We are publishing below the second part of an orientation text submitted for discussion in the ICC in the summer of 2001, and adopted by our organisation’s Extraordinary Conference in March 2002.[1] The first part of this text was published in International Review n°111 [1], and dealt with the following points:

-     The effects of the counter-revolution on the self-confidence and the traditions of solidarity of today’s proletarian generations.

-     The effects within the ICC of weaknesses in confidence and solidarity.

-     The role of confidence and solidarity in the rise of humanity.

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4. The dialectic of the self-confidence of the working class: Past, present, future.

Since the proletariat is the first class in society with a conscious historical vision, it is understandable that the bases of its confidence in its own mission are also historical, incorporating the entirety of its process of coming to being. This is why, in particular, this confidence is based to a decisive degree on the future, and thus on a theoretical understanding. And this is why the strengthening of theory is the privileged weapon in overcoming the ICC’s congenital weaknesses on the question of confidence. Confidence by definition is always confidence in the future. The past cannot be changed; therefore there is no question of confidence being directed towards it.

Every ascendant, revolutionary class bases confidence in its specific mission not only on its present strength, but also on its past experiences and achievements, and on its future goals. Nevertheless, the confidence of the revolutionary classes of the past, and the bourgeoisie in particular, was mainly rooted in the present - in the economic and political power it had already gained within the existing society. Since the proletariat can never possess such a power within capitalism, there can never be such a predominance of the present. Without the capacity to learn from its past experience, and without a real clarity and conviction in relation to its class goal, it can never gain the self-confidence to overcome class society. In this sense the working class is, more than any other before it, an historical class in the full sense of the word. The past, present and future are the three indispensable components of its self-confidence. No wonder therefore that Marxism, the scientific weapon of the proletarian revolution, was called by its founders historical or dialectical materialism.

a) This pre-eminent role of the future does not at all eliminate the role of the present in the dialectic of the class struggle. Precisely because the proletariat is an exploited class, it needs to develop its collective struggle for the class as a whole to become aware of its real strength and future potential. This necessity for the whole class to gain confidence is a completely new problem in the history of class society. The self-confidence of the revolutionary classes of the past, which were exploiting classes, was always based on a clear hierarchy within that class and within society as a whole. It was based on the capacity to command, to submit other parts of society to their own will, and thus on the control over the productive and the state apparatus. Indeed, it is a characteristic of the bourgeoisie that even in its revolutionary phase it got other social strata to do the fighting for it, and that once in power it “delegates” more and more of its tasks to paid servants.

The proletariat cannot delegate its historic task to anybody. This is why the class must develop its self-confidence. And it is why confidence in the proletariat is always necessarily confidence in the class as a whole, never just in one part of the class.

Because it is an exploited class the proletariat’s confidence has a fluctuating and even erratic character, ebbing and flowing with the movement of the class struggle. Moreover, revolutionary political organisations are themselves profoundly affected by these ups and downs, to the extent that the way they organise, regroup and intervene in the class largely depends on this movement. And as we know, in periods of profound defeat only tiny minorities have been able to maintain their confidence in the class.

But these fluctuations in confidence are not only linked to the vicissitudes of the class struggle. As an exploited class, the proletariat may fall victim to a crisis of self-confidence at any moment, even in the heat of revolutionary struggles. The proletarian revolution “constantly interrupts itself in its own course, coming back to what apparently has already been achieved, in order to begin with it again” etc. In particular it “always shrinks back again and again in face of the undefined enormity of its own intention” as Marx said.A

The Russian Revolution of 1917 shows clearly that not only the class as a whole, but also the revolutionary party can be affected by such waverings. In fact, between February and October 1917, the Bolsheviks went through several crises of confidence in the capacity of the class to fulfil the tasks of the moment. Crises which culminated in the panic which gripped the Bolshevik Central Committee in the face of the insurrection.

The Russian Revolution is thus the best illustration of why the deepest roots of the confidence of the proletariat, as opposed to that of the bourgeoisie, can never lie in the present. During those dramatic months, it was above all Lenin who embodied the unswerving confidence in the class without which no victory is possible. And he did so because he never for a moment abandoned the theoretical and historical method that is the hallmark of Marxism.

Nevertheless, the mass struggle of the proletariat is an indispensable moment in the development of revolutionary confidence. At the present moment it is the key to the whole historical situation. By permitting a re-conquest of class identity, it is the precondition for the class as a whole to re-assimilate the lessons of the past and redevelop a revolutionary perspective.

Therefore, as with the question of class consciousness, with which it is intimately linked, we must distinguish two dimensions of this confidence: the historical, theoretical, programmatic and organisational accumulation of confidence, represented by revolutionary organisations, and, more broadly, by the historic process of subterranean maturation within the class, and the degree and extension of self confidence in the class as a whole at any given moment.

b) The contribution of the past to this confidence is no less indispensable. Firstly because history contains irrefutable proofs of the working class’ revolutionary potential. The bourgeoisie itself understands the importance of these past examples for its class enemy, which is why it unceasingly attacks this heritage, and above all the October Revolution of 1917.

Secondly, one of the factors most likely to reassure the proletariat after a defeat, is its  capacity to correct past errors and to draw the lessons of history. As opposed to the bourgeois revolution, which goes from one victory to the next, the final victory of the proletariat is prepared through a series of defeats. The proletariat is thus able to transform past defeats into elements of confidence in the future. This was one of the main bases of the confidence that Bilan maintained in the depth of the counter-revolution. Indeed, the deeper confidence in the class is, the more courage revolutionaries have to mercilessly criticise their own weaknesses and those of the class, the less need they have of consoling themselves, the more they are characterised by sober lucidity and the absence of senseless euphoria. As Rosa Luxemburg repeated again and again, the task of revolutionaries is to say what is.

Thirdly, continuity, the capacity to pass on lessons from one generation to the next, has always been fundamental for the cultivation of mankind’s self-confidence. The devastating effects of the counter-revolution of the 20th century on the proletariat is the negative proof of this. It is therefore all the more important for us today to study the lessons of history, in order to pass on our own experience and that of the whole working class to the generations of revolutionaries who will follow us.

c) But it is the future perspective that offers the most profound basis for our confidence in the proletariat. That might seem paradoxical. How is it possible to base confidence on something that does not yet exist? But this perspective does exist. It exists as a conscious goal, as a theoretical construction, in the same way as the building to be constructed already exists in the head of the architect. Before building it in practice, the proletariat is already the architect of communism.

We have already seen that together with the proletariat as an independent force in history there appeared the perspective of communism: the collective ownership, not of the means of consumption, but of the means of production. This idea was the product of the separation of the producers from the means of production through wage labour, and of the socialisation of labour. In other words it was a product of the proletariat, of its position in capitalist society. Or as Engels put it in Anti-Dühring, the main contradiction at the heart of capitalism is that between two social principles, a collective one at the basis of modern production, represented by the proletariat, and an individual, anarchic one based on the private ownership of the means of production, represented by the bourgeoisie.

The communist perspective already arose before the proletarian struggle had revealed its revolutionary potential. What these events therefore clarified was that only the workers’ struggles can lead to communism. But the perspective itself existed beforehand. It was not mainly based either on the past or present lessons of the proletarian combat. And even in the 1840s, when Marx and Engels began to transform socialism from a utopia to a science, the class had not given much proof of its revolutionary might.

This means that from the onset theory was itself a weapon of the class struggle. And until the defeat of the revolutionary wave, as we have said, this vision of its historical role was crucial in giving the class the confidence to confront capital.

Thus, alongside the immediate struggle and the lessons of the past, revolutionary theory is an indispensable factor of confidence, of its development in depth in particular, but in the long run also in its extension. Since the revolution can only be a conscious act, it cannot be victorious unless revolutionary theory conquers the masses.

In the bourgeois revolution, the perspective was not much more than a projection of the mind of the past and present evolution: the gradual conquest of power within the old society. To the extent that the bourgeoisie developed theories of the future, they turned out to be crude mystifications which mainly had the task of inflaming revolutionary passions. The unrealistic character of these visions did not damage the cause they served. For the proletariat on the contrary, the future is the point of departure. Because it cannot gradually build its class power within capitalism, theoretical clarity is a most indispensable weapon.

“Classical idealist philosophy always postulated that humanity lives in two different worlds, the material world, in which necessity rules, and the world of the mind or the spirit, in which freedom reigns.

Notwithstanding the necessity to reject the assumption of the two worlds to which, according to Plato and Kant, humanity belongs, it is nevertheless correct, that human beings live simultaneously in two different worlds (...) The two worlds, in which humanity live, are the past and the future. The present is the border between them. His whole experience lies in the past. (…) There is nothing in it he can change; all he can do is accept its necessity. Thus the world of experience, the world of recognition is also the world of necessity. It is different with the future. I do not have the least experience of it. It lies apparently free ahead of me, as a world which I cannot explore on the basis of knowledge, but in which I have to assert myself through action. (..) Acting always means choosing between different possibilities, and even if only between acting or not acting, it means accepting and rejecting, defending and attacking. (…) But not only the feeling of freedom is a precondition of action, but also given aims. If the world of the past is governed by the relation between cause and effect (causality), that of action, of the future, by purposefulness (teleology).”B

Already before Marx, it was Hegel who theoretically resolved the problem of the relation between necessity and freedom, between the past and the future. Freedom consists in doing what is necessary, Hegel said. In other words, it is not by revolting against the laws of motion of the world, but through understanding them and employing them to his own ends that man enlarges his sphere of freedom. “Blind is necessity only to the extent that it is not understood”.C Similarly, it is necessary for the proletariat to understand the laws of motion of history in order to be able to fulfil its class mission. It is Marxist theory, this science of the revolution, which gives the class the means, and with it the confidence, to understand and thus fulfil this mission. Thus, if the science, and with it the confidence, of the bourgeoisie was to a large extent based on a growing understanding of the laws of nature, the science and the confidence of the working class is based on the understanding of society and history.

As MC[2] showed in one a classic defence of Marxism on this question, it is the future which must predominate over past and present in a revolutionary movement, because this is what determines its direction. The predominance of the present invariably leads to vacillations, creating an enormous vulnerability for the influence of the petty bourgeoisie, the personification of vacillation. The predominance of the past leads to opportunism and thus the influence of the bourgeoisie as the bastion of modern reaction. In both cases, it is the loss of the long-term view that leads to the loss of revolutionary direction.

As Marx said: “The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future”.D

From this we must conclude that immediatism is the main enemy of confidence in the proletariat, not only because the road to communism is long and torturous, but also because this confidence is rooted in theory and the future, whereas immediatism is capitulation to the present, the worship of the immediate facts. Throughout history, immediatism has been the leading factor in the disorientation of the workers movement. It has been at the root of all the tendencies to put “the movement before the goal” as Bernstein put it, and thus to abandon class principles. Whether it takes the form of opportunism, as with the revisionists at the turn of the century or with the Trotskyists in the 1930s, or of adventurism as with the Independents in 1919 and the KPD in 1921 in Germany, this petty bourgeois political impatience always amounts to betraying the future for a bowl of lentils, to use the biblical image. At the root of this folly there is always a loss of confidence in the class.

In the historical ascent of the proletariat, past, present and future form a unity. At the same time, each of these “worlds” warn us of a specific danger. The danger concerning the past is that its lessons can be forgotten. The danger of the present is that of falling victim to the immediate, the surface appearances. The danger regarding the future is that of the neglect and the weakening of theoretical efforts.

This reminds us that the defence of and development of the theoretical arms of the working class is the specific task of revolutionary organisations, and that the latter have a particular responsibility to safeguard historical confidence in the class.

5. Confidence, Solidarity and the Party Spirit are never definitive acquisitions.

As we have said, clarity and unity are the main bases of confident social action. In the case of the international proletarian class struggle, this unity is of course but a tendency, which may some day be realised through a world wide workers council. But politically, the unitary organisations, which arise in struggle, are already the expression of this tendency. Even outside of these organised expressions, workers solidarity - even when expressed at an individual level - also manifests this unity. The proletariat is the first class within which there are no conflicting economic interests, and in this sense, its solidarity announces the nature of the society it is fighting for.

However, the most important and permanent expression of class unity is the revolutionary organisation and the programme it defends. It is consequently the most developed embodiment of confidence in the proletariat - and also the most complex.

As such, confidence is at the very heart of the construction of such an organisation. Here, confidence in the proletarian mission is directly expressed in the confidence in the political programme of the class, in the Marxist method, in the historic capacity of the class, in the role of the organisation towards the class, in its principles of functioning and in the confidence of the militants and the different parts of the organisation in themselves and in each other. In particular, it is the unity of the different political and organisational principles which it defends, and the unity between the different parts of the organisation which are the most direct expressions of confidence in the class: unity of purpose and of action, of the class goal and of the means of its achievement.

The two main aspects of this confidence are political and organisational life. The first aspect is expressed through loyalty to political principles, but also through the capacity to develop Marxist theory in response to the evolution of reality. The second aspect is expressed through loyalty to the principles of proletarian functioning and the capacity to develop a real confidence and solidarity within the organisation. The result of a weakening of confidence at either of these two levels will always be to put in question the unity - and thus the existence - of the organisation.

At the organisational level, the most developed expression of this confidence, solidarity and unity is what Lenin called the party spirit. In the history of the workers movement there are three famous examples of the achievement of such a party spirit: The German Party in the 1870s and 80s, the Bolsheviks from 1903 to the Revolution, and the Italian Party and the Fraction which emerged from it after the revolutionary wave. These examples will help to show us the nature and dynamic of this party spirit, and the dangers which menace it.

a) What characterised the German Party at this level was that it based its mode of functioning on the organisational principles worked out by the First International in the struggle against Bakuninism (and Lassalleanism); that these principles were anchored throughout the party through a series of organisational struggles; and that in the combat for the defence of the organisation against state repression a tradition of solidarity between the militants and the different parts of the organisation was forged. In fact, it was during this “heroic” period of clandestinity that the German party developed the traditions of uncompromising defence of principles, of theoretical study and organisational unity which made it the natural leader of the international workers movement. The daily solidarity within its ranks was a powerful catalyst for all of these qualities. But by the turn of the century, this party spirit was almost completely dead, so that Rosa Luxemburg could declare that there is more humanity in any Siberian village than in the whole of the German party.E Indeed, long before its programmatic betrayal, the disappearance of this solidarity announced its coming betrayal.

b) But the banner of the party spirit was carried on by the Bolsheviks. Here again we find the same characteristics. The Bolsheviks inherited their organisational principles from the German Party; anchored them in each section and each member through a series of organisational struggles; forged a living solidarity through years of illegal work. Without these qualities, the Party could never have stood the test of the revolution. Although between August 1914 and October 1917 the party suffered a series of political crises, and even had to react repeatedly to the penetration of openly bourgeois positions within its ranks and its leadership (i.e. support for the war in 1914 and after February 1917), the unity of the organisation, its capacity to clarify divergences, to correct its errors and to intervene towards the class was never put in question.

c) As we know, long before the final triumph of Stalinism the party spirit was in full retreat within the Party of Lenin. But once again, the banner was carried forward, this time by the Italian Party, and afterwards by the Fraction in the face of the Stalinist counter-revolution. The party became the inheritor of the organisational principles and traditions of Bolshevism. It developed its vision of party life in the struggle against Stalinism, later enriching it with the vision and method of the Fraction. And this was done under the most terrible objective conditions, in the face of which once again a living solidarity had to be forged.

At the end of World War II, the Italian Left in turn abandoned the organisational principles that had been its hallmark. In fact, neither the semi-religious parody of collective party life developed by post-war Bordigism, nor the federalist informalism of Battaglia Comunista, have anything to do with the organisational life of the Italian Party under Bordiga. In particular, the whole conception of the Fraction has been abandoned.

It was the French Communist Left which took up the heritage of these organisational principles, and of the struggle for the party spirit. Today it falls to the ICC to perpetuate this heritage and to give it life.

d) The party spirit is never a definitive achievement. Those organisations and currents of the past that best embodied it, each went on to completely and definitively lose it. (…)

In each of the examples given, the circumstances under which this party spirit disappeared were very different. The experience of the slow degeneration of a mass party, or of the integration of a party into the state apparatus of an isolated workers’ bastion, may never be repeated. But there are nonetheless general lessons to be drawn. In each case:

-      The party spirit disappeared at an historical turning point: in Germany between ascendant and decadent capitalism, in Russia with the retreat of the revolution, and for the Italian Left between revolution and counter-revolution. Today it is the entry into the phase of decomposition which threatens the existence of the party spirit.

-      The illusion that past achievements can be definitive prevented the necessary vigilance. Lenin’s Infantile Disorder is a perfect example of this illusion. Today the overestimation of the ICC’s organisational maturity contains the same danger.

-      It was immediatism and impatience that opened the door to programmatic and organisational opportunism. The example of the Italian Left is particularly striking, since it is historically closest to us. It was the desire to at long last extend its influence and to recruit new members which prompted the Italian Left in 1943-45 to abandon the lessons of the Fraction, and the Bordigist ICP in 1980-81 to abandon some of its programmatic principles. Today the ICC in turn is faced with similar temptations linked to the evolution of the historic situation.

-      This abandonment was the expression, at the organisational level of a loss of confidence in the working class, which inevitably expressed itself at the political level also (loss of programmatic clarity). This has never to date been the case with the ICC as such. But it has always been the case with the different “tendencies” which split off from it (like the EFICC or the “Paris circle”, which have abandoned the analysis of decadence).

In the past months, it is above all the simultaneity of a weakening of our theoretical efforts and vigilance, a certain euphoria in relation to the progress of the organisation and thus a blindness towards our failings, and the resurgence of clanism which reveal the danger of the loss of the party spirit, of organisational degeneration and theoretical sclerosis. The undermining of confidence within our ranks and the inability to make decisive steps forward in the development of solidarity have been leading factors in this tendency, which potentially can eventually lead to the programmatic betrayal or to the disappearance of the organisation.

6. No Party Spirit without Individual Responsibility

 

After the struggle of 1993-96 against clanism, attitudes of suspicion towards the political and social relationships between comrades outside of the formal framework of meetings and mandated activities began to emerge. Friendships, love relationships, social ties and activities, gestures of personal solidarity, political and other discussions between comrades were sometimes treated in practice as necessary evils, in fact as the privileged terrain of the development of clanism. As opposed to this, the formal structures of our activities began to be considered as in some way offering a kind of guarantee against the return of clanism.

Such reactions against clanism themselves revealed an insufficient assimilation of our analysis, and a disarming in the face of this danger. As we have said, clanism partly emerged as a false response to the real problem of lack of confidence and solidarity within our ranks. Moreover, the destruction of the relations of mutual confidence and solidarity between comrades that did exist was largely the work of clanism, and the precondition for its further development. It was first and foremost clanism which undermined the spirit of friendship: real friendship is never directed against third persons, and never excludes mutual criticism. Clanism destroyed the indispensable tradition of political discussions and social links between comrades by converting them into “informal discussions” behind the back of the organisation. By increasing atomisation and demolishing confidence, by irresponsibly and excessively intervening in the personal lives of comrades while socially isolating them from the organisation, clanism undermined the natural solidarity which must be expressed in the organisation’s “duty to concern itself” with its militants’ personal difficulties.

It is impossible to fight clanism using its own weapons. It is not suspicion towards the full development of political and social life outside of the formal framework of section meetings, but real confidence in this tradition of the workers movement that makes us more resilient against clanism.

Underlying this unjustified suspicion of the “informal” life of a workers organisation is the petty bourgeois utopia of a guarantee against the circle spirit, which can only lead to the illusory dogma of a catechism against clanism. Such an approach tends to convert the statutes into rigid laws, the right of view into surveillance, and solidarity into an empty ritual.

One of the ways in which the petty bourgeois fear of the future expresses itself is through a morbid dogmatism that appears to offer protection against the danger of the unforeseen. This was what led the “old guard” of the Russian Party constantly to accuse Lenin of abandoning the principles and traditions of Bolshevism. It is a kind of conservatism that undermines the revolutionary spirit. Nobody is exempt from this danger, as is shown by the debate in the Socialist International on the Polish Question, where not only Wilhem Liebknecht, but, to some extent, Engels also adopted this attitude when Rosa Luxemburg asserted the necessity of calling into question the old position of support for Polish independence.

In reality, clanism, precisely because it is an emanation of unstable, intermediary layers without any future, is not only capable, but actually condemned to take on ever changing forms and characteristics. History shows that clanism not only takes the form of the informalism of the boheme and the parallel structures much loved by the declassed, but is equally capable of using the official structures of the organisation and the appearance of petty bourgeois formalism and routinism in order to promote its parallel policies. Whereas in an organisation where the party spirit is weak and the spirit of contestation is strong, an informal clan has the best chance of success, in a more rigorous atmosphere, where there is a strong confidence in the central organs, a formalistic appearance and the adaptation of the official structures can perfectly correspond to the needs of clanism.

In reality, clanism contains both sides of this coin. Historically, it is condemned to vacillate between these two apparently mutually exclusive poles. In the case of Bakunin’s policy we find both of them contained in a “higher synthesis”: the absolute individual anarchist freedom proclaimed by the official Alliance, and the blind confidence and obedience demanded by the secret Alliance:

“Like the Jesuits, but with the goal, not of the servitude but of the emancipation of the people, each of them has renounced his own will. In the Committee, as in the whole organisation, it is not the individual which thinks, wants and acts, but the whole”, writes Bakunin. What characterises this organisation, he continues, is “the blind confidence offered it by known and respected personalities”.F

It is clear which role social relationships are called on to play in such an organisation: “All feelings of affection, the mollycoddling sentiments of closeness, friendship, love, thankfulness have to be suffocated in him through the sole cold passion of the revolutionary task.”G

Here, we see clearly that monolithism is not an invention of Stalinism, but is already contained in the clannish lack of confidence in the historic task, collective life and proletarian solidarity. For us, there is nothing new or surprising in this. It is the well known petty bourgeois fear of individual responsibility which nowadays drives countless highly individualistic existences into the arms of diverse sects, where they can cease to think and act for themselves.

It is truly an illusion to believe that one can combat clanism without the individual members of the organisation taking up their responsibilities. And it would be paranoiac to think that “collective” surveillance could substitute for individual conviction and vigilance in this combat. In reality, clanism incorporates the lack of confidence both in real collective life and in the possibility of real individual responsibility.

What is the difference between discussions between comrades outside of meetings, and the “informal discussions” of clanism? Is it the fact that the former, but not the latter is reported to the organisation? Yes, although it is not possible to formally report every discussion. More fundamentally, it is the attitude with which such a discussion is conducted, which is decisive. This is the party spirit that we all have to develop, because no one will do it for us. This party spirit will always remain a dead letter if militants cannot learn to have confidence in each other. Equally there can be no living solidarity without a personal commitment of each militant at this level.

If the struggle against the circle spirit depended solely on the health of the formal collective structures, there would never be a problem of clanism in proletarian organisations. Clans develop because of the weakening of vigilance and the sense of responsibility at the individual level. This is why part of the Orientation Text of 1993[3] is devoted to the identification of the attitudes against which each comrade must arm him or herself. This individual responsibility is indispensable, not only in the struggle against clanism, but for the positive development of a healthy proletarian life. In such an organisation, the militants have learnt to think for themselves, and their confidence is rooted in a deep theoretical, political and organisational understanding of the nature of the proletarian cause, not in the loyalty to or fear of this or that comrade or central committee.

“The new course must begin with everyone in the apparatus - from the simple functionary to the highest ones - feeling that nobody anymore can terrorise the party. Our youth must conquer the revolutionary slogans, absorb them into their flesh and blood. They have to conquer their own opinion and a face of their own, and be able to fight for their own opinion with a courage flowing from a deep conviction and an independent character. Out of the party with passive obedience, the mechanical orientation towards those in charge, with un-personality, crawling and careerism! A Bolshevik is not only a disciplined being, no, he is a person who goes to the roots of things and forms his own solid opinion and defends it in struggle not only against the enemy, but also in his own party”.H 

And Trotsky adds: “The greatest heroism in military affairs and in the revolution is the heroism of truthfulness and of responsibility”.I

Collective and individual responsibility, far from being mutually exclusive, depend on and condition each other.

As Plekhanov argued, the elimination of the role of the individual in history is connected to a fatalism that is incompatible with Marxism.

“While some subjectivists, out to endow the ’individual’ with the greatest possible role in history, have refused to recognise mankind’s historical development as a law-governed process, some of their more recent opponents, who have tried to bring out in higher relief the law-governed nature of that development, have evidently been prepared to forget that history is made by people and that the activities of individuals cannot therefore but be significant in history”.J

Such a rejection of individual responsibility is also connected to petty bourgeois democratism, to the wish to replace our principle of “from each according to his ability” with the reactionary utopia of the equalisation of members in a collective body. This project, already condemned in the 1993 Orientation Text, is a goal neither of the organisation today, nor of the future communist society.

One of the tasks we all have is to learn from the example of all the great revolutionaries (the famous ones and all the nameless combatants of our class) who did not betray our programmatic and organisational principles. This has nothing to do with any cult of the personality. As Plekhanov concluded in his famous essay on the role of the individual:

“It is not only to the ‘Beginners’ alone and not only to ‘great’ men that a broad field of activity lies open. It awaits all those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to love their fellow men. The concept of greatness is a relative one. In the moral sense, any man is great who, to quote from the New Testament, ‘lays down his life for his friends’”.J

By way of conclusion

From this it follows that the assimilation and deepening of the questions we began to discuss more than a year ago is a major priority today.

The task of consciousness is to create the political and organisational framework best favouring the cultivation of confidence and solidarity. This task is central to the construction of the organisation, this most difficult art or science. At the basis of this work is the strengthening of the unity of the organisation, this most “sacred” principle of the proletariat. And as with every collective community, its precondition is the existence of common rules of behaviour. Concretely, the statutes, the texts of 1981 on the function and functioning of the orgnisation, and of 1993 on the organisational tissue already give the elements of such a framework. It is necessary to come back repeatedly to these texts, but above all when the unity of the organisation is in danger. They must be the point of departure of a permanent vigilance. It is necessary to more deeply assimilate them, their spirit and the method they represent.

At this level, the main misconception which must be overcome within our ranks is the idea that these questions are easy and straightforward. According to this approach, it is enough to declare confidence for it to already exist. And since solidarity is a practical activity, it is enough to “just go and do it”. Nothing could be further from the truth! The construction of the organisation is an extremely complicated and even delicate enterprise. And there is no other product of human culture as difficult and as fragile as confidence. Nothing else is harder to construct and easier to destroy. This is why, in the face of this or that lack of confidence by this or that part of the organisation, the first question that must always be posed is what must be done collectively to reduce distrust or even fear within our ranks. As for solidarity, although it is “practical” and also “natural” to the working class, this class lives in bourgeois society and is surrounded by factors working against such solidarity. Moreover, the penetration of alien ideology leads to aberrant conceptions on these questions, such as the recent attitude of considering the refusal to publish the texts of comrades to be an expression of solidarity, or to consider a “home-grown psychological” explanation of the origins of certain political divergences in the personal lives of comrades[4] (…)

In particular in the struggle for confidence, our watchword must be prudence and once again prudence.

Marxist theory is our principle weapon in the struggle against loss of confidence. In general, it is the privileged means of resisting immediatism and defending a long-term vision. It is the only possible basis of a real, scientific confidence in the proletariat, which in turn is the basis of the confidence of all the different parts of the class in themselves and each other. Specifically, only a theoretical approach allows us to go to the deepest roots of organisational problems, which must be treated as theoretical and historical issues in their own right. Similarly, in the absence of a living tradition on this question, and of the absence to date of the ordeal by fire of repression, the ICC must base itself on a study of the past workers movement in the conscious and voluntary development of a tradition of active solidarity and social life within its ranks.

If history has made us particularly vulnerable to the dangers of clanism, it has also given us the means to overcome it. In particular, we must never forget that the international character of the organisation, and the instalment of information commissions are the indispensable means of restoring mutual confidence in moments of crisis when this confidence has been damaged and lost.

The old Liebknecht said about Marx that he approached politics as a subject to be studied.K As we have said, it is the enlargement of the zone of consciousness in social life which frees humanity from the anarchy of blind forces, making confidence, making solidarity, making the victory of the proletariat possible. In order to overcome the present difficulties, and solve the questions posed, the ICC must study them. Because, as the philosopher said: “Ignorantia non est argumentum” (“Ignorance is not an argument”, from Spinoza: Ethics)

ICC, 15/06/2001.

Notes from the original

A. Marx: 18th Brumaire.

B. Kautsky: ibid.

C. Hegel: Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences.

D. Marx: 18th Brumaire.

E. Rosa Luxemburg: Correspondence with Konstantin Zetkin.

F. Bakunin: Appeal to the Officers of the Russian Army.

G. Bakunin: The Revolutionary Catechism.

H. Trotsky: The New Course.

I. Trotsky: On Routinism in the Army and Elsewhere.

J. Plekhanov: On the Individual’s Role in History.

K. Wilhelm Liebknecht: Karl Marx.

 

On 28th June 1914, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the emperor Franz-Joseph and inspector-general of the Austro-Hungarian army, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a young Serbian nationalist. For Austria, the opportunity was too good to be missed. The Austrians had already laid hands on Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, their imperialist appetites whetted by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The assassination provided Austria with the perfect pretext to attack Serbia, which it suspected of encouraging the nationalities under Austrian rule in their desires for independence. The declaration of war followed without the slightest negotiation. What ensued is common knowledge: Russia rushed to Serbia’s rescue, fearing to see Austria dominate the Balkans; Germany gave its support to its Austro-Hungarian ally; France in turn supported Russia, while Britain followed; in total, the war that resulted left almost ten million dead, six million mutilated, and Europe in ruins, not to mention the consequences of the war such as the 1918 flu epidemic, which caused more deaths than the war itself.

On 11th September 2001, the 3,000 deaths in the Twin Towers provided the USA with the pretext for their invasion of Afghanistan, along with the installation of military bases in the three bordering ex-Soviet republics. They were also a pretext for preparing a war aimed at eliminating the government of Saddam Hussein, to be followed by a long-term occupation of Iraq itself. Today’s historical conditions mean that for the moment the consequences of 11th September have been less bloody than the 1914-18 war. Nonetheless, this extension of the USA’s direct military presence is heavy with menace for the future.

Despite the similarities between these two events – in each case, a great imperialist power has used a terrorist attack to justify its own warmongering – terrorism in 2001 has nothing to do with that of 1914.

On the one hand, Gavrilo Princip’s act had its roots in the traditions of the 19th century struggle of populist and terrorist organisations against Tsarist absolutism, which expressed the impatience of a petty bourgeoisie unable to understand that history is made by classes, not by individuals. At the same time, this attack prefigured what was to become a characteristic of terrorism during the 20th century: its use by nationalist movements, and the manipulation of the latter by the bourgeoisie of the great powers. In some cases, these nationalist movements were too weak, or arrived too late on the stage of history, to make a place for themselves in a capitalist world already shared out among the great historical nations: the ETA in Spain is a typical example, since an independent Basque state would be completely non-viable. In other cases, terrorist groups have been a part of a wider movement leading to the creation of a national state: we can cite the example of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist movement which fought the British in Palestine before and after World War II, and carried out both attacks on “military” targets such as the British army HQ at the King David hotel, and massacres among the civilian population, such as the slaughter wreaked on the Arab villagers of Deir Yassine. We should remember that Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister awarded the Nobel peace prize following the signature of the Camp David peace agreement with Egypt, was one of the Irgun’s leaders.

In some ways, the example of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ireland[i] summarises what terrorism was to become during the 20th century. Following the crushing of the 1916 Easter Rising, one of the executed Irish leaders was none other than James Connolly, a great figure of the Irish workers’ movement. His death marked the end of an epoch, which had in reality already closed with the outbreak of World War I, an epoch where the workers’ movement could still, in certain cases, support struggles for national independence. In the new period of decadent capitalism that was just opening, such support could only turn against the proletariat.[ii] It was the fate of Roger Casement that symbolised what nationalist and terrorist movements were to become in decadence: arrested (and later shot) by the British as soon as he landed from a German submarine, with the mission to accompany a shipload of German weapons to arm the Easter Rising.

The career paths of Menachem Begin – Prime Minister of Israel – and Gerry Adams – not yet prime minister, but nonetheless a respectable politician received in Downing Street and the White House – are also indicative of the fact that, for the bourgeoisie, there is no firm line of demarcation between terrorism and respectability. The only difference between the statesman and the terrorist leader is that the latter is still in a position of weakness, his only weapons being the terrorist outrage, whereas the latter disposes of all the weaponry of a modern state. Throughout the 20th century, especially during the period of “decolonisation” after World War II, there are numerous examples of terrorist groups (or nationalists using terrorist methods) being transmogrified into the armed forces of a new state: the members of the Irgun absorbed into the new Israeli armed forces, the FLN in Algeria, the Vietminh in Vietnam, Yasser Arafat’s PLO in Palestine, etc.

This kind of armed struggle is also choice ground for the intervention of the bourgeois state, in its own inter-imperialist conflicts. This got going on a large scale during World War II, when the “democratic” bourgeoisie made extensive use of resistance movements against German occupying forces, particularly in France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, while the German Nazi bourgeoisie – though with a good deal less success – tried to use certain independence movements in the British Empire (notably in India). During the Cold War, with the intensification of the confrontation between Russia and the USA, nationalist formations ceased to be mere terrorist groups, and were transformed into veritable armies: this was the case in the Vietnam war, with hundreds of thousands of fighters in the field and millions of deaths, and in Afghanistan where – let us remember – the Taliban and their predecessors in the struggle against the Russian occupation were trained and armed by the United States.

Terrorism – the struggle of an armed minority – thus became a terrain for the interventions and manoeuvres of the great powers. This is obviously the case in the armed confrontations in the so-called “Third World” countries, but it is no less true of the shady dealings that go on within the great powers themselves. Because terrorist action must by definition be prepared in secret, it offers “a choice terrain for the underhand dealings of the police and the state, and in general for the most unexpected manipulations and intrigues”.[iii] A striking example of this kind of manipulation, combining misguided idealists (who even imagined themselves to be acting in the interests of the working class), gangsterism, and the secret services of the great powers, is the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by a Red Brigades commando (which acted with military efficiency), and his assassination on 9th May 1978 after the Italian government refused to negotiate his liberation. Aldo Moro in fact represented a fraction of the Italian bourgeoisie that favoured the Italian Communist Party’s inclusion in the government majority, an option vigorously opposed by the United States. The Red Brigades were equally opposed to Aldo Moro’s “historic compromise” between the Christian Democrats and the CP, and thus were openly playing the same game as the American state. When we consider that the Red Brigades were heavily infiltrated both by the Italian secret service and by the Gladio network,[iv] it is clear that terrorism was already a weapon in imperialist conflicts by the end of the 1970s.[v]

Terrorism: a weapon and a justification for imperialist war

During the 1980s, the proliferation of terrorist attacks (like the ones in Paris in 1986) carried out by groups of fanatics remote controlled by Iran, introduced a new phenomenon. These were no longer, as at the beginning of the 20th century, armed actions executed by minority groups aimed at the formation or the national independence of a state: states themselves were now organising and using terrorism as a weapon of war against other states.

The fact that terrorism has become directly a state weapon of war marks a qualitative evolution in the nature of imperialism. The fact that these attacks were controlled by Iran (or by Syria or Libya in other cases, such as the destruction of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie) is also a significant example of a phenomenon that was to spread with the collapse of the blocs after 1989 and the disappearance of the discipline that had previously been imposed by the bloc leaders: third rate regional powers like Iran tried to throw off the tutelage of the US and Russian blocs. Terrorism had become the poor man’s nuclear bomb.

More recently, the two major military powers – Russia and America – have used terrorism to justify their own military interventions. The media have revealed that the bomb attacks in Moscow in the summer of 1999 used explosives reserved for the military, and that Vladimir Putin – head of the FSB (ex-KGB) at the time – was probably behind them. These attacks provided the pretext for the invasion of Chechnya by Russian troops. After the latest attack, and the seizure of 700 hostages in a Moscow theatre, both the Russian and the international press have raised the question of how it was possible for a group of fifty heavily armed men to enter a public space in a town where a Chechen can be routinely stopped and checked several times a day.

One hypothesis put forward by the 16th November edition of Le Monde is that either the commando was directly infiltrated by the Russian secret service, or that the latter knew what was being planned and did nothing to stop it, in order to justify an intensification of the war in Chechnya. According to some sources, secret service agents had informed their superiors months in advance of the preparation of the Moscow attack by the Movsar Baraev group, but the information “got lost as always in the meanders of the higher ranks”. And yet it is hard to imagine this kind of information being “lost”. The 29th October issue of Moskovski Komsomolets quotes an anonymous FSB informer to the effect that the Chechen commando had long since been infiltrated by the Russian secret service, which directly controlled four of its members.

The commando was led by the Baraev clan, whose henchmen have already distinguished themselves in the Chechen war. Its previous leader (assassinated two years ago), and uncle to the hostage-takers’ commander, despite his appearance as a radical defender of Islam, nonetheless had close ties to the Kremlin. His troops were the only ones to be spared during the bombardments and killings carried out by the Russian army. He made possible the massacre of the main Chechen nationalist military leaders surrounded in Grozny, by sending them straight into an ambush prepared by the Russians.

As for the 11th September, even if the US state was not directly behind it, the idea that the secret services of the world’s greatest power were caught unawares like some vulgar banana republic, is simply not credible. It seems clear enough that the American state let the events take place, sacrificing the Twin Towers and 3,000 lives.[vi] They were the price that US imperialism was ready to pay to reassert its world leadership by unleashing “Operation Unlimited Justice” on Afghanistan. This deliberate policy of letting events take their course in order to justify military intervention is not something new.

It was already used in December 1941 during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor[vii] in order to justify US entry into World War II, and more recently when Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990, in order to justify the Gulf War fought under American control.[viii]

The method of using already planned terrorist attacks to justify the extension of an imperialist influence via a military (or police) intervention, seems to be catching on. The information available seems to suggest that the Australian government was aware of the threat of an attack in Indonesia and did nothing about it, even encouraging its citizens to continue travelling to Bali. What is certain, is that Australia has seized on the opportunity of the 12th October attack to increase its influence in Indonesia, both on its own behalf and on that of its US ally.[ix]9

But this policy of “letting things happen” is no longer, as in 1941, simply a matter of letting the enemy attack first, according to the classic laws of wars between states.

This is no longer a war between rival states, with its rules, its flags, its preparations, its uniformed troops, its battlefields and its armies, that serve as a pretext for the massive intervention of the great powers. Today, the great powers use blind terrorist attacks by kamikaze fanatics, aimed directly at the civilian population, to justify the unleashing of imperialist barbarism.

The world’s small states – Iran, Libya, or others in the Middle East – are no longer alone in their use and manipulation of terrorism. It has become a weapon in the arsenal of the planet’s great powers.

The ideology of fear and death

It is indicative of capitalist society’s increasing ideological disintegration, that those who carried out the attacks in Moscow, New York, and Bali (whatever the motives of those behind them) were not moved by ideologies with even a semblance of progressive rationality, such as the creation of new national states. On the contrary, they draw on ideologies that were already outdated and hopelessly reactionary in the 19th century: mystical and religious obscurantism. Capitalism’s decomposition is summed up in the fact that, for part of today’s youth, the best hope that life can offer is not life, nor even struggle in the service of a great cause, but death in the shadow of feudal obscurantism, and in the service of cynical operators whose very existence they do not even suspect.

In the developed countries, the terrorism for which they themselves bear the prime responsibility serves the bourgeois state as a means of propaganda towards its own population, in an effort to convince the latter that in a world of horrors like the 11th September, the only solution is to seek protection in the state. The situation in Venezuela shows what we can expect if the working class lets itself be drawn onto a terrain that is not its own through support for this or that fraction of the ruling class. The Chavez government came to power with wide support among the working class and the poor, having succeeded in making them believe that its national-populist and anti-American programme could protect them against the increasingly intolerable effects of the crisis. Today, the poor masses and the working class are divided, under the control of the forces of the ruling class: either behind Chavez and his military clique, or enrolled in a trade union “general strike” which even includes the judiciary, and which is viewed with a friendly eye by the bosses! Nor is this danger limited to capitalism’s periphery as we can see from the monster demonstration in Paris on 1st May 2002, where the “citizens” were invited to take the side of one bourgeois clique against another (the “other” being that caricature bogey-man Le Pen).

If the world working class fails to reassert its own class independence, in the struggle first for its own interests and then for the revolutionary overthrow of this rotting society, then we can expect nothing else but the generalisation of confrontations between bourgeois cliques and states, using even the most barbaric methods – including in particular the daily use of the weapon of terror.

Arthur, 23rd December 2002

 

 

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The following notes on the history of the revolutionary movement in Japan illustrate with some concrete details the international nature of the development of the working class and its revolutionary vanguard; the fundamental unity of its interests and struggle across the globe to overthrow world capitalism.

This international characteristic doesn’t express itself identically with the same chronology in every country taken separately but has evolved in an uneven and reciprocal way. For various historical reasons Western Europe is the fulcrum of the world communist revolution.[1] The history of the revolutionary movement in Japan indeed notes on several occasions how this movement lagged behind developments in the Western Hemisphere.

However this is in no sense a moral judgement, a result of “Euro-centrism” nor does it express a desire to award points to the country with the most advanced proletarian movement. On the contrary this history will further reveal the unbreakable link that exists between the proletarian revolutionary movement here and in the rest of the world. Through this analytical framework, we can better understand the dynamic of the world revolution of the future, and the vital, irreplaceable role that a section of the proletariat in a country like Japan must play within it.

When we study the history of the Japanese workers’ movement, we cannot help being struck by the profound similarities between the issues and answers developed in Japan, and those confronted by the proletariat elsewhere in the world. Indeed, these similarities are all the more striking given Japan’s relative isolation from the rest of the industrial world, and even more so given the extraordinary rapidity of Japan’s industrial development. This only began in the 1860s after the US Commodore Perry with his “black ships”, followed by the European powers, forcibly opened Japan to outside influence and commerce. Until then, Japan had been frozen in a hermetic feudalism totally cut off from the rest of the world. In only thirty years – barely a generation – it rose to become the last major industrial power to make an entry into the imperialist arena. This it did in the most striking manner imaginable, by annihilating the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in 1905.

For the proletariat, this meant that the experience and ideas which European workers developed over a century or more had to be compressed into a quarter of the time. The Japanese proletariat was born at a time when marxism had already established a profound influence in the European workers’ movement (notably in the 1st International), and yet the first Japanese translations of Marx’s work only became available in 1904.

The first regroupment of revolutionaries

Until the last decades of the 19th century, the ideas in the workers movement were largely influenced by traditional Confucianism where social harmony was paramount and individual activity was placed in the service of the community.[2]

In May 1882 the Socialist Party of the East (Toyo Shakaito) was founded, which based itself on utopian socialism and anarchism. A short time later it was dissolved.

The 1880s were marked by the appearance of circles which set themselves the task of appropriating socialist classics and familiarising the movement with the struggles and debates of the workers’ movement in Europe such as in “Friends of the People” (Kokumin-no tomo) or the “Society for exploring social problems” (Shakai mondai kenkyukai). Their activities were not based on a permanent organisation and they had not yet established links with the 2nd International founded in 1889.

In 1890 for the first time migrant workers of Japanese origin regrouped in the USA in the “Brave Society of Workers” (Shokko gijukai). This group was also rather a study circle with the goal of studying workers’ questions in different countries of western Europe and the USA. The American Trades Unions had a strong influence on this group.

In 1897 the “Society for the preparation of the foundation of unions” was founded (Rodo kumiai kiseikai), which was to report a membership of 5,700. For the first time in the history of the workers’ movement in Japan they had a paper of their own: Rodo sekai – published every two months and edited by S. Katayama. The goals of this movement were the formation of unions and co-operatives. Two years later this union association already counted 42 sections with 54,000 members. The statutes and positions of the unions were based on the models in Europe. The train drivers’ union developed a campaign for the introduction of general voting rights and declared in March 1901, that “socialism is the only definitive answer to the workers’ situation”.

On October 18th 1898, a small group of intellectuals met in a Tokyo Unitarian Church and founded Shakaishugi Kenkyukai (Association for the Study of Socialism), which started to meet once a month. Five of its six founders still considered themselves to be Christian Socialists.

After Katayama’s trip to England and the USA he contributed to the foundation of the Socialist Association (Shakaishugi kyokai) in 1900, which counted some 40 members. It was decided to send a delegate for the first time to the Paris Congress of the 2nd International, but financial problems prevented them from doing so.

The first “machine-breaking” phase of the workers’ struggle (corresponding to some degree to the “Luddism” of English workers at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries) was only superseded at the end of the 1880s, opening the way to a wave of strikes that erupted between 1897-1899. In particular, metalworkers, machinists and railway workers tested their combativity. Due to the Chinese-Japanese war (1894-1895) there was a new push of industrialisation, so that by the mid 90s a workforce of 420,000 had developed. Some 20,000 workers - or 5% of the modern industrial labour force - were unionised, most of the unions were small, having fewer than 500 members. But the Japanese bourgeoisie reacted from the very beginning with the most atrocious violence against an increasingly combative workforce. In 1900 it adopted a law on “the protection of public order” based on the model of the anti-socialist laws of Bismarck which banned the SPD[3] in Germany in 1878.

On May 20th 1901 the first Social Democratic Party (Shakai Minshuto) was founded, which put forward the following demands:

- “abolish the gap between rich and poor and secure a victory for pacifism in the world by means of genuine socialism and democracy;

- world wide fraternity overcoming racial or political differences;

- world peace and the abolition of arms;

- equal & just distribution of wealth;

- equal access to political power for the whole population”.

These demands are entirely characteristic of the situation in which the Japanese workers’ movement found itself at the time, combining as they do:

- a somewhat naïve “a-classist” vision typical of the earliest phases of the workers’ struggle;

- an insistence on the end to inequalities based on race, which must certainly reflect the experience of Japanese immigrant workers in the USA;

- a democratic and pacifist phraseology similar to that of the revisionist wing of the 2nd International.

Shakai Minshuto (Social Democratic Party) proclaimed to respect the law; anarchism and violence were rejected explicitly; it supported participation in parliamentary elections. By defending the interests of the masses of the people, by overcoming classes, by liquidating economic inequality, by fighting for general voting rights for all workers, the party hoped to make a contribution to establishing world peace.

Although it put parliamentary activities high on the agenda the party was immediately forbidden. The attempt to set up a political party failed. The level of organisation could not yet supersede the level of discussion circles. Moreover repression led to a big setback. The publication of newspapers was continued without an organisation behind them. Thus the main thrust of the activities was still holding conferences, organising meetings and publishing texts.

The struggle against war

On April 5/6th 1903 at the Socialist Conference of Japan in Osaka the participants demanded the socialist transformation of society. While the demand for “liberty, equality and fraternity” was still raised, the demand for the abolition of classes and any type of oppression as well as the prohibition of wars of aggression was raised as well. At the end of 1903 the Commoners’ Society (Heiminsha) became the centre of the anti-war movement: Japan was then expanding into Manchuria and Korea and was on the verge of a war with Russia. Its paper was printed in 5,000 copies. Again, it was a paper without any major organisational framework behind it. D. Kotoku was one of the most famous speakers of this grouping.

Katayama,[4] who left Japan from 1903-1907, attended the Amsterdam Congress of the 2nd International in 1904. When he shook hands with Plekhanov this was seen as an important symbolic act in the midst of the Japanese-Russian war, which lasted from February 1904 until August 1905.

From the outset, Heiminsha clearly opposed the war. It did so in the name of humanitarian pacifism. The strive for profit of the armaments sector was denounced.

On March 13th 1904 the Heimin Shimbun published an open letter to the Russian RSDLP,[5]5 calling for unity with the socialists of Japan against the war. Iskra n°37 published their response. At the same time Japanese socialists spread socialist literature amongst Russian prisoners of war.

In 1904 39,000 leaflets against the war were distributed and some 20,000 copies of Heimin were sold.

Thus the intensive imperialist activities of Japan (the wars with China in the 1890’s, the war with Russia in 1904-05) forced the proletariat to take up position on the question of war. Even if the rejection of imperialist war was not yet based on a solid Marxist footing and still marked by a pacifist orientation, the working class developed a tradition of internationalism.

The first translation of the Communist Manifesto was also published by Heimin in 1904. Until that time the classics of Marxism were not accessible in Japanese.

As soon as the government exercised repression against revolutionaries, putting many of them on trial, Heimin ceased publication and the paper Chokugen (“Free speech”), which was to follow it, was still dominated by a strong pacifism.

Capital had to lay the costs of war on the shoulders of the working class. Prices doubled, then tripled. The state, which inaugurated a policy of undertaking debts to pay for the war, had to impose a lot of taxes on the working class.

Much the same as in Russia in 1905, the drastic worsening of workers’ living conditions in Japan led to the outbreak of violent protests in 1905 and to a series of strikes in the shipyards and the mines in 1906 & 1907. The bourgeoisie never hesitated for one moment and sent its troops against the workers and once again declared any workers organisation illegal.

While there was still no organisation of revolutionaries, but only a revolutionary tribune against the war, the Japanese-Russian war led at the same time to a strong polarisation. A first delineation between Christian socialists around Kinoshita, Abe and the wing around Kotoku (who since 1904-05 had taken a strong anti-parliamentarian stand) and the wing around Katayama Sen and Tetsuji occurred.

DA

 

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Correspondence with the International Communist Group (Russia)

We are publishing below a letter received from the Russian group International Communist Union (ICU).[1] Their letter is itself a response to previous correspondence from the ICC; it contains numerous quotes from our letter, which appear in italics.

 

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Dear comrades,

We apologise that we could not answer quickly enough. We are a very small group, and we have a lot of work, including a large volume of correspondence. And all foreigners don’t write in Russian.

Concerning the platform, there seems to be a high level of agreement with a number of key positions: the perspective of socialism or barbarism, the capitalist nature of the Stalinist regimes, recognition of the proletarian character of the Russian revolution of 1917

It’s not so simple. In the Russian revolution of 1917 two crises were incorporated: the internal crisis, which should have permitted a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the world crisis, which put on the order of the day an attempt at world socialist revolution. The proletariat of Russia, argued Lenin, was to undertake the initiative in both revolutions: it should head the bourgeois revolution in Russia and, simultaneously, with the help of this revolution, kindle socialist revolution in Europe and in other countries. Therefore we consider it incorrect to broach the question of the nature of the Russian revolution without specifying where these two revolutions derive from: internal or international. But, certainly, in Russia both these revolutions were headed by the proletariat.

What we’re less sure about is whether you agree with the ICC on the historical framework which gives substance and coherence to many of these positions: the conception that capitalism has, since 1914, been a decadent, declining social system.

Certainly, we do not agree. The transition to one higher economic formation is the result of the development of the previous formation, instead of destruction. If the old formation has been exhausted, it constantly derives social crisis and social forces aspiring to proceed to the new formation. This is not happening. Moreover, for many decades capitalism has ensured relative stability of development, during which the revolutionary forces not only did not grow, but on the contrary, broke up. And (capitalism) really develops, not only creating qualitatively new productive forces, but also creating new forms of capitalism. The study of this development can give the answer when there will come a new crisis, such as the crisis of 1914-45, and hence what transitional forms to socialism there should be. The theory of decadence denies the development of capitalism and makes it impossible to study it, leaving us as simple dreamers trusting in the bright future of mankind.

As to destruction, destruction, war, violence etc. are not just integral features of capitalism, but a necessity of its existence. Both in Marx’s time and in the 20th century.

To give a precise illustration of the problem we are raising: in your statement you argue against ‘fronts’ with the bourgeoisie on the grounds that all bourgeois factions are equally reactionary. And we agree. But this position has not always been valid for marxists. While capitalism today is a decadent system, i.e. one in which the social relations have become a permanent fetter on the productive forces and thus on human progress, it has, like previous forms of class exploitation, also known an ascendant period when it represented progress in relation to the previous mode of production. This is why Marx did support certain fractions of the bourgeoisie, whether the northern capitalists against the southern slaveholders in the American civil war, the Risorgimento movement in Italy for national unification against the old feudal classes, and so on. This support was based on the understanding that capitalism had not yet exhausted its historical mission and that the conditions for the world communist revolution had not yet fully matured.

Historically speaking, in relation to the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the proletarian party has considered all fractions of the bourgeoisie to be reactionary. But it is not only when capitalism had historical resources that it was possible to speak about the progressiveness of this or that fraction of the bourgeoisie. It was necessary that the appropriate fraction was capable of carrying out the historical tasks facing it. Thus, for example, the Russian bourgeoisie was not capable of heading the bourgeois revolution, and so was reactionary in 1917, though the bourgeois-democratic transformations of the Russian revolution were certainly progressive. Today we confirm that no fraction of the bourgeoisie is capable of carrying out necessary bourgeois modernisation without world war for the violent association of mankind. For this reason, it is senseless to support any of these fractions. But this does not mean that there are no more bourgeois tasks. The liquidation of national borders and the creation of the world market is only a bourgeois task, but it is impossible here to trust the bourgeoisie, and it is necessary to use the future crisis to ensure that this task is executed by the proletariat and from here proceeds to socialist tasks. To put it briefly, the question of the exhaustion of the historical tasks of capitalism and the question about whether its different fractions are progressive or not, are two different questions. Therefore the proletariat should always take the revolutionary initiative on itself. Including when it is necessary to undertake bourgeois tasks, trying to expand the movement so that it is possible to proceed to socialist tasks. We consider such an approach to be the Marxist one.

In your view, national struggles have been a source of considerable progress, and the demand for national self-determination still has validity, if only for the workers of the more powerful capitalist countries in relation to the countries oppressed by their own imperialism. You then appear to argue that national struggles have lost their progressive character since the advent of “globalisation”. These statements call for a number of comments on our part.

Our position on the decadence of capitalism is not our own invention. Based on the fundamentals of the historical materialist method (in particular when Marx talks about “epochs of social revolution” in his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy), it was concretised for the majority of revolutionary marxists by the outbreak of the First World War, which showed that capitalism had already “globalised” itself to the point where it could no longer overcome its inner contradictions except through imperialist war and self-cannibalisation. This was the position of the Communist International at its founding congress, although the CI was not able to draw all the consequences for this as regards the national question: the theses of the second congress still saw a “revolutionary” role of some kind for the bourgeoisie of the colonial regimes. But the left fractions of the CI were later on able to take this analysis to its conclusion, particularly following the disastrous results of the CI’s policies during the revolutionary wave of 1917-27. For the Italian left in the 1930s, for example, the experience of China in 1927 was decisive. It showed that all factions of the bourgeoisie, no matter how “anti-imperialist” they claimed to be, were equally counter-revolutionary, equally compelled to massacre the proletariat when it struggled for its own interests, as in the Shanghai uprising of 1927. For the Italian left this experience proved that the theses on the national question from the second congress had to be rejected. Moreover, this was a confirmation of the correctness of Rosa Luxemburg’s views on the national question as against those of Lenin: for Luxemburg, it had already become clear during the First World War that all states were inevitably part of the world imperialist system.

All the questions here are jumbled together. The Comintern politics of Stalin and Bukharin during the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 is completely different from the politics of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which determined the first years of the Comintern. You again argue that if there are bourgeois tasks, we should support this or that bourgeois fraction. The Mensheviks and the Stalinists said the same. The method of Marx and Lenin consists in not refusing the tasks of the moment when all fractions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary, and in carrying out these tasks by the method of the proletarian revolution, trying to execute bourgeois tasks to the maximum depth and proceeding to the socialist tasks. The Chinese revolution has shown the correctness of this approach, instead of the correctness of the left. All the same the bourgeois revolution did win in China, though leaving enormous numbers of victims. This revolution has made it possible to create the most numerous proletariat in the world and powerful, quickly developing productive forces. The same result was given also by tens of other revolutions in the countries of the east. We see no sense in denying their historically progressive role: due to them our revolution has a strong class basis in many countries of the world, which in 1914 were almost completely agricultural.

What has changed from the time of the beginning of “globalisation”? The opportunity of the national revolution has disappeared. You say that capitalism has always had a global character. Yes, this has been the case since its origins, with the period of great geographic expansion. But the level of this “globalisation” was qualitatively different. Till the 1980s the national revolutions could still ensure the growth of the productive forces, therefore they should still have been supported, trying, if possible, to transfer management of them into the hands of the revolutionary proletariat. It was because there was an objective opportunity for national development, due to the efforts of the national state. Now this historical stage for national development is finally exhausted. This concerns all states, including the advanced ones. The reforms by Reagan or Thatcher, which in the 1950s and 60s would have resulted in terrible crises, have now given relative and temporary, but positive results. For these reforms included their countries in the “globalization” of the economy (in the modern sense of this word).

Now the national struggle has lost its progressive character, because historical national tasks have exhausted themselves – the national state, even if the revolution will win under the direction of proletariat, cannot ensure further development. This again does not mean that everywhere bourgeois tasks have disappeared. There are still countries with feudal vestiges, there is still national oppression. But the national revolution cannot bring even their temporary solution. The proletariat of the backward countries should aspire to begin the chapter of revolutions in the countries, but now these revolutions (unlike in the 1950s and 60s) cannot basically lead to any results (even from the bourgeois point of view) if they do not result directly in the international proletarian revolution. For this reason we say that with the beginning of globalisation national revolutions have lost their progressive meaning.

As to support for movements of national independence, the unique sense here, both yesterday, and today, is to pull the struggle against national oppression from the hands of the bourgeoisie and to transfer it into the hands of proletariat. To transform independence movements into part of the world socialist revolution. It cannot be done by refusing to recognize the right of nations to self-determination, i.e. by not recognizing the necessity of finishing the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise, we shall leave the national proletariat under the direction of the national bourgeoisie. This Leninist approach has resulted in vast interest in Marxism on the part of a huge quantity of the inhabitants of the backward countries precisely because it could correctly pose the national question. And it was not the fault of Bolshevism, that the leadership of the Comintern was taken over by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Only the revolution in the west could have prevented this, but this did not happen because at that time capitalism still had historical opportunities. Through two world wars it temporarily got round its contradictions.

Now these contradictions again accrue, but to understand why they will result in new crisis, it is necessary to study the development of capitalism, instead of just repeating the incantation that it is decadent and decomposed. In Russia the latter thesis causes especially malicious sneers after decades in which the Stalinists have gone on about “rotting” capitalism.

Supporting one nation against another always meant supporting one imperialist constellation against another, and all the national liberation wars of the 20s century have reinforced this view. What the Italian left made absolutely explicit was that this also applied to colonial bourgeoisies, to capitalist factions seeking to establish a new ‘independent’ state: they could only hope to attain their ends by subordinating themselves to the imperialist powers which had already divided up the planet. As you say in your platform, the 20th century has been one of incessant imperialist wars for the domination of the planet: for us, this is both the surest confirmation that capitalism is a senile and reactionary world order, and that all forms of “national” struggle are entirely integrated into the global imperialist game.

Once again: 1) “continuous wars “ are the constant companion of capitalism at any stage, that is why they cannot be the proof either of its progressiveness, nor its decline; 2) the growth of productive forces and a numerous proletariat in the Third World has unequivocally shown the progressive character of national revolutions up to the mid-1970s; 3) the purpose of support for national movements was not “support of one nation against another”, but drawing the workers towards the party of revolution.

Luxemburg also made a very rigorous critique of the slogan of “national self-determination” even before the First World War, arguing that it was an illusion of bourgeois democracy – in any capitalist state, it is not the “people” or the “nation” who are “self-determined” but the capitalist class alone. Marx and Engels made no secret of the fact that when they called for national independence, it was to further and support the development of the capitalist mode of production in a period in which capitalism still had a progressive role to play.

We also, as well as Marx, do not hide the fact that the progressive character of the national revolutions only makes sense from the point of view of the development of capitalism.

With brotherly congratulations

ICU, 20th February 2002

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Our reply

In a series we wrote in the late 1980s and early 90s in defence of the idea that capitalism is a social system in decline, we noted that “the more capitalism sinks into decadence, the more it exhibits its advanced decomposition, the more the bourgeoisie needs to deny reality and promise the world a bright future under the sun of capital. This is the essence of the present campaigns in response to the very visible collapse of Stalinism: the only hope, the only future, is capitalism” (“The real domination’ of capital, and the real confusions of the proletarian milieu”, International Review n°60, winter 1990).

There is nothing surprising in the bourgeoisie being in denial about the inevitable demise of its social system; indeed, the closer its death approaches, the more you would expect it to run away from the truth and retreat into fantasy. It is after all an exploiting class, and no exploiting class has been able to face the truth that it is an exploiting class, still less that its days are historically numbered. And if any of its representatives do finally admit to its oncoming doom, none of them can envisage a human world beyond the rule of capital without clutching at visions of a mythical past or a messianic future.

Of course one would expect better from those who claim to speak for the exploited proletariat and to be looking ahead to a communist revolution. But we should never underestimate the ideological power of the dominant system, its capacity to derail and distort any striving for a clear and lucid understanding of the real situation and prospects of the current world order. There are just too many examples of those who have lost sight of the fundamental theoretical premises of the communist movement since Marx and Engels first framed them in scientific terms; who have lost confidence in the proposition that capitalism, like all the other systems of exploitation that came before it, is but a passing phase in mankind’s historical evolution, doomed to extinction by its own inherent contradictions. This is the phenomenon we observed in the 80s and – as we noted in the first part of this article in IR 111 we are seeing it even more explicitly today. The more rotten capitalism has become, the more it passes from simple decline to outright disintegration, the more we are seeing those in and around the revolutionary movement running hither and thither, desperately seeking some ‘new’ discovery that will hide the awful truth. Capitalism decomposing? No, no, it’s recomposing! Capitalism at an impasse? But what about…the internet, globalisation, Asian dragons…..?

This is the general atmosphere of confusion in which the new proletarian currents in Russia and the ex-USSR are emerging; as we pointed out in the previous article, despite their differences, all of them seem to have difficulty in accepting the conclusion upon which the Communist International was founded and which provided the groundrock for the work of the communist left: that world capitalism has been in historical decline or decadence since the first world war.

As we said in the last article, we are going to focus on the arguments of the comrades of the International Communist Union in this discussion. This is how they explain their arguments against the notion of decadence:

“The transition to one higher economic formation is the result of the development of the previous formation, instead of destruction. If the old formation has been exhausted, it constantly derivates social crisis and social forces aspiring to proceed to the new formation. It does not occur. Moreover, for many decades capitalism has ensured relative stability of development, during which the revolutionary forces not only did not grow, but on the contrary, broke up…And (capitalism) really develops, not only creating qualitatively new productive forces, but also creating new forms of capitalism. The study of this development can give the answer when there will come a new crisis, such as the crisis of 1914-45, and hence what transitional forms to socialism there should be. The theory of decadence denies the development of capitalism and makes it impossible to study it, leaving us as simple dreamers trusting in the bright future of mankind” (letter to the ICC, 20th February 2002).

No doubt the comrades have in mind here the arguments of Marx in his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy where he deals with the material conditions for the transition from one mode of production to another, saying that “No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed and new, higher relations of productions never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself”.1

Naturally we adhere to Marx’s arguments here, but we don’t think he meant them to imply that a new society could not emerge out of the old until the very last technical or economic innovation had been developed. Such a vision might have seemed compatible with previous modes of production where technical discovery took place at a very slow pace; it would hardly be possible under capitalism which cannot live without constantly, indeed daily, developing its technological infrastructure. The problem here is that the ICU seem to refer to this passage without assimilating the preceding part, where Marx outlines the preconditions for the opening up of a period of social revolution, which is the key to our understanding of capitalism’s decadence, its epoch of wars and revolutions as the CI put it. We are referring to the passage where Marx says that “at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression of the same thing – with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution”.

Forms of development become fetters; in the dynamic view which is proper to marxism, this does not mean that society comes to a complete halt but that its continued development becomes increasingly irrational and catastrophic for humanity. And indeed we have on many occasions clearly rejected the view that decadence means a complete halt in the productive forces. The first time was in our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism, originally written in the early 1970s, where an entire section is devoted to precisely this point. Refuting Trotsky’s assertion in the 1930s that “the productive forces of humanity have ceased to grow” we affirmed that “according to the marxist view, the period of a society’s decadence cannot be characterised by a total and permanent halt in the growth of the productive forces but by the definitive slackening of this growth. Absolute halts in the growth of the productive forces do, in fact, appear during the phases of decadence. But these stoppages appear only momentarily in the capitalist system because the economy cannot function without a constantly increasing accumulation of capital. They are the violent convulsions which regularly accompany the progression of decadence (…)

From an economic standpoint, what characterises the decadence of a given social form is therefore:

- an actual slowing down of the growth of productive forces, which would have been technically and objectively possible without the obstacle of the relations of production. This slow-down must have an inevitable and irreversible character. It must be caused specifically by the perpetuation of the relations of production which hold the society together. The discrepancy between actual development and possible development of the productive forces can only widen. This discrepancy appears increasingly clearly to the social classes;

- the appearance of increasingly profound and widespread crises. These crises create the subjective conditions necessary for the social revolution. In the course of these crises the power of the ruling class is profoundly weakened, and through the objective intensification of the necessity for its intervention, the revolutionary class finds the preliminary bases for its strength and unity”.2

Elsewhere (“The study of capital and the foundations of communism”, International Review n°75), we pointed out that our conception was no different from that of Marx in the Grundrisse, where he writes:

“Considered ideally, the dissolution of a given form of consciousness sufficed to kill a whole epoch. In reality, this barrier to consciousness corresponds to a definite degree of development of the forces of material production and hence of wealth. True, there was not only a development on the old basis, but also a development of this basis itself. 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” (emphasis in the original).

More than any previous social system, capitalism is synonymous with “economic growth”, but contrary to the quack-doctors of the bourgeoisie growth and progress are not the same: capitalism’s growth in its epoch of decay is more akin to that of a malignant tumour than that of a healthy body progressing from infancy to adulthood.

The material conditions for capitalism’s “healthy” development ended at the beginning of the 20th century when it effectively established a world economy and thus laid the essential foundations for the transition to communism. This did not mean that capitalism had rid itself of all remnants of pre-capitalist modes of production and classes, that it had exhausted the last pre-capitalist market, or even that it had effected the final transition from the formal to the real subsumption of labour in every corner of the planet. What it did mean was that henceforward global capitalism could less and less move into what Marx called “the outlying fields” of expansion and was compelled to grow through increasing self-cannibalisation and the cheating of its own natural laws of motion. We have already devoted considerable space to these forms of “development as decay” and will merely summarise here:

- the organisation of gigantic “state capitalist trusts” at the national level, and even at the international level through the formation of imperialist blocs, devoted to the regulation and control of the market, and thus to preventing the “normal” operation of capitalist competition from finding their real level and exploding in gigantic and open crises of overproduction on the model of 1929;

- the resort (largely via the intervention of these state capitalist behemoths) to credit and deficit spending, no longer as a stimulus to the development of new markets but more and more as a replacement for the real market; thus economic growth on an increasingly speculative and artificial basis which paves the way for devastating “adjustments” such as the collapse of the Asian tigers and dragons, or indeed what is now beginning to take place in the USA after the frenzied but drugged growth of the 90s;

- militarism and war as a mode of survival for the system – not only as a further artificial market which actually becomes a mounting burden on the world economy, but as the only means for nation states to defend their national economy at the expense of their rivals. The comrades of the ICU might reply that capitalism has always been a warlike system but as we also explained in an article in our series ‘Understanding the decadence of capitalism’(see in particular part V in IR 54) there is a qualitative difference between the wars of capitalism’s ascendancy - which were generally of short duration, local in scale, involving mainly professional armies and opening up genuinely new possibilities of economic expansion - and the wars of its decline, which have taken on a near permanent character, have been increasingly axed round the indiscriminate slaughter of millions of conscripts and civilians, and have thrown the wealth produced by centuries of labour into a bottomless abyss. Capitalism’s wars once provided the basis for the establishment of a world economy and thus for the transition to communism; but from this point on, far from laying the bases for future social progress they have increasingly threatened the very survival of humanity;

- the gigantic waste of human labour power represented by war and production for war also highlights another aspect of capitalism in its senile phase: the enormous weight of non-productive expenditures and activities, not only through the military sphere, but also through the need to maintain vast apparatuses of bureaucracy, of marketing, and so on. In the official record books of capital, all these spheres are defined as expressions of “growth”, but in reality they are testimony to the degree to which capitalism has become a barrier to the qualitative development of man’s productive powers which have become both necessary and possible in this epoch;

- a further dimension of “development as decay” which was only glimpsed in Marx’s day is the ecological threat that the blind drive to accumulate poses to the very life support system of the planet. Although this question has become increasingly obvious in the last few decades, it is intimately connected to the question of decadence. It is the historical constriction of the world market which has more and more compelled each nation state to pillage or mortgage its natural resources; this process has been building up throughout the 20th century even if it is reaching its paroxysm today; and at the same time a successful proletarian revolution in 1917-23 would not have been faced with the same immense problems now posed by the damage that capitalism’s diseased growth has done to the natural environment. At this level it is immediately obvious that capitalism is the cancer of the planet.

When did the epoch of bourgeois revolutions come to a close?

Following Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune, Lenin considered that 1871 marked the end of the period of bourgeois revolutions in the main centres of world capitalism. At the same time it marked the beginnings of the phase of imperialist expansion from these centres.

During the last third of the 19th century, the marxist movement considered that bourgeois revolutions were still on the agenda in the areas dominated by the colonial powers. This was a perfectly valid approach at the time; but by the end of the century it had become increasingly clear that the very dynamic of imperialist expansion, which required the colonies to develop only to the point that they served as passive markets and sources of raw materials, was inhibiting the emergence of new independent national capitalisms, and thus of a revolutionary bourgeoisie. This question was the subject of particularly fierce debates within the revolutionary movement in Russia; in his writings on the Russian peasant commune, Marx had already expressed the hope that a successful world revolution might spare Russia the necessity to pass through the purgatory of capitalist development. Later on, as it became obvious that imperialist capital was not going to leave Russia to its own devises, the focus of the question shifted to the problem of the inherent weakness of the fledgling Russian bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks, interpreting the marxist method in a very rigid and mechanistic way, argued that the proletariat had to prepare to support the inevitable bourgeois revolution in Russia; the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, recognised that the Russian bourgeoisie lacked the spine to carry out its revolution, and concluded that this task would have to be taken up by the proletariat and the peasantry (the formula of the “democratic dictatorship”). In fact, it was the position of Trotsky which came closer to reality, since it was immediately posed not in “Russian” terms but in a global and historical framework, and it started from the recognition that capitalism as a whole was moving towards the epoch of the world socialist revolution. The working class in power would not be able to stop at the bourgeois tasks of the revolution but would be compelled to make the “revolution in permanence” – to spread the revolution onto the world arena, where it could only take on a socialist character.

In the April Theses of 1917 Lenin effectively came over to this position, sweeping aside the objections of conservative Bolsheviks (who had in fact been flirting with Menshevism and the bourgeoisie) that he was abandoning the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”. And in 1919 the Communist International was formed on the basis that capitalism had indeed entered its epoch of decline, the epoch of the world proletarian revolution. But while proclaiming that the emancipation of the colonial masses was now dependent on the success of the world revolution, the CI was not yet able to take this argument to its logical conclusion: that the epoch of national liberation struggles was now at a close, although Rosa Luxemburg and others had already seen it. It was above all the disastrous attempts of the Bolsheviks to forge alliances with the so-called “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie in such regions as Turkey, the former Tsarist empire, and above all China which enabled the communist left (in particular the Italian Fraction) to question the CI’s theses on the national question, which held out the possibility of temporary alliances between the working class and the colonial bourgeoisie. The left fractions had recognised that each one of these “alliances” ended with the massacre of the working class and the communists at the hand of the colonial bourgeoisie, which in doing so did not hesitate to put itself at the service of one or another gang of imperialists.

The ICU, in their platform, claim that they owe their origins to the work of the left communist fractions who split with the degenerating CI (see World Revolution n°254). But on this question they are with the “official” view of the CI against that the of the left: “The Comintern politics of Stalin and Bukharin during the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 is completely different from the politics of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which determined the first years of the Comintern. You again argue that if there are bourgeois tasks, we should support this or that bourgeois fraction. The Mensheviks and the Stalinists said the same. …the method of Marx and Lenin consists in not refusing the tasks of the moment when all fractions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary, and in carrying out these tasks by the method of the proletarian revolution, trying to execute bourgeois tasks to the maximum depth and proceeding to the socialist tasks. The Chinese revolution has shown the correctness of this approach, instead of the correctness of the left. All the same the bourgeois revolution did win in China, though leaving enormous numbers of victims. This revolution has made it possible to create the most numerous proletariat in the world and powerful, quickly developing productive forces. The same result was given also by tens of other revolutions in the countries of the east. We see no sense in denying their historically progressive role: due to them our revolution has a strong class basis in many countries of the world, which in 1914 were almost completely agricultural”.

Of course we agree that Lenin’s position, the position outlined in the theses on the national and colonial question from the Second Congress of the CI in 1920, was by no means the same as Stalin’s in 1927. In particular, the 1920 theses had insisted on the necessity for the proletariat to remain strictly independent even from the “revolutionary nationalist” forces; Stalin called on the insurrectionary Shanghai workers to hand their arms over to the butchers of the Kuomingtang. But as we have shown in our series of articles on the origins of Maoism (International Review n°81, 84, 94), this experience confirmed not only that the Stalin clique had abandoned the proletarian revolution in the interests of the Russian national state; it also finally dashed all hopes of finding a sector of the colonial bourgeoisie which would not prostrate itself at the feet of imperialism, and which would not slaughter the proletariat at the first available opportunity. The “revolutionary nationalist” or “anti-imperialist” sectors of the colonial bourgeoisie simply did not exist. It could not be otherwise in a historical epoch – the decadence of world capitalism – in which there was no longer the slightest coincidence of interests between the two major classes.

The ICU and the “bourgeois revolution” in China

The ICU position on China seems to us to contain a profound ambiguity. On the one hand, they argue that in Russia in 1917 the bourgeoisie was already reactionary, which is why the proletariat had to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois revolution; according to their view, in China and “tens of other” unspecified eastern countries, a successful bourgeois revolution seems to have been carried out. Does this mean that the bourgeoisies in these countries were still progressive after 1917? Or does it mean, in the case of China in particular, that the faction which allegedly carried out the “bourgeois revolution” – Maoism – had something proletarian about it, as the Trotskyists argue? The ICU needs to make their thinking crystal clear on this point.

In any case, let us consider whether what happened in China corresponds to the marxist understanding of a bourgeois revolution. From the latter point of view, the bourgeois revolutions were a factor of historical progress because they cleared away the remnants of the old feudal mode of production and laid the foundations for the future revolution of the proletariat. This process had two basic dimensions:

- at the most material level, the bourgeois revolution threw off the feudal fetters that were blocking the development of the productive forces and the expansion of the world market. The formation of new nation states was an expression of progress in this sense: that they broke out of the limitations of feudal localism and constituted the building blocks of a world economy;

- the development of the productive forces is also, of course the material development of the proletariat, but what was also key to the bourgeois revolutions is that that they created the political framework for the “ideological” development of the working class, its capacity to identify and organise itself as a distinct class within and ultimately against capitalist society.

The so-called Chinese revolution of 1949 does not correspond to either of these aspects. To begin with, it was a product not of an expanding world economy but of one that had reached a historical impasse. This can be seen straight away when we grasp that it was born not out of a struggle against feudalism or Asiatic despotism, but out of a bloody struggle between bourgeois gangs, all of whom were linked to one or other of the great imperialist powers that dominated the globe. The Chinese “revolution” was the fruit of the imperialist conflicts that wracked China in the 30s and above all of their culminating point – the second world imperialist war. This is not altered by the fact that at different moments the contending Chinese factions had different imperialist backers (Maoism, for example, was supported by the US during the second world war, and then by Russia at the start of the “Cold War”). Nor does the fact that China embarked on an “independent” imperialist orientation for a brief period in the 60s prove that there are “young” bourgeoisies which can escape the grip of imperialism in this epoch. Rather the contrary: the fact that even China, with its immense territory and resources, was only able to chart an independent course for a such a brief period amply confirms Rosa Luxemburg’s arguments in the Junius Pamphlet: that in the epoch opened up by the first world war, no nation can “hold aloof” from imperialism because we live in a period in which imperialism’s domination of the entire planet can only be overcome by the world communist revolution.

China’s economic development also contains all the features of “development as decay”: thus it occurs not as part of an expanding world market, but as an attempt at autarkic development in a world economy which has already reached the fundamental limits of its capacity to expand. Hence, as in Stalinist Russia, the huge preponderance of the military sector, of heavy industry at the expense of the production of consumer goods, of a hideously swollen state bureaucracy. Hence also the periodic convulsions such as the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” in which the ruling class sought to mobilise the population behind campaigns to intensify its exploitation and its ideological submission to the state. These campaigns were a desperate response to the chronic stagnation and backwardness of the economy: witness the state’s demand during the “Great Leap Forward” that pig iron forges be set up in every village, using whatever bits of scrap metal came to hand.

Of course the Chinese working class is bigger today than it was in 1914. But to judge whether this is in itself a factor of progress for mankind we have to look at the situation of the proletariat in global, not national terms. And what we see at this level is that capitalism has proved incapable of integrating the majority of the world population into the working class. As a percentage of the world population, the working class remains in a minority.

Progress for the Chinese proletariat in this past century would have been the success of the world revolution in 1917-27, which would have permitted the balanced and harmonious development of industry and agriculture on a world scale, not the frenzied and historically unnecessary struggle of each national economy to survive on a glutted world market. Instead, the Chinese working class has spent the best part of the century under the odious heel of Stalinism. Far from being the product of a belated bourgeois revolution, Stalinism is the classic expression of the bourgeois counter-revolution, the awful revenge of capital after the proletariat has tried and failed to overthrow its rule. The fact that it based on a total lie – its claim to represent the communist revolution – is in itself a typical expression of a decadent mode of production: in its ascendant, self-confident phase capitalism had no need to garb itself in the clothes of its mortal enemy. Furthermore, this lie has had the most negative effects on the capacity of the working class – on a world scale, and particularly in the countries ruled by Stalinism – to understand the real communist perspective. When we consider as well the terrible toll of repression and massacre that Stalinism has extracted from the working class – the numbers who have perished in Maoism’s prisons and concentration camps is still unknown, but probably runs into the millions - it becomes evident that the so-called “bourgeois revolution” in China has totally failed to deliver what the authentic bourgeois revolutions were able to deliver in the 18th and 19th centuries: a political framework that enabled the proletariat to develop its self-confidence and consciousness of itself as a class. Stalinism has been an unmitigated disaster for the world proletariat; and even in its death throes it continues to poison its consciousness via the bourgeois campaigns that equate the demise of Stalinism with the end of communism. Like all the so-called “national revolutions” of the 20th century, it is testimony to the fact that capitalism is no longer laying down the foundations for communism, but is more and more ripping them apart.

Communists and the national question: no room for ambiguity

According to the ICU, communists could in some sense support national revolutions until the 1980s; now, with the advent of globalisation, this is no longer possible: “What has changed from the time of the beginning of ‘globalisation’? The opportunity of the national revolution has disappeared. Till the 1980s the national revolutions could still ensure the growth of the productive forces, therefore they should still have been supported, trying, if possible, to transfer management of them into the hands of the revolutionary proletariat…Now this historical stage for national development is finally exhausted”.

The first point to be made about this position is that if the communist left had defended it up until the 1980s, there would be no communist left today. Since the death of the Communist International at the end of the 20s, the communist left has been the only political current which has consistently opposed the mobilisation of the proletariat for imperialist war, above all when these wars were justified in the name of some belated bourgeois revolution or the “struggle against imperialism”. From Spain and China in the 30s, through the second world war, and in all the proxy conflicts that characterised the Cold War (Korea, Vietnam, Middle East, etc) the communist left alone has stood for proletarian internationalism, rejecting any support for any nation state or national factions, calling on the working class to defend its autonomous class interests against the appeals to dissolve itself into the war fronts of capital. The terrible consequences of straying from this path were illustrated very graphically by the implosion of the Bordigist current in the early 80s: its ambiguities on the national question opened the door to the penetration of out and out nationalist factions who sought to drag the main Bordigist organisation onto the terrain of support for the PLO and states like Syria in the war in the Middle East. There was resistance to this on the part of the proletarian elements in the organisation, but it paid a terrible price in the loss of militant energies and the further fragmentation of the entire current. Had the nationalists succeeded, they would have ended up annexing this historic offspring of the Italian left to the left wing of capital alongside the Trotskyists and the Stalinists. If the political ancestors of other groups such as the ICC and the IBRP had followed a policy of support for the so-called “national revolutions”, they would have suffered a similar fate, and there would be no left communist current for the newly emerging Russian groups to relate to.

Secondly, it seems to us that, despite the ICU concluding that now at last is the time for a truly independent proletarian position on the national movements, the comrades remain wedded to formulations that are at best ambiguous and at worst can lead to an open betrayal of class principles. Thus, they still talk about the possibility of transferring the national struggle from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, still cling to the slogan of “national self-determination”: “As to support for movement of national independence, the unique sense here, both yesterday, and today, is to pull the struggle against national oppression from the hands of the bourgeoisie and to transfer it into the hands of proletariat. To transform independence movements into part of the world socialist revolution. It cannot be done by refusing to recognize the right of nations to self-determination, i.e. by not recognizing the necessity of finishing the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise, we shall leave the national proletariat under the direction of the national bourgeoisie”. But the working class cannot take over the national struggle; even to defend its class interests in the most basic and immediate way, it finds itself in opposition to the national bourgeoisie and all its ambitions. Class war and national war are diametric opposites both in their form and content. As for national self-determination, the comrades themselves recognise that this is an impossibility under the conditions of present day capitalism, even if they consider that this has only been the case since the 1980s. They therefore argue in favour of the slogan in similar terms to Lenin - as a means to avoid “antagonising” or offending the proletarians of the backward countries and winning them away from bourgeois influence. But comrades, communism cannot help being offensive to the misguided nationalist sentiments which exist within the working class. By the same token communists should avoid the criticism of religion because many workers are influenced by religious ideology. Of course we don’t go out to provoke or insult workers because they have confused ideas. But as it says in the Communist Manifesto, communists disdain to hide their views. If national liberation and national self-determination are impossible, then we must say so in the clearest possible terms.

The appearance of groups like the ICU is an important gain for the world proletariat. But their ambiguities on the national question are very serious and put into question their capacity to survive as an expression of the proletariat. History has shown that, because it connects to the profound antagonism between the proletariat and imperialist war, ambiguities on the national question above all can easily turn into betraying the internationalist interests of the working class. We therefore urge them to reflect profoundly on all the texts and contributions which the communist left has made on this vital issue.

 

CDW

 

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