossessed against the dominant order, and later, as an established power in its own right, provided a framework for the preservation of many of the cultural acquisitions of the ancient world. This dialectic between the old order and the new was a feature of ideological transformations during the decline of feudalism as well. On the one hand:

"The period of stagnation saw the rise of mysticism in all its forms. The intellectual form with the ‘Treatise on the Art of Dying', and above all, ‘The Imitation of Jesus Christ'. The emotional form with the great expressions of popular piety exacerbated by the influence of the uncontrolled elements of the mendicant clergy: the ‘flagellants' wandered the countryside, lacerating their bodies with whips in village squares in order to strike at human sensibility and call Christians to repent. These manifestations gave rise to imagery of often dubious taste, as with the fountains of blood that symbolised the redeemer. Very rapidly the movement lurched towards hysteria and the ecclesiastical hierarchy had to intervene against the troublemakers, in order to prevent their preaching from increasing the number of vagabonds (...) Macabre art developed... the sacred text most favored by the more thoughtful minds was the Apocalypse." (J. Favier, From Marco Polo to Christopher Columbus, p152f).

On the other hand, the demise of feudalism also saw the rise of the bourgeoisie and its world view, expressing itself in the magnificent flowering of art and science in the period of the Renaissance. And even mystical and millenarian movements like the Anabaptists were, as Engels pointed out, often intimately linked to the communist aspirations of the exploited classes. Such movements could not yet provide a historically viable alternative to the old system of exploitation, and their millenarian dreams were more often fixated on a primitive past than a more advanced future, but they nevertheless played a key role in the processes bringing about the destruction of the decaying mediaeval hierarchy.

In a decadent epoch, the general cultural decline is never absolute: at the artistic level, for example, the stagnation of the old schools can also be countered by new forms which above all express a human protest against an increasingly inhuman order. The same can be said at the level of morality. If morality is ultimately an expression of the social nature of mankind, and if periods of decadence are expressions of the break-down of social relations, then they will tend to be characterised by a concomitant break-down in morality, a tendency towards the collapse of basic human ties and the triumph of the anti-social impulses. The perversion and prostitution of sexual desire, the flourishing of casual murder, robbery and fraud, and above all the suspension of the moral order in warfare become the order of the day. But again, this should not be seen in a rigid and mechanical way, in which periods of ascent are marked by superior human behaviour and periods of decline by a sudden plunge into wickedness and depravity. The undermining and shattering of old moral certainties can equally express the rise of a new system of exploitation, in comparison to which the old order may seem comparatively benign, as noted in the Communist Manifesto with regard to the rise of capitalism:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade".

And yet, such is the understanding of Hegel's ‘Cunning of Reason' in the thinking of Marx and Engels that they were able to recognise that this moral ‘decline', this commodification of the world, was in fact a force for progress which was helping to sweep away the static feudal order that lay behind it and pave the way for the genuinely human moral order that lay in front of it.

---

[1] Preface to A contribution to the critique of political economy.

[2] For example, the settled and already quite hierarchical hunting societies which were able to hold extensive food stocks, the various semi-communist forms of agrarian production, the ‘tributary empires' formed by semi-barbarian pastoralists like the Huns and the Mongols, etc

[3] Among the Australian tribes when the traditional way of life was still in force, the hunter who brought in the game kept nothing for himself, but immediately handed over the product to the community in the shape of certain complex kinship structures. According to the work of the anthropologist Alain Testart, Le Communisme Primitif, 1985, the term primitive communism should only be applied to the Australians, which he sees as the last remnant of a social relationship which had probably been general during the palaeolithic period. This is a matter for debate. Certainly even among the nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples, there are wide differences in the way that the social product is distributed, even though all of them give priority to the maintenance of the community, and as Chris Knight points out in his Blood Relations, Menstruation and the Origins of Culture, 1991, what he calls the ‘own-kill rule' (ie prescribed limits on what the hunter may consume of his kill) is extremely widespread among hunting peoples.

[4] It must of course be borne in mind that the dissolution of primitive social relations was not a one-off event but followed very different rhythms in different parts of the globe; it is a process spanning millennia and it is only now reaching its last tragic chapters in the remotest regions of the globe, such as the Amazon and Borneo.

[5] Capital, 1, Part IV, Chapter XIV

When World War I broke out, the socialists met on 4th August 1914 to engage the struggle for internationalism and against the war: there were seven of them in Rosa Luxemburg's apartment. This reminiscence, which reminds us that the ability to swim against the current is one of the most important of revolutionary qualities, should not lead us to conclude that the role of the proletarian party was peripheral to the events which shook the world at that time. The contrary was the case, as we have tried to show in the first two articles of this series to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the revolutionary struggles in Germany. In the first article, we put forward the thesis that the crisis in the Social-Democracy, in particular in the German SPD[1] - the leading party of the Second International - was one of the most important factors making it possible for imperialism to march the proletariat to war. In Part 2 we argued that the intervention of revolutionaries was crucial in enabling the working class, in the midst of war, to recover its internationalist principles, thus making possible the ending of the imperialist carnage by revolutionary means (the November Revolution of 1918). In so doing, they set down the foundations for a new party and a new International.

And in both of these phases, we pointed out, the capacity of revolutionaries to understand the priority of the moment was the precondition to their playing such an active and positive role. After the breaking up of the international in face of war, the task of the hour was to understand the causes of this fiasco, and to draw the lessons. In the struggle against war, the responsibility of true socialists was to be the first to raise the banner of internationalism, to light up the path towards revolution.

The councils and the class party

The workers' uprising of 9th November 1918 brought the war to an end on the morning of November 10th 1918. The German Emperor and countless German princelings were overthrown - a new phase of the revolution was beginning. Although the November uprising was led by the workers, Rosa Luxemburg called it the "revolution of the soldiers". This was because the spirit which dominated it was that of a profound longing for peace. A desire which the soldiers, after four years in the trenches, embodied more than any other social group. This was what gave that unforgettable day its specific colour and its glory, and which fed its illusions. Since even parts of the bourgeoisie were relieved that the war was finally over, general fraternisation was the mood of the day. Even the two main protagonists of the social struggle, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, were affected by the illusions of 9th November. The illusion of the bourgeoisie was that it could still use the soldiers coming from the front against the workers. In the days which followed, this illusion dissipated. The "grey coats"[2] wanted to go home, not to fight the workers. The illusion of the proletariat was that the soldiers were already on their side and wanted revolution. During the first sessions of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils which were elected in Berlin on November 10th, the soldiers' delegates nearly lynched those revolutionaries who spoke of the necessity to continue the class struggle, and who identified the new Social Democratic government as the enemy of the people.

These workers' and soldiers' councils were, in general, marked by the weight of human inertia which curiously marks the beginning of every great social upheaval. Very often, soldiers elected officers as their delegates, and workers appointed the same Social-Democratic candidates they had voted for before the war. Thus, these councils found nothing better to do than appoint a government led by the warmongers of the SPD, and to decide their own suicide in advance by calling general elections to a parliamentary system.

Despite the hopelessness of these first measures, the workers' councils were the heart of the November Revolution. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, it was above all the appearance of these organs which proved and embodied the essentially proletarian character of this upheaval. But now a new phase of the revolution was opened up, in which the central question was no longer that of the councils but of the class party. The phase of illusions was coming to an end, the moment of truth, the outbreak of civil war was approaching. The workers' councils, through their very function and structure as organs of the masses, are capable of renewing and revolutionising themselves from one day to the next. The central question now was: would the determined revolutionary, proletarian outlook gain the upper hand within the councils, within the working class?

In order to be victorious, the proletarian revolution needs a unified, centralised political vanguard in which the class as a whole has confidence. This was perhaps the most important lesson of the October Revolution in Russia the previous year. The task of this party, as Rosa Luxemburg had argued in 1906 in her pamphlet about the Mass Strike, is no longer to organise the masses, but to give the class a political leadership, and a real confidence in its own capacities.

The difficulties in the regroupment of revolutionaries

But at the end of 1918 in Germany there was no such party in sight. Those socialists who opposed the pro-war policies of the SPD were mainly to be found in the USPD, the former party opposition subsequently excluded by the SPD. A mixed bunch with tens of thousands of members, from pacifists and those who wanted a reconciliation with the warmongers, to principled revolutionary internationalists. The main organisation of these internationalists, the Spartakusbund, was an independent fraction within the USPD. Other, smaller internationalist groups, such as the IKD[3] (which emerged from the left opposition in Bremen) were organised outside the USPD. The Spartakusbund was well known and respected among the workers. But the recognised leaders of the strike movements against the war were not these political groups, but the informal structure of factory delegates, the "revolutionäre Obleute". By December 1918 the situation was becoming dramatic. The first skirmishes leading to open civil war had already taken place. But the different components of a potential revolutionary class party - the Spartakusbund, the other left elements in the USPD, the IKD, the Obleute were still separate entities, and still mainly hesitant.

Under the pressure of events, the question of the foundation of the party began to be posed more concretely. In the end, it was dealt with in a great hurry.

The first national congress of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils had come together in Berlin on 16th December. While 250,000 radical workers demonstrated outside to put pressure on the 489 delegates (of whom only 10 represented Spartakus, 10 the IKD), Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were not allowed to address the meeting (under the pretext that they had no mandate). When this congress concluded by handing over its power to a future parliamentary system, it became clear that revolutionaries would have to reply to this in a unified manner.

On 14th December 1918, the Spartakusbund published a programmatic declaration of principles: What does the Spartakusbund want?

On 17th December, a national conference of the IKD in Berlin called for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and for the formation of a class party through a process of regroupment. The conference failed to reach agreement on whether or not to participate in the coming elections to a national parliamentary assembly.

Around the same time, leaders within the left of the UPSD, such as Georg Ledebour, and among the factory delegates, such as Richard Müller, began to raise the question of the need of a united workers' party.

At the same moment, delegates of the international youth movement were meeting in Berlin, where they set up a secretariat. On 18th December, an international youth conference was held, followed by a mass meeting in Berlin Neukölln, where Karl Liebknecht and Willi Münzenberg spoke.

It was in this context that a meeting in Berlin of Spartakusbund delegates decided on 29th December to break with the USPD and form a separate party. Three delegates voted against this decision. The same meeting called for a joint conference of Spartakus and the IKD, to begin in Berlin the following day, at which 127 delegates from 56 cities and sections participated. This conference was partly made possible through the mediation of Karl Radek, delegate of the Bolsheviks. Many of these delegates did not realise until their arrival that they had been summoned to form a new party[4]. The factory delegates were not invited to participate, since it was felt that it would not yet be possible to unite them with the very decided revolutionary positions defended by a majority of the often very young members and supporters of Spartakus and the IKD. Instead, it was hoped that the factory delegates would join the party once it had been formed.[5]

What became the founding congress of the KPD brought together leading figures of the Bremen Left (including Karl Radek, althought he represented the Bolsheviks at this meeting), who felt that the foundation of the party was long overdue, and of the Spartakusbund, such as Rosa Luxemburg and above all Leo Jogiches, whose principle worry was that this step might be premature. Paradoxically, both sides had good arguments to justify their stances.

The Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) sent six delegates to the conference, two of whom were prevented from participating by the German police.[6]

 

The founding congress: a great programmatic advance

Two of the main discussions at what became the founding congress of the KPD concerned the question of parliamentary elections and the trade unions. These were issues which had already played an important role in the debates before 1914, but which had become secondary in the course of the war. Now they returned to centre stage. Karl Liebknecht already took up the parliamentary issue in his opening presentation on the "Crisis in the USPD". The first national Congress of the Workers' Councils in Berlin had already posed the question which would inevitably split the USPD: National Assembly or Council Republic? It was the responsibility of all revolutionaries to denounce the bourgeois elections and its parliamentary system as counter-revolutionary, as the death of the rule of the workers' councils. But the leadership of the USPD had refused the calls both of the Spartakusbund and of the Obleute in Berlin for an extraordinary congress to debate and decide this question.

Speaking for the Bolshevik delegation, Karl Radek further developed this understanding that it was historical development itself which determined not only the need for a founding congress, but even its agenda. With the end of the war, the logic of the revolution in Germany would necessarily be different to that in Russia. The central question was no longer peace, but food supplies and their price, and the question of unemployment.

In putting the question of the National Assembly and "economic struggles" on the agenda the during first two days of the congress, the leadership of the Spartakusbund hoped for a clear position for the workers' councils against the bourgeois parliamentary system and against the outdated trade union form of struggle, as a solid programmatic basis for the new party. But the debates went further than this. The majority of delegates came out against any participation in bourgeois elections, even as a means of agitation against them, and against working within the trade unions. At this level, the congress was one of the strong moments in the history of the workers' movement. It helped to formulate, for the first time ever in the name of a revolutionary class party, these radical positions corresponding to the new epoch of decadent capitalism. These ideas were to strongly influence the formulation of the Manifesto of the Communist International, written some months later by Trotsky. And they were to become basic positions of the Communist Left - as they are to this day.

The interventions of the delegates who defended these positions were often marked by impatience and a certain lack of argumentation, and were criticised by the experienced militants including Rosa Luxemburg, who did not share their most radical conclusions. But the minutes of the meeting illustrate well that these new positions were not the product of individuals and their weaknesses, but of a profound social movement involving hundreds of thousands of class conscious workers[7]. Gelwitzki, delegate from Berlin, called on the party, instead of participating in the elections, to go the barracks to convince the soldiers that the assembly of the councils is the "government of the world proletariat", the national assembly that of the counter revolution. Levine, delegate from Neukölln (Berlin), pointed out that the participation of Communists in the elections could not but reinforce the illusions of the masses.[8] In the debate on the economic struggles, Paul Frölich, delegate from Hamburg, argued that the old trade union form of struggle was now out of date, since it was based on a separation between the economic and the political dimensions of the class struggle.[9] Hammer, delegate from Essen, reported how the miners in the Ruhr area were throwing away their trade union membership books. As for Rosa Luxemburg herself, who still favoured working within the trade unions for tactical purposes, she declared that the struggle of the proletariat for its liberation is identical with the struggle for the liquidation of the trade unions.

 

Mass strike and insurrection

The programmatic debates at the founding congress were of great historic importance, above all for the future.

But at the moment of the foundation congress itself, Rosa Luxemburg was profoundly right in saying that both the question of parliamentary elections and the trade unions were secondary. On the one hand, the question of the role of these institutions in what had become the epoch of imperialism, of war and revolution, was still too new in the workers' movement Both the debate and practical experience were still insufficient to fully clarify the issue. For the moment it was enough to know and agree that the mass unitary organs of the class, the workers' councils, and not parliament or the trade unions, are the means of the workers' struggle and of the proletarian dictatorship.

On the other hand, these debates tended to divert from the main task of the congress, which was to identify the next steps of the class on the road to power. This question, tragically, the congress failed to clarify. The key discussion on this issue was opened by a Rosa Luxemburg's presentation on "Our Programme" on the afternoon of the second day (31st December 1918). Here she explored the nature of what had been called the second phase of the revolution. The first phase, she said, had been immediately political, since directed against the war. During the November Revolution, the question of the specific economic class demands of the workers had been sidelined. This in turn helped to explain the relatively low level of class consciousness which accompanied these events, expressed in a general wish for reconciliation and for a "reunification" of the "socialist camp". For Rosa Luxemburg, the main characteristic of the second phase of the revolution would be the return of the class' economic demands to centre stage.

Here, she was not forgetting that the conquest of power is above all a political act. Instead she was highlighting another important difference between the revolutionary process in Russia and in Germany. In 1917 the Russian proletariat came to power without much deployment of the strike weapon. But, Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, this was possible because the revolution in Russia began, not in 1917, but in 1905. In other words, the Russian proletariat had already gone through the experience of the mass strike before 1917.

At the congress, she did not repeat the main ideas developed by the left of Social Democracy about the mass strike after 1905. She could safely assume that these were still present in the minds of the delegates. Here we will briefly recall: the mass strike is the precondition for the seizure of power, precisely because it explodes the separation between the economic and political struggles. And whereas the trade unions, even at their strongest moment as instruments of the workers, only organise minorities of the class, the mass strike activates the "knotted up mass of the helots" of the proletariat, the unorganised masses untouched by the light of political education. The workers' struggle is directed not only against material poverty. It is an insurrection against the existing division of labour itself, led by its main victims, the wage slaves themselves. The secret of the mass strike is the striving of the proletarians to become full human beings. Last but not least: the mass strike would be led by rejuvenated workers' councils, giving the class the organisational means to centralise its struggle for power.

This is why Rosa Luxemburg, in her congress speech, insisted that the armed insurrection is the last, not the first act of the struggle for power. The task of the hour, she said, is not to topple the government, but to undermine it. The main difference to the bourgeois revolution, she argued, is its mass character, coming from "below".[10]

 

The immaturity of the Congress

But precisely this was not understood at the congress. For many of the delegates, the next phase of the revolution was characterised, not by mass strike movements, but by the immediate struggle for power. This confusion was expressed particularly clearly by Otto Rühle[11], who claimed that it would be possible to seize power within 14 days. Even Karl Liebknecht, while admitting the possibility of a long drawn-out revolution, did not want to exclude the possibility of an "extremely rapid victory" in the "coming weeks."[12]

We have every reason to believe the eye witness accounts, according to which Rosa Luxemburg in particular was shocked and alarmed by the results of this congress. As for Leo Jogiches, his first reaction is said to have been to advise Luxemburg and Liebknecht to leave Berlin and go into hiding for a while[13]. He feared that the party and the proletariat were heading towards a catastrophe.

What alarmed Rosa Luxemburg most were not the programmatic positions adopted, but the blindness of most of the delegates to the danger represented by the counter-revolution, and the general immaturity with which the debates were conducted. Many interventions were characterised by wishful thinking, giving the impression that a majority of the class already stood behind the new party. The presentation of Rosa Luxemburg was greeted with jubilation. A motion of 16 delegates was immediately passed, to publish it as quickly as possible as an "agitation pamphlet". As opposed to this, the congress itself failed to discuss it seriously. In particular, hardly any intervention took up its main idea: that the struggle for power was not yet on the agenda. One laudable exception was the contribution of Ernst Meyer, who spoke about his recent visit to the provinces east of the river Elbe. He reported that large sectors of the petty bourgeoisie were speaking of the necessity to teach Berlin a lesson. He continued: "I was even more shocked by the fact that even the workers in the cities have not yet understood the necessities of the situation. This is why we have to develop with all our might our agitation not only in the countryside, but also in the small and middle size towns." Meyer also replied to Paul Frölich's idea of encouraging the creation of local council republics. "It is absolutely typical of the counter-revolution that it propagates the possibility of independent republics, expressing nothing but the desire to split up Germany into zones of social differentiation, removing the socially backward regions from the influence of the socially progressive ones."[14]

Particularly significant was the intervention of Fränkel, delegate from Königsberg, who proposed that there should be no discussion about the presentation at all. "I am of the opinion that a discussion about the magnificent speech of comrade Luxemburg would only weaken it" he declared.[15]

This contribution was followed up by an intervention of Bäumer, who declared that the proletarian position against any participation in elections was so evident, that he "bitterly regretted" that there had been any discussion on the subject at all[16].

Rosa Luxemburg was supposed to make the conclusion to this discussion. In the end, no conclusion was made. The chairman announced: "Comrade Luxemburg is unfortunately not able to make a conclusion, she is not feeling well.[17]"

What Karl Radek was later to describe as the "youthful immaturity" of the founding congress[18] was thus characterised by impatience and naivety, but also by a lack of culture of debate. Rosa Luxemburg had spoken about this problem the previous day. "I have the impression that you are taking your radicalism too lightly. Specifically the call for ‘rapid voting' proves this. That is not the maturity and the earnest spirit which belongs in this hall (...) We are called upon to accomplish the greatest tasks in world history, and we cannot be mature and thorough enough in thinking about which steps we have ahead of us in order to safely reach our goal. Decisions of such importance cannot be taken lightly. What I miss here is an attitude of reflection, the seriousness which by no means excludes revolutionary élan, but needs to be coupled with it."[19]

 

 

The negotiations with the "factory delegates"

 

The revolutionäre Obleute of Berlin sent a delegation to the congress to negotiate their possible adherence to the new party. A peculiarity of these negotiations was that the majority of the seven delegates considered themselves as the representatives of the factories where they worked, casting their votes on specific issues on the basis of some kind of proportional system, only after consultation with "their" workforce, who seem to have assembled for the occasion. Liebknecht, who led the negotiations for Spartakus, reported back to the congress that, for instance on the question of participation in the elections to the National Assembly, 26 votes had been cast in favour, and 16 votes against. Liebknecht adds: "But among the minority there are the representatives of the extremely important factories in Spandau, who have 60,000 workers behind them." Däumig and Ledebour, who were representatives of the left of the USPD, not Obleute, did not participate in the voting.

Another bone of contention was the demand of the Obleute for parity in the programme and the organisational commissions nominated by the congress. This was turned down on the grounds that the delegates represented a large part of the working class of Berlin, whereas the KPD represented the class in the whole country.

But the main dispute, which seems to have poisoned the atmosphere of negotiations which had begun very constructively, concerned the strategy and tactics for the coming period i.e. the very question which should have been at the heart of the congress deliberations. Richard Müller demanded that the Spartakusbund abandon what he called its "putschist tactic." He seemed in particular to be referring to the tactic of daily armed demonstrations through Berlin, led by the Spartakusbund, at a moment when, according to Müller, the bourgeoisie was trying to provoke a premature confrontation with the political vanguard in Berlin. To which Liebknecht replied: "You sound like a mouthpiece of Vorwärts"[20] (the counter-revolutionary paper of the SPD).

As Liebknecht describes it to the congress, this seems to have been the negative turning point of the negotiations. The Obleute, who until then were satisfied to have five representatives in the above mentioned commissions, now reverted to demanding eight etc. The factory delegates even began threatening to form a party of their own.

The congress went on to pass a resolution blaming "pseudo radical elements from the bankrupt USPD" for the failure of the negotiations. Under different "pretexts" these elements were trying to "capitalise on their influence over the revolutionary workers."[21]

The article about the congress, which appeared in the January 3rd 1919 issue of Die Rote Fahne, which was written by Rosa Luxemburg, expressed a different spirit. This article speaks of the beginning of negotiations towards unification with the Obleute and the delegates of the big Berlin factories, the beginning of a process which "as a matter of course, irresistibly, will lead to a process of unification of all true proletarian and revolutionary elements in a single organisational framework. That the revolutionary Obleute of Greater Berlin, the moral representatives of the vanguard of the Berlin proletariat, will join up with the Spartakusbund, is proven by the cooperation of both sides in all the revolutionary actions of the working class in Berlin to date."[22]

 

The alleged "Luxemburgism" of the young KPD

How to explain these flawed birth marks of the KPD?

After the defeat of the revolution in Germany, a series of explanations were put forward, both within the KPD and the Communist International, which emphasised specific weaknesses of the movement in Germany, in particular in comparison with Russia. The Spartakusbund was accused of having defended a "spontaneous" and so-called Luxemburgist theory of the formation of the party. One sought here the origins of everything from the alleged hesitation of the Spartakists to separate from the war mongers in the SPD, to the so-called leniency of Rosa Luxemburg towards the young "radicals" in the party.

The origins of the alleged "spontaneist theory" of the party is habitually traced back to Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet about the 1905 revolution in Russia - The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions - where she allegedly calls for the intervention of the masses in the struggle against the opportunism and reformism of Social Democracy as an alternative to the political and organisational struggle within the party itself. In reality, the recognition that the progress of the class party depends on a series of "objective" and "subjective" factors, of which the evolution of the class struggle is one of the most important, was a basic thesis of the Marxist movement long before Rosa Luxemburg.[23]

Above all, Rosa Luxemburg did propose a very concrete struggle within the party: The struggle to re-establish the political control of the party over the social democratic trade unions. It is a common belief, in particular among syndicalists, that the organisational form of the political party is much more prone to capitulate to the logic of capitalism than the trade unions who directly organise the workers in struggle. Rosa Luxemburg understood very well that the opposite is the case, since the trade unions mirror the reigning division of labour which is the most profound basis of class society. She understood that the trade unions and not the SPD were the main carriers of opportunist and reformist ideology in pre-war Social Democracy, and that under cover of the slogan of their "autonomy" the trade unions were in reality taking over the workers' political party. It is true that this strategy proposed by Luxemburg proved insufficient. But this does not make it "spontaneist" or syndicalist (!) as is sometimes alleged! Similarly, the orientation of Spartakus during the war to form an opposition first within the SPD and then the USPD, expressed not an underestimation of the party, but an unswerving determination to fight for the party, to prevent its best elements falling into the hands of the bourgeoisie.

In an intervention at the fourth congress of the KPD, in April 1920, Clara Zetkin claimed that Rosa Luxemburg, in her last letter to Zetkin, had written that the foundation congress had been mistaken in not making the acceptance of participation in the elections a condition for membership in the new party. There is no need to doubt the sincerity of Clara Zetkin in making this claim. The capacity to read what other people really write, and not what you would want or expect them to, is probably rarer than is generally assumed. The letter of Luxemburg to Zetkin, dated January 11, 1919, was later published. What Rosa Luxemburg wrote is as follows: "But above all, as far as the question of the non participation in the elections is concerned: You enormously overestimate the importance of this decision. There were no ‘Rühlists" present, Rühle was not a leader at the Conference. Our ‘defeat' was only the triumph of a somewhat childish, immature, unswerving radicalism (...) We all decided unanimously not to make of this casus a cabinet question, not to take it tragically. In reality, the question of the National Assembly will be pushed right into the background by the stormy developments, and when things proceed as they are doing, it appears questionable enough if the elections to the National Assembly will even take place"[24].

The fact that the radical positions were often put forward by those delegates who most clearly expressed the impatience and immaturity of that Conference, helped to give the impression that this immaturity was the product of the refusal to participate in bourgeois elections or in the trade unions. This impression was to have tragic consequences about a year later when the leadership, at the Heidelberg Conference, excluded the majority on account of their position on the elections and the trade unions.[25] This was not the attitude of Rosa Luxemburg, who knew that there is no alternative to the necessity for revolutionaries to pass on their experience to the next generation, and that a class party cannot be founded without the participation of the young generation.

 

The alleged "déclassé" character of the "young radicals"

After the exclusion of the radicals from the KPD, and of the KAPD from the Communist International, there was the beginning of a theorisation of the role of the "radicals" within the young party as an expression of the weight of "uprooted" and "déclassé" elements. It is certainly true that, among the young supporters of the Spartakusbund during the war, more particularly within the ranks of the groupings of "red soldiers", the war deserters, the invalids etc. there were currents who dreamt of destruction and "total revolutionary terror". Some of these elements were highly dubious, and the Obleute were rightly suspicious of them. Others were hotheads, or simply young workers politicised by the war, who had learnt of no way of articulating their ideas other than fighting with a gun, and who longed for the kind of "guerrilla" campaigns as were soon to be practised by Max Hoelz[26].

This interpretation was taken up again in the 1970s by authors such as Fähnders and Rector in their book Linksradikalismus und Literatur.[27] They attempted to illustrate their thesis of the link between Left Communism and "lumpenisation" through the example of the biographies of radical artists and writers of the left, rebels who, like the young Maxim Gorki or Jack London, had rejected existing society by placing themselves outside of it. Referring to one of the most influencial leaders of the KAPD, they wrote: "Adam Scharrer was one of the most radical representatives of international rebelliousness (...) leading him to the extreme rigid positions of the Communist Left."[28]

In reality, most of the young militants of the KPD and the Communist Left were politicised in the socialist youth movement before 1914. Politically they were not a product of the "uprooting" and "lumpenisation" caused by the war. But their politicisation did gravitate around the question of war. As opposed to the older generation of socialist workers, who suffered the weight of decades of political routine in the epoch of the relative stability of capitalism, the socialist youth was directly mobilised by the spectre of approaching war, developing a strong "anti-militarist" tradition[29]. And whereas the Marxist Left became an isolated minority within Social Democracy, their influence within the radical youth organisations was much stronger[30].

As for the accusations that the "radicals" had been tramps in their youth, this fails to take into account that these years of "wandering" were a typical part of proletarian biographies at that time. Partly a leftover of the old tradition of the wandering journeyman which still characterised the first socialist political organisations in Germany like the Communist League, this tradition was above all a fruit of the workers' struggle to ban child factory work. Many young workers would set out to "see the world" before having to submit to the yoke of wage slavery. Going on foot, they would explore the German speaking countries, Italy, the Balkans and even the Middle East. Those connected to the workers' movement would find free or cheap accommodation in the trade union houses in the big cities, political and social contacts and support in the local youth organisations. In this way hubs of international exchange appeared around political, cultural, artistic and scientific developments[31]. Others went to sea, learning languages and establishing socialist links across the globe. No wonder this youth became a vanguard of proletarian internationalism throughout Europe![32]

 

Who were the "revolutionäre Obleute"?

The counter-revolution accused the Obleute of being paid agents of foreign governments, of the Entente and then of "World Bolshevism". In general they have gone down in history as a kind of grass roots trade unionist, localist and factory oriented, anti-party current. Within "operaist" circles they have been considered with admiration as a kind of revolutionary conspiracy out to sabotage the imperialist war. How else to explain the way they "infiltrated" the key sectors and plants of the German arms industry?

Let's stick to the facts. The Obleute began as a small circle of Social-Democratic party functionaries and militants, who had gained the confidence of their colleagues through their unswerving opposition to the war. They were particularly strongly based in the capital, Berlin, and in the metal industry, above all among the turners. They belonged to the most intelligent, educated workers with the highest wages. But they were renowned for their sense of support and solidarity towards other, weaker sectors of the class, such as the women mobilised to replace male workers sent to the front. In the course of the war a whole network of politicised workers grew up around them. Far from being an anti-party current, they were almost exclusively composed of former Social-Democrats, who were now members or sympathisers of the left wing of the USPD, including the Spartakusbund. They participated passionately in all the political debates which took place in the revolutionary underground throughout the war.

The particular form this politicisation took was to a large degree determined by the conditions of clandestine activity, making mass assemblies rare and open discussion impossible. In the factories, the workers protected their leaders from repression, often with remarkable success. The extensive spy system of the trade unions and the SPD regularly failed to even find out the names of the "ringleaders". In case of arrest, each of these delegates had named a substitute who immediately filled the gap.

The "secret" of their capacity to "infiltrate" the key sectors of industry was very simple. They belonged to the "best" workers, so that the capitalists competed with each other to sign them up. In this way, the employers themselves, without knowing it, put these revolutionary internationalists in key positions of the war economy.

 

The absence of the International

It is no peculiarity of the situation in Germany that the three above mentioned forces within the working class played crucial roles in the drama of the formation of the class party. One of the characteristics of Bolshevism during the revolution in Russia was the way it united basically the same forces within the working class: the pre-war party representing the programme and the organisational experience; the advanced, class conscious workers in the factories and work places, who anchored the party in the class, played a decisive, positive role in resolving the different crises in the organisation; and revolutionary youth politicised by the struggle against war.

Compared with this, what is striking in Germany is the absence of a similar degree of unity and mutual confidence between these essential components. This, and not any inferior quality of these elements themselves, was crucial. Thus, the Bolsheviks possessed the means to clarify their confusions while maintaining and enforcing their unity. In Germany this was not the case.

The revolutionary vanguard in Germany suffered from a more deeply rooted lack of unity and of confidence in its own mission.

One of the main explanations for this is that the German revolution faced a much more powerful enemy. The bourgeoisie in Germany was certainly more ruthless than in Russia. Moreover, the phase of history inaugurated by the world war had delivered a new and mighty weapon into its hands. Germany before 1914 was the country with the most developed organisations of the workers' movement worldwide. In a new era, when the trade unions and the mass social democratic parties could no longer serve the cause of the proletariat, these instruments because enormous obstacles. Here the dialectics of history were at work. What had once been a strength of the German working class now became its weakness.

It takes courage to attack such a formidable fortress. The temptation can be very strong to ignore the strength of the enemy in order to reassure yourself.

But the problem was not only the strength of the German bourgeoisie. When the Russian proletariat stormed the bourgeois state in 1917, world capitalism was still divided by the imperialist war. It is a well known fact that the German military actually helped Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders to return to Russia, since they hoped that this would in some way weaken the military resistance of their opponent on the Eastern front.

Once the war was over the world bourgeoisie united against the proletariat. One of the strong moments of the first congress of the KPD was the adoption of a resolution identifying and denouncing the military collaboration of the British and German military with the local landlords in the Baltic states in the training of counter-revolutionary paramilitary units directed against "the Russian Revolution today" and the "German revolution tomorrow".

In such a situation, only a new International could have given revolutionaries and the whole proletariat in Germany the necessary confidence and self-confidence. The revolution could still be victorious in Russia without the presence of a world class party, because the Russian bourgeoisie was relatively weak and isolated - but this was not true in Germany. The Communist International was not yet founded when the decisive confrontation of the German revolution took place in Berlin. Only such an organisation, by bringing together the theoretical acquisitions and the experience of the whole proletariat, could have been equal to the task of leading a world revolution.

It was only the outbreak of the Great War itself which made revolutionaries realise the need for a truly united and centralised international left opposition. But under the conditions of war it was extremely difficult either to link up organisationally or to clarify the political divergences which still separated the two most important currents of the pre-war left: the Bolsheviks around Lenin, and the German and Polish Lefts around Rosa Luxemburg. This absence of unity before the war made it all the more difficult to make the political strengths of currents in different countries the common heritage of all, and to attenuate the weaknesses of each.

In no country was the shock of the collapse of the Socialist International as profound as in Germany. There, the confidence in such qualities as theoretical formation, political leadership, centralisation or party discipline was profoundly shaken. The conditions of war, the crisis of the workers' movement, made it difficult to restore such confidence.[33]

Conclusion

In this article we have concentrated on the weaknesses which appeared in the formation of the party. This was necessary in order to understand the defeat at the beginning of 1919, the subject of the next article. But despite these weaknesses, those who came together at the moment of the foundation of the KPD were the best representatives of their class, embodying all that is noble and great-hearted in humanity, the true representatives of a better future. We will return to this question at the end of this series.

The unification of revolutionary forces, the formation of a political leadership of the proletariat worthy of the name, had become the central question of the revolution. Nobody understood this better than the class directly threatened by this process. From the November 9 Revolution on, the main thrust of the political life of the bourgeoisie was directed towards the liquidation of the Spartakusbund. The KPD was founded in the midst of this pogrom atmosphere, preparing the decisive blows against the revolution which were soon to follow.

This will be the subject of the next article.

 

Steinklopfer.

---

[1] Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social-Democratic Party).

[2] German soldiers in "feldgrau" uniform.

[3] Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands (International Communists of Germany).

[4] The agenda announced in the invitation letter was:

1. The crisis in the USPD
2. Programme of Spartakusbund
3. National Assembly
4. International Conference.

[5] Jogiches on the other hand seems to have wanted the Obleute to take part in founding the party.

[6] Six of the militants present at this conference were murdered by the German authorities in the following months.

[7] Der Gründungsparteitag der KPD. Protokoll und Materalien. Herausgegeben (Founding Congress of the KPD. Minutes and Documents), Hermann Weber.

[8] Eugen Levine was executed a few months later as a leader of the Bavarian Council Republic.

[9] Frölich, a prominent representative of the Bremen Left, was later to write a famous biography of Rosa Luxemburg.

[10] Protokoll und Materalien, pp 196-199.

[11] Although he soon was to reject completely any class party as bourgeois, and to develop a rather individual vision of the development of class consciousness, Otto Rühle was to remain true to Marxism and the cause of the working class. At the congress, he was already a partisan of the "Einheitsorganisationen" (political-economic groups), which in his opinion should replace both the party and the trade unions. In the debate on the "economic struggles" Luxemburg replies to this point of view, saying that the alternative to the trade unions is the workers' councils and mass organs, not the Einheitsorganisationen.

[12] Protokoll und Materalien, p222.

[13] According to Clara Zektin, Jogiches, in reaction to the discussions, wanted to end the congress in failure i.e. postpone the foundation of the party.

[14] Ibid p214.

[15] Ibid p206. According to the minutes, this suggestion was greeting with shouts of: "Quite right!" Fortunately, Fränkel's motion was voted down.

[16] Ibid p209. For the same reason Gelwitzki, the previous day, said it had been "shameful" even to have discussed this question. And when Fritz Heckert, who did not have the same revolutionary reputation as Luxemburg or Liebknecht, tried to defend the position of the central committee on participation in the elections, he was interrupted by a shout from Jakob: "here speaks the spirit of Noske" p117). Noske, the Social Democratic minister of the interior of the bourgeois government of the hour, went down in history as the "bloodhound of the counter-revolution".

[17] Ibid p224

[18] "The congress demonstrated sharply the youth and inexperience of the party. The link to the masses was extremely weak. The congress adopted an ironic attitude towards the left Independents. I did not have the feeling of already having a party in front of me." Ibid p47.

[19] Ibid P. 99.100.

[20] Ibid., p271.

[21] Ibid., p290.

[22] Ibid., p302.

[23] See the arguments of Marx and Engels within the Communist League after the defeat of the 1848-49 revolution.

[24] Protokoll und Materalien, pp42,43.

[25] A large part of this excluded majority went on to found the KAPD. Suddenly, there were two communist parties in Germany, a truly tragic division of revolutionary forces!

[26] Max Hoelz, sympathiser of the KPD and the KAPD, whose armed supporters were active in central Germany at the beginning of the 1920s.

[27] Walter Fähnders, Martin Rector: Linksradikalismus und Literatur, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der sozialistischen Literatur in der Weimarer Republik (Left Radicalism and Literature, Studies of the History of Socialist Literature in the Weimar Republic).

[28] P. 262. Adam Scharrer, a leading figure of the KAPD, continued to defend the need for a revolutionary class party until the crushing of the Left Communist organisations in 1933.

[29] The first appearance of a radical socialist youth movement was in Belgium in the 1860s, when young militants agitated (with some success) the soldiers in the barracks to prevent their use against striking workers.

[30] See Scharrer's novel Vaterlandslose Gesellen (which translates roughly as "unpatriotic rabble"), written in 1929, as well as the biography and commentary of the "Arbeitskollektiv proletarisch-revolutionärer Romane" republished by Oberbaumverlag Berlin.

[31] One of the most important witnesses of this chapter of history is Willi Münzenberg, for instance his book Die Dritte Front ("The Third Front"): "Reminiscences from 15 years in the proletarian youth movement" first published 1930.

[32] The acknowledged leader of pre-war socialist youth was in Germany Karl Liebknecht, in Italy Amadeo Bordiga.

[33] The example of the maturation of socialist youth in Switzerland under the influence of regular discussions with the Bolsheviks during the war shows what was possible under more favourable circumstances. "With great psychological ability, Lenin drew the young people towards him, went to their discussion evenings, praising and criticising always in a spirit of empathy. Ferdy Böhny later recalled: ‘The way he discussed with us resembled the Socratic dialogue'". (Babette Gross: Willi Münzenberg, Eine politische Biografie p93).

In International Review n°133 we began the publication of a debate within the ICC on the underlying causes of the period of post-war prosperity during the 1950s-60s, which has proven to be an exceptional one in the history of capitalism since World War I. In that article, we posed the terms and framework of the debate, and presented briefly the main positions around which it has turned. We are publishing below a new contribution to the discussion.

This contribution supports the thesis presented in n°133 under the title "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism", and attributes the creation of solvent demand during the post-war boom essentially to the Keynesian mechanisms set up by the bourgeoisie.

In future issues of the Review we will publish articles presenting the other positions in the debate, as well as a reply to this position in particular as regards the nature of capitalist accumulation and the factors determining capitalism's entry into its decadent phase.

---

The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism

In 1952, our predecessors of the GCF[1] brought their group's activity to an end because "The disappearance of the extra-capitalist market leads to a permanent crisis of capitalism (...) We can see here the striking confirmation of Rosa Luxemburg's theory (...) In fact, the colonies are no longer an extra-capitalist market for the colonial homeland (...) We are living in a state of imminent war...".[2] Written on the eve of the post-war boom, these repeated mistakes reveal the need to go beyond "the striking invalidation of Rosa Luxemburg's theory", and to return to a more coherent understanding of the functioning and limits of capitalism. Such is the aim of this article.

I. Capitalism's motive forces and internal contradictions

1) The constraints on extended reproduction and its limits

The appropriation of surplus labour is fundamental to capitalism's survival.[3] Unlike previous societies, capitalist appropriation has its own inbuilt, permanent dynamic towards the expansion of the scale of production which goes far beyond simple reproduction. It generates a growing social demand through the employment of new workers and reinvestment in extra means of production and consumption: "These limits of consumption are extended by the exertions of the reproduction process itself. On the one hand, this increases the consumption of revenue on the part of labourers and capitalists, on the other hand, it is identical with an exertion of productive consumption".[4] This dynamic of extension takes form in a succession of cycles, roughly every decade, when the increasing weight of fixed capital tends to reduce the rate of profit and provoke crises.[5] During these crises, bankruptcies and the depreciation of capital create the conditions for a recovery which expands the markets and productive potential: "The crises are always but momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions. They are violent eruptions which for a time restore the disturbed equilibrium (...)The ensuing stagnation of production would have prepared - within capitalistic limits - a subsequent expansion of production. And thus the cycle would run its course anew. Part of the capital, depreciated by its functional stagnation, would recover its old value. For the rest, the same vicious circle would be described once more under expanded conditions of production, with an expanded market and increased productive forces."[6] Graph n°1 perfectly illustrates all the elements of this theoretical framework established by Marx: each of the ten cycles of rising and falling profit rates ends in a crisis (recession).

Graph n°1: Quarterly rate of profit and recessions, USA 1948-2007 (the nine recessions which marked the ten cycles are indicated by the lines from top to bottom: 1949, 1954, 1958, 1960, 1970-71, 1974, 1980-81, 1991, 2001)

Capitalist accumulation for more than two centuries has lived to the rhythm of some thirty cycles and crises. Marx identified seven during his lifetime, the Third International sixteen,[7] and the left in the International completed the picture for the inter-war period.[8] This is the recurring material basis for the cycles of over-production whose origins we will now examine.[9]

2) The circuit of accumulation, a play in two acts: production of profit and the realisation of commodities

The extraction of a maximum of surplus labour, crystallised in a growing quantity of commodities, constitutes what Marx calls "the first act in the process of capitalist production". These commodities must then be sold in order to transform the material surplus labour into surplus value in the form of money for reinvestment: this is "the second act of the process". Each of these two acts contains its own contradictions and limits. Although they influence each other, the first act is driven above all by the rate of profit, while the second is a function of the various tendencies limiting the market.[10] These two limits engender periodically a final demand which is unable to absorb production: "Over-production is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labour with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay".[11]

What is the origin of this inadequate solvent demand?

a) Society's limited capacity for consumption, which is reduced by the antagonistic relations in the division of surplus labour (class struggle): "The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit".[12]

b) The limits resulting from the process of accumulation which reduce consumption as the rate of profit declines: the inadequate surplus value extracted relative to invested capital puts a break on investment and the employment of new labour power: "The limitations of the capitalist mode of production come to the surface: 1) In that the development of the productivity of labour creates out of the falling rate of profit a law which at a certain point comes into antagonistic conflict with this development and must be overcome constantly through crises...".[13]

c) An incomplete realisation of the total product when the proportions between the sectors of production are not respected.[14]

3) A threefold conclusion on capitalism's internal dynamic and contradictions

Throughout his work, Marx constantly underlines this dual root cause of crises, whose determinations are fundamentally independent: "The foundation of modern overproduction is on the one hand, the absolute development of the productive forces and consequently the mass production of producers shut up in the circle of life's necessities, and on the other its limitation by capitalist profit".[15] In fact, if the level and the recurrent fall in the rate of profit mutually influence the way in which surplus value is shared out, Marx nonetheless insists that these two root causes are fundamentally "independent", "logically divergent", "not identical".[16] Why is this? Simply because the production of profit and the markets are, for the most part, subjected to different conditions. This is why Marx categorically rejects any theory which attributes crises to a single cause.[17] It is thus theoretically incorrect either to make the evolution of the rate of profit dependent on the size of the market, or the reverse. The time-scales of these two underlying root causes are thus necessarily different. The first contradiction (the rate of profit) has its roots in the need to increase constant capital at the expense of variable capital, and its timescale is thus tied essentially to the cycles of rotation of fixed capital. Since the second contradiction turns around the distribution of surplus labour, its timescale is determined by the balance of forces between the classes which evolves over longer periods.[18] While these two timescales may come together (the process of accumulation influencing the balance of forces between the classes and vice versa), they are fundamentally "independent", "not identical", "logically divergent", for the class struggle is not strictly tied to the ten-year cycles, nor are the latter tied to the balance of class forces.

II. An empirical validation of the marxist theory of the crises of overproduction

The period from the end of World War II to the present day is a good example confirming Marx's analysis of the crises of overproduction, and of its three main implications. In particular, it allows us to disprove all the single-cause crisis theories, whether they be the theory based solely on the falling rate of profit which is incapable of explaining why accumulation and growth do not start up again despite the fact that the rate of profit has been rising for a quarter-century, or that based on the saturation of solvent demand which cannot explain the rise in the rate of profit since the markets are totally exhausted (which logically should be expressed in a zero rate of of profit). All this can readily be understood from the two graphs (n°1 and n°3) which show the evolution of the rate of profit.

The exhaustion of post-war prosperity and the worsening economic climate during 1969-82 are fundamentally the product of a downturn in the rate of profit,[19] despite the fact that consumption was maintained by the indexation of wages and measures to support demand.[20] The gains of productivity declined by the end of the 1960s,[21] cutting the rate of profit in half by 1982 (see Graph n°3). Since then, a recovery in the rate of profit has only been possible by increasing the rate of surplus value (lowering wages and increasing exploitation). This has implied an inevitable deregulation of the key mechanisms which ensured a growth in final demand during the post-war boom (see below). This process began at the beginning of the 1980s and can be seen in particular in the constant decline in wages as a proportion of total wealth produced.

Graph n°2 Wages in relation to total wealth produced: G7, Europe, France

Overall then, during the 1970s the "rate of profit" contradiction weighed on capitalism, while final demand was maintained. The situation was reversed from 1982 onwards: the rate of profit has been spectacularly restored, but at the price of a drastic compression of final demand (the market): essentially of wage earners (see Graph n°2), but also (to a lesser extent) of investment, since the rate of accumulation has remained at its low-water mark (see Graph n°3).

Hence, we can now understand why the economic decline is continuing despite a restored rate of profit: the failure of growth and accumulation to take off again, despite a spectacular improvement in company profitability, is explained by the compression of final demand (wages and investment). This drastic reduction in final demand leads to listless investment for enlarged accumulation, continued rationalisation through company take-overs and mergers, unused capital pouring into financial speculation, delocalisation of industry in search of cheap labour... all of which further depresses overall demand.

Graph n° 3 Profit, accumulation and economic growth, USA, Europe, Japan: 1961-2006

As for the recovery of final demand, this is hardly possible under present conditions since the increase in the rate of profit depends on keeping it low! Since 1982, in a context of improved company profitability, it is thus the "restriction of solvent markets" timescale which plays the leading role in explaining the continued listlessness of accumulation and growth, even if fluctuations in the rate of profit can still play an important part in the short term in sparking off recessions, as we can readily see in Graphs n°1 and n°3.

III. Capitalism and its surrounding world

Capitalism's dynamic towards enlargement necessarily gives it a fundamentally expansive character: "The market must, therefore, be continually extended, so that its interrelations and the conditions regulating them assume more and more the form of a natural law working independently of the producer, and become ever more uncontrollable. This internal contradiction seeks to resolve itself through expansion of the outlying field of production. But the more productiveness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of consumption rest".[22] That said, when Marx pointed out all the dynamics and limits of capitalism, he did so in abstraction from its relationships with the external (non-capitalist) sphere. We now need to understand what is the latter's role and importance during capitalism's development. Capitalism was born and developed within the framework of feudal, then mercantile social relations, with which it inevitably developed important ties to obtain the means of its own accumulation (import of precious metals, looting, etc.), for the sale of its own commodities (direct sale, triangular trade, etc.), and as a source of labour.

Once capitalism's foundation was assured after three centuries of primitive accumulation (1500-1825), this environment continued to supply a whole series of opportunities throughout the ascendant period (1825-1914) as a source of profit, an outlet for the sale of commodities suffering from overproduction, and as an extra source of labour power. All these reasons explain the imperialist rush for colonies between 1880 and 1914.[23] However, the existence of an external regulation of a part of capitalism's internal contradictions does not mean either that the former were more effective for its development, nor that capitalism is incapable of creating internal modes of regulation. It is first and foremost the extension and domination of wage labour on its own foundations which progressively allowed capitalism to make its growth more dynamic, and while the various relations between capitalism and the extra-capitalist sphere gave it a whole series of opportunities, the size of this milieu and the overall balance-sheet of its exchanges with it, were nonetheless a brake on its growth.[24]

IV. The historical obsolescence of the capitalist mode of production and the basis for going beyond it

This formidable dynamism of capitalism's internal and external expansion is nonetheless not eternal. Like every mode of production in history, capitalism also undergoes a phase of obsolescence where its social relationships become a brake on the development of its productive forces.[25] We must therefore seek for the historical limits to the capitalist mode of production within the transformation and generalisation of the social relations of wage labour production. Once it reaches a certain stage, the extension of wage labour and its domination through the formation of the world market constitute capitalism's apogee. Instead of continuing to eradicate old social relationships and develop the productive forces, the henceforth obsolete character of the wage-labour relationship tends to freeze the former and put a brake on the latter: it remains incapable of integrating a large part of humanity, it engenders crises, wars and disasters of ever-growing magnitude, to the point where it threatens humanity with extinction.

1) Capitalism's obsolescence

The progressive generalisation of wage labour does not mean that it has taken root everywhere, far from it, but it does mean that its domination of the world creates a growing instability where all the contradictions of capitalism find their fullest expression. World War I opens this era of major crises whose dominant feature is that they are world-wide and anchored in the wage-labour relationship: a) the national framework has become too narrow to contain the onslaught of capitalism's contradictions; b) the world no longer offers enough opportunities and shock-absorbers providing capitalism with an external regulation of its internal contradictions; c) with hindsight, the failure of the regulation set up during the post-war boom reveals capitalism's historical inability to adjust internally in the long term to its own contradictions, which consequently explode with increasingly barbaric violence.

Inasmuch as it was a world conflict, not for the conquest of new spheres of influence, zones for investment, and markets, but to share out those that already existed, World War I marked the capitalist mode of production's definitive entry into its phase of obsolescence. The two, increasingly violent, world wars, the greatest crisis of overproduction ever (1929-1933), the severe restriction on the growth of the productive forces between 1914 and 1945, capitalism's inability to integrate a large part of humanity, the development of militarism and state capitalism throughout the planet, the increasing growth of unproductive expenditure, and capitalism's historic inability to stabilise internally its own contradictions - all these phenomena are material expressions of this historical obsolescence of the social relations of production based on wage labour which have nothing to offer humanity but a perspective of growing barbarism.

2) Catastrophic collapse, or a historical, materialist and dialectical vision of history?

Capitalism's obsolescence does not imply that it is condemned to catastrophic collapse. there are no predefined quantitative limits within capitalism's productive relations (whether it be a rate of profit, or a given quantity of extra-capitalist markets) which determine a single point beyond which capitalist production would die. The limits of modes of production are above all social, the product of their internal contradictions and the collision between these now-obsolete relations and the productive forces. Henceforth it is the proletariat which will abolish capitalism, capitalism will not die of itself as a result of its "objective" limits. During capitalism's obsolescence, the same tendencies and dynamics that Marx analysed continue to operate, but they do so within a profoundly modified general context. All the economic, social, and political contradictions inevitably appear on a higher level, either in social struggles which regularly pose the question of revolution, or in imperialist conflicts which threaten humanity's very future. In other words, the world has entered the "epoch of wars and revolutions" announced by the Third International.

V. Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism: the foundation of the post-war boom

Marxists have no reason to be surprised at recoveries that take place during a mode of production's obsolescence: we can see these for example in the reconstitution of the Roman Empire under Charlemagne, or in the formation of the great monarchies during the Ancien Régime. However, it is not because we are standing at a bend in the river that we can conclude that it is flowing uphill and away from the sea! The same is true of the post-war boom: the bourgeoisie proved capable of creating a brief phase of strong growth in a general course of obsolescence.

The Great Depression of 1929 in the United States showed how violently capitalism's contradictions could break out in an economy dominated by wage labour. One might therefore have expected that it would be followed by increasingly violent and frequent economic crises, but this was not the case. The situation had evolved considerably, both in the process of production (Fordism) and in the balance of forces between the classes (and within them). Moreover, the bourgeoisie had learned certain lessons. The years of crisis and the barbarism of World War II were thus followed by a good thirty years of strong growth, a quadrupling of real wages, full employment, the creation of a social wage, and an ability by the system not to avoid, but to react to its cyclical crises. How was all this possible?

1) The foundations of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism

Henceforth, in the absence of adequate external outlets for its contradictions, capitalism had to find an internal solution to its dual constraint at the level of profits and markets. The high rate of profit was made possible by the strong gains in labour productivity thanks to industrial Fordism (assembly-lines combined with shift work). Meanwhile, the markets on which to sell this enormous mass of commodities were guaranteed by the expansion of production, state intervention, and various systems indexing real wages to productivity. This made it possible to increase demand in parallel with production (see Graph n°4). By stabilising the share of wages in total wealth produced, capitalism was thus able for a while to avoid "Over-production [which] arises precisely from the fact that the mass of the people can never consume more than the average quantity of necessaries, that their consumption therefore does not grow correspondingly with the productivity of labour".[26]

This was the analysis that Paul Mattick and other revolutionaries of the time were to adopt to analyse post-war prosperity: "It is undeniable that wages have risen in the modern epoch. But only in the framework of the expansion of capital, which presupposes that the relationship of wages to profits should remain in constant in general. Labour productivity should therefore rise with a rapidity which would make it possible both to accumulate capital and to raise the workers' living standards".[27] This is the main economic mechanism of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism. This is attested empirically by the parallel evolution of wages and labour productivity during this period.

Graph n° 4 US wages and productivity A comment on this graph: the increase in productivity and wages remains almost identical from World War II onwards. From the 1980s onwards, the two increasingly diverge. Ever since capitalism began, this divergence has been the rule, and their parallel development during the post-war boom the exception. In effect, this divergence is the material expression of capitalism’s permanent tendency to increase production (the upper line of productivity) beyond the growth of the most important element of solvent demand: real wages (the lower line).

Given the spontaneous dynamics of capitalism (competition, pressure on wages, etc.), such a system could only be viable with the straitjacket of a state capitalism which contractually guaranteed a threefold division of increased productivity between profits, wages, and state revenues. A society dominated henceforth by wage labour imposes de facto a social dimension on all the policies adopted by the ruling class. This presupposes setting up multiple social and economic controls of the working class, social shock-absorbers, etc. The purpose of this unprecedented explosion of state capitalism was to contain the system's explosive social contradictions within the limits of capitalist order: predominance of the executive over the legislative, the significant growth of state intervention in the economy (almost half of GNP in the OECD countries), social control of the working class, etc.

2) Origins, contradictions and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism

Following the German defeat at Stalingrad (January 1943), the political, employer, and trade union representatives in exile in London began intense discussions on the reorganisation of society following the now inevitable collapse of the Axis powers. The memory of the Depression years and the fear of social movements at the end of the war, the lessons learned from the crisis of 1929, the increasingly widespread acceptance of the necessity of state intervention, and the bipolarisation created by the Cold War, were to be the elements that pushed the bourgeoisie to modify the rules of the game and to work out more or less consciously this Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism which was to be pragmatically and progressively implanted in all the developed countries (OECD). The sharing out of gains in productivity was all the more easily accepted by all inasmuch as: a) they were increasing strongly, b) this redistribution guaranteed the increase in solvent demand in parallel with production, c) it offered social peace, d) social peace was all the easier to obtain in that the proletariat in reality emerged defeated from World War II, under the control of parties and unions in favour of reconstruction within the framework of the system, e) but at the same time long term it guaranteed long-term profitability of investments, f) as well as a high rate of profit.

The system was thus able temporarily to square the circle of increasing the production of profit and markets in parallel, in a world where demand was henceforth largely dominated by that coming from wage labour. The guaranteed growth in profits, state spending and the rise in real wages, were able to guarantee the final demand so vital if capital were to continue its accumulation. Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism is the response that the system has been able to find temporarily to the crises of capitalism's obsolescent phase, whose dominant features are their world-wide nature and their basis in wage labour. It allowed a self-centred functioning of capitalism, without the need to have recourse to delocalisations despite high wages and full employment, while at the same time enabling it to get rid of its colonies which henceforth had only minor usefulness, and eliminating the internal extra-capitalist farming activity whose activity had now to be subsidised.

From the end of the 1960s until 1982, all the conditions which had allowed these measures to succeed deteriorated, beginning with a progressive slowing in the rise of productivity which overall was cut to a third, and drew all the other economic variables down with it. The internal regulation temporarily discovered by Keynesiano-Fordist state capitalism thus had no lasting foundation.

However, the reasons which had demanded the creation of this system were still there: wage labour is dominant in the working population, and capitalism was therefore forced to find a means of stabilising final demand in order to avoid its decline leading to a depression. Since company investments are conditioned by demand, it was necessary to find other means of maintaining consumption. The answer inevitably was found in the twin factors of declining saving and rising debt. This created a formidable machine for producing financial bubbles and feeding speculation. The constant aggravation of the imbalances in the system is thus not the result of errors in the conduct of economic policy, it is an integral part of the model.

3) Conclusion: and tomorrow?

This descent into hell is all the more inevitable in the present situation inasmuch as the conditions for a recovery in productivity gains and a return to their three-way redistribution are socially absent. There is nothing tangible in economic conditions, in the present balance of forces between the classes, and inter-imperialist competition at the international level which leaves open any way out: all the conditions are there for an inexorable descent into hell. It is up to revolutionaries to contribute to the consciousness of the class struggles which will inevitably arise from capitalism's deepening contradictions.

C Mcl.

---

[1] Gauche Communiste de France (French Communist Left).

[2] Internationalisme n°46, 1952.

[3] This is the motor of "the tendency to accumulate, the drive to expand capital and produce surplus-value on an extended scale. This is law for capitalist production, imposed by incessant revolutions in the methods of production themselves, by the depreciation of existing capital always bound up with them, by the general competitive struggle and the need to improve production and expand its scale merely as a means of self-preservation and under penalty of ruin." (Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III). The quotes from Capital can all be found on https://marxists.org [82]

[4] Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part V

[5] "As the magnitude of the value and the durability of the applied fixed capital develop with the development of the capitalist mode of production, the lifetime of industry and of industrial capital lengthens in each particular field of investment to a period of many years, say of ten years on an average (...) the cycle of interconnected turnovers embracing a number of years, in which capital is held fast by its fixed constituent part, furnishes a material basis for the periodic crises." (Marx, Capital, Vol. II Part II).

[6] Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III, our emphasis.

[7] "Crisis and boom blend with all the transitional phases to constitute a cycle or one of the great circles of industrial development. Each cycle lasts from 8 to 9 or 10 to 11 years (...) In January of this year the London Times published a table covering a period of 138 years - from the war of the 13 American colonies for independence to our own day. In this interval there have been 16 cycles, i.e., 16 crises and 16 phases of prosperity. Each cycle covers approximately 8 2/3, almost 9 years" (Trotsky, Report on the World crisis and the new tasks of the Communist International).

[8] "...beginning a new cycle to produce new surplus value remains the capitalist's supreme goal (...) this almost mathematical periodicity of crises is one of the specific traits of the capitalist system of production" (Mitchell, Bilan n°1°, "Crises et cycles dans le capitalisme agonisant".

[9] In Graph n°1, the nine recessions which punctuated the ten cycles are indicated by groups of lines from top to bottom of the graph: 1949, 1954, 1958, 1960, 1970-71, 1974, 1980-81, 1991, 2001.

[10] "As soon as all the surplus-labour it was possible to squeeze out has been embodied in commodities, surplus-value has been produced. But this production of surplus-value completes but the first act of the capitalist process of production - the direct production process. Capital has absorbed so and so much unpaid labour. With the development of the process, which expresses itself in a drop in the rate of profit, the mass of surplus-value thus produced swells to immense dimensions. Now comes the second act of the process. The entire mass of commodities, i.e. , the total product, including the portion which replaces the constant and variable capital, and that representing surplus-value, must be sold. If this is not done, or done only in part, or only at prices below the prices of production, the labourer has been indeed exploited, but his exploitation is not realised as such for the capitalist, and this can be bound up with a total or partial failure to realise the surplus-value pressed out of him, indeed even with the partial or total loss of the capital." (Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III).

[11] Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Ch.XVII

[12] This analysis by Marx obviously has nothing to do with the theory of under-consumption as the cause of crises - a theory which he in fact criticised: "It is sheer tautology to say that crises are caused by the scarcity of effective consumption, or of effective consumers. The capitalist system does not know any other modes of consumption than effective ones, except that of sub forma pauperis or of the swindler. That commodities are unsaleable means only that no effective purchasers have been found for them, i.e., consumers (since commodities are bought in the final analysis for productive or individual consumption). But if one were to attempt to give this tautology the semblance of a profounder justification by saying that the working-class receives too small a portion of its own product and the evil would be remedied as soon as it receives a larger share of it and its wages increase in consequence, one could only remark that crises are always prepared by precisely a period in which wages rise generally and the working-class actually gets a larger share of that part of the annual product which is intended for consumption" (Marx, Capital, Vol. II Part III).

[13] Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III.

[14] Each of these three factors is identified by Marx in the following passage: "The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realising it, are not identical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically. The first are only limited by the productive power of society, the latter by [c)] the proportional relation of the various branches of production and [a)] the consumer power of society. But this last-named is not determined either by the absolute productive power, or by the absolute consumer power, but by the consumer power based on antagonistic conditions of distribution, which reduce the consumption of the bulk of society to a minimum varying within more or less narrow limits. [b)] It is furthermore restricted by the tendency to accumulate, the drive to expand capital and produce surplus-value on an extended scale" (Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III).

[15] Marx, Theories of surplus value (our translation from the French edition).

[16] "Since the market and production are independent factors, the extension of one does not necessarily correspond to the growth of the other" (our translation from the French version of Marx's Grundrisse, La Pléiade, Economie II, p489). Or again: "The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realising it, are not identical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically." (Marx, Capital, Book III).

[17] It is all the more important to reject the idea that crises of overproduction have a sole cause in that their causes, both for Marx and in reality, are far more complex: the anarchy of production, disproportion between the two main sectors of the economy, opposition between "loaned capital" and "productive capital", the disjunction between purchase and sale due to hoarding, etc. Nonetheless, the two root causes most fully analysed by Marx, and also the most important in reality, are the two that we have insisted on here: the fall in the rate of profit and the laws governing the distribution of surplus labour.

[18] Such as, for example, the long period of rising real wages during the second half of capitalism's ascendancy (1870-1914), during the post-war boom (1945-82), or of their relative and even absolute decline since then (1982-2008).

[19] It goes without saying that a crisis of profitability leads inevitably to an endemic state of overproduction of both capital and commodities. However, these phenomena of overproduction followed and were the target of policies of reduction of production both by the state (production quotas, restructuring, etc.) and private (mergers, rationalisation, take-overs, etc.).

[20] During the 1970s, the working class suffered from the crisis essentially through a decline in working conditions, restructuring and redundancies, and hence in a spectacular increase in unemployment. However, unlike the crisis of 1929 this unemployment did not lead to a spiral of recession thanks to the use of Keynesian social shock-absorbers: unemployment benefit, retraining measures, planned lay-offs, etc.

[21] For Marx, the productivity of labour is the real key to capitalism's evolution, since it is nothing other than the inverse of the law of value, in other words of the average socially necessary labour time for the production of commodities. Our article on the crisis in International Review n°115 includes a graph showing the productivity of labour from 1961-2003 for the G6 (USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy). It shows clearly that the decline of labour productivity predates all the other variables which were to follow it afterwards, as well as its continuing low level since then.

[22] Marx, Capital, Vol. III Part III.

[23] Each regime of accumulation that has marked capitalism's historical development has engendered specific relations with its external sphere: from the mercantilism of the countries of the Iberian peninsula, to the self-centred capitalism of the post-war boom, via the colonialism of Victorian Britain, there is no uniformity in the relations between capitalism's heart and its periphery, as Rosa Luxemburg thought, but a mixed succession of relationships which are all driven by these different internal necessities of capital accumulation.

[24] During the 19th century, when colonial markets were most important, ALL the NON-colonial capitalist countries grew more rapidly than the colonial countries (71% more rapidly on average). This observation is valid throughout the history of capitalism. Sales outside pure capitalism certainly allow individual capitalists to realise their commodities, but they hinder the global accumulation of capitalism since, as with armament, they correspond to material means leaving the circuit of accumulation.

[25] "...the capital relation becomes a barrier for the development of the productive powers of labour. When it has reached this point, capital, ie wage labour, enters into the same rlation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter" Grundrisse, "The chapter on capital, notebook 7", p 749 in the Penguin edition 1973.

[26] Marx, Theories of surplus value.

[27] Paul Mattick, Intégration capitaliste et rupture ouvrière, EDI, p151, our translation.

"Famines are developing in the Third World, and will soon reach the once so-called "socialist" countries, while in Western Europe and North America food stocks are being destroyed, and farmers are paid to cultivate less land or being penalised if they produce more than their quotas. In Latin America, killer diseases like cholera, once eradicated, have returned and reached epidemic levels. All over the world, floods and earthquakes have killed tens of thousands, even though the means exist to build dykes and houses which could prevent such holocausts. At the same time, it is not even possible to accuse "fate" or "nature" of provoking disasters such as Chernobyl where in 1986 the explosion of a nuclear power station killed hundreds (if not thousands) of people and contaminated whole regions, or in the more developed countries, of causing mortal catastrophes in the great cities: 60 dead in a Paris railway station, more than 31 killed at the Kings Cross Underground fire in London. The system is also proving incapable of preventing the destruction of the environment, acid rain, nuclear and other pollution, the greenhouse effect, or the spread of the desert, all of which threaten the continued survival of humanity itself" (Manifesto of the 9th ICC Congress, July 1991)

The question of the environment has been present in revolutionary propaganda since Marx and Engels denounced the unbearable conditions of London in the mid-19th century, taking in Bordiga's exposure of environmental disasters as the result of the irresponsibility of capitalism. Today this question is even more crucial and demands added effort on the part of revolutionary organisations, in order to show that the historic alternative facing humanity - socialism or barbarism - is not only a choice between socialism and the barbarism of war, local or generalised. The danger of barbarism also includes the threat of an ecological catastrophe which is appearing more and more clearly on the horizon.

With this series of articles[1], the ICC aims to develop the question of the environment by dealing with the following aspects:

This first article will examine the present state of affairs and try to highlight the threat weighing on humanity, in particular the most destructive phenomena on a planetary level, such as:

• the development of the greenhouse effect
• the management of waste
• the accelerating spread of pollutants and the processes which amplify this on the biological level
• the exhaustion of natural resources and/or their alteration through pollution.

In the second article, we will seek to show how the problems of the environment cannot be attributed to individuals - even though individual responsibilities certainly do exist - to the extent that it is capitalism and its logic of maximising profit which are really responsible. Here we will see how the very evolution of science and scientific research doesn't happen by chance, but is subjected to the capitalist imperative of maximum profit.

In the third article, we will analyse the responses put forward by the various green and ecological movements, in order to show that despite the good intentions and good will of many of those who participate in them, not only are they totally ineffective but serve to feed illusions in the possibility of solving these problems within capitalism, when the only solution is the international communist revolution.

The harbingers of catastrophe

There is more and more talk about environmental problems, if only because in recent years, in various countries, we have seen the rise of parties whose banner is the defence of the environment. Is this reassuring? Not at all! All the noise around this issue only serves to further fog our ideas. This is why we have decided to begin by describing the particular phenomena which, by combining together, are increasingly leading society towards environmental catastrophe. As we will see - and contrary to what is being piped to us through the television or more or less specialised glossy magazines - the situation is much worse and more threatening than they would have us believe. And it's not this or that greedy and irresponsible capitalist, this or that Mafiosi or Camorra clan which bears the responsibility, but the capitalist system as a whole.

The development of the greenhouse effect

The greenhouse effect is something that everyone talks about, but they don't always know what they are talking about. In the first place, we have to be clear that the greenhouse effect is a highly beneficial fact for life on the earth - at least for the kind of life that we know about - to the extent that it makes it possible for the average temperature on the surface of our planet (average taking into account the four seasons and the different latitudes) of around 15°C instead of -17°C, the estimated temperature in the absence of the greenhouse effect. We have to imagine what the world would be like if the temperature was permanently below 0°C, with the seas and rivers frozen. To what do we owe this extra 32 degrees? To the greenhouse effect: the light of the sun penetrates the lower layers of the atmosphere without being absorbed (the sun does not heat up the air), and feeds the energy of the earth. The radiation which emanates from the latter (as from any celestial body), being composed essentially of infrared waves, is then intercepted and abundantly absorbed by certain constituents of the air such as carbon anhydride, water vapour, methane and other parts of the synthesis such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The thermal balance of the earth profits from the warmth produced in the lower reaches of the atmosphere, and this has the effect of increasing the temperature of the earth's surface by 32°C. The problem is not therefore the greenhouse effect in itself, but the fact that with the development of industrial society many ‘greenhouse' substances have been introduced into the atmosphere, the concentration of which is clearly growing, with the result that the greenhouse effect is increasing. It has been shown, for example, thanks to studies of the air trapped in the polar ice, which goes back 650,000 years, that the present concentration of CO² has gone from 380 ppm (parts per million or milligrams per cubed decimetre) is the highest throughout this entire period, and perhaps the highest over the past 20 million years. Furthermore, the temperatures registered during the 20th century have been the highest for 20,000 years. The frenetic resort to fossil fuels as a source of energy and the growing deforestation of the earth's surface have, since the beginning of the industrial era, compromised the natural balance of carbon gases in the atmosphere. This balance is the product of the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on the one hand, via the combustion and decomposition of organic matter, and, on the other hand, of the fixation of this same carbon gas through photosynthesis, a process which transforms it into glucose and thus into complex organic matter. The imbalance between the release (combustion) and fixation (photosynthesis) of CO², to the advantage of release, is at the basis of the current accentuation of the greenhouse effect.

As we said earlier, it's not only carbon gas but also water vapour and methane which enter into the picture. Water vapour is both a factor in and product of the greenhouse effect since, being present in the atmosphere, it is all the more abundant the higher the temperature, because of the increased evaporation of water that results. The increase in the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, for its part, derives from a whole series of natural sources, but is also caused by the growing use of this gas as a combustible and from the leaks of the various gas pipes distributed around the earth. Methane, also known as ‘swamp gas', is a type of gas which derives from the fermentation of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. The flooding of wooded valleys by the construction of hydroelectric dams is at the origin of the growing local production of methane. But the problem of methane, which today contributes towards one third of the increase of the greenhouse effect, is much more serious than may appear from the elements we have just mentioned. First and foremost, methane has a capacity for absorbing infrared 23 times greater than CO², which is quite considerable. But there is worse! All the current predictions, which are already fairly catastrophic, don't take into account the scenario which could unfold from the liberation of methane from its natural reservoirs. These are made up of the gas trapped at around 0°C and under several atmospheres of pressure, in the particular structures of the ice (hydrated gas): a litre of ice crystal is capable of holding some 50 litres of methane gas. Such layers are found above all in the sea, along the continental shelf, and within the permafrost in the various zones of Siberia, Alaska and Northern Europe. Here is the view of some of the experts on this subject:  "if global warming goes past certain limits (3-4°C) and if the temperature of the coastal waters and the permafrost goes up, there could be an enormous emission in a short period of time (a few dozen years) of methane released by hydrates that have become unstable, and this would result in a catastrophic increase in the greenhouse effect.....over the last year, methane emissions from the Swedish soil to the north of the Arctic circle have increased by 60%, and while the increase in temperature over the last 15 years is on a global average fairly limited, it is much more intense (by several degrees) in the northern regions of Eurasia and America (in the summer, the mythical north west passage which makes it possible to go by boat from the Atlantic to the pacific, was actually opened up)"[2]

Even without this cherry on the icing, the predictions elaborated by recognised international bodies like the UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of technology) in Boston, already announce, for the new century, an increase in average temperature from between 0.5°C to a maximum of 4.5°C, assuming that, as is happening now, nothing is going to change very much in terms of the measures human beings may take. Furthermore, these predictions don't take into account the emergence of two new industrial powers, gluttons for energy, China and India.      

"an additional warming of a few degrees centigrade would provoke a more intense evaporation of the ocean waters, but the most sophisticated analyses suggest that there would be an accentuation of the disparity in rainfall in different regions. Arid zones would extend and become even more arid. The ocean areas with surface temperatures above 27°C, a critical point in the formation of cyclones, would go up by 30 or 40%. This would create a succession of catastrophic meteorological events resulting in recurrent floods and disasters. The melting of a large part of the glaciers in the Antarctic and Greenland, the increasing temperature of the oceans, would raise the level of the latter, with salt water penetrating many fertile coastal regions and whole regions being submerged (part of Bangladesh, many ocean islands)" (ibid)

We haven't got the space here to develop this theme but it is at least worthwhile underlining the fact that climate change, provoked by the increase in the greenhouse effect, even without reaching the feed-back effect produced by the release of the earth's methane, still threatens to be catastrophic since it would lead to:

• more intense meteorological events, much greater rainfall resulting in a reduction in the fertility of the soil, and a growing process of desertification even in temperate zones, as is already happening in Piedmont in Italy
• the creation, in the Mediterranean and other formerly temperate seas, of environmental conditions favourable to the survival of tropical marine species, and thus the migration of non-native species, resulting in disturbances in the ecological balance
• the return of diseases which have been all but eradicated, such as malaria, owing to the development of climatic conditions favourable to the spread of vector organisms such as mosquitoes.

 

The problem of the production and management of waste

A second kind of problem, typical of this phase of capitalist society, is the excessive production of waste and the difficulty of dealing with it adequately. In recent months the news of mountains of rubbish piling up in all the streets of Naples and Campania has been widely covered in the international media; but this is only because this region of the world is still considered as being an industrial and therefore an advanced country. But the fact that the peripheries of many big cities in the Third World have become open air rubbish dumps has been evident for a long time now.

This enormous accumulation of waste is the result of the logic of capitalism. While it is true that human beings have always produced waste, in the past this was always reintegrated, recuperated and re-used. It is only today, with capitalism, that waste has become a problem because of the specific way this society operates, given that is based on the fundamental principle that every kind of human activity is seen as a commodity, i.e. something that is destined to be sold in order to realise a profit on a market where the only law is the law of competition. This cannot fail to have a series of pernicious consequences:

1. The production of commodities cannot be planned in space and time because of competition between capitalists; it therefore follows an irrational logic, according to which each capitalist tends to enlarge his own production in order to sell at a lower price and realise his profit, which leads to an excess of unsold commodities. It is moreover precisely this necessity to outdo the competition and lower prices which leads the producers to lower the quality of manufactured products, which drastically reduces their lifetime and rapidly reduces them to items of waste
2. An aberrant production of wrapping and packaging, often made of toxic and non-degradable substances is accumulating in the environment. These wrappings, which often have no other function than to make the commodity more attractive to potential buyers, make up an increasingly large part, at the level of volume and weight, of the content of the commodity being sold. It has been estimated today that at least half of any rubbish bag in any city is filled with the remains of wrapping.     
3. The production of waste is accentuated by the new lifestyles inherent in modern life. Eating out, in a self-service restaurant, on plastic plates and drinking from plastic bottles, has now become a daily habit for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Similarly, using plastic bags to put the shopping in is a convenience that hardly anyone does without. All this does not suit the environment of course, but it does suit the owners of the self-service who save on the labour-power needed to wash cutlery and crockery that is not made to be thrown away. The supermarket owner or even the local shopkeeper benefit from the fact that a customer can buy what he wants, even if he hadn't planned to buy it, knowing that he can put everything into free plastic bag. All this results in a considerable increase in the production of waste all over the world, nearing a kilo per day per citizen, or millions of tons of waste every day!

It has been estimated that, in Italy alone, over the last 25 years, with the population more or less stable, the amount of waste has more than doubled because of packaging.  The problem of waste is one of the problems the politicians think they can resolve, but in fact it encounters insurmountable obstacles in capitalism. Such obstacles are not the result of a lack of technology, but once again to the logic which governs this society. In reality, the management of waste, whether making it disappear or reducing the amount generated, is also subject to the laws of profit. Even when the recycling and reutilisation of material is possible, all this requires the political capacity to coordinate it, which is generally lacking in the weakest economies. This is why in the poorest countries and where enterprises are in decline owing to the galloping crisis of the last few decades, managing waste is a real supplementary expense.

But some would object: if in the advanced countries the management of waste does function, that means it's just a question of the right intentions, of the civic sense and the good practice of enterprises. The problem is that, as in all sectors of production, the strongest countries burden the weakest ones (or, within a country, the most economically deprived regions) with a good part of their waste.

"Two groups of American environmentalists, Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics, recently published a report which affirms that 50 to 80% of waste products from the electronics industry in the western states of the USA are taken away in containers by boats bound for Asia (above all India and China) where the costs of eliminating them are much lower and environmental laws always much less strict. This is no aid project, but a trade in toxic rejects which the consumers have decided to throw away. The report by the two associations refers for example to the Guiyu dumping area, which receives mainly screens and printers. The workers of Guiyu use very rudimentary working tools to extract the components that can be sold. A striking quantity of electronic waste is not recycled but simply dumped in the open in the fields, on riverbanks, in lakes, in swamps, rivers and canals. Men, women and children all do this work without any protection"[3]

"In Italy it has been estimated that the eco-mafias have a business running into 26,000 billion (euro) a year, 15,000 of which from the traffic and illegal elimination of waste (Report on the Ecomafia 2007, by the Lega Ambienta). The customs office confiscated around 286 containers with more than 9000 tons of waste in 2006. The legal treatment of a container of 15 tons of dangerous waste costs around 60,000 euros; for the same quantity, the illegal market in the east only asks 5000 euros. The main destinations of this illegal traffic is a number of developing Asian countries; the exported materials are first worked on then reintroduced into Italy or other western countries as derivatives of the same waste, aimed particularly at factories producing plastics.

In June 1992, the Food and Agricultural Organisation announced that the developing countries, especially in Africa, had become the west's dustbin. Somalia seems today to be the African state most ‘at risk', a real crossroads for traffic and trade of this kind; in a recent report. The United Nations Environment Programme noted the constant increase in the number of polluted underground waters in Somalia, which is the cause of incurable diseases in the population. The port of Lagos in Nigeria is the most important stopping-off point for the illegal traffic in obsolete technological components sent to Africa.

Last May the Panafrican Parliament demanded compensation from the western countries for the damages provoked by the greenhouse effect and the dumping of waste on the African continent, two problems which, according to the African authorities, are the responsibility of the most industrialised countries.

Every year over the world, 20 to 50 millions tons of electronic junk is produced; in Europe, up to 11 millions of this produced, 80% of which is thrown away. It has been estimated that around 2008 there were around a billion computers (one for every six inhabitants); around 2015, there will be more than two billion. These figures represent a new and grave danger at the level of the elimination of the products of obsolete technology"[4]

As we said earlier, the report on the problem of waste being dumped on deprived regions also exists inside the same country. This is precisely the case in Campania, in Italy, which has hit the international headlines as a result of the piles of rubbish that have lain on the streets for months on end. But few know that Campania, like China, India or the northern African countries on the international level, is the receptacle for all the toxic waste from the northern industries, which has transformed fertile and pleasant agricultural regions, like Caserta, into some of the most polluted areas of the planet. Despite the various legal actions that have taken place, this massacre continues unabated. It is not the Camorra, the mafia, common criminals who are the ultimate cause of all this damage, but the logic of capitalism. Whereas the official procedure for properly eliminating a kilo of toxic waste can cost over 60 centimes, the same service costs around ten when illegal channels are used. Thus each year, each abandoned cave becomes an open rubbish tip. In a small village in Campania, where an incinerator is going to be built, these toxic materials, covered over with earth to hide them, have been used to build the foundations of a long boulevard of beaten earth. As Saviano says in his book, now quite a cult in Italy, "if the illegal waste managed by the Camorra was all put together, this would make a mountain 14,600 meters high, on a base of three hectares: the biggest mountain that had ever existed on Earth"[5].   

What's more, as we shall see in more detail in the next article, the problem of waste is above all linked to the kind of production that takes place in the present society. Apart from the idea of the ‘throw away' item, the problem often derives from the materials used to make things with. The use of synthetic materials, particularly plastics, which are practically indestructible, poses immense problems for tomorrow's humanity. And this time it's not about poor or rich countries because plastic is non-degradable in every country in the world, as this extract shows:

"Called the Trash Vortex, the island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean, which has a diameter of nearly 25,000 km, a depth of 30 meters and which is composed 80% of plastic, the rest by other forms of waste arriving from all directions. It is as though there was a vast island in the middle of the Pacific, made up of rubbish instead of rock. In recent weeks, the density of this material has reached such a level that the total weight of this ‘island' of trash has reached 3.5 million tons, as explained by Chris Parry of the Californian Coastal Commission in San Francisco (...) This incredible and little-known island began to form in the 1950s, following the existence of the north Pacific subtropical gyre, a slow oceanic current which moves clockwise and spirally under the effect of a system of high pressure currents (...) the greater part of the plastic arrives from the continents, around 80%; the rest comes from boats, private commercial or fishing craft. Around the world around 100 billion kilos of plastic are produced a year, roughly 10% of which ends up in the sea. 70% of this ends up at the bottom of the ocean, causing huge damage to sea life. The rest carries on floating. The major part of this plastic is not very biodegradable and end up fragmenting into tiny grains which end up in the stomachs of many sea animals, resulting in death. What remains takes hundreds of years to decompose, meanwhile causing all sorts of damage to sea life".[6]    

A mass of rubbish which is two times the size of the USA! Has this only just been discovered? No, it was actually discovered in 1997 by an oceanographic research officer who was returning from a yacht race, and a UN report in 2006 "calculates that a million sea birds and more than 100,000 marine fish and mammals die each year as a result of plastic detritus, and that every square mile of the ocean contains at least 46,000 fragments of floating plastic".[7]  

But what has been done these past 10 years by those who hold the reins of society? Absolutely nothing! Similar situations, even if they are not quite so dramatic, also exist in the Mediterranean, where each year 6.5 million tons of detritus are hurled, 80% of it plastics; it is estimated that on the bottom of the Mediterranean there are around 2000 bits of plastic to every square kilometre.[8]

And yet solutions do exist. When plastic is made up of 85% of maize starch it is completely biodegradable, for example. This is already a reality today: bags, crayons and various other objects are being made out of this material. But under capitalism industry does not normally take a particular path if it is not profitable, and since plastic made from maize starch costs more, no one wants to pay the price for it because they risk losing their place on the market.[9]  The problem is that the capitalists are used to drawing up economic balance sheets which systematically exclude everything which can't be put in the profit or loss column, because that's something that can't be bought or sold, even if it's to do with the health of the population and the environment. Each time an industry produces a material which, at the end of its life, becomes waste, the expense involved in eliminating this waste is hardly ever taken into account, and what is never taken into account above all is the harm that the permanent nature of the material can do to the Earth.

We should note something else about rubbish: the resort to dumps or even incinerators represents a waste of energy values and of the useful materials contained in rubbish. It has been proved for example that producing materials like copper or aluminium on the basis of recycled material represents a reduction in the costs of production which can exceed 90%. As a result, in the peripheral countries, rubbish has become a real source of subsistence for the thousands of people who have left the countryside but who haven't managed to integrate themselves into the economic tissue of the cities. People sift through rubbish to se what can be sold:

"Veritable ‘rubbish dump cities' have appeared. In Africa, the Korogocho slum in Nairobi - which has been described many times by Father Zanotelli - and lesser known ones in Kigali in Rwanda or Zambia, where 90% of rubbish is not collected and just piles up in the streets, while the Olososua dump in Nigeria receives a thousand truckloads of rubbish every day. In Asia, near Manilla, Payatas in Quezon City is infamous: this slum inhabited by 25,000 people appeared on the slopes of a hill of trash, the ‘smoking mountain' where adults and children vie with each other to find stuff to re-sell. There is also Paradise Village, which is not a tourist village, but a slum which has arisen on a swamp, where floods are as regular as the monsoon rains. There is also Catmon Dumpsite, the dump on which a slum overhanging Paradise Village was built. In China, in Beijing, dumps are inhabited by thousands of people who recycle unauthorised waste, whereas India, with its metropolitan slums, is the country with the greatest density of people who ‘survive' thanks to rubbish".[10]

The spread of contamination 

Contaminants are substances, natural or synthetic, which are toxic for man and other living things. Alongside natural substances which have always been present on our planet and have been used in different ways by industrial technology, such as heavy metals, the chemical industry has produced tens of thousands of them and in...industrial quantities. Lack of knowledge about the dangers of a whole series of substances and, above all, the cynicism of capitalism, have provoked unimaginable disasters, creating an environmental situation which will be difficult to restore once the present ruling class has been eliminated.

One of the most catastrophic episodes in the chemical industry was without doubt Bhopal in India, which took place on 2-3 December 1984 in a factory owned by Union Carbide, an American multinational chemical company. A toxic cloud of 40 tons of pesticide killed at least 16,000 people, either straight away or over the next few years, and caused irreparable physical damage to a million others. Successive inquiries then revealed that, unlike the same kind of enterprise in Virginia, in Bhopal there was no effective measure of gauging pressure or of refrigeration. The cooling tower was temporarily closed and the safety systems were not adapted to the scale of the factory. The truth was that this was a factory in India, using cheap labour power, and for its American owners it was far more profitable to make the savings on fixed and variable capital...

Another historic event was what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986. "It has been estimated that the radioactive emissions of Reactor Number 4 at Chernobyl was around 200 times higher than the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. In all, the zones that were most seriously affected in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were home to 9 million people. 30% of the territory of these zones was contaminated by caesium 137. In the three countries, around 400,000 people were evacuated, while 270,000 others live in areas where there are restrictions on the use of locally produced food"[11]

There are obviously numerous other environmental disasters resulting from the bad management of factories or from incidents like the innumerable black seas, such as the ones caused by the oil tanker Exxon Valdez on 24 March 1989. When it sank on the Alaskan coast, this led to a leak of at least 30,000 tons of oil; or again, the first Gulf War which ended with the burning of various oil wells and an ecological disaster resulting from the discharge of oil into the Persian Gulf, the most serious in history up to now. More generally, according to the US National Academy of Science, the quantity of hydrocarbons lost in the sea every year is around 3-4 million tons, with a tendency to get bigger, despite the various preventative interventions, as a result of the continuing increase in the demand for oil. 

As well as the action of contaminants, which at high doses have extremely toxic effects on the environment, there are also slower, more discrete forms of poisoning. A toxic substance absorbed slowly and in small doses, while it is chemically stable, can accumulate in the organs and tissues of living organisms, until they reach lethal levels of concentration. This is what in ecotoxicology is called bioaccumulation. There is also another mechanism through which a toxic substance is transmitted through the food chain from lower stages to the higher ones, each time increasing in concentration by two or three times. To be more explicit, we will refer to a concrete case which took place in 1953 in the bay of Minamata in Japan, inhabited by a community of poor fishermen who lived essentially from what they caught. Near this bay there was an industrial complex which produced acetaldehyde, a chemical composite which required the use of a product derived from mercury. The waste from this plant, dumped into the sea, was slightly contaminated by mercury, with a level of concentration of no more than 0.1 micrograms per litre of seawater, i.e. a concentration which, even with the much more sophisticated instruments available today, is still difficult to detect. What was the consequence of this apparently undetectable contamination? Forty-eight people died in a few days, 156 were severely poisoned with grave consequences and even the fishermen's cats, who had been fed on the remains of the fish, ended up ‘committing suicide' in the sea, a behaviour completely untypical for a feline. What had happened? The mercury present in the sea water had been absorbed and fixed by phytoplankton, was then taken up by zooplankton, then by small molluscs, then by small and medium fish, growing through the whole food chain in which the same contaminant, chemically indestructible, is transmitted to a new host at a growing concentration and inversely proportional to the relationship between the size of the predator and the mass of food ingested during its life. It was thus discovered that, among fishes, this metal had reached a concentration of 50mg per kilo, which represents a growth in concentration by a factor of 500,000. It was also discovered that in certain fishermen exhibiting the ‘Minamata syndrome' there had been an increase in the concentration of the metal in their organs and notably their hair to almost half a gram per kilo.

Although from the beginning of the 1960s the scientific world has been conscious of the fact that, in the matter of toxic substances, it's not good enough to use methods of dilution in nature because, as the above case shows, biological mechanisms are capable of concentrating what man dilutes, the chemical industry has continued to contaminate our planet without the excuse that they ‘didn't know this would happen'. Thus a second Minamata was produced more recently at Priolo (Sicily), where a layer of soil was poisoned over a distance of some square kilometres by at least five refineries. It turned out that Enichem was illegally discharging mercury from a factory producing chlorine and caustic soda. Between 1991 and 2001, around 1000 children were born with severe mental handicaps and serious malformations of the heart and the urogenital organs; entire families were stricken with tumours and many desperate women were forced to have abortions to avoid having the monstrous children they had conceived. And yet the Minamata episode had already shown all the danger that mercury represents to human health. Priolo was thus not an unforeseen event, a tragic error, but an act of banditry pure and simple, perpetuated by Italian capitalism and what's more by a ‘state capitalism' which some people like to present as being more ‘left wing' than private capitalism. In fact it was revealed that the bosses of Enichem had behaved like the worst ecomafia: to save on the costs of ‘decontamination' (we're talking about a saving of several million euros), the waste containing the mercury was mixed with other used water and thrown into the sea or buried. On top of this, by making false certificates, double-bottomed cisterns were used to camouflage this traffic in dangerous waste! When all this came out and the managers of this industry were arrested, Enichem's responsibility was so obvious that it decided to reimburse the affected families by 11000 euros, a figure equivalent to what it would have to pay if had been condemned by a court.

Alongside accidental sources of contamination, it's the whole society which, because of the way it functions, continuously produces contaminants which are accumulating in the air, water and soil and - as we have already said - in the whole biosphere, including in us humans. The massive use of detergents and other products have resulted in the phenomenon of the excessive enrichment of rivers, lakes and seas, In the 90s, the North Sea received 6000-11000 tone of lead, 22,000-28,000 of zinc, 4200 of chrome, 4000 of copper, 1450 of nickel, 530 of cadmium, 1.5 million tons of combined nitrogen and some 100,000 tons of phosphates. This waste, so rich in polluting material, is particularly dangerous in the seas which are characterised by the extent of their continental plate (i.e. they are not that deep), which is precisely the case with the North Sea, the Baltic, the south Adriatic and the Black Sea. In effect, the reduced mass of marine water combined with the difficulty of dense, salty sea water mixing with the soft water of rivers does not allow for an adequate dilution of contaminants.

Synthesised products like the famous insecticide DDT, which has been banned in the industrialised countries for 30 years, or PCBs (polychlorides of biphenyl) formerly used in the electrical industry, also banned from production because they no longer conform to current norms - all of them however based on a very strong chemical solidity - can today be found almost everywhere, unaltered, in water, soil and... in the tissue of living organisms. Thanks again to bioaccumulation, these materials are dangerously concentrated in a few animal species, leading to death or the disruption of reproduction, and thus to declining populations. It is in this context that we have to consider what was said earlier about the traffic in dangerous waste, which, often stored in ways that avoid any protection for their surrounding milieu, cause incalculable damage to the ecosystem and the human population.     

To finish this part - although we could add hundreds of other cases from all over the world - we also have to remember that it is precisely this diffuse contamination of the soil which is responsible for a new and dramatic phenomenon: the creation of dead zones, like for example in Italy in the triangle between Priolo, Mellili and Augusta in Sicily -  a zone where the percentage of babies with congenital malformations is 4 times higer than the national average, or again the other triangle of death near Naples between Giuliano, Qualiano and Villaricca, a zone where the number of cases of tumour is far higher than the national average.

The exhaustion of natural resources and/or the menace of pollution

The last example of global phenomena which are leading the world towards catastrophe is the one related to natural resources, which are in part being used up and in part are threatened by the problem of pollution. Before developing on this phenomenon in detail, we want to underline that problems of this kind have already been encountered by the human species on a more limited scale, and with disastrous consequences. If we are still here to talk about this, it's because only because the region concerned only represented a very small part of the Earth. We are going to cite extracts from a work by Jared Diamond, Collapse, which deals with the history of Rapa Nui, Easter Island, famous for its huge stone statues. We know that the island was discovered by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Day 1772 (hence its name), and it is now been scientifically proved that the island was "once covered in a thick subtropical forest, rich in huge trees and vine trees" and that it was also rich in birds and wild animals. But the impression given to the colonists on their arrival was very different:

"Roggeveen was puzzled to understand how the islanders had erected their statues. To quote his journal again, ‘The stone images at first caused us to be struck with astonishment, because we could not comprehend how it was possible that these people, who are devoid of heavy thick timber for making any machines, as well as strong ropes, had nevertheless been able to erect such images (...) We originally, from a further distance, considered the said Easter Island as sandy, the reason for that is this, that we counted as sand the withered grass, or other scorched and burnt vegetation, because its wasted appearance could give no other impression that could give no other impression than of a singular poverty and barrenness'. What had happened to all the other trees that must have stood there?

Organising the carving, transport and erection of the statues required a complex populous society living in an environment rich enough to support it (...)

The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields.

Raw materials lost or else available only in greatly decreased amounts consisted of everything made from native plants and birds, including wood, rope, bark to manufacture bark cloth, and feathers. Lack of large timber and transport brought an end to the transport and erection of statues, and also to the construction of seagoing canoes."

"Deforestation must have begun some time after human arrival by AD900, and must have been completed by 1722, when Roggeveen arrived and saw no trees over 10 feet tall (...) All this suggests that forest clearance began soon after human arrival, reached its peak around 1400, and was virtually complete by dates that varied locally between the early 1400s and the 1600s (...) Clearance of the palms led to massive erosion (...) Other damages to soil that resulted from deforestation and reduced crop yields included desiccation and nutrient leaching. Farmers found themselves without most of the wild plant leaves, fruit, and twigs that they had been using as compost (...)

In place of their former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest hitherto unused source available to them: humans, whose bones became common not only in proper burials but also (cracked to extract the marrow) in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was ‘the flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth' (...)

The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalisation, international trade, jet planes and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future".

These extracts quoted in full from Diamond's book alert us to the fact that the capacity of Earth's ecosystem is not unlimited and that, as was shown at a given moment on the limited scale of Easter island, something similar could re-occur in the near future if humanity does not learn how to administer its resources in an adequate manner.

In fact, we can make an immediate parallel at the level of deforestation, which has been a reality from the times of the primitive community to today, but which is now developing to the point where the last green lungs of the planet like the Amazon forest are being destroyed. As we know, the maintenance of these green zones is extremely important, not only to preserve a series of animal and plant species, but also to ensure the right balance between CO² and oxygen (vegetation develops by consuming CO² and so produces glucose and oxygen). As we have already seen with regard to mercury poisoning, the bourgeoisie knows very well the risks involved, as we can see from the noble intervention of the 19th century scientist Rudolf Julius Emmanuel Clausius, who expressed himself very clearly on the problem of energy and resources, well over a century before all the current discourse about the preservation of the environment: "In the economy of a nation, there is a law that is always valid: you must not consume during a given period more than has been produced during the same period. We should thus not burn more wood than is possible to reproduce through the growth of trees"[12].

But if you look at what is happening today, we can say that the precise opposite of what Clausius recommended in being done, and that we are heading in the same fatal direction as Easter Island.

To examine the problem of resources adequately, we also have to take into account another basic variable , which is the variation of the world population:

"Up till 1600, the growth of the world population was so slow that the increase was about 2-3% per century: it took 16 centuries to go from the 250 million inhabitants at the beginning of the Christian era to around 500 million. From that moment, the time taken for the population to double continued to diminish to the point where today, in certain countries, it is close to the so-called ‘biological limit' in the speed of population growth (3-4% a year). According to the UN, we will go past 8 billion inhabitants around 2025...We should consider the notable differences that exist today between the advanced countries, which have almost arrived at zero growth and the developing countries which contribute to 90% of the present demographic growth (...) In 2025, according to UN predictions, Nigeria, for example, will have a larger population than the USA and Africa will outnumber Europe three times. Overpopulation, combined with backwardness, illiteracy and the lack of facilities for hygiene and health certainly represent a very grave problem, and not only for Africa, because of the inevitable consequences of such a phenomenon on a world scale. There seems in fact to be an imbalance between supply and demand of available resources, which is also due to the using of around 80% of world energy resources by the industrialised countries.

Overpopulation brings a strong fall in living conditions because it diminishes productivity per worker and the availability per head of food, drinking water, health services and medicine, The strong pressure from human populations today is leading to the degradation of the environment and will have inevitable repercussions of the balance of Earth's ecology.     

The imbalance of recent years is increasing: the population is not only continuing to grow in a non-homogeneous way but is also becoming more and more dense in the urban zones"[13].

As we can see from this information, the growth in the world's population can only exacerbate the problem of the exhaustion of resources, all the more because, as this document shows, the problem of a lack of resources is more strongly felt in places where the demographic explosion is at its height, which heralds increasing calamities for a growing part of the world's population.

Let's begin by examining the first natural resource par excellence, water, a universal necessity which is today very clearly under threat from the irresponsible action of capitalism.

Water is a substance which is found in abundance on the surface of the earth (not to speak of the oceans, the Polar icecaps and underground waters), but only a small part of it is drinkable - the water found in underground springs and some non-polluted water courses. The development of industrial activity, without any respect for the environment, and the very widespread dispersal of urban waste has polluted a very important part of the underground water levels which are the natural reservoirs of drinking water, This has led on the one hand to various cancers and pathologies among the population, and the rapid diminution of the sources of such a precious material.

"By the mid 21st century, according to the most pessimistic predictions, 7 billion people in 60 countries will not have enough water. If things turn out for the best, however, there will ‘only' be two billion people in 48 countries suffering from lack of water (...) But the most worrying facts in the UN document are probably those about the deaths from polluted water and the bad conditions of hygiene: 2.2 million a year. What's more, water is the vector for numerous diseases, among them malaria which kills around a million people every year".[14]

The British scientific review New Scientist, drawing the conclusions from the symposium on water in Stockholm in the summer of 2004, wrote that "in the past, tens of millions of wells have been dug, most of them without any controls, and the quantities of water extracted from them by powerful electric pumps are far superior to the rain waters which feed underground water levels (...) Pumping water allows many countries to have abundant rice harvests and sugar cane (crops which need a good deal of water to grow, ed.), but the boom is not destined to last...India is the epicentre of the revolution in prospecting for underground water. By using the technology of oil industry, small farmers have sunk 21 billion wells in their fields and the number is growing by about a million a year (...) In China, in the northern plains, where there is the largest amount of agricultural production, each year the cultivators extract 30 cubic km of water in addition to what is derived from rainwater (...) In the last decade, Vietnam has multiplied the number of wells by four (...) In the Punjab, the region of Pakistan which produces 90% of the country's food resource, the underground levels are beginning to dry up"[15].

While the situation in general is grave, in the so-called emerging countries like India and China the situation is already close to disaster

"the drought which reigns in the province of Sechuan and Chongking has led to economic losses, at least 9.9 billion yuan, and to restrictions on drinking water for over 10 million people, while in the nation as a whole there are at least 18 million people who lack water"[16].

"China has been hit by terrible floods in recent years, affecting 60 million people in central and southern China, resulting in at least 350 deaths and direct economic losses which have already reached 7.4 billion yuan; 200,000 houses destroyed or damaged; 528,000 hectares of agricultural land destroyed and 1.8 million submerged. At the same time, desertification is increasing rapidly, involving a fifth of the land area and provoking dust storms which reach as far as Japan (...) While central and southern China is hit by floods, in the north the desert continues to advance, now covering a fifth of the land along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, on the high plateau of Qinghai-Tibet and part of Inner Mongolia and Gansu.

The population of China represents around 20% of the world population, but it only has around 7% f the cultivable land.

According to Wang Tao, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science in Lanzhou, the deserts of China have increased by 950 square km a year over the last decade, Each spring time, the sand storms hit Beijing and the whole of northern China and reach as far as South Korea and Japan".[17]

All this has to make us reflect on the much vaunted power of Chinese capitalism. In reality, the recent development of the Chinese economy, rather than revitalising senile world capitalism, is a perfect expression of the horror of its death throes with its cities devastated by smog (hardly hidden for the last Olympic Games), its drying up water courses and its factories where working conditions are frightful and lack any rules of basic safety.

There are may other resources that are running out. To finish this first article, we will only look briefly at two of them.

The first is oil. As we know, there has been talk of dwindling oil reserves since the 1970s, but it does seem that in 2008 we really are reaching a peak in oil production, the so-called Hubbert peak, i.e. the moment when we will have exhausted and consumed half of the natural resources of oil estimated by the various geological prospectors. Oil today represents around 40% of basic energy and around 90% of the energy used for transport; its applications are equally important in the chemical industry, particularly in the fabrication of fertilisers for agriculture, plastics, glue and varnish, lubricants and detergents. All this is possible because oil has constituted a low cost and seemingly unlimited resource. The change in this outlook has already led to an increase in prices, obliging the capitalist world to turn towards less onerous substitutes. But once again, the recommendation by Clausius not to consume in one generation more than nature is capable of reproducing has had no echo and the capitalist world has thrown itself into a mad race to consume energy, with countries like China and India to the fore, burning everything that can be burned, going back to toxic fossil carbon to produce energy and generating unprecedented pollution all around them.

Naturally, even the recourse to the miracle solution of biofuels has already had its day and has shown all its inadequacy. Producing combustibles from the alcoholic fermentation of maize or oily vegetable products not only does not make it possible to meet the current market for combustibles, but above all has helped increase the price of food, which results in famine for the poorest populations. Those who have drawn benefit from this, once again, are the capitalist enterprises, like the food companies who have switched to biofuels. But for mere mortals, this means that vast areas of forest are being cut down to make way for biofuel plantations (millions and millions or hectares). The production of biofuels demands the use of large stretches of land, To get an idea of the problem, it's enough to think that a hectare of land growing colza or sunflower, or other semi-oleaginous plants, produces around 100litres of biofuel, which could keep a car going for around 10,00 kilometres. If we assume for the sake of argument that on average the cars of one country travel 10,000km a year, each car would consume all the biofuel produced by a hectare of land, That means that for a country like Italy, where there are 34 million cars, to obtain all the fuel needed through agriculture, you would need a cultivatable surface of 34 million hectares. If we added to the cars around 4 million trucks, which have bigger engines, the consumption would double, and would demand a surface area of 70 million hectares, which would correspond to a land surface almost double the Italian peninsula, including its mountains, cities, etc.

Although it's not talked about to the same degree, an analogous problem to the one with combustible fuels is posed with other mineral resources, for example the ones used to extract metals, It is true that, in this case, metal is not destroyed by use as is the case with oil or methane gas, but the negligence of capitalist production ends up spreading huge quantities of wasted metal over the surface of the earth, which means that sooner or later the supply of metals will also be exhausted. The use, among other things, of certain alloys and multi-stratified metals makes the eventual recovery of the ‘pure' material all the more difficult.

The breadth of the problem is revealed by estimates according to which in the space of a few decades, the following resources will be exhausted: uranium, platinum, gold, silver, cobalt, lead, magnesium, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, tin, tungsten and zinc. These are materials which are practically indispensable for modern industry and their scarcity will weigh heavily in the near future. But there are other materials which are not inexhaustible: it has been calculated that there are still available (in the sense that it is economically feasible to extract them) 30 million tons of iron, 220 million tons of copper, 85 million tons of zinc. To have an idea of these quantities, you need to think that to take the poorest countries to the level of the advanced ones, they would need 30 billion tons of iron, 500 millions of copper, 300 of zinc: that is to say, far more than the planet Earth has to offer.

Faced with this approaching catastrophe, it has to be asked whether progress and development must inevitably go together with pollution and the disruption of the planet's ecosystem. We have to ask whether such disasters have to be put down to poor education of human beings or something else. This is what we shall see in the next article.

Ezechiele (August 2008).

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[1] The version published on the internet is slightly longer than the one published in the printed version of the Review. Cuts are marked by (....)

[2](G Barone et al, ‘Il metano e il futuro del clima', in Biologi italiani, no 8, 2005).

[3] G. Pellegri, Terzo mondo, nueva pattumiera creata dal buonismo tecnologico 

[4] Vivere di rifiuti, http:/www.scuolevi-net: [84]

[5] Roberto Saviano, Gomorra, Viaggio nell'impero economico e nel sogno di dominio della camorra, Arnoldo Montaldi, 2006.

[6] La Republica online, 29.10.07

[7] In the USA alone, more than 100 billion plastic bags are used, and 1.9 billion tons of oil are needed to produce them; most of them end up being thrown away and take years to decompose. American production of around 10 billion plastic bags requires around 15 million trees to be cut down

[8] See the article Mediterraneo, un mare di plastica, in La Republica, 19.7.07.

[9] It's quite possible that the dizzying price rises in oil which we've been seeing since the end of last year will provoke a discussion about the use of this raw material in the production of non-biodegradable synthetics, leading to the conversion to the ecological faith of these vigilant entrepreneurs - vigilant about safeguarding their own interests. 

[10] R. Troisi : la discarica del mondo luogo di miseria e di speranza nel ventunesimo secolo.

[11] See the article : ‘Alcuni effetti collaterali dell'industria, La chimica, la diga e il nucleare'.

[12] RJE Clausius (1885). Clausius was born in Koslin (in Prussia, now Poland) in 1822 and died in Bonn in 1888.

[13] Associazione Italiana Insegnanti Geografia, La crescita della popolazione

[14] G. Carchella, Acqua : l'oro blu del terzo millenario, ‘Lettera 22, associazione indipendente di giornalisti'

[15] ‘Asian Farmers sucking the continent dry', New Scientist, 28.8.04

[16] ‘Cina : oltre 10 milioni di persone assetate dalla siccità', Asia News,

[17] ‘La Cina stretta tra le inondazioni e il deserto che avanza', 18/08/2006, in Asia News.