Since these theses were written important political events have taken place in Spain which, without undermining the general perspectives outlined in the theses, make it necessary to bring them up to date.
The theses say that one of the causes of “the inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to acquire the political means for containing and confronting the proletariat - apart from bloody repression” resides in “a quasi-religious paralysis in front of the personage of Franco, who, as long as he is alive, constitutes the only raison d’etre for the completely anachronistic forces which back him”. The agony and death of Franco, by eliminating one of the causes of the paralysis of the Spanish bourgeoisie, has unfreezed the situation. As a result there has been a complete disarray amongst those anachronistic forces, mentioned in the theses, who derive their strength partly from the army and more especially from the police. These elements have, during the ‘interregnum’, tried to stand in the way of any possibility of ‘democratization’, by engaging in a systematic campaign of repression, in particular by putting Marcelino Camacho, the Stalinist leader of the workers’ commissions, back in prison a few days after his release. But all this has been the swan-song of the ‘ultras’. They have allowed their hands to be tied by the fact that Arias Navarro has remained at the head of the government and they have had to listen, without protest, to a solemn warning issued by the Minister of the Interior, Fraga Iribarne, the new ‘strong man’ of the regime, to the effect that: “those who attribute to themselves the role of guardians of their own affairs and their own leaders, roles which no one has accorded to them, had better understand what I am saying: we will have no friends or enemies other than those of the state...” (20 December)
The death of Franco will thus add a certain nuance to the perspective outlined in our thesis which states that, “In spite of the fact that the world bourgeoisie....has taken the Spanish situation in hand, it is unlikely that the changeover in Spain can still take place in an atmosphere of calm”. Today the Spanish bourgeoisie has been strengthened by the support of the whole world bourgeoisie, especially that of America. (A recent expression of this support was the fact that so many of the Heads of State who attended Juan Carlos coronation ‘missed’ Franco’s funeral.) After two fruitless attempts at the end of the sixties and at the beginning of 1974, the bourgeoisie of Spain has finally managed to set in motion the delicate process of ‘opening out’ (‘apertura’), a process which must allow it to move towards ‘real democracy’. And whether in the government or in the opposition, the main factions of the bourgeoisie will do all they can, in a concerted manner, to make the transition a peaceful one (of the tete-a-tete dinner on 15 December between Fraga Iribarne and Tierno Galvan, one of the leaders of the Democratic Junta).
Thus the present government’s policy of ‘small steps towards democracy has a dual objective:
* to ensure a sufficient continuity in the structures of the state to avoid disorganization and convulsions of the kind that have taken place in Portugal
* to divert the discontent and combativity of the proletariat towards ‘deepening’ and accelerating the process of democratization.
As far as the opposition is concerned, its unification has been based on the need to divert working class struggle; the head of the PSOE, Felipe Gonzalez, was not afraid to declare: “The country wants democracy without violence; that is why we are prepared to compromise ... we must try to be realistic.” (L'Expansion, December, 1975) There is no lack of themes for the left to use in its efforts to derail the combativity of the class, and they will probably all be used one after another: amnesty, freedom of the press, the ‘right’ to strike, universal suffrage, a constitutional referendum, etc.
And when all these themes have been used up, there is always the spectre of the ‘return to fascism’. In Spain as everywhere else the left in power will not hesitate to denounce workers in struggle as ‘agents of fascism’, of the ‘reaction’, or the ‘right’, etc., in order to be able to repress them all the more easily. It is in this sense that these theses remain entirely relevant to the current situation.
29 December, 1975
With a growth rate of more than 10% during the sixties, the Spanish economy was, after Japan’s, one of the main beneficiaries of post-war reconstruction. This spectacular progress was to make it one of the most modern and concentrated economies in Europe, although it still retained a number of archaic sectors - agriculture, commerce, handicrafts and mall industry. Tied to the rigid political structure of Francoism, the persistence of these archaic sectors has caused tension and furthered contradictions brought about as a result of the effects of the world economic crisis.
The prodigal son of European capitalism, Spanish capital is today beginning to look like one of its impoverished parents. With an 8% fall in industrial production, inflation at 20% and unemployment doubling, Spain has in this last year plunged full-tilt into the crisis. The start of the large-scale movement home of Spanish migrant workers from other more developed European countries which are also feeling the effects of the economic crisis, and the fall-off in tourism, have contributed in a very concrete way to the aggravation of the economic situation in Spain.
Having paid for the boom in its’ national economy through ferocious exploitation, the Spanish proletariat, with its powerful tradition of combativity and solidarity, has launched itself into a number of hard and resolute struggles since the first onslaughts of the crisis in the late sixties. These struggles reached their culmination in the winter of 1974-5, when whole industrial concentrations and even provinces engaged in often violent struggles which, despite the systematic repression that it has had to deal with, have put the Spanish proletariat at the forefront of the global strike movement. The considerable deterioration of working class living standards since last winter, which is a result of the deepening crisis, opens up a perspective of major confrontations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in this country.
The Spanish bourgeoisie is in a particularly unfavourable situation to deal with this upsurge:
* the present regime is hated by the working population who see in it a symbol of their defeat in 1936-39 and the repression which followed. It has no capacity for mystification and for diverting workers’ struggles ‘from within’.
* this regime is completely rotten, senile, and incapable of reforming itself to deal with the new situation; in particular, after several attempts, it has shown itself to be incapable of ensuring an ‘institutional’ transition to democracy, despite the fact that a growing sector of the bourgeoisie is demanding such a change as the only way of channeling the class struggle. The blind violence with which the Franco regime struck at the leftist militants of the FRAP and ETA is an expression of the deadly impasse in which the regime finds itself today. Its imminent demise makes it act like a wild animal at bay.
The inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to acquire the political means for containing and confronting the proletariat - apart from bloody repression - has a number of causes:
-- the paralysis of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the urgent measures which the situation demands, a paralysis brought about by its fear of arousing the proletariat. In other words, the proletarian menace has become so strong that the bourgeoisie is unable to take measures against it.
-- a quasi-religious paralysis in front of the personage of Franco, who, as long as he is alive, constitutes the only raison d’etre for the completely anachronistic forces which back him.
-- the relative weakness of the democratic political parties, a weakness linked to the still partially-backward character of the Spanish economy and to the thirty-six years of illegality with which they have had to contend.
In contrast to Portugal, the army in Spain cannot serve as a force for political transformation in that it:
-- does not constitute the only social force organized within a capitalism that is relatively developed and powerful.
-- is not a colonial army confronted with a situation that would allow it to become aware of the real interests of the national capital.
-- recruits its officers from the social strata closest to the regime, since its role is limited to the maintenance of internal order.
-- constitutes the regime’s most reliable bulwark, and the maintenance of its preponderant weight within the state and the privileges of' its present military personnel depend on the survival of the regime.
In this sense the dissident movements which have grown up in the Spanish army, even if they are used by the bourgeoisie to nurture the myth of a democratic army - which is their only function anyway - are doomed to play a secondary political role and have no chance of playing a similar role to the junior officers’ movement in Portugal.
It is for these same reasons that the classical democratic parties, in particular those regrouped around the ‘Democratic Junta’, will, despite their relative weakness, be called upon to play a more important role than they have done in Portugal; and so as a consequence of this will the classical forms for containing and mystifying the working class: the trade unions and elections. Because of this the card of the extreme left will probably be used much later on than in Portugal; for the moment, the leftists in Spain are destined to act as the touts of the traditional ‘left’.
Another difference between Spain and Portugal resides in the position of the two countries in the international balance of forces, particularly in the field of class struggle. Because of the concentration of its industry and its working class, because of the proletariat’s combativity, and because of Spain’s geographical position that much closer to the nerve centres of European capitalism, the importance of the situation in Spain is much greater than it is in Portugal.
Portugal’s main value is to serve as a laboratory for the various experiments of the bourgeoisie in the face of the crisis and the class struggle. But like Russia in 1917, Spain today is a ‘weak link’ in the capitalist system, and its importance therefore is much more than ‘exemplary’. Events there can have a decisive weight and effect upon the development of the class struggle in the rest of Europe.
The fundamental importance of the Spanish situation in terms of international class confrontation, in addition to the inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to face up to the objective necessity of defending its own interests, (an incapacity manifested in particular by the executions of 27 September), have led the world bourgeoisie to take over the task of ‘regularizing’ the Spanish situation.
History demonstrates that the only time different national bourgeoisies can set aside their economic and imperialist rivalries is if their very existence is called into question by the class struggle.
This explains why the different national factions of the bourgeoisie, strengthened by past experience, are now in the process of taking preventative measures in relation to Spain, putting pressure on the regime (eg, the recent decision of the EEC), and orchestrating whole campaigns denouncing the present political set up in Spain.
As well as being used to channel the discontent of the European workers and to divert their struggles, the recent anti-fascist campaigns have been used to indicate to the Spanish bourgeoisie that the bourgeoisie of other countries is prepared to support only its democratic factions, since they alone are capable of fulfilling the political needs of capital in Spain and by extension the rest of Europe.
In these grand manoeuvres of capital, it is not surprising to find, alongside the Pope, the traditional left and Gaullists like Alexander Sanguinetti, those eternal protagonists of anti-working class causes, the leftists, among whom the anarchists are making as much noise as their meagre resources allow.
More tragic than this is the fact that certain elements of the petty-bourgeoisie and even of the proletariat have in despair put themselves at the mercy of the counter-revolutionary strategies of the FRAP, ETA, or other nationalist movements, who use them as instruments of terrorism. Terrorism constitutes one way of diverting class struggle along with providing an excuse for bloody repression and new martyrs for the repulsive propaganda machines of the left and extreme left; propaganda all the more disgusting since its aim is nothing more than the introduction of new governmental bureaucrats whose essential task will be to massacre the Spanish workers.
In spite of the fact that the world bourgeoisie (including American capitalists acting through their intermediaries in Germany and Holland) has taken the Spanish situation in hand, it is unlikely that the changeover in government in Spain can still take place in an atmosphere of calm. Thus the democratic parties, especially the Democratic Junta, will probably come to power in a ‘hot’ climate, probably as a result of big workers’ struggles. In such a situation, it is equally probable that a great deal of violence will be used against the tenants of the old regime, and that this will be taken in charge by the left and leftists. Once again in the name of anti-fascism they will try to shift the working class on to bourgeois terrain and divert it from its own struggles.
As in 1936, because of the impending violence and the historic situation it is emerging from, Spain is once again destined to serve as one of the main themes for the diversion of the struggles of the European proletariat. The current anti-fascist campaigns, whose principal function at the moment is to help the Spanish bourgeoisie to rid itself of a regime which isn’t equipped to fulfill the needs of capital, are part of the preparations of the bourgeoisie for reinforcing a myth it will use to the maximum when class confrontation really hots up: the myth of the ‘fascist’ menace.
The difference with the campaigns of 1936 - that the present anti-fascist campaign has the function first and foremost of obstructing an ascendant movement of proletarian struggle, in order to repress it all the better when the time comes to do so; whereas the campaigns of the thirties took place after the defeat of the world proletariat and had the task of mobilizing the class for an imperialist war. In 1936, in the face of a completely disorientated working class, fascism had a real presence and this made the regimentation of the working class all the more effective. Today the ‘fascist danger’ has to be constructed artificially and a proletariat in the process of gaining consciousness is much less likely to be fooled by it; but the relative success, in much less propitious circumstances, of the anti-fascist mystification in Portugal shows that capital will not fail to make use of it in Spain.
Within this perspective, revolutionaries must give priority to the clearest and most systematic denunciation of the anti-fascist menace. They must denounce the left, which is putting itself forward as the future executioner of the proletariat, and in particular, its extreme leftist watchdogs who are trying and will go on trying to outdo the left in antifascist hysteria. Revolutionaries must make no concessions to any anti-fascist campaigns; they must clearly assert the counter-revolutionary role of all political tendencies which, even in a critical manner, participate in these campaigns today and in the future.
19 October, 1975
For a long time we have been working on the project of reproducing the work of Bilan, the publication of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which was published during what was perhaps the blackest period in the history of the workers’ movement: the period leading from Hitler’s triumph in Germany to the second, imperialist world war. But until now our wish to do so was not, in itself, enough to surmount the difficulties and problems posed by our lack of means and scarce resources.
Bilan, a small review of the 30s, was totally unknown to the general public and hardly better known by the militants of the extreme left. Not having behind it prestigious names like Pannekoek, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg, Bilan was not a commercial proposition and did not arouse the interest either of the big publishing houses or the self-styled ‘left wing’ publishers. Neither was it of any interest to the student movement of the 60s, which submerged itself in ‘contestation’ and anti-authoritarian politics and, in the process, drew its sustenance from Marcuse; discovered the ‘sexual revolution’ with Reich; worshipped idols like Castro and Che Guevara; and wallowed in black, anti-racist racism and mystifications about ‘national liberation’, Third Worldism, and, support for the ‘liberating’ war in Vietnam. Indeed, as far as the SDS of Germany, the USA, and elsewhere were concerned, with their contempt for a working class they saw as being totally integrated into capitalism, what could they look for and find in Bilan except ‘old-fashioned marxist ideas’ like the class struggle and the proletariat, historical subject of the communist revolution? Che’s beard and Reich’s sex were much more attractive notions to the rebellious children of the decomposing petite-bourgeoisie than the prosaic class struggle of the workers and the writings of Bilan, which were entirely given over to that struggle. More astonishing and less understandable, superficially at least, is the complete silence displayed by the International Communist Party (Bordigist), on the subject of Bilan. If before the second world war, Bilan and the Italian fraction claimed their origins in Italian Left Communism of which they were the continuation, it seems that the ICP (Bordigist), founded in Italy after the war, does not care to remember what happened to the Italian Left in exile, after it was excluded from the Party and the Communist International. It is so proud of this exiled left fraction that, like a good bourgeois family which produces a bastard, it prefers to talk about it as little as possible. During the thirty years this party has existed, and despite its numerous publications, the number of articles republished from Bilan could be counted on the fingers of a one-armed man. Why? Why this embarrassed silence? By merely leafing through the pages of Bilan, it becomes obvious that vital principles separate it from the ICP. The ‘stammerings’ (as Bilan said of itself) of the Italian Left in exile, tried to be, and were, a critical examination of the erroneous positions and incomplete or incorrect analyses of the Third International, a living critique done in the harsh light of the experience and defeats of the proletariat, thus constituting an important contribution to the understanding, forward-movement and enrichment of communist thought. But the ‘finished’ and ‘invariant’ work of the ICP attempts only to ‘preserve’ the past. In reality it has found itself regressing purely and simply to the worst errors of the Third International (on questions such as trade unionism, parliament, national liberation, the identification of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the party, etc), errors which the ICP not only integrally takes as its own but exaggerates to the point of absurdity.
While the one sought to go forward, the other marches resolutely backwards. Over the years the distance separating the two has accentuated, not diminished. This is the only reason for the ICP’s bad faith and lack of interest in republishing the writings of Bilan. But there is no reason for despair. We are convinced that with the growth of class struggle and revolutionary activity, Bilan will be re-established in its rightful place in the workers’ movement and among militants who want to know more about the history and development of revolutionary thought. The little that we have published from Bilan has led many of our readers to write to us insisting on the importance of publishing more. We fully share this conviction and in order to answer this demand, while waiting for a complete re-edition of Bilan, the International Review will, from now on, undertake the publication of a greater number of articles and extracts from that review. As far as possible we shall try to group articles according to their subject, in order to give readers a more complete idea of the orientation, the clarity and political positions fought for by the Communist Left and Bilan.
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In all, forty-six issues of Bilan appeared (1478 pages. The first issue came out in November l933, the last in Jaruary 1939. Beginning as the Theoretical Bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy, it ceased publication to be replaced by the review, Octobre, the magazine of the International Bureau of the Left Communist Fractions. Excluded from the Communist Party and the Communist International at the Lyon Congress in 1926, the Italian Left Fraction reconstituted itself at the beginning of 1929 and published the journal, Prometeo, in Italian and an information bulletin in French, which was actually less a news bulletin than a theoretical publication.
Deeply involved in the international communist movement, the Italian Left in exile was to play an active part in this movement, especially in France and Belgium; participating with all its might in the struggle against the degeneration and treason of the Third International and its parties which were totally dominated by Stalinism. As a consequence it was in close contact with all the left currents and groups who one by one were ejected from what had once been the Communist International. Its struggles were conducted amid the terrible disarray and immense confusion produced by the profound defeat of the greatest revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat and the demoralization which followed its crushing.
A short-lived attempt at rapprochement with Trotsky’s Left Opposition indicated the fundamentally different orientation which separated these two currents. While Trotskyism saw itself simply as an opposition fighting for the ‘reform’ of the Communist Parties and thus was always ready to renounce its autonomous, organizational existence and re-integrate itself into the Party, the Italian Left saw that a difference of programmatic principles existed which could only be resolved through the constitution of independent communist organizations: the fractions fighting for the total destruction of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist current. The discussion arising from the situation in Germany, its perspectives, and the position revolutionaries should take towards it, was finally to render impossible any joint work. Faced with the threat of Hitlerian fascism, Trotsky advocated a broad ‘Workers United Front’ between the Stalinists and the Social Democracy. In the ‘United Front’ between the counter-revolutionaries of yesterday and the counter-revolutionaries of today, Trotsky saw the force that would bar the way to fascism; he thus completely erased the fundamental problem of the class nature of these organizations, and ignored the fact that the struggle against fascism has no meaning for the proletariat if it is separated from the general class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system. Conjuring up some brilliant images, Trotsky said that a United Front could even be made between the “Devil and his grandmother”, thus demonstrating no less brilliantly, that he had completely lost sight of the class terrain of the struggle of the proletariat. Dazzled by his own verbal virtuosity, Trotsky, under the name of Gourev (probably to show that he oould quite easily be mistaken1) even went as far as saying that “The communist revolution could even be victorious under the leadership of Thaelman.”(sic!) From this point on it became evident that the perspective appropriated by Trotsky from the counter-revolution could only lead to further shameless renunciations of communist positions, culminating in Trotskyism’s participation in the second imperialist war, in the name, of course, of the ‘defence of the USSR’.
The path followed by the Italian Left was in diametrical opposition to all this. The disaster that the triumph of fascism represented for the proletariat had been made possible and inevitable by the successive catastrophic defeats the class had suffered at the hands of first Social Democracy and then Stalinism. It was this defeat which opened the way to the capitalist solution to the historic crisis of the system: a new imperialist world war. The only alternative revolutionaries could offer to this perspective was to strive to regroup the proletariat on its own class terrain by their own intransigent defence of the fundamental principles of communism. In order to do this revolutionaries had to recognize that the principal task facing them was to subject to an exhaustive, critical examination the recent experiences of the working class, which had begun with the great revolutionary wave that had interrupted the first world war and had raised mighty hopes in the working class that the hour of its final emancipation had come. To understand the reason for the defeat, study its causes, make a ‘balance sheet’ (‘bilan’) of the gains and errors, draw the lessons of the experience, and on this basis elaborate the new programmatic political positions - all this was indispensable to enable the class to take up the fight again tomorrow, better armed and more capable of confronting its historic task: the communist revolution. It was this formidable project that Bilan, as its name suggests, resolved to tackle; the magnitude of which caused Bilan to invite all the communist forces who had survived the debacle of the counterrevolution to join with it in order that the task might be accomplished.
Few groups responded to the appeal, but then few groups had managed to resist the terrible, crushing advance of this period of reaction and preparation for World War II; and these groups were whittled down year by year. Nevertheless Bilan, kept going by the devotion of a few dozen members and sympathizers, had always, within a strict framework of class frontiers, opened its pages to thoughts and ideas which differed from its own. Nothing was more alien to it than sectarianism or the search for the ephemeral successes of localism; that is why one often found in the pages of Bilan articles of discussion and clarification written by comrades of the Dutch and German Left and the Belgian Communist League. Bilan never had the stupid pretension of having found the final answers to all the problems of the revolution. It was aware that it was often only groping towards an answer; it knew that ‘final’ answers could only be the result of the living experience of the class struggle, of confrontation and discussion within the communist movement. On many questions the answers Bilan gave remained unsatisfactory, but it is impossible to doubt the seriousness, the sincerity, the profundity of this effort and above all the validity of its method, the correctness of its orientation and the firmness of its revolutionary principles. It’s not simply a question of paying homage to this small group, which was able to keep the flag of revolution aloft in the midst of the storm of the counter-revolution; our task is to reappropriate what Bilan has left to us, to continue on their path a continuity which is not stagnation, but a process of going forward on the basis of the lessons and example made by Bilan.
It is no accident that we have chosen for this first publication a series of articles relating to the events in Spain, More than an analysis of the Spanish situation in itself, the study of these events had a more general importance and provided the key to an understanding of the evolution of the world situation, of the class forces involved, of the different political formations within them and their effective strength, their orientation and political options. Above all, it offered a direct vision of the immense tragedy into which the international proletariat, and in the first instance the Spanish working class, had been propelled.
Once again, today, Spain is at the centre of the rapidly developing international situation. While it is absolutely right and necessary to clearly establish the difference between the events in Spain in the 1930s (which took place in the wake of a long series proletarian defeats forming part of an inexorable process whereby the proletariat was dragged into the imperialist war and the present period (which is one of re-awakening class struggle, of rising oombativity on the part of the workers), it is no less important to underline what the two periods have in common. And that is the decisive role Spain will once more play in the evolution of the world proletarian struggle. As a result of particular historical circumstances, Spain finds itself for the second time at the turning point of two periods. 1936 saw the last gasp of the proletariat stifled; this massacre was the culminating point in a long series of defeats suffered by the class world-wide and was to throw open the way to world war. Today, events in Spain presage immense social upheavals in the rest of Europe. Thus Spain is once again a focal point, a point of departure in the class struggle which will probably have the same decisive importance for the coming period as it did in the 1930s. Spain will again be a highly significant test of the balance of class forces. World capitalism, and in particular the ‘European Community’, will intervene in force in the situation there, giving all their support to the forces of ‘democratic’ order, which are alone capable of erecting a barrier before the surging tide of working class struggle. The strategy of capital will be to put forward its left wing, led by the various political forces who base their activity in the working class: Communist Party, Socialist Party, and the other :leftists. The battalions of the left are already being feverishly prepared for this task.
In the days to come the Spanish proletariat will once again find itself up against the same forces who in 1936 succeeded so masterfully in first diverting the class and then bleeding it white. The leftists will use to the utmost the experience they gained in 1936 as a weapon to attack the proletariat, a weapon which, since then, they have had many opportunities to perfect. Their greatest deceit is to preach hypocritically to the workers that they should ‘forget the past’ in the name of national reconciliation. In other words, the workers should forget the lessons learned from the bloody experience of the class struggle.
The history of class struggle is strewn with defeats. Defeat is the painful school through which the proletariat must inevitably pass. In a particular sense and up to a certain point, it is only through defeat that the proletariat can ultimately be victorious. It is through defeat that the class becomes conscious of itself, of its goals, of the road which leads to them. In this way the proletariat learns to correct its errors, to recognize false prophets, avoid dead-ends, to organize itself more effectively, and to weigh up more precisely the balance of forces at a given moment. Because it is a class deprived of any other power within society, its experience is its only real trump-card and this experience is built to a great extent on lessons learned through defeat.
On the eve of the great battles which the proletariat in Spain is about to wage, battles whose consequences will weigh heavily on the struggles of the world proletariat, we can prepare ourselves in no better way than by re-examining, re-investigating the great experience of that bloody defeat euphemistically known as ‘the Spanish Civil War’.
Bilan was bitterly aware of the ever-increasing state of isolation with which it had to contend, and which it rightly saw as one of the manifestations of the tragic defeat of the proletariat. The isolation grew in proportion to the degree that the hysteria of war seeped into the bodies and brains of the workers. Like all great and decisive events, the war in Spain left no room for flexible attitudes. The choice was glaringly clear: with capitalism and for the war, or with the proletariat against the war. The isolation to which Bilan was condemned was the unavoidable price it paid for its loyalty to the principles of communism, and this was to its merit and its honour, at a time when so many left communist groups allowed themselves to fall into the traps laid by the class enemy.
In contrast to Bilan we today can have the firm conviction that by renewing the same class positions we no longer have to swim against the stream, but will find ourselves being carried along by the new wave of the communist revolution, and able to make our own contribution to its growth.
M.C.
Revolution Internationale
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From the first months of its existence the Spanish Republic showed that when it came to massacring workers it had nothing to learn from the fascist regimes. Probably the only difference is that fascism quite clearly massacres workers as workers and as revolutionaries, whereas (‘democracy’ massacres them while simultaneously slandering them with accusations of being ‘provocateurs’, ‘agents of reaction’, of the monarchy or of fascism. Right from the beginning Bilan made this point quite clear, in contrast to all those who attempted to mobilize the workers ‘in defence of the Republic’.
M. C.
The massacre of workers in SpainHow many were there? It is impossible to give even an approximate figure for the number of victims crushed in this orgy of blood, this worthy ceremony for the opening of the Cortes of the ‘Spanish Workers’ Republic’. The agrarian and monarchist Right, the Republican Left, the radical Left, the Socialist Party, the Catalan Left, all grouped together in an admirable united front, are satisfied with this victory of ‘order’. Now that the Spanish workers have abandoned their ‘bad leaders’ - in this case the anarchists of the Iberian Anarchist Federation - everyone from Macia, ‘Liberator of Catalonia’, to Maura; and from Lerroux to Prieto can pay such opportune homage to the “wisdom of the Spanish workers”. Of course it was never a question of a workers’ movement being crushed by machine guns and cannon; no, no, it was, quite simply, a sort of purification rite performed by the bourgeoisie in the interest of the workers. Once the ulcer has been cut out, wisdom, that innate wisdom, can re-emerge and the workers can rush to thank the executioners who saved them from the anarchists.
Now it is high time to draw up a balance sheet of the victims of the Republic of Azana-Caballero, and of the new Cortes; much more than a thousand theoretical controversies, this task will enable us to grasp the significance of the Republic and of the so-called ‘democratic revolution’ of 1931. This record will make the monarchy’s work seem pale in comparison and will show to the proletariat that it cannot defend any form of bourgeois organization, that there are no ‘lesser evils’ for the workers, and that, as long as the day of the insurrectionary struggle has not yet dawned, all the proletariat can do is to defend the class positions that it has conquered, and prevent them from being confused with the organizational forms of the government of its enemy, however democratic they may be. The Spanish workers have once again undergone this experience, like the workers of the ‘democratic paradises’ or the fascist countries.
‘An anarchist movement!’ That is what this uprising, now drowned. in blood, has been called. Obviously, the organizations of the bourgeois left, the Socialists as well as the liberal, Macia, will say that among these anarchist ‘leaders’ were monarchist ‘provocateurs’: thus their Republican ‘conscience’ can remain unsullied. But the proletariat knows its own. It knows that the police have not been cutting down provocateurs, but its bravest sons who rose in revolt against the oppression of Republican capitalism.
(Bilan, no.2, December 1933)
As the massacres perpetuated by the Republic in the name of ‘the defence of democracy’ grew more and more massive, Bilan posed in extremely clear terms the question of the meaning of the so-called democratic regimes. Is democracy a step on the way to the revolution, as the Left and Leftists claim in their appeals to the workers to support and defend it; or is it really nothing but a weapon of capital which at a given moment is the most appropriate one to be adopted to divert the proletariat so as to be able to crush it all the more effectively later on? Two million deaths and forty years of Francoism have provided a tragic but definitive answer to this question, which absolutely confirms the calls for alarm and vigilance which Bilan issued prior to the events of 1936.
M. C.
The crushing of the Spanish workersThere are two criteria for understanding these events; two opposing vantage points the working class has to understand. Only thus can we analyze the recent sacrifices of thousands of workers in the Iberian Peninsula; shot, machine-gunned and bombarded by the ‘Spanish Workers’ Republic’.
Either the Republic and democratic liberties are nothing but a powerful diversion which capital utilizes when it is unable to resort to violence and terror to crush the proletariat, or the Republic and democratic liberties represent a lesser evil and even, a favourable precondition for the victorious advance of the proletariat, thereby imposing on the workers a duty to support democracy in order to facilitate their ultimate offensive in their fight for emancipation from all the chains of capitalism.
The terrible carnage of these last days in Spain must obliterate all the idiocy which presents the Republic as a ‘proletarian conquest’ which the workers must defend but only, of course, under ‘certain conditions’ and especially ‘only to the extent’ that democracy is not what it is; or on condition that it ‘becomes’ what it cannot become; or finally ‘if’, far from having the meaning and objectives that it really has, it sees fit to become an organ of working class power. This 1ittle game became equally difficult to play in the period preceding the Civil War in Spain when capitalism made a show of strength against the proletariat. Indeed, from the foundation of the Spanish Republic in April 1931 up to December 1931 - the ‘swing to the left’ and the formation of the Azana-Caballero-Lerroux government, followed by the subsequent ejection in December 1931 of its right wing represented by Lerroux - none of this provided more favourable conditions for the growth of revolutionary consciousness within the proletariat or for the growth of forms of organization suitable for the direction of revolutionary struggle. It is not a question here of seeing what the republican, radical. socialist government ought to be doing for the good of the communist revolution; but what we do have to ask is whether or not this movement of capitalism to the left or the extreme left, this unanimous chorus appealing for the defence of the Republic and comprising everyone from the Socialists to the syndicalists, has created the conditions for the development of the class struggle for the onward march of the revolutionary proletariat? Or else whether this movement to the left was dictated by the necessity for capitalism to throw the workers, already intoxicated by their own revolutionary enthusiasm, into confusion and. thus prevent them from channeling this enthusiasm into a truly revolutionary struggle? In other words, was the road the bourgeoisie was free to take in October 1934 too big a gamble in 1931? At that moment could the workers have been victorious, since capitalism was in no position to recruit an army for the purposes of savage repression?
Similarly the Catalan and Basque separatist movements have been seen as an open breech in the forces of capitalist domination, a breech which, it is said, should be widened as much as possible in order that the proletarian revolution can go forward. Was not the real potential of separatism revealed in the constitution of a Catalan Republic which lasted only for a few hours? (The Republic came to an ignominious end under the heel of General Batet - whom President Companys had called to the defence of Catalonia when proclaiming its independence.) And, in the Asturias, weren’t the forces of the army, police and the air force hurled for weeks against the miners and other workers, who were deprived of any guidance in their heroic struggle? Didn’t the upsurges of Basque separatism do nothing more than give warning of the suffering which was to come? Is it not true that the Basque separatists allowed the struggle in the Asturias to be crushed? Crushed, what is more, by the forces of government terror, led by a separatist, who tomorrow will no doubt once again swear his allegiance to the Republic and regional autonomy.
From 1930 to 1934 there has been a harsh logic in the development of events. In 1930 Berenguer was called in by King Alfonso XIII, who hoped to be able to repeat the manoeuvres of 1923 when he managed to contain the consequences of the Moroccan disasters within the framework of monarchical legality. In 1923 Primo de Rivera was substituted for the ministers who were seen to be responsible for the Moroccan disaster; and this change of government made it possible to hold off an attack by the masses. Naturally, the masses paid the price of this manoeuvre by having to suffer seven years of an agrarian, clerical dictatorship. But in 1930 the economic situation had been totally transformed by the appearance of the crisis and it was no longer sufficient to resort to simple governmental manoeuvres. In February 1931 the conditions for a proletarian movement were already ripe, and there was a threat of a railway strike: thus the need arose for a big theatrical display - offering the masses the heads of Berenguer and the king. At the instigation of the monarchist, Guerra, and in agreement with the Republican, Zamora, the king’s departure was organized even before the workers had walked out of the factories. The leftward movement of the government continued until the end of 1931, and this was the only way that the bourgeoisie could place obstacles in the path of the masses to prevent them from forging the weapon necessary for their victory: the proletarian party. Since it was impossible to suppress class conflicts, all capitalism could do was to make sure that these conflicts only ended up in confusion. And the Republic served this aim. At the beginning of 1932, the left wing government made its first move, and launched a violent attack on the general strike which had been proclaimed by the syndicalists. At this point, the forces of the bourgeoisie were concentrated around its left wing, and a reactionary like Maura was able to make a plebiscite for the Azana-Caballero government through the Republican Cortes.
The e1an of the masses, which had been a product of economic conditions, was diverted onto the path of the Republic and of democracy, and was then broken by the reactionary violence of the radical-socialist government. From this resulted an opposite movement within the bourgeoisie towards its right wing: in August 1932 we saw the first skirmish with the right, Sanjurjo’s revolt aimed at the concentration of the right wing forces. A few months afterwards, in December 1933, the workers were again plunged into a bloodbath during another strike launched by the syndicalists at the very time when, elections were providing the opportunity for the Spanish Republic to move right. As a result, in 1934 a frontal attack aimed at annihilating all the forces and organizations of the Spanish proletariat took place. And as a sad, cruel epilogue to the errors of the syndicalists, we saw the anarchist Confederation of Labour abstains from action in the face of the carnage, on the grounds that it could not get mixed up in political movements…….
Left or right? Republic or monarchy? Support for the Left and the Republic against the right and the monarchy in order to further the cause of the proletarian revolution - these are the alternatives put forward by the different currents operating inside the working class and the solution they defend. But the real alternative is the one between capitalism and the proletariat, between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which aims to crush the workers, and the dictatorship of the proletariat which aims to set up a bastion of the world revolution dedicated to the abolition of states and classes.
Although the Spanish economy was able to take advantage of the benefits of neutrality during the war, its structure is such that it has only been able to put up a very weak resistance to the effects of the economic crisis. Its industrial sector is too limited in relation to what is very much an agrarian economy still dominated by non-industrialized forms and forces of production. It is because of this economic foundation that the industrial regions have provided the arena for the separatist movements which have no real future and which can only have a reactionary character; under their rule capitalism would continue to extract surplus value from the workers and surplus labour from the peasants, by expropriating the banking organizations who presently control this operation for the big magnates. Such an economic basis puts the Spanish workers in a very similar situation to that of the Russian workers: faced by the capitalist class which can only enforce its rule through a dictatorship of blood and iron, the workers must smash this ferocious oppression, but they can only do so by means of a victorious insurrection
And the Spanish tragedy, like its counterpart in Austria, has unfolded before the helpless passivity of the world proletariat, immobilized by the counter-revolutionary acts of the centrists and socialist. A simple overture by the Communist International towards the Social Democratic International would even be rejected on the grounds that the right moment had passed. As if after Hitler’s victory when the right moment had also passed, the Social Democratic International didn’t propose a joint action with the Communist International! But the decay and corruption of organizations which still dare to call themselves working class is so great, that all that these traitors of yesterday and today would do on the very graves of the workers, would be, any case, to agree on some manoeuvre which would allow them to continue with their betrayals. And they will continue until the day when the workers succeed in overthrowing, along with the class that oppresses them, all the forces which have betrayed them. Thousands of Spanish workers have not died in vain, because the blood spilled by the Spanish Republic will be the seed of a new struggle for the communist revolution, a struggle which will cast down all the obstacles which the enemy class ceaselessly puts in the way of the proletariat’s march to freedom.
(Bilan, no. 2, October 1934)
The bloody savagery of the Republic did not stop short at mass slaughter: it also resorted to individual executions to ‘serve as an example’. The resonant appeal for international class solidarity which Bilan issued as far as its weak voice would carry, was easily smothered by the din created by those who sang the ‘virtues’ of the Republic and democracy, in defence of which the workers would be massacred in their millions in the ‘anti-fascist’ war.
It is hardly necessary to point out that, when it came to saving the lives of workers who were going to be shot one by one by the Republic, neither the democratic governments, nor the parties of the left, nor the defenders of the ‘rights of man’, nor the Pope himself, raised a single protesting voice. And Bilan never dreamed of appealing to them and their humanitarian feelings.
M.C.
Appeal for international working class solidarityThe guns are silent now in Spain, Thousands of proletarians have been pitilessly massacred. Here is another trophy which the bourgeoisie can display alongside the February massacres in Austria and the decapitations in Germany.
The world proletariat lies drawn and quartered on the ground, and its blood has been sullied by the boots of bourgeois tyranny which has imposed order with shrapnel and cannon-fire. From East to West the bestial terror of the ruling classes reigns supreme over the carnage, whose sole purpose was to strangle the revolutionary struggle of the workers.
We want to pay homage first of all to the Asturias fighters. They fought to the death, sacrificing women and children for their class, for the revolution, but, without any guidance, they were defeated. They, like the miners of Oviedo will now understand the meaning of the ‘peaceful construction of socialism’ in Russia. For those who have been bombed to shreds and torn by the bayonets of the Moroccan Legions, the seventeenth anniversary of the USSR will have a particular meaning. In mourning its dead the Spanish proletariat will also see that it can only count on its own struggle, the struggle of the world proletariat, which Russia has now abandoned.
After its orgy of blood in the Asturias, the bourgeoisie now wants to carry out the murder of rebel workers through its military courts, in order to intimidate those who dare to take up arms to emancipate themselves.
November 7: Jose Larredo Corrales and Guerra Pardo have therefore been shot as an example to others: one at Gijon, the other at Leon. Others will follow if the international solidarity of the proletariat does not vigorously assert itself.
(Bilan no. 13, December 1934)
The next piece is a short account of the ‘noble’ role played in Spain by the Socialists of the right and the left, from Prieto to Caballero. One lesson among others that the workers must never forget.
M.C.
What happens when there is no proletarian party……….with respect to the events in Spain.... After the war, encouraged by the economic recovery which took place in all countries, including neutral Spain, the Social Democracy supported no less directly the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and collaborated with it. When the dictatorship fell, Social Democracy appeared as the only force organized on a national scale (the Republican groups - both the old ones and those recently hatched - having only a local existence), and it gained an influence far in excess of its real strength: 114 deputies were elected to the Constituent Assembly. This fact allowed it to put itself forward as the principal agency for the safeguarding of capitalist order at dangerous moments and for consolidating that order when the counter-offensive against the proletariat could be undertaken.
During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, established in 1923, and under Berenguer’s transitional government which succeeded it in January 1930, the two ‘historical’ parties of the bourgeoisie began to fragment and this opened the door to the parties which claimed to represent the middle classes: various republican groupings which were not greatly distinguishable from one another and which were concentrated around the Radical Party of Lerroux and the Radical Socialist Party which was created by the left wing of the Radical Party.
Among other things this period was characterized by the San Sebastian Pact in August 1930, concluded by the various Catalan parties and the anti-monarchist parties (Socialist, Radical Socialists, Radicals, the Republican Right) and which attempted to deal with the thorny problem of the autonomy of the Catalan and Basque provinces; this led to the premature adventure of December 1930, involving the uprising of the Jaca garrison and the proclamation of the Republic in Madrid.
Capitalism possesses a remarkable flexibility which allows it to adapt to the most difficult situations; the monarchist bourgeoisie soon saw that it would be better in the short term to peacefully cede power to the ‘friendly hands’ of the Socialists and Republicans rather than to risk provoking a resistance that would threaten their class interests. Moreover all the political disagreements that were to come to light within the Republican camp would operate to their advantage later on. Overnight the bourgeoisie changed from monarchism to Republicanism: when the municipal elections of 12 April gave the anti-monarchist opposition parties a majority - they won 46 out of 50 provincial capitals - a peaceful change of political window-dressing took place and Alfonso XIII abdicated. His place was taken by a provisional government made up of the Republicans and Socialists who had signed the December 1930 manifesto.
In the first coalition government the Socialists held the Ministries of Labour, Justice and Finance - these last two having been taken in exchange for the Ministries of Education and Public works.
For over thirty months of coalition government, the Socialists endorsed and covered up all the heinous crimes of the ‘liberal’ bourgeoisie: the repression of workers’ and peasants’ movements including the massacres at Arnedo and Casas Vierjas, the law for the defence of the Republic, the law on public order, the reactionary law on associations and the mystification of the agrarian law.
The main historical function of the Social Democracy is to maintain democratic illusions within the working class, thus preventing their radicalization and in the end smothering their revolutionary elan.
It’s worth saying here that there has been too much talk of a ‘revolution’ in Spain, particularly when it was a question of a simple manoeuvre by the bourgeoisie and this talk exaggerated the possibilities for a ‘proletarian revolution’. Above all the lack of a class party and the negative influence of anarcho-syndicalism had undermined any chance of success.
When Social Democracy got a kick in the arse, that is to say when capitalism felt strong enough to be able to dispense with its good services, the Socialists who had intensified their verbal demagogy in proportion to their loss of influence within the government, gave birth to a ‘Left’ which did all it could to keep the flags of treason flying within the working class. And so Largo Caballero, the Minister at the time of Casas Vierjas, threatened the bourgeoisie with the proletarian dictatorship and a soviet regime…….
There really is an iron law which makes Social Democracy concentrate the proletariat around democratic slogans, then. go over to, a ‘leftist’ oppositional stance, in order to get ready to betray the class the day after, while the parties of the middle class join the forces of reaction preparing to attack. And this whole pattern of events unfolds with an implacable speed and logic.
Thus in Spain, in order to pave the way for new elections, the coalition government was succeeded by a Radical transitional government, which, after the November 1933 elections which were such a debacle for the Socialists, gave way to a right-wing Radical government led by Lerroux himself. But the bourgeoisie did not yet feel able to mount a violent offensive and Samper took the place of Lerroux. But already the positions of command were in the hands of the open partisans of reaction.
The facts are well-known: in response to the reconstitution of a Lerroux government in which the most important Ministries,- Justice, Agriculture, and Labour - were held by the Catholic populists (thus by the most reactionary party in the Iberian Peninsula), the Socialists proclaimed a general strike for 5 October. It was to be a ‘legal’ strike aimed at causing the fall of Lerroux and replacing him with the old Republican-Socialist coalition.
As in Italy in 1922, when the strike called by the Labour Alliance was aimed against the ‘fascist menace’ of Mr Mussolini and sought to put in his place a ‘better government’ under Turati-Modigliani, in Spain the Social Democracy was also fighting against the ‘fascist menace’ and for the reconstitution of a Republican-Socialist coalition government. But this latter phase - to which must be added the joke of the proclamation of the Catalan State - was short-lived, and gave way to a second phase characterized by a working class struggle unaffected by the separatist deviations which had appeared particularly in Catalonia and the Basque provinces; a struggle which developed above all in the coal fields of the Asturias, where a working class unity around the bitter struggle for power took place.
The government ended up sending an army of 30,000 men against ‘Red Asturias’, equipped with ultra-modern destructive power: bombers, assault tanks, etc. Only the most reliable troops were sent to quell the rebellion: the Foreign Legion, made up of the dregs of society, and the Moroccan sharpshooters were the ones used to deal with the insurrection. Today we know that this was no idle precaution: at Alicante the sailors themselves attacked the arsenal; at Oviedo 900 soldiers, although besieged, refused to fire on the workers who were marching to attack the barracks. In addition to this, certain garrisons in the province of Leon where bitter struggles were taking place had to be transported with the utmost urgency to more tranquil regions.
But in the end, isolated while the rest of Spain didn’t budge, the heroes of the Asturias were crushed, though not vanquished - because even today there are still groups o f rebels in the mountains carrying on the struggle.
(Bilan no.14, January 1935)
This long article, in which Bilan attempted to make a detailed analysis of the evolution of capitalism in Spain, is of considerable interest. Though the backwardness of capitalist development in Spain explains the particularities of that country, we cannot analyse the events in Spain on the basis of these particularities, but only from the historical period of capitalism, of the general crisis of the system which is ravaging the whole world; this is also the only way we can hope to understand the present situation and the social upheavals which are brewing today.
The underlying basis of these events is not a bourgeois democratic revolution directed against so-called feudalism, but the struggle between capitalism in open crisis and the proletariat. Bilan categorically rejected the references some people made to Marx and Engels, misusing their writings to justify the position that the workers should support the democratic Republic in Spain. If one compares the writings of Bilan on this point with the positions defended today by Proletaire, the paper of the ICP, concerning the so-called ‘bourgeois democratic revolutions’ in the underdeveloped countries, one is struck by the enormous regression represented by the latter’s positions. Proletaire ignores the historical era and only looks at geographic areas. Hence it continues to talk about the democratic-bourgeois revolution in the underdeveloped countries, where it distinguishes between ‘progressive’ classes struggling against ‘reactionary’ classes. This is the way Proletaire analysed the war between North and South Vietnam, as well as the struggle between Pinochet and Allende; regarding Allende, the main reproach it directed towards him concerned his indecision and Pro1etaire in its great wisdom recommended that he should follow the example of firmness provided by the Jacobins.
The Bordigists’ arguments about Chile and other underdeveloped countries would have been equally valid for Spain in 1936, when it too was an underdeveloped country. This is how Bilan counteracted in advance arguments of this kind:
“But October 1917 exists to show us that the continuation of the work of Marx does not consist in repeating in a profoundly different situation, the positions our mentors defended in their era. In Spain, as in all other countries, the democratic forces of the bourgeois Left have shown themselves to be not a step towards the final victory of the proletariat, but the last bastion of the counterrevolution.”
The following article was written at the end of July 1936, the very time of the Franco uprising and the workers’ response to it. Bilan still lacked a good deal of information on the development of events. But it saw straight away the dangers of the mobilization of the proletariat behind the defence of the Republic, and, it warned the workers of Spain and other countries of that danger.
We should emphasize the concern displayed in this article by Bilan (faced with the events in Spain which were a prelude to the world imperialist war) regarding the regroupment of the scattered revolutionary nuclei of that period. If the regroupment of revolutionaries was recognized to be necessary to withstand the effects of a period of proletarian retreat, it is an imperious necessity in a period of mounting class struggle. It is absolutely necessary to insist on this point to better counter the confusions of those groups, who, having failed to comprehend this need, prefer instead to maintain their isolation in the name of ‘their’ autonomy and ‘their’ freedom of movement.
M.C.
In Spain: the bourgeoisie against the proletariat The structure of Spanish capitalism (extract)Especially before the advent of the Republic in April 1931, the economic structure of Spanish society, because of its extremely backward characteristics, could give the impression that the bourgeoisie had not yet won power and therefore what is confronting us today is a revolution of the same type as the bourgeois revolutions of last century but with one important difference in its ultimate perspective: since we are in a new historic situation in which capitalism no longer has a progressive role to play but has entered into its period of decline, the proletariat’s task is to circumvent the capitalist stage and set up instead its own class dictatorship. But in fact none of this is the case because Spain is one of the oldest bourgeois nations, and if it has not gone through a sequence of historic events analogous to those which led capitalism to power in other countries, this is solely a result of the exceptionally favourable conditions in which the Spanish bourgeoisie arose. Since it possessed an immense colonial empire, Spanish capitalism was able to evolve without huge internal upheavals and in fact was able to avoid them precisely because the basis of its domination was not - as it was for other capitalisms - a radical change in the foundations of the feudal economy, resulting in the establishment of large scale industries in the cities and the liberation of the peasants from serfdom. On the contrary, that basis was established by adapting the old feudal system to the demands of a capitalism which possessed immense territorial outlets for investment, and could thus hold back from industrializing its home economy. It is worthwhile pointing out that the old colonies were lost to the Spanish bourgeoisie the very moment they began to go through the whirlwind of industrial transformation. The nobility and the clergy as well as owning the big landed properties, also possessed shares in banking and industrial concerns and the Madrid Tramway Company; similarly some of the mines of the Asturias, subcontracted to foreign capital, were controlled prior to 1931 by the Jesuits.
This archaic social structure was profoundly affected by the war which intensified the industrialization of Spain, especially in Catalonia where a powerful manufacturing industry developed. But this development only took place in certain ‘islands’ - the North, Barcelona, Madrid; the rest of Spain remained almost in the same condition as before. However, the necessity to find a dictatorial solution to social unrest was felt very quickly and Primo de Rivera took power in 1923, backed mainly by the industrial circles in Barcelona under the leadership of Cambo. This was at a time when Alfonso XIII was rather more inclined to see the Moroccan enterprise through to the end in spite of the rude defeat his troops had suffered there. The Primo de Rivera experience, although in no way comparable to Italian or German fascism, is also explained by the necessity to prevent the proletariat from intervening autonomously in social struggles, and it was under Primo de Rivera’s government that various institutions of labour arbitration developed: Largo Caballero, who today is being called the Spanish Lenin was then an official; the Socialist organizations were allowed to exist, and even the anarchist CNT (National Confederation of Labour) managed to survive in that period. (It’s easy enough to insult great men when they are dead, and for some people it isn’t enough that Stalin should be hailed as Lenin successor.)
In 1930, when Primo de Rivera fell like a rotten fruit, the Spanish bourgeoisie believed that it could carry on with the same system, and his place was taken by a general; only this time, there was a different political direction. It was no longer just a question of solving social issues with the aid of state intervention, but of trying to channel the working masses toward a liberal democratic regime. The world economic crisis had broken out and a military-type authoritarianism was no longer any use in keeping the resulting social turmoil within manageable limits.
These factors allow us to arrive at a brief definition of the Spanish social structure. We are dealing with a capitalist regime where any repetition of the events which accompanied the victory of the bourgeoisie in other countries is to be ruled out: far from repeating the work of the Jacobins in 1793, or the bourgeoisie of 1848 on its way to the Cavaignacs of June, the Azanas and Caballeros are much more orientated towards playing the role of the Noskes, with however a profound difference resulting from the particularities of the Spanish situation. Spanish capitalism has entered the world economic crisis not only without any room for manoeuvre, on a world market which is less and less able to absorb agricultural exports, but also with an economic scaffolding which is one of the least capable of resisting the hammer of the economic crisis. As a result there was absolutely no way of avoiding the outburst of powerful social movements; and, as with the fall of Primo de Rivera, which seemed to have been provoked by the collapse of the Barcelona exhibition, it was again an element of secondary importance, historically speaking, which presaged the great events which were brewing: in October 1930 the Pact of San Sebastian was drawn up laying the foundations of the Republic under the guiding hand of the monarchist, Zamora; and on 14 April, 1931 through the mediation of Romanones, Alfonso XIII abdicated following the communal elections, which led to the proclamation of the Republic. In a like manner the events which followed in 1931, 1932 and 1933 permit us to better explain social reality and the significance of the advent of the Republic. This latter event from the point of view of the social movement and its onward progress, represented a completely subsidiary element and could in no way be compared to the establishment of bourgeois republics last century; on the contrary, it represented nothing but a new form of bourgeois domination, a new attempt by Spanish capitalism to deal with the problems which confronted it.
Never has there been a more ferocious repression against the workers’ movement than the one unleashed in 1931 and 1932 under the left wing governments in which the Socialists participated. It is obvious that the fundamental cause of this repression resided in the powerful growth of working class struggle; but those who couple the upsurge of the workers’ movement with the taking of power of left wing governments should pause to reflect upon the events which followed the proclamation of the Republic and which proved conclusively that such governments are nothing but the most ‘appropriate’ form (to use the formulation put forward by Salengro in the French Senate, when he said that the government would use all the ‘appropriate’ methods to bring the factory occupations to an end) for the defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is thus no direct relationship between the Republic and the workers’ movement, but only a bloody opposition between them as events has proved.
When we look at such a backward social structure, which can be compared to that of Tsarist Russia, the following question arises: how is it that, against such a chequered social canvas, in the presence of a bourgeoisie so incapable of solving the alarming problems posed by the economic crisis just as it was in Russia, how is it that, in such a favourable social milieu, no marxist nuclei with the power and scope of the Russian Bolsheviks, have been formed? It seems to us that the answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the Russian bourgeoisie was still moving along an ascendant path, while the Spanish bourgeoisie, which sprang up centuries ago, is in a state of putrefying decay. This difference in the positions occupied by the two bourgeoisies also reflects a difference in the positions of the two proletariats; and the fact that the Spanish proletariat has been unable, in the course of huge struggles, to give rise to the class party so indispensable to its victory seems to us to be a result of the backward condition of this country which capitalism has condemned to remain in the rearguard of the present social and political evolution.
The anachronistic nature of Spanish capitalism, it’s extremely backward structure, the impossibility of the bourgeoisie of this country finding any solution to the complex and involved problems of its economic structure - all this explains for us the powerful movements which have emerged over the last five years in Spain, the fact that the proletariat has found it impossible to create its own party, and the fact that its movements have appeared as fruitless upheavals rather than events which could lead to the only result worthy of the heroism the Spanish workers have shown: the communist revolution. In the light of all this we can well interpret the words of Marx in 1854, when he said that a revolution which could happen in three days in another European country would require nine years in Spain.
The birth of the Spanish republicMarx, writing about the events of 1808-1814, and Engels about those of 1873, advocated the same tactics for Spain that they had elsewhere applied to Germany. They advised socialists of other countries to take up a position of ‘innoculating’ the bourgeois revolution with the virus of proletarian struggle in order to propel the situation towards its final goal: the victory of the working class. But October 1917 exists to show us that the continuation of the work of Marx does not consist in repeating, in a profoundly different situation, the positions our mentors defended in their era. In Spain, as in all other countries, the democratic forces of the bourgeois left have shown themselves to be not a step towards the final victory of the proletariat, but the last bastion of the counter-revolution. In 1854 Marx wrote that the Central Junta could have brought about changes in the Spanish social structure. If these changes were not realized at that time this could be put down to wrong tactics, but the Republic of 1931 had an entirely different function from that of the Junta of 1808: the latter had a progressive character, while the Republic represented a weapon of the most savage reaction against the workers’ movement. The same applies to Engel position with respect to the Republic of 1873 where he foresaw the possibility of a parliamentary workers’ group acting effectively both to aid the victory of Pi y Margall against the right and also to push the left towards taking up the demands of the workers. Within the Constituent Cortes of 1931 and the others which followed there was no lack of a ‘workers’ group, but since it was rooted in a very different social terrain, a terrain upon which the Republic showed its real nature as a bloody expression of anti-working class repression, the ‘workers’ group could only be a tool in the bands of the bourgeoisie.
In this epoch, the regroupment of the working class cannot be achieved on the basis of a dual programme agitating for partial demands while making propaganda for the ultimate goals of the movement. There is no possibility of linking the partial conquests of the working class to a Republic which could conceivably evolve towards a progressive transformation of Spanish society and so would become favourable to the interests of the masses. The years 1931, 32, 33 saw the government moving further and further left, going from the Azania-Caballero-Lerroux bloc to the exclusion of the Radicals; and at the same time the strike movement of workers and peasants was being subjected to the bloodiest repression. Indeed, the left turn of the government was a signal for an even stronger anti-working class repression.
Engels rightly criticized Bakunin and the Alleanzistes of the day, who were advocating an immediate struggle for the liberation of the workers on the basis of the extension of the movement of partial demands. The marxist viewpoint is against putting forward the slogan of insurrection when conditions for it do not exist, just as it is against raising the slogan of the struggle for the Republic or for its reform at a time when historical analysis has shown that this Republic has become an essential instrument for the subjugation of the proletariat; and that the proletariat, again because of the development of the historic situation, now finds itself in a position to put forward one demand only: the dictatorship of the proletariat, through insurrection and destruction of the capitalist state.
This analysis can be confirmed by reviewing briefly the events of 1931 32, 33, 34. This is indispensable if we are to be able to examine the current situation and to indicate the position which the proletariat both in Spain and internationally will have to take up, if the heroic acts of the Iberian workers are going to lead to the victory of the communist revolution.
We have already shown that the proclamation of the Republic was simply a signal for much more important events, events which were to hurl all the Spanish workers and peasants into the arena of class struggle. Let us begin by noting that capitalism rushed to give Alfonso XIII a one way ticket out of the country in order to prevent a railway strike, a movement which, because it would have paralyzed economic life, would have had profound repercussions on the national situation. It is quite obvious that the Spanish bourgeoisie was in no way aware of the situations which would develop over the years 1931-2 and 1933, but in attempting to foresee the course of events it did have recourse to a change in the form of its regime from the monarchy to the Republic. Capitalism is doomed never to be able to clearly foresee the pattern of future events: this is an expression of the contradictory basis of its power. It can only do one thing: fights against its class enemy and in any given situation find the solution which seems to defend its privileges the best. When in April 1931 the proclamation of the Republic appeared a necessity, the Spanish bourgeoisie did not hesitate to resort to it; and this was a good move at that time, because, in the face of all the social movements which followed, it would have been extremely risky to have opposed them with brutal, head-on methods. A balance was needed and this was provided by the left wing governments supported by the Socialists, who were numerically the strongest group of loyal and sincere ‘Republicans’.
Immediately after the foundation of the new regime, a wave of strikes swept the country, notably the telephone strike and. the strikes in Andalusia, followed by others in Bilbao, Barcelona (building workers), Valencia, Manresa, etc. During the course of these events the following happened: the government under Zamora’s presidency moved more and more towards savage repression; the Minister of the Interior, Maura, who had slaughtered thirty peasants in Seville, replied. to questions by saying that “nothing happened”; and on 20 October of the same year, the ‘Law for the Defence of the Republic’ was voted in order to prohibit strikes, impose on all labour disputes compulsory arbitration through Parity Commissions, and outlaw all union organizations which did not give ten days warning before a strike. At the same time the Socialist UGT (General Union of Workers) openly organized the sabotage of the movements called by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, when it was not actually advocating armed struggle against the workers organized by the CNT. And it must be said that the policy of the Socialists met with a certain amount of success since, except for a few rare instances where the workers of the two unions made common cause, the UGT managed to keep its members at work. If these methods did not always lead to the defeat of the workers’ movements, it made them much more difficult, and, when the Civil Guard intervened, much more bloody.
On the other side of the barricade were the unions of the CNT around which the workers’ struggles polarized. But the political positions of the anarchists in no way corresponded to the needs of the situation and although its militants often displayed great courage, the leaders, from a political point of view, never succeeded in formulating an overall plan for reconstituting the unity of the working class in order to lead it to victory over the bosses. The constant succession of aimless strikes ended up exhausting the masses, who found it impossible to gain real improvements in their living standards; this led some to have recourse to desperate adventures like the ones in Catalonia and Andalusia where Free Communes were proclaimed for the organization of a libertarian society. It should be said that these extreme movements did not even win the solidarity and support of the CNT leadership; this was also what happened with the delegate from the Free Commune of Figola who “came to Barcelona to canvas the support of the proletariat of the city: he returned somber and saddened; he had been unable to obtain any promises of support for the Figola movement”. (Revolution Proletarianne, February 1932, reported by Lazarevitch). We do not intend to criticize the CNT for not once again proclaiming the general strike, We only refer to this episode in order to demonstrate that the policies of the anarchosyndicalist leaders could only serve to bottle up the general movemet of the Spanish workers, certain sections of whom were led to engage in desperate acts, cruelly repressed with the unconditional support of the Socialists. The sequence of events of 1931, 32, 33 thus give us a left wing movement supporting itself on the UGT, while the only position of defence the working class could take up was to entrust itself to the CNT. This essential point about the role of the CNT, which is in no way peculiar to the brief period we are discussing, must lead communists to ask whether, in contrast to other countries where the communist movement found its roots in the socialist parties and trade unions which had emerged from the struggle against, and break with, the anarchists, it is not the case that in Spain the trade union movement that can move towards communism will find its source in the CNT unions as well as in the UGT.
The anarchists, lacking an overall plan for the great class combats that were now unfolding, were in a state of total confusion on the political level. Although they were hostile to the Republic, to ‘all’ parties, they did not fight against the separatist movements of the bourgeois extreme left. This obviously led the masses to put their trust in these movements which engaged in deeds of indisputable bravery, but which could have nothing in common with the interests of the working class.
As we have said, the government’s slide to the left coincided with the extension of the strike movement but the repression became even more savage and they even began deporting anarchist militants. Already in August 1932 the bourgeoisie began to manoeuvre in the opposite direction: Sanjurjo attempted to make a coup in Madrid and Seville, and prior to this the June auxiliary elections in Madrid had been a great success for the son of Primo de Riliera. With the failure of Sanjurjo’s attempted coup, the Republic was saved; and in Barcelona, Valencia and Cadiz in January 1933; in Malaga, Bilbao and Saragossa in May, the workers, thanks to the bullets of the Civil Guard, would soon discover the price of being unable to direct their struggle against the bourgeois left as well as against the right.
On 8 September 1933, Azana resigned and after an interregnum of twenty-three days under the Lerroux government, Martinez Barrios dissolved the Cortes in apparent violation of Article 75 of the Constitution. This Barrios, who was given the job of effecting the passage from left to right in 1933, had the same job at the beginning of the current series of events, but this time he has been unable to succeed in this task. And so ended the first phase of the Spanish Republic. This leads us to clarify a point which relates to recent events. We are often told that the Republic, as well as other governments of the Left, should be seen as a fruit of the class struggle, an imperfect fruit it is true but still an expression of re-awakening working class struggle. At the same time the bourgeoisie, in the face of a rising class struggle, can do nothing except entrust its destiny to a government of the Left. In reality, the people of the Left who defend these ideas are deceiving themselves in two ways: firstly when they put their trust in a bourgeoisie which will get rid of them at the first opportune moment, secondly when they believe that the workers will be satisfied with mere verbiage and renounce the struggle for their own class interests. For us political events can never be explained by examining the desires of this or that bourgeois formation: a given institution, in this case the Republic, must be analyzed according to the role it plays in the class struggle.
Now, the Republic has appeared as the specific form for anti-working class repression, the form which best corresponds to the interests of capitalism, because as well as being able to resort to bloody repression it can count on the support of the UGT and the Socialist Party. One might object that capitalism could have had recourse to another form of government and that if it has not done this it is solely because the pressure of the workers’ struggle has forced it to move towards the Left. This kind of hypothetical discussion is of little interest to us and seems somewhat inconclusive, but what seems to us essential is that capitalism must be fought against whatever governmental form it makes use of, whether that of the Right or the Left. Only the autonomous, independent struggle of the proletariat on its own class basis can allow it to get out of the dilemma between the left and right wings of the bourgeoisie, to avoid aiding the Right when struggling against the Left and, conversely, to avoid supporting the Left when struggling against the Right. The Spanish Republic is what it is, not what one might want it to be. Its function of brutally opposing the workers’ interests shows that it is rooted solely in the bourgeois camp; it is an insult to the workers who have fallen victim to the bullets of the Republic to say that they were the ones who made the victory of the Republic possible.
Before undertaking an examination of the current situation, which we will begin by dealing with the agrarian question, we must say a few words on the events of 1934, on the Asturias insurrection. We lack the space here to go into this colossally important event in any detail; we will simply indicate its basic meaning. After the right wing electoral victory and the violent repression of the 1933 November strike, the situation evolved slowly but surely towards the predominance of the CEDA (Spanish Confederation of the Independent Right), and the return of the forces that had been pushed aside when the Republic was set up. The Socialists made a sudden left turn and renewed their contacts with the workers, even leading strikes. In October 1934, a general strike was proclaimed as a response to the constitution of the Lerroux government with its four CEDA representatives. The leaders of the strike obviously did not expect it to spread the way it did among the most tried and tested section of the Spanish working class, the Asturias miners. Condemned to starvation wages and seeing their leaders initiating the struggle, the miners believe that at last the hour had come when, in contrast to 1932 when the UGT had sabotaged their actions, it would finally be possible to do something about their miserable living conditions. Unfortunately the insurrection remained isolated and was violently crushed. Throughout the year 1935, the working class was subjected to continuous repression, both through legal channels and through extreme forms of persecution.
At the end of 1935 likes the end of 1933, the insoluble problems of the Spanish situation reached a new point: the demonstration in Madrid glorifying Azana marked the beginning of a new stage and in February 1936 came the electoral victory of the Popular Front.
The agrarian problemWe have attempted to show that the proclamation of the Republic in 1931 cannot be fitted into the two classical schemas by which we have explained events in other countries. In no way did it represent a phase in the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal structure of an agrarian economy since capitalism has been in existence for centuries in Spain, and it grew up precisely by adapting itself to this economic structure, living a parasitical life thanks to the colonial territories under its control. Neither was it a form, through which the bourgeoisie resisted a revolutionary attack by the proletariat, since the latter - owing to the extreme state of decadence of Spanish capital - has found it impossible in the midst of an extremely heterogeneous social milieu to engender its own class party, the only historic agent capable of leading the revolution to victory. The Republic of 1931 was an expression of the formidable social upheavals which burst out immediately after it was set up; but because of the isolation of the Spanish proletariat internationally, these convulsions were doomed tragically to end up in an impasse. The same is true for the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936. But before dealing with current events, we must briefly discuss the agrarian and economic questions, which will enable us to say that the Left and the extreme Left, no less than the Right and the extreme Right, find it impossible to offer any solution to these problems. The noisy suggestions for political reform coming from various quarters can only serve to cover over capitalism’s inability to change the economic basis of Spanish society. The proletariat is the only class capable of changing the foundations of the Spanish economy; outside of that change no solution is possible.
Both from the agrarian and industrial point of view, Spain can broadly be divided into two parts: the first, the smaller of the two, is composed of forms of cultivation and industry similar to those that have provided the basis for capitalist domination in other countries. The second part, on the other hand, is composed of huge tracts of partially uncultivated land in which the peasants and agricultural workers are condemned to an extremely miserable existence. The peasants of the east coast are subjected to heavy taxation by a central power which can only survive by depriving these smallholders of any chance of getting a reasonable price for their products, which have to be exported as cheaply as possible in order to compete internationally. The smallholders find themselves with no option but to sell their goods as best they can, since they have an immediate need for capital in order to continue cultivating the land. As for the big landowners, they also have a hostile attitude towards a centralizing state which compared to the large financial contributions they have to make to it, does not give them any real advantages in exchange. It is from these elements that the separatist movements arise; these movements have also extended to other parts of Spain, to the central plateau, where the big landowners squeeze out of the enslaved peasants rents which are immediately put into the big banks and are never used for reclaiming land or buying agricultural machinery without which it is quite impossible to make these landholdings profitable. Carving up these huge properties would farther complicate this problem since mechanized cultivation cannot be carried out on the basis of small plots of land; it requires large expanses of land and centralized management. We have already said that the big landowners have nothing to do with their landed property except exact their rent, while leaning on a hierarchy of tenant and sub-tenant farmers which makes the exploitation of the peasants and agricultural workers all the more intolerable. These big landowners never dream of investing their capital in the land and they obviously look askance at any government intervention which might diminish their power and ‘expropriate’ the least productive landholdings. The transformation of the agrarian economy can only take place through industrialization, and only the proletariat can carry out this task.
When we look at industry we are dealing with very similar phenomena. The Asturias coalmines are very unproductive and the workers there are forced to work under starvation conditions analogous to those of the workers of Andalusia and Estremadura, while the rich iron ore mines which are partially controlled by foreign capital produce solely for export. As far as the industrial transformation of Catalonia is concerned, it is likewise not directed towards the internal market, which, because of the extremely low buying power of the masses, is unable to absorb its products. It thus works almost exclusively for the world market. Of course, the basic essentials for the resolution of these economic problems already exist in Spain. The country has sufficient resources to be able to cultivate the land in an effective way. But this transformation can only take place if the whole social structure is overturned, if this parasitical capitalism is extirpated and replaced by the conscious direction of the proletariat aiming at the construction of a communist society.
When the Republic was set up, just as after the victory of the Popular Front, a great deal of noise was made about the Agrarian Reform, but these measures only took effect at a political level (expropriation and redistribution of land). However, since the solution to the problem can only lie in the industrialization of agriculture, these projects were doomed to disappear as soon as the masses began to struggle in earnest, even though their movement was incapable of winning any real improvements. Certainly there is a difference between the economic programmes of the Right and the Left. The first is fighting for the rigid preservation of the specific social structure of Spain, the second for changes in the juridical and political manifestations of this structure. But since neither is able to get to the heart of the problem, it was inevitable that the masses, after e period of desperate struggle would feel that there was no solution and would go through a period of demoralization. This was easily exploited by the Right, which is least able to maintain capitalist exploitation without disruption; whereas the Left make things complicated by spreading the belief that under its guidance the struggle has real possibilities, that reforms can be won if only the big landowners can be opposed. But the latter will remain unassailable as long as the basic structure of the Spanish economy remains unchanged. The Republic of 1931 played the same role as the Popular Front in 1936, and it is not surprising that by 1934 the social situation was ripe for a victory of the agrarian Right and that in 1936 Franco had been able to find a favourable echo in the countryside.
Origins of the present situationIn April 1936 the first skirmish took place. During the demonstrations marking the anniversary of the Republic, a ‘revolt’ broke out (to use the terminology of the Popular Front), Following this, rigorous measures were decreed by the government: Azana declared that “the government has taken a whole series of measures; fascists who were in positions of command have been transferred or replaced. The Right has been seized by panic, but it will not dare to come out into the open again”. (See l’Humanite, 26 April 1936). In the subsequent debate in the Cortes, the spokesman for the centrists, in complete agreement with his Socialist confederates, gave a vote of confidence in the government, which had committed itself to the suppression of ‘sedition’ And l’Humanite praised the government for its courageous struggle. The promises of agrarian reform were then made more concrete: discussions began around Article 44 of the Constitution which provides for nationalization without compensation. Azana declared that we should not stop at the distribution of communal estates, that it was necessary to envisage the sharing out of the ‘baldios’, the lands lying fallow which the big landowners reserved solely for hunting. He even said that we should not exclude the possibility of distributing the big cultivated estates to the peasants. Meanwhile the leftward movement within the Socialist Party gathered pace: on 23 April the Madrid Assembly pronounced itself in favour of the dictator ship of the proletariat and a split seemed inevitable. Two and a half months passed after the April events. The masses who had been hoping for an improvement in their lot were demoralized once again and the Right now judged that the s moment had come. Those self-same right wing elements who would not “dare to come out in the open again” went onto the offensive, using as a pretext the murder of the monarchist leader Sotelo, who had been killed as a reprisal for the assassination of Lieutenant Castillo. At this point we don’t want to try to analyse in any detail the subsequent events. (Information concerning these events could not be more contradictory.) Our aim is rather to explain them, to show their real meaning in order to define the class positions around which the Spanish and international proletariat must regroup itself if it is to prevent the sad impasse in which the masses now find themselves from once more leading to demoralization in their ranks. If this happens capitalism will use the present bloodletting as another step towards the mobilization of the workers of all countries for a new world war. Since our main aim will be the clarification of political positions, we shall have to postpone a more detailed analysis of events to a later date.
The meaning of the Spanish conflictThe idea that, because capitalism dominates society today, it is possible for it to establish a social discipline that allows it a total control over all events, is very far from any political or historical reality. Capitalist society is by definition filled with contradictions which give rise not only to basic class antagonisms, but also to friction between the various intermediary strata, between these strata and the bourgeoisie, and finally to rivalry between capitalist groups and individuals. Certainly the bourgeoisie would like to reign in an atmosphere of social peace, but such tranquility is rendered impossible by the nature of capitalism itself. Thus the bourgeoisie is forced to accommodate itself to every situation and to learn not how to avoid any manifestation of social conflict, but how to canalize all such conflict in a direction which does not threaten their power, and which prevents the proletariat from mounting an offensive that would destroy their system. But it should not be thought that these opposition currents within the bourgeois camp can undermine or threaten the basis of capitalism. In spite of appearances, we will not find the real origins of the struggle between the militarists and the Popular Front in the opposition between their political programmes or between the bourgeois social strata that they represent. Moreover, it would be quite difficult to see the Azana front, which includes even the anarcho-syndicalists, as a coalition of industrialists, and the Franco bloc as the simple representative of the big landowners, exploiting the peasants’ dissatisfaction with the Popular Front in order to strengthen their hold over Andalusia and Estremadura, regions which witnessed powerful uprisings under the Republic.
Social events are determined by antagonisms linked to the conflict between the evolution of the productive forces and the existing form of social organization. What is being played out in Spain today is the historic antithesis between a bourgeois regime incapable of solving the economic and political problems which confront it and a proletarian regime which cannot come to the surface owing to the absence of a class party. Bourgeois factions, Left and Right, express the upheavals of a capitalist society which finds itself in an impasse, but the struggle between these two tendencies cannot be confined within the class boundaries of the bourgeoisie. It encompasses the proletariat because the proletariat alone holds the key to historical development. The real conflict is not between Azana and Franco, but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Whichever one of these is beaten, the real loser will be the proletariat who will pay the cost of the victory of either Azana or Franco. Far from remaining indifferent to the present events simply because the struggle is one between two factions of the bourgeoisie, the duty of the proletariat is to intervene directly in the situation because it alone is the object of these ideological battles, and it alone will be the victim of the present struggle.
In his study of the Spanish Revolution Trotsky shows the particular character of the Spanish army in which the different kinds of military specializations correspond to various political positions: the artillery, for example, has always been higher up the social ladder. This profoundly correct observation of Trotsky’s allows us to understand that if the army in Spain maintains a particular position - and is not above the struggle between the different political parties of the bourgeoisie - this is a result of the social structure of Spain where capitalism was not able to destroy feudalism with violence but chose to identify itself with the surviving vestiges of feudalism. There is nothing surprising in the fact that generals occupy centre stage in today’s social upheavals and that they are able to play a political role of considerable importance. We make this observation in order to show that military sedition has not emerged out of internal army affairs and cannot be brought to an end by a quick pronunciamiento. It is not something which, if it is not .immediately successful, will be doomed to certain failure; rather it expresses a social struggle whose components we discussed when we looked at the social activity of the Popular Front government and the disappointments it brought to the peasants and the workers.
Just as at the time of the proclamation of the Republic which was a signal for the outbreak of formidable class struggle, the present struggle between the Popular Front and the generals simply camouflages a much more important social struggle. That struggle has been ripening in the sub-soil of a society dislocated by the dual anachronism of a capitalism unable to bring the slightest solution to the problems it faces, and a proletariat unable to build its class party and raise the flag of revolution in a social milieu bristling with contradictions which cannot be resolved in themselves.
The working class, which was hurled into epic struggles in the years 1931-33, is once again at the threshold of new uprisings which will be all the more powerful since the economic crisis has aggravated all the fundamental problems unresolved by either the left or right wing governments which followed each other in 1934-35,or by the Popular Front government. There was of course the legalized reaction which lasted throughout 1935, after the defeat of the Asturia insurrection, but this repression did not succeed in removing the proletariat from the social scene: the working class has once again been thrown into the arena by the impact of accentuated economic problems which have proved to be insoluble. In our opinion, it is here that the explanation of present events is to be found. It should be said at once that the first reaction of the Popular Front government to the Morocco mutiny was to manoeuvre towards a compromise with Franco. The resignation of Quiroga, President of Council was the first gesture made to the Right: to Quiroga had been attributed a phrase which was interpreted as giving encouragement to the punitive action against the monarchist, Sotelo.
Immediately afterward it was Barrios (same man who had undertaken at the end of 1933 the rightward passage of the previously left wing regime and presided over the elections which subsequently gave a victory to the Right) who tried to constitute a government - again, the same Barrios who, after the assassination of Sotelo declared the situation had become impossible because the regular corps of the Civil Guard might organize outrages. The attempted compromise failed, but this did not mean that the government immediately went on to arm the workers. As soon as his Cabinet was set up, Giral tried to divert the masses with vague anti-fascist proclamations and the enlistment offices were only set up when it had already become clear that the workers in the industrial towns had mounted a vigorous resistance and had gone over to armed struggle, Once this had become unavoidable, the bourgeoisie saw that it could only defend its interests by legalizing the arming of the workers which was the only possible method of politically disarming the masses. Once the workers had been incorporated into the state, there was a considerable lessening of the danger that they would take advantage of that illegal instrument par excellence, armed force, and go over to that illegal struggle par excellence - the assault on the social citadel of capitalism, the state.
One might suppose that the arming of the workers is an act containing, some innate virtue from the political point of view and that, once they’ve got arms, the workers could get rid of their traitorous leaders and go on to a higher form of struggle. This is not the case. The workers whom the Popular Front have incorporated into the bourgeois state, because they are fighting under the leadership and for the victory of a bourgeois faction, are by that very fact deprived of the possibility of struggling on the basis of class positions. Here we are not dealing with a struggle begun under the leadership of a bourgeois formation, but capable of taking on a proletarian character because it is based on fundamental class demands. What we are dealing with is this: the workers have taken up a cause which not only is not their cause, but which is fundamentally opposed to their interests. There is no need to refute the vulgar arguments about the possible responsibilities of the workers or about the demonic abilities of the traitors. For us, the workers are discovering the impossibility of seeing the way to victory without a minority of the class forming the party. And this has happened because of the way capitalism has exploited, brutalized, and prevented them from achieving a consciousness of social reality and the road that leads to victory. The masses in their entirety can attain a perfectly conscious understanding of their role, but this can only happen in particular circumstances arising out of a historical situation, ie, during a revolution, when the maturation of consciousness makes victory possible under the leadership of the class party. The workers have never fought willingly for the traitors, for the Popular Front; they still believe that they are fighting for the defence of their own interests. It is only the particularities of the situation which have allowed the traitors to force into the hands of the masses a flag which is not their own the flag, the flag of the bourgeoisie.
The development of events so far seems to exclude the possibility of the Spanish workers affirming themselves along class lines. We will quite probably see the kind of heroic exploits that took place in 1932; they may be even more heroic, but unfortunately they will simply be part of a bloody social upheaval which has no chance of reaching the level of an insurrectional movement. At the time of writing there is no documentation at all on these events, but what allows us to put forward the political positions we do is the fact that there is an enormous disproportion between the arming of huge numbers of workers and the rare episodes of class struggle that have taken place. Very recently we have been able to read the appeals made by the Socialists and anarcho-syndicalists - appeals that seemed to have been listened to – asking the workers to go back to work in order to ensure the victory of the government.
These considerations allow us to assert that, even during the second phase of events when it will be a question of physically disarming the workers, a revolutionary perspective will not unfortunately be opened up. If the government wins it will be easy to root out the pockets of resistance formed by workers who don’t want to give up their aims; to massacre them like the Zamora and Azana-Caballero governments did in 1931-32 when the class as a whole was caught up in the intoxication of the anti-fascist victory. In the event of a right wing victory, news now coming out of the zones presently occupied by the generals shows quite clearly how they will go about massacring the revolutionary workers.
The positions we have put forward may lead some to accuse us of pessimism. The question of optimism or pessimism is of no interest for marxists unless it is based on class criteria. Thus for the proletariat, the greatest pessimist is he who quibbles most about the revolutionary perspectives opening up under the leadership of the Popular Front, because he is displaying the darkest pessimism with regard to the proletarian programme and the historic role of the workers. On the other hand the greatest optimist is he who bases himself solely on the politics of the working class and expresses not only distrust, but a ruthless opposition towards the traitors, even when they hide behind the scarlet mask of the ‘general armament of the proletariat’, It is well-known that Marx, even though an analysis of the epoch had led him to oppose insurrections in 1870 (see letter to Kugelmann), raised the flag for the defence of the Commune against all its democratic detractors and its republican and reactionary butchers. The proletarian struggle does not follow the pre-established schema of the academics, but is a result of the contradictory course of historical evolution. The present events in Spain, however wasteful they may appear to armchair revolutionaries, are nevertheless a step along the road towards the emancipation of the world proletariat. It will not be in vain that the heroic workers have fallen; it will not be in vain that the Spanish women and young girls have dedicated themselves to urging the workers to “storm the heavens” (Marx), making a vital contribution to the class struggle beside which all the proclamations of feminism pale into insignificance.
But apart from these considerations about the ultimate repercussions of current events, it is necessary to show on what basis the proletariat can move towards victory, and on what terrain the proletarian groupings who seek to act as the nuclei of the class party must struggle from now on. The dilemma for or against the Popular Front, however seductive it may seem in the present circumstances; the fear of a right wing victory which would lead to the extermination of the workers, however justified it may be for militants who have experienced the ferocious repression of fascism: none of this must make us forget that the proletariat cannot pose the problem in these terms, because capitalism is the only arbiter in the choice of its governmental personnel. The only way forward for the workers is to regroup on a class basis: to fight for partial demands, for the defence of conquests already made, while at the same time preparing for the moment when the development of events will make it possible to put forward the only real governmental solution: the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, to raise the slogan of insurrection when the conditions for it have ripened. Such an approach to the problem could certainly weaken the stability and the possibilities for success of the Popular Front government; but the right wing victory which would result from it would lead nowhere, because the proletariat would have at last constituted itself as a class and would be in a position to smash the forces of capitalist reaction once and for all. The proletariat would not then allow a repeat of what happened in Italy and more particularly in Germany, when the Socialists and centrists prepared the way for bloody repression by the Right. This position obviously has nothing in common with that which the centrists in Bulgaria defended in 1924 when they remained indifferent in the face of a struggle between two bourgeois factions. We have explained that the essence of this conflict is not the struggle between Franco and Azana but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and we conclude from this that the proletariat must intervene with all its strength in the present situation - but only on its own class terrain.
From the international point of view, the demonstrations of solidarity by workers of other countries can only link up with the struggle of the Spanish proletariat if they break with the Popular Front, which is calling for the intervention of the democratic armies in order to thwart the manoeuvres of the fascists. Such appeals are an excellent way of mobilizing the masses for war. These demonstrations of solidarity can only lead somewhere if they are directed against the respective bourgeoisies of each country. Our fraction is attempting such work among Italian emigres.
Finally, the bloody alarms issuing from Spain, where the workers are dying in the struggle for communism even if they find themselves under the banners of the Popular Front, are another warning to left communists in different countries of the need to constitute an international centre so that, after a profound discussion of the experiences of recent years, the basic premises for a new Revolutionary International can be laid down. Will this tragic lesson, learned at the cost of the lives of many Spanish workers, be the last one before the outbreak of a new world war? But even if capitalism can delay that fateful day there is no excuse for the inertia displayed by the various left communist groups in response to the initiatives of our fraction to begin the work of political clarification needed to lay the iron basis for an organization capable of leading the struggle of the working class towards the triumphs of the world revolution.
(Bilan, no. 33, July-August 1936)
The ‘Communists’ are making a bourgeois revolution! They want a great, prosperous, happy Spain. The bourgeoisie also wants it and the fascists wouldn’t say no to such a programme. As for a democratic Spain, that’s another kettle of fish. It is precisely democratic Spain - in so far as a capitalist country can still be democratic - that has developed the antagonisms between capital and labour that have led to the present Civil War. By talking about democracy, the ‘Communists’ hope to be able to stay silent about the class conflicts that are rending Spanish society. It is no less probable that the Spanish syndicalists and anarchists have an even clearer vision of the struggle now unfolding. For a long time the CNT and FAI (Iberian Anarchists Federation) have supported the petit-bourgeois government of the Catalonian Generalidad. They offer no programme for social transformation.
(Bilan, no. 33, July-August 1936)
* The Bilan texts have been translated from French.
1 The verb, gourer, in French means to be deceived or mistaken.
The theses and their introduction were written on 21 September, 1975, while points 6-8 of the last part of the theses date from 1 November. Since that date important events have taken place in Portugal which seems, at first glance, to totally contradict the perspective outlined in the thesis. Indeed since 25 November, following the mutiny of the parachutists at Tancos (who had recent1y been converted to ‘leftist’ politics), the government has vigorously taken the situation in hand and has totally eliminated from the wheels of state the faction which is put forward in the thesis as being the best adapted for taking over the defence of the national capital - that is, the COPCON/Carvalho faction. The pushing aside of Carvalho, Fabiao, Coutinho, the arrest of Dimis de Almeida, etc, signify that the extreme left has now lost what was its main strength: the control of the forces of repression and intervention. Although the Sixth Government remains practically unchanged, it is the right which now governs in Portugal to the extent that in the country it is the army really exercises power.
The fact that it was members of the extreme right - such as the commandos of Amadora and the National Republican Guard who ‘re-established order’ on 26 November and who have taken charge of the repression since then indicates the true colours of the present political power. The return in force of the Spinolist officers to the posts left vacant by leftists who have resigned or been put in prison and the freeing of a number of important agents of the ex-PIDE, confirm this trend.
Therefore what this present trend clearly demonstrates is the validity of the essential idea of the theses: “The Portuguese experience represents a setback for the political mechanism of classical democracy as a means of managing society, and as a means of integrating the working class”. (thesis no 4) In fact ‘democracy’ as represented essentially through the SP and the PPD - who dominate both the Constituent Assembly and the Azevedo government - can only ensure its survival with the assistance of the extreme right; and this deprives it of any possibility of mystifying the class and of any chance of controlling it except through open repression.
In Portugal the economic and political crisis is so catastrophic that there is no ‘middle of the road’ way of dealing with it. In order to force the working class to accept the terrible sacrifices which alone can stave off total bankruptcy, only extreme solutions can be envisaged: immediate, open repression by the extreme right a la Pinochet which is advocated by Spinola and, the commando leader Jaime Neves, or else the ‘leftist’ brand of containing the class, as outlined in the COPCON document of August, 1975.
For the moment, it is the first solution which seems to have won out. But Portugal is not Chile. Portugal is not a ‘far-off’', ‘exotic’ country where tens of thousands of workers can be massacred with no problems: on the one hand the proletariat in Portugal is more powerful than the proletariat in Chile; and on the other hand the European bourgeoisie is not ready to accept a premature civil war that would reveal the true stakes of the class struggle today. It is for this reason that the political solution which prevails in Portugal at the moment cannot last very long - although a gross error on the part of the bourgeoisie is always possible. With the reawakening of the proletarian struggle which has been paralyzed since the summer by the smokescreen of a leftist alternative, but which cannot fail to develop in the face of the austerity measures now being imposed, we will once again see the Portuguese bourgeoisie making use of its most ‘radical’ forms of government, which are the only ones capable of derailing the combativity of the workers.
3 January, 1976
IntroductionSince 21 September 1975 when the theses were written, the analysis contained in them has been confirmed by the course of events in Portugal.
* The inability of the Azevedo government to control the economic, social, political and military crisis has confirmed what was stressed in the theses: the increasing ineffectiveness of traditional forms of management of the bourgeois state and of the traditional means of integration and mystification of the working class. However, that inability has made it all the more urgent for the bourgeoisie to find a solution based upon the most left-wing faction of the army, in particular the supporters of COPC ON, and the use of different method of mystification of the working class, such as workers’ commissions and tenants committees.
* The fact that the sixth provisional government’s only success was to obtain aid from the EEC and the USA, despite the fact that its domestic policy was even more incapable of stabilizing the situation than that of the fifth government, confirms that the crisis of last summer was principally and temporarily, the result of problems of foreign policy. The choice of the principal protagonist in the attack against the pro-CP faction of the army, Melo Antunes, as Minister of Foreign Affairs tends to confirm this interpretation.
A new element which has emerged since then, and which falls within the perspective of these theses, is the appearance of the S.U.V. (Soldiers United Will Win) and soldiers committees. Although these are an expression of the decomposition of the entire social structure, they are in no way a revolutionary manifestation of the working class, unlike the soldiers’ committees of 1917-19. On the contrary, these organs are essentially instruments of democratization in the army, in order to make it more effective in its repression of the working class.
1. Events in Portugal provide a glaring illustration of the fact that in the period of' capitalist decadence there is no room for any real economic development in underdeveloped countries, even the strongest of them. A great colonial power, Portugal has not been achieved economic ‘take-off’ in the twentieth century, despite her large share of the imperialist cake. Thus on the eve of 25 April 1974 she had the distinction of being at one and the same time the poorest country in Europe, apart from Yugoslavia, and the last to hang on to her colonial possessions.
As a consequence of her economic weakness, Portugal granted independence to her colonies very slowly, which was in turn a severe handicap for Portuguese capital (because of the cost of arms expenditure, the cost of colonial administration, the four-year call-up of potentially productive workers, and political emigration) to the extent that in 1974 Portugal had most of the characteristics of a ‘Third World’ country:
- Annual income per head: $1250 (Compared with $1790 for Greece and $4900 for France.)
- An important agricultural sector employing 29% of the working population (France: 12%, U. K.: 3%).
- The archaic structure of the agricultural sector, which is basically composed of ‘latifundia’ and tiny smallholdings (less than 1% of agricultural holdings cover 39% of cultivated land; 92% cover 33% of cultivated land). In both cases output is extremely low.
- Modern industry is intensely concentrated in two areas, around Oporto and around Lisbon and Setubal. It exists side by side with archaic and uncompetitive small-scale industry (32,000 enterprises employ less than 100 people while only 156 employ more than 500).
2. The open crisis of capitalism which began around 1965-7 struck the Portuguese economy with its full force after 1973 because of:
- the structural weakness of the economy, which was becoming less and less competitive;
- the ever more crippling burden of the colonial wars;
- the unemployment which developed among emigrant workers, who on their return to Portugal, deprived the Portuguese economy of the foreign currency they had been sending home.
At the same time that the crisis was expressing itself in the highest rate of inflation in Europe, the class struggle which had died down after the wave of 1968-70 intensified again at an increasing rate until the beginning of 1974 (viz. struggles at Timex, Lisnave, TAP, etc.).
3. The coup of April 25th represented an attempt on the part of more enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie to put the national economy back in order, which could only be achieved:
- by the liquidation of colonial debts;
- by putting a check on the working class.
Only the army could be the executor of this policy, as practically the only organized force in the country (apart from the only legal party, the Salazarists). Furthermore the army:
- was directly confronted with the hopelessness of achieving a military solution in the colonies;
- had no particular connection with the specific capitalist interests associated with the regimes of Salazar and Caetano, and was thus able to see the interests of the entire national capital in a global context.
Although the first effects of the coup were compatible with the interests of ,the large private capitalists (Champlimaud, CUF, etc.), of which Spinola was the principal representative within the junta, the objective needs of a national economy embroiled in a catastrophic crisis led the army to take more and more state capitalist measure.
In any case, the army identified more readily with state capitalism, because:
- it was not directly linked to private property, especially since the colonial wars had necessitated the call-up of large numbers of the intellectual petty-bourgeoisie;
- its centralized, hierarchical and monolithic structure closely resembles that of state capitalism.
July 74, September 74 and March 75 marked a series of crises and attempted coups by anachronistic factions of the bourgeoisie.
But even if at first they expressed the resistance of the anachronistic bourgeois factions, all these crises finally led t he same conclusion, namely:
- the diffusion of a working class offensive (the strikes of May-June, August-September, and particularly the TAP movement of February March) by diverting the focus of discontent onto ‘fascists’ and ‘reactionaries’, whose importance was totally exaggerated.
- the reinforcement of economic and political state capitalist measures (reinforcement of the ‘left-wing’ of the AFM and the elimination of the ‘right-wing’ factions like that of Spinola; and nationalizations presented as ‘great victories’; agrarian reform, etc.)
Through these different crises the army took control of the state more and more openly, and the pro-CP faction of the army strengthened its position. The convergence of the positions of the army and the CP is explained by the fact that the CP is one of the most dynamic state capitalist tendencies, and also that at first it was one of the best weapons with which to attack the working class. This convergence was also an expression of an attempt made by Portuguese capital to free itself to some extent from the influence of the United States and the western bloc, through establishing relations with the Soviet bloc. Although the PCP like all Stalinist parties is above all a party representing the national interest, it is nevertheless the case that the world is divided up into imperialist blocs, and each nation must orientate itself towards one of these blocs. In this context, the PCP represents an attempt to steer Portuguese capital into the Russian orbit, or at least out of the American orbit.
4. Of all the objectives set by the coup of April 25th, only that of decolonialization was attained. And even here, the result was not particularly beneficial for Portuguese capital, since this basically came down to a withdrawal of Portuguese influence in favour of the great imperialist powers (especially in Angola, the richest colony). It led to the repatriation of half a million colonial residents who couldn’t possibly be integrated into the struggling home economy. In fact, despite the battery of state capitalist measures and bursts of ‘antifascist’ and ‘revolutionary’ demagogy from the government, the working class has not really been kept under control, nor enrolled in the ‘battle for production’, the constant war-cry of the Stalinists and their Intersyndical.
For Portuguese capital the basic problems posed by the coup of April 25th remain:
* How to revitalize the national economy.
* How to contain the working class.
The only possible solution, whatever the detours and hesitations on the way, lies in the increasing statification of the economy, and an ever increasing concentration of political and economic power. Only such a policy will be capable of preserving some sort of order in the economy - which like the whole of Portuguese society is in a state of anarchy, verging on disintegration - while at the same time being presented as ‘revolutionary actions’ to the proletariat the main enemy of capital.
Now more than ever the time is right for state capitalism in Portugal - which with the rest of the world is embroiled in ever increasing social and economic convulsions - and only those political groups which represent the most dynamic expression of this tendency have any future. Those which still cling to anachronistic forms of capitalism, or less developed forms of state capitalism, like the SP and the PDP, which are essentially based in the propertied petty-bourgeoisie, can only recede from the forefront of the political stage, along with the anachronistic political forms which they stand for (constituent elections, democratic parties).
In Portugal, as in most of the ‘Third World’, the army represents the chief executive power of state capitalism and the factions within the army which will play an increasingly important role is that which is the most concentrated, the most operational, and at the same time the clearest: that is, COPCON. Grouped around COPCON are the two other main state capitalist tendencies, the CP and the leftists, who one way or another are destined to play an important role as part of the state capitalist apparatus - since they represent the most important means for controlling the working class.
The Portuguese experience represents a setback for the political mechanism of classical democracy as a means of managing society and as a means of integrating the working class. It is as much a setback for parliamentary elections as a means of mystification as it is for the parties in their function as managers of the state. The army comes to represent the real power of the state and the parties become mere appendages of the army, following the army line. In the same way the unions show themselves to be more and more incapable of integrating a working class which has not been subjected to years of ‘democratic’ and union mystifications. In order to replace the old techniques as they become progressively more ineffective, the only solution for Portuguese state capitalism lies in direct enlistment of the class by the army in ‘grass-roots’ organizations such as ‘workers’ commissions’ and tenants’ and community organizations, whose function is to take responsibility for local administration and factory management. In place of the traditional parliamentary democracy, state capitalism increasingly substitutes ‘non-party’ forms of participation by the working class, which basically means participating in their own exploitation and oppression. As such, ‘self-management’ and ‘workers’ control’ will have an important role to play in Portugal, and this is exactly what is envisaged in the document put out by COPCON in August 75. These non-parliamentary forms are an objective necessity and hence power will necessarily be removed from the hands of SP and PDP. This means a strengthening of the tendency towards a state capitalism based on the integration of the working class through ‘grass-roots’ organs and a lesser dependence on traditional unionism. The ‘critical support’ of the leftists for the CP threatens to become the ‘critical support’ of the CP for the leftists.
5. On the basis of the above analysis it seems impossible to understand the present situation in Portugal. If one sees that the CP is better adapted to satisfy the real needs of the Portuguese economy than the SP, then it is hard to understand its retreat before the latter following the recent extended crisis. It would be easier to understand if the new government was more ‘left-wing’ than its predecessor instead of more ‘social-democratic’. This is not the case.
In fact it is in the long term that capitalism’s objective needs find expression in its economic and political forms. Capital will be forced to resort to the necessary forms of economic management and of mystification and integration of the working class, as well as to the political forces and organizations which are to be the executors or vehicles of these policies. But only in the term are these tendencies destined to emerge out of a whole series of seemingly contradictory convulsions. There are several reasons for this:
- Unlike the proletariat for whom control of society can only be a fully conscious activity, class prejudices prevent the bourgeoisie from reaching a real understanding of its political actions. Thus it is often forced to adopt the most suitable positions for the defence of its class interests only by way of manoeuvres and conflicts between its different factions which may have a greater or lesser awareness of the total class interest.
- There are ‘no holds barred’ in bourgeois politics. Today’s allies may be the adversaries of tomorrow. Strange alliances which seem to be ‘unnatural’ may be formed to deal with the needs of the moment, only to dissolve with the disappearance of those needs.
The depth of the present crisis is expressed throughout the world in the contradictory nature of the measures taken by the bourgeoisie in its attempts to overcome or shorten the crisis. This is true both with respect to economies where the inescapable alternative is between recession and inflation, and with respect to the different political ‘solutions’. Thus the contradiction between the necessity to use the leftists in an attempt to paralyse the working class offensive at the outset and the need to hold on to their ‘last card’; and the contradiction between the need on the one hand to strengthen the imperialist blocs - a need imposed by the heightening of inter-imperialist tensions as the crisis deepens - and on the other hand the growing need for an ‘anti-imperialist’ policy of ‘national unity’ capable of luring the class into support for the national capital. The bourgeoisie has to attend to its most urgent problems, and thus adopts a certain measure one day only to retract it the next day when other problems created by the measure itself become even more urgent. This is wily the deeper the crisis becomes, the more erratic and contradictory the political course taken by the country seems to be.
In order to understand this summer’s crisis and its ‘solution’, one has to take many different considerations into account - not only the long term interests of Portuguese capital, but also the more immediate needs.
In fact the real origin of the crisis lies not only in internal political conditions but equally in external conditions although it was the events at Republica which provided the detonator. Certainly the more the class struggle becomes a decisive factor in the determination of national policy, the more the latter develops in response to needs which arise internally. However, this does not mean:
* that the national needs arising from the international situation disappear;
* that they will not come to the forefront during a momentary lull in the class struggle as in July 1975.
At the beginning of July the faction of the AFM which was closest to the CP, led by Vasco Goncalves, was in an extremely powerful position, having a majority in the ‘real’ government - The Revolutionary Council - as well as in the civilian government. It had control over all means of communication and propaganda (especially through the 5th Division), and control of the unions (the Intersyndical). But this did not correspond to the needs of Portuguese capital on two counts:
* the power of the CP and its Intersyndicil was diminishing.
* Portugal had to abandon any idea of disengagement from the western bloc, either militarily or economically. Attempts to establish trade with Eastern Europe have come to nothing since the latter, with its own economy in a weak state, had little to offer Portugal. Thus the conditions attached to aid from the EEC, Kissinger’s public statements and the response of the USSR showed that Portugal’s place was within NATO and the western economy.
Even if the CP continues in part to represent the needs of state capitalism, it must necessarily lose its place at the centre of power in favour of another more ‘left-wing’ faction, less committed to a pro-Russian policy. Thus we have seen a struggle whose length and bitterness, as well as the disorder which it provoked throughout the country, have resulted in a shift in the balance of power between the three opposing forces: the remaining representatives of traditional capitalism, standing for ‘democracy’ and a pro-American orientation, who regrouped around the SP and the PDP and to some extent round the Antunes faction in the army; the Goncalves faction, with a pro-Russian orientation, which is based in the CP; and the COPCON faction which is supported by the leftists, with a ‘realistic’ foreign policy. (Their slogan is: “Against all imperialism, for national independence”.)
The crucial struggle has taken place within the army which is where the real power lies. And the Antunes faction, by calling for a pro-European orientatton has scored a victory over the Goncalves faction. The success of the Antunes document is the result of a coalition of all those forces hostile to Goncalves for whatever reason, i.e. on the basis of both internal and foreign policy. The momentary success of the Antunes faction, which has been brought about by particular circumstances, has given it a powerful position in the AFM, in which it has become the dominant force at the expense of the CP/Goncalves faction (the latter however still retains some of its former power.) The COPCON/Carvalho faction has remained neutral, and remains the clearest about the real needs of Portuguese capital.
In fact, the ‘victory’ of the SP and the PDP is merely an expression of the immediate needs of Portuguese capital with regard to foreign policy, and of a shift in the balance of power within the CP faction. It cannot hide the following facts:
- that the struggle in the army is still decisive. The army retains all real power, despite recurrent talk of ‘restoring’ the constitution.
- that there is no alternative path than toward state capitalism.
- that the problems posed by foreign policy which were at the centre of much of the recent conflict (cf Antunes’ document) will not retain such central importance after a resurgence of class struggle.
- that the present government has practically no weapons with which to mystify the working class.
In fact, the COPCON/Carvalho faction, at once the strongest militarily and the clearest politically, has merely made use of ‘democratic’ factions in order to weaken the CP. As far as possible it has avoided doing the job itself (with the exception of the occupation by COPCON of units of the 5th Division, and the letter from Carvalho to Goncalves ‘amicably’ urging him to resign). Such caution is explained by the fact that the Carvalho faction will need the support of the CP to be able to govern effectively and cannot put this necessary alliance at risk by attacking the CP too openly.
While expressing ‘very critical support’ for the present government, the Carvalho faction can let the government and the political forces which dominate it (Antunes, the SP and PDP) assume responsibility for the drastic austerity measures which Portuguese capital must urgently take. Thus the power of these forces can only be eroded in favour of that of the Carvalho faction .
Consequently the present government will not remain in office for long and fairly soon the solution foreseen by COPCON and the leftists will be the order of the day: a military government using a ‘popular national assembly’ of representatives of various ‘grass-roots’ organisations whose function will be to contain the working class.
6. Because Portugal is situated on the edge of Europe and because it is of relatively minor economic importance, Portugal is not destined to play a fundamental role in the coming class confrontations. Nevertheless, at the moment, economic and political problems have been posed more acutely there than anywhere else in Europe on account of Portugal’s inherent social instability. To this extent Portugal is a testing ground for the different weapons to be used by the bourgeoisie against the world proletariat and, thus, provides a very rich field of analysis for the developing consciousness of the working class. These are the essential lessons of the events in Portugal:
* State capitalist measures remain the only possible response of capitalism to the present crisis, both to prevent complete disintegration of the economy and to mystify the working class. The present situation confirms capitalism’s need to develop a means of containing the working class within a political structure with which the class can identify as much as possible. This is the only means capitalism has of enforcing its ‘discipline’.
* The mystifications of ‘anti-fascism’ remain capitalism’s most effective weapon and it will use such mystifications wherever possible. The role of revolutionaries is to mercilessly denounce such mystifications and all who propagate them.
* The present situation in Portugal has made clear that where they are not already fully developed, the traditional means for integrating the working class are quickly transcended as the class struggle deepens. This phenomenon has already been witnessed historically in Russia in 1917. But the present impotence of such institutions in Portugal indicates that such a phenomenon has a general significance for the class struggle and was not merely the product of specifically Russian conditions. For fifty years these institutions have existed not on the basis of the historic function for which they were created, but purely and simply as a means of mystification; however, they are now unable to completely fulfill the latter function. The parties associated with these out-model forms of mystification, that is the SP and the CP, have themselves been weakened. Having performed their essential tasks for capital in the period of deepest counter-revolution, they are not necessarily well-equipped to cope with the new resurgence of working class struggle.
* Faced with the diminishing effectiveness of traditional forms of mystification and learning itself from the Portuguese example, world capitalism will increasingly attempt to take over forms of struggle which the working class itself has developed, and turn them into weapons to be used against the workers. This represents no more than a return to a tactic decadent capitalism has already found most useful: the recuperation of working class forms of struggle and working class organizations which it dare not attack frontally. This was the fate of the unions years ago. Later, workers’ councils, thrown up by the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, suffered the same fate. With the resurgence of the class struggle these methods will again be made use of on a wide scale by the bourgeoisie and revolutionaries themselves must be careful not to be deluded by fake ‘workers’ councils’ or ‘soviets’.
* No doubt the world bourgeoisie, taking its cues from the current situation in Portugal, will adopt on a wide scale the policy of co-option of ‘workers’ councils’ and use them as instruments of ‘self-management’ and ‘workers control’. This policy has the following advantages for capitalism in:
- that it seems to be a more ‘left wing’ variety of state capitalism.
- that it provides a means to prop up a host of failing sectors of capitalism, which are themselves the inevitable product of the crisis.
Thus, in place of the traditional parliamentary and syndicalist forms of participation through which society is indirectly ‘controlled’, workers will be called upon more and more to participate directly in their own exploitation and oppression.
* On a more general level, it is obvious that the autonomous activity of the class can only manifest itself in factory organizations and workers’ councils, and that only these can survive as organs in the service of the class. These organized bodies are not simply ‘forms’ of no importance in themselves as the Bordigists claim. However, contrary to what the councilists think, the mere existence of workers’ councils and factory committees does not automatically make them a form of activity which coincides with the interests of the class. In 1918, the experiences of the German workers’ councils, among others, have already indicated this. The situation in Portugal tends to confirm this today - not with respect to those commissions which are simply created by the leftists, but to those which arose spontaneously in the course of class struggle. It is, therefore, not enough for revolutionaries to complacently eulogize these autonomous organs, but it remains their fundamental task to defend communist positions within them, so that such factory committees and workers’ councils can develop into real expressions of working class struggle.
* From the above it is clear that the various ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ leftist factions, which are less tied to the traditional forms of integration of working class struggle into capitalism than the official left wing parties, are destined to play a fundamental role in discrediting these parties when they are not powerful enough to supplant them altogether.
Here again the role of revolutionaries will be to denounce all these tendencies as forcefully as possible and to clearly demonstrate to the working class the repugnant function such groups will continue to perform for capitalism.
The resort to ‘grass-roots’ and other ‘popular’ forms of organization as a means to integrate the working class struggle, in addition to the 1eftists rise to prominence, will progressively pose in turn for capitalism the problem that these methods of mystification will lose effectiveness the more capitalism has recourse to them. This will then open up the possibility of the proletariat gaining a clearer understanding of its real class interests. The exhaustion of the traditional means of mystification is already well-advanced in Portugal today; in future this will become a generalized tendency operating at varying rates throughout the world. As a result of this, the perspective for the autonomous organization of the class, struggling for its historic interests and in so doing directly confronting the bourgeoisie, arises. This fact must be fully understood by revolutionaries so that, both with respect to organization and intervention, they are able to fulfill the responsibilities such a perspective places upon them.
(Issued at the founding conference of the group Internationalisme, Belgian section of the International Communist Current)
After several months of discussion leading to an agreement about class frontiers, about the fundamental political positions which have come out of the proletarian struggle, three groups - Revolutionnaire Raden Socialisten (Antwerp), Vrije Raden Socialisten (Ghent) and Journal des Lutte de Classe (Brusselles) - decided to dissolve themselves as separate groups to form a single organization in Belgium called Internationalisme.
In the present period of acute crisis, which will lead either to the proletarian revolution or the prolongation of capitalist barbarism into a third world war, the task of revolutionaries is to aid the constitution of a centralized organization at an international level in order to help generalize communist struggles and revolutionary consciousness within the working class.
The conference considering that:
- the destruction of capitalism as a transitory mode of production is the work of the proletariat itself, the only class which is both able and compelled to overthrow capitalism
- in this task the proletariat has no other weapons but its consciousness and its ability to organize
- the political organization of the proletariat contributes to the development of consciousness within the class and the workers’ councils – the expression of its unity - are the instruments for the seizure of power and the wielding of its dictatorship
- the destruction of capitalism is not a local or a national problem but involves all the countries of the world because capitalism is a world system and the proletariat a world class; this demands the theoretical and practical co-operation of the most advanced revolutionary forces
CALLS on all revolutionaries and revolutionary groups who agree on the basic class frontiers to regroup themselves around a coherent revolutionary pole organized on a world scale. It is towards the constitution of this pole that the greatest efforts of the groups who make up the International Communist Current are dedicated. Thus we call on all revolutionaries who understand their responsibilities to their class to unite their efforts with, and around the ICC, and to organize themselves in order to make it an indispensable weapon for the triumph of the communist revolution.
Long live the world revolution!
The International Communist Current greets the formation of a unified group in Belgium and the integration of this group into the ICC. The ICC sees these developments as an outgrowth of the deepening international crisis felt more and more strongly each day by revolutionaries who are trying to regroup their forces nationally and internationally so as to be able to assume their responsibilities more fully in the international struggle of the proletariat.
The formation of the section in Belgium is particularly significant for several reasons:
* the importance of this highly industrialized country whose proletariat has a long tradition in the struggle of the class
* the central geographic location of Belgium at the crossroads of Europe
* the inclusion of the important Flemish working class sector of the country whose language will enable the ICC to extend its work towards Holland, Scandinavia and Germany.
The ICC is convinced of the important role that the section in Belgium will play in the overall framework of the Current’s work.
The ICC considers that revolutionaries should give particular attention to the experience of the unification process of the groups in Belgium. The attitude of the Belgian militants during this entire process was based on a genuine revolutionary will and an awareness of the need for an organized regroupment of revolutionary forces on the basis of fundamental revolutionary principles.
The entire ICC should carefully consider this rich and positive experience when following through its work towards the international regroupment of revolutionaries This experience is an illustration of the need to overcome localistic tendencies, to go beyond the false alternatives of sterile monolithism or empirical eclecticism which come from the long period of counter-revolution and which weigh heavily on revolutionary elements today.
Resolution adopted by the ICC
November, 1975
The following letter was written to a group in Argentina which is based on the conceptions of the Situationist International. In criticizing some of the articles and documents sent to us by this group from the first issue of their forthcoming magazine, Diversion, we have been led to deal with what has been called ‘Situationism’.
Situationism was the most radical expression of the student movement which shook the main western countries at the end of the sixties as a reaction to the first signs of the world economic crisis.
By calling for the “end of the university”, the radical destruction of the bourgeois state with its unions, Stalinist, Trotskyist and other such ‘workers’ parties’, by calling for the “international power of the workers’ councils”, situationism marked a break with university leftism which wanted the ‘modernization’ of the university, a ‘democratic government’ formed by the ‘workers’ parties’ of capital and a ‘revolution’ which to them meant a state capitalist regime.
But the Situationist International did not live beyond the moment which brought it to the heights of glory. With the end of ‘student protest’, the Situationist International dissolved into a series of splits and mutual exclusions over the issues which defined their specific tendency: the problems of petty bourgeois intellectual who is sincerely against capitalist society but incapable of seeing humanity’s problems except through the problems of his own isolated individual-ness…….the problems of the ‘misery of everyday life’. Like the utopian socialists of the 19th century with whom they were so anxious to claim a link, the situationists were unable to recognize the working class as the only revolutionary force in society; they ended up burning themselves out in the petty, self-centred dead-end of the search for self ‘disalienation’.
However, because of their positions against the unions, parliamentarism, frontism, nationalism and state capitalism presented as socialism, situationism is still capable of sowing illusions among certain small groups who are trying to become an active factor in the communist revolution. But situationism, this theory of the rebellious petty bourgeoisie, because of its lack of' understanding of the basis of Marxism – economic determinism and the rejection of any possibility of revolutionary activity except through the historical struggle of the working class -- is today, just as it was seven years ago, a reactionary impasse for any effort towards revolutionary activity.
This is what we wanted to make clear in this letter to Diversion.
Maria Teresa’s and Daniel’s letter starts by saying: “the struggle that we have begun against the old world, making moments which aren’t dead, enters a new phase. The spectacular commodity society fragments itself and loses strength in this historic period. Diversion appears and becomes stronger all the time.”
Gradually, your reader realizes that he doesn’t actually understand what is being said. Therefore he carefully continues to read the rest, to the end, looking for some clues. But on reaching the last paragraph the only conclusion that he can arrive at is, that if he doesn’t get the point, it’s a result of the incoherence and lack of clarity of the ideas themselves.
Let’s look at the letter section by section.
The subject of historyIn the last paragraph we read about “the consistent pursuit of the realization of the international power of the workers’ councils.” And, in the first line you mention: “the struggle that we have begun against the old world” (our emphasis). Who is “we”? If you think that “the international power of the workers’ councils” is a present historic goal, a moment in the struggle against the old world, you would logically think that the real subject of this struggle can only be the working class. (Unless, as for Leninists of all descriptions, what is meant is that such international power will be given to the working class by another class or by a group of individuals. We assume this is not what you mean.)
But then, it would be reasonable to ask why is it that the working class is not mention in the rest of the text? Why is there no mention of the past century and a half of workers’ struggles? Why is there no mention, not even the slightest hint, of all the experiences acquired at such cost by the working class throughout its struggle against the old world, the capitalist world?
If you’re really convinced that the working class is the subject of history in present-day society, the phrase “the struggle that we have begun against the old world” can only be understood as: “the struggle that the working class has begun against the old world for more than a century and a half”.
Reading on, however, we can’t understand the following phrase: “the making of moments which aren’t dead.” Do you believe that the struggle waged by the working class since its birth as a class constitutes a “making of moments which aren't dead”? Perhaps what you mean by “moments which aren’t dead” are 'moments of “real life”; in other words, moments in which human beings, or for us, workers, can develop their capacities in a harmonious and infinite way.
But, only hopeless reformists can believe that this is possible “momentarily” and within this society. First, to think that you can “make” or construct anything worthwhile within this society is the basic lie of all reformists. The reality defended by revolutionaries is that the working class must begin by destroying this society so that humanity can begin to construct something human. The proletarian revolution has the specificity of being the first revolution in history that is the task of an exploited class. In other words, contrary to what happened in the past, there’s no possibility for the development of the new society from within the old one (as was the case for feudalism developing within slave society or for the bourgeoisie from within the feudal realm). In capitalism there’s no possibility of a political or economic compromise between the ruling class and the revolutionary class, since the revolution is not a confrontation between two exploiting classes, but one between an exploiting class and an exploited class.
Thus, you are defending a perfectly reformist and unfortunately banal conception when you assert: “The falsity of separating manual and mental labour must be exposed within ourselves. Our experience has shown us that on the way to our becoming human we must develop ALL our abilities; we must be equally able to solder a pipe or fix a kitchen as we are able to master other languages or cure with traditional medicines (Indian massage, herbs, acupuncture, etc).”
The division between manual and mental labour is neither right nor wrong. It’s a necessity in present society, just as its dissolution will be in the future society. The elimination of such a division isn’t an individual problem because its existence isn’t either, and never was. When we eliminate this problem, we will do it on a global scale because that’s the only way to do it. It’s elimination corresponds to an objective need and hence is possible. It’s a sad and barren illusion to believe that by “soldering pipes” in between reading philosophy books we will have eliminated the division between manual and mental labour! The proletariat doesn’t struggle to create illusory individual moments during which this division may disappear. On the contrary it struggles for the creation of the real and concrete material conditions (its political dictatorship exercised through the international workers’ councils), which will allow it to begin to lay the foundations of a new society in which this division could and should disappear; not momentarily, but definitely.
Secondly, what constitutes the motor force of class action and therefore of the working class, is not specifically a “critique of everyday life”, or the search for “undead moments”. In present society, as well as in all previous societies, everyday life always has been inhuman, not only for the exploited classes but for all men. It’s true that all men look, in the final analysis, for ways of bettering and rendering human their everyday life; it’s also true that the proletarian revolution will bring the greatest change to everyday life in human history, to the bourgeoisie as much as to the workers. (Individuals who today are bourgeois will become much more human and happier in the future society.) But, why does the bourgeoisie struggle for the preservation of present society, and the proletariat for its destruction? From the standpoint of “everyday life” this reality is totally incomprehensible. Furthermore, if the fight against the alienation of everyday life is logically taken to be the motor force of revolutionary struggle, we would have to reach these conclusions:
1. Revolution is not an activity of classes of people defined by their economic situation in the process of production, but rather it is a question which more or less alienated individuals pose for themselves. (It’s not an accident that in your texts, as in those of the International Situationists, “classes” are almost never mentioned.)
2. The most revolutionary individuals would be the petty-bourgeois intellectuals because their lives are most “unreal” and their personal worries are most closely concerned with ideas of boredom and meaninglessness. (Being a social group without a real position in the productive process, they are the most prone to existential anxieties characteristic of a class wit neither a historic future nor past.)
It is also not a coincidence that you write that “the possibility of realizing humanity’s history resides in the insoluble link of the struggles of those groups which want to be revolutionary and the unending movement (in present-day prehistory) of the wrathful declassed: it resides in the sum total of their talents and wills combatting the dominant spectacle.”
If you want to believe, as anarchists do, that human history is the result of the “sum total of the talents and wills” of individuals who “want” this or that, and of the “declassed”, that’s up to you. But then why do you speak of the “international power of the workers’ councils”? The power of workers’ councils presupposes the workers organized as a class. To say that this power is the path towards a society without classes means that the achievement of human history resides in the struggle of the working class.
The framework provided by a critique of “everyday life” may appear seductive insofar as it seems to offer a global critique of all existing states (Russia, China, or the US) without necessitating the dry task of demonstrating economically and scientifically that they are all forms of capitalism in greater or lesser evolution towards the most decadent form of the system: state capitalism. But in reality the critique of everyday life finally engulfs everything (all classes, all historic epochs) and in so doing it ends up in engulfing nothing, since it is an empty phrase merely hiding the essential (the class struggle), and must lead its proponents to waste their time in writing treatises about the “perfectly, self-made, free man”.
Thirdly, “the path to becoming human” that you talk about, and that all individuals (regardless of their class origins) should search for, cannot be an individual path of “self-purification” or “individual self-unalienation”. To be human is to consider oneself human, that is as an integral part of humanity and therefore it consists, above all, in considering human history as your own, in integrating yourself as a conscious and active factor in the historic march of humanity.
In this moment, in this last stage of “humanity’s prehistory”, “the kingdom and dominion of necessity”, the “history of humanity continues to be the history of class struggle” and thus, to be human means to be an active factor in the struggle of a class the revolutionary class: the struggle of the working class for the defence of its specific interests which today become one with the interests of humanity as a whole.
Ideas aren’t the product of other ideas - they stem from men’s social practice. In a class society revolutionary ideas are and can only be the product of the historical practice of the revolutionary class.
When you speak in your text about what a revolutionary organization should be (almost the whole text is dedicated to this problem), and what convictions revolutionaries should uphold, there’s no mention of the historical practice of the revolutionary class. Therefore the text is purely ideological (in the worst sense of the word). Instead of starting with the historical practice of the class prior to discussing the revolutionary organization, which is one of its instruments, so that you can understand what revolutionaries should be and how they should act in accordance with their organization’s real and global function; you do the exact opposite. Instead of following a really materialist analytic sequence you approach the question in an idealist fashion. (What Marx criticized in his Theses on Feuerbach, calling it “intuitive” or “vulgar” materialism.) Such a standpoint solely begins with the individual, considered separately from social practice, that is, outside classes.
Thus, while the world working class is awakening after fifty years of triumphant counter-revolution, stronger than ever throughout the four corners of the planet, but hampered nonetheless by half a century of Stalinist, Social Democratic, and trade union inspired confusion, along with nationalism and all the other poisonous lies distilled by capital; as the class confronts the arduous task of re-appropriating its historical revolutionary experience, you waste three-quarters of your first publication and your own time on recipes for “self-unalienation” - pipe welding, Indian herbs, and other “diversions” of your everyday triviality.
It is especially important to denounce all those who attempt to identify state capitalism with socialism, all those for whom “the revolution” does not imply a radical change in all human relations. However, to base our critique of them on the latter aspect is of secondary importance and introduces confusion since it deviates attention from the essential thing, the class struggle. The European Social Democrats, especially the French, understand this: their favourite slogans over the past few years have been: “Transform life” and “Self-managed Socialism”. This is not just pure demagogy. The first slogan dilutes the proletariat in an indistinguishable soup - the “people”. In other words, the proletariat is submerged among all other classes because ‘life-style’ politics pose problems and their solutions at an individual level. The second slogan seeks to lock up the working class within its factories, urging it to play at “managing its own exploitation”, its own misery, as capital continues to hold the reigns of central power before a self-divided, self-castrated class. The experience of 1920 in Italy where the working class allowed itself to be imprisoned within the factories playing at self-exploitation, while Giolitti (who didn’t even interrupt his holidays) and his government with the support of the trade unions and the assistance of the police, peacefully took over whole cities, is a clear example of the meaning and danger of the entire self-management critique, and with it the critique of everyday life.
The only subject of history in the present epoch is the proletariat, the working class. Therefore, every ideology and every conception that does not adopt as its central axis the revolutionary struggle of the working class places itself outside history, beyond the real terrain of revolution. It is on account of this that these ideologies can so easily become counterrevolutionary instruments.
The present historical periodLet us return to your first paragraph since the essential weaknesses of the text can be found condensed there. You assert that “The struggle ... against the old world ... enters a new phase. The spectacular commodity society fragments and weakens itself in this historical period .... DIVERSION appears and becomes stronger all the time.”
In leaving aside the question of diversion, which you define as “the transcendence of the separation between play and everyday life” since a critique of that concept has already been sketched earlier in this letter, we will also not deal with your calling capitalism “a spectacular commodity society”. We think that the concept of “spectacle”, as defined by the International Situationists, is confusing enough, and the concept of a “spectacular commodity society” rather than making more precise the historical specificity of present-day society (in other words what distinguishes it from all other social forms in history) doesn’t do anything but dilute it.
Ignoring these two points, we are in total agreement with the idea that the historical struggle of the working class today enters a “new phase” and that capitalist society “divides itself and weakens its forces”. However, this doesn’t go beyond, today, the banal confirmations that even appear on the front page of Time magazine. The important thing to know is first, why this is happening, and why today? And secondly what does this “new phase” of revolutionary struggle consist of? These questions are either not answered by your texts or they are answered incorrectly. Concerning the first question: “Why capitalist society fragments and weakens its forces?” - generally, the only answer that you provide is to be found in the comic strip title, “Dialectics of the state, dialectics of putrefaction”. The “superhero” of the comic says, “It is enough to have the least regression- a speck of sand in the system - for the crisis to explode, or better stated, for the immediate reality of the system to be unmasked. And on the slightest pretext: economic recession, police brutality, football hooliganism, settlement of debts - social violence will regain its course.”
What is “social violence”? Is it the exploitation and daily oppression of capitalism? The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat? Terrorism of desperate individuals or that of factions of the bourgeoisie struggling for power? Let’s suppose that you do mean the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat against the old order (so that the following phrase in the comic strip gains some sense): “The moment has not come ...to consciously enlist oneself in work favouring the evolution of the world revolution.”(?) Given that you are talking about the class struggle, the notion contained in the comic strip is historically false.
For many decades, the pretexts that you talk about have occurred either dozens of times (economic recessions), or thousands of times (football hooliganism), or millions of times (the settlement of debts); yet no revolutionary struggle has “regained its course”. Where do you get the idea that it is enough to have a slight relapse for the permanent crisis in which society finds itself to explode? What world are you talking about? the world of science fiction, the comic strip, or the one we’re living in today?
For one individual taken in isolation, an awareness of the crisis which society has endured for more than fifty years can be provoked by anything: rebellion against parents, love problems, religious crises, reading, etc…... But it is absurd to confuse such a personal world with the real, social world individual life is determined by social life, but the life of society is not, as idealism would have it, the product of the sum total of individual lives.
The proletarian revolution has already erupted more than once in history. And those who don’t have a total ignorance of it, know that what makes it erupt as a definite movement, is a sufficiently profound economic crisis, a necessary but not sufficient condition for revolution. Only the economic crisis forces all classes (groups of men defined not by their ideas, nor by their colour of skin, nor by their traditions, but above all by their position in the social process of production), and particularly the proletariat, to attempt to struggle according to their specific interests. The economic crisis is proof of the need for society to be reorganized differently, since the economy remains even today the skeleton of society.
Secondly, a sufficient condition for revolution is that the class struggle at the beginning of a period of crisis does not find itself in a situation of historical defeat, as happened between 1929 and 1946, when the world working class was under the heel of the triumphant counter-revolution, from Moscow to Madrid, Canton to Berlin and Turin. These are general conditions that can be deduced from a century and a half of the historical experience of workers’ struggles. These are the conditions for the open eruption of the proletarian revolution - but these are not conditions for victory in themselves. Victory depends on a thousand other factors that are part of the development of the balance of class forces between the proletariat and capital. However, this is not the subject under discussion at the moment.
One should, in any case, make clear that the conditions for the explosion which will allow the proletarian revolution “to regain its course” have nothing to do with the “slight pretexts” that you talk about. According to your conception of social revolution, the strength of revolution is always, eternally present, ready to demolish the old world in the name of the new - a conception not unlike that of the primitive Christians who longed so much for a communist world.
On what do you base your idea of the necessity for, and the possibility of, the world proletarian revolution? On the wide-scale existence of injustice? Too much alienation in everyday life? May 68 in France, the hot autumn of 69 in Italy, December 70 in Poland, the struggles at El Ferrol, Pamplona or Valladolid in Spain, the generalized wild cat strikes in England in 72, the struggles in Cordoba and Mendoza in Argentina, etc - do you honestly believe that they were produced by a sudden rebirth globally of the idea of “justice” in itself? Do you believe that it is a mere accident that workers’ struggles developed throughout the world just as the capitalist economy began to enter a new crisis (second half of the 60s)? The waning of prosperity produced by the reconstruction period following World War II was aggressively announced by the “reconstructed” countries, which had ceased to be markets for American commodities, and were beginning to demand export markets for their own.
Today, capitalism once more completes the cycle in which it has lived since World War I: crisis, war, reconstruction, crisis .... Faced with the crisis, decadent capitalism flounders and will increasingly flounder. Humanity today has only two ways out: the proletarian solution, a revolution which will destroy the capitalist system and establish socialism, thus bringing to an end the prehistory of humanity; or the capitalist solution, if the proletariat is defeated, consisting of a third world war which would give way again to the cycle of reconstruction containing a perspective of a new crisis posing once again the same problem.
If today, one can say that the alternative is once more “socialism or barbarism”, it is not because some eternal principle of “justice” guides the course of human progress and can be opposed to capitalism. History has not only taught us but confirms today that the economic crisis of the capitalist system imposes the barbarism of imperialist war and generalized destruction while at the same time bringing to the forefront the reaction of one of the exploited classes, the working class. Because the working class is exploited and is the collective producer class it carries within itself in its opposition and resistance to capitalist exploitation and oppression the socialist solution - the new society.
Only by beginning from this perspective can present world events be understood, and it is only from within this framework that one can seriously pose an international revolutionary perspective.
In fact, the point of this discussion with you is essentially to establish whether or not you are marxists. The Situationist International, which inherited to a great extent the traditions of Socialism or Barbarism, was not. However, it never dared to answer openly. More often it amused itself by replying with jokes, “pseudo-hoodwinkings for pseudo-initiates”, such as “Marx was the founder of the SI in 1864”, or “Just like Marx, we’re not marxists.”
Just like Socialism or Barbarism, the SI forms part of the payment that the revolutionary movement has had to make to the Stalinist counter-revolution and to the worst swindle in history, which claims that marxism is the theory of State capitalism.
Today we have to re-appropriate the experience of our class - and marxism forms an essential and integral part of that experience. But in order to do so, it is first necessary to abandon certain peurile attitudes, particularly the one that seeks to define what is revolutionary by symmetrically opposing it to that which is counter-revolutionary.
Proletarian theory, revolutionary conceptions, is not symmetrically opposed to the counter-revolution. Revolutionary conceptions are the result of the historical practice of the revolutionary class.
To break with the revolutionary tradition of militancy because Stalinism created a militancy that answered its counter-revolutionary needs; to break with the idea of the party because all present parties are bourgeois; to break with the experience of the Russian proletariat in 1917, and with the Bolshevik Party because the latter ended up in the counter-revolution in Russia - indeed, these attitudes are symmetrical to the counter-revolution.
The struggle of the working class is distinguished from that of other exploited classes because the proletariat is the only class that can affirm itself positively, in that it provides a solution, a real future in historical terms. Other strata in society (small petty traders, small peasants, etc) can only arrive at - in the best of cases - a purely negative rebellion; they are against the evolution of capitalism but cannot put forward an alternative social evolution. In this sense only the proletariat can generate a true conception of the world which is truly autonomous from the dominant ideology. Only the proletariat can truly negate capitalism, since it is the only class- which can transcend it.
We must place ourselves within this perspective and not within a simple one to one opposition to the counter-revolution.
As for the second question: the struggle of the proletariat is entering a new phase. What is the new phase? Your answer is once again to be found in the comic strip. Your superhero says, “If the proletariat doesn’t dissolve itself quickly, thereby ending class society, ending this society of survival, ending the system of the spectacular commodity, ending any sort of political domination; if the proletariat doesn’t create generalized self-management and social harmony by means of the inter-action of autonomous assemblies, we run the risk that the evil necessity of survival will bring back the conditioned reflex of death.”
“If the proletariat doesn’t dissolve itself quickly” - what are we to make of that? It is true that the disappearance of a society divided into classes would bring about the dissolution of the proletariat. But this is not the beginning of the revolutionary struggle. On the contrary, it is its final consequence. To eliminate classes implies not only the destruction of the power of the bourgeoisie but also the elimination of all that remains of the capitalist economy and in particular, commodity production, which in turn implies the elimination on a global scale, of all exchange. This particularly implies a society of abundance in all parts of the world, something which will only be possible after a certain period of time during which the producers themselves will control the means of production.
The period of transition between capitalism and communism is none other than that period during which the condition of the proletariat is extended to include the whole world population. This will not be accomplished by the self-dissolution of the proletariat into the other social strata, but on the contrary, by the integration of the latter into the ranks of the proletariat. The proletariat will cease to exist, not because the proletarians of today decide overnight not to be proletarians any more, but because the whole population is integrated into the working class. The process of proletarian dissolution is thus the same as the process of its generalization: when the whole world population is the proletariat, only then is the proletariat dissolved.
This process is a conscious political and economic process. And its goal is the end of all politics and economics.
In order to dissolve classes the proletariat must begin by creating the concrete means to do so, and the first of these means is nothing less than its taking political power and exercising its dictatorship. For this reason, in order to ultimately negate itse1f, the proletariat must begin by first affirming itself as a class, as an autonomous force with regard to the rest of the social strata in society, as it is the only truly revolutionary force. The phase which the proletarian struggle is entering today, is not, therefore, one consisting of “the rapid dissolution of the proletariat”, but rather one in which the proletariat is becoming conscious of its own class interests, of the need to act like a united world class, autonomous from the rest of society. Within the proletariat there is an increased consciousness of the fact that today it constitutes the class that carries on its shoulders the future of humanity.
From the standpoint of organization, the present phase of the proletarian movement consists in the workers learning to organize themselves in their own assemblies and co-ordinating them by means of councils of elected and revocable delegates (elected and revocable on the widest possible scale), outside of and against the trade unions. Concerning “generalized self-management”, we have already mentioned the dangers of this type of ideology. If there is any task for revolutionaries today, it is that of denouncing all the lies that the bourgeoisie, world-wide, is currently attempting to use against the proletariat. Lies used to make the proletariat accept the management of a bankrupt system, the better to divide the class by caging the workers in the factories. Lies, which above all deviate the consciousness of the proletariat from its political goal, the taking of power, and its historical struggle.
Every criticism carries within it the danger of caricaturing the idea that is being criticized. We hope that in this letter we have not done so. If we have, it results from the necessity to carefully scrutinize what is being analysed, not because we wished to raise red herrings in order to be rid of you. Naturally, like anybody else, we too dislike wasting our time.
Also, we hope that any polemical tone that may have inadvertently, but perhaps inevitably, entered this letter will not constitute an obstacle to further discussion. We await your answer - the sooner the better.
The years we are living in today are of the type Marx used to say encompass whole epochs - as you say in your letter, “to be revolutionary is to tread in the path of reality”.
Communist greetings,
R. Victor for the ICC
(This letter is translated from the Spanish.)
The following text is a letter adressed to the swedish group, Arbetarmakt, (workers power league) in the context of our Current's long-standing effort towards international discussion and contact.
Arbetarmakt recently published a text in English summarising the political orientation defended in its swedish newspaper. This text reflects a curious mixture of positive aspects of the “councilist tradition and certain marked “Third-Worldism”. Such a mixture is not as surprising as it seem among those who claim to be followers of the Dutch left today as we have shown in a previous article directed against the conceptions of Daad en Gedachte. (See Councilism comes to the aid of Third-Worldism in International Review no 2)
However the orientation text of Arbetarmakt presents a definite interest to the extent that it is expresses an effort towards political clarification which is going on in this group as it is in many others today. We hoped to contribute to this process by our letter.
Although we have not yet received a reply we feel that our letter will be of general interest to our readers in that it deals questions such as “national liberation”, state capitalism, etc and so we are publishing it here.
The “Presentation” text of Arbetarmakt was written to define the political orientation which your defends in class struggle. It makes important points about the meaning of workers councils, the experience of the working classs in history, about the need to denounce the left of capital and the so-called “socialist” regimes. You stand for the self-activity of the working class, against the “Leninist” idea of the party while seeing the neec for the organisation of revolutionaries in our time heightened class struggle. With all this our Current is in most profound agreement as you can see from our publications.
We would however, like to comment on some aspects of your platform which we feel need further clarification.
Your document seems to offer no explanation or mention of the economic crises which is plaguing rhe capitalist world today, east and west. The capitalist system, like all previous forms of social organisation based on exploitation, it is not an eternal system. It is being torn apart by the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the narrow limit of the socail relations which the capitalist laws have imposed. Throughout the major part of the 20th century, capitalism has repeated the horrenduos cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction-crisis demonstrating its historical bankruptcy as a system. The continued functioning of capitalism in decline, in the absence of a victorious proletarian revolution, can only mean the repetition of this cycle with increasing autarky, the permanent war economy, deeper and deeper crisis and the threat of the exacerbation of inter-imperialist conflict leading to another world war. The only choice that decadent capitalism has offer is: socialism or continued barbarism.
During the years of apparent ‘prosperity’ based on the reconstruction of war-shattered economies, some political tendencies took this apparent ‘boom’ for the reality of the capitalist system which had supposedly escaped the workings of its own economic laws. Cardan, for example, wrote of a “crisis-free” capitalism and rejected marxism as an inappropriate, “outmoded” theory. Marcuse wrote of the integration of the working class into capital and the need to find a ‘new’ revolutionary subject in the marginal strata. The analysis of the ‘consumer society’ became ‘fashionable’ and with the talk of ‘boredom with the spectacular society’ somehow provoking revolution, the working class, the only class capable of becoming the grave-diggers of capitalism was shunted aside.
But by the late 60’s something had changed. The symptoms of the permanent crisis of the system re-emerged with the end of the reconstruction period. Today there can be no doubt about the crisis: galloping inflation, monetary crisis, unemployment, threatening economic disorganization. It is this objective situation which has determined the resistance of the working class to the degradation of its condition from Italy in 1969 to Poland in 1971, in South America, all over Europe from Scandinavia to Spain and Portugal. The motor force of the crisis has once again begun a process of developing class consciousness in the working class and the .re-emergence of revolutionary groupings within the class.
We feel it is not enough to simply talk about the revolutionary aspirations of the working class without seeing them in the context of the concrete possibility and historical necessity of revolutionary transformation in the period of capitalist decline. Otherwise we can so easily fall into dangerously simplistic notions about how the crisis is just the result of the machinations of individual capitalists, the RocKefeller conspiracy, the ‘Arab sheiks’ or any other variations which do not deal with the international aspects of an entire system in crisis. Revolutionaries may have differing analyses of the workings of the law of value in theoretical terms, but the fact of economic crisis cannot be denied and must be dealt with coherently. This dimension is lacking in your text.
The need to deal with manifestations of the crisis is crucial to developing a coherent revolutionary orientation - an analysis and contribution to class struggle, which is not an eclectic collection of different isolated points but an. effort towards a coherent explicit expression of the dynamic inherent in class struggle. And this analysis must have a historical dimension - including the lessons of previous class struggle and the contribution of revolutionary marxism.
Political coherence and the effort to evaluate the lessons of the past are particularly important in relation to the question of proletarian internationalism and national liberation struggles. In the 19th century capitalism was a progressive social force against the remaining fetters of feudalism and the solidification of nation states was the framework for this growth of capital. Insofar as capitalism represented a historically progressive mode of production, the proletariat fought alongside the bourgeoisie against reactionary elements. This did not mean, however, that the class struggle against capitalist exploitation was suspended. On the contrary, the proletariat built its class organizations and fought in class struggles. But because revolution was not an immediate historical possibility, marxists and the workers’ movement supported the formation of new nations insofar as this process helped the development of the productive forces and thereby hastened the day when capitalism as a system would complete its historical tasks.
This was the major criterion of Marx and Engels when they supported movements in Poland for example and when they opposed the formation of a new southern nation in the US Civil War. Nowhere in Marxism of this time do we find anything about an abstract right of ‘self-determination’ nor of new nations being ‘a first step towards socialism’ -- formulations so dear to the Third Worldist movements of today.
With the beginning of the decadence of capitalism, the revolutionary programme became the only adequate, possible response to the decomposition of capitalist society. The bourgeoisie had ceased to be a progressive class for the development of the productive forces and only socialism could get humanity out of the mire of barbarism and destruction. Bourgeois revolutions became a thing of the past in the context of the general incapacity of the system to deal with its own internal contradictions.
The Bolshevik Party stood firmly for an internationalist position during World War 1 and actively participated in the Russian Revolution which was one of the greatest experiences of the working class; but it did not, however, fully understand the implications of this new period. Particularly after Second Congress of the Third International in 1920, they imposed their notion of the revolutionary potential of struggles for national autonomy on the workers’ movement as a whole. In fact, this question was so difficult to understand that even in the councilist tradition there were hesitations and ambiguities on the subject of national liberation. These ambiguities are expressed even more blatantly in many groups which claim to be continuing council communism today.
Despite your desire to reject the roots of Leninism on certain questions related to revolutionary theory, you merely accept and continue their tradition in this domain. Our Current recognizes the many contributions of the Bolshevik Party but Lenin’s theory of national self-determination has not, in any way, stood the test of' time. What have the last fifty years shown us about national liberation struggles? After all, we are no longer speculating about ‘possibilities’ - we have years of actual experience to deal with.
Imperialism rules supreme in our period capitalist decadence, the imperialism of all countries, large or small. All countries vie for a share of the world market already carved up and inadequate to the needs of expanded production. Of course the larger, more powerful capitalist complexes are best armed for this constant struggle. In this context, national autonomy is a utopia. No country can free itself from one bloc without the ‘aid’ of another under whose military and economic sphere it then inevitably falls.
National liberation struggles are the arena for local wars and for confrontations between the large Imperialist blocs. In your desire to fight against imperialism you do not seem to recognize that imperialism isn’t a ‘policy’ of one country or another. It is the generalized way of life for all nations in capitalist barbarism. In seeing imperialism as merely the barbarism of one particular country, support is implied, if not explicitly given, to other imperialist blocs. Where, we may ask, is the ‘ideological’, ‘anti-capitalist’ content of the struggles that saw American and Chinese imperialism supporting Pakistan and Russian imperialism supporting the Bangladesh movement, each for their own interests - just as the local bourgeoisie saw its own interests in this struggle and the population of these areas were used as cannon fodder, then to be left to starvation? Or Chinese and French imperialism which supported the Biafra efforts in order to get their toe-hold while Russian Imperialism supported the Nigerian federal government. Or today as Chinese and American imperialism supports the Marcos regime in the Philippines while the Russian imperialist interests try their hand at supporting the Muslim rebels. Or in Angola where Russian imperialism supports the Popular Movement and US and Chinese interests are behind Holden Roberto and the National Front. The situation in Angola makes even the most abstracted ‘national liberationist’ stop and think.1 Just as revolutionaries in the past have called for the transformation of imperialist war into class war, revolutionaries today must denounce these localized, imperialist wars and call for class war.
You talk about national liberation struggles bringing a “better life for people”, but how can there be a “better life” under capitalism except by destroying it. Or do different faces make different exploiters? The development of the productive forces on a world scale is impossible today - the gap between developing and underdeveloped countries is constantly widening and the misery of the ‘Third World’, aggravated by war, famine, economic chaos, or intensely exploitative state capitalist regimes, has reached unequalled depths. Capitalism was capable of creating a world market (by destroying pre-capitalist, economic-social systems) but it is incapable of integrating new masses into the productive process as the shanty-towns of the unemployed in ‘Third World’ cities show. In certain areas, with economic dependence on imperialist powers and unparalleled exploitation and regimentation of the labour force, some countries (eg Cuba, China) have been able to develop massive arms economies and a highly labour-intensive exploitation at low productivity rates, which are tragic testimony to the misery of working class life there and to the inability to develop within the framework of the capitalist system today under all its guises. Backyard blast furnaces in China are hardly a development of the productive forces; they are merely one manifestation of the over-all irrationality of autarkic efforts at national development in a period of capitalist decline.
What do these new regimes, paid for with the blood of workers and the population in general, mean for the class struggle? ‘Independence’ is really subservience to another imperialist power and ‘liberation’ governments are forced to move towards state capitalism as the only way to defend their relatively weak, national capital. This means an intensification of exploitation up to and including the militarization of labour and the forbidding of strikes. Frelimo announces that ‘laziness’ will be punished - thereby making a mockery of the “better life” the working class is ‘supposed’ to be enjoying. It is particularly ironic to see groups in the US and Europe who write about workers sabotaging production lines in Detroit or Turin but feel so very differently about sweated labour if it is extracted in the name of ‘national liberation’ elsewhere, which costs them nothing. The succeeding ‘ieft’ governments in Portugal all announce that owing to the economic crisis, everyone must work hard for the homeland and avoid agitation and strikes. The army was sent in to break strikes2 just as was the case in Chile. But do the leftists call for class struggle against exploitation in these situations? Oh no - that would be ‘unfair’! To the interests of Portuguese capital and the nation which is having such a hard time. But the working class has no homeland and these leftists do their job only for the interests of capital and ‘critical support’ for one government or another.
The Polish workers’ revolt showed the world that crisis is a reality in state capitalist regimes and that the working class would fight to destroy the myth and reality of the ‘workers’ paradise’ - not just to be channeled into anti-Russian, nationalist sentiment but against its own bourgeoisie. In the same way, the strikes of iron workers in Venezuela’s nationalized industries, the strikes in Peru, Colombia, Egypt, the striking Chilean copper miners who were met with Allende’s machine guns, have drawn the class line on the question of ‘national unity’ and ‘national movements’. Where do revolutionaries stand: with the workers’ class struggle in these countries or with the bourgeoisie’s attempts to mobilize nationalism and self-serving ‘anti-imperialism’, so as to create the conditions for more efficient exploitation? The need to express and fight for our solidarity with our class brothers all over the world does not pass through the Frelimo, the Vietnamese ‘liberation’ army, the Palestinian ‘liberation’ front or the IRA any more than it does through the Alliance for Progress, NATO or Zionism. It can only be expressed through solidarity with workers’ struggles and the class interests of the proletariat in all countries. The socialist revolutionary programme is the only way out of massacres in the ‘Third World’. Socialism can never be created in one country, either a backward or a developed country, alone. But the class struggles of workers in the ‘Third World’ are echoed in the class struggles in Europe and the developed countries and this is the revolutionary hope of the future.
When you write “long live proletarian internationalism” and then call for support for national movements in the ‘Third World’, it is the same thing as calling for the ”union sacree”, “national unity”, an end to strikes, support for the Communist Party and the leftists in any European country. Nationalism is the road to class defeat wherever and whatever its ideological cloak.
‘Third Worldism’ has been very popular among the leftists in the developed countries because it is such an easy way to relieve ‘guilt’ and is, therefore, so emotionally satisfying. When the European and American working class was not very active, it seemed as though the only ‘hope’ was to look elsewhere - to the ‘people’ and not the working class. But today when the crisis is a reality everywhere and when class struggle is awakening after years of counter-revolution, it is certainly time to re-evaluate the implications of this position. The smug satisfaction which comes from talking of a “better life” in Vietnam or Cambodia over a generation of graves resulting from inter-imperialist struggles is a mockery of revolutionary thought.
We feel that the question of ‘national liberation’ today is one of the crucial points we would like to discuss with your group. (Perhaps the recent article on this question in Internationalism no. 7 will give you a fuller idea of our position.) We regret not being able to read more of your publications at this time but we look forward to receiving other translations of your texts in English or other languages.
The question of imperialism today is related to your statement on the nature of the Russian, Chinese and East European regimes. It is very difficult to elaborate a revolutionary perspective if your analysis does not define the capitalist system as a whole. You write, “not all parts of the world are dominated by the capitalist system”. According to your statements, the world is divided into capitalist and non-capitalist “bureaucratic” regimes. How is it possible then to defend and explain a revolutionary programme for two, supposedly completely different, social systems? You write, “the class struggle continues” - but what are the classes? What is the material basis of this so-called, non-capitalist bureaucracy and where are its objective contradictions?
You state that Russia and China are “planned economies” but planning in itself is not a definition of a social system. Centralized, state, economic planning to one degree or another is in force in France, England, Spain; in fact in all countries today, including the US and Canada. Nationalization and planning have everywhere become integral parts of decadent capitalism and these efforts will increase as the crisis itself grows deeper everywhere.
Even following the logic of your own arguments and statements, the nature of Russian and Chinese “bureaucratism” becomes clear if we are not blinded by outward appearances. What is the system you describe - which creates a proletariat, has a ruling class which controls the means of production, where salaries are given, where expanded national production for accumulation is the goal, a system which competes on the world market? This is capitalism and the operation of the law of value.
The Russian, Chinese, and Eastern European regimes are expressions of the tendency towards state capitalism which today dominates to one degree or another the capitalist system in all countries. Russia or China is more extreme examples of the need for concentration of national capital in the hands of the state. But the bureaucracy in Russia or China has the same role in production as the traditional ‘private’ bourgeoisie: they are the functionaries of capital. The juridical form that capitalism may take, whether it is in individual or state hands, is only a secondary question. The primary question is the role of a social class in relation to the means of production.
Russia, China or the other more extreme examples of state capitalist organization are imperialist because of the very nature of global capitalism in our period. Your analysis leaves this point dangerously vague and readers may infer these countries can indeed lead ‘anti-imperialist’ struggles as the Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists claim. Just like the theories of the workers’ state’ or the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ and the like, your rather vaguely defined theory of ‘another system’' leaves the door open to dangerous mystifications. Although you call for proletarian revolution in these strange ‘other’ systems, the very definition of the proletariat itself is undermined by an inconsistent analysis. The conclusions may be right but the logic is missing.
There have been many theories which have tried to explain Russia and China without reference to state capitalism. We can point particularly to the writings of Chaulieu/Cardan in Socialisme ou Barbarie which proclaimed that Russia, and China later on, were a ‘third system’, neither socialist nor capitalist. This theory led him to (abandon the proletariat as the international revolutionary class3 and to adopt the idea of ‘order-takers’ and ‘order-givers’ as the fundamental division of the ‘new’, ‘crisis-free’ society whose material roots remained a mystery. More fundamentally, the idea of a third system implies the rejection of the basic marxist insight that only socialism - the end of all property relations and the end of the law of value, commodity production and wage labour - can answer the contradictions inherent in capitalism,
In rejecting all the conjectures on the subject of Russia and China which have dominated in the period of counter-revolution and in defending the conception of state capitalism, our Current stresses the fact that since the First World War, statification is a general tendency in decadent capitalism. Whatever it’s ideological label - Stalinism, fascism or ‘democracy’ - state capitalist measures in one degree or another are the basic trend in all countries. With the deepening of the crisis, the bourgeoisie of all colours and stripes will accelerate this trend and it is important that revolutionaries try to clarify this in the developed countries as well as in the underdeveloped ones. The bourgeoisie will attempt to co-opt proletarian struggles through nationalizations, self-management schemes, new New Deals or Popular Fronts in defence of national capital through intensified statification and ‘pacification’ of the working class. We cannot go into all the details of our analysis here but you may be interested to read our pamphlets on decadence and the crisis and our articles on state capitalism.4
In general, if we had to sum up a major part of the work of our Current, it would be to emphasize that the only revolutionary class in capitalism, east or west, is the proletariat. With the crisis today and the reawakening of international class struggle, talk of marginal elements or fringe movements become dangerous diversions for class struggle. The theories of the ‘consumer society’ you mention in your text also seem like empty absurdities today when the problem for the working class is increasingly inflation, unemployment and maintaining a minimal standard of living. With almost 10% unemployment in the US and 12% in Denmark for example, not to mention the decline in real wages which galloping inflation represents, how can we give credence to the idea that capitalist society exists to make the working class ‘consume’?
The working class is the only subject of revolution in capitalist society and only through its self-activity, the development of its revolutionary consciousness and class organization in workers councils, can socialism eventually become a living reality. In this sense, our Current has always defended the position that the revolutionary party of the working class cannot substitute itself for the class as a whole. We reject the Leninist idea that the party must assume state power ‘in the name of the class’. The political organizations of the class exist to contribute to the heightening and generalization of class consciousness, to defend “the fundamental goals and means of achieving them”.
We do not quite understand your reference to the need for the ‘autonomy’ of the class in relation to its political organizations. Although these organizations cannot assume the tasks of the class as a whole, they are an emanation of the class to fulfill a vital role of contributing to the clarification of class consciousness in struggle. When we speak of the autonomy of the working class, it is not an autonomy which would separate the whole from a part of that whole, but rather the autonomy of the working class in relation to all other classes. The refusal to join ‘popular fronts’, ‘anti-fascist’ or ‘national liberation fronts’ with elements of the bourgeoisie, the refusal to dilute proletarian class interests in a vague amalgam of the ‘people’ - this is the autonomy of the proletarian movement which is essential for the process of revolution.
Although we reject the Leninist party, we do not agree in rejecting all need for the organization of revolutionaries. Like your group, we do see the need for an international regroupment of revolutionaries today based on a clear, coherent political platform. We are trying to contribute to this goal by the unity of our sections in different countries. At the present level of class struggle, we feel that the contribution of organized revolutionaries can be an important factor for today and for the future formation of a proletarian international political party on a clear programmatic basis.
We do not claim to have discovered all the ‘answers’ nor to have found an exclusive ‘eternal truth’. We try to base our intervention on the heritage of left communism and the fullest possible analysis of the lessons of class struggle.
We are deeply concerned about contributing to international debate and the clarification of ideas which must go on among revolutionaries in the class. We hope to be able to read more of your publications and analyses soon and that this letter will be taken as a contribution further correspondence between our groups.
J.A. for the ICC
August, 1975
1 See Angola, Ethiopia: Inter-Imperialist Struggle in Africa, Internationalism/World Revolution pamphlet no. 3
2 The TAP airline strike.
3 See Cardan under the name Coudray in Mai 1968: La Breche, Paris, 1968.
4 The Decadence of Capitalism and The Convulsions of World Capital, World Revolution/Internationalism pamphlets Nos 1 & 2.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/anti-fascismracism
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/360/fascism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1936-spain
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/21/united-front
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/italian-left
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/portugal-1975
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/portugal
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/23/self-management
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-reports
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/correspondance-other-groups
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/22/national-question
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/councilism