The explosion of anger and revolt by the present generation of proletarianised young people in Greece is not at all an isolated or particular phenomenon. It has its roots in the world crisis of capitalism and the confrontation between these proletarians and the violent repression which has unmasked the real nature of the bourgeoisie and its state terror. It is in direct continuity with the mobilisation of the younger generation on a class basis against the CPE law (Contrat Première Embauche - first job contract) in France in 2006 and the LRU (Law on the Reform of the Universities) in 2007, when the students from universities and high schools saw themselves above all as proletarians rebelling against their future conditions of exploitation. The whole of the bourgeoisie in the main European countries has understood all this very well and has confessed its fears of the contagious spread of similar social explosions with the deepening of the crisis. It is significant, for example, that the bourgeoisie in France has retreated by suddenly suspending its programme of "reform" for the high schools. Furthermore, the international character of the protests and the militancy among university students and above all high school students has already been expressed very strongly.

In Italy, two months of mobilisation included massive demonstrations on 25th October and 14th November behind the slogan "we don't want to pay for the crisis" against the Gelmini decree, which is being challenged because it involves budgetary cuts in the education sector, resulting in the non-renewal of the contracts of 87,000 temporary teachers and of 45,000 ABA workers (technical personnel employed by the Ministry of Education) and in reduced public funding for the universities.[1]

In Germany, on 12th November, 120,000 high school students came out onto the streets [1] of the main cities in the country, with slogans like "capitalism is crisis" in Berlin, or laying siege to the provincial parliament as in Hanover.

In Spain, on 13th November, hundreds of thousands of students demonstrated in over 70 towns against the new European directives (the Bolgona directives) for the reform of higher education and universities, spreading the privatisation of the faculties and increasing the number of training courses in the enterprises.  

The revolt of young people against the crisis and the deterioration of their living standards extended to other countries: in January 2009 alone, there were movements and riots in Vilnius in Lithuania, Riga in Latvia and Sofia in Bulgaria, meeting with harsh police repression. In Kegoudou, 700km south east of Dakar, Senegal, in December 2008, violent clashes took place during demonstrations against poverty, where demonstrators had called for a share in the mining profits exploited by ArcelorMittal. Two people were killed. At the beginning of May in Marrakech, Morocco, 4,000 students had risen up after 22 of them were poisoned by food in the university canteen. The movement was violently repressed and was followed by arrests, long prison sentences and torture.  

Many of these movements see their own reflection in the struggle of the Greek students.

The scale of this mobilisation against the same kinds of measures by the state is not at all surprising. The reform of the education system being undertaken on a European level is part of an attempt to habituate young working class generations to a restricted future and the generalisation of precarious employment or the dole.

The refusal, the revolt of the new educated proletarian generation faced with this wall of unemployment, this ocean of uncertainty reserved for them by capitalism in crisis is also generating sympathy from proletarians of all generations.   

Violence by a minority or massive struggle against exploitation and state terror?

The media, which are the servants of the lying propaganda of capital, have constantly tried to deform the reality of what's been happening in Greece since the murder by police bullet of 15 year old Alexis Andreas Grigoropoulos on 6th December. They have presented the confrontations with the police as the action of a handful of anarchists and ultra-left students coming from well to do backgrounds, or of marginalised wreckers. They have broadcast endless images of violent clashes with the police and put across the image of young hooded rioters smashing the windows of boutiques and banks or pillaging stores.   

This the same method of falsifying reality we saw during the anti-CPE mobilisation in 2006 in France, which was identified with the riots on the city outskirts the year before. We saw the same gross method used against the students fighting the LRU in 2007 in France - they were accused of being "terrorists" and "Khmer Rouge"!

But if the heart of the "troubles" took place in the Greek "Latin Quarter" of Exarchia, it is difficult to make this lie stick today: how could this uprising be the work of a few wreckers or anarchists when it spread like wildfire to all the main cities of the country and to the Greek islands of Chios and Samos and even to the most touristy cities like Corfu or Heraklion in Crete? The riots spread to 42 prefectures in Greece, even towns where there had been no demonstrations before. More than 700 high schools and a number of universities were occupied.

The reasons for the anger

All the conditions were there for the discontent of a whole mass of young proletarians, full of disquiet about their future, to explode in Greece, which is a concentrated expression of the dead-end into which capitalism is steering the present generation: when those who are called the "600 Euro generation" enter into working life, they have the feeling of being ripped off. Most of the students have to get paid work in order to survive and continue their studies, most of it unofficial and underpaid jobs; even when the jobs are slightly better paid, part of their labour remains undeclared and this reduces their access to social benefits. They are generally deprived of social security; overtime hours are not paid and often they are unable to leave the family home until they are 35, since they don't earn enough to pay for a roof over their heads. 23% of the unemployed in Greece are young people (the official unemployment rate for 15-24 year olds is 25.2%) as an article published in France indicates: "these students don't feel in any way protected; the police shoot at them, education traps them, work passes them by, the government lies to them".[2] The unemployment of the young and their difficulties in entering the world of work has thus created a general climate of unease, of anger and generalised insecurity. The world economic crisis is going to bring  new waves of massive redundancies. In 2009, 100,000 job-cuts are predicted in Greece, which would mean a 5% increase in unemployment. At the same time, 40% of workers earn less than 1,100 Euros net, and Greece has the highest rate of workers on the poverty line out of the 27 EU states: 14%.   

It's not only the students who have come out onto the streets, but also poorly paid teachers and many other wage earners facing the same problems, the same poverty, and animated by the same spirit of revolt. The brutal repression against the movement, whose most dramatic episode was the murder of that 15 year old, has only amplified and generalised feelings of solidarity and social discontent. As one student put it, many parents of pupils have been deeply shocked and angered: "Our parents have found out that their children can die like that in the street, to a cop's bullet".[3] They are becoming aware that they live in a decaying society where their children won't have the same standard of living as them. During the many demonstrations, they have witnessed the violent beatings, the strong-arm arrests, the firing of real bullets and the heavy hand of the riot police (the MAT). 

The occupiers of the Polytechnic School, the central focus of the student protest, have denounced state terror, but we find this same anger against the brutality of the repression in slogans such as "bullets for young people, money for the banks". Even more clearly, a participant in the movement declared: "We have no jobs, no money, a state that is bankrupt with the crisis, and the only response to all that is to give guns to the police".[4]

This anger is not new: the Greek students were already mobilising in June 2006 against the reform of the universities, the privatisation of which will result in the exclusion of the least well-off students. The population had also expressed its anger with government incompetence at the time of the forest fires in the summer of 2007, which left 67 dead: the government has still not paid any compensation to the many victims who lost houses or goods. But it was above all the wage-earners who mobilised massively against the reform of the pension system at the beginning of 2008 with two days of widely followed general strikes in two months, and demonstrations of over a million people against the suppression of pensions for the most vulnerable professions and the threat to the right of workers to claim retirement at 50.

Faced with the workers' anger, the general strike of 10th December, controlled by the trade unions, was aimed at putting a damper on the movement while the opposition, with the Socialist and Communist parties to the fore, called for the resignation of the present government and the holding of elections. This did not succeed in channelling the anger and bringing the movement to a halt, despite the multiple manoeuvres of the left parties and the unions to block the dynamic towards the extension of the struggle, and despite the efforts of the whole bourgeoisie to isolate the young people from the other generations and the working class as a whole by pushing them into sterile confrontations with the police. For whole days and nights, the clashes were incessant: violent charges by the police wielding batons and using tear gas, beatings and arrests in huge numbers.

The young generation of workers expresses most clearly the feeling of disillusionment and disgust with the utterly corrupt political apparatus. Since the end of the war, three families have shared power, with the Caramanlis dynasty for the right and the Papandreou dynasty for the left taking it in turns to run the country, involving themselves in all kinds of scandals. The conservatives came to power in 2004 after a period in which the Socialists were up to their neck in intrigues. Many of the protestors see the political and trade union apparatus as totally discredited: "The fetishism of money has taken over society. The young people want a break with this society without soul or vision".[5] Today, with the development of the crisis, this generation of proletarians has not only developed a consciousness of capitalist exploitation, which it feels in its very bones, but also a consciousness of the necessity for a collective struggle, by spontaneously putting forward class methods and class solidarity. Instead of sinking into despair, it draws its confidence in itself from the sense of being the bearer of a different future, spending all its energy in rising up against the rotting society around them. The demonstrators thus proudly say of their movement: "we are an image of the future in the face of the sombre image of the past". If the situation today is very reminiscent of May 1968, the awareness of what's at stake goes well beyond it.

The radicalisation of the movement

On 16 December, the students managed to take over part of the government TV station NET and unfurled banners on screen saying "Stop watching the telly - everyone onto the streets!" and launched an appeal; "the state is killing. Your silence arms them. Occupation of all public buildings!" The HQ of the anti-riot police in Athens was attacked and one of their patrol wagons was burned. These actions were quickly denounced by the government as "an attempt to overturn democracy", and also condemned by the Greek Communist Party, the KKE. In Thessaloniki, the local branches of the trade unions GSEE and ADEDY, the federation of civil servants, tried to keep the strikers cooped up in a rally in front of the Labour Exchange. High school and university students were determined to get the strikers to join their demonstration and they succeeded: 4,000 workers and students marched through the town's streets.  On 11th December militants of the KKE's student organisation had tried to block assemblies to prevent occupations (Pantheon University, the school of philosophy at Athens University). Their attempts were a failure and the occupations in Athens took place. In the district of Ayios Dimitrios the town hall was occupied and a general assembly was held, with 300 people of all generations taking part.  On 17th December, the building which houses the main trade union confederation of the country, the GEEE, in Athens, was occupied by proletarians who called themselves "insurgent workers" and issued a call to make this a place for general assemblies open to all wage earners, students and unemployed.

There was an identical scenario, with occupations and assemblies open to all, at the Athens University of Economics and the Polytechnic School.

We are publishing the declaration of these workers in struggle to help break the "cordon sanitaire" of the lying media which surrounds these struggles and presents them as no more than violent riots led by a few anarchist wreckers terrorising the population. This text clearly shows the strength of the feeling of workers' solidarity which animated the movement and which linked different generations of proletarians: 

"We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us

We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive TV-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighbourhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obligations to take to the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in struggle.

WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF GSEE

To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.

To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers", "hooligans" or some other fairy tale, while on the TV-screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and Worldwide leads to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a "natural phenomenon".

To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection - and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermines the struggles, bargain our labour power for crumbs, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstration, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.

To open up this space for the first time - as a continuation of the social opening created by the insurrection itself - a space that has been built by our contributions, a space from which we were excluded. For all these years we trusted our fate on saviours of every kind, and we end up losing our dignity. As workers we have to start assuming our responsibilities, and to stop assigning our hopes to wise leaders or "able" representatives. We have to acquire a voice of our own, to meet up, to talk, to decide, and to act. Against the generalized attack we endure. The creation of collective ‘grassroot' resistances is the only way.

To propagate the idea of self-organization and solidarity in working places, struggle committees and collective grassroot procedures, abolishing the bureaucrat trade unionists.

All these years we gulp the misery, the pandering, the violence in work. We became accustomed to counting the crippled and our dead - the so-called ‘labour accidents'. We became accustomed to ignore the migrants - our class brothers - getting killed. We are tired living with the anxiety of securing a wage, revenue stamps, and a pension that now feels like a distant dream.

As we struggle not to abandon our life in the hands of the bosses and the trade union representatives, likewise we will not abandon any arrested insurgent in the hands of the state and the juridical mechanism.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE DETAINED!

NO CHARGE TO THE ARRESTED!

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS' GENERAL STRIKE!

WORKERS' ASSEMBLY IN THE ‘LIBERATED' BUILDING OF GSEE

Wednesday, 17th December 2008, 18:00 General Assembly of Insurgent Workers".

On the evening of 17th December, fifty odd union bureaucrats and heavies tried to get the HQ back under their control but they ran away when student reinforcements chanting "solidarity", the majority of them anarchists, came from the University of Economics, which had also been occupied and transformed into a place for meetings and discussions open to all workers. The association of Albanian immigrants, among others, distributed a text proclaiming their solidarity with the movement, entitled "these days are ours as well!"

Significantly, a small minority of those occupying the trade union HQ put out the following message:

"Panagopoulos, the general secretary of the GSEE, has decaled that we are mot workers, because workers are at work. Among other things this reveals a lot about the reality of Panagopoulos' ‘job'. His ‘job' is to make sure that the workers are indeed at work, to do all in his power to make sure that the workers go to work. But for the last ten days, workers haven't just been at work, they are also outside, in the streets. And this is a reality which no Panagopoulos in the world can hide...We are people who work, we are also unemployed (paying with lay-offs for our participation in strikes called by the GSEE while the representatives of the trade unions are rewarded with promotions), we work for insecure contracts in one small job after another, we work without any formal or informal security in training courses or jobs subsidised to keep the unemployment figures down. We are part of this world and we are here.

"We are insurgent workers, full stop. All of our wage cheques are paid for in our blood, our sweat, in violence at work, in heads, knees, hands and feet broken by accidents at work.

"The whole world is made by us, the workers...

"Proletarians from the liberated building of the GSEE"

There were repeated calls for an indefinite general strike from the 18th onwards. The unions were forced to call a three-hour strike in the public sector on that day. 

On the morning of the 18th, another high school student, 16, taking part in a sit-in near his school in a suburb of Athens, was wounded by a bullet. On the same day, several radio and TV stations were occupied by demonstrators, notably in Tripoli, Chania and Thessaloniki. The building of the chamber of commerce was occupied in Patras and there were new clashes with the police. The huge demonstration in Athens was violently repressed: for the first time, new types of weapons were used by the anti-riot forces: paralysing gas and deafening grenades. A leaflet against state terror was signed "Girls in revolt" and circulated in the University of Economics.

The movement began to perceive, in a confused way, its own geographical limits: this is why it welcomed with enthusiasm the demonstrations of international solidarity that have taken place in France, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Montreal or New York and declared "this support is very important to us". The occupiers of the Polytechnic School called for an "international day of mobilisation against state murder" on 20th December; but to overcome the isolation of this proletarian uprising in Greece, the only way forward is the development of solidarity and of class struggle on an international scale.    

A maturation that points to the future

On 20th December, more violent street fights took place and the vice tightened around the Polytechnic School in particular, with the police threatening to launch a raid. The GSEE occupation handed back the building on 21st December, following a decision by the occupation committee and a vote in the general assembly. On 22nd December the occupation committee of the Polytechnic School then published a communiqué which declared: "We are for emancipation, human dignity and freedom. No need to throw tear gas at us because we are crying enough already".

Showing a great deal of maturity, and following a decision taken at the general assembly of the University of Economics, the occupiers used the call for the demonstration of the 24th against police repression and in solidarity with imprisoned comrades as a suitable moment to effect a mass evacuation of the building and to do it in safety: "There seems to be a consensus on the need to leave the university and to sow the spirit of revolt in society in general". These examples would be followed by the general assemblies of other occupied universities, thus springing the trap of being closed in and pushed towards a direct confrontation with the police, which could only have resulted in a bloodbath. The general assemblies also denounced the use of firearms against a police car, claimed by a so-called "Popular Action" group, as being a police provocation.

The Polytechnic occupation committee symbolically evacuated the last bastion in Athens at midnight on 24th December: "The general assembly and the assembly alone will decide if and when we leave the university...the crucial point is that it's the people occupying the building and not the police who decide on the moment to quit"

Before that, the occupation committee published a declaration: "By bringing the occupation of the Polytechnic School to an end after 18 days, we send our warmest solidarity to everyone who has been part of this revolt in different ways, not only in Greece but also in many countries of Europe, America, Asia and Oceania. For all those we have met and with whom we are going to stay together, fighting for the liberation of the prisoners of this revolt, and for its prolongation until the world social liberation."

In certain areas, residents took over the speakers installed by the municipal authorities for broadcasting Christmas carols to call, among other things, for the immediate freeing of all those arrested, the disarmament of the police, the dissolution of the anti-riot brigades and the abolition of the anti-terrorist laws. In Volos, the municipal radio station and the offices of the local paper were occupied to talk about the events and their implications. At Lesvos, demonstrators installed a sound system in the centre of the town and broadcast messages. In Ptolemaida and Ionnina, Christmas trees were decorated with photos of the young high school pupil killed at the beginning and with the movement's demands.

The feeling of solidarity was expressed again spontaneously and with considerable force on 23rd December, after an attack on an employee of a cleaning firm subcontracted by the Athens metro company (ISAP). Acid was thrown at her face while on the way home from work. Solidarity demonstrations took place and the HQ of the Athens metro was occupied on 27th December, while in Thessaloniki the GSEE HQ was occupied. The two occupations organised a series of demonstrations, solidarity concerts and "counter-information" actions (for example, occupying the loudspeaker system at the metro station to read out communiqués).

The Athens assembly declared in its text:

"When they attack one of us, they attack all of us!

"Today we are occupying the central offices of the ISAP (Athens metro) as a first response to the murderous acid attack to the face of Konstantina Kuneva on 23rd December as she was coming home from work. Konstantina is in intensive care in hospital. Last week, she was in dispute with the company demanding a full Christmas bonus for her and her colleagues, denouncing the illegal acts of the bosses. Before that, her mother had been sacked by the same company. She herself was moved far away from her first workplace. These are very widespread practices in the cleaning companies which pay the casual workers...Oikomet's owner is a member of PASOK (the Greek Socialist Party). It officially employs 800 workers (the workers say it's double that, while over the last three years over 3,000 have worked there). The illegal, mafia-like behaviour of the bosses there is a daily phenomenon. For example, the workers are forced to sign blank contracts (the conditions are written in by the bosses afterwards) and they have no opportunity of reviewing them. They work for 6 hours and are only paid for 4.5 (gross wage) so that they don't go beyond 30 hours (otherwise they have to be put in the high risk category). The bosses terrorise them, displace them, sack them and threaten them with forced resignations. The struggle for DIGNITY and SOLIDARITY is OUR struggle".

Parallel to this, the assembly of the occupation of the GSEE in Thessaloniki published a text which said: "Today we are occupying the HQ of the trade unions of Thessaloniki to oppose the oppression which takes the form of murder and terrorism against the workers...We appeal to all the workers to join this common struggle...the assembly, open to all occupying the union office, people coming from different political milieus, trade union members, students, immigrants and comrades from abroad adopted this joint decision:

"to continue the occupation;

"to organise rallies in solidarity with Konstantina Kuneva;

"to organise actions to spread information and to raise awareness around the city;

"to organise a concert in the city centre to collect money for Konstantina".

This assembly also declared "Nowhere in the platform of the trade unions is there any reference to the causes of inequality, poverty and hierarchical structures in society...The general confederations and the trade union centres in Greece are an intrinsic part of the regime in power; their rank and file members must turn their back on them and work towards the creation of an autonomous pole of struggle directed by themselves...if the workers take their struggles into their own hands and break with the logic of being represented by the bosses' accomplices, they will rediscover their confidence and thousands of them will fill the streets in the next round of strikes. The state and its thugs are murdering people.

"Self-organisation! Struggles for social self-defence! Solidarity with immigrant workers and Konstanitina Kuneva". 

At the beginning of January 2009, demonstrations were still taking place across the country in solidarity with the prisoners. 246 people had been arrested and 66 were still in preventative prison. In Athens, 50 immigrants had been arrested in the first three days of the uprising, with punishments of up to 18 months, in trials without interpreters; all of them are threatened with expulsion.

On 9th January, young people and police were again confronting each other after a march in the city centre by around 3,000 teachers, students and pupils. On their banners were slogans like "money for education, not the bankers", "Down with the government of murderers and poverty". Large anti-riot forces charged them several times to disperse them, resulting in a number of further arrests.

In Greece as everywhere else, with the insecurity, the redundancies, the unemployment, the poverty wages imposed by the world crisis, the capitalist state can only offer more police and more repression. Only the international development of the struggle and solidarity between industrial workers and office workers, full-time and casual workers, school pupils, university students, the unemployed, pensioners, all generations together, can open the way to a future perspective of abolishing this system of exploitation. 

W (18.1.09)

 

---

[1]. See our article "Noi la crisi non la paghiamo! [2]"

 

[2]. Marianne n° 608, 13/12/08, "Grèce: les leçons d'une émeute"

 

[3]3. Libération 12/12/08

 

[4]. Le Monde, 10/12/08

 

[5]. Marianne, op cit.

 

In the first three parts of our series on the German Revolution of 1918-19 we showed how, after the collapse of the Socialist International faced with World War I, the tide turned in favour of the proletariat, culminating in the November Revolution of 1918, which, like the October Revolution in Russia the previous year, was the high point of an uprising against the imperialist war. Whereas October represented the first mighty blow of the working class against the "Great War", it was the action of the German proletariat which finally brought it to an end.

According to the history books of the ruling class, the parallel between the movements in Russia and Germany ends here. The revolutionary movement in Germany was only that of November 1918, directed against the war. As opposed to Russia, in Germany there was never a revolutionary socialist mass movement directed against the capitalist system as such. The "extremists", who fought for a "Bolshevik" revolution in Germany, would pay with their lives for not having understood this. So it is claimed.

However, the ruling class of the time did not share the nonchalance of the present day historians regarding the unshakeable character of capitalist rule Their programme of the day was: Civil War!

"Dual Power" and the council system

This orientation was motivated by the presence of a situation of dual power resulting from the November Revolution. If the ending of the imperialist war was the main result of November, its principle product was the system of workers' and soldiers' councils, which, as in Russia and Austria-Hungary, covered the whole country.

The German bourgeoisie, in particular Social Democracy, immediately drawing the lessons from what had happened in Russia, intervened from the outset to turn these organs of the revolution into empty shells. In many cases, they imposed the election of delegates on the basis of party lists, divided up between the SPD and the wavering, conciliatory USPD, effectively excluding revolutionaries from these organs. At the first national congress of the workers' and soldiers' councils in Berlin the left wing of capital prevented Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg from speaking. Above all, it pushed through a motion declaring the intention to hand over all power to a coming parliamentary government.

Such successes of the bourgeoisie still constitute the basis of the myth that in Germany, as opposed to Russia, the councils were not revolutionary. But this forgets that in Russia too, at the beginning of the Revolution, the councils did not follow a revolutionary course, that most of the delegates initially elected were not revolutionaries, and that the "soviets" there had also initially been in a hurry to give up their power.

After the November Revolution, the German bourgeoisie had no illusions about the supposed harmlessness of the council system. While claiming power for themselves, these councils continued to allow the bourgeois state apparatus to coexist alongside them. On the other hand the council system was by its very nature dynamic and elastic, its composition, attitude and mode of action capable of adjustment to each turn and radicalisation of the movement. The Spartakists, who had immediately understood this, had begun ceaseless agitation for the re-election of delegates, which would concretise a sharp left turn of the whole movement.

Nobody understood the potential danger of this "dual power" situation better than the German military leadership. General Groener, appointed to lead the operations of reaction, immediately activated the secret telephone connection 998 to the new chancellor, the Social Democrat Ebert. And just as the legendary Roman senator Cato, two thousand years before, had concluded every speech with the words "Carthage [(the mortal enemy of Rome] must be destroyed", Groener was obsessed with the destruction of the workers' and above all the soldiers' councils. Although, during and after the November Revolution, the soldiers' councils had partly represented a conservative dead weight holding back the workers, Groener knew that the radicalisation of the revolution would reverse this tendency, with the workers' councils beginning to draw the soldiers behind them. The ambition of the soldiers' councils was above all to impose its own command and to break the rule of the officers over the armed forces. This amounted to nothing less than the arming of the revolution. No ruling class has ever voluntarily accepted having its monopoly of armed force called into question. In this sense, the very existence of the council system put civil war on the agenda.

More than this: The bourgeoisie understood that in the aftermath of the November Revolution, time was no longer on its side. The spontaneous tendency of the whole situation was towards the radicalisation of the working class, the loss of its illusions regarding Social Democracy and "Democracy" and the swelling of its own self confidence. Without the slightest hesitation the German bourgeoisie immediately embarked on a policy of systematically provoking military clashes. Its goal: imposing decisive confrontations on its class enemy before the revolutionary situation could mature. More concretely: the "decapitation" of the proletariat through a bloody defeat of the workers in the capital Berlin, the political centre of the German workers' movement, before the struggles in the provinces could react a "critical" stage.

The open struggle between two classes, each determined to impose its own power, each with its own organisations of class rule, cannot but be a temporary, instable, untenable state of affairs. "Dual power" ends in civil war.

The Forces of Counter-Revolution

As opposed to the situation in Russia in 1917, the German Revolution was faced with the hostile forces of the whole world bourgeoisie. The ruling class was no longer split into two rival camps by the imperialist war. As such, the revolution had to confront not only the German bourgeoisie, but also the forces of the Entente, which gathered on the west bank of the Rhine, ready to intervene militarily should the German government lose control of the social situation. The United States, a relative newcomer to the world political stage, played the card of "democracy" and "the right of nations to self determination", presenting itself as the sole guarantor of peace and prosperity. As such it tried to formulate a political alternative to revolutionary Russia. The French bourgeoisie, for its part, obsessed by its own chauvinistic thirst for revenge, was burning to march deeper into German territory and to drown the revolution in blood in the process. It was Great Britain, the major world power of the day, which assumed the leadership of this counter-revolutionary alliance. Instead of lifting the embargo it had imposed on Germany during the war, it reinforced it. London was determined to starve out the population of Germany as long as that country had not installed a political regime approved by His Majesty's government.

Within Germany itself, the central axis of the counter-revolution was the alliance between two major forces: Social Democracy and the military. Social Democracy was the Trojan Horse of the white terror, operating behind the lines of the class enemy, sabotaging the revolution from within, using the remaining authority of a former workers' party (and the trade unions) to create a maximum of confusion and demoralisation. The military supplied the armed forces, but also the ruthlessness, audacity and strategic capacity which are its hallmarks.

What a wavering, half hearted lot the Russian socialists around Kerensky in 1917 were compared with the cold blooded counter-revolutionaries of the German SPD! What an unorganised mob the Russian officers were compared with the grim efficiency of the Prussian military elite![1]

In the days and weeks after the November Revolution, this alliance of death set out to solve two major problems. Given the disintegration of the imperial armies, it had to weld together the hard core of a new force, a white army of terror. It drew its raw material from two main sources, from the old officers' corps, and from uprooted individuals driven mad by the war, who could no longer be integrated into "civilian" life. Themselves victims of imperialism, but broken victims, these former solders were in search of an outlet for their blind hatred, and of someone who would pay for this service. Out of these desperados the aristocratic officers - politically supported and covered by the SPD - recruited and trained what became the Freikorps, the mercenaries of counter-revolution, the nucleus of what was later to be the Nazi movement.

These armed forces were backed up by a whole series of spy rings and agents provocateurs, coordinated by the SPD and the army staff.

The second problem was how to justify to the workers the deployment of the white terror. It was the Social Democracy which resolved this problem. For four years it had preached imperialist war in the name of peace. Now it preached civil war in the name of... preventing civil war. We don't see anybody here who wants bloodshed, it declared - except Spartakus! Too much workers' blood has already been spilled in the Great War - but Spartakus thirsts for more!

The mass media of the day spread these shameless lies: Spartakus is murdering and plundering and hiring soldiers for the counter revolution and collaborating with the Entente and getting money from the capitalists and preparing a dictatorship. The SPD was accusing Spartakus of what it was doing itself!

The first great manhunt of the 20th century in one of the highly "civilised" industrial nations of Western Europe, was directed against Spartakus. And whereas the capitalists and military top brass, offering enormous awards for the liquidation of the Spartakus leaders, preferred to remain anonymous, the SPD openly called for the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in its party press. Unlike their new bourgeois friends, the SPD were motivated in this campaign, not only by (bourgeois) class instinct and strategic thinking, but by a hatred no less boundless than that of the Freikorps.

The German bourgeoisie did not let itself be fooled by the superficial and fleeting impression of the moment; that Spartakus was only a small, sideline group. It knew that the heart of the proletariat was beating there, and got ready to strike its mortal blow.

December 1918: First Victories for the Proletariat

The counter-revolutionary offensive began on 6th December in Berlin with a three-pronged attack. The headquarters of the Rote Fahne, the paper of the Spartakusbund, was raided. Another group of soldiers tried to arrest the leaders of the executive organ of the workers' councils, who were in session. The intention to eliminate the councils as such was clear enough: Around the corner, another group of soldiers was obligingly calling on Ebert to outlaw the Executive Council. And a demonstration of Spartakus was ambushed near the city centre, at the Chausseestrasse: 18 dead, 30 injured. Proletarian bravery and ingenuity was able to prevent the worst. The leaders of the council executive were able to talk the soldiers out of this action, while a group of Russian prisoners of war, coming from behind along the Friedrichstrasse, were able to surprise and overpower the machine gunners from the Chausssestrasse with their bare hands.[2]

The following day an attempt was made to arrest (kidnap) and murder Karl Liebknecht in the offices of the Rote Fahne. His own cool headedness saved his life on this occasion.

These actions provoked the first gigantic solidarity demonstrations of the Berlin proletariat with Spartakus. From now on, all the demonstrations of the Spartakusbund were armed, led by lorries bearing batteries of machine guns. At the same time, the gigantic strike wave which had broken out at the end of November, centred in the heavy industrial areas of Upper Silesia and the Ruhr, intensified in face of such provocations.

The next target of the counter-revolution was the Volksmarinedivision, armed sailors who had come to the capital from the coastal ports to spread the revolution. Its very presence was a provocation to the authorities, all the more so since they had occupied the palace of the hallowed Prussian Kings.[3]

This time the SPD prepared the ground more carefully. They awaited the results of the national council congress, which came out in favour of handing over power to the SPD government and a future national assembly. A media campaign accused the sailors of marauding and plundering. Criminals, Spartakists!

On the morning of 24th December, Christmas Eve, the government presented an ultimatum to the 28 sailors in the palace and their 80 colleagues in the Marstall (Arsenal)[4]: Unconditional surrender. The badly armed garrison vowed to fight to the last man. Exactly ten minutes later (there was not even time to evacuate women and children from the buildings) the roar of artillery began, awakening the great city.

"That would have been, despite all the tenacity of the sailors, a lost battle, since they were so badly armed - had it taken place anywhere else. But it took place in the centre of Berlin. During battles, it is well known, rivers, hills, topographical difficulties play and important role. In Berlin the topographical difficulties were human beings.

When the canons began to roar, proudly and big mouthed, they woke civilians out of their sleep, who immediately understood what the canons were saying." [5]

Unlike Britain or France, Germany had not been a long standing centralised monarchy. Unlike London or Paris, Berlin did not become a world metropolis under the guidance of a government plan. Like the Ruhr valley, it sprawled like a cancerous growth. The result was that the government district ended up being surrounded on three sides by a "red belt" of gigantic working class districts.[6] Armed workers rushed to the scene to defend the sailors. Working class women and children stood between the guns and their target, armed only with their courage, humour and capacity of persuasion. The soldiers threw away their weapons and disarmed their officers.

The following day, the most massive demonstration in the capital since November 9 took possession of the city centre - this time against the SPD in defence of the revolution. The same day, groups of workers occupied the offices of Vorwärts, the daily paper of the SPD. There is little doubt that this action was the spontaneous result of the profound indignation of the proletariat. For decades, Vorwärts had been a mouthpiece of the working class - until the SPD leadership stole it during the World War. Now it was the most shameless and dishonest organ of the counter-revolution.

The SPD immediately saw the possibility of exploiting this situation for a new provocation, beginning a campaign against the alleged "attack against freedom of the press". But the Obleute, the revolutionary delegates, rushed to the Vorwärts headquarters, persuading the occupation group of the tactical wisdom of temporarily withdrawal to avoid a premature confrontation.

The year thus ended with another demonstration of revolutionary determination: the burial of the 11 dead sailors from the Marstall battle. The same day the USPD left the coalition government with the SPD. And while the Ebert government toyed with the idea of fleeing the capital, the founding congress of the KPD began.

The Eichhorn affair and the second Vorwärts occupation

The events of December 1918 revealed that a profound consolidation of the revolution had begun. The working class won the first confrontations of the new phase, either through the audacity of its reactions, or through the wisdom of its tactical retreats. The SPD had at least begun to expose its counter-revolutionary nature in the eyes of the class as a whole. It quickly turned out that the bourgeois strategy of provocation was difficult and even dangerous.

With its back to the wall, the ruling class drew lessons from these first skirmishes with remarkable lucidity. It realised that the direct and massive targeting of symbols and identified figures of the revolution - Spartakus, the leadership of the workers' councils or the sailors' division - could prove to be counter-productive, provoking the solidarity of the whole working class. Better to attack minor figures, who would win the support of only part of the class, thus possibly dividing the workers in the capital, and isolating them from the rest of the country. Such a figure was Emil Eichhorn, who belonged to the left wing of the USPD. A quirk of fate, one of the paradoxes which every great revolution produces, had made this man the president of the Berlin police. In this function, he had begun to distribute arms to workers militias. As such, he was a provocation for the ruling class. Targeting him would help to galvanise the forces of the counter-revolution, still reeling from their first reverses. At the same time, the defence of a chief of police was an ambiguous cause for the mobilisation of the revolutionary forces!

But the counter-revolution had a second provocation up its sleeve, no less ambiguous, with no less potential to divide the class and make it hesitate. It had not gone unnoticed by the SPD leadership that the brief occupation of the Vorwärts offices had shocked social democratic workers. Most of these workers felt ashamed for the content of this paper. What worried them was something else: the spectre of military conflict between social democratic and communist workers - painted in gaudy colours by the SPD - that might result from such occupation actions. This concern weighed all the heavier - the SPD leadership knew this well - because it was motivated by a real proletarian concern to defend the unity of the class.

The whole machinery of provocation was again flung into motion.

Torrent of lies: Eichhorn is corrupt, a criminal, payed by the Russians, preparing a counter-revolutionary putsch!

Ultimatum: Eichhorn must immediately resign, or be removed by force!

Display of brute force: This time, 10,000 troops were posted in the city centre, 80,000 more drawn together in the vicinity. These included the highly disciplined elite divisions of General Maercker, infantry troops, an "iron brigade" from the coast, militias from the bourgeois districts, and the first Freikorps. But they also included the "Republican Guard", an armed militia of the SPD, and important troop contingents which directly sympathised with Social Democracy.

The trap was ready to close. 

The fatal trap of January 1919

As the bourgeoisie expected, the attack against Eichhorn did not mobilise those troops in the capital who sympathised with the revolution. Nor did it arouse the workers in the provinces, where the name Eichhorn was unknown[7].

But there was one component of the new situation which took everyone by surprise. This was the massive extent and the intensity of the reaction of the proletariat of Berlin. On Sunday, January 5, 150,000 followed the call of the Revolutionäre Obleute[8] to demonstrate in front of the police headquarters at Alexanderplatz. The following day, over half a million workers downed tools and took possession of the city centre. These workers were ready to fight and to die. They had immediately understood that not Eichhorn, but the defence of the revolution was the real issue.

Although taken aback by the power of this response, the counter-revolution was cold blooded enough to go ahead with its plans. Once again Vorwärts was occupied, but also other press offices in the city centre. This time, agents provocateurs from the police had taken the initiative.[9]

The young KPD immediately warned the working class. In a leaflet, and in front page articles in the Rote Fahne, it called on the proletariat to elect new delegates to its councils and to arm itself, but also to realise that the moment for armed insurrection had not yet come. Such an insurrection required a centralised leadership at the level of the whole country. This could only be provided by workers' councils in which the revolutionaries held sway.

On the evening of January 5 the revolutionary leaders came together for consultations in the headquarters of Eichhorn. Around 70 Obleute were present, of whom roughly 80% were supporters of the left of the USPD, the rest supporters of the KPD. The members of the central committee of the Berlin organisation of the USPD turned up, as well as two members of the central committee of the KPD: Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck..

At first, the delegates of the workers' organisations were unsure as to how they should respond. But then the atmosphere was transformed, indeed electrified, by reports coming in. These reports concerned the armed occupations in the newspaper district and the alleged readiness of different garrisons to join an armed insurrection. Liebknecht now declared that, under these circumstances, not only the repulsion of the attack against Eichhorn, but armed insurrection had become necessary.

The eye-witness reports of this dramatic meeting indicate that Liebknecht's intervention constituted the fatal turning point. Throughout the war, he had been the political compass and the moral conscience of the German and even the world proletariat. Now, at this crucial moment of the revolution, he lost his head and his bearings. Above all, he prepared the way for the Unabhängigen, the Independents, who were still the dominant political force. Lacking clearly defined principles, a clear long term perspective and a more profound confidence in the cause of the proletariat, this "independent" current was condemned to vacillate constantly under the pressure of the immediate situation, and thus to compromise with the ruling class. But the reverse side of the coin of this "centrism" was the strongly felt need to participate whenever unclear "action" is on the agenda, not least in order to put one's own revolutionary determination on the record.

"The Independent Party had no clear political programme; but nothing lay further beyond its intentions than the idea of toppling the Ebert-Scheidemann government. At this conference, decisions lay in the hands of the Independents. And here it became clear that in particular those wavering figures who were sitting in the Berlin party committee, who normally did not like to put themselves in danger, but at the same time always wanted to participate in everything, turned out to be the wildest bawlers, presenting themselves in the most ‘revolutionary' manner possible."[10]

According to Richard Müller, the situation thus escalated into a kind of competition between the USPD leadership and the KPD delegation.

"Now the Independents wanted to show courage and consequence by outbidding the goals proposed by Liebknecht. Could Liebknecht, in face of the ‘revolutionary' fire of these ‘wavering and hesitant elements' restrain himself? That did not lie in his nature." (ibid).

Warnings, such as those of soldiers' delegates who expressed doubts about the readiness of the troops to fight, were not listened to.

"Richard Müller spoke out in the sharpest possible terms against the proposed goal of the struggle, the toppling of the government. He declared that neither the political nor the military preconditions existed. The movement throughout the country was growing from day to day, so that very soon the political, military and psychological preconditions for the struggle for power would be achieved. A premature, isolated action in Berlin could put the further development of the revolution in danger. Only with difficulty could he present his attitude of rejection in face of objections from all sides.

Pieck as representative of the central committee of the KPD spoke sharply against Richard Müller and demanded in very definite terms an immediate vote and the commencement of struggle."[11]

Three major decisions were voted and adopted. The call for a general strike was taken unanimously. The two other decisions, the calls to topple the government and to maintain the occupation of the press offices, were adopted by a large majority, but with six votes against.[12]

A "provisional revolutionary action committee" was then formed, with 53 members and three chairmen: Liebknecht, Ledebour, Scholze.

The proletariat was now caught in the trap.

The so-called Spartakus Week

There now ensued what was to become a bloody week of fighting in Berlin. The bourgeoisie called this the "Spartakus Week": The foiling of a "communist putsch" by the "heroes of freedom and democracy". The fate of the German and the World Revolution was largely decided in this week, from January 5 to 12.

On the morning after the formation of the revolutionary committee, the strike in the city was almost total. Even more workers poured into the city centre than the previous day, many of them armed. But by midday all the hopes of active support from the garrisons had been dashed. Even the sailors' division, a living legend, declared itself neutral, going as far as to arrest its own delegate Dorrenbach for what they considered his irresponsible participation in the call for insurrection. The same afternoon, the same Volksmarinedivision turned the revolutionary committee out of the Marstall, where it had sought protection. Similarly, the concrete measures taken to remove the government were foiled, or even ignored, since there was no visible armed power behind them![13]

Throughout the day the masses were in the streets, awaiting further instructions from their leaders. But such instructions were not forthcoming. The art of the successful execution of mass actions consists in the concentration and direction of energy towards a goal which goes beyond the point of departure, which advances the general movement, which gives the participants the feeling of collective success and strength. In the given situation, the mere repetition of the strike and mass demonstrations of the previous days was not enough. Such a step forward would have been, for instance, the encirclement and agitation of the barracks in order to win the soldiers over to the new stage of the revolution, disarming the officers, beginning a broader arming of the workers themselves[14]. But the self-appointed revolutionary committee did not propose such measures, not least because it had already put forward a course of action which was much more radical, but sadly unrealistic. Having called for nothing less than armed insurrection, more concrete but far less spectacular measures would have appeared as a disappointment, an anti-climax, a retreat. The Committee, and with it the proletariat, was the prisoner of a misguided, empty radicalism.

The leadership of the KPD was horrified when it received news of the proposed insurrection. Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches in particular accused Liebknecht and Pieck of having abandoned, not only the decisions of the party congress of the previous week, but the party programme itself.[15]

But these mistakes could not be undone, and as such were not (yet) the question of the hour. The turn of events placed the party before a terrible dilemma: How to lead the proletariat out of the trap it was already caught in?

This task was much more difficult that that mastered by the Bolsheviks during the famous "July Days" of 1917 in Russia, when the party succeeded in helping the class to side-step the trap of a premature military confrontation.

The astonishing, paradoxical response which the party, under the impetus of Rosa Luxemburg's urging found, was as follows. The KPD, the most determined opponent of an armed revolution up till then, must now become its more fervent protagonist. This for a single reason. Taking power in Berlin was the only way of preventing the bloody massacre which was now looming, the decapitation of the German proletariat. Once this danger had been averted, the Berlin proletariat could tackle the problem of holding out or of retreating in good order until the revolution was ripe in the country as a whole.

Karl Radek, the emissary of the Russian Party in hiding in Berlin, proposed an alternative course of action: immediate retreat while keeping their weapons, but if necessary surrendering them. But the class as a whole still had no arms. The problem was that the appearance of an "undemocratic" communist "putsch" gave the government the pretext it needed for a bloodletting. No retreat of the combatants could undo this.

The course of action proposed by Luxemburg was based on the analysis that the military balance of forces in the capital was not unfavourable to the proletariat. And indeed: if January 6th immediately dashed the hopes of the revolutionary committee in "its" troops, it soon became clear that the counter-revolution had miscalculated also. The Republican Guard and those troops who sympathised with the SPD now refused, for their part, to use force against the revolutionary workers. In their accounts of events, both the revolutionary Richard Müller and the counter-revolutionary Gustav Noske later confirmed the correctness of the analysis of Rosa Luxemburg: From the military point of view, the balance of forces at the beginning of the week was in favour of the proletariat.

But the decisive question was not the military but the political balance of forces. And this weighed against the proletariat for the simple reason that the leadership of the movement was still in the hands of the "centrists", the wavering elements, and not yet those of the consequent revolutionaries. According to the Marxist "art of insurrection" the armed rising is the last step in the process of enforcing the revolution, which merely sweeps away the last posts of resistance.

Realising the trap into which it had manoeuvred itself, the provisional committee, instead of arming the proletariat, began to negotiate with the government it had just declared to be ousted, and without even knowing what it wanted to negotiate. Given this attitude of the committee, on 10th January the KPD obliged Liebknecht and Pieck to resign from it. But the damage was already done. The policy of conciliation paralysed the proletariat, bringing all its doubts and hesitations to the surface. The workers of a whole series of major plants came out with declarations condemning the SPD, but also Liebknecht and the "Spartakists", calling for re-conciliation between the "socialist parties".

At this moment, when the counter-revolution was reeling, the Social Democrat Noske saved the day. "Somebody has to be the bloodhound. I am not afraid of the responsibility" he declared. While pretending to "negotiate" in order to gain time, the SPD now openly summoned the officers, the students, the bourgeois militias to drown the workers resistance in blood. With the proletariat divided and demoralised, the way was now open for the most savage white terror. These atrocities included the shelling of buildings with artillery, the murdering of prisoners and even of negotiation delegates, the lynching of workers, but also of soldiers who shook hands with revolutionaries, the molesting of women and children in the workers districts, the desecration of dead bodies, but also the systematic hunting down and murdering of revolutionaries such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. We will return to the nature and significance of this terror in the last article of this series.

Revolutionary mass strike, January-March 1919

In a famous article published in the Rote Fahne on 27th November 1918 entitled "The Acheron in Motion" Rosa Luxemburg announced the beginning of a new phase in the revolution: that of the mass strike. This was soon confirmed in a resounding manner. The material situation of the population did not improve with the end of the war. The contrary was the case. Inflation, redundancies and mass unemployment, short term work and falling real wages created new misery for millions of workers, state functionaries, but also for large layers of the middle classes. Increasingly, material misery, but also bitter disappointment with the results of the November Revolution, obliged the masses to defend themselves. Their empty stomachs were a powerful argument against the alleged benefits of the new bourgeois democracy. Successive strike waves rolled across the country above all in the first quarter of 1919. Far beyond the traditional centres of the organised socialist movement like Berlin, the coastal ports or the concentrations of the engineering and high technology sectors,[16]politically less experienced parts of the proletariat were swept into the revolutionary process. These included what Rosa Luxemburg in her Mass Strike pamphlet of 1906 had called the "helot layers"[17] These were particularly downtrodden sectors of the class, who had hardly benefited from socialist education, and who as such were often looked down on by pre-war Social Democratic and trade union functionaries. Rosa Luxemburg had predicted that they would play a leading role in a future struggle for socialism.

And now, there they were. For instance the millions of miners, metal and textile workers in the industrial districts of the lower Rhine and Westphalia.[18] There, the defensive workers struggles were immediately confronted with a brutal alliance of the employers and their armed factory guards, the trade unions and the Freikorps. Out of these first confrontations crystallised two main demands of the strike movement, formulated at a conference of delegates from the whole region at the beginning of February in Essen: All power to the workers' and soldiers' councils! Socialisation of the factories and mines!

The situation escalated when the military tried to disarm and dismantle the solders councils, sending 30,000 Freikorps to occupy the Ruhr. On 14th February the workers' and soldiers' councils called for a general strike and armed resistance. In some areas the determination of the workers' mobilisation was so great that the white mercenary army did not even dare to attack. The indignation against the SPD, which openly supported the military and denounced the strike, was indescribable. To such an extent that on 25th February the councils - supported by the Commuist delegates - decided to end the strike. Unfortunately at just that very moment it was beginning in central Germany! The leadership was afraid that the workers would flood the mines or attack Social Democratic workers.[19] In fact, the workers demonstrated a high degree of discipline, with a large minority respecting the call to return to work -although not agreeing with it.

A second, gigantic mass strike broke out towards the end of March, lasting several weeks despite the repression of the Freikorps.

"It soon became clear that the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union leaders had lost their influence over the masses. The power of the revolutionary movement of the months of February and March did not lie in the possession and use of military arms, but in the possibility of taking away the economic foundation of the bourgeois-socialist government through paralysing the most important areas of production (...) The enormous military mobilisation, the arming of the bourgeoisie, the brutality of the military, could not break this power, could not force the striking workers back to work."[20]

The second great centre of the mass strike was the region known as central Germany (Mitteldeutschland)[21]. There, the strike movement exploded in mid-February, not only in response to pauperisation and repression, but also in solidarity with the victims of repression in Berlin and with the strikes on the Rhine and Ruhr. As in the latter region, the movement drew its strength from being led by the workers' and soldiers' councils, where the Social Democrats were fast losing influence.

But whereas in the Ruhr area the employees in heavy industry dominated, here the movement engulfed not only miners, but almost every profession and branch of industry. For the first time since the beginning of the revolution, the railway workers joined in. This was of particular significance. One of the first measures of the Ebert government at the end of the war was to substantially increase wages on the railways. The bourgeoisie needed to "neutralise" this sector in order to be able to move its counter-revolutionary brigades from one end of Germany to the other. Now, for the first time, this possibility was put in question.

No less significant was that the soldiers in the garrisons came out in support of the strikers. The National Assembly, which had fled from the Berlin workers, went to Weimar to hold its constitutive parliamentary session. It arrived in the midst of acute class struggle and a hostile soldiery, and was forced to meet behind an artillery and machine gun barrier.[22]

The selective occupation of cities by Freikorps provoked street fighting in Halle, Merseburg and Zeitz, explosions of masses "enraged to the point of madness" as Richard Müller put it. As on the Ruhr, these military actions were unable to break the strike movement.

The call of the factory delegates for a general strike on February 24 was to reveal another enormously significant development. It was supported unanimously by all the delegates, including those from the SPD. In other words: Social Democracy was losing its control even over its own membership.

"From the very onset the strike spread to a maximum degree. A further intensification was not possible, unless through an armed insurrection, which the strikers rejected, and which appeared pointless. The only way to make the strike more effective would be through the workers in Berlin."[23]

It was thus that the workers summoned the proletariat of Berlin to join, indeed to lead the movement which was flaming in central Germany and on Rhine and Ruhr.

And the workers of Berlin responded, as best they could, despite the defeat they had just suffered. There, the centre of gravity had been transformed from the streets to the mass assemblies. The debates which took place in the plants, offices and barracks produced a continuous shrinking of the influence of the SPD and the number of its delegates in the workers' councils. The attempts of Noske's party to disarm the soldiers and liquidate their organisations only accelerated this process. A general assembly of the workers' councils in Berlin on 28th February called on the whole proletariat to defend its organisations and to prepare for struggle. The attempt of the SPD to prevent this resolution was foiled by its own delegates.

This assembly re-elected its action committee. The SPD lost its majority. At the next elections to this organ, on 19th April, the KPD had almost as many delegates elected as the SPD. In the Berlin councils, the tide was turning in favour of the revolution.[24]

Realising that the proletariat could only triumph if led by a united, centralised organisation, mass agitation began in Berlin for the re-election of the workers' and soldiers' councils in the whole country, and for the calling of a new national congress of this organisation. Despite the hysterical opposition of the government and the SPD to this proposal, the soldiers' councils began to declare themselves in favour of this proposal. The Social Democrats played for time, fully aware of the practical difficulties of the hour in realising such plans.

But the movement in Berlin was confronted with another, very pressing question: The call for support from the workers in central Germany. The general assembly of the workers' councils of Berlin met on 3rd March to decide on this question. The SPD, knowing that the nightmare of the January Week stilled haunted the proletariat of the capital, was determined to prevent a general strike. And indeed the workers hesitated at first.. The revolutionaries, agitating for solidarity with central Germany, gradually turned the tide. Delegations from all the main plants of the city were sent to the assembly of the councils to inform it that the mass assemblies at the work places had already decided to down tools. It became clear that there, the Communists and Left Independents now had the majority of workers behind them.

In Berlin too, the strike was almost total. Work continued only in those plants which had been designated to do so by the workers' councils (fire brigade, water, electricity and gas supplies, health, food production). The SPD and its mouthpiece Vorwärts immediately denounced the strike, calling on those delegates who were party members to do likewise. The result: these delegates now declared themselves against the position of their own party. Moreover, the printers, who, under strong social democratic influence, had been among the few professions which had not joined the strike front, now did so - in protest against the attitude of the SPD. In this way, an important part of the counter-revolutionary hate campaign of was silenced.

Despite all these signs of ripening, the trauma of January proved fatal. The general strike in Berlin came too late, just when it was ending in central Germany. Worse still, the Communists, traumatised indeed by the January defeat, refused to participate in the strike leadership alongside Social Democrats. The unity of the strike front began to decompose. Division and demoralisation spread.

This was the moment for the Freikorps to invade Berlin. Drawing lessons from the January events, the workers assembled in the factories instead of the streets. But instead of immediately attacking the workers, the Freikorps marched first against the garrisons and the soldiers' councils, to begin with against those regiments which had participated in suppressing the workers in January; those who enjoyed the least sympathy of the working population. Only afterwards did it turn on the proletariat. As in January, there were summary executions on the streets, revolutionaries were murdered (among them Leo Jogiches), corpses flung into the river Spree. This time, the white terror was even more horrific than in January, claiming well over a thousand lives. The workers' district of Lichtenberg, to the east of the city centre, was bombed by the air force.

Concerning the January-March struggles, Richard Müller wrote: "This was the most gigantic uprising of the German proletariat, of the workers, employees, civil servants and even parts of the petty bourgeois middle classes, on a scale never previously reached, and thereafter only once more attained, during the Kapp-Putsch. The popular masses stood in general strike not only in the regions of Germany focused on here: in Saxony, in Baden and Baveria, everywhere the waves of social revolution pounded against the walls of the capitalist production and property order. The working masses were striding along the path of the continuation of the political transformation of November 1918."[25]

However:

"The curse of the January action still weighed on the revolutionary movement. Its pointless beginning and its tragic consequences were tearing the workers of Berlin asunder, so it took weeks of dogged work to render them capable of re-entering the struggle. If the January putsch had not taken place, the Berlin proletariat would have been able to come to the assistance of the combatants in Rhineland-Westphalia and in central Germany in good time. The revolution would have successfully been continued, and the new Germany would have been given a quite different political and economic face."[26]

Could the revolution have triumphed?

The failure of the world proletariat to prevent World War I created difficult conditions for the triumph of the revolution. In comparison with a revolution primarily in response to an economic crisis, a revolution against world war has considerable drawbacks. Firstly, the war killed or mained millions of workers, many of them experienced and class conscious socialists. Secondly, unlike an economic crisis, the bourgeoisie can bring such a war to a halt when it sees that its continuation menaces its system. This happened in November 1918. It created a division within the working class in each country between those satisfied with a ceasefire  and those for whom only socialism could resolve the problem. Thirdly, the international proletariat was divided, first by the war itself, and then between workers in the "defeated" and in the "victorious" countries. It is no coincidence that a revolutionary situation arose where the war had been lost (Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany) - not among the main powers of the Entente (Great Britain, France, the United States).

But does this mean that a successful proletarian revolution, under such circumstances, was an impossibility from the outset? We recall that this was one of the main arguments advanced by Social Democracy to justify its counter-revolutionary role. But in reality, this was far from being the case.

Firstly, although the "Great War" physically decimated and psychologically weakened the proletariat, this did not prevent the class from unleashing a powerful revolutionary assault against capitalism. The carnage imposed was immense, but less than that inflicted by World War II; no comparison to what a Third World War with thermonuclear weapons would signify.

Secondly, although the bourgeoisie could bring the war to a halt, this does not mean that it could eliminate its material and political consequences. To these consequences belonged the exhaustion of the productive apparatus, the disorganisation of the economy and the overexploitation of the working class in Europe. In the defeated countries in particular, the ending of the war did not lead to a rapid restoration of the pre-war standard of living of the mass of the population. The contrary was the case. Although the demand for the "socialisation of industry" contained the danger of diverting the class away from the struggle for power towards the kind of self management projects favoured by anarchism and syndicalism, in 1919 in Germany the main driving force behind this demand was the concern for the physical survival of the proletariat. The workers, more and more convinced of the inability of capitalism to produce enough foodstuffs, coal etc at affordable prices to get the population through the winter, began to realise that an undernourished and exhausted work force, periled by an explosion of disease and infection, would have to take these questions into its own hands - before it was too late.

In this sense, the struggle against the war did not end with the war itself. Moreover, the impact of the war on the consciousness of the class was profound. It robbed modern warfare of its heroic image.

Thirdly, the breach between the workers in the "defeated" and the "victorious" countries was not insurmountable. In Great Britain in particular, there had been powerful strike movements both during and at the end of the war. The most striking aspect of 1919, the "year of revolution" in central Europe, was the relative absence of the French proletariat from the scene. Where was that sector of the class, which from 1848 to the Paris Commune of 1871 had been the vanguard of proletarian insurrection? To a large extent it had been infected by the chauvinist frenzy of the bourgeoisie, which promised "its" workers a new era of prosperity on the basis of the reparations it would impose on Germany. Was there no antidote to such nationalist poison? Yes, there was. The victory of the proletariat in Germany would have been this antidote.

In 1919 Germany was the vital link between the revolution in the East and the slumbering class consciousness in the West. The European working class of 1919 had been educated by socialism. Its conviction as to the necessity and possibility of socialism had not yet been undermined by the Stalinist counter-revolution. The victory of the revolution in Germany would have weakened illusions in the possibility of a return to the apparent "stability" of the pre-war world. The resumption by the German proletariat of its leading role in the class struggle would have enormously strengthened confidence in the future of socialism.

But was the triumph of the revolution in Germany itself ever a realistic possibility? The 1918 November Revolution revealed the power and the heroism of the class, but also enormous illusions, confusions and vacillations. But this was no less the case in February 1917 in Russia. In the months which followed, the course of the Russian Revolution reveals a progressive ripening of an immense potential, leading to victory in October. But in Germany, from November 1918 onwards - despite the ending of the war - we see a very similar ripening. In the first quarter of 1919, we have seen the development of the mass strike, the drawing into combat of the whole class, a growing role of the workers' councils, and of revolutionaries within them, the beginnings of the effort to create a centralised organisation and leadership of the movement, the progressive exposure of the counter revolutionary role of the SPD and the trade unions, as well as the limits of the effectiveness of state repression.

In the course of 1919, local risings and "council republics" in the coastal cities, in Bavaria and elsewhere, were liquidated. These episodes are full of examples of proletarian heroism and of bitter lessons for the future. For the outcome of the Revolution in Germany, they were not decisive. The determining centres lay elsewhere. The first was the enormous industrial concentration in what today is the province of North-Rhine-Westphalia. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, this area was populated by a sinister species from a kind of underworld, which never saw the light of day, which lived beyond the bounds of civilisation. It was horrified when it saw this enormous grey army in sprawling cities, where the sun rarely shone, and where the falling snow was black, emerge from the mines and furnaces. Horrified, even more horrified, when it became acquainted with the intelligence, the human warmth, the sense of solidarity and discipline of this army, no longer the cannon fodder of imperialist wars and production battles, but the protagonists of its own class war. Neither in 1919 nor in 1920 was the combined brutality of the military and the Freikorps able to crush this foe on its own terrain. It was only vanquished when, after repelling the Kapp Putsch in 1920, these workers made the mistake of sending their "Red Army of the Ruhr" out of the cities and the coal stacks to fight a conventional battle.

The second lay in central Germany with its very old, highly qualified working class steeped in socialist traditions.[27] Before and during the World War, ultra-modern industries such as chemicals, and aircraft production were established there, attracting tens of thousands of young workers, inexperienced, but combative, radical, full of a sense of solidarity. This sector too, would engage in further massive struggles in 1920 (Kapp) and 1921 (March Action).

But if Rhine and Ruhr and central Germany were the lungs, the heart and the digestive organs of the revolution, Berlin was the brain. The third largest city in the world (after New York and London), Berlin was something like the silicon valley of Europe of the day. The basis of its economic rise was the ingenuity of its highly skilled work force. The latter also had a long-standing socialist education, it was the heart of the process of the formation of the class party.

The conquest of power was not yet on the agenda in the first quarter of 1919. The task of the hour was to gain time for the maturation of the revolution in the whole class, while avoiding a decisive defeat. Time, at this decisive moment, was on the side of the proletariat. Class consciousness was deepening. The proletariat was striving to create its necessary organs of victory - the party, the councils. The main battalions of the class were joining the struggle.

But through the defeat of January 1919 in Berlin time switched, going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. The Berlin defeat came in two parts: January and March-April 1919. But January was decisive because it was a moral and not only a physical defeat. The unification of the decisive sectors of the class in the mass strike was the force capable of foiling the strategy of the counter-revolution and opening a pathway leading towards insurrection. But this process of unification - similar to what took place in Russia at the end of the summer 1917 in face of the Kornilov Putsch - depended above all on two factors: The class party and the workers in the capital. The bourgeoisie succeeded in its strategy of pre-emptively inflicting serious wounds on these decisive elements. The failure of the Revolution in Germany in face of its "Kornilov Days" was above all the result of its failure in face of the German version of the July Days.[28]

The most striking difference to Russia is the absence of a revolutionary party capable of formulating and defending a coherent and lucid policy in face of the inevitable storms of revolutions and the divergences in its own ranks. As we said in the previous article, the revolution could triumph in Russia without the constitution of a world class party - but not in Germany.

This is why we devoted a whole article of this series to the founding congress of the KPD. This congress understood many questions, but not the most burning issues of the hour. Although it formally adopted the analysis of the situation presented by Rosa Luxemburg, in reality too many delegates underestimated the class enemy. Although insisting heavily on the role of the masses, their vision of revolution was still influenced by examples from the bourgeois revolutions of the past. The bourgeoisie's seizure of power was but the last act of its coming to power, prepared in advance by the ascent of its economic might. Since the proletariat, as an exploited class without property, cannot accumulate wealth, it must prepare its victory by other means. It must accumulate consciousness, experience, organisation. It must become active, learning to take its fate into its own hands.[29]

Time economy of the revolution

The capitalist mode of production determines the nature of the proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution reveals the secret of the capitalist mode of production. Going through the stages of cooperation, manufacture and industrialisation, capitalism brings forth the productive forces which are the precondition for classless society. It does this through the establishment of associated labour. This "collective labourer", the creator of this wealth, is enslaved by capitalist property relations, by the private, competitive, anarchic appropriation of the fruits of associated labour. The proletarian revolution abolishes private property, bringing the mode of appropriation into line with the associated character of production. Under the command of capital, the proletariat has from the onset been creating the material conditions for its own liberation. But the gravediggers of capitalist society can only complete their historic mission if the proletarian revolution itself is the product of the "associated labourer"; of the workers of the world acting so to speak as a single person. The collective of toil of wage labour must become the conscious collective association of struggle.

This welding together in struggle both of the class as a whole, and of its revolutionary minorities, takes time. In Russia it took over a dozen years, from the struggle for a "new kind of class party" in 1903, through the mass strikes of 1905-06 and on the eve of World War One, to the heady days of 1917. In Germany, in the Western countries as a whole, the context of world war and the brutal acceleration of history it embodies granted little time for this necessary maturation. The intelligence and determination of the bourgeoisie after the armistice of 1918 further reduced the time available.

We have repeatedly spoken in this series about the shaking of the self confidence of the class and its revolutionary vanguard through the collapse of the Socialist International faced with the outbreak of war. What did this mean?

Bourgeois society conceives of this question of self-assurance as the confidence of the individual in his or her own powers. This conception forgets that mankind, more than any other known species, depends on society for its survival and development. This is all the more true for the proletariat, associated labour, which produces and struggles not individually but collectively, which brings forth not individual revolutionaries but revolutionary organisations. The powerlessness of the individual worker - which is much more extreme than that of the individual capitalist or even the individual small property owner - reveals itself in struggle as the real, hidden strength of this class. Its dependence on the collective prefigures the nature of the future communist society, where the conscious affirmation of the community will for the first time permit the development of full individuality. Self-confidence of the individual presupposes confidence of the parts in the whole, the mutual confidence of the members of the community of struggle.

In other words, it is only by welding a unity in struggle that the class can develop the courage and confidence necessary for victory. Only in a collective manner can its theoretical and analytical weapons be sufficiently sharpened. The mistakes the delegates of the KPD made at the decisive moment in Berlin were in reality the product of the still insufficient maturity of this collective strength of the young class party as a whole.

Our insistence on the collective nature of the proletarian struggle in no way denies the importance of the role of the individual in history. Trotsky, in his History of the Russian Revolution, wrote that, without Lenin, the Bolsheviks in October 1917 might have been too late in recognising the right moment for insurrection. The Party came close to missing its "rendezvous with history". Had the KPD sent these clear sighted analysts Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches to the headquarters of Emil Eichhorn on 5th January, instead of Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck, the historic outcome might have been different.

We do not deny the importance of Lenin or Rosa Luxemburg in the revolutionary struggles of the time. What we deny is that their role was above all the product of their individual genius. Their importance flowed above all from their capacity to be collective, to concentrate and direct like a prism all the light radiated by the class and the party as a whole. The tragic role of Rosa Luxemburg in the German Revolution, the fact that her influence on the party at the decisive moment was not great enough, is linked to fact that she embodied the living experience of the international movement at a moment when the movement in Germany still suffered from its isolation from the rest of the world proletariat.

We want to insist that history is an open process, and that the defeat of the first wave of world revolution was not a foregone conclusion. It is not our intention to tell the story of "what might have been". There is never a way back in history. There is only a way forward. With hindsight, the course taken by history is always "inevitable". But here we forget that the determination - or lack of determination - of the proletariat, its capacity to draw lessons and to unite its forces internationally, are part of this equation. In other words, that which becomes "inevitable" depends also on us. Our efforts towards a conscious goal are an active component of the equation of history.

In the next, concluding chapter of this series, we will examine the enormous consequences of the defeat of the German Revolution and consider the relevance of these events for today and tomorrow. 

Steinklopfer

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[1] This alliance between the military and the SPD, which proved decisive for the victory of the counter-revolution, would itself not have been possible without the support of the British bourgeoisie. The smashing of the power of the Prussian military caste was one of London's war goals. This goal was abandoned in order not to weaken the forces of reaction. In this sense, it would be no exaggeration to speak of an alliance between the German and the British bourgeoisie as the pillar of the international counter-revolution of the day. We will return to this question in the last part of this series.

[2] Thousands of Russian and other prisoners of war were still held by the German bourgeoisie and condemned to forced labour, despite the end of the war. They participated actively in the revolution alongside their German class brother and sisters.

[3] This monumental baroque building, which survived World War II, was blown up by the GDR and replaced by the Stalinist "Palace of the Republic". The balcony where Liebknecht had proclaimed the Socialist Republic on the day of the November Revolution, was removed beforehand and integrated into the adjacent façade of the "State Council of the GDR". In this way, the spot where Liebknecht summoned to World Revolution was transformed into a symbol of the nationalist "Socialism in one country".

[4] This building, located behind the palace, still exists.

[5] This is the formulation of the author Alfred Döblin in his book Karl and Rosa, the last part of his novel in four volumes: November 1918. As a sympathiser of the left wing of the USPD, he was an eye witness of the revolution in Berlin. His monumental account was written in the 1930s, and is marked by the confusion and despair of the triumphant counter-revolution.

[6] In the course of rebuilding in the city centre after the Berlin Wall fell, escape tunnels of different governments of the 20th century were excavated, unmarked on any official map, monuments to the fear of the ruling class. It was not reported if new tunnels have been built.

[7] There were sympathy strikes, demonstrations and occupations of buildings in a number of cities, including Hamburg, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf.

[8] Revolutionary delegates in the factories (see the previous articles in this series).

[9] This development, already amply documented by Richard Müller in his history of the German Revolution, written in the 1920's, is today an accepted fact among historians.

[10] Volume 3 of Müllers History of the German Revolution: Civil War in Germany. pp35, 36.

[11] Müller ibid p33. Richard Müller was one of the most experienced and talented leaders of the movement. There are certain parallels between the role Müller played in Germany and that of Trotsky in 1917 in Russia. Both were chairman of the action committee of the workers' councils in the capital city. Both went on to become the historian of the revolution they directly participated in. It is painful to see the summary way in which Wilhelm Pieck brushed aside the warnings of such an experienced and responsible leader.

[12] The six opponents were Müller, Däumig, Eckert, Malzahn, Neuendorf and Rusch.

[13] The case of Lemmgen, a revolutionary sailor, is legendary, but unfortunately true. After the failure of his repeated attempts to confiscate the state bank, the Reichsbank (a civil servant called Hamburger disputed the validity of the signatures under his order), poor Lemmgen was so demoralised that he went home and crept into his bed.

[14] Precisely this course of action was proposed in public by the KPD, in particular in its central press organ the Rote Fahne.

[15] In particular the passage of the programme which declared that the party would assume power only with the support of the great mass of the proletariat

[16] Such as Thuringia, the Stuttgart area or the Rhine valley, long standing bastions of the Marxist movement.

[17] The helots were an unfree population group that formed the main population of Laconia [5] and the whole of Messenia [6] (areas of Sparta [7]). Tied to the land, they worked in agriculture [8] as a majority and economically supported the Spartan [7] citizens. They were ritually mistreated, humiliated and even slaughtered: every autumn, during the crypteia [9], they could be killed by a Spartan citizen without fear of repercussion.

[18] Centred around the rivers Ruhr and Wupper.

[19] On 22nd February communist workers in Mülheim on the Ruhr attacked a public meeting of the SPD with machine guns.

[20] R.Müller Vol. 3. pp141, 142.

[21] The provinces of Saxony, Thuringia and Saxon-Anhalt. The centre of gravity was the city of Halle and the near by chemical belt around the giant Leuna plant.

[22] The term "Weimar Republic", covering the period of German history from 1919 to 1933, originates from this episode.

[23] Müller, ibid. p146.

[24] In the first weeks of the revolution, the USPD and the Spartakusbund between them were backed by only a quarter of all delegates. The SPD dominated massively. The party membership of the delegates voted in Berlin at the beginning of 1919 was as follows.

February 28th: USPD 305; SPD 271; KPD 99; Democrats:95.

April 19 th: USPD 312; SPD 164; KPD 103; Democrats 73.

It should be noted that the KPD during this period could only operate in secrecy, and that a considerable number of the USPD delegates in reality sympathised with the Communists and were soon to join their ranks.

[25] Müller ibid p161

[26] Ibid p154.

[27] No coincidence that the childhood of the Marxist movement in Germany is associated with the names of Thüringian cities: Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt.

[28] The July Days of 1917 were one of the most important moments, not only of the Russian revolution but in the history of the workers' movement. On 4th July an armed demonstration, half a million strong, besieged the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet, calling on them to take power, but dispersed peacefully in the evening in response to an appeal from the Bolsheviks. On 5th July counter-revolutionary troops retook the city and began hunting down the Bolsheviks and the most militant workers. However, by avoiding a premature struggle for power when the class as a whole was not yet ready for it, the proletariat as a whole kept its revolutionary forces intact. This made it possible for the workers to draw the essential lessons from events, in particular their understanding of the counter-revolutionary nature of bourgeois democracy and the new left of capital: the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, who had betrayed the cause of the workers and poor peasants and passed into the enemy camp. Never was the danger greater than during these dramatic 72 hours, of a decisive defeat for the proletariat and the liquidation of the Bolshevik Party. At no other time was the profound confidence of the proletariat's most advanced battalions in their class party, the communist vanguard, of such importance.

After the workers' defeat in July, the bourgeoisie thought they could put an end to the nightmare of revolution. Thanks to a division of labour between Kerensky's "democratic" bloc and the openly reactionary bloc of the army leader Kornilov, between August and early September the ruling class organised the latter's coup d'Etat which tried to use the Cossack and Caucasian regiments which still seemed to be reliable, against the Soviets. The attempt was a fiasco. The massive reaction of the workers and soldiers, their firm organisation by the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution - which was later to become the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee in charge of the October insurrection - meant that Kornilov's troops either surrendered without even mobilising, or more often deserted to the side of the workers and soldiers.

[29] Unlike Luxemburg, Jogiches or Marchlewski, who were in Poland  (then part of the Russian Empire ) during the revolution of 1905-06, most of the those who founded the KPD, lacking direct experience of the mass strike, had difficulties  understanding its indispensability for the victory of the revolution.

In this issue of the International Review, we are continuing the publication of our internal debate on the explanation of the post-war boom during the 1950s and 60s. Our readers will remember that this debate was originally prompted by a critique of the analysis of this period contained in our pamphlet on The decadence of capitalism, and in particular its analysis of the role played by the destruction during World War II in opening an outlet to capitalist production through the creation of a market based on reconstruction. One position (under the name "War economy and state capitalism"), "still basically adheres to the idea that the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s is determined by the global context of imperialist relations and the establishment of a permanent war economy in the wake of the Second World War". Two other positions, which at the outset shared the critique of the analysis in The decadence of capitalism, nonetheless disagreed on the analysis of the workings of the prosperity of the post-war decades: this was attributed to Keynesian mechanisms in the case of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis, and to the exploitation of the last extra-capitalist markets and the beginnings of a massive expansion of debt in the case of the "Extra-capitalist markets and debt" thesis.

In the International Review n°133, we published a presentation of the framework of the debate [20] as well as a brief explanation of the different positions in the debate. An article on "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism [21]" in International Review n°135 developed a more complete account of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis.

In this issue, we open our pages to the other two positions, with the following articles: "The bases of capitalist accumulation" (which defends the "Extra-capitalist markets and debt" thesis), and "War economy and state capitalism". Before doing so however, we feel it necessary to comment on the evolution of the positions under discussion, and on the rigour demanded by the debate.

The evolution of the positions in the debate 

During a considerable period following the opening of the debate, the different viewpoints all considered themselves to be based on the ICC's analytical framework,[1] which moreover often served as a reference point for the different positions' criticisms of each other. This is no longer the case today. That such an evolution should take place is inherently possible in any debate: differences which seem minor at the outset may appear, with the discussion, deeper than at first appeared, to the point where they call into question the initial theoretical framework. This is what has happened in our own debate, notably as regards the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis. This position, as can be seen in the afore-mentioned article in International Review n°135, now clearly calls into question some of the ICC's positions. Future articles will come back to this article's reassessment of our positions, and inasmuch as it will be taken up by the debate itself, we will limit ourselves here to pointing out the existence of three disagreements in particular:

• Capitalism[2] "generates a growing social demand through the employment of new workers and reinvestment in extra means of production and consumption" whereas for the ICC "Contrary to what the idolaters of capital claim, capitalist production does not create automatically and at will the markets necessary for its growth" (ICC Platform).
• Capitalism's apogee corresponds to "a certain stage [of] the extension of wage labour and its domination through the formation of the world market", whereas for the ICC on the contrary its apogee corresponds to the world's division between the major powers and the fact that "capitalism reached a point where the outlets which allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated" (ICC Platform).
• The evolution of the rate of profit and the size of the market are completely independent, whereas for the ICC "the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realisation of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion" (ICC Platform).

It is characteristic of proletarian debate to take the systematic and methodical clarification of disagreements to their roots, without fear of whatever re-evaluation may result. Only such a debate can really strengthen the theoretical foundations of organisations that claim to defend the proletarian cause. Consequently, the debate imposes the strictest possible scientific and militant clarity, in particular in referring to the texts of the workers' movement in support of this or that position or demonstration. Unfortunately, the article on "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" poses certain problems at this level. 

A lack of rigour in debate

The article in question begins with a quotation taken from Internationalisme n°46 (the press of the Gauche Communiste de France), as follows: "In 1952, our predecessors of the GCF brought their group's activity to an end because ‘The disappearance of the extra-capitalist market leads to a permanent crisis of capitalism (...) it can no longer expand its production. We can see here the striking confirmation of Rosa Luxemburg's theory (...) In fact, the colonies are no longer an extra-capitalist market for the colonial homeland, they have become new capitalist countries. They therefore cease to be outlets. (...) the perspective of war (...) is falling due. We are living in a state of imminent war...'. The paradox is that this incorrect perspective was announced on the eve of the post-war boom!".[3]

Two ideas emerge from this passage:

1. That in 1952 (when the article was written), the GCF considered that the extra-capitalist markets had disappeared, whence the "permanent crisis of capitalism".
2. The GCF's belief that war was imminent springs directly from the exhaustion of the extra-capitalist market.

However, this does not reflect the reality of the GCF's thinking at the time but on the contrary deforms it through the construction of a quote (reproduced above) which draws respectively from pages 9, 11, 17, and 1 of Internationalisme.

The first passage quoted, "The disappearance of the extra-capitalist market leads to a permanent crisis of capitalism" is immediately followed in the original by this, which is omitted from the quote: "Moreover Rosa Luxemburg demonstrates that the crisis opens long before this disappearance becomes absolute". In other words, for both Rosa Luxemburg and for Internationalisme, the crisis that reigned when the article was written in no way implies that the extra-capitalist markets are exhausted since "the crisis opens well before this deadline". This alteration of the GCF's thinking is not without its consequences for the debate since it supports the idea (defended by the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis) that the extra-capitalist markets are a negligible element in the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s.

The second idea attributed to Internationalisme, that "The disappearance of the extra-capitalist market leads to a permanent crisis of capitalism" and to "a state of imminent war", was not in fact defended by the GCF as such but by certain members of the group in an internal discussion. This is clear when we look at the passage from Internationalisme which is used in the article, but in an amputated form (the cuts are in bold in the passage that follows): "For some comrades indeed, the perspective of war, which they have always considered as imminent, is falling due. We are living in a state of imminent war and the question that demands analysis is not to study the factors that would drive us towards a worldwide explosion - these factors are given and are already in action - but on the contrary to examine why war has not yet broken out on a world scale". This second alteration of Internationalisme's thinking tends to discredit the position defended by Rosa Luxemburg and by the GCF since a Third World War, which should supposedly have been the consequence of the saturation of the world market, has not taken place, as everyone is aware.

Our aim in setting the record straight here is not to undertake a discussion of Internationalisme's analyses, which were undoubtedly mistaken on certain points, but to point out a tendentious interpretation of this analysis in the pages of our Review. Nor do we wish to prejudice the foundation of the analysis in the article on "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism", which is entirely distinct from the arguments we have just criticised. Now that we have undertaken this necessary clarification, it remains to us to continue calmly with the discussion of the points of disagreement in our organisation.

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[1] As we pointed out in the presentation of the debate's framework in International Review n°133.

[2] The quotes that follow in these three points, are drawn from the article in International Review n°135 or from the ICC Platform [22].

[3] This passage is drawn from the original, longer version of the article which has been published on the web in French [23]. The passage cited in the English version of the article (and published in French in the print edition of the International Review) is somewhat more truncated.

The thesis we have titled "Extra-capitalist markets and debt", as its name suggests, considers that the outlets which made it possible to realise the surplus value necessary for capitalist accumulation in the 1950s and 60s were constituted by extra-capitalist markets and credit. During this period, debt gradually took over from the world's remaining extra-capitalist markets as these became inadequate to absorb all the commodities produced under capitalism.

Two questions have been posed about this thesis:

• Can its validity be verified by an analysis of trade between different economic zones, which represent different levels of integration into capitalist relations of production? Can it also be verified by an analysis of debt during this period? A later article will look at this problem more closely.
• In what way is this thesis different from the other two? How far is it compatible with them, or not? The present article intends to undertake a critical analysis of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis, while a later one will undertake to comment on the positions defended under the title "War economy and state capitalism".

As we have already suggested in the text presenting the "Extra-capitalist markets and debt" thesis which appeared in International Review n°133, neither the increase in the purchasing power of the working class, nor state spending - much of which is unproductive, as we can see in the case of the armaments industry - can contribute to enriching global capital. This article will be essentially devoted to this question which we believe reveals a serious ambiguity in the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis, in particular as far as the virtues for the capitalist economy of increasing workers' wages are concerned.

According to the latter, "The system was thus able temporarily to square the circle of increasing the production of profit and markets in parallel, in a world where demand was henceforth largely dominated by that coming from wage labour".[1] What does it mean to increase the production of profit? It means producing commodities and selling them, but to satisfy what demand? That of the workers? The following sentence in the article just cited is equally ambiguous and does not take us much further: "The guaranteed growth in profits, state spending and the rise in real wages, were able to guarantee the final demand so vital if capital were to continue its accumulation".[2] If the growth of profits is guaranteed then so is capitalist accumulation, and in that case it becomes pointless to invoke a rise in wages and state spending to explain how capitalism can continue accumulating!

This vagueness in the formulation of the problem leaves us no option but to interpret the argument, at the risk of making mistakes in the interpretation. Does it in fact mean, as the text as a whole seems to suggest, that final demand is guaranteed by state spending and rising wages which make it possible to increase the profits which are the foundation of capitalist accumulation? If this is the case, then this text presents a real problem since in our view such an idea calls into question the very foundations of the marxist analysis of capitalist accumulation, as we will see. If, on the other hand, our interpretation is incorrect, then it is necessary to show us which demand guarantees the realisation of profit through the sale of commodities.

Capitalists accumulate what is left of the surplus value drawn from the exploitation of workers, after subtraction of unproductive costs. Since an increase in real wages can only be to the detriment of total surplus value, it is therefore also necessarily to the detriment of the share of surplus value destined for accumulation. In practice, an increase in wages comes down to paying the workers a part of the surplus value derived from their exploitation. The problem with this part of surplus value which is paid back to the workers is that, since it is not destined to reproduce labour power (which is already ensured by a "non-increased" wage) it cannot either be a part of enlarged reproduction. In fact, whether the workers use it to buy food, housing, or leisure, it can never be used to increase the means of production (machines, wages for new workers, etc.). This is why increasing wages beyond what is necessary for the reproduction of labour power is - from the capitalist standpoint - nothing other than a pure waste of surplus value which cannot become a part of the accumulation process.

It is true that the bourgeoisie's statistics hide this reality. The calculation of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) cheerfully includes everything relative to unproductive economic activity, whether this be spending on weapons or advertising, the wages of priests and policemen, the consumption of the exploiting class or the wage increases granted to the workers. Like the bourgeoisie's statistics, the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis confuses the "growth of production" measured by the growth in GDP, and the "enrichment of capitalism"; these two terms are far from being equivalent since the "enrichment of capitalism" is founded on the increase of real accumulated surplus value, and excludes surplus value sterilised by unproductive spending. This difference is by no means unimportant, especially in the period under consideration which is characterised by a massive rise in unproductive spending: "The creation by Keynesianism of an internal market capable of providing an immediate solution to finding outlets for massive industrial production gave the illusion of a lasting return to the prosperity of the ascendant phase of capitalism. But since this market was totally disconnected from the needs for the valorisation of capital, its corollary was the sterilisation of a significant portion of capital."[3]

The idea that an increase in workers' wages could, in certain circumstances, be a favourable factor in capitalist accumulation completely contradicts this basic position of marxism (and not only that!) according to which "the aim of capital is not to minister to certain wants, but to produce profit".[4]

And yet - those comrades who defend the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis will reply - this latter is itself based on Marx. Its explanation of the success of state capitalist measures aimed at avoiding over-production is indeed based on Marx's idea that "the mass of the people can never consume more than the average quantity of goods of primary necessity (...) its consumption therefore does not increase at the same rhythm as the increase in labour productivity".[5] Through this formulation of Marx, the thesis sees a way to explaining how the capitalist economy was able to overcome a contradiction: as long as there are gains in productivity sufficient for consumption to increase at the same rhythm as labour productivity, the problem of overproduction can be resolved without preventing accumulation since profits, which are also increasing, are enough to ensure accumulation. During his lifetime, Marx never witnessed an increase in wages at the same rhythm as the productivity of labour, and moreover thought that this was impossible. Nonetheless, this has happened at certain moments in the life of capitalism; however this fact in no way allows us to deduce that it could resolve, even temporarily, the fundamental problem of overproduction that Marx highlighted. Marxism does not reduce this contradiction of overproduction simply to the proportion between increasing wages and increasing productivity. The fact that Keynes saw such a mechanism of sharing out wealth as a means to maintain temporarily a certain level of economic activity in a context of sharply rising labour productivity is one thing. That the "outlets" created in this way make possible a real development of capitalism is something else, and is moreover an illusion.

Here we need to examine more closely the repercussions on the mechanisms of the capitalist economy of such a means of "regulating" the question of overproduction through workers' consumption. It is true that workers' consumption and state spending make it possible to sell the products of an increase in production, but as we have seen this results in a sterilisation of the wealth produced since it is unable to be usefully employed to valorise capital. Indeed the bourgeoisie has tried out similar expedients to contain overproduction: the destruction of agricultural surpluses, especially during the 1970s (when famine was already widespread in the world as a whole) quota systems at the world or even the European level of steel or oil production, etc. In fact, whatever the means used by the bourgeoisie to absorb overproduction or make it disappear, in the end they all come down to a sterilisation of capital.

Paul Mattick,[6] who is quoted in the article on "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism",[7] also notes an increase in wages keeping pace with an increase in productivity during the period which concerns us here: "It is undeniable that wages have risen in the modern epoch. But only in the framework of the expansion of capital, which presupposes that the relationship of wages to profits should remain constant in general. Labour productivity should therefore rise with a rapidity which would make it possible both to accumulate capital and to raise the workers' living standards".[8]

But it is unfortunate that the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis goes no further in its use of Mattick's work. For Mattick, as for us, "True prosperity, in contrast, depends on the increase in surplus value for the further expansion of capital".[9] In other words, it does not increase through sales to markets created by increasing wages or state spending: "The whole matter finally comes down to the simple fact that what is consumed cannot be accumulated, so that the growth of ‘public consumption' cannot be a means to transform a stagnating or declining rate of accumulation into a rising one".[10] This particularity of the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s has gone unnoticed by both official bourgeois economics and by the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis: "Since the economists do not distinguish between economy in general and the capitalist economy, it is impossible for them to see that "productive" and "capitalistically productive" means two different things and that public, like private investments are capitalistically productive only if they create surplus value not because they supply material goods or amenities".[11] Consequently, "The additional production made possible by deficit financing does appear as additional demand, but as demand unaccompanied by a corresponding increase in total profits".[12]

It follows from what we have just said that the real prosperity of the 1950s and 60s was not as great as the bourgeoisie likes to pretend, when it proudly shows off the GDP of the major industrialised economies of the time. Mattick's observation in this respect is completely valid: "In America, however, it remained necessary to keep the level of production stable by means of public spending, which led to slow but sure growth of the national debt. The growth of the public debt can also be traced to America's imperialistic policy and, later, to the war in Vietnam in particular. But since unemployment did not fall below 4 percent of the total labor force and production capacity was not fully utilized, it is more than plausible that without the ‘public consumption' of armaments and human slaughter, the number of unemployed would have been much higher than it actually was. And since about half of world production was American, despite the upswing in Western Europe and Japan, one cannot really speak of a complete overcoming of the world crisis, particularly not when the underdeveloped countries are taken into consideration. However brilliant the prosperity was, it was nevertheless confined to no more than a part of world capital and did not result in a general upswing encompassing the world economy".[13] The "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis underestimates this reality.

For us, the real source of accumulation is not to be found in the Keynesian measures put into effect during this period,[14] but in the realisation of surplus value through sales both to extra-capitalist markets and on credit. If we have understood it correctly, the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis makes a theoretical mistake on this level which opens the door to the idea of the possibility for capitalism of overcoming the crisis, as long as it is able to continue increasing labour productivity in the same proportion as workers' wages.

At the beginning of this debate, the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis considered itself in continuity with the theoretical framework for understanding capitalism's contradictions, developed by Marx and later enriched by Rosa Luxemburg. In our view however, whether this thesis accepts or rejects Luxemburg's theory makes no difference to its inability to account for the contradictions which undermined capitalist society during the period of the post-war boom. As we can see from the various quotations from Mattick, on which we have based our critique, the debate with this thesis has nothing to do with the more classical opposition between the theory of the necessity of extra-capitalist markets for capitalism's development (defended by Rosa Luxemburg), and the analysis based on the falling rate of profit as sole explanation for the crisis of capitalism (as defended by Paul Mattick).

As for the other question - whether sales on credit can provide a lasting basis for real accumulation - this takes us back to the debate between the falling rate of profit and the saturation of extra-capitalist markets. The answer to this question is to be found in capitalism's ability or otherwise to repay its debts. In fact, the continued increase in debt since the end of the 1950s is a sign that the present open crisis of debt has its roots precisely in the period of "prosperity" of the 1950s and 60s. But this is another debate to which we will return when we consider the verification in real life of the "Extra-capitalist markets and debt" thesis.

Silvio

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[1] "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" in International Review n°135.

[2] Ibid.

[3] International Review n°133, "Internal debate: the causes of the post-1945 economic boom", in the section "Extra-capitalist markets and debt".

[4] Capital Vol. III Part III, "The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall", Chapter 15 "Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law", Section III, "Excess capital and excess population".

[5] Marx, Théories sur la plus-value (Grundrisse), Editions Sociales tome 2, pp559-560. The translation is ours'. 

[6] Mattick was a member of the Communist Left and a militant in the KAPD during the German revolution. After emigrating to the USA in 1926 he joined the IWW and wrote on many political subjects, including economics. Two of his works are particularly noteworthy: Marx and Keynes - the limits of the mixed economy (1969) and Economic crisis and crisis theory (1974). Fundamentally, Mattick derives the capitalist crisis from the contradiction pointed out by Marx, of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. He thus disagrees with the Luxemburgist explanation of crises which - while not denying the falling rate of profit - insists essentially on the need for markets outside capitalist relations of production if capitalism is to develop. We should point out Mattick's ability in Economic crisis and crisis theory to summarise brilliantly the contributions to Marx's crisis theory by his successors, from Rosa Luxemburg to Henryk Grossmann, including Tugan-Baranovsky and not forgetting Pannekoek. His disagreements with Luxemburg do not prevent him from explaining the great revolutionary's work on economics in a perfectly objective and intelligible manner.

[7] International Review n°135.

[8] Paul Mattick, Intégration capitaliste et rupture ouvrière, EDI, p151, our translation.

[9] Mattick, Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory, "Splendor and Misery of the Mixed Economy".

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid.

[12] ibid.

[13] ibid.

[14] As Mattick points out, the Keynesian policies which were originally conceived as a means of escaping from the crisis are fundamentally only an aggravating factor: "The compensatory state-induced production thus changes from the means of easing the crisis it originally was to a factor deepening the crisis, as it divests an increasing part of social production of its character as capital, namely its ability to produce additional capital" (ibid.).

The principal purpose of this article is to develop some of the groundwork for the analysis of the post-1945 economic boom that was sketched out in International Review n°133 under the title "State capitalism and the war economy".[1] In doing so, it also seems to us useful to examine briefly some of the objections to this analysis raised by other participants in the debate.

As the introductory remarks in International Review n°133 rightly point out, the importance of the debate goes well beyond the analysis of the post-war boom as such to more fundamental aspects of the marxist critique of political economy; it should in particular contribute to a better understanding of capitalist society's main driving forces. These driving forces determine both the extraordinary dynamism of capitalism's ascendant period which impelled it from its beginnings in the city-states of Italy and Flanders to the creation of the first planetary society, and the enormous destructiveness of capitalism's decadent period that has subjected humanity to two world wars whose barbarity would have made Genghis Khan blench, and which today threaten our species' very existence.

What underlies the dynamic expansionism of the capitalist economy?

The key to capitalism's dynamism lies at the very core of capitalist social relations:

• the exploitation of the producing class by the ruling class takes the form of the purchase of labour power as a commodity;
• the product of the exploited class' labour must necessarily take the form of commodities (commodity capital) which in turn means that the expropriation of surplus labour by the ruling class necessarily involves the sale of these commodities in the market.[2]

To express this more simply through an example: the feudal lord took surplus produce from his serfs and used it directly to maintain his household estates. The capitalist takes surplus value from the workers in the form of commodities which are of no use to him as such, but which must be sold on the market to be transformed into money capital.

This inevitably creates a problem for the capitalist: who is to buy the commodities that represent the surplus value that the workers' labour has created? Very schematically, two answers have historically been given to this question in the workers' movement:

• According to some theories, there is no problem: the process of capital accumulation and the normal operations of credit allow the capitalists to invest in another round of production which, being on a larger scale, absorbs the surplus value produced by the previous round and the whole process simply begins again.[3]
• For the majority of the ICC, this explanation is inadequate.[4] After all, if capitalism can expand indefinitely on its own foundations without any problem, why was the capitalist class seized with the mania for foreign conquest? Why did the bourgeois not stay quietly at home and get on with expanding their capital without the risky, expensive, and violent business of constantly expanding their access to new markets? Luxemburg answers this question as follows in the Anti-Critique: "[There] have to be consumers who receive their means of purchase on the basis of commodity exchange, i.e. also production of goods, but taking place outside of capitalist commodity production. They must be producers, whose means of production are not to be seen as capital, and who belong to neither of the two classes - capitalists or workers - but who still have a need, one way or another, for capitalist commodities".[5]

Until the publication of his latest article in International Review n°135, it seemed reasonable to suppose that comrade C.Mcl shared this basic view of capitalism's expansion in its ascendant phase.[6] In this article, entitled "Origin dynamic and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" the comrade seems to have changed his opinion on the subject. If nothing else this shows that ideas change in the process of debate - however it seems to us necessary to pause for a moment to consider some of the new ideas that he puts forward.

It has to be said that these ideas are not at first sight very clear. On the one hand C.Mcl tells us - and we would agree - that the extra-capitalist environment provided capital with a "series of opportunities" amongst other things for the sale of excess goods.[7] On the other hand, however, C.Mcl tells us that these "external opportunities" were not only unnecessary, because capitalism is perfectly capable of developing its own "internal regulation", but that the external expansion of capitalism actually puts a brake on its development; if we understand comrade C.Mcl correctly, this is because the commodities sold in extra-capitalist markets cease to function as capital and do not therefore contribute to accumulation, whereas commodities sold within capitalism both allow the realisation of surplus value (through the conversion of commodity capital into money capital) but also themselves function as elements of accumulation, whether in the form of machines (means of production, constant capital) or as consumer goods (means of consumption for the working class, variable capital). To validate this idea, C.Mcl informs us that the non-colonialist capitalist countries experienced higher growth rates in the 19th century than the colonial powers.[8]

This view seems to us profoundly mistaken both empirically and theoretically. It is an essentially static vision in which the extra-capitalist market is nothing but a sort of overflow pipe for the capitalist market when it gets too full.

The capitalists do not just sell to the extra-capitalist market they also buy from it. The ships that carried cheap consumer goods to the markets of India and China[9] did not come back empty: they returned laden with tea, spices, cotton, and other raw materials. Until the 1860s the main source of cotton for the English textile industry was the slave economy of the American South. During the "cotton famine" caused by the Civil War replacement sources were found in India and Egypt.

In reality, "Within this process of circulation, in which industrial capital functions either as money or commodities, the circuit of industrial capital, whether as money-capital or commodity-capital, crosses the commodity circulation of the most diverse modes of social production, so far as they produce commodities. No matter whether commodities are the output of production based on slavery, of peasants (Chinese, Indian ryots), of communes (Dutch East Indies), of state enterprise (such as existed in former epochs of Russian history on the basis of serfdom) or of half-savage hunting tribes, etc. - as commodities and money they come face to face with the money and commodities in which industrial capital presents itself and enter as much into its circuit as into that of the surplus-value borne in the commodity-capital, provided the surplus-value is spent as revenue (...) The character of the process of production from which they originate is immaterial. They function as commodities in the market, and as commodities they enter into the circuit of industrial capital as well as into the circuit of the surplus-value incorporated in it".[10]

What of the argument that colonial expansion puts a brake on capitalism's development? In our opinion there are two mistakes here:

1. As the ICC (following Marx and Luxemburg) has repeatedly pointed out, the problem of the extra-capitalist market is posed at the level of global and not individual or even national capital.[11]
2. Colonisation is not the only form of expansion into extra-capitalist markets.

The history of the United States provides a particularly clear - and important given the rising role of the US economy during the 19th century - illustration of this point.

First of all, the absence of a US colonial empire during the 19th century was due, not to some kind of "independence" from an extra-capitalist environment, but to the fact that this environment was contained within the frontiers of the USA.[12] We have already mentioned the slave economy of the American South. Following the latter's destruction in the Civil War (1861-65), capitalism expanded for the next thirty years across the American West in a continuous process which can be represented as follows: slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population; installation of an extra-capitalist economy through sales and grants of the newly acquired "government land" to homesteaders and small ranchers;[13] extermination of this extra-capitalist economy through debt, fraud, and violence and the extension of the capitalist economy.[14]

In 1890 the US Bureau of the Census officially declared the internal frontier closed. In 1893 a severe depression hit the US economy and during the 1890s the US bourgeoisie was increasingly preoccupied with the need to expand its national frontiers.[15] In 1898 a State Department document explained: "It seems to be conceded that every year we shall be confronted with an increasing surplus of manufactured goods for sale in foreign markets if American operatives and artisans are to be kept employed the year around. The enlargement of foreign consumption of the products of our mills and workshops has, therefore, become a serious problem of statesmanship as well as of commerce".[16] There followed a rapid imperialist expansion: Cuba (1898), Hawaii (also 1898), the Philippines (1899),[17] the Panama Canal Zone (1903). In 1900 Albert Beveridge (a leading member of the US "imperialist interest") declared in the Senate: "The Philippines are ours forever (...) And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets (...) The Pacific is our ocean (...) Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer...".[18]

Decadence and War

For Europeans, the imperialist frenzy at the end of the 19th century is often seen in terms of the "Dash for Africa". In many ways, however, the US conquest of the Philippines was of greater importance inasmuch as it symbolises the moment when European imperialist expansion eastwards met US expansion to the West. The first war of this new imperialist epoch was fought between Asian powers as Russia and Japan contended for control of Korea and access to Chinese markets. That war in turn was a key factor in the 20th century's first revolutionary uprising, in Russia in 1905.

What does this new "epoch of wars and revolutions" (as the Third International described it) imply for the organisation of the capitalist economy?

Put very schematically, it implies the inversion of the relationship between the economy and war: whereas in capitalism's ascendant period warfare is a function of economic expansion, in decadence on the contrary the economy is at the service of imperialist war. The capitalist economy in decadence is a permanent war economy.[19]

This is the fundamental problem that underlies the whole development of the capitalist economy since 1914, and in particular the economy of the post-war boom that followed 1945.

Before we go on to examine the post-war boom from this perspective, it seems necessary to consider briefly some of the other positions present in the debate.

1) The role of extra-capitalist markets after 1945

It is worth remembering that the ICC's pamphlet on Decadence... already attributes a role to the continued destruction of extra-capitalist markets in this period,[20] and it is possible that we have underestimated their role during the post-war boom; indeed, the destruction of such markets (in the classic sense described by Luxemburg) continues to this day in the most dramatic forms, as we can see in the tens of thousands of recent suicides among Indian peasants, unable to repay the debts they contracted to buy seed grain and fertiliser from Monsanto and others.[21]

Nonetheless it is difficult to see how these markets could have contributed decisively to the post-war boom if we take into account:

• the enormous destruction visited on the small peasant economy in many countries between 1914 and 1945 as a result of war and economic catastrophe;[22]
• the fact that all the Western economies were massively subsidising agriculture during the post-war boom: in these economies the peasant economy was a cost for capitalism rather than a market.

2) Rising debt

Here we are on much more solid ground. It is true that when compared to the astronomical levels that it has reached today after more than thirty years of crisis, the increase in debt during the post-war boom may seem trivial at first sight. Compared to what went before however, its rise was spectacular. In the USA, Gross Federal debt alone rose from $48.2 billion in 1938 to $483.9 billion in 1973, ie a ten-fold increase.[23]

 

US consumer debt rose massively, from about 4% of GDP in 1948 to more than 12% in the early 1970s:

 

Real estate loans also rose, from $7 billion in 1947 to $70.5 billion in 1970 - a tenfold increase which largely understates the real situation since massive lending by the government at cheap rates and easy conditions meant that by 1955 the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration between them handled 41% of all mortgages.[24]

 

3) Rising wages

For comrade C.Mcl, the prosperity of the post-war boom was due in large part to the fact that wages increased in line with productivity as part of a deliberate Keynesian policy designed to soak up excess capacity and allow a continued expansion of the market.

It is quite true, as Marx had already pointed out in Capital, that wages can rise without threatening profits as long as productivity is also rising. It is also true that mass production of consumer goods is impossible without mass consumption by the working class. And it is also true that there was a deliberate policy of raising workers' wages and living standards after World War II in order to ward off social revolt. None of this, however, solves the basic problem identified by both Marx and Luxemburg: that the working class cannot absorb the full value of what it produces.

Moreover, C.Mcl's hypothesis lies on two major assumptions which in our view are unjustified empirically:

1. The first, is that rising wages were guaranteed by indexing them to productivity; yet we can find no evidence for this as a general policy except in a few minor cases such as Belgium.[25] To take just two counter-examples, the Italian scala mobile introduced in 1945 tied wages to inflation (a different matter altogether of course) and the "Social Contract" introduced by Wilson's Labour government in Britain at the end of the boom was a desperate attempt to reduce wages in a period of high inflation by indexing them to productivity.
2. The second is the assumption that Western capital did not seek to call on cheap foreign labour until the beginning of the period of "globalisation" in the 1980s. This is simply wrong: in the USA migration to the cities reduced the rural population from 24.4 million in 1945 to only 9.7 million in 1970.[26] In Europe the phenomenon was even more spectacular: some 40 million people migrated from the countryside or from outside Europe to the major industrial areas.[27]

The fruits of war

World War II - even more than World War I - proved a striking demonstration of the fundamental irrationality of imperialist war in decadence. Far from paying for itself by the conquest of new markets, the war left both vanquished and victors ruined and exhausted. With one exception: the United States, the only belligerent to have suffered no destruction on its own territory. This exception laid the foundation for the equally exceptional - and so unrepeatable - post-war boom.

One of the main defects of the other positions present in this debate is that a) they tend to pose the problem in purely economic terms, and b) they consider only the post-war boom itself and so fail to see that this boom was determined by the situation created by the war.

What, then, was this situation?

Between 1939 and 1945, the US economy doubled in size.[28] Mass production techniques were applied to existing industries (like shipbuilding). Whole new industries were created: mass production of aircraft, electronics and computing (the first computers were used to calculate ballistic trajectories), pharmaceuticals (with the discovery of penicillin), plastics - the list goes on and on. And although government debt peaked massively during the war, for the US bourgeoisie much of this development was pure capital accumulation as they bled the accumulated wealth of the British and French empires through arms orders.

Despite this overwhelming superiority, the United States was not without its problems at the end of the war, to say the least. We can summarise them as follows:

1. Where to find outlets for the doubling of US industrial production that had taken place during the war?[29]
2. How to uphold US national interests - now for the first time truly world wide - against the threat of Soviet expansionism?
3. How to avoid major social upheavals and the potential threat from the working class - no fraction of the world bourgeoisie had forgotten October 1917 - especially in Europe.[30] 

Understanding how the United States set about attempting to resolve these problems is the key to understanding the post-war boom - and its failure in the 1970s. This will have to wait for a future article, however it is worth pointing out that Rosa Luxemburg, writing before the full development of the state capitalist economy during the First, and above all the Second World War, had already given a brief indication of the economic effects of the militarization of the economy: "...the multitude of individual and insignificant demands for a whole range of commodities, which will become effective at different times and which might often be met just as well by simple commodity production, is now replaced by a comprehensive and homogeneous demand of the state. And the satisfaction of this demand presupposes a big industry of the highest order. It requires the most favourable conditions for the production of surplus value and for accumulation. In the form of government contracts for army supplies the scattered purchasing power of the consumers is concentrated in large quantities and, free of the vagaries and subjective fluctuations of personal consumption, it achieves an almost automatic regularity and rhythmic growth. Capital itself ultimately controls this automatic and rhythmic movement of militarist production through the legislature and a press whose function is to mould so-called ‘public opinion'. That is why this particular province of capitalist accumulation at first seems capable of infinite expansion. All other attempts to expand markets and set up operational bases for capital largely depend on historical, social and political factors beyond the control of capital, whereas production for militarism represents a province whose regular and progressive expansion seems primarily determined by capital itself.".[31]

Less than fifty years after the Accumulation was written, the reality of imperialist militarism was described in the following terms: "[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government (...) we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

(...) Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government". These words were spoken in 1961, not by some left-wing intellectual, but by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Jens, 10th December 2008

---

[1]    For reasons of space it is impossible to do justice to the whole period from 1945 to 1970. We propose therefore to go no further than to introduce an analysis of the foundations of the post-war boom which we hope to treat in more detail later.

[2]    It is no accident that the first chapter of Capital is titled "Commodities".

[3]    We are leaving aside for the moment the question of the cyclical crises through which this evolves historically.

[4]    We will not repeat here what the ICC has already written on many occasions to support our view that for Marx and Engels - and for Luxemburg in particular among the marxists of the generation that followed - the problem of the inadequacy of the capitalist market is a fundamental difficulty standing in the way of the process of capital's enlarged accumulation.

[5]    www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/anti-critique/ch01.htm [26]

[6]    See in particular the article written by the same comrade in International Review n°127 where, under the sub-heading "Rosa's analysis identical to Marx" he demonstrates in a very clear and documented manner the continuity between Marx's analysis and that of Luxemburg.

[7]    "(...) this environment continued to supply a whole series of opportunities throughout the ascendant period (1825-1914) as a source of profit, an outlet for the sale of commodities suffering from overproduction, and as an extra source of labour power".

[8]    "During the 19th century, when colonial markets were most important, ALL the NON-colonial capitalist countries grew more rapidly than the colonial countries (71% more rapidly on average). This observation is valid throughout the history of capitalism. Sales outside pure capitalism certainly allow individual capitalists to realise their commodities, but they hinder the global accumulation of capitalism since, as with armament, they correspond to material means leaving the circuit of accumulation"

[9]    Notably opium in China's case, the highly "virtuous" British bourgeoisie fighting two wars to force the Chinese government to continue to allow their population to poison themselves with British opium.

[10]  Marx, Capital (Lawrence and Wishart), Book II "The process of circulation of capital", Part I, Chapter IV, "The circuit of commodity capital", p113.

[11]  Schematically, if German industry (no colonies) outstrips British industry (with colonies) on the world market, and thus enjoys a higher growth rate, then German industry is also profiting from the extra-capitalist markets conquered by British imperialism.

[12]  When the US stripped Mexico, by force and fraud, of California (1845-1847) and Texas (1836-1845), these states were not incorporated into an empire but into the national territory of the USA.

[13]  For example, the "Oklahoma Land Rush" of 1889: the land run started at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²).

[14]  The history of capitalism's development in the USA during the 19th century merits a series of articles in itself, and we do not have the space to go into it here. It is worth pointing out moreover that these mechanisms of capitalist expansion were not limited to the USA but - as we can see in Luxemburg's Introduction to Political Economy - were also present in Russia's expansion to the East and in the incorporation into the capitalist economy of China, Egypt, and Turkey, none of which were ever colonised.

[15]  This preoccupation had already found expression in the Monroe Doctrine adopted in 1823 which clearly stated that the US considered the entire American continent, North and South, to be its exclusive sphere of interest - and the Monroe Doctrine was enforced by repeated US military intervention in Latin America.

[16]  Quoted in Howard Zinn, A people's history of the United States.

[17]  The conquest of the Philippines, whereby the US first evicted the Spanish colonial power and then conducted a ferocious war against the Filipino insurrectos, is a particularly revolting example of capitalist hypocrisy and barbarism.

[18]  Zinn, op.cit.

[19]  An example will help to illustrate this. In 1805, the industrial revolution was already well under way in Britain: both the use of steam power and mechanised textile production had been expanding rapidly since the 1770s. Yet in the same year, when the British destroyed the French and Spanish fleets at the battle of Trafalgar, Nelson's flagship HMS Victory was nearly fifty years old (the ship was built to designs drawn up in 1756 and finally launched in 1765). Compare this to the situation today where the most advanced technologies are dependent on the armaments industry.

[20]  The Decadence... pamphlet - rightly in our view - associates this phenomenon with the increasing militarism of "Third World" countries.

[21]  One could also cite the elimination of small tradesmen in the advanced economies by the spread of supermarkets and the mass marketing of the most ordinary household items (including of course, food), both phenomena which really got under way in the 1950s and 1960s.

[22]  Stalin's forced collectivisation programme in the USSR during the 1930s, Chinese warlordism and civil war during the inter-war years, the conversion of peasant to market economies in countries like Romania, Norway, or Korea to meet German and Japanese imperialism's demands for food autonomy, the disastrous effects of the Depression on small farmers in the US (Oklahoma dust bowl), etc.

[23]  Unless stated otherwise the figures and graphs are drawn from the US government statistics available on https://www.economagic.com [27]. We are concentrating in this article on the US economy partly because its government statistics are more readily available, but above all because of the overwhelming weight of the US economy in the world economy during the period.

[24]  James T Patterson, Grand Expectations, p72.

[25]  Indeed, according to one study (cedar.barnard.columbia.edu/~econhist/papers/Hanes_sscale4.pdf) "sliding scale" wage agreements had already existed in certain industries in the USA and Britain from the mid-19th century right up to the 1930s, only to be abandoned after the war.

[26]  Patterson, op.cit. This was "one of the most dramatic demographic shifts of modern American history".

[27]  "In Italy, between 1955 and 1971, an estimated 9 million people moved from one region of their country to another (...) Seven million Italians left their country between 1945 and 1970. In the years 1950-1970 a quarter of the entire Greek labour force left to find work abroad (...) It is estimated that between 1961 and 1974, one and a half million Portuguese workers found jobs abroad - the greatest population movement in Portugal's history, leaving behind in Portugal itself a workforce of just 3.1 million (...) By 1973 in West Germany alone there were nearly half a million Italians, 535,000 Yugoslavs and 605,000 Turks" (Tony Judt, Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945, pp334-5).

[28]  The United States accounted for something like 40% of world industrial production: in 1945 the United States alone produced half the world's coal, two-thirds of its oil, and half of its electricity. In addition, the USA held more than 80% of the world's gold reserves.

[29]  Zinn (op.cit.) quotes a State Department official in 1944: "As you know, we've got to plan on enormously increased production in this country after the war, and the American domestic market can't absorb all that production indefinitely. There won't be any question about our needing greatly increased foreign markets".

[30]  But also in the USA. According to Zinn, (op.cit., p417): "During the war there were fourteen thousand strikes [in the US], involving 6,770,000 workers, more than in any other comparable period in American history (...) When the war ended, the strikes continued in record numbers - three million on strike in the first half of 1946".

[31]    Luxemburg, The accumulation of capital, written in 1913, chapter on "Militarism as a province of accumulation" (the emphasis is ours).

The bourgeoisie is afraid, very afraid. Between August and October, a real gale of panic was blowing over the world economy. The noisy declarations of the politicians and economists were testimony to it. "At the edge of the abyss", "An economic Pearl Harbor" "A Tsunami on the way", "A September 11 for finance"... only the allusion to the Titanic was missing[1].

It has to be said that the biggest banks on the planet were about to go bust one after another and that the stock exchanges were plummeting, losing $32,000 billion since January 2008, or the equivalent of two years annual US production. Iceland's stock exchange fell by 94% and Moscow's by 71%. 

In the end, the bourgeoisie, going from ‘salvage' plan to ‘recovery' plan, managed to avoid the total paralysis of its economy. Does this mean that the worst is now behind us? Certainly not! The recession we are only just entering is going to be the most devastating since the Great Depression of 1929.

The economists admit it clearly: the present "conjuncture" is "the most difficult for several decades", as the HSBC "the biggest bank in the world" put it on 4th August[2].

"We are facing the most difficult economic and monetary policy environments ever seen" said the president of the American Federal Reserve, going one better, on 22nd August[3]. 

As for George W Bush televised speech on 24 September?

"We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis....The government's top economic experts warn that without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold: more banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically. And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession".

And now this "distressing scenario" of a "long and painful recession" is coming true, hitting not just the "American people" but the workers of the whole world.

A brutal recession...

Since the famous sub-prime crisis of the summer of 2007, bad news about the economy has not stopped coming.

The hecatomb in the banking sector for the year 2008 alone is impressive. There are those that have been taken over by a rival, propped up by a central bank or quite simply nationalised: Northern Rock (the eighth British bank); Bear Sterns (the fifth bank on Wall Street); Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae (two American loan companies that together weigh about $850 billion); Merril Lynch (another American star); HBOS (Scotland's second bank); AIG (American International Group, one of the world's biggest insurers) and Dexia (the Luxemburg, Belgian and French finance company). Shattering, historical bankruptcies have also marked this year of crisis. In July, Indymac, one of the biggest American loan companies, was put under the control of the Federal authorities. It was the most important American banking establishment to go bust for 24 years. But its record didn't last long. A few days later, Lehman Brothers, the fourth bank in America, also declared bankruptcy. The sum total of its debts amounted to $613 billion. Bang went the record! The biggest failure of an American bank up until then, the Continental Illinois in 1984, was six times smaller ($40 billion). Two weeks after that, another record! Now it was the turn of the Washington Mutual (WaMu), the most important savings company in the USA, to close its doors.

After this heart attack at the very centre of capitalism, the banking sector, the health of the whole body began to vacillate and decline: now the "real economy" was brutally struck. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the USA has officially been in recession since December 2007. Nouriel Roubini, now the most respected economist on Wall Street, thinks that a contraction of economic activity in America of around 5% in 2009 and again 5% in 2010 is probable![4] We don't know whether this will be the case, but the mere fact that one of the most reputable economists on the planet can envisage such a catastrophic scenario reveals the deep anxiety of the bourgeoisie. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expects the whole of Europe to be in recession in 2009. For Germany, the Deutsche Bank foresees a drop in GNP of up to 4%![5] To get an idea of the scale of such a recession, you have to remember that the worst year since the Second World War up to now was 1975, when Germany's GNP fell by ‘only' 0.9%. No continent is spared. Japan is already in recession and even China, that capitalist Eldorado, is not escaping the brutal slow-down. Result: demand has collapsed to the point where prices, including that of oil, are tumbling. In short, the world economy is doing very badly.

....and a wave of pauperisation unprecedented since the 1930s

The first victim of this crisis is obviously the proletariat. In the USA, the deterioration of living conditions has been particularly spectacular. 2.8 million workers, incapable of repaying their debts, have lost their homes since the summer of 2007. According to the Association of Mortgage Banks nearly one out of ten mortgage-paying Americans is under the threat of eviction. And this phenomenon is beginning to hit Europe, especially Spain and Britain. 

Lay-offs are also multiplying. In Japan, Sony has announced an unprecedented plan of 16,000 job-cuts, 8,000 of them on permanent contracts. This company, an emblem of Japanese industry, has never before laid off people on permanent contract. With the housing crisis, the building sector is slowing right down. The Spanish building trade expects to lose 900,000 employees between now and 2010! For the banks, it's a veritable massacre. Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the world, is going to get rid of 50,000 jobs having already shed 23,000 since the beginning of 2008. In 2008, for this sector alone, 260,000 jobs have been cut in the US and Britain. On average, one job in finance generates four directly linked jobs. The collapse of the financial organisms therefore means unemployment for hundreds of thousands of working class families. Another sector that has been hit very hard is the car industry. Sales of vehicles have crashed everywhere this autumn by over 30%. Renault, France's foremost car manufacturer, has more or less stopped production since mid-November: no more cars are coming off its assembly lines, and this on top of the fact that these lines had already been running at only 54% of their capacity for months. Toyota is going to cut 3000 out of 6000 temporary jobs in its Japanese factories. But once again the most alarming news comes from the USA: the famous Big Three of Detroit (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) are on the verge of bankruptcy. The hand-out of $15 billion from the American state won't be enough to keep them out of it for long[6] (the Big Three were actually asking for $34 billion). Massive restructuring will be taking place in the months ahead. Between 2.3 and 3 million jobs are under threat. And in the US workers who are laid off lose their health insurance and their pensions.

The inexorable consequence of this massive destruction of jobs is obviously the explosion of unemployment. In Ireland, "the economic model of the last decade", the number of unemployed has more than doubled in a year, which represents the highest increase ever recorded! Spain finished the year with 3.13 million unemployed, more than a million more than in 2007[7]. In the US, 2.6 million jobs were axed in 2008, something never seen since 1945[8].The end of the year was particularly disastrous with more than 1.1 million jobs lost during November and December. At this rate, there could be another 3 or 4 million unemployed between now and the summer of 2009.

And for those who survive, those who see their colleagues being laid off, the future is "work much more to earn less"[9]. Thus, according to the latest report by the International Labour Organisation, entitled ‘World report on wages 2008/9', "For the 1.5 billion wage earners in the world, difficult times are ahead....the world economic crisis will lead to painful cuts in wage levels".

How the bourgeoisie explains this crisis

The economic mechanisms which have engendered the current recession are relatively well known. Television has provided us with all sorts of reports which claim to give us all the background to the affair. To keep it simple, for years, the consumption of "American households" (in other words, working class families) has been supported artificially by all sorts of credits, in particular one which met with huge success: risky mortgage loans or ‘subprimes'. The banks, the financial organs, the pension funds...all gave out loans without any concern for the real capacity of these workers to pay them back, as long as they had a mortgage. The worst that could happen, they thought, was that they would be repaid by the sale of houses by debtors who couldn't repay their debts. This had a snowball effect: the more the workers borrowed - above all to buy their houses - the more the price of houses went up; the more house prices went up, the more they could borrow. All the speculators on the planet then joined the dance: they rushed into buying properties, which made them even more expensive and they then started selling each other these subprimes through the mechanism of ‘securitisation' (i .e. the transformation of loans into assets exchangeable on the world market like other shares). Over the decade, the speculative bubble grew to huge proportions; all the financial institutions on the planet were involved in it to the tune of trillions of dollars. Put another way, households which were known to be insolvent became the world economy's goose that laid the golden eggs.

Obviously, in the end the real economy forced this idyllic world to face reality. In ‘real life', all these hyper-indebted workers were also facing rising living costs and frozen wages, unemployment, falling unemployment benefits....In a word, they were getting considerably poorer, so that a growing number of them were less and capable of meeting their repayments. The capitalists then started to forcibly eject the bad debtors so that their houses could be sold...but there were so many houses coming onto the market[10] that prices began to come down and...hey presto, in the sunshine of summer 2007, the whole vast snowball melted away! The banks found themselves with hundreds of thousands of insolvent debtors and all those houses worth nothing. It was bankruptcy, the crash. 

Summarised like this, the whole thing seems absurd. Loaning money to people who don't have the means to pay you back goes against capitalist common sense. And yet the world economy based the essentials of its growth over the last decade on this nonsense. The question is then why? Why such madness? The answer given us by the journalists, the politicians, the economists is simple and unanimous: It's the fault of the speculators! It's the fault of greedy bosses who behave like thugs! It's the fault of irresponsible bankers! Today, everyone is joining the traditional choir of the left and the extreme left, singing about the evils of ‘deregulation' and ‘neo-liberalism' (a kind of unbridled liberalism) and calling for a return to state intervention....which shows up the real nature of the ‘anti-capitalist' proposals of the left and the extreme left. Thus France's right-wing president Sarkozy proclaims that "capitalism must found itself anew on an ethical basis". Germany's Angela Merkel insults the speculators. Spain's ‘socialist' Zapatero points an accusing finger at the "market fundamentalists". And Chavez, the illustrious knight of ‘21st century socialism', commenting on the emergency nationalisations pushed through by Bush, told us that "comrade Bush is about to take certain measures which are the same as those taken by comrade Lenin"[11]. They all tell us that hope today lies in ‘another kind of capitalism', more human, more moral... more state-controlled!

Lies! In the mouths of all these politicians, everything is false, including their so-called explanation of the recession. 

Today's economic catastrophe is the fruit of a hundred years of decadence

In reality, it's the state itself which was the first to organise this generalised household debt. To provide an artificial support to the economy, the state opened the floodgates of credit by reducing the lending rates of the central banks. By giving out cheap loans, sometimes at less than 1%, the flow of money was greatly increased. World debt was thus a deliberate choice of the bourgeoisie and not the result of some kind of ‘deregulation'. How else are we to understand Bush's declaration in the aftermath of September 11 2002 when, facing the beginnings of a recession, he called on the workers to "be good patriots, consume". The American president was giving a clear message to the whole financial sphere: multiply consumer credit or the national economy would fold![12]

In fact, capitalism has been surviving on credit for decades. The graph in figure 1[13], which presents the evolution of total US debt (i.e. the combined debt of state, companies and households) since 1920, speaks for itself. To understand the origins of this phenomenon and go beyond the simplistic and fraudulent story about the ‘madness of the bankers, speculators and bosses', we have to go to the "great secret of modern society: the creation of surplus value", to use Marx's words[14]

Figure 1: Evolution of total US debt since 1920

Capitalism carries within itself, and has done since its birth, a sort of congenital illness: overproduction. It produces more commodities than its market can absorb. Why? Let's take a totally theoretical example: a workers on an assembly line or in front of a computer and who, at the end of the month, is paid 800 euros. In fact, he has produced not the equivalent of 800 euros, which he receives, but a value of 1200 euros. He has carried out unpaid labour, or, to put it another way, he has produced surplus value. What does the capitalist do with these 400 euros he has stolen from the worker (providing that that he manages to sell his commodities)? He puts some of it in his pocket, let's say 150 euros, and the remaining 250 euros he invests in his company's capital, most often by buying more modern machinery etc. But why does the capitalist proceed in this way? Because he has no choice. Capitalism is a competitive system; you have to sell your goods more cheaply than the rival selling the same products. As a result, the boss is forced not only to lower his production costs, i.e. wages, [15], but also to use a growing part of the unpaid labour he has extracted for reinvestment in more efficient machines[16] in order to increase productivity. If he doesn't do this, he can't modernise, and sooner or later, his rival, who has done so, will be able to sell more cheaply and conquer the market. The capitalist system is thus affected by a contradictory phenomenon: by not paying back the workers the equivalent of what they have supplied to him as labour, and by forcing the bosses to give up consuming a large part of the profit extorted in this way, the system produces more value than it can distribute. Neither the workers nor the capitalists put together can ever absorb all the commodities produced. Who is going to consume this surplus of commodities? The system has to find outlets outside the framework of capitalist production - the extra-capitalist markets, in the sense of economies than don't function in a capitalist manner.

This is why in the 18th and above all the 19th century, capitalism conquered the globe: it had to find new markets all the time, in Asia, in Africa, in South America, to realise profit by selling its surplus commodities, on pain of seeing its economy paralysed. And this is what regularly happened when it could not make new conquests quickly enough. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 contains a masterly description of this kind of crisis:

"In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce".

Nevertheless, in this period, because capitalism was a rising system, because it really could conquer new territories, each crisis gave way to a new phase of prosperity:

"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere (...) The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image".

But already Marx could see in these periodic crises something more than just an eternal cycle which would always lead to a new phase of prosperity. He saw them as the expression of profound contradictions which would undermine capitalism. By conquering new markets, the bourgeoisie was "paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented". Or, as he put it in Wage Labour and Capital: crises "become more frequent and more violent, if for no other reason, than for this alone, that in the same measure in which the mass of products grows, and there the needs for extensive markets, in the same measure does the world market shrink ever more, and ever fewer markets remain to be exploited, since every previous crisis has subjected to the commerce of the world a hitherto unconquered or but superficially exploited market".

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the main capitalist powers were engaged in a race to conquer the world; they increasingly divided the planet up into colonies and created veritable empires. From time to time, they found themselves in dispute over the same territory; a short war broke out, and the loser quickly moved on to find another corner of the earth to conquer. But by the beginning of the 20th century, the great powers had completed the domination of the world. It was no longer a matter of scrambling for new areas of Africa, Asia or America, but of engaging in a pitiless struggle to defend their spheres of influence and to seize areas from their rivals at the barrel of a gun. This was a real question of survival for the capitalist nations: they had to be able to pour enough of their overproduction into non-capitalist markets. It was thus not by chance that it was Germany, which had very few colonies and was dependent on the good will of the British Empire to trade in the areas under its control (a dependence which is intolerable for any national bourgeoisie) proved to be the most aggressive power and was the one which unleashed the First World War in 1914. This butchery cost more than 11 million lives, caused terrible suffering and inflicted moral and psychological traumas on entire generations. This horror announced the opening of a new epoch, the most barbaric epoch in history. Having gone past its zenith, capitalism now entered its period of decadence. The 1929 crash strikingly confirmed this.

And yet, after more than a hundred years of slow agony, this system is still standing - ill, certainly, but still alive. How has it survived? Why has its body not been totally paralysed by the poison of overproduction? It is here that the resort to debt enters into the picture. The world economy has managed to avoid a shattering collapse by resorting more and more to debt.

As Figure 1 shows, since the beginning of the 20th century, the total American debt has literally exploded, starting in the 1920s. Households, enterprises and banks crumpled beneath a pile of debt. And the brutal fall in the debt curve in the 1930s and 40s is in fact deceptive. The Great Depression of the 1930s represented the first great economic crisis of decadence. The bourgeoisie was not yet prepared for such a shock. At first it did not respond or responded badly. By closing off frontiers (through protectionism), it accentuated overproduction and the toxins did their worst. Between 1929 and 1933, America's industrial production fell by 50%[17]; unemployment hit 13 million workers and the level of poverty was truly terrible. Two million Americans were made homeless[18]. Initially, the government didn't come to the aid of the financial sector: of the 29,000 banks registered in 1921, there were only 12,000 left at the end of March 1933; and this hecatomb continued until 1939[19]. All these bankruptcies meant a pure and simple disappearance of mountains of debt[20]. On the other hand, what isn't shown on this graph is the growth of public debt. After four years of doing nothing, the American state finally began to take measures: this was Roosevelt's New Deal. And what did this plan, so talked about today, actually consist of? It was a policy of great works based on... a massive, unprecedented increase in state debt (from $17 billion in 1929, the public debt rose to $40 billion by 1939)[21].

After that, the bourgeoisie drew the lessons of this misadventure. At the end of the Second World War it organised monetary and financial institutions on an international level (via the Bretton Woods conference) and above all it systematised the resort to credit. Thus, having hit a low point in 1953-54 and despite the short calm in the years 1950 and 1960[22], total American debt began again slowly but surely to increase from the mid-50s on.  And when the crisis came back on the scene in 1967, this time the ruling class didn't wait four years before doing something. It immediately resorted to credit. These past 40 years can in fact be summarised as a succession of crises and and an exponential rise in world debt. In the USA, there were officially recessions in 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990 and 2001[23]. The solution of the American bourgeoisie in the face of these difficulties is also visible on the graph: the axis of debt goes up sharply after 1973 and even more sharply during the 1990s. All the bourgeoisies in the world have acted in the same way.

But debt is not a magical solution. Figure 2[24] shows that, since 1966, debt has been less and less effective in creating growth[25]. It's a vicious circle: the capitalists produce more commodities than the market can normally absorb; next, credit creates an artificial market; the capitalists then sell their commodities and reinvest their profits in production and... then you need more credit to sell the new commodities. Not only do debts accumulate, but with each new cycle, you need more and more debts to maintain an identical rate of growth (since production has been enlarged). Furthermore, an increasingly large part of all this credit is never injected into the circuit of production but disappears immediately into the abyss of deficits. Over-indebted households often take out new loans to pay back their old debts. The state, companies and banks work in the same way. Finally, over the past 20 years, with the ‘real economy' in perpetual crisis, a growing part of the money created goes to fuel speculative bubbles (the Internet bubble, the housing bubble, etc...)[26]. It is more profitable and in the end less risky to speculate on the stock exchange than to invest in the production of commodities which will be extremely difficult to sell. Today five times more money circulates in the stock exchange than in production[27].

Figure 2: Weakening effect of the growth of debt on the growth of GNP

But this headlong flight into debt is not simply less and less effective, it inexorably and systematically results in a devastating economic crisis. Capital can't simply pull money out of a hat. It is the ABC of commerce: every debt must one day be paid back or the lender will get into serious difficulties and eventually bankruptcy. We then go back to the beginning: capital can only gain time in the face of its historic crisis. Worse: by putting off the effect of the crisis till tomorrow, it is paving the way for even more violent economic convulsions. This is exactly what is happening to capitalism today.

Can the state save the capitalist economy?

When an individual becomes bankrupt, he loses everything and is thrown out onto the street. A company locks its gates. But a state? Can a state become bankrupt? After all, we have never seen a state shut up shop. Not exactly. But being in cessation of payment, yes!

In 1982, 14 deeply indebted African countries were forced to officially declare themselves in cessation of payment. In the 1990s, countries in South America and Russia were also in default. More recently, in 2001, Argentina crumbled in its turn. Concretely, these states did not cease existing, and the national economy didn't just stop either. On the other hand, each time it happened there was a sort of economic earthquake: the value of the national currency fell, the lenders (in general, other states) lost all or part of their investment, and above all the state drastically reduced its expenses by laying off a large number of civil servants and by temporarily ceasing to pay those who remained. 

Today, numerous countries are at the edge of this abyss: Ecuador, Iceland, Ukraine, Serbia, Estonia... But how goes it with the great powers? The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared at the end of December that his state was in a "fiscal state of emergency". The richest of all the American states, the "Golden State", was ready to lay off 235,000 of its public employees (and those who are left are going to have to take two days of unpaid holiday a month starting on 1st February). Presenting this new budget, the ex-Hollywood star warned that "everyone will have to agree to make sacrifices". This is a very powerful symbol of the profound economic difficulties of the world's leading power. We are still far away from a cessation of payments by the American state but this example shows clearly that the great powers' economic room for manoeuvre is today very limited. World debt seems to be reaching saturation point (it stood at $60,000 billion in 2007 and has swollen by several trillion dollars since); obliged to continue in the same direction, the bourgeoisie is thus going to provoke devastating economic shocks. The FED has lowered lending rates for 2009 to 0.25% for the first time since its creation in 1913. The American state is thus loaning money almost for nothing (and even at a loss if you take inflation into account). All the economies of the planet are calling for a "New Deal", dreaming about Obama as the new Roosevelt, capable of re-launching the economy, like in 1933, through an immense programme of grand public works financed... by credit[28]. The bourgeoisie has been regularly launching plans based on state debt equivalent to the New Deal since 1967, with no real success. And the problem is that such a policy of forward flight can lead to the collapse of the dollar. Today there are many countries who doubt the ability of the US to repay their loans and are being tempted to withdraw all their investments. This is the case with China which, at the end of 2008, threatened, in very diplomatic language, to stop propping up the American economy by buying Treasury Bonds: "Every error about the gravity of the crisis will cause problems both for lenders and borrowers. The country's apparently growing appetite for American Treasury Bonds does not mean that they will remain a profitable investment in the long term or that the American government will continue to depend on foreign capital". And this, in a few words, is how China threatened the American state with cutting off the flow of Chinese dollars which has been feeding the US economy for several years. If China carried out its threat[29], the international currency chaos that would ensue would be apocalyptic and the ravages on working class living standards gigantic. But it's not only China which is beginning to have doubts: on Wednesday 10th December, for the first time in history, the American state had all sorts of difficulties in finding a loan of $28 billion. And since the coffers of all the great powers are empty, staggering under the weight of interminable debts and ailing economies, on the same day the same problem hit the German state: for the first time since the 1920s, it had the greatest difficulty in finding anyone willing to loan it 7 billion euros.

No doubt about it: debt, whether household, company or state, is just a palliative and it doesn't cure capitalism of the disease of overproduction. At best it allows the economy to get out of jail but only by preparing ever more violent crises. And yet the bourgeoisie is going to carry on with this desperate policy because it has no choice, as was shown, for the umpteenth time, by Angela Merkel's declaration on 8th November 2008 to the international conference in Paris: "There is no other way of struggling against the crisis except by accumulating a mountain of debts", or again by the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard's latest statement: "we are in the presence of a crisis of exceptional breadth whose main component is a collapse in demand (...) It is imperative to re-launch private demand if we want to prevent the recession turning into a Great Depression". How is this to come about? "Through an increase in public expenditure".   

But if not through these recovery plans, can the state still be the saviour by nationalising a good part of the economy, such as the banks or the car industry? Once again, no. First, and contrary to the traditional lies of the left and the extreme left, nationalisations have never been good news for the working class. At the end of the Second World War, there was a big wave of nationalisations aimed at putting the apparatus of production on its feet again after all the destruction and at increasing the tempo of work. We should not forget the words that Thorez, General Secretary of the French Communist Party, and then vice president in the De Gaulle government, threw at the working class in France, especially those in the nationalised industries: "If miners have to die at their post, their wives will replace them", or "Roll up your sleeves for national reconstruction!" or again "strikes are the weapon of the trusts". Welcome to the wonderful world of nationalised enterprises! There is nothing surprising about any of this. Since the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, revolutionary communists have always shown the viscerally anti-proletarian role of the state:   

"The modern state (...) is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.".[30]

The new wave of nationalisations will bring no benefit to the working class. Nor will it allow the bourgeoisie to return to long-term growth. On the contrary! These nationalisations presage ever-more violent economic storms on the horizon. In 1929, the American banks that went bust took with them the savings of a large part of the American population, plunging millions of workers into poverty. After that, to avoid such a debacle happening again, the banking system was divided in two: on the one hand, business banks which financed companies and worked in all kinds of financial operations; on the other hand, savings banks which took the money of their customers and put them in relatively safe investments. Now, swept away by the wave of bankruptcies in 2008, these American business banks no longer exist. The American financial system has gone back to what it was like before 24th October 1929! When the next storm breaks, all the banks which have so far been kept going thanks to partial or complete nationalisations risk disappearing, but this time taking with them the meagre savings of working class families. Today, if the bourgeoisie nationalises, it's not to put through a new economic recovery plan but to avoid the immediate insolvency of the mastodons of finance and industry. It's a matter of avoiding the worst and saving the furniture[31].

The mountain of debts that has been building up over the last four decades has become a veritable Everest and nothing can now prevent capital from sliding down its slopes. The economy is truly in a disastrous state. That doesn't mean that capitalism will collapse overnight. The bourgeoisie will not let its world disappear without reacting: it will try desperately and with all possible means at its disposal to prolong the agony of its system, without concern for the ills that this will inflict on humanity. Its mad flight into debt will continue and here and there may still be short moments of growth. But it is certain is that the historic crisis of capitalism is changing its rhythm After forty years of slowly descending into hell, the future will be one of violent convulsions, of recurrent economic spasms shaking not only the countries of the Third World but also the US, Europe, Asia...[32]

The slogan of the Communist International in 1919 is more relevant today than ever: "for humanity to survive, capitalism must perish!" 

Mehdi 10.01.09 

---

[1] Respectively: Paul Krugman (the last Nobel Prize winner in economics); Warren Buffet (an American investor, nicknamed the ‘oracle of Omaha', so much is the opinion of this billionaire from small town Nebraska respected in the world of high finance); Jacques Attali (economic adviser to French president Nicolas Sarkozy) and Laurence Parisot (president of the French bosses' association.

[2] Libération 4.08.08

[3] Le Monde, 22.08.08

[4] Source : contreinfo.info/article.php3?id_article=2351

[5] Les Echos, 05.12.08

[6] This money was found in the funds of the Paulson plan, which is already insufficient for the banking sector. The American bourgeoisie is obliged to "robbing Peter to pay Paul", which shows the disastrous state of the finances of the world's leading power.

[7] Les Echos, 08.01.09

[8] According to the report published on 9 January by the American Labour Department (Les Echos, 09.01.09)

[9] In France, President Sarkozy waged a campaign in 2007 whose main slogan was "Work more to earn more!" (sic!)

[10] In 2007, nearly three million American households were defaulting on their payments (‘Subprime Mortgage Foreclosures by the Numbers', www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2007/03/26/2744/subprime-mortgage-foreclosures-by-the-numbers [32]).

[11] For once, we agree with Chavez. Bush is indeed his comrade. Even if they have been engaged in a bitter imperialist battle between their two countries, they are nonetheless comrades when it comes to defending capitalism and the privileges of their class... the bourgeoisie

[12] Today Alan Greenspan, the former president of the FED and the conductor of the whole orchestra of economic credit, is being lynched by all the economists and doctors of the dismal science. This fine crowd has short memories and forget that not long ago they were calling him the ‘financial guru'.

[13] Source : eco.rue89.com/explicateur/2008/10/09/lendettement-peut-il-financer-leconomie-americaine

[14] Marx, Capital Vol 1

[15] Or in other words, variable capital

[16] Fixed capital

[17] A Kaspi, Franklin Roosevelt, Paris, Fayard, 1988, p 20

[18] These figures are all the more significant given that the American population at the time was only 120 million. Source: Lester V Chandler, America's Great Depression 1929-1941, New York, Harper and Row, 1970, p24f

[19] According to Frédéric Valloire, in Valeurs Actuelles 15.02.08

[20] To complete the picture, this fall in debt can also be explained by a complex economic mechanism: monetary creation. The New Deal was not financed fully by debt but simply by creating money. Thus on 12 May 1933, the President was authorised to increase the credit of the federal banks by three billion dollars and to print bills without any counterpart in gold to the tune of another $3 billion. On 22nd October of the same year, the dollar was devalued 50% in relation to gold. All this explains the relative moderation of debt levels.

[21]Source: www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo3.htm [33].

[22] From 1950 to 1967, capitalism went through a phase of major growth, sometimes known as the ‘Golden Age'. The aim of this article is not to analyse the causes of this parenthesis in the economic swamp of the 20th century. There is a debate going on in the ICC in order to reach a better understanding of what underlay this period, a debate which we have begun to publish in our press (see ‘Internal debate in the ICC: the causes in the period of prosperity after the Second World War in International Review n°133, second quarter of 2008). We strongly encourage all our readers to participate in this discussion at our public meetings, by letter or by e-mail

[23] Source: www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating [34]

[24] Source : eco.rue89.com/explicateur/2008/10/09/lendettement-peut-il-financer-leconomie-americaine

[25] In 1966, a dollar of supplementary debt produced another $0.80 of wealth, whereas in 2007 the same dollar only created an extra $0.20 of GNP

[26] Shares and housing are not included in GNP

[27] Thus, contrary to everything the economists, journalists and other experts tell us, this ‘speculative madness' is the product of the crisis, not the other way round!

[28] Just after this article was written, Obama announced his long-awaited recovery plan. In the words of the economists it was "rather disappointing": $775 billion would be released, allowing a "fiscal gift" of $1,000 dollars to every American household (95% of households were concerned) in order to encourage spending, and to launch a programme of grand public works in the sphere of energy, infrastructure and schools. Obama promises that this plan will create three million jobs in the course of the next few years. Since the American economy is currently destroying over 500,000 jobs a month, this new New Deal (even if its most hopeful expectations are fulfilled, which does not seem very likely) is thus far below what is required.

[29] In itself, this threat reveals the impasse and the contradictions facing the world economy. For China, massively selling its dollars would be like cutting off the branch on which it's sitting since the USA is the main outlet for its commodities. This is why up till now it has continued to help prop up the American economy. But at the same time, it is aware that the branch is rotten, and it has no desire to be sitting on it when it cracks.

[30] Engels, 1878 Anti-Dühring

[31] In doing so, it is laying the ground for the development of the class struggle. By becoming their official boss, the state confronts the workers' struggle directly. In the 1980s, the big wave of privatisations (under Thatcher in Britain for example) brought an extra difficulty for the struggle. Not only were the workers called on by the unions to fight to save the nationalised industries, in other words, to be exploited by one boss (the state) instead of another (private), but also they no longer confronted the same boss (the state) but a series of different private bosses. Their struggles were thus often dispersed and ineffective. In the future, by contrast, the ground will be more fertile for a united workers' struggle against the state.

[32] Since the economic terrain is so unstable, it's difficult to see what will be the next bomb to go off. But in the pages of the economic journals, a term often crops up in the worried jottings of the economic experts: CDS. A CDS - ‘Credit Default Swap' - is a sort of insurance which a financial establishment uses to protect itself from the risk of a default in payment. The total market in CDS was estimated at $60 trillion in 2008. In other words if there were to be a CDS crisis on the model of the sub-prime crisis it would be absolutely devastating. It would swallow up all the American pension funds, and thus shatter workers' retirement plans.

"The first global crisis of humanity" (WTO, April 2009);[1] a recession which is "the most profound and the most synchronised in the memory of man" (OECD, March 2009)![2] From the very words of these great international institutions, the present economic crisis is of an unprecedented gravity. In order to face up to it, all the forces of the bourgeoisie have been mobilised for months. The ruling class is doing all it can to hold back the world economy's descent into hell. The G20 is without doubt the strongest symbol of this international response.[3]

At the beginning of April, all capitalist hopes turned towards London, the city holding the summit of salvation that had the task of "re-launching the economy" and "raising the moral standards of capitalism". And to believe the declarations from the different leaders of the planet, this G20 was a real success. "It's the day that the world came together in order to fight the recession" stated the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. "It has gone beyond what we could have imagined" the French President Nicolas Sarkozy said emotionally. "It is a historic compromise for an exceptional crisis", was the opinion of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And for Barak Obama, this summit was a "turning point".

Clearly the truth is elsewhere.

The only success of the G20: it took place!

These last months, the economic crisis has been stirring up international tensions. Firstly, there has been a drift towards protectionism. Each state has been trying more and more to save a part of its economy, using subsidies and national grants to fight off foreign competition. This, for example, was the case for the support plan for the automobile industry in France decided on by Nicolas Sarkozy, a plan sharply criticised by his European "friends". Then, there's the growing tendency to undertake recovery plans in dispersed order, in particular when it comes to rescuing the financial sector. Finally, the United States, epicentre of the financial earthquake, hit by the full force of the economic storm, has numerous competitors trying to take advantage of the situation so as to weaken American leadership still more. This is the real meaning of the appeals to "multilateralism" from France, Germany, China, and some countries of Latin America.

This London G20 was thus a tense one, and in the corridors the debates were really stormy. But appearances were maintained and the catastrophe for the bourgeoisie of a chaotic G20 was avoided. The bourgeoisie hadn't forgotten how the absence of international coordination and the frenzied turn towards each for themselves had contributed to the disaster of 1929. At that time, capitalism was confronted with the first great crisis of its period of decadence,[4] and the ruling class didn't know how to react to it. First, the states did nothing. From 1929 to 1933, almost no measures were taken, while the banks collapsed one after the other in their thousands. World trade literally collapsed. In 1933, a first reaction was sketched out: it was the first New Deal[5] of Roosevelt. This recovery plan contained a policy of public works and state debt, but also a protectionist law, "Buy American".[6] From there, every country launched themselves into the protectionist current. World trade, already in a bad way, again suffered a shock. Through these measures, the bourgeoisie ended up aggravating the world crisis in the 1930s.

Today, all the bourgeoisies want to avoid a repetition of the vicious circle of crisis-protectionism-crisis... They are conscious that they must do everything to avoid repeating the errors of the past. It was of the utmost necessity that this G20 displayed the unity of the great powers against the crisis, in particular when it came to supporting the international financial system. The IMF even made a specific point of it in its preparatory "Work document" prior to the G20 to warn against the danger of each for themselves.[7] Thus Point 13 was entitled "The spectre of commercial and financial protectionism is a growing preoccupation" and it went on: "Notwithstanding the engagements made by the countries of the G20 (those of November 2008) not to resort to protectionist measures, worrying backslidings have taken place. The lines are vague between public interventions aiming to contain the impact of the financial crisis on sectors in difficulty and inappropriate subsidies to industries whose long term viability is questionable. Certain policies of financial support also lead the banks to direct their credit towards their country. At the same time, there is growing risk that some emerging countries confronted by external pressures on their accounts try to impose capital controls." The IMF has not been alone in issuing such warnings: "I fear that if this does not happen, a return to generalised protection would become likely, as a way for deficit countries, such as the US, to strengthen demand for domestic output and employment.... This is a time of decision. Choices must be made between outward-looking and inward-looking solutions. We tried the latter in the 1930s. This time we should try the former" (Martin Wolf, in front of the US Senate Commission for Foreign Affairs, March 25, 2009).[8]

The G20 heard the message: the leaders of the world have been able to present an appearance of unity and wrote in their final communiqué: "Not to repeat the errors of the past". What followed was a real international cry of relief. As the French economic journal, Les Echos, wrote on April 3rd  "the first conclusion to be drawn about the G20 that took place yesterday in the British capital, is that it hasn't failed, and that is already a lot. After the tensions of these last weeks, the twenty great economies on the planet have displayed their unity".

Concretely, the different countries undertook not to put up barriers, including on financial flows, and have mandated the WTO to scrupulously verify that this engagement is respected. Moreover, 250 billion dollars will be put at the disposal of export support agencies or investment agencies so as to aid the recovery of international trade. But above all, the growth of tensions has not spoilt this summit by turning it into an open fight. Appearances have been maintained and here's the real success of the G20. This is obviously only a temporary success because the crisis will inexorably continue to stir up international disunity.

Today's debt prepares the crisis of tomorrow    

Since the summer of 2007 and the famous "sub-prime" crisis, recovery plans have followed one another in a frantic rhythm. The first time that a massive injection of billions of dollars was announced there was a momentary breeze of optimism. But today, as the crisis has got worse and worse, each new plan is welcomed with more and more scepticism. Paul Jorion, a sociologist specialising in economics (and one of the first to announce the economic catastrophe) had this to say about the whole spiral of setbacks: "One moves indifferently from the small push of 2007 from a mounting figure in millions of euros or dollars to the big shove at the beginning of 2008, then to the enormous push at the end of the year numbering  hundreds of billions. As to 2009, it's the year of the "colossal" push, to amounts this time expressed in "trillions" of euros or dollars. And despite the Pharonic ambition, still not the least glimmer at the end of the tunnel!" [9]

And what does the G20 propose? A new raising of the stakes that is just as ineffectual! 5,000 billion dollars will be injected into the world economy from here to 2010.[10] The bourgeoisie has no other "solution" to put forward and thereby reveals its impotence.[11] The international press is not mistaken about it: "The crisis is in effect far from being finished and one would be naive to think that the decisions of the G20 will change everything" (La Libre Belgique), "It has failed at a time when the world economy is about to implode" (New York Times), "The recovery left the G20 summit unmoved" (Los Angeles Times).

The estimates of the OECD for 2009, as optimistic as they are as usual, leave hardly any doubt about what's going to hit humanity in the coming months, with or without the G20. According to these calculations, the United States will undergo a recession of 4%, the euro-zone 4.1% and Japan 6.6! The World Bank, for its part, affirmed on March 30th that for 2009 it was anticipating  "a contraction of 1.7% of world GDP which constitutes the strongest retreat in global production ever recorded". The situation will certainly become more aggravated in the months to come, and the crisis is already worse than that of 1929. The economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke have thus calculated that the fall of world industrial production over the last nine months was as violent as in 1929, that the fall of stock markets was twice as rapid, and the same for the shrinkage of world trade.[12]

All these figures have a very concrete and dramatic reality for millions of workers around the world. In the United States, the top world power, 663,000 jobs have been destroyed in March alone, which brings the total to 5.1 million jobs destroyed in two years. Today, every country is being hit hard by the crisis. In Spain, for example, unemployment will go past 17% in 2009!

But this policy is not simply ineffectual today; it also prepares still more violent crises for the future. In effect, all these billions are created by massive recourse to debt. But one day, not too far into the future, an attempt must be made to repay them. Even the bourgeoisie says so: "It is clear that the consequence of this crisis is that it will be necessary to pay the bill: there will be a loss of wealth, losses of inheritance, of revenues and jobs; and it would be demagogic to say that nobody in the world will not pay part or all of this bill" (Henri Guanino, special advisor to the President of the French Republic, 3rd April).[13] By accumulating these debts, capitalism is putting its economic future in hock.

And what did the journalists, who were pleased with its new found importance, say about the IMF? Its financial means have been tripled by the G20, to 750 billion dollars and further, we have seen the authorisation of the issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDR)[14] for 250 billion dollars. One can understand why its president, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has stated that this is "the greatest coordinated recovery plan ever decided upon". The mission given to him is to "aid the weakest", particularly the countries of the east who are on the edge of bankruptcy. But the IMF is a strange last hope. The - justified - reputation of this organisation is to impose draconian austerity in exchange for its "aid". Restructurings, redundancies, unemployment, suppression of health spending, pensions... such are "the IMF effect". For example, this organisation went to the sick bed of Argentina in the 1990s and continued prescribing its medicine up to... the collapse of this economy in 2001!

Not only has this G20 not at all cleared the capitalist sky but it has given us a glimpse of still more gloomy tomorrows.

The great bluff of a "more moral" capitalism

Given the patent incapacity of this G20 to propose real solutions for the future, it was quite difficult for the bourgeoisie to promise a rapid return to growth and radiant tomorrows. But there is among the workers a profound disgust for capitalism and a growing reflection on the future. The ruling class has been quick to respond to this questioning. With drums and trumpets, this G20 promised a new capitalism, better regulated, more moral, more ecological...

The manoeuvre is so gross that it's ridiculous. As a gesture towards the ‘moralisation' of capitalism, the G20 is turning its gaze on a few ‘tax havens', threatening sanctions that it will consider from now to the end of the year (sic!) against countries not making the effort to achieve "transparency".  They have pointed the finger at four areas that make up the "black list": Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay. Other nations have been lectured and classified on the "grey list". Included here are Austria, Belgium, Chile, Luxemburg, Singapore and Switzerland.

In other words, the main tax havens are missing from the list! The Cayman Islands and its hedge funds, the dependent territories of the British Crown (Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man), the City of London, American states such as Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming... all these are officially as white as snow (and thus figure on the white list). The G20's classification of tax havens is just like the pot calling the kettle black.

Full of hypocrisy, only a few days after the London summit, the OECD - responsible for this classification - announced the withdrawal of the four countries from the black list, in exchange for promises to try to be transparent!

There's absolutely nothing astonishing about all this. How can these big capitalist leaders, real gangsters without faith or honour, how can they "moralise" about anything?[15] And how can a system based on exploitation and the search for profits be more "moral"? What's more, nobody is seriously expecting to see a "more human capitalism" come out of the G20. That does not exist and the political leaders talking about it are like parents telling their children about Father Christmas. On the contrary, this time of crisis will reveal, still more cruelly, the inhuman face of this system. Almost 130 years ago, Paul Lafargue wrote: "capitalist morality (...) curses the body of the worker; it takes as its ideal the reduction of the worker to the smallest minimum of needs, to suppress his joys and passions and condemn him to the role of the machine delivered up to work without truce or mercy",[16] or rather, we can add, the sole truce possible being unemployment and poverty. As the economic crisis strikes, the workers are sacked and thrown on the streets like useless objects. Capitalism is and will always be a brutal and barbarous system of exploitation.

But the grossness of the manoeuvre is itself revealing. It demonstrates that there's really nothing more to offer, that capitalism no longer brings any good to humanity, just more misery and suffering. There is no more chance of seeing the birth of an "ecological capitalism" or a "moral capitalism" than of seeing alchemists turning lead into gold.

If this G20 showed one thing, it's that another capitalist world is not possible. It is probable that the crisis will undergo highs and lows, with sometimes punctual moments of a return to growth. But, fundamentally, capitalism will continue to founder economically, sowing misery and engendering wars.

We can expect nothing from this system. The bourgeoisie with its international summits and its recovery plans are not part of the solution but part of the problem. Only the working class can change the world, but for that it is necessary for it to have confidence in the society that it can give birth to: communism!

Mehdi (16th April 2009)

 

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[1]. Declaration by Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organisation

 

[2]. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development "Economic Outlook - Interim Report" March 2009. Available online at https://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/1/42443150.pdf [36]

 

[3]. The G20 is composed of members of the G8 (Germany, France, United States, Japan, Canada, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia), to which can be added South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and finally the European Union. A first summit was held in November in the midst of the financial storm

 

[4]. Read our series "Understanding the decadence of capitalism" in International Review n° 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60 and online at https://en.internationalism.org/series/304 [37].

 

[5]. A myth abounds today, according to which the New Deal of 1933 allowed the world economy to pull out of the economic swamp. The logical conclusion today is to call for a "New New Deal". But in reality, the American economy of 1933 to 1938 remained particularly flat; it was the second New Deal, that of 1938, which allowed a real recovery of the machine. But, this second New Deal was nothing other than the beginning of the war economy which prepared the Second World War. You can understand why this isn't talked about much!

 

[6]. This law imposed the buying of goods produced on US territory for purchases directly made by the American government.

 

[7]. Source : contreinfo.info/prnart.php3?id_article=2612

 

[8]. Martin Wolf is a British economic journalist. He's the Associate Editor and economic commentator in chief for the Financial Times.

 

[9]. "The Age of the Colossal Shoves", a blog published April 7th.

 

[10]. In reality, 4,000 billion will come from dollars earmarked for recovery plans already announced these last few months

 

[11]. In Japan, a new recovery plan of 15,400 billion yen (116 billion euros) has just been decided upon. It's the fourth recovery plan elaborated by Tokyo in the space of a year!

 

[12]. Source : voxeu.org

 

[13]. On the role of debt in capitalism and its crises, read our article in the previous issue of International Review: "The most serious crisis in capitalism's history".

 

[14]. The SDR are a basket of money made up of dollars, euros, yen and pound sterling. China has particularly insisted on these SDRs being used. These last weeks the Middle Empire has multiplied its official declarations calling for the creation of an international currency that could replace the dollar. And numerous economists throughout the world have relayed this message, by warning of the inexorable fall of the US currency and the economic tremors that would follow. It's true that the weakening of the dollar, as the American economy sinks into recession, is a real danger for the world economy. As an international reference point, it is one of the pillars of capitalist stability since the war. On the contrary, the emergence of a new money reference (be it the euro, the yen, the pound sterling or the IMF's SDR) is totally illusory. No power will be able to replace the United States; none can play its role as international economic stabiliser. The weakening of the American economy and its money thus signifies a growing monetary disorder.

 

 

[15]. Lenin described the League of Nations, another international institution, as a "den of thieves".

 

[16]. The Right to be Lazy

 

Introduction (ICC)

Throughout the world, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth (12th February 1809), and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication (24th November 1859) of his first fundamental work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has been declared "Darwin Year" by both scientific institutions and media and publishing houses. We thus find ourselves confronted with a multitude of conferences, books, magazines and TV programmes dealing with Darwin and his theories. While these sometimes allow us to get a better idea of both, they often tend to surround them in a fog where it can be difficult to find one's way.

This is partly because many of the authors, speakers, and journalists who are presented as "experts on Darwin" knew nothing about him a year ago; for them and their employers, the Darwin Year is above a good opportunity to increase their income and their notoriety on the basis of a quick dip into Wikipedia. But there is another reason for the fog surrounding Darwin's ideas: ever since they were first put forward in The Origin of Species, they have been the object of bitter political and ideological contention, in particular because they dealt a severe blow to the religious dogma of the day, but also because they were immediately put to use by various bourgeois ideologues. And these issues are still alive today, in all the various falsifications and interpretations to which Darwin's theory continues to be subjected. To allow our readers to get a clearer idea for themselves, we are republishing in two parts Anton Pannekoek's pamphlet on Marxism and Darwinism, written in 1909 on the occasion of the centenary of Darwin's birth, and which remains largely relevant today. Marxism has always taken an interest in scientific development, partly because it is part and parcel of the development of society's productive forces, but also because it considers that the communist perspective must be based not simply on a moral demand for justice, as was the case for many of the "utopian socialists" in the past, but on a scientific understanding of human society and of the natural world from which it springs. This is why in June 1873, long before the publication of Pannekoek's pamphlet, Marx himself dedicated a copy of his major work Capital to Charles Darwin. Indeed, Marx and Engels had already recognised the methodological similarity between Darwin's approach to the study of living organisms and their own historical materialism, as we can see in these two extracts of their correspondence:

"This Darwin I am now reading, is quite sensational (...) No one has ever made an attempt on such a scale to demonstrate the existence of a historical dynamic in nature, at least never with such success."[1]

"...it is in this book that the historico-natural foundations of our theory can be found".[2]

Pannekoek's text is written with great simplicity and gives us an excellent summary of the theory of the evolution of species. But Pannekoek was not only a learned man of science (he was a renowned astronomer). He was above all a marxist and a militant of the workers' movement. This is why his pamphlet Marxism and Darwinism aims to criticise any attempt to apply Darwin's theory of natural selection schematically and mechanically to the human species.  Pannekoek clearly highlights the analogies between Darwinism and marxism, and shows how the theory of natural selection was used by the most progressive fractions of the bourgeoisie against the reactionary remnants of feudalism. But he also criticises the bourgeoisie's fraudulent exploitation of Darwinism against marxism, notably in the variants of "Social Darwinist" ideology developed in particular by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer (and revived today by the ideologues of free-market liberalism to justify capitalist competition, the law of the jungle, the war of each against all and the elimination of the weak).

Faced with a return to obscurantist ideas dredged up from the dawn of time and in particular with "creationism" and its avatar "intelligent design", according to which the evolution of living organisms (and the appearance of man himself) corresponds to a pre-ordained "plan" established by a divine "superior intelligence", it is up to marxists to reassert the scientific and materialist nature of Darwin's theory and to emphasise the immense step forward that it represented for natural science.

Obviously, Pannekoek's pamphlet must be placed in the context of the scientific knowledge of his day, and some of the ideas developed in the second part (which we will publish in the next issue of the Review [39] ) have been somewhat outdated by a century of scientific research and discovery (notably in the fields of genetics and palaeontology). But his text nonetheless remains for the most part a valuable contribution to the workers' movement.[3]

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Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek

I. Darwinism

There can hardly be two scientists who have marked the thought of the latter half of the 19th century as much as Darwin and Marx. Their teachings revolutionised the masses' conception of the world. For decades their names have been on every tongue, and their teachings have become the lynchpin of the intellectual struggles which accompany the social struggles of today. The cause of this lies primarily in the highly scientific content of their work.

The scientific importance of marxism as well as of Darwinism consists in their following out the theory of evolution, the one in the domain of the organic world, of things animate; the other, in the domain of society. This theory of evolution, however, was in no way new; it had its advocates before Darwin and Marx: the philosopher, Hegel, even made it the central point of his philosophy. It is, therefore, necessary to look more closely at the achievements of Darwin and Marx in this field.

The theory that plants and animals have developed from one another is met with first in the nineteenth century. Formerly the question, "Whence come all these thousands and hundreds of thousands of different kinds of plants and animals that we know?", was answered: "At the time of creation God created them all, each after its kind." This primitive theory was compatible with experience and with the best available information about the past. According to available information, all known plants and animals had always been the same. Scientifically, this experience was expressed thus: "All kinds are invariable because the parents transmit their characteristics to their children."

There were, however, some peculiarities among plants and animals which gradually made a different conception necessary. These were nicely arranged into the system first set up by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus. According to this system, animals are divided into phyla, which are divided into classes, classes into orders, orders into families, families into genera, each of which contain a few species. The greater the similarity between living beings, the closer they are in this system, and the smaller is the group to which they belong. All the animals classed as mammals show the same general characteristics in their body structure. The herbivorous animals, and carnivorous animals, and monkeys, each of which belongs to a different order, are further differentiated. The body structures of bears, dogs, and cats, all of which are carnivorous animals, have much more in common with each other than they do with horses or monkeys. This similarity is still more obvious when we examine varieties of the same species: the cat, tiger and lion resemble each other in many respects where they differ from dogs and bears. If we turn from the class of mammals to other classes, such as birds or fishes, we find greater differences between classes than we find within a class. There still persists, however, a general similarity in the formation of the body, the skeleton and the nervous system. These features first disappear when we turn from this main division, which embraces all the vertebrates, and turn to the molluscs (soft bodied animals) or to the polyps.

The entire animal world may thus be arranged into divisions and subdivisions. Had every different kind of animal been created entirely independently of all the others, there would be no reason why such orders should exist. There would be no reason why there should not be mammals having six paws. We would have to assume, then, that at the time of creation, God had taken Linnaeus' system as a plan and created everything according to this plan. Happily we have another way of accounting for it. The likeness in the construction of the body may be due to a real family relationship. According to this conception, the similarity of particular characteristics shows how near or remote the relationship is, just as the resemblance between brothers and sisters is greater than between remote relatives. The animal classes were, therefore, not created individually, but descended one from another. They form one trunk which started with simple foundations and which has continually developed; the last and thinnest twigs are the species existing today. All species of cats descend from a primitive cat, which together with the primitive dog and the primitive bear, is the descendant of some primitive type of carnivorous animal. The primitive carnivorous animal, the primitive hoofed animal and the primitive monkey have descended from some primitive mammal, etc.

This theory of descent was put forward by Lamarck and by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. It did not, however, meet with general approval. These naturalists could not prove the correctness of this theory and, therefore, it remained only a hypothesis, a mere assumption. When Darwin came along, however, his major work on The Origin of Species struck like a thunderbolt; his theory of evolution was immediately accepted as a strongly proved truth. Since then the theory of evolution has become inseparable from Darwin's name. Why so?

Partly this was due to the fact that through experience ever more material had been accumulated which went to support this theory. Animals were found which could not very well be placed into the classification, such as oviparous mammals[4], fishes with lungs, and invertebrate animals. The theory of descent claimed that these are simply the remnants of the transition between the main groups. Excavations revealed fossil remains which looked different from animals living now. These remains have partly proven to be the primitive forms of our animals, and have shown that the primitive animals have gradually developed into existing ones. Then the theory of cells was formed; every plant, every animal, consists of millions of cells and has been developed by incessant division and differentiation of single cells. Having gone so far, the thought that the highest organisms have descended from primitive beings having but a single cell no longer seemed so strange.

All this new experience could not, however, raise the theory to a strongly proved truth. The best proof for the correctness of this theory would have been to have an actual transformation from one animal kind to another take place before our eyes, so that we could observe it. But this is impossible. How then is it at all possible to prove that animal forms are really changing into new forms? This can be done by showing the cause, the propelling force of such development. This Darwin did. Darwin discovered the mechanism of animal development, and in doing so he showed that under certain conditions some animal species will necessarily develop into other species. We will now make clear this mechanism.

Its main foundation is the nature of transmission, the fact that parents transmit their peculiarities to children, but that at the same time the children diverge from their parents in some respects and also differ from each other. It is for this reason that animals of the same kind are not all alike, but differ in all directions from the average type. Without this variation it would be wholly impossible for one animal species to develop into another. All that is necessary for the formation of a new species is that the divergence from the central type should become greater and that it should continue in the same direction until the divergence has become so great that the new animal no longer resembles the one from which it descended. But where is the force that could call forth such ever-growing variation in the same direction?

Lamarck declared that such variation could be attributed to the usage and intense exercise of certain organs; that, owing to the continuous exercise of certain organs, these become ever more perfected. The lion acquired its powerful paws and the hare its speedy legs in the same way that the muscles of men's legs get strong from much running. Similarly, the giraffes got their long necks because in order to reach the tree leaves which they ate, their necks were stretched so that a short-necked animal developed to the long-necked giraffe. To many this explanation was incredible and it could not account for the fact that frogs should have acquired the green colour which serves them as camouflage.

To solve this puzzle, Darwin turned to another field of experience. The animal breeder and the gardener are able artificially to raise new races and varieties. When a gardener wants to raise from a certain plant a variety having large blossoms, all he has to do is to kill before maturity all those plants having small blossoms and preserve those having large ones. If he repeats this for a few years in succession, the blossoms will be ever larger, because each new generation resembles its predecessor, and our gardener, having always picked out the largest of the large for the purpose of propagation, succeeds in raising a plant with very large blossoms. Through such action, done sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally, people have raised a great number of races of our domesticated animals which differ from their original form much more than the wild kinds differ from each other.

If we should ask an animal-breeder to raise a long-necked animal from a short-necked one, it would not appear to him an impossibility. All he would have to do would be to choose those having longer necks, have them inter-breed, kill the young ones with shorter necks and again have the long-necked inter-breed. By repeating this process with every new generation the neck would as a result become ever longer and he would get an animal resembling the giraffe.

This result is achieved because there exists a definite will with a definite object, which, to raise a certain variety, chooses certain animals. In nature there is no such will, and all the deviations will tend to be attenuated by interbreeding, so that it is impossible for an animal to keep on departing from the original stock and keep going in the same direction until it becomes an entirely different species. Where then, is that power in nature that chooses the animals just as the breeder does?

Darwin pondered this problem at length before he found its solution in the "struggle for existence." In this theory we have a reflex of the productive system of the time in which Darwin lived, because it was the capitalist competitive struggle which served him as a picture for the struggle for existence prevailing in nature. This solution did not come to him through his own observation, but by his reading of the works of the economist Malthus. Malthus tried to explain that in our bourgeois world there is so much misery and starvation and privation because population increases much more rapidly than the existing means of subsistence. There is not enough food for all; people must therefore struggle with each other for their existence, and many must go down in this struggle. By this theory capitalist competition as well as the existing misery were declared to be an unavoidable natural law. In his autobiography Darwin declares that it was Malthus' book which made him think about the struggle for existence.

"In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work."

It is a fact that animals' birth rates outpace the available food supply. There is no exception to the rule that all organic beings tend to increase so rapidly that our Earth would soon be overrun by the offspring of a single pair were some of these not destroyed. This is why a struggle for existence must arise. Every animal tries to live, does its best to eat, and seeks to avoid being eaten by others. With its particular peculiarities and weapons it struggles against the entire antagonistic world, against animals, cold, heat, drought, floods, and other natural events that may threaten to destroy it. Above all, it struggles with the animals of its own kind, who live in the same way, have the same peculiarities, use the same weapons and live on the same diet. This struggle is not a direct one; the hare does not struggle directly with the hare, nor the lion with the lion - unless it is a struggle for the female - but it is a struggle for existence, a race, a competitive struggle. Not all of them can reach adulthood; most of them are destroyed, and only those who win the race remain. But which ones win the race? Those which, through their particularities and their physical structure are best able to find food or to escape an enemy; in other words, those which are best adapted to existing conditions will survive. "Because there are ever more individuals born than can remain alive, the struggle as to which shall remain alive must start again and that creature that has some advantage over the others will survive, but as these diverging peculiarities are transmitted to the new generations, nature itself does the choosing, and a new generation will arise having changed peculiarities."

Here we have a different schema whereby to understand the origin of the giraffe. When grass does not grow in some places, the animals must nourish themselves on tree leaves, and all those whose necks are too short to reach these leaves must perish. In nature itself there is selection, and nature selects only those with long necks. Referring to the selection carried out by the animal breeder, Darwin called this process "natural selection."

This process must necessarily produce new species. Because too many are born of a certain species, more than the existing food supply can sustain, they are forever trying to spread over a larger area. In order to procure their food, those living in the woods go to the plain, those living on the ground go into the water or climb into the trees. Under these new conditions, an aptitude or a variation often proves appropriate where before it was not. The body organs change along with the mode of life. They adapt to the new conditions and a new species develops from the old. This continuous movement of existing species branching out into new ones brings into existence thousands of different animals which will then differentiate still further.

Just as the Darwinian theory thus explains the general descent of animals, their transmutation and formation out of primitive beings, it also explains the wonderful degree of adaptation throughout nature. Formerly this wonderful adaptation could only be explained through the wisdom of God's intervention. Now, however, this natural descent is clearly understood. For this adaptation is nothing other than adaptation to the means of life. Every animal and every plant is exactly adapted to existing circumstances, for all those less well adapted are exterminated in the struggle for existence. The green frog, having descended from the brown frog, must preserve its protecting colour, for all those that deviate from this colour are found sooner by their predators and destroyed or find greater difficulty in obtaining their food and perish.

It was thus that Darwin showed us, for the first time, that new species continually formed out of old ones. The theory of descent, which until then was merely a hypothesis inferred from many phenomena that could not be well explained in any other way, gained the certainty of the necessary functioning of definite forces that could be proved. Here lies the main reason that this theory had so quickly dominated scientific discussions and public attention.

II. Marxism

If we turn to marxism we immediately see its great similarity with Darwinism. As with Darwin, the scientific importance of Marx's work consists in this, that he discovered the propelling force, the cause of social development. He did not have to prove that such a development was taking place; every one knew that from the most primitive times new social forms had always displaced older ones, but the causes and aims of this development were unknown.

In his theory Marx started with the information at hand in his own time. The great political revolution that gave Europe its present aspect, the French Revolution, was known to everyone to have been a struggle for supremacy, waged by the bourgeoisie against nobility and royalty. After this struggle new class struggles emerged. The struggle carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists against the landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class revolted against the bourgeoisie. What were all these classes? How did they differ from each other? Marx proved that these class distinctions were due to the various functions each one played in the productive process. It is in the productive process that classes have their origin, and it is this process which determines to which class one belongs. Production is nothing other than the social labour process by which men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. It is the production of the material necessities of life that forms society's basic structure and that determines political relations and social struggles.

The methods of production have changed continuously with the progress of time. Whence came these changes? Ways of working and productive relations depend on the tools with which people work, on technical development and upon the means of production in general. Because in the Middle Ages people worked with crude tools, while now they work with gigantic machinery, we had then small trade and feudalism, while now we have capitalism; it is also for this reason that at that time the feudal nobility and the small bourgeoisie were the most important classes, while now it is the bourgeoisie and the proletarians which are the main classes.

It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social development. It goes without saying that people are always trying to improve these tools to make their labour easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools leads them in turn to develop and perfect their thinking. Owing to this development, a technical progress takes place more or less quickly, which at the same time changes the social forms of labour. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes. At the same time social, i.e. political struggles arise. Those classes predominating under the old process of production try artificially to preserve their institutions, while the rising classes try to promote the new process of production; and by waging class struggle against the ruling classes and by conquering them they pave the way for further unhindered technical development.

Marxist theory thus revealed the driving force and the mechanism of social development. In doing so it has proven that history is not something irregular, and that the various social systems are not the result of chance or haphazard events, but that there is a regular development in a definite direction. It also proved that social development does not cease with our system, since technical development always continues.

Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and of Marx, the one in the domain of the organic world and the other in the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science.

In doing so they made the theory of evolution acceptable to the masses as the basic conception of social and biological development.

III. Marxism and the class struggle

While it is true that for a theory to have a lasting influence on the human mind it must have a high scientific value, this in itself is not enough. It has often happened that a theory was of the utmost importance to science, and yet has evoked no interest whatsoever outside a limited circle of scholars. Such was the case, for instance, with Newton's theory of gravitation. This theory is the foundation of astronomy, and it is owing to this theory that we have our knowledge of heavenly bodies, and can foretell the arrival of certain planets and eclipses. Yet, when Newton's theory of gravitation made its appearance, its only adherents were a few English scientists. The broad masses paid no attention to this theory. It first became known to the masses by a popular book by Voltaire written half a century later.

There is nothing surprising about this. Science has become a specialty for a certain group of educated men, and its progress concerns these men only, just as smelting is the smith's specialty, and an improvement in the smelting of iron concerns him only. Only that which all people can make use of and which is found by everyone to be a vital necessity can gain adherents among the broad masses. When, therefore, we see that a certain scientific theory stirs up zeal and passion in the masses, this can be attributed to the fact that this theory serves them as a weapon in the class struggle. For it is the class struggle that engages almost all the people.

This can be seen most clearly in marxism. Were marxist economic teaching of no importance in the modern class struggle, then none but a few professional economists would spend their time on it. But because marxism serves the proletarians as a weapon in the struggle against capitalism, scientific struggles are focused on this theory. It is owing to this service that Marx's name is honoured by millions who know even very little of his teaching, and is despised by thousands that understand nothing of his theory. It is owing to the great role that marxist theory plays in the class struggle that his theory is diligently studied by the large masses and that it dominates the human mind.

The proletarian class struggle existed before Marx for it is the offspring of capitalist exploitation. It was only natural that the workers, being exploited, should think about and demand another system of society where exploitation would be abolished. But all they could do was to hope and dream about it. They were not sure of its coming to pass. Marx gave a theoretical foundation to the labour movement and socialism. His social theory showed that social systems were in continuous movement, and that capitalism was only a temporary form within this movement. His studies of capitalism showed that owing to the continuous development of perfection of production techniques, capitalism must necessarily develop to socialism. This new system of production can only be established by the proletarians struggling against the capitalists, whose interest it is to maintain the old system of production. Socialism is therefore the fruit and aim of the proletarian class struggle.

Thanks to Marx, the proletarian class struggle took on an entirely different form. Marxism became a weapon in the proletariat's hands; in place of vague hopes he gave a positive aim, and by clearly highlighting the process of social development he gave strength to the proletariat, and at the same time laid the foundation for working out correct tactics. On the basis of marxism, the workers can demonstrate capitalism's transitory nature, and the necessity and certainty of their victory. At the same time marxism has done away with the old utopian views that socialism would be brought about by the intelligence and goodwill of all wise men, who considered socialism as a demand for justice and morality - as if the object were to establish an infallible and perfect society. Justice and morality change with the productive system, and every class has different conceptions of them. Socialism can only be gained by the class whose interest lies in socialism, and the question is not one of bringing about a perfect social system, but of a change in the methods of production leading to a higher step, i.e., to socialised production.

Because the marxist theory of social development is vital to the proletarians in their struggle, they try to make it a part of their inner self; it dominates their thoughts, their feelings, their entire conception of the world. Because marxism is the theory of social development, in the midst of which we stand, marxism itself stands at the central point of the great mental struggles that accompany our economic revolution.

IV. Darwinism and the class struggle

It's well known that marxism owes its importance and position to the role it takes in the proletarian class struggle. With Darwinism, however, things seem different to the superficial observer, for Darwinism deals with a new scientific truth which has to contend with religious prejudices and ignorance. Yet it is not hard to see that in reality Darwinism had to undergo the same experiences as marxism. Darwinism is not a mere abstract theory which was adopted by the scientific world after discussion and objective tests. No, immediately after Darwinism made its appearance, it had its enthusiastic advocates and passionate opponents; Darwin's name, too, was either highly honoured by people who understood something of his theory, or despised by people who knew nothing more of his theory than that "man descended from the monkey," and who were surely unqualified to judge from a scientific standpoint the validity or otherwise of Darwin's theory. Darwinism, too, played a role in the class struggle, and it is owing to this role that it spread so rapidly and had enthusiastic advocates and venomous opponents.

Darwinism served the bourgeoisie as a tool in their struggle against the feudal class, against the nobility, the prerogatives of the church and of feudal lords. This was an entirely different struggle from the struggle now waged by the proletarians. The bourgeoisie was not an exploited class striving to abolish exploitation. Oh no. What the bourgeoisie wanted was to get rid of the old ruling powers standing in their way. The bourgeoisie wanted to rule themselves, basing their demands upon the fact that they were the most important class, the leaders of industry. What argument could the old class, the class that became nothing but useless parasites, bring forth against them? They relied on tradition, on their ancient divine rights. These were their pillars. With the aid of religion the priests held the great mass in subjection and ready to oppose the demands of the bourgeoisie.

It was therefore in their own interests that the bourgeoisie were in duty bound to undermine the "divine" right of rulers. Natural science became a weapon in their opposition to faith and tradition; science and newly discovered natural laws were promoted; it was with these weapons that the bourgeoisie fought. If the new discoveries could prove that the priests' teaching was false, then the "divine" authority of these priests would crumble and the "divine rights" enjoyed by the feudal class would be destroyed. Of course the feudal class was not conquered by this only, as material power can only be overthrown by material power, but intellectual weapons can become material ones. This is why the bourgeoisie relied so much on natural science.

Darwinism came at the right moment: Darwin's theory that man is descended from a lower animal destroyed the entire foundation of Christian dogma. As soon as Darwinism made its appearance, the bourgeoisie thus took it up with great zeal.

This was not the case in Britain. Here we see once again how important the class struggle was in spreading Darwin's theory. In Britain the bourgeoisie had already ruled for several centuries, and in their majority had no interest in attacking or destroying religion. Thus although this theory was widely read in Britain, it did not stir anybody; it merely remained a scientific theory without great practical importance. Darwin himself considered it as such, and he purposely avoided applying it immediately to men for fear that his theory might shock prevailing religious prejudice. It was only after numerous postponements and after others had done it before him, that he decided to take this step. In a letter to Haeckel he deplored the fact that his theory must offend so many prejudices and encounter so much indifference that he did not expect to live long enough to see it overcome these obstacles.

But in Germany things were entirely different, and Haeckel rightly answered Darwin that in Germany the Darwinian theory had met with an enthusiastic reception. When Darwin's theory first appeared, the bourgeoisie was preparing to undertake a new attack on absolutism and Junkerism. The liberal bourgeoisie was headed by the intellectuals. Ernst Haeckel, who was both a great and an audacious scientist, immediately drew the most daring conclusions against religion in his book, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte ("Natural Creation"). So, while Darwinism was enthusiastically received by the progressive bourgeoisie, it was also bitterly opposed by the reactionaries.

The same struggle took place in other European countries. Everywhere the progressive liberal bourgeoisie had to struggle against reactionary powers. These reactionaries either held power, or were trying to gain it with religious support. Under these circumstances, even scientific discussions were carried on with the zeal and passion of a class struggle. The writings that appeared for and against Darwin have therefore the character of social polemics, despite the fact that they bear the names of scientific authors. Many of Haeckel's popular writings, when looked at from a scientific standpoint, are very superficial, while the arguments and protests of his opponents show an unbelievable foolishness whose equal is only to be found in the arguments used against Marx.

The struggle carried on by the liberal bourgeoisie against feudalism was not fought to its finish. This was partly because everywhere socialist proletarians made their appearance, threatening all ruling powers, including the bourgeoisie. The liberal bourgeoisie cooled down, while the reactionary tendencies gained the upper hand. The old zeal for combating religion disappeared entirely, and while it is true that the liberals and reactionaries were still fighting among themselves, in reality they drew together. The interest once shown in science as a weapon in the class struggle had completely disappeared, while the reactionary Christian tendency, which wanted the masses to stick to religion, became ever more powerfully and brutally pronounced.

Esteem for science has also undergone a change, which matches the change in the need for it as a weapon. Previously, the educated bourgeoisie founded a materialistic conception of the universe in science, wherein they saw the solution of the riddle of the universe. Now mysticism has gained the upper hand; all that science has succeeded in explaining is seen as very trivial, while everything that remains unsolved appears as very great indeed, encompassing life's most important questions. A sceptical, critical and doubting frame of mind has replaced the former jubilant spirit celebrating science.

This could also be seen in the stand taken against Darwin. "What does his theory show? It leaves the riddle of the universe unsolved! Whence comes this wonderful nature of transmission, whence comes the ability of animate beings to change so appropriately?" Here lies the mysterious riddle of life that could not be overcome with mechanical principles. What then is left of Darwinism in the light of later criticism?

Of course, the advance of science began to make rapid progress. The solution of one problem always brings new problems to the surface to be solved, which were hidden beneath the theory of transmission. This theory, which Darwin had had to accept as a research hypothesis, continued to be studied, and heated discussion arose over the individual factors of development and the struggle for existence. While some scientists directed their attention to variation, which they considered due to exercise and adaptation to life (following the principle laid down by Lamarck) this idea was explicitly rejected by scientists like Weissman and others. While Darwin only assumed gradual and slow changes, De Vries found sudden and leaping cases of variation resulting in the sudden appearance of new species. All this, while it went to strengthen and develop the theory of descent, in some cases gave the impression that the new discoveries had torn asunder Darwin's theory, and so every new discovery that had this effect was hailed by the reactionaries as showing the bankruptcy of Darwinism. This social conception had its influence on science. Reactionary scientists claimed that a spiritual element is necessary. The supernatural and the mysterious, which Darwinism had thrown out the door, came back in through the window. This was the expression of a growing reactionary tendency within that very class which had at first been the standard bearer of Darwinism.

V. Darwinism versus socialism

Darwinism has been of inestimable service to the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the old powers. It was therefore only natural that the bourgeoisie should use it against its new enemy, the proletariat; not because the proletarians were opposed to Darwinism, but the reverse. As soon as Darwinism made its appearance, the proletarian vanguard, the socialists, hailed Darwin's theory, because in Darwinism they saw a corroboration and completion of their own theory; not as some superficial opponents believe, that they wanted to base socialism upon Darwinism but in the sense that the Darwinian discovery - that even in the apparently stagnant organic world there is a continuous development - is a glorious corroboration and completion of the marxist theory of social development.

Yet it was natural for the bourgeoisie to make use of Darwinism against the proletarians. The bourgeoisie had to contend with two armies, and the reactionary classes know this full well. When the bourgeoisie attacks their authority, they point at the proletarians and caution the bourgeoisie to beware lest all authority crumble. In doing this, the reactionaries mean to frighten the bourgeoisie into abandoning any revolutionary activity. Of course, the bourgeois representatives answer that there is nothing to fear; that their science only refutes the groundless authority of the nobility while it supports them in their struggle against enemies of order.

At a congress of naturalists, the reactionary politician and scientist Virchow assailed Darwin's theory on the ground that it supported socialism. "Be careful of this theory," he said to the Darwinists, "for this theory is very closely related to the theory that caused so much dread in our neighbouring country." This allusion to the Paris Commune, made in the year famous for the hunting down of socialists, must have had a great effect. What shall be said, however, about the science of a professor who attacks Darwinism with the argument that it is not correct because it is dangerous! This reproach, of being in league with the red revolutionists, greatly annoyed Haeckel, the defender of this theory. He could not stand it. Immediately afterwards he tried to demonstrate that it is precisely Darwin's theory that shows the untenable nature of socialist demands, and that Darwinism and socialism "endure each other as fire and water."

Let us follow Haeckel's contentions, whose main lines recur in most authors who base their arguments against socialism on Darwin.

Socialism is a theory which presupposes natural equality between people, and strives to bring about social equality; equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments. Darwinism, on the contrary, is the scientific proof of inequality. The theory of descent establishes the fact that animal development goes in the direction of ever greater differentiation or division of labour; the higher or more perfect the animal, the greater the inequality existing. The same holds also good in society. Here, too, we see the great division of labour between vocations, class, etc., and the more society has developed, the greater become the inequalities in strength, ability and talent. The theory of descent is therefore to be recommended as "the best antidote to the socialist demand of complete egalitarianism."

The same holds true, but to a still greater extent, of the Darwinian theory of survival. Socialism wants to abolish competition and the struggle for existence. But Darwinism teaches us that this struggle is unavoidable and is a natural law for the entire organic world. Not only is this struggle natural, but it is also useful and beneficial. This struggle brings an ever greater perfection, and this perfection consists in an ever greater extermination of the unfit. Only the chosen minority, those who are qualified to withstand competition, can survive; the great majority must perish. Many are called, but few are chosen. The struggle for existence results at the same time in a victory for the best, while the bad and unfit must perish. This may be lamentable, just as it is lamentable that all must die, but the fact can neither be denied nor changed.

We wish to remark here how a small change of almost identical words serves as a defence of capitalism. When Darwin spoke of the survival of the fittest, he meant those that are best fitted to conditions. Seeing that in this struggle those that are better organized conquer the others, the conquerors were called first the fittest, and later the "best". This expression was coined by Herbert Spencer. In thus winning in their own domain, the conquerors in the social struggle, the large capitalists, proclaimed themselves the best.

Haeckel retained and still upholds this conception. In 1892 he said:

"Darwinism, or the theory of selection, is thoroughly aristocratic; it is based upon the survival of the best. The division of labour brought about by development causes an ever greater variation in character, an ever greater inequality among individuals, in their activity, education and condition. The more advanced human culture, the greater the difference and gulf between the various classes. Communism and the demands put up by the Socialists in demanding an equality of conditions and activity is synonymous with going back to the primitive stages of barbarism."

The English philosopher Herbert Spencer already had a theory on social growth before Darwin. This was the bourgeois theory of individualism, based upon the struggle for existence. Later he brought this theory into close relation with Darwinism. "In the animal world," he said, "the old, weak and sick are ever rooted out and only the strong and healthy survive. The struggle for existence serves therefore as a purification of the race, protecting it from deterioration. This is the happy effect of this struggle, for if this struggle should cease and each one were sure of procuring its existence without any struggle whatsoever, the race would necessarily deteriorate. The support given to the sick, weak and unfit causes a general race degeneration. If sympathy, finding its expressions in charity, goes beyond its reasonable bounds, it misses its object; instead of diminishing, it increases the suffering for the new generations. The good effect of the struggle for existence can best be seen in wild animals. They are all strong and healthy because they had to undergo thousands of dangers wherein all those that were not qualified had to perish. Among men and domestic animals sickness and weakness are so general because the sick and weak are preserved. Socialism, having as its aim to abolish the struggle for existence in the human world, will necessarily bring about an ever growing mental and physical deterioration."

These are the main contentions of those who use Darwinism as a defence of the bourgeois system. Strong as these arguments might appear at first sight they were not hard for the socialists to overcome. To a large extent, they are the old arguments used against socialism, but wearing the new garb of Darwinian terminology, and they show an utter ignorance of socialism as well as of capitalism.

Those who compare the social organism with the animal body neglect the fact that men do not differ like various cells or organs, but only in the degree of their abilities. In society the division of labour cannot go so far that all abilities perish at the expense of one. What is more, anyone who understands something of socialism knows that the efficient division of labour does not cease with socialism; that a real division of labour will be possible for the first time under socialism. The differences between the workers, their ability, and employment will not disappear; all that will disappear is the difference between workers and exploiters.

While it is certainly true that in the struggle for existence those animals that are strong, healthy and well survive, this does not happen under capitalist competition. Here victory does not depend upon perfection of those engaged in the struggle, but in something that lies outside of their body. While this struggle may hold good with the small bourgeois, where success depends upon personal abilities and qualifications, with the further development of capital success does not depend upon personal abilities, but upon the possession of capital. Whoever has a larger capital at command as will soon conquer the one who has a smaller capital at his disposal, although the latter may be more skilful. It is not the personal qualities, but the possession of money that decides who shall be the victor in the struggle. When the small capitalists perish, they do not perish as men but as capitalists; they are not weeded out from among the living, but from the bourgeoisie. They still exist, but no longer as capitalists. The competition existing in the capitalist system is therefore something different in its demands and its results from the animal struggle for existence.

Those people that perish as people are members of an entirely different class, a class that does not take part in the competitive struggle. The workers do not compete with the capitalists; they only sell their labour power to them. Owing to their being without property, they have not even the opportunity to measure their great qualities and enter a race with the capitalists. Their poverty and misery cannot be attributed to the fact that they fell in the competitive struggle on account of weakness, but because they were paid very little for their labour power. This is why, although their children are born strong and healthy, they perish in droves, while the children born to rich parents, although born sick, remain alive by means of the nourishment and care that is lavished on them. The children of the poor do not die because they are sick or weak, but because of external causes. It is capitalism which creates all these unfavourable conditions by means of exploitation, reduction of wages, unemployment crises, bad housing, and long hours of employment. It is the capitalist system that causes so many of the strong and healthy to succumb.

Thus the socialists prove that unlike the animal world, the competitive struggle between men does not bring forth the best and most qualified, but destroys many strong and healthy ones because of their poverty, while those that are rich, even if weak and sick, survive. Socialists prove that the determining factor is not personal strength, but something outside of man; it is the possession of money that determines who shall survive and who shall perish.

 

(End of part 1) Anton Pannekoek

 

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[1]. Engels to Marx, 12th December 1859.

 

[2]. Marx to Engels, 19th December 1860. It is worth pointing out that shortly afterwards, in another letter to Engels dated 18th June 1862, Marx's opinion of Darwin was more critical: "It is remarkable to see how Darwin recognises in the animals and plants his own English society, with its division of labour, its competition, its opening of new markets, its ‘inventions', and its Malthusian ‘struggle for life'. It is the bellum omnium contra omnes [the war of all against all] of Hobbes, which reminds one of Hegel in the Phenomenology, where civil society appears as ‘the fleshly realm of the spirit', whereas with Darwin, it is the animal realm that takes the form of civil society". Engels was later to repeat Marx's criticism in Anti-Dühring (Engels refers to Darwin's "Malthusian blunder") and in Dialectics of Nature. In the next issue of the International Review we will return to what can only be considered as an incorrect interpretation of Darwin's work by Marx and Engels.

 

[3]. The following translation is based on the 1912 English translation by Nathan Weiser, checked for accuracy against the Dutch original.

 

[4]. Egg-laying mammals like the platypus (translator's note).

 

The defeat of the proletarian revolution in Germany was a decisive turning point in the 20th century because it also meant the defeat of the world revolution. In Germany, the establishment of the Nazi regime, built upon the crushing of the revolutionary proletariat, marked the acceleration of Germany's march towards the Second World War. The particular barbarism of the Nazi regime would very soon serve as a justification for the anti-fascist campaigns aimed at dragooning the proletariat of the "democratic" imperialist camp for the impending war. According to anti-fascist ideology, democratic capitalism was a "lesser evil" which could to some extent protect the population from all the worst in bourgeois society. This mystification, which still has a harmful effect on the consciousness of the working class, is given the lie by the revolutionary struggles in Germany: they were defeated by social democracy, which unleashed a reign of terror against them and so paved the way for fascism. This is one of the reasons why the ruling class likes to cover these events in a thick blanket of silence.  

Order reigns in Berlin

On the evening of January 15th 1919, five members of the armed bourgeois vigilante committee of the well-to-do district of Wilmeersdorf in Berlin, among them two businessmen and a distiller, gained access to the apartment of the Marcusson family, where they discovered three members of the central organ of the young Communist Party of Germany (KPD): Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Wilhelm Pieck. "Conventional" history books still say that the KPD leaders were "arrested". In reality, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Pieck were kidnapped. Although the activists of the "citizens army" were convinced that their prisoners were criminals, they did not hand them over to the police. Instead they brought them to the luxurious Hotel Eden, where, only the same morning, the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division (GKSD) had established its new headquarters.

The GKSD had been an elite unit of the Imperial Army, originally the body guards of the Emperor himself. Like its successor in World War II, the SS, it sent "shock" units to the battle front, but also had its own espionage and security systems. As soon as news of the outbreak of the revolution reached the western front, the GKSD marched homewards to assume the leadership of the counter-revolution, reaching the Berlin area on November 30th. There it led the "Christmas Eve" attack against the revolutionary sailors in the Imperial Palace on December 24th, employing artillery and gas grenades in the middle of the city.[1]

In his memoirs, the commander in chief of the GKSD, Waldemar Pabst, recalled how one of his officers, a Catholic aristocrat, after hearing a speech of Rosa Luxemburg, declared her to be a "saint", and asked him to allow her to address their unit. "At this moment", Pabst declared, "I recognised the extent of the danger represented by Mrs. Luxemburg. She was more dangerous that all the rest, including those with arms".[2]

The five intrepid defenders of law and order from Wilmersdorf, when they reached the paradise of Hotel Eden, were handsomely rewarded for their services. The GKSD was one of three organisations in the capital offering considerable financial rewards for the capture of Liebknecht and Luxemburg.[3]

Pabst has given us a brief account of his interrogation of Rosa Luxemburg that evening. "Are you Mrs. Rosa Luxemburg?" he asked. "Please decide for yourself" she replied. "To judge by the photos, you must be". "If you say so". She then took out a needle and began to sow her skirt, the rim of which tore when she was arrested. She then began reading one of her favourite books - Goethe's Faust - ignoring the presence of her interrogator.

As soon as news of the arrival of the captured "Spartakists" spread, a pogrom atmosphere broke out among the guests of the elegant hotel. Pabst, however, had plans of his own. He called in lieutenants and officers of the navy, highly respected men of honour. Men, whose "honour" had been wounded in a particular manner, since their own subordinates, the sailors of the imperial fleet, deserted and began the revolution. These gentlemen proceeded to swear a man's oath, a vow of silence for the rest of their lives concerning what was now to follow.

They were concerned to avoid a trial, a "martial rule execution" or anything else which would make the victims appear as hero's or martyrs. The "Spartakists" should die a disgraceful death. It was agreed to pretend to take Liebknecht to prison, fake a car breakdown in the city centre park, the "Tiergarten", and shoot him "on the run". Since such a "solution" would hardly seem credible regarding Rosa Luxemburg with her well known hip ailment that made her limp, it was decided that she should appear to fall victim of a civilian mob. The role of the mob was assigned to navy lieutenant Herman Souchon, whose father, Admiral Souchon, in November 1918, as governor of Kiel, had suffered the disgrace of being obliged to negotiate with the revolutionary workers and sailors. He was to wait outside the hotel, run over to the car taking Rosa Luxemburg away and shoot her in the head.

In the course of the execution of this plan, an unforeseen element appeared in the person of a soldier called Runge, who had arranged with his captain, a man called Petri, to stay on duty after his 11 p.m. knocking off time. They were determined to get the main reward for the liquidation of these revolutionaries for themselves. While Liebknecht was being taken to a car outside the hotel, Runge gave him a tremendous blow on the head with the butt of his rifle - an act which was to considerably discredit the story that Liebknecht had been "shot on the run". In the consternation caused by this act, nobody thought of removing Runge from the scene. When Rosa Luxemburg was brought out of the hotel, Runge, in full uniform, knocked her unconscious, using the same means. As she lay on the ground, he delivered her a second blow. After she had been flung, half dead, into the waiting car, another soldier on duty, von Rzewuski, inflicted another blow. It was only then that Souchon ran forward to execute her. What followed is well known. Liebknecht was shot in the Tiergarten. The corpse of Rosa Luxemburg was dumped into the nearby Landwehr canal.[4] The following day, the murderers had their photograph taken at their celebration party.

After expressing shock and condemnation in the face of these "atrocities", the Social Democratic government promised a "most rigorous investigation" - which it placed in the hands of the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division (GKSD). The leader of the investigation, Jorns, who had gained a reputation through the cover up of a colonial genocide by the German army in "German South West Africa" before the war, set up his office in Hotel Eden, where he was aided in his "inquiries" by Pabst and one of the accused murderers, von Pflugk-Harrtung. The plan to play for time and then bury the idea of a court case was foiled however by an article published in the Rote Fahne, the paper of the KPD, on 12th February. This article, which came remarkably close to what has been established as the concrete historical truth of these murders, triggered off a public outcry.[5]

The trial thus began on May 8th 1919. The court house was placed under the protection of armed forces of the GKSD. The appointed judge was another representative of the imperial fleet, Wilhelm Canaris, a personal friend of Pabst and of von Pflugk-Harrtung. He went on to become the commander in chief of the espionage of Nazi-Germany. Again, almost everything went according to plan - except that members of the Eden hotel staff, despite the fear of losing their jobs and of being put on the hit list of the military killers  squads, truthfully testified what they had seen. The cleaning girl Anna Belger recounted hearing the officers speaking of the "reception" they had in store for Liebknecht in the Tiergarten. The waiters Mistelski and Krupp, both 17 years of age, identified Runge and revealed his connection to Petri. Despite all of this, the court unquestioningly accepted the "shot on the run" version, acquitting the officers who had shot. As far as Rosa Luxemburg was concerned, the conclusion was that two soldiers had tried to kill her, but that there was no known murderer. Nor was the cause of her death known, since her body had not been found.

On May 31st 1919, workers at a canal lock found the body of Rosa Luxemburg. On hearing that "she" had reappeared, the SPD minister of the interior, Gustav Noske, immediately ordered a news blackout on the issue. It was not until three days later that an official announcement was published, claiming that the remains of Rosa Luxemburg had been found, not by workers, but by a military patrol.

In defiance of all regulations, Noske delivered the corpse to his military friends, into the hands of Rosa's murderers. The authorities responsible could not help pointing out that Noske had infact stolen a corpse. Obviously, the Social Democrats were terrified even of the dead body of Rosa Luxemburg.

The vow of silence taken in Hotel Eden held for decades. But it was finally broken by Pabst himself. He could no longer stand not getting public credit for his deed. In the years after World War II, he began dropping heavy hints in interviews with news magazines (Spiegel, Stern) and became more explicit in discussions with historians and in his memoirs. In the democratic West German Federal Republic, the "anti-Communism" of the Cold War period offered favourable circumstances. Pabst recounted that he telephoned the Secial Democratic minister of the interior Noske on the evening of January 15th 1919, for advice about how to deal with his illustrious prisoners. They agreed on the need to "bring the civil war to an end." On the means to this end, Noske declared: "Your General should take the decision, they are your prisoners".[6] In a letter to Dr. Franz in 1969 Pabst wrote: "Noske and I were in complete agreement. Naturally Noske could not give the order himself." And in another letter Pabst wrote: "...these German idiots should drop to their knees and thank Noske and me, streets and squares should be called after us![7] Noske at the time was exemplary, and the Party (except for its half Communist left wing) was without fail. The fact that I could never have taken this action without the consent of Noske (with Ebert in the background), and that I had to protect my officers, is clear."[8]

The system of political murder

The years 1918 to 1920 in Germany were not the first time in history when an attempted proletarian revolution or insurrection was met with a horrible massacre, costing up to 20,000 proletarian lives. Similar scenes were witnessed in Paris in the July Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. And whereas the victorious October Revolution of 1917 was almost bloodless, the civil war, which international capital imposed in response, cost millions of lives. What was new in Germany was the employment of a system of political murder, not only at the end of the revolutionary process, but from the very onset.[9]

Concerning this question, after Klaus Gietinger, we call on another witness: Emil Julius Gumbel, who published a famous book entitled Four Years of Political Murder in 1924. Like Klaus Gietinger today, Gumbel was not a revolutionary Communist. Infact he was a defender of the bourgeois republic established at Weimar. But he was above all a man in search of the truth, ready to risk his life in the process.[10]

For Gumbel, what characterised developments in Germany was the transition from "artisan murder" to what he called a "more industrial" method.[11] This was based on death lists compiled by secret organisations and "worked through" by hit squads comprised of officers and soldiers. These death squads not only peacefully co-existed alongside the official organs of the democratic state - they actively cooperated. A key role in this strategy was played by the media, which prepared and justified the assassinations in advance, and in the aftermath robbed the dead of all that remained to them: their good reputation.

Comparing the pre-war left-wing, mainly individual terrorism[12] with the new right-wing terror, Gumbel wrote: "The unbelievable clemency of the courts towards the perpetrators is well known. It is thus that the present political murders in Germany distinguish themselves from earlier ones common in other countries through two moments: Their scale and the extent to which they are not punished. In earlier times political murder after all did require a certain strength of decision. A certain heroism was not to be denied. The perpetrator was risking life and limb. It was extraordinarily difficult to flee. Today the culprit risks nothing at all. Mighty organisations with  representatives throughout the country offer lodgings, protection and material support. ‘Well meaning' civil servants, heads of police provide the necessary papers to go abroad where necessary.... You are put up in the best hotels where you can live it up. In a word, political murder has gone from a heroic act to an everyday deed, virtually to an easy source of income."[13]

What went for individual murder applied no less to a right wing Putsch, used in order to kill on a massive scale - what Gumbel called "semi-organised murder". "If the putsch succeeds, all the better. If it fails, the courts ensure that nothing happens to the murderers. And they have made sure. Not a single murder from the right was ever really atoned for. Even those murderers who owned up to their crimes were let off on the basis of the Kapp-Amnesty".

A great number of such counter-revolutionary organisations were set up in Germany in response to the outbreak of the proletarian revolution.[14] And when they were banned in the country as a whole, when martial law and the extraordinary courts system were lifted, all of this was maintained in Bavaria, making Munich the "nest" of the German (and Russian exile) extreme right. What was presented as "Bavarian particularism" was in reality a division of labour. The main bearers of this "Bavarian Fronde" were Ludendorff and his supporters from the former military headquarters, who were not Bavarians at all.[15]

Social democracy, the military and the system of terror

As we noted in the second part of this series, the legend of the "knife in the back", the Dolchstosslegende, was invented in September 1918 by General Ludendorff. As soon as he realised that the war was lost, he called for the formation of a civilian government which would sue for peace. His original idea was to make the civilians take the blame and save the reputation of the armed forces. The revolution had not yet broken out. Once it did,  the Dolchstoß won a new importance. The propaganda that a glorious armed force, never defeated in the field of battle, was robbed of its victory at the last moment by the revolution, was aimed at crazing society, the soldiers in particular, with a burning hatred of the revolution.

When the Social Democrats were originally offered a place in such a civilian "government of disgrace", within the SPD leadership the clever Scheidemann, recognising that it was a trap, wanted to turn down the offer.[16] He was overruled by Ebert, who pleaded for putting the good of the Fatherland above "party politics".[17]

When, on the 10th of December 1918 the SPD government and the military high command marched a mass of troops returning from the front through the streets of Berlin, the intention was to use these forces to crush the revolution. To this end, Ebert addressed the troops at the Brandenburg Gate, greeting the army "never beaten in the field of battle". At this moment, Ebert made the Dolchstoßlegende an official doctrine of the SPD and of his government.[18]

Of course, the "stab in the back" propaganda did not literally blame the working class for Germany's defeat. Nor would this have been wise at a moment when civil war was beginning, i.e. when it is necessary for the bourgeoisie to blur class divisions. Minorities had to be found who had manipulated and misled the masses, and who could be identified as the real culprits.

One of these culprits was the Russians and their agent, German Bolshevism, representing a savage, Asiatic form of socialism, the socialism of famine and a bacillus menacing "European civilisation". Under different terms, these themes were a direct continuation of the anti-Russian propaganda of the war years. The SPD was the main and most debased spreader of this poison. The military was actually more hesitant here, since some of its more daring representatives temporarily toyed with what they called "National Bolshevism" (the idea that a military alliance of German militarism with proletarian Russia against the "Versailles powers" might also be a good means to morally destroy the revolution both in Germany and in Russia).

The other culprit was the Jews. Ludendorff had them in mind from the start. At first glance, it would appear as if the SPD did not follow this lead. In reality, its propaganda basically repeated the filth spread by the officers - except that the word "Jew" was replaced by "foreigner", "elements without national roots" or "intellectuals". Terms, which in the cultural context of the day meant the same thing. This anti-intellectual hatred of the "book worms" is a well known characteristic of anti-semitism.  Two days before Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered, Vorwärts, the daily paper of the SPD published a "poem" - in reality a pogrom call - The Mortuary, regretting that only proletarians were among those killed, whereas the "likes" of "Karl, Rosa, Radek" escaped.

Social Democracy sabotaged the workers struggles from within. It led the arming of the counter-revolution and its military campaigns against the proletariat. By defeating the revolution, it created the possibility for the later victory of National Socialism, unwittingly preparing its way. The SPD did even more than its duty in defending capitalism. By helping to create the unofficial mercenary armies of the Freikorps, by protecting the officers' death squads, by spreading the ideologies of reaction and hatred which were to dominate German political life for the next quarter of a century, it actively participated in the cultivation of the milieu which helped to produce the Hitler regime.

"I hate revolution like sin" declared Ebert piously. This was not the hatred of the industrialists and military, who feared losing their property, and for whom the existing order seemed so natural that they could not but combat everything else; the sins Social Democracy hated were the sins of their own past, their involvement in a movement alongside convinced revolutionaries and proletarian internationalists - even if many of them had never themselves shared such convictions. It was the hatred of the renegade towards the cause betrayed. The leaders of the SPD and the trade unions believed that the workers' movement was their own property. When they ganged up with the imperialist bourgeoisie at the outbreak of world war, they thought that this was the end of socialism, an illusory chapter they had now decided to close. When the revolution raised its head only four years later, it was like the re-appearance of a dreaded ghost from the past. Hatred of the revolution was also fear of it. Projecting their own emotions onto their enemies, they feared being lynched by the "Spartakists" (a fear shared by the officers of the deathsquads).[19] Ebert was on the brink of fleeing the capital between Christmas and New Year 1918. All of this crystallised itself in relation to the principle target of their hatred: Rosa Luxemburg. The SPD had become a concentration of everything which was reactionary in putrefied capitalism. Thus, the very existence of Rosa Luxemburg,  because of her loyalty to principles, her courage, her intellectual brilliance, the fact that she was a foreigner, of Jewish origin and a woman was a provocation to them. They called her "Red Rosa": a woman with a rifle, blood-thirsty and out for revenge.

We must bear this in mind when examining one of the striking phenomenon of the revolution in Germany: the degree of servility of Social Democracy towards the military, which even the Prussian officer caste found disgusting and ridiculous. Throughout the period of collaboration of the officers corps with the SPD, the former never ceased declaring in public their intention of chasing the latter "to hell" as soon as they no longer needed it. None of this could shatter the dog like loyalty of the SPD. This servility was of course not new. It had characterised the attitude of the trade unions and the reformist politicians long before 1914.[20] But now it was combined with the conviction that only the military could save capitalism and thus the SPD itself.

In March 1920 right wing officers revolted against the SPD government the Kapp Putsch. On the side of the Putschists we find all the collaborators of Ebert and Noske in the double murder of January 15th 1919: Pabst and his General von Lüttwitz, the GKSD and the above mentioned Lieutenants of the navy. Kapp and Lüttwitz had promised their troops a handsome financial reward for overthrowing Ebert. The coup was foiled, not by the government (which fled to Stuttgart), nor by the official military command (which declared itself "neutral") but by the proletariat. The three conflicting parties of the ruling class, the SPD, the "Kappists" and the military command (no longer neutral) got together again to defeat the workers. All's well that ends well! Except for one thing: What about the  poor mutineers and their hoped for reward for toppling Ebert? No problem! The Ebert government, back in office, itself paid out this reward.

So much for the argument (advanced for instance by Trotsky before 1933) that Social Democracy, although integrated into capitalism, might still rise against the authorities and prevent Fascism - to save its own skin.

Capitalist dictatorship and social democracy

In fact, the military was not so much opposed to Social Democracy and the trade unions as to the existing party political system as a whole.[21] Already, pre-war Germany had not been governed by political parties, but by the military caste, a system symbolised by the monarchy. Step by step, the ever more powerful industrial and financial bourgeoisie was integrated into this system, though unofficial structures and, in particular the Alldeutsche Verein (the "All-German-Club") which effectively ruled the country before and during the World War.[22]

Against this, the parliament in Imperial Germany (the Reichstag) had almost no power. The political parties had no real government experience and were more lobby groups for different economic or regional factions than anything else.

What originally was a product of the political backwardness of Germany turned out to be an enormous advantage once the world war broke out. Coping with the war and with the revolution which followed, made the dictatorial control of the state over the whole of society a necessity. In the old western "democracies", in particular in the Anglo-Saxon countries with their sophisticated two party systems, state capitalism evolved through a gradual merger of the political parties and the different economic factions of the bourgeoisie with the state. This form of state capitalism, at least in Britain and the United States, proved to be extremely effective. But it took a relatively long time to emerge.

In Germany, the structure for such dictatorial state intervention already existed. One of the main "secrets" of the capacity of Germany to hold out for over four years during the war against almost all the other major powers of the world - who had the resources of their colonial empires behind them - lies in the efficiency of this system. This is also why the western allies were not just "playing to the gallery" when they demanded the liquidation of "Prussian Militarism" at the end of the war.

As we have already seen in the course of this series, not only the military but also Ebert himself wanted to save the Monarchy at the end of the war, with a pre-1914 style Reichstag. In other words they wanted to maintain those state capitalist structures which had proven themselves during the war. This had to be abandoned in the face of the danger of revolution. The whole arsenal and pageantry of party political democracy was needed to ideologically derail the workers.

This was what produced the phenomenon of the Weimar Republic: a host of inexperienced and ineffective parties largely incapable of cooperating together or of integrating themselves in a disciplined way into the state capitalist regime. No wonder the military wanted to get rid of this! The only real bourgeois political party existing in Germany was the SPD.

But if the maintenance of the state capitalist[23] war regime was made impossible by the revolution, the plan of Britain and the USA in particular to liquidate its military-social base was also made impossible by the revolution. The western "democracies" had to leave the nucleus of the military caste and its power intact in order to crush the proletariat. This did not remain without consequences. When in 1933 the traditional leaders of Germany, the armed forces and big industry, ditched the system of Weimar, it regained its organisational advantage over its western imperialist rivals in the preparation of World War II. At the level of its composition, the main difference between the old and the new system was that the SPD had been replaced by the NSDAP, by the Nazi Party. The SPD had been so successful in defeating the proletariat that its own services were no longer required.

Russia and Germany: Dialectical poles of the world revolution

In October 1917 Lenin summoned the party and the soviets in Russia to insurrection. In a resolution to the Bolshevik central committee, written "with the gnawed end of a pencil on a sheet of paper from a child's notebook ruled in squares" (Trotsky)[24] he wrote: "The Central Committee recognises that the international position of the Russian revolution (the revolt in the German navy which is an extreme manifestation of the growth throughout Europe of the world socialist revolution; the threat of peace by the imperialists with the object of strangling the revolution in Russia) as well as the military situation (the indubitable decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co. to surrender Petrograd to the Germans), and the fact that the proletarian party has gained a majority in the Soviets - all this, taken in conjunction with the peasant revolt and the swing of popular confidence towards our party (the elections in Moscow) and, finally, the obvious preparations being made for a second Kornilov revolt... - all this places armed uprising on the order of the day."[25]

This formulation contains the whole Marxist vision of the world revolution of the day, and of the pivotal role of Germany in this process. On the one hand the insurrection in Russia must come in response to the beginning of the revolution in Germany, which is the signal for the whole of Europe. On the other hand, unable to squash the revolution on its own territory, the Russian bourgeoisie intends to entrust this task to the German government, the gendarme of the counter-revolution on the European continent (handing over Petersburg). Lenin thundered against the opponents of insurrection within his own party, those who declared their solidarity with the revolution in Germany, and in so doing called on the Russian workers to wait for the German proletariat to give the lead.

"Just think of it: under devilishy difficult conditions, having but one Liebknecht (and he in prison) with no newspapers, with no feeedom of assembly, with no Soviets, with all clases of the population, including every well-to-do peasant, incredibly hostile to the idea of internationalism, with the imperialist big, middle, and petty bourgeoisie spelndidly organised - the Germans, ie the German revolutionary internationalists, the German workers dresssed in sailors jackets, started a mutiny in the navy with one chance in a hundred of winning.

"But we, with dozens of papers at our disposal, freedom of assembly, a majority in the Soviets, we, the best situated proletarian internationalists in the world, should refuse to support the German revolutionaries by our uprising. We ought to reason like the Scheidemanns and Renaudeks, that it is most prudent not to revolt, for if we are shot, then the world will lose such excellent, reasonable, ideal internationalists! "[26]

As he wrote in his famous text The Crisis Has Matured, (September 29, 1917) those who would postpone insurrection in Russia would be "triators to the cause, for by their conduct they would be betraying the Germany revolutionary workers who have started a revolt in the navy".[27]

A similar debate took place within the Bolshevik party on the occasion of the first political crisis which followed the seizure of power: whether or not to sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with German imperialism. At a first glance, it seems as if the front within the debate has been reversed. It is now Lenin who pleads for caution: We must accept the humiliation of this treaty.  But in reality there is continuity. In both cases, when the fate of the Russian Revolution is at stake, the perspective of the revolution in Germany became the focus of debate. In both cases, Lenin insists that everything depends on what happens in Germany, but also that the victory of the revolution there will take longer and be infinitely more difficult than in Russia. This is why the Russian Revolution must take the lead in October 1917. This is why, at Brest-Litovsk, the Russian bastion must be prepared to make a compromise. It has the responsibility to "hold out" in order to be able to support the German and the world revolution.

From the outset, the revolution in Germany was permeated with a sense of responsibility towards the Russian Revolution. To the German proletariat fell the task of liberating the Russian workers from their international isolation. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in prison in her notes on The Russian Revolution, published posthumously in 1922:

"Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an

inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism."[28]

The glory of the Russian events is that of having begun the world revolution.

"This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realisation of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labour in the entire world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘bolshevism'."[29]

The practical solidarity of the German with the Russian proletariat is thus the revolutionary conquest of power, the demolition of the main bastion of militarist and social democratic counter-revolution in continental Europe. Only this step can broaden the breach achieved in Russia into a world wide revolutionary flood.

In another contribution from her prison cell, The Russian Tragedy, Rosa Luxemburg highlighted the two mortal dangers of the isolation of the Russian revolution. The first danger is that of a terrible massacre at the hands of world capitalism, represented at that moment by German militarism. The second danger is that of a political degeneration and moral bankruptcy of the Russian bastion itself, its incorporation into the imperialist world system. At the moment she was writing (after Brest-Litovsk), she saw this danger from the side of what was to become the so-called National Bolshevik line of thinking within the German military establishment. This centred around the idea of offering "Bolshevik Russia" a military alliance as a means, not only of helping German Imperialism to world hegemony against its European rivals, but at the same time of morally corrupting the Russian Revolution - above all though the destruction of its basic principle of proletarian internationalism.

In fact, Rosa Luxemburg greatly overestimated the readiness of the German bourgeoisie at that moment to embark on such an adventure. But she was fundamentally right in identifying this second danger, and in recognising that its realisation would be the direct result of the defeat of the German and the world revolution. As she concluded:

"Any political defeat of the Bolsheviks in honest struggle against the overwhelming force and the disfavour of the historical situation would be preferable to this moral debacle."

The Russian and the German revolutions can only be understood together. They are two moments of one and the same historic process. The world revolution began on the periphery of Europe. Russia was the weak link in the chain of imperialism, because the world bourgeoisie was divided by imperialist war. But it had to be followed by a second blow, delivered at the heart of the system, if it were to have a chance of toppling world capitalism. This second blow was delivered in Germany, beginning with the November Revolution of 1918. But the bourgeoisie was able to deflect this deadly blow against its heart. This is turn sealed the fate of the Revolution in Russia. But the outcome there corresponded not to the first, but to the second hypothesis of Rosa Luxemburg, the one she feared most. Against all the odds, Red Russia defeated the invading white counter-revolutionary forces. A combination of three main factors made this possible. Firstly the political and organisational leadership of the Russian proletariat, which went through the school of Marxism and the school of the revolution. Secondly the sheer size of the country, which had already helped to defeat Napoleon, which would contribute to defeating Hitler, and which here too was to the disadvantage of the counter-revolutionary invaders. Thirdly the confidence of the peasants, the vast majority of the Russian population, in the proletarian revolutionary leadership. It was the peasantry which supplied the lion's share of the troops of the Red Army under Trotsky.

What followed was the capitalist degeneration of the isolated revolution from within: a counter-revolution in the name of the revolution. Thus, the bourgeoisie has been able to bury the secret of the defeat of the Russian revolution. All of this is based on the ability of the bourgeoisie to keep secret the fact that there was a proletarian revolutionary upsurge in Germany. The secret is that the Russian Revolution was defeated, not in Moscow and Petersburg, but in Berlin and the Ruhr. The defeat of the German revolution is the key to understanding the defeat of the Russian revolution. The ruling class has hidden this key. A great historical taboo which all the responsible circles abide to. In the house of the hangman, the noose is never mentioned.

In a sense, the existence of revolutionary struggles in Germany is more of a problem than in Russia. This is precisely because the revolution in Germany was defeated in an open struggle by the bourgeoisie. Not only the lie that Stalinism equals socialism, but also the lie that bourgeois democracy, that social democracy is antagonistic to fascism, depends to a large degree on the German struggles being forgotten.

What remains is embarrassment. A discomfort which is concretised above all in relation to the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, which has become the symbol of the victory of the counter-revolution.[30] Indeed this crime, which stands for tens of thousands of others, is the epitome of the ruthlessness, of the unconditional will to victory of the bourgeoisie in defence of its system. But was this crime not committed under the leadership of bourgeois democracy? Was it not the joint product of social democracy and the extreme right? Were its victims, not its perpetrators, the incorporation of all that is best, most human, most representative of what could be a bright future for our species? And why, already at the time, and again today, do those who feel responsible for this future of society, feel so deeply troubled by these crimes, and so attracted to those who were its victims? These swaggering crimes, which helped to save the system 90 years ago, may yet prove to be a boomerang.

In his study of the system of political murder in Germany, undertaken in the 1920's, Emil Gumbel makes a connection between this practise and the individualist, "heroic" vision of the defenders of the present social order, who see history as the product of individuals. "The right is correspondingly inclined to believe that it can wipe out the left opposition, which is carried by the hope of  a radically different economic order, by liquidating its leaders."[31] But history is a collective process made and experienced by millions of people, not only by the ruling class which tries to monopolise its lessons.

In his study of the German Revolution written in the 1970s, the "liberal" German historian Sebastian Haffner concluded that these crimes remained an open wound, and that their long term results were still an open question.

"Today one realises with horror that this episode was the really historically binding event of the drama of the German revolution. Looking back on it from a distance of half a century, its historic impact has taken on something of the uncanny unpredictability of the events at Golgatha - which, at the moment they took place, also seemed not to have changed anything". And:

"The murder of January 15th, 1919 was the beginning - the beginning of the thousands of murders in the coming months under Noske, to the millions of murders in the following decades of the Hitler era. It was the signal for everything else."[32]

Can the present and the future generations of the working class re-appropriate this historic reality? Is it possible, in the long term, to liquidate revolutionary ideas by killing those who bear them? The last words of the last article of Rosa Luxemburg before she died were spoken in the name of the revolution: "I was, I am and I will be."

Steinklopfer, May 2009.

---

[1]. This attack was foiled by a spontaneous mobilisation of the workers. See the previous article in this series.

 

[2]. Quoted by Klaus Gietinger: Eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal. Die Ermordung Rosa Luxemburgs (A corpse in the Landwehr Canal. The murdering of Rosa Luxemburg) P.17. Hamburg 2008. Gietinger, Sociologist, Author and Film Director, has devoted an important part of his life to researching the circumstances of the murdering of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. His latest book - Waldemar Pabst: Der Konterrevolutionär (The Counter-Revolutionary) - benefits from insight into historical documents found in Moscow and East Berlin to more completely prove the implication of the SPD.

 

[3]. The others were the monarchist "Regiment Reichstag" and the spy organisation of the SPD under the command of Anton Fischer.

 

[4]. Wlhelm Pieck was the only one of the three arrested to get away with his life. To this day, it remains unclear whether he was able to bluff his way out, was let off because he was not well known, or whether he was allowed to escape after betraying his comrades. Pieck was later to become president of the German Democratic Republic.

 

[5]. The author of this article, Leo Jogiches, was "shot on the run" a month later.

 

[6]. General von Lüttwitz

 

[7]. On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of these atrocities, the Liberal Party (FPD) in Germany poposed erecting a monument for Noske in Berlin. Pofalla, the general secretary of the CDU, the patry of chancellor Angela Merkel, described the actions of Noske as a "plucky defence of the republic". (Quoted in the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel January 11th 2009)

 

[8]. Gietinger: The murder of Rosa Luxemburg: See the chapter "74 Jahre danach" (74 years on).

 

[9]. The importance of this step taken in Germany is emphasised by the writer Peter Weiss, a German artist of Jewish origin who fled to Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. In his monumental novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance) he tells the story of the Swedish minister of the interior, Palmstierna, who in the summer of 1917 sent an emissary to Petrograd, calling - in vain - on Kerensky, the prime minister of the pro-Entente Russian government, to murder Lenin. Kerensky refuses, denying that Lenin represents a real danger.

 

[10]. Gumbel: Vier Jahre politischer Mord (Malik-Verlag Berlin), republished 1980 by Wunderhorn, Heidelberg.

 

[11]. Who can read these words today without thinking of Auschwitz?

 

[12]. For instance that of western European anarchists or the Russian Narodniki and Social Revolutionaries.

 

[13]. Gumbel ibid P. 147.

 

[14]. Gumbel lists "some" of these organisations in his book. We will repeat this list here, without even bothering to translate their names, just to give an impression of the scale of the phenomenon: Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten, Bund der Aufrechten, Deutschvölkische Schutz- und Trutzbund, Stahlhelm, Organisation "C", Freikorps and Reichsfahne Oberland, Bund der Getreuen, Kleinkaliberschützen, Deutschnationaler Jugendverband, Notwehrverband, Jungsturm, Nationalverband Deutscher Offiziere, Orgesch, Rossbach, Bund der Kaisertreuen, Reichsbund Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, Deutschsoziale Partei, Deutscher Orden, Eos, Verein ehemaliger Baltikumer, Turnverein Theodor Körner, Allgemeiner deutschvölkischer Turnvereine, Heimatssucher, Alte Kameraden, Unverzagt, Deutscher Eiche, Jungdeutscher Orden, Hermansorden, Nationalverband deutscher Soldaten, Militärorganisation der Deutschsozialen und Nationalsozialisten, Olympia (Bund für Leibesübungen), Deutscher Orden, Bund für Freiheit und Ordnung, Jungsturm, Jungdeutschlandbund, Jung-Bismarckbund, Frontbund, Deutscher Waffenring (Studentenkorps), Andreas-Hofer-Bund, Orka, Orzentz, Heimatbund der Königstreuen, Knappenschaft, Hochschulring deutscher Art, Deutschvölkische Jugend, Alldeutscher Verband, Christliche Pfadfinder, Deutschnationaler Beamtenbund, Bund der Niederdeutschen, Teja-Bund, Jungsturm, Deutschbund, Hermannsbund, Adlerund Falke, Deutschland-Bund, Junglehrer-Bund, Jugendwanderriegen-Verband, Wandervögel völkischer Art, Reichsbund ehemaliger Kadetten.

 

[15]. It was General Ludendorff, virtually the dictator of Germany during World War I, who organised the so-called beer hall putsch in Munich in 1923 along with Adolf Hitler.

 

[16]. Scheidemann himself was to become the target of an (unsuccessful) assassination attempt from the extreme right, who blamed him for accepting the Treaty of Versailles dictated by the western powers.

 

[17]. The admiration of the former chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt, for the "statesmanship" of Ebert is well known.

 

[18]. However, infected by the revolutionary mood in the capital, most of the troops fraternised with the population or dispersed.

 

[19]. After murdering Karl and Rosa, members of the GKSD expressed the fear that they would be lynched if sent to prison.

 

[20]. During the January 1918 mass strikes in Berlin, Scheidemann from the SPD was included in a delegation of workers sent to government offices to negotiate. There, they were ignored. The workers decided to leave. Scheidemann begged the officials to meet the delegation. His face "blazed red with joy" when one of them made some vague promises. The delegation was not received. Recounted by Richard Müller: From Empire to Republic. P. 106.

 

[21]. On the whole, the military greatly appreciated Ebert and Noske in particular. Stinnes, the richest man in post World War I Germany, named his yacht after Legien, the leader of the Social Democratic trade union federation.

 

[22]. According to Gumbel, it was also the main organiser of the Kapp Putsch

 

[23]. Or "state socialism", as Walter Rathenow, president of the gigantic AEG electrical concern, enthusiastically called it

 

[24]. Leon Trotsky: History of the Russian Revolution, Pluto Press P.999.

 

[25]. Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (B), October 10 (23), 1917. In: Lenin Collected Works, Vol.26

 

[26]. Lenin: Letter to Comrades, October 1917, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p.204.

 

[27].  Collected Works, Vol.26, p.81.

 

[28]. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks p. 394.

 

[29]. Ibid, p.395.

 

[30]. The dyed-in-the-wool Liberals of the FDP in Berlin suggested giving a public place in Berlin the name of Noske, as we noted above. The SPD, the party of Noske, turned down this proposition. No plausible explanation was given for this untypical modesty.

 

[31]. Gumbel, ibid, P. 146.

 

[32]. Haffner: 1918/19, A German Revolution, P. 147 and 158,

 

In preceding articles in this series, we have looked in detail at Marx's summation of the historical materialist method in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. We have now reached the last section of this summation: 

"The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation".

The universality of Marx's method

We will come back later to the specific antagonisms which Marx considered to be inherent in capitalist society, and which provide the basis for his verdict that capitalism, like previous forms of class exploitation, can only be considered to be a transitory social formation. Before proceeding, however, we want to respond to a charge that has been raised against marxists who have tried to locate the ascent and decline of capitalist society in the context of the succession of previous modes of production - in other words, to use the marxist method to examine capitalism as a moment in the entire drama of human history. In discussions with elements of a new generation coming to revolutionary positions (for example in the internet discussion forum libcom.org), such an approach has been criticised for offering no more than a "metaphysical narrative", leading to essentially messianic conclusions; elsewhere in the same forum[1] our efforts to draw conclusions about the ascent and decline of capitalism from a far more general historical perspective is seen as an example of an enterprise that Marx himself repudiated: the search for a "general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical."

This quote from Marx is often taken out of context to support the view that Marx never tried to elaborate a general theory of history, but only aimed to analyse the laws of capitalism. So what was the context of this quote?

It's from a letter from Marx to the editor of the Russian journal Otyecestvenniye Zapisky (November1877), responding to "a Russian critic" who tried to portray Marx's theory of history precisely as a dogmatic and mechanical schema, in which every nation is predetermined to go through exactly the same pattern of development that Marx analysed with regard to the rise of capitalism in Europe. His critic "feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself".  And indeed, this tendency was very strong among the original Russian marxists, who often tended to present marxism as a simple apology for capitalist development, and who assumed that Russia must necessarily go through its own bourgeois revolution before being able to pass over to the stage of the socialist revolution. It was this trend which resurfaced later on in the form of Menshevism. 

In the letter in question, Marx actually comes to a very different conclusion:

"In order that I might be qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia to-day, I learnt Russian and then for many years studied the official publications and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclusion: If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime".

In sum: Marx certainly did not consider that his method for analysing history in general could be applied rigidly to each country taken separately, and that his theory of history was not a rigid system of "universal progress", describing a linear, mechanical process which must always lead in the same progressive direction (even if what was called marxism certainly became that in the hands of the Mensheviks and later of the Stalinists). He had reason to consider that Russia might be spared the horrors of a capitalist transformation by the conjunction between a proletarian revolution in the advanced western countries and the traditional communal forms at the basis of Russian agriculture. The fact that things turned out somewhat differently does not invalidate Marx's open-ended approach. Furthermore: his method is concrete and involves consideration of the actual historical circumstances in which a given social form appears. In the same letter, Marx gives an example of the way he works: "In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former ‘poor whites' in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical"

But what this example does not show is that Marx's theory excluded any attempt to draw out the general dynamic of social formations prior to capitalism, and that therefore any general discussion about the ascent and decadence of social systems is a nonsensical and futile enterprise. The huge amount of energy Marx put into studying the Russian "commune" and the general question of primitive communism in his later years, and the amount of space covered by the analysis of pre-capitalist social forms in the Grundrisse and elsewhere clearly counts against this proposition. The example of the letter shows that Marx insisted on studying a given social formation separately prior to making comparisons, and in this way "finding the clue" to the phenomenon in question; it does not show that Marx refused to go from the particular to the general when it came to understanding the movement of history. 

Above all, the charge that attempts to locate capitalism in the context of the succession of modes of production is a "super-historical" project is refuted by the approach in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx outlines his general approach to historical evolution, and where he very clearly announces the scope of his investigation. In the previous article, we examined the passage dealing with previous social forms (primitive communism, Asiatic despotism, slavery, feudalism, etc), and showed how certain general conclusions could indeed be drawn about the reasons for their ascent and decline - to be precise, the establishment of social relations of production which acted now as a spur, now as a barrier to the development of the productive forces. In the passage we are looking at here, Marx uses a mere phrase - but one so full of significance - to underline the fact that the scope of his investigation is the whole of human history: "The prehistory of human societies ends with this formation". What exactly does Marx mean by this term? 

End of history or end of prehistory?

When the eastern bloc collapsed in 1989, the ruling class in the west launched itself into a massive propaganda campaign based around the slogan "communism is dead" and exulting in the conclusion that Marx, the "prophet" of communism, had been finally discredited. The "philosophical" gloss on this campaign was supplied by Francis Fukayama, who had no hesitation in announcing "the end of history" - the definitive triumph of liberal democratic capitalism, which would, in its admittedly flawed but basically human way, bring an end to war and poverty and free mankind from the burden of earth-shattering crises. "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".[2]

The two decades that followed these events, with all their attendant military barbarism and genocides, with the growing gap between rich and poor on a global scale, with the increasing evidence that we are facing an environmental disaster of planetary proportions, soon began to undermine Fukayama's complacent thesis, which he himself began to qualify, along with his uncritical support for the ruling Neo-Con faction in the US state. And today, with the outbreak of a profound economic crisis in the very heart of triumphant liberal democratic capitalism, such claims can only be the object of ridicule - and meanwhile, Marx and his vision of capitalism as a system wracked by crisis can no longer be dismissed as a remnant of some long-past Jurassic era. 

Marx himself remarked very early on that the bourgeoisie had already come to the conclusion that its system was the end of history, the pinnacle and final goal of man's striving and the most logical expression of human nature. Even a revolutionary thinker like Hegel, whose dialectical method was based on the recognition of the transience of all historical stages and expressions, fell into this trap when he saw the existing Prussian regime as the final resting place of the Absolute Spirit.

As we have seen in the previous articles, Marx repudiated the notion that capitalism, based on private property and the exploitation of human labour, was the perfect expression of human nature, pointing out that the original human social organisation had been a form of communism, and identifying capitalism as only one in a series of class-divided societies that had succeeded the dissolution of primitive communism, no less doomed to disappear as the result of its own inherent contradictions.

Capitalism - the final episode in the series  

But capitalism was indeed the final episode of this series, "the last antagonistic form of the social process of production- antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence".

And why was this? Because "the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism".

The term "productive forces" has come to be regarded with some suspicion since Marx used it. Understandably so, because (as we explained in a previous chapter) the perversion of marxism by the Stalinist counter-revolution has given a sinister meaning to the notion of developing the productive forces, conjuring up images of Stakhanovite exploitation and the construction of a monstrously top-heavy war economy. And in the last few decades, the rapid evolution of the ecological crisis has emphasised the terrible price mankind has paid through the continuation of capitalism's frenzied "development".

For Marx, the productive forces are not to be understood as some autonomous power determining human history - that is only true in so far as they are the product of alienated labour and have escaped the hands of the species which developed them in the first place. But by the same token, these forces, set in motion by particular forms of social organisation, are not inherently hostile to mankind, as in the anti-technological nightmares of the primitivists and other anarchists. On the contrary: at a certain stage of their costly and contradictory development, they are key to the liberation of the human species from millennia of toil and exploitation, providing that mankind can reorganise its social relations to the point where the immense productive power evolved under capitalism can be used to satisfy real human need.

Such a reorganisation is indeed possible because of the existence, within capitalism, of a "productive force", the proletariat, which is for the first time both an exploited class and a revolutionary one, in contrast, for example, to the bourgeoisie, which though revolutionary in opposition to the old feudal class, was itself the bearer of a new form of class exploitation.  The working class has no interest in setting up a new system of exploitation because it can only free itself by freeing humanity in general. As Marx put it in The German Ideology:

"In all revolutions up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present society".

But this also means emancipating mankind from the scars of thousands of years of class rule, and beyond that, from the hundreds of thousands of years in which mankind has been dominated by material scarcity and the struggle for survival.

  Mankind thus comes to a definite point of rupture with all previous historical epochs. This is why Marx talks about the end of "prehistory".  If the proletariat succeeds in overthrowing the rule of capital and, after a more or less long period of transition, in creating a fully communist world society, it will have made it possible for future generations of human beings to make their own history in full consciousness. A passage from Engels in Anti-Duhring makes this point very eloquently: 

"With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history, pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom".

In such passages, Marx and Engels reaffirm the vast sweep of their historical vision, showing the underlying unity of all hitherto existing epochs of human history, and showing how the historical process, for all that has proceeded more or less unconsciously, blindly, is yet creating the conditions for a qualitative step no less fundamental than the first emergence of man from the animal kingdom.

This grandiose vision was reiterated by Trotsky over 50 years later, in a lecture to Danish students on 27th November 1932, not long after his exile from Russia. Here Trotsky calls on the material supplied by the human and natural sciences, in particular the discoveries of psychoanalysis, to indicate more precisely what this step implied for man's inner life: "Anthropology, biology, physiology have accumulated sufficient data to place before humanity in its full magnitude the task of its own physical and spiritual perfection and growth. Psychoanalysis, no matter how one relates to one or another of its conclusions, has undoubtedly through Freud's genius given access to the well called the psyche or, poetically, ‘the soul' of man. And what was found? Our conscious thought comprises only a fraction of the dark psychic forces at work in man himself. Research divers descend into the depths of the ocean and photograph the most obscure fish. Man's thought, having descended into the depths of his own spiritual well, must illuminate the most hidden motive forces of the psyche and subject them to reason and will. Once having gotten control over the anarchic forces of its own society, humanity will get at itself in the chemist's mortar and retort. For the first time humanity will see itself as raw material or, at the very best, as a physical and psychic half-product."[3]

In both these passages, there is a clear unity established in all epochs of history hitherto: during this immense arc of time, man is a "physical and psychical half-product" - still, in a sense, a species in transition from the animal kingdom to a fully human existence.

Capitalism alone of previous class societies could be the prelude to such a qualitative leap, because it has developed the productive forces to the point where the fundamental problems of mankind's material existence - the provision of life's necessities for everyone on the planet - can at last be resolved, allowing human beings the freedom to develop their creative capacities without limit, and to finally achieve their real, hidden potential. And here the real meaning of "productive forces" becomes apparent: the productive forces are fundamentally the creative powers of mankind itself, which have hitherto only expressed themselves in a limited and distorted manner, but which will truly come into their own once the limitations of class society have been transcended.

More than this: communism, a society without private property and exploitation, has become the only possible basis for the development of mankind, since the contradictions inherent in generalised wage labour and commodity production are threatening mankind with the disintegration of all social bonds and even the destruction of the very foundations of human life. Mankind will live in harmony with itself and with nature, or it will not live at all. Marx's assessment in The German Ideology, written in capitalism's youth, becomes far more urgent and unavoidable the longer capitalism sinks into its decay:  "Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence"

Communism thus resolves the basic conundrum of human history - how do we ensure the necessities of life in order to enjoy life to the full. But unlike capitalist ideology, the communist viewpoint does not see communism as a static end point. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx certainly presents communism as the "solution to the riddle of history", but he also sees it as a starting point from which the true history of mankind can get underway:  "Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society."[4]

The standpoint of the future

Characteristically, Marx's summation of how he considers it necessary to look at the past ends with a step into the far distant future. And this too is entirely in line with his method, to the scandal of those who think that posing the question on such a scale inevitably ends up in "metaphysics". Indeed, it could be said that the future is always the starting point for Marx. As he explained in the Theses on Feuerbach, the standpoint of the new materialism, the basis of the proletarian movement's knowledge of reality, was not the agglomeration of atomised egos that make up bourgeois society, but "socialised humanity", or man as he could be in a really human society; in other words, the entire movement of history up till now has to be assessed from the starting point of the communist future. It is essential to bear this in mind when we go about analysing whether a social form is a factor of "progress" or a system that is holding back humanity's advance. The standpoint that considers all human epochs up till now as belonging to "prehistory" is not based on an ideal of perfection which humanity is inevitably programmed to achieve, but on a material possibility inherent in the nature of man and his inter-action with nature - a possibility which can fail to be realised precisely because that realisation is ultimately dependent on conscious human action. But the fact that there is no guarantee of success for the communist project does not alter the judgement that revolutionaries, who "represent the future in the present", need to make about capitalist society once it has reached the point where it has made the leap towards the realm of freedom possible on a global scale: that it has become redundant, obsolete, decadent as a system of social reproduction.  

Gerrard, May 2009.

 

 

---

[1]. See for example https://libcom.org/forums/thought/general-discussion-decadence-theory-17... [42].

 

[2]. The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama, 1992.

 

[3]. Cited in Trotsky's Notebooks, 1933-1935, Writings on Lenin, Dialectics and Evolutionism, translated and introduced by Philip Pomper, New York 1998, p 67.

 

[4].  From the chapter "Private Property and Communism".

 

The main characteristic of revolutionary syndicalism is the conception that the unions are the ideal form of working class organisation on the one hand and, on the other, that after the revolution in the form of a victorious general strike, they will be the basis for a new social structure.

The trade union opposition by the "Localists" and, after 1897, the foundation of the Freie Vereinigung Deutscher Gewerkschaften (FVDG, the Free Association of German Trade Unions) formed the basis for the birth of organised syndicalism in the German workers' movement. In a manner comparable to the more important syndicalist tendencies in France, Spain and the USA, syndicalism was in its origins a healthy proletarian reaction within the German workers' movement against the increasingly reformist politics of the leadership of a powerful social democracy and its trade unions.

After the First World War, the Frei Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD, the Free Workers' Union of Germany) was founded in September 1919. As an explicitly "anarcho-syndicalist" organisation, the FAUD saw itself as the direct heir of the syndicalist movement prior to the war.

Today there are a number of anarcho-syndicalist groups who lay claim to the tradition of the FVDG and the later anarcho-syndicalism of the FAUD in the 1920s. Rudolf Rocker, as the best known "theoretician" of German anarcho-syndicalism from 1919 onwards is often seen as its political reference point.

However, syndicalism in Germany undoubtedly went through many changes following its birth. For us, the central issue is to examine whether the syndicalist movement in Germany was able to defend the interests of the working class, to provide political answers to the burning questions posed to it and to remain loyal to proletarian internationalism.

It is worth beginning by looking at the most serious challenge faced by the working class in the last decades of the 19th century in Germany: reformism. Without doing this, there is a danger of seeing syndicalism in Germany simply as a particularly radical trade union strategy or as no more than a set of ideas imported from the Latin countries like Spain or France, where syndicalism always played a more important role than in Germany.  

The degeneration of social democracy and the appearance of syndicalism's "ancestors"

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was part of the Second International (1889-1914) and the most powerful proletarian organisation of the day. It served as a political compass for the international workers' movement. But the SPD is also the symbol of a tragic experience: it is the typical example of an organisation which, having been situated for years on the proletarian terrain, went through an insidious process of degeneration and ended up, during the years of the First World War, passing once and for all into the camp of the ruling class. The leadership of the SPD pushed the working class into the slaughter of war in 1914 and took on a central role in the defence of German imperialist interests. 

In 1878 Bismarck imposed the "anti-socialist law" which remained in force for 12 years - up until 1890. This law suppressed the activities and meetings of proletarian organisations, and was aimed above all at any organisational links between proletarian groupings. But the "anti-socialist law" was not merely an expression of blind repression against the working class. The ruling class also tried to attract the leadership of the SPD to the idea of placing participation in the bourgeois parliament at the centre of its activities. It thus subtly encouraged the growth of the reformist tendency within social democracy.

These reformist conceptions found early expression in the "Zurich Manifesto" in 1879 and developed around the figure of Edward Bernstein. They called for parliamentary work to be the main vehicle for gradually conquering power within the bourgeois state. This thus marked an abandonment of the perspective of a proletarian revolution that destroys the bourgeois state, in favour of reforming capitalism. Bernstein and his followers wanted the SPD to be transformed from a workers' party into an organisation capable of winning the ruling class to the idea of converting private capital into a collective form of capital. The ruling class was thus to be the main instrument for going beyond its own system - a total absurdity. These conceptions amounted to a frontal attack on the proletarian character of the SPD. But more than this: the Bernstein wing was openly making propaganda in favour of supporting German imperialism in its colonial policy, approving the building of powerful ocean warships for example. At the time of the Zurich Manifesto, Bernstein's reformist ideas were clearly fought by the majority of the social democratic leadership and had not found much echo in the rank and file of the party. But history showed tragically in the decades that followed that this had been the first expression of a cancer that would gradually and relentlessly invade large parts of the SPD. It is not surprising therefore that this open capitulation to the capitalist system, which Bernstein symbolically represented in a more isolated manner but which was to gain a growing influence in German social democracy, unleashed a reaction of indignation within the working class. It is also not astonishing that in this situation a particular reaction developed precisely among the more combative workers organised in the unions. 

Carl Hillmann's trade union theory

However, even before the Zurich Manifesto, at the beginning of the 1870s, there were signs in the German workers' movement that an independent "trade union theory" was developing around Carl Hillmann. The syndicalist movement just before the First World War and above all anarcho-syndicalism afterwards continued to take him as a reference. From May 1873 there appeared a series of articles under the heading "Practical indications for emancipation" in the review Der Volkstaat,[1] where Hillmann wrote:  "... the great mass of workers show a distrust towards all the purely political parties, because they are often betrayed and abused by them, and because these parties' ignorance of social movements leads them to hide the importance of the latter's political side; at the same time, the workers show a greater understanding of and a practical sense for questions about matters that are closer to their interests: a shorter working day, the elimination of offensive factory rules, etc. The permanent trade union organisation exerts a lasting pressure on lawmaking and governments, and as a result the workers' movement in this form of its expression is also political, even if only in the second place (...) The efforts of effective trade union organisations give rise to thoughts about the emancipation of the working class, and this is why these natural organisations must be put at the same rank as purely political agitation, and can be seen neither as a reactionary formation nor as a political movement".

Behind Hillmann's desire in the 1870s to defend the role of the trade unions as central organisations for the struggle of the working class, there was no intention of  introducing a line of separation between the economic struggle and the political struggle, or even of rejecting the political struggle. Hillmann's "trade union theory" was mainly a sensible reaction to the tendencies emerging within the leadership of social democracy that wanted to subordinate the trade unions, and the class struggle in general, to parliamentary activities.

Engels, in the time of Hillmann, March 1875, made the same criticism of the draft programme for the unification congress of the two socialist parties at Gotha, which he considered to be "without sap or vigour"

"Fifthly, there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat's true class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris). Considering the importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party".[2]

In effect, the trade unions in a period in which capitalism was in full development were an important instrument for going beyond the isolation of the workers and assisting them to become conscious of themselves as a class. They were a school of class struggle. The way was still open for the working class to obtain lasting reforms from an expanding capitalism.[3]

Contrary to the historiography written by certain parts of the anarcho-syndicalist milieu, it was not Hillmann's intention to resist the marxists who supposedly had always underestimated the trade unions. This is an assertion you find very often but it does not correspond to reality. Hillmann linked his general conceptions to those of the International Working Men's Association, in which Marx and Engels were also active. His criticisms, at root, were directed against those who were aiming to subordinate social democracy's field of activity to the parliamentary struggle - the same elements Marx and Engels opposed in their criticisms of the Gotha programme. To talk about an "independent trade unionism" in the German workers' movement as early as the 1870s is clearly wrong. As a tangible movement within the working class in Germany it only began to form gradually around 20 years later.

But although Hillmann had a healthy and precocious proletarian reaction to the parliamentary cretinism that was slowly emerging in the German workers' movement, there is an essential difference between his approach and that of Marx and Engels: Hillmann put the whole stress on the autonomy of the unions and the workers' "sense for questions about matters that are closer to their interests". Marx, on the other hand, had already in the 1860s warned against reducing the class struggle to the struggle for higher wages: "Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wage slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements".[4]

As we have already seen, Marx and Engels insisted on the unity between the economic and political struggle of the working class, even if these had to be waged by different organisations. The ideas of Hillmann showed a great weakness in not consistently engaging in the political struggle against that wing of the SPD which was oriented exclusively towards parliament, and in withdrawing into trade union activity, thus conceding the terrain to reformism almost without a fight. This played into the hands of his enemies, since the restriction of the workers to the purely economic struggle is precisely what characterised the development of reformism within the trade union movement.

Did syndicalism in Germany come out of the anarchist movement?

In the summer of 1890. a small opposition was formed within the SPD, the "Jungen" - the "Youngsters". What characterised its best-known representatives, Wille, Wildberger, Kapfneyer, Werner and Baginski was their call for "greater freedom" within the party and their anti-parliamentary attitude. With a very localist approach, they also rejected the necessity for a central organ for the SPD.

The Jungen were a very heterogeneous opposition; it is probably more appropriate to define them as a conglomeration of discontented elements in the SPD. However there was a real justification for their discontent, since the reformist tendency in social democracy had in no way disappeared after the abolition of the anti-socialist law in 1890. Reformism gradually grew in weight. But the criticisms made by the Jungen were not really able to identify the real problems and the ideological roots of reformism. Instead of a politically based struggle against the reformist idea of a peaceful transformation of capitalism into a classless socialist society, the Jungen simply waged a violent and very personal campaign against the various heads of the SPD. Their explanation for reformism was based on an immature and reductionist argument which focused on the problem of "the search for personal profit and celebrity" and on the "psychology of the SPD leaders". This conflict ended in the simultaneous departure and exclusion of the Jungen at the Erfurt Congress of the SPD in 1891, which led in turn to the formation, in November 1891, of the Anarchist Union of Independent Socialists (VUS). The ephemeral VUS, a completely heterogeneous grouping formed mainly by former SPD malcontents and prey to strong personal tensions, quickly fell under the control of the anarchist Gustav Landauer and disappeared three years later, in 1894.

When you read the writings of contemporary anarcho-syndicalists and the best-known books about the birth of syndicalism in Germany, what's striking is the often tortuous attempt to trace a red thread linking past organisations to the anarcho-syndicalism of the FAUD of 1919. Most of the time these writers simply juxtapose the various opposition currents inside the German workers' organisations, from Hillmann to Johann Most, the Jungen and the "Localists", then the FVDG and finally the FAUD. The mere existence of a conflict against the respective leaderships of social democracy and the trade unions is considered as a decisive point in common. But the existence of a conflict with the leadership either of the unions or the party does not in itself constitute a political continuity; if you look at things more closely, there is in fact little continuity between these organisations. With Hillmann, Most and the Jungen you can see that there is a shared aversion for the illusions in parliament which were spreading around them. But while Hillmann always remained part of the First International and of the living struggle of the working class, Most, along with Hasselmann, soon slid towards the petty bourgeois, isolated, desperate activity of "propaganda by the deed", in short, terrorism. The Jungen, with their personal attacks, lacked the political quality of Hillmann who had made a serious effort to push forward the class struggle. The Localists, and the FVDG which came out of them, also represented a real movement within the working class. In the trade union opposition which gave rise to German syndicalism, anarchist ideas prior to 1908 had a weak influence. That said, anarchism left a real mark on the German syndicalism which developed outside the framework of the social democratic unions following World War I.   

The "Localists": a proletarian reaction against the political emasculation of the working class

An organised opposition in the ranks of the social democratic trade unions in Germany was formed in March 1892 in Halberstadt at the time of the first trade union congress after the abolition of the anti-socialist law. The General Commission of the trade union centre under the leadership of Karl Legien decreed at this congress an absolute separation between the political struggle and the economic struggle. The working class organised in the trade unions, according to this point of view, should limit itself exclusively to economic struggles while only social democracy - and above all its deputies in parliament - could be competent in political matters.  

But because of the conditions imposed by 12 years of the anti-socialist law, the workers organised in professional unions were used to the fusion inside the same organisation of political and economic discussions and aspirations, and this had also developed under the constraints of illegality.

The relations between the economic struggle and the political struggle were thus already the object of one of the major debates within the international working class - and this has no doubt remained the case to this day!

At a time when the conditions for the world revolution were maturing as capitalism headed towards its phase of decadence, it became clearer and clearer to the proletariat that it had to answer political questions, in particular the question of war.

In 1892, the leadership of the German trade union movement, after being scattered into isolated professional unions for a number of years as a result of its illegal status, set up the central union confederation - but at the tragic price of the restriction of unions to the economic struggle. This was not because the years of repression under the anti-socialist law had made it necessary to give up freedom of speech and assembly on political questions, but on the basis of reformist visions and huge and spreading illusions in parliamentarism. As a healthy proletarian reaction to this policy of the union leadership around Legien the trade union opposition current known as the Localists was formed. Gustav Kessler played a key role. He had worked in the 1880s on the task of coordinating the professional unions around a system of "trusted delegates" and had participated very actively in the publication of the trade union organ Der Bauhandwerker.

To appreciate the true worth of the Localists, it is first necessary to rectify a very widespread error: the name "Localists" makes it seem at first sight that this was an opposition whose main aim was to concentrate exclusively on regional affairs and to reject any organisational relationship with the working class in other sectors or regions. This impression is often given when you read the current literature, especially that produced by today's anarcho-syndicalists.

For the most part it is difficult to judge whether this is the result of a desire to retrospectively make the Localists and the FVDG organisations mirror today's localist anarcho-syndicalism, or whether it is just the product of an ignorance of history.

The same goes for the very schematic use of the invaluable descriptions by marxists of the beginnings of syndicalism in Germany. When Anton Pannekoek wrote in 1913: "according to their practice, they describe themselves as ‘Localists' and thus express an opposition to the centralisation of the large federations their main principle of agitation",[5] he was describing a development which only took place in the German workers' movement after 1904 through the rapprochement with the idea of the "Bourses de Travail" enshrined in the French CGT's Amiens Charter of 1906.[6] But this does not apply to the period in the 1890s when the Localists first appeared.

The Localists were not formed because they saw their trade union opposition to the policies of Legien first and foremost as being based on a federalist method of waging the class struggle in a locally dispersed manner.  The leading elements in the unions made use of sonorous phrases about the "strict centralisation" of the class struggle while at the same time imposing a strict political abstinence on the workers organised in the unions. To note the existence of this situation, which did gradually push parts of the Localist current towards federalist and anti-centralising ideas, is a rather different matter.

A centralisation in the sense of a common struggle of the working class, of solidarity going beyond trades, sectors and nations, was absolutely necessary. The idea of centralisation as embodied by the trade union centres, however, gave many workers the impression that it meant having organs of control in the hands of the reformist leaders. And at the heart of the approach of the Localist opposition in the mid-1890s was indignation against the decree on political abstinence for the workers.

With regard to the birth of syndicalism in Germany, it seems to us important to set the record straight on the false and sometime exclusive fixation on the question of "federalism versus centralism", by looking at the words of Fritz Kater, one of the leading members of the FVDG and the FAUD: "The effort to organise the trade unions in Germany into central confederations went along with the abandonment of any clarification in the meetings of questions of political and public affairs, and in particular of any attempt by the union to exercise any influence in this sphere, engaging solely in the day to day struggle for better wages and working conditions. It was this point which was the main reason for those who called themselves ‘Localists' to reject and combat the centralism of the confederation. As revolutionary social democrats and members of the party they had the very correct idea that the so-called trade union struggle for the improvement of workers' conditions could not be waged without affecting in an incisive manner the relationship between the workers and the state and its organs of legislation and administration"[7] (our emphasis).

Through this false representation of the Localists as a symbol of absolute federalism, the Stalinist and Trotskyist historiographers sit curiously with certain neo-syndicalist writings for whom federalism is the nec plus ultra.

Even Rudolf Rocker, who lived in Paris and London between 1893 and 1919, and who made federalism a central theoretical principle in the FAUD during the 1920s, honestly and pertinently describes the "federalism" of the Localists of 1892: "However, this federalism was not at all the product of a political and social notion as it was with Pisacane in Italy, Proudhon in France and Pi y Margall in Spain, which was later taken up by the anarchist movement in this country: it was above all the result of an attempt to get round the workings of the Prussian laws on association which were in force at that time. These laws allowed purely local trade unions to discuss political questions but denied this right to members of central confederations."[8]

In the condition of the anti-socialist laws, having grown used to a method of coordination (which can also be called centralisation) through a network of trusted delegates, it was very difficult for the Localists to take up another form of coordination which corresponded to the change in conditions after 1890. A federalist tendency was undoubtedly germinating in 1892. But the federalism of the Localists of this period can be more accurately described as an attempt to make a virtue of the system of trusted delegates. However, the Localists still remained for nearly five years in the big trade union confederations with the aim of representing a combative vanguard inside the social democratic trade unions, and were clearly understood to be a part of social democracy. 

The foundation of the FVDG

In the second half of the 1890s, and above all during strikes, open conflicts broke out more and more between the adherents of the "Localist" professional unions and the central confederations. The most violent expressions of this was among the building workers of Berlin and during the port workers' strike in Hamburg in 1896-97. In these disputes, the central question was generally the one of going on strike: could the professional unions take this decision off their own bat or did this have to have the consent of the central confederation? It is striking that the Localists drew their support from the skilled building workers (masons, tilers, carpenters, among whom there was a strong feeling of "professional pride"), and proportionally much less among the industrial workers.

Parallel to this, the social democratic leadership was, from the end of the 1890s on, inclined to accept the apolitical model of the "neutrality" of the trade unions around Legien's General Commission. With regard to the quarrels between the unions, the SPD, for different reasons, evaded the issue and only expressed itself with some reserve. Even if the Localists at the time of the Halberstadt congress in 1892 only represented a comparatively small minority of around 10,000 members (only about 3% of all the workers organised in trade unions in Germany), among them were numerous combative and experienced trade unionists with close links to the SPD. From fear of antagonising these comrades by taking up a unilateral position on the trade union debates, but above all through lack of clarity about the relationship between the economic and political struggles of the working class, the social democratic leadership stayed on the fence for a long time. It was only in 1908 that the members of the FVDG were definitely dropped by the SPD leadership.

In May 1897, with 68,000 members,[9] the first declared and independently organised precursor of the future syndicalism in Germany was born. Or, put more precisely: the organisation which in the years that followed was to take the path of syndicalism in Germany. With the foundation of this national trade union body, a historic split in the social democratic union movement had taken place. At the "first congress of locally organised trade unions in Germany" at Halle, the Localists proclaimed their organisational independence. The name "Free Association of German Trade Unions"[10] was only adopted in September 1901. Its newly founded press organ Die Einigkeit appeared up until the banning of the FVDG at the outbreak of war in 1914.

Still hand in hand with social democracy?

The resolution of the 1897 congress proposed by Gustav Kessler expressed most clearly the FVDG's understanding of the political struggle of the working class and its relations with social democracy:

"1. Any separation between the trade union movement and consciously social democratic politics is impossible without putting at risk the struggle for the improvement of the situation of the workers in the context of the present order;

2. Any effort, whatever its origin, aimed at weakening or breaking relations with social democracy must be seen as hostile to the working class;

3. Those forms of organisation of the trade union movement that are an obstacle to political objectives must be seen as erroneous and should be condemned. The congress sees the forms of organisation adopted by the Social Democratic Party at the Halle Congress of 1890, taking into account the existence of the law on association, as the most appropriate for pursuing all the objectives of the trade union movement".[11]

Here we see a defence of the political needs of the working class and a strong attachment to social democracy as a "sister organisation". Relations with social democracy were still seen as a bridge to politics. The foundation of the FVDG was thus, at the programmatic level, not a rejection of the spirit of the class struggle defended by Marx, or a rejection of marxism in general, but on the contrary an attempt to keep this spirit alive. The FVDG's desire to keep the "struggle for political objectives" in the workers' hands still constituted its essential strength in the years it was founded. 

The debates at the "4th Congress of centralisation through trusted delegates" in May 1900 showed how firm this political attachment to social democracy was. The FVDG then had around 20,000 members. Kessler even raised the call for a possible fusion between trade unions and party, which was accepted in a resolution: "the political and trade union organisations should unify. This cannot take place immediately, since the historic circumstances for this have to be right; but we probably have the duty to prepare for this unification, by making the unions fit to be bearers of socialist thought. Whoever is convinced that the trade union and political struggle are both the class struggle, and that this can only be fought by the proletariat itself, that person is our comrade and is in the same boat as us".[12]

Despite this healthy desire to avoid being limited exclusively to the economic struggle and to maintain links with the main political organisation of the German working class, the SPD, the seeds of later confusions about syndicalism and the "unified organisation" - an idea that was to appear in Germany after 1919, not only in syndicalism but above all in the "Workers' Unions" - are nonetheless clearly visible. However, the aspiration for a common struggle between social democracy and the FVDG contained in the resolution of 1900 was to be put through a tough trial in that same year.

The "Trade union conflict in Hamburg"

In 1900 the central trade union confederation in Hamburg signed an agreement with the bosses on the abolition of piece work. Some of the stonemasons were opposed to this. They went back to work, were accused of strikebreaking, and expelled from the central trade union confederation. Then these stonemasons joined the FVDG. The Hamburg SPD immediately called for the expulsion of these workers from the party, a decision that was however rejected by an SPD arbitration jury.

Not out of political proximity to the FVDG, but as part of her struggle against reformism and in particular the effort to clarify the relationship between the economic and political struggle of the working class, Rosa Luxemburg defended the jury's decision not to expel the FVDG stonemasons from the SPD. She certainly called for "a severe admonition to the stonemasons"[13] for having broken the strike, but vigorously rejected the formalist and bureaucratic viewpoint that strikebreaking was a reason for immediate exclusion from the party. The central confederation of social democratic unions had, in a number of disputes with the FVDG, also resorted to breaking strikes! The SPD should not in Luxemburg's view become a terrain for conflict between the unions. The party was not the judge of the working class. 

Rosa Luxemburg understood that behind this violent dispute about the Hamburg stonemasons there were much more important questions. The same as those presented in the reports made by the FVDG regarding the "unification" between the party and the mass trade union organisation: the distinction between, on the one hand, a revolutionary political organisation and, on the other hand, the organisational form the working class needed to create in moments of open class struggle: "In practice this would lead to an amalgam between the political and economic organisation of the working class, a confusion in which the two forms of combat would lose their external separation, which would be a backward step for the division of labour which has been engendered by historical conditions".[14]

If the Rosa Luxemburg of 1900, like the workers' movement as a whole, could not at that point go beyond the horizon of the traditional trade union organisation of the working class and saw the unions as mighty organisations of the economic class struggle, this was because it was only in the years that followed that the working class would itself engage in the mass strike and create the workers' councils - a revolutionary laboratory which merged the economic and the political struggle.

The unification of the workers' class struggle, which in Germany was dispersed into all sorts of trade unions, was indeed historically necessary. But this goal could not be reached through the formal application of the party's authority, with the aim of disciplining the workers, which is what the big union confederations wanted. Neither could it be done through the idea of "unitary organisations" which underestimated the necessity for a political party, an idea that was beginning to gain ground in the ranks of the FVDG. Nor could the problem be resolved through "one big union" but only through the unification of the working class in the class struggle itself. The SPD congress at Lübeck in 1901, no doubt under pressure from Luxemburg, and probably in a formal manner, refused to play the role of arbitrating between the central union confederation and the FVDG. However it did adopt Bernstein's "Sonderbund resolution" which threatened any future union split with exclusion from the party. The SPD thus clearly began to take its distance from the FVDG.

In 1900-01, the FVDG experienced growing internal tensions, mainly turning around the question of mutual financial support for a unitary strike fund, There were very strong particularist tendencies and a lack of a sprit of solidarity in its own ranks. A characteristic example of this was the case of the union of cutlery workers and metal stampers in Solingen, who for a long time received financial support from the FVDG's administrative commission only to threaten to leave the FVDG as soon as it was itself asked to give aid to other strikes.

From January 1903 to March 1904, on the initiative of and under pressure from the SPD, secret negotiations were held between the FVDG and the central union confederation with the aim of reintegrating the FVDG into the central confederation. The negotiations broke down. Within the FVDG's commercial commission itself, these negotiations provoked violent tensions between Fritz Kater, who represented the openly syndicalist tendency that would develop later on, and Hinrichsen, who was simply giving way to pressure from the central confederations. This resulted in a great deal of confusion among the organised workers. Around 4,400 FVDG members (more than 25%) left for the central confederation in 1903-04. The failed unification negotiations had taken place in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, resulting in a tangible decline in the FVDG's numbers and represented the first chapter in its break with the SPD.      

Conclusion

Up till 1903, the Localists and the FVDG had the merit of expressing the healthy need of the workers not to see political questions as something exclusively for the party. They thus clearly opposed reformism and the delegation of politics to the parliamentarians. The FVDG was a proletarian movement that was strongly motivated politically and very combative, but also very heterogeneous and completely restricted to the union terrain. As a loose conglomeration of small professional union organisations, it was obviously impossible for it to play the role of a political organisation of the working class. To satisfy its push towards politics, it would have had to move much more strongly towards the revolutionary left within the SPD

Furthermore, the history of the Localists and the FVGD shows that it is vain to search for the "exact hour" of the birth of German syndicalism. This was rather a process that took place over a number of years in which a proletarian minority detached itself from the orbit of social democracy and the social democratic unions.

The challenge of the question of the mass strike when posed directly to syndicalism was to open another stage in its development in Germany. The next article will look at the debates around the mass strikes and the history of the FVDG, from the latter's definitive break with the SPD in 1908 until the outbreak of the First World War.

Mario 27.10.2008

---

[1] Der Volkstaat was the organ of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, the so-called Eisenach tendency led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel.

 

[2]. Letter by Engels to A Bebel, 18/28 March.

 

[3]. See our pamphlet Trade Unions against the Working Class

 

[4]. Resolution (written by Marx) of the IWMA, Geneva 1866: "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council".

 

[5]. Anton Pannekoek, "German Syndicalism", 1913, our translation.

 

[6]. Confédération Générale du Travail (General Labour Confederation). See our article in International Review n°120.

 

[7]. Cited by W Kulemann, Die Berufvereine, vol 2, Lena 1908 (our translation).

 

[8]. Rudolf Rocker, Aus den memoiren eines deutschen Anarchisten, Ed Suhrkamp p288 (our translation).

 

[9]. See also www.sydikalismusforschung.info/museum.htm [45]

 

[10]. The big central confederation of trade unions was also officially called "free trade unions" The similarity with the name "Free Association" often created confusion

 

[11]. Cited by W Kulemann, Die Berufvereine, volume 2, 1908, p46 (our translation).

 

[12]. Proceedings of the FVDG, cited by D H Muller, Gewerkschaftliche Versammlungsdemokratie und Arbeiterdelegierte, 1985, p 159. (our translation).

 

[13]. Rosa Luxemburg, Der Parteitag und di hamburger Gewerkschaftstrit, Gesammelle Werke, vol. 1/2, p117 (our translation).

 

[14]. Ibid, p 116.

 

Capitalism today requires an arsenal of ideological mystifications to survive. As a historically bankrupt social and economic system, capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except a future of misery, decay, and war. The ruling class finds it necessary to obscure this reality to keep the working class from recognising and acting upon its revolutionary, historic responsibilities. The latest mystification the world bourgeoisie has rolled out from the arsenal is the green economy. Media pundits, politicians, economists and business leaders increasingly envision green industry expansion as a significant component of economic recovery. Some compare the green economy to the biotech and computer technologies in terms of its transformative potential for the American economy. It's almost funny to see all the corporations jumping on the green bandwagon, now that environmentalism is "in." Even the biggest polluters are now advocates for the green movement, like the home heating oil industry television commercial in the US that claims that oil heat is energy efficient and environmentally friendly!

Like all ideological swindles, the green economy has a certain link to reality. There is indeed a genuine and widespread concern about the despoliation of the environment and the very real threat of climate change with potentially catastrophic social impact. And there is undeniably a disastrous global economic downturn that is destroying jobs by the millions throughout the world, worsening poverty and deprivation. This link to reality makes the green economy myth even more pernicious than your typical run-of-the-mill, trumped up propaganda campaign.

The world bourgeoisie advances the preposterous claim that it has a policy alternative to save the day in order to short-circuit the development of class consciousness and the recognition that the environmental disaster and economic crisis graphically expose capitalism as an anachronistic system and poses the necessity for its overthrow in no uncertain terms. In so doing the bourgeoisie denies the fact that the current crisis is a systemic problem and pitches the notion that it is a policy problem that can be dealt with. The green economy, they tell us, will revolutionise the economy and bring back prosperity.

Environmental and economic realities

The scientific evidence about the seriousness of the environmental crisis is voluminous. According to a report released by Barack Obama's White House scientific advisers, global warming has already caused significant changes in weather patterns in the United States, including more heavy downpours, rising temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons and altered river flow.[1] This report anticipates that average temperatures in the US could rise by 11o Fahrenheit or approximately 6o C by end of the century. The International Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in March, 2009, reported that "temperature rises above 2o C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century." And the last time we checked, 6o is three times greater than 2o!

One of the key conclusions of the March Copenhagen Conference was that:

 "Recent observations confirm that given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrives. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climactic shifts."[2]

Regarding the economic situation, there is hardly a need to present evidence here of the seriousness of the current recession. The bourgeois media itself acknowledges this as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Since the current recession has occurred, despite the myriad state capitalist safeguards and palliatives put in place after the Great Depression in the 1930s supposedly to make sure that such economic devastation never happened again, one could argue that this recession is even worse than 1929. It has certainly brought the world's biggest and most powerful economy, the United States, to its knees, requiring the virtual nationalisation of the banking industry, the propping up of the entire finance industry and the bankruptcy of General Motors, the largest corporation in the world. They used to say "what's good for General Motors is good for the USA." 

The Obama administration first predicted that US unemployment would rise to only 8 percent before stabilising. Reality has already outstripped this overly optimistic prediction, as official unemployment has risen to 9.4 percent and Obama himself now openly acknowledges the unemployment rate will hit double digits before things start to improve. Even these bleak numbers seriously underestimate reality. In the US a person is considered unemployed only if he or she has no job and has applied for a job in the previous 30 days. Unemployed workers who have not applied for a job during this period or who have become so demoralised looking for jobs that don't exist and have given up applying for positions are, by bureaucratic fiat, considered to have withdrawn from the workforce. According to the American state, these "discouraged workers" are no longer workers and are therefore not unemployed! 

Workers who have lost their jobs and can't find new full time positions, but scramble to find menial part-time jobs just to survive - called "involuntary part-time workers" - are not considered unemployed or even underemployed. Provided they have a part-time job of at least 10 hours per week, they are considered "employed" and what's more each and every one of their part-time jobs counts as a "job" in the statistics that record the number of jobs in the economy. Thus for example, a laid off 59-year old special-education teacher's aide who lost her job nine months ago, now works four part-time jobs. Not only is she not unemployed according to the government, she alone accounts for four new jobs in the economy. Working as a fitness instructor teaching five classes a week, a day-care worker, a personal care attendant to a patient with Down's syndrome, and as a personal fitness trainer for private clients, she manages to pull in a grand total of $750 per month, which doesn't help very much since her monthly mortgage payment is $1,000.[3]

The US Labor Department acknowledges that there were 9.1 million such "involuntary part-time workers" in May and that if discouraged workers and involuntary part-time were included in unemployment calculations, unemployment would stand at 16.4 percent, not 9.4. Even the most optimistic prognosticators predict that "full" employment (defined as 6 percent unemployment) can't possibly return until 2013 or 2014 in the US

 The green economy

The green economy mystification was a key element in the Obama presidential campaign. In the second presidential debate in October, 2008, Obama said, "if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily." More specifically his campaign web site promised to "create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyse private efforts to build a clean energy future."[4] Programmatically, the Obama/Biden green economy proposal includes the following:

within 10 years saving more oil than is currently imported from the Middle East and Venezuela;

putting 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015;

ensuring that 10 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, 25 percent by 2025;

implementing economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.[5]

In February 2009, Congress passed Obama's economic recovery plan which earmarked $80 million in stimulus spending for developing alternative fuel sources and other eco-conscious initiatives, which was widely touted among environmental groups as a down payment on the green economy. However, despite the triumphalism of the environmental groups, this paltry $80 million mathematically means that Obama will now have to "strategically" spend $149.926 billion dollars in nine years to fulfil his green economy pledge.

The green economy mystification is not simply an American phenomenon. According to a European environmental activist, "the clean economy is about to take off."7 The European Union is actively promoting green industry investment. European countries introduced their own carbon dioxide cap-and-trade programs in 2005. Germany has enacted the German Renewable Energy Act and introduced a feed-in tariffs (FITs)8 program providing incentives for clean energy investment. In Canada, Ontario Province has adopted a measure modelled on the German FITs. In Britain, efforts to promote environmentally friendly investments are a central element in economic recovery plans. Australia seeks to increase green jobs by 3,000 percent over the next several decades. Germany, Spain and Denmark have been promoting wind power programs. Germany and Spain have also been supporting solar power ventures.

Is the green economy a magic bullet?

The green economy is hardly the magic bullet that will save capitalism from itself. The comparisons of the green economy to the so-called "computer technology revolution" are spurious. This is no new technological revolution that will transform society the way the industrial revolution was able do when it transcended natural production and permitted the development of modern manufacturing, which decreased costs and increased production and helped raise the standard of living. When capitalism was a historically progressive system, capable of expanding the forces of production, when new technologies and new industries arose, they produced millions of new jobs, even as they may have destroyed old jobs and industries. So for example, the rise of the automobile industry, though it largely destroyed such industries as blacksmithing and buggy manufacturing, created millions more jobs in the auto, rubber, steel, aluminium, petroleum and allied industries. However today, in a crisis of global overproduction, insofar as it was able to reduce production costs and increase productivity, computer technology didn't revolutionise the economy, didn't enable the system to overcome its economic crisis, but on the contrary actually aggravated the crisis of overproduction.

The notion that fixing the mess that capitalism has created over the past century is the basis for economic progress is a complete fallacy. It's like saying that Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2004 was good for the economy because it created thousands of new construction jobs and makes possible economic growth. This kind of ideological sleight of hand only works if you leave out of the equation all the human suffering (death, dislocation, poverty) and destruction of productive forces, housing, schools, hospitals, etc. that was caused by Katrina. Fixing something that's broken is not "revolutionising" the economy.

In any case, all the hype about how the green economy will produce new jobs is rubbish. A study commissioned by the US Conference of Mayors projects an increase in green jobs in the US from about 750,000 today to 2.5 million in 2018, an increase of 1,750,000 jobs - much more modest than Obama's prediction of 5 million jobs. However, academic researchers from such universities as York College in Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois and University of Texas Arlington have challenged the Mayors' projections as wildly inflated, because they pad the job numbers with clerical and administrative support positions that have no direct involvement with clean energy production. In any case, even if Obama's inflated claims were accurate, five million new green jobs over ten years would be a drop in the bucket in this economy. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the American economy has lost nearly 6 million jobs to lay-offs and the economy needs 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs a month, or 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 jobs per year, just to absorb new workers coming of age and entering the workforce and keep unemployment stable. Thus, the alleged five million new jobs that will be created "easily" over a period of ten years will not even compensate for all the jobs destroyed in the last 18 months of the current recession!

Nor would the new green jobs compensate for the jobs lost in the oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and automobile industries that would result from the wholesale shift away from fossil fuels in what they call the "black" economy. The highly promoted cap-and-trade program which allows polluting companies to trade allowances to pollute which has already been in place in Europe for four years has yet to have any positive benefits, as emissions levels have increased in the those countries.

Capitalist enterprises will only switch to environmentally friendly practices and investments if there are profits to be made. Since these new technologies require tremendous start up and research and development costs, they have to be very profitable. The only way that governments can promote the green economy is to introduce disincentives for continued use of fossil fuels and incentives to push companies towards green economy investments. So-called "free market" forces will never make this happen; it requires vigorous state capitalist policy intervention. This means increased taxes on the use of fossil fuel technologies, driving up costs for commodities produced by traditional manufacturing processes, and hence prices for consumers. And at the same time, it means government subsidies and tax breaks to green technology companies. All of this will of course be financed out of the hide of the working class, who will pay higher prices for "clean" consumer goods and higher taxes to finance subsidies and compensate for lost revenues due to corporate tax breaks. In the end the green economy that will supposedly "revolutionise" the economy and save the world from ecological disaster is ultimately just another way to foist austerity on the working class and erode even further its standard of living.

World capitalism is totally incapable of the degree of international co-operation necessary to address the ecological threat. Especially in the period of social decomposition, with the disappearance of economic blocs, and a growing tendency for each nation to play its own card on the international arena, in the competition of each against all, such co-operation is impossible. While the US has been attacked for its refusal to participate in the Kyoto Protocols guidelines for curtailing carbon emissions, the nations who were enthusiastic participants in the treaty accomplished nothing in terms of reducing greenhouse gases in the past decade. Even when capitalism "tries" to implement solutions to the environmental crisis, the profit motive works irrationally to undermine social well being. The disastrous example of what happened with the profit-driven switch to produce ethanol from corn as an alternative fuel, which prompted many agribusinesses to switch from food production to producing corn-for-ethanol and contributed to global food shortages and hunger rioting, offers just a taste of what a capitalist green economy has in store for humanity.

The green economy is a smokescreen

The green economy is nothing but a smokescreen, an ideological campaign to give capitalism a human face. In its quest for profits, capitalism has debased the environment. The environmental calamity that capitalism has produced is yet another proof of the fact that it has outlived its usefulness, that it must be cast aside. But the green economy is a cynical response by the ruling class. They say they can fix the problem that flows directly from the very nature of their system. The distance between the promise of the green economy and reality is so enormous as to be laughable. The jobs it will create over the next decade won't even compensate for the jobs lost in the current "recession." They market ecologically friendly foodstuffs, that are supposedly more natural and more organic, but are often priced beyond the reach of the average worker. To conserve energy, they tell us to switch from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent lights, which contain mercury, which is disastrous for the environment, unless disposed of in controlled manner.

No matter how you package it ideologically, capitalism works for profit, not for the fulfilment of human need.

 There is no way for capitalism to extricate itself from the economic crisis, no way for a system based on the profit motive to save the environment. Only the proletariat has the capacity to salvage humanity's future - to destroy this rapacious system of capitalist exploitation of man by man based on a relentless drive for profits and replace it with a society in which the fulfilment of social need is the paramount principle in economic and social life. All this talk about green and black economies is nonsense. Only a red economy will offer humanity a future.

J. Grevin 31/7/9

 

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[1]. By law, the White House is required to issue a report on the impact of global warming, but no such report had been issued since 2000, when the Clinton/Gore administration was still in power. The Bush administration with its strong links to the energy industry and ties to anti-regulation rightwing cronies, refused to issue such a report in the entire eight years of its tenure. Until the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its report affirming the existence of global warming as incontrovertible fact, the Bush administration considered the matter an "open" scientific question, much to the dismay of professional scientists on the staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who found their reports censored or suppressed during the Bush years.

[2]. "Key Messages from the Congress" climatecongress.ku.dk/newsroom/congress_key_messages

[3]. DePass, Dee, "More Workers Fall Back on Part-Time ‘Survival' Jobs," Star Tribune, (Minneapolis, MN), June 21, 2009. p1D

[4]. barackobama.com [48]

[5]. ibid

6. The 150 billion promised at the time of the electoral debate from which the 80 million already allocated in February 2009 is subtracted.

7. WWF: Green Economy Creates Jobs. en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=1555.

8. Tariffs imposed on businesses for the purchase of electricity from renewable sources.

Not since 1929 has an economic crisis struck with such violence against the world proletariat. Everywhere, unemployment and poverty are exploding. This dramatic situation can only provoke a strong feeling of anger among workers. But to transform this anger into combativity is very difficult today. What do you do when your factory closes? How do you fight back? What type of strikes or actions do you undertake? And for those that still have a job, how do you resist wage cuts, unpaid supplementary hours and the increases in productivity and flexibility when the boss uses the odious blackmail of "There's the door, if you don't like it there's millions more to take your place"? The brutality of this recession is a source of terrible, sometimes paralysing anxiety for workers' families.

However, in these last months important strikes have broken out:

• - In Narayanganj, Bangladesh, last May, 20,000 workers who had not been paid for months, exploded in anger, ransacked dozens of textile factories and went on to put their lives in danger by confronting the army.
• - In China, in the towns of Daqing and Liaoyang, at the heart of the industrial basin of Manchuria, tens of thousands of workers who had recently lost their jobs came onto the streets from March 1st to demand payment of their unemployment pay and the maintenance of their social security. This wave of struggle is representative of the general growth of the combativity of the proletariat in this region of the world. According to surveillance agencies based in Hong Kong, 58,000 "mass incidents" (strikes, demonstrations) happened in China during the course of the first three months of this year. "If this tendency continues throughout the year, 2009 will beat all preceding records with more than 230,000 of these ‘mass incidents', compared to 120,000 in 2008 and 97,000 in 2006".[1]
• - In Spain at the end of April, metal workers at Vigo took up their struggle again. After undertaking an exemplary strike in 2006 by organising general assemblies in the street so as to draw in the working population of the town, these workers this time faced a more prepared trade union with weapons sharpened: empty general assemblies with no debate, sterile actions such as blocking a cruise ship... If the strikers were unable to thwart all these traps, the consciousness of the necessity of the struggle broke new ground with this phrase of one of the striking workers: "It's going very badly. We fight or we die."[2]

But it's in Britain that the clearest advance of consciousness within the working class has been expressed. At the beginning of the year, workers at the Lindsey refinery were at the heart of a wave of wildcat strikes. This struggle, at its beginning, was held back by the weight of nationalism, symbolised by the slogan "British jobs for British workers". The ruling class used these nationalist ideas to the full by presenting this strike as being against Italian and Portuguese workers employed on the site. However, the bourgeoisie suddenly put an end to this strike when banners begun to appear calling on Portuguese and Italian workers to join the struggle, affirming "Workers of the World, Unite!", and when construction workers from Poland joined in wildcat strikes in Plymouth. Instead of a workers' defeat, with growing tensions between workers of different countries, the workers at Lindsey obtained the creation of 101 supplementary jobs (the Italian and Portuguese workers keeping theirs), gained assurances that no worker would be sacked and, above all, returned to work united. When, in June, Total announced the sacking of 51 then of 640 employees, the workers based their reaction on this recent experience. The new wave of struggle broke out straightaway on a much clearer basis: solidarity with the sacked workers. And quickly, wildcat strikes broke out throughout the country. "Workers from power stations, refineries, factories in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxford, South Wales and Teesside stopped work to show their solidarity".[3] "There were also signs that the strike was spreading to the nuclear industry; then EDF Energy said that the contractors at the nuclear reactor of Hinckley Point in Somerset had stopped work".[4] The oldest fraction of the world proletariat showed on this occasion that the strength of the working class above all resides in its capacity for unity and solidarity.

All these struggles can seem little in comparison with the gravity of the situation. And, effectively, the future of humanity will necessarily demand proletarian combats of quite another breadth and scale. But if the present economic crisis has left the proletariat somewhat stupefied up to now, it nevertheless remains the most fertile ground for the future development of workers' combativity and consciousness. In this sense, these examples of struggles, that carry within them the germ of unity, solidarity and human dignity, are promises for the future.

Mehdi 8/7/9

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[1]. Source: "News from the front" (https://dndf.org/?p=4049 [51]).

[2]. For more information on this struggle, read our article in Spanish "Vigo: Los metados sinidicales conducen a la derrota" (https://es.internationalism.org/node/2585 [52])

[3]. The Independent, June 20th.

[4]. The Times.

Introduction (ICC)

 

The article we are publishing below is the second part of Anton Pannekoek's pamphlet, Marxism and Darwinism, the first chapters of which we published in the preceding issue of the International Review [54] . This text explains the evolution of man as a social species. With good cause, Pannekoek looks to the second great work of Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) and clearly shows that the mechanism of the struggle for existence through natural selection, developed in The Origin of Species, cannot be applied schematically to the human species, as Darwin himself demonstrated. Among all the social animals, and more still in man, co-operation and mutual aid are the condition for the collective survival of the group, within which the weakest are not eliminated, but, on the contrary, protected. The motor of evolution of the human species is thus not the competitive struggle for existence and the advantage conferred to those living beings who are most adapted to the conditions of the environment, but the development of their social instincts.

Pannekoek's pamphlet shows that Darwin's book, The Descent of Man, offers a striking rebuttal to the reactionary ideology of "social Darwinism", notably advocated by Herbert Spencer (also distorted into the ideas of eugenics by Francis Galton), which based itself on the mechanism of natural selection, described in The Origins of the Species, in order to give a pseudo-scientific seal of approval to the logic of capitalism based upon competition, the law of the strongest and the elimination of the "weakest". To all the "social Darwinists" of yesterday and today (whom he designates as "bourgeois Darwinists"), Pannekoek responds very clearly, basing himself upon Darwin, that: "This throws an entirely new light on the point of view of the bourgeois Darwinists. They proclaim that only the elimination of the weak is natural and that this is necessary to prevent the corruption of the race. On the other hand, the protection provided to the weak is against nature and contributes to the decline of the race. But what do we see? In nature itself, in the animal world, we can establish that the weak are protected, that they don't hold out thanks to their own personal strength, and they are not eliminated due to their individual weakness. These arrangements don't weaken the group, but confer on it a new strength. The animal group in which mutual aid is better developed is better adapted to look after itself in conflicts. What, according to the narrow conception of these Darwinists, appears as a factor of weakness becomes exactly the opposite, a factor of strength, against which strong individuals who undertake struggle individually are not up to the job."

In this second part of the pamphlet, Pannekoek also examines, with great dialectical rigour, how the evolution of Man permitted him to free himself from his animality and of certain contingencies of nature, thanks to the conjoint development of language, thought and tools. Nevertheless, in taking up the analysis developed by Engels in his uncompleted article "The Role of Labour in the Transition of Ape to Man" (published in The Dialectics of Nature), he tends to underestimate the fundamental role of language in the development of the social life of our species.

This article of Pannekoek was drawn up a century ago and he couldn't thus integrate the latest scientific discoveries, notably in primatology. Recent studies on the social behaviour of anthropoid apes allow us to affirm that human language wasn't chosen in the first place for the making of tools (as Pannekoek seems to think, following Engels) but first of all for the consolidation of social links (without which the first humans wouldn't have been able to communicate to construct shelter, protect themselves from predators and the hostile forces of nature and then transmit their knowledge from one generation to the other). Although the text of Pannekoek makes a very well argued description of the process of the development of the productive forces since the first tools were made, he tends to reduce these solely to the satisfaction of the biological needs of man (notably the need to overcome hunger) and thus loses sight of the fact that the emergence of art (which made its appearance very early in the history of humanity) equally constituted a fundamental stage in the disengagement of the human species from the animal kingdom.

Moreover, although as we've seen, Pannekoek explains in a very synthetic way, but with a remarkable clarity and simplicity, the Darwinian theory of the evolution of man, in our opinion he doesn't go far enough in understanding the anthropology of Darwin. In particular, he doesn't show that with the natural selection of the social instincts, the struggle for existence has chosen anti-eliminatory behaviours that have given birth to morality[1]. By effecting a rupture between natural and social morality, between nature and culture, Pannekoek has not sufficiently understood the evolutionary continuity between the selection of social instincts and the protection of the weak through mutual aid, which allowed man to take up the road to civilisation. It is really this enlargement of solidarity and of the consciousness of belonging to the same species that permitted humanity, at a certain stage of its development under the Roman Empire (as underlined elsewhere in Pannekoek's text), to declare the Christian formula: "All men are brothers".

ICC, July 2009.

 

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[1]. This idea is also presented in Kautsky's book Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History, which Pannekoek refers to and approves, as the following quote shows: "An animal impulse and nothing else is the moral law. Thence comes its mysterious nature, this voice in us which has no connection with any external impulse, or any apparent interest... Because the moral law is the universal instinct, of equal force to the instinct of self preservation and reproduction, thence its force, thence its power which we obey without thought, thence our rapid decisions, in particular cases, whether an action is good or bad, virtuous or vicious: thence the energy and decision of our moral judgement, and thence the difficulty to prove it when reason begins to analyse its grounds." (Ethics and the materialist conception of history, Chapter IV "The ethics of Darwinism."; section 4 "The social instinct" [55] . English edition published by Charles H Kerr and Company, 1914). 

Furthermore, Darwin's anthropology is very clearly explained in the theory of the "reverse effect of evolution" developed by Patrick Tort, notably in his book The Darwin Effect: Natural Selection and the Birth of Civilisation (Editions du Seuil). Our readers can find a presentation of this work in an article on our website "On Patrick Tort's book The Darwin Effect: a materialist conception of the origins of morality and civilisation. [56] "

 

 

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VI. Natural law and social theory

 

The false conclusions reached by Haeckel and Spencer on socialism are no surprise. Darwinism and marxism are two distinct theories, one of which applies to the animal world, the other to society. They complete each other in the sense that the animal world develops according to the laws of Darwinian theory up to the stage of man and, starting from the moment where he is elevated from the animal world, it is marxism which constitutes the subsequent law of development. When one wishes to carry a theory from one domain to the other, where different laws apply, one can only make wrong deductions.

Such is the case when we wish to discover, starting from the law of nature, which social form is natural and more in conformity with nature, and this is just what the bourgeois Darwinists have done. They deduced from the laws which govern the animal world, where Darwinian theory applies, that the capitalist social order, which is in conformity with this theory, is a natural order, which must endure forever. On the other hand, there have also been some socialists who wanted to prove in the same way that the socialist system is the natural system.  These socialists said, 

"Under capitalism men do not carry on the struggle for existence with identical weapons, but with artificially unequal weapons. The natural superiority of those who are healthier, stronger, more intelligent or morally better, cannot predominate so long as birth, class, or above all the possession of money control this struggle. Socialism, in abolishing all these artificial inequalities, will make the conditions as favourable for all, and only then will the real struggle for existence prevail, in which personal excellence constitutes the decisive factor. Following Darwinian principles, the socialist mode of production will therefore be truly natural and logical."

As a critique of the conceptions of the bourgeois Darwinists, these arguments are not bad, but they are still ultimately erroneous. Both opposing sets of arguments are equally false because they both start from the long disproved premise that there exists a single natural or logical social system.

Marxism has taught us that there is no such thing as a natural social system, and that there can be none, or, to put it another way, every social system is natural, because every social system is necessary and natural in given conditions. There is not a single definitive social system that can claim to be natural; the different social systems succeed each other as a result of the development of the productive forces.  Each system is therefore the natural one for its particular epoch, as the following one will be for a subsequent epoch. Capitalism is not the only natural order, as the bourgeoisie believes, and no world socialist system is the only natural system, as some socialists try to prove. Capitalism was natural in the conditions of the 19th Century, just as feudalism was in the Middle Ages, and just as socialism will be at a future stage of the development of the productive forces. The attempt to promote a given system as the only natural system is as futile as if we were to take an animal and say that this animal is the most perfect of all animals. Darwinism teaches us that every animal is equally adapted and equally perfect in its form to adapt to its particular environment. In the same manner, marxism teaches us that each social system is particularly adapted to its conditions, and that, in this sense, it can be called good and perfect.

Herein lies the main reason why the attempts of the bourgeois Darwinists to defend the decadent capitalist system are bound to fail. Arguments based on natural science, when applied to social questions, must almost always lead to wrong conclusions.  In effect, while nature does not change significantly in the course of human history, human society, on the other hand, undergoes rapid and continuous changes. In order to understand the motor force and the cause of social development, we must study society itself. Marxism and Darwinism must remain in their proper domains; they are independent of each other and there is no direct connection between them.

Here arises a very important question. Can we stop at the conclusion that marxism applies only to society and that Darwinism applies only to the organic world, and that neither of these theories is applicable in the other domain? From a practical point of view it is very convenient to have one principle for the human world and another one for the animal world. In adopting this point of view, however, we forget that man is also an animal. Man has developed from the animals, and the laws that apply to the animal world cannot suddenly lose their applicability to man. It is true that man is a very peculiar animal, but if that is the case it is necessary to find from these very peculiarities why the principles applicable to all animals do not apply to men, or why they assume a different form.

Here we come to another problem. The bourgeois Darwinists do not have this problem; they simply declare that man is an animal, and without further ado they set about applying Darwinian principles to men. We have seen to what erroneous conclusions they come. To us this question is not so simple; we must first have a clear vision of the differences which exist between men and animals, then, from these differences, must flow why, in the human world, Darwinian principles are transformed into different ones, namely, into marxism.

VII. The sociability of man

The first peculiarity that we observe in man is that he is a social being. In this he does not differ from all animals, for even among the latter there are many species that live in a social way. But man differs from all the animals that we have observed until now in dealing with Darwinian theory; those animals that live separately, each for themselves, and struggle against all the others to survive. It is not with the rapacious animals that live separately and which are the model animals for the bourgeois Darwinians, that man must be compared, but with those that live socially. Sociability is a new force that we have not yet taken into account; a force that calls forth new relations and new qualities among animals.

It is an error to regard the struggle for existence as the unique and omnipotent force giving shape to the organic world. The struggle for existence is the principal force that is the origin of new species, but Darwin himself knew full well that other forces co-operate, which give shape to the forms, habits, and particularities of the organic world. In his later work, The Descent of Man, Darwin minutely examined sexual selection and showed that the competition of males for females gave rise to the gaudy colours of the birds and butterflies and, equally, to the melodious songs of the birds. There he also devoted a chapter to social living. One can also find many examples on this question in Kropotkin's book, Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution. The best exposé of the effects of sociability is given in Kautsky's Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History.

When a certain number of animals live in a group, herd or flock, they lead a common struggle for existence against the outside world; within such a group the struggle for existence ceases. The animals that live socially no longer wage a struggle against each other, wherein the weak succumb, it's just the reverse; the weak enjoy the same advantages as the strong. When some animals have an advantage by means of sharper smell, greater strength, or experience which allows them to find the best pasture or to evade the enemy, this advantage benefits not only themselves, but equally the entire group, which comprises less advantaged individuals. The combining of the less advantaged individuals with the more advantaged allows the former to overcome to a certain extent the consequences of their less favourable properties.

This combining of the animals' separate strengths into one unit gives to the group a new and greater strength than any one individual possessed, even the strongest. It is owing to this united strength that herbivores can ward off rapacious animals. It is only by means of this unity that some animals are able to protect their young. Social life therefore enormously profits all of the members.

A second advantage of sociability arises from the fact that where animals live socially, there is a possibility of the division of labour. Such animals send out scouts or place sentries whose task is to look after the safety of all, while the others are safely eating or gathering, relying on their guards to warn them of danger.

Such an animal society becomes, in some respects, a unity, a single organism. Naturally, relations remain much looser than the cells of a single animal body; and the members remain equal between themselves - it is only among the ants, bees and several other insects that an organic distinction develops - and they are capable in certain unfavourable conditions of living alone. Nevertheless, the group becomes a coherent body, and there must be some force that holds the individual members together.

This force constitutes the social motives, the instinct that holds the animals together and thus permits the perpetuation of the group. Every animal must place the interest of the entire group above its own; it must always act instinctively for the benefit of the group without consideration for itself. If every weak herbivore thinks only of itself and runs away when attacked by a wild animal, the united herd is scattered anew. Only when the strong motive of self-preservation is suppressed by a stronger motive of union, and each animal risks its life for the protection of all, only then does the herd remain and enjoy the advantages of sticking together. Self-sacrifice, bravery, devotion, discipline and loyalty must arise in the same way, for where these do not exist, cohesion dissolves; society can only exist where these exist.

These instincts, while they have their origin in habit and necessity, are strengthened by the struggle for existence. Every animal herd still stands in a competitive struggle against the same animals of a different herd; the herds that are best fitted to withstand the enemy will survive, while those that are less well equipped will perish. The groups in which the social instinct is better developed will be better able to hold their ground, while the groups in which social instinct is low will either fall easy prey to their enemies or will not be able to find favourable pastures. These social instincts become therefore the most important and decisive factors that determine who shall survive in the struggle for existence. It is owing to this that social instincts have been raised to the position of predominant factors in the struggle for survival.

This throws an entirely new light on the point of view of the bourgeois Darwinists. They proclaim that only the elimination of the weak is natural and that this is necessary to prevent the corruption of the race. On the other hand, the protection provided to the weak is against nature and contributes to the decline of the race. But what do we see? In nature itself, in the animal world, we can establish that the weak are protected, that they don't hold out thanks to their own personal strength, and they are not eliminated due to their individual weakness. These arrangements don't weaken the group, but confer on it a new strength. The animal group in which mutual aid is better developed is better adapted to look after itself in conflicts. What, according to the narrow conception of these Darwinists, appears as a factor of weakness becomes exactly the opposite, a factor of strength, against which strong individuals who undertake struggle individually are not up to the job.

This supposedly degenerating and deteriorating race carries off the victory and proves itself in practice the smartest and best.

Here we first see clearly how near-sighted, narrow and unscientific are the claims and arguments of the bourgeois Darwinists. They have derived their natural laws and their conceptions of what is natural from a part of the animal world which man resembles least, the solitary animals, while leaving unobserved those animals that live practically in the same circumstances as man. The reason for this can be found in their own conditions of life; they themselves belong to a class where each competes individually against the other. Therefore, they see among animals only that form of the struggle for existence which corresponds to the bourgeois competitive struggle.  It is for this reason that they overlook those forms of the struggle that are of greatest importance to men.

It is true that these bourgeois Darwinists are aware of the fact that everything in the animal world as in the human cannot be reduced to pure egoism. The bourgeois scientists say very often that every man is possessed of two feelings; egoism or self-love, and altruism or love of others. But as they do not know the social origin of this altruism, they cannot understand its limits or conditions. Altruism in their mouths becomes a very vague idea which they don't know how to handle.

Everything that applies to social animals applies also to man. Our ape-like ancestors and the primitive men that developed from them were all defenceless weak animals who, as almost all apes do, lived in tribes. Here the same social motives and instincts emerged which later, with man, developed into moral feelings. That our customs and morals are nothing other than social feelings, feelings that we find among animals, is known to all; even Darwin spoke about "the habits of animals related to their social attitudes, which would be called moral among men." The difference is only in the measure of consciousness; as soon as these social feelings become clearly conscious to men, they assume the character of moral feelings. Here we see that the moral conception - which bourgeois authors considered as the main distinction between men and animals - is not peculiar to men, but is a direct product of conditions existing in the animal world.

The reason why moral feelings do not spread further than the social group to which the animal or the man belongs is found in the nature of their origin. These feelings serve the practical object of keeping the group together; beyond this they are useless. In the animal world, the range and nature of the social group is determined by circumstances of life, and therefore the group almost always remains the same. Among men, however, the groups, these social units, are ever changing in accordance with economic development, and this also changes the extent of the validity of social instincts.

Ancient groups, at the origins of the savage and barbarian peoples, were more strongly united than the animal groups, not only because they were in competition, but also because they directly made war. Family relationships and a common language strengthened this union further. Every individual depended entirely on the support of the tribe. Under such conditions, social instincts, moral feelings, the subordination of the individual to the whole, had to be developed to the utmost. With the further development of society, the tribes are dissolved into larger economic entities and reunited in towns and peoples.

New societies take the place of the old ones, and the members of these entities carry on the struggle for existence in common against other peoples. In equal ratio to economic development, the size of these entities increases, the struggle of each against the other decreases, and social feelings spread. At the end of antiquity we find that all the known people around the Mediterranean formed one unit, the Roman Empire. At that time there also arose the doctrine which extended moral feelings to the whole of humanity and formulated the maxim that all men are brothers.

When we regard our own times, we see that economically all the people more and more form one unit, even if this is a weak one.  Consequently, the feeling prevails - it's true relatively abstract - of a brotherhood that encompasses all civilised people. Even stronger is nationalist feeling, above all in the bourgeoisie, because nations are the entities in the bourgeoisie's constant struggle. Social feelings are strongest towards members of the same class, because classes are the essential social units embodying the convergent interests of their members. Thus we see that social entities and social feelings change in human society with the progress of economic development. [1]

VIII. Tools, thought and language

Sociability, with its consequent moral instincts, is a peculiarity which distinguishes man from some, but not all, animals. There are, however, some peculiarities which belong to man only, and which separate him from the entire animal world. These, in the first instance, are language, then reason. Man is also the only animal that makes use of self-made tools.

Animals show a slight propensity for these, but among men they have developed specific new characteristics. Many animals have some kind of voice and can, by means of sounds, communicate their intentions, but only men can emit sounds which serve as a medium for naming things and actions. Animals also have brains with which they think, but the human mind shows, as we shall see later, an entirely new departure, which we designate as rational or abstract thinking. Animals, too, make use of inanimate things which they use for certain purposes; for instance, the building of nests. Monkeys sometimes use sticks or stones, but only man uses tools which he makes himself deliberately for particular purposes. These primitive tendencies among animals convince us that the peculiarities possessed by man came to him, not by means of a miracle of creation, but by a slow development.  To understand how these first traces of language, thought and use of tools developed new properties and their first early importance with man involves considering the problem of the humanisation of the animal.  

Only human beings as social animals have been capable of this evolution. Animals living in isolation cannot arrive at such a stage of development. Outside society, language is just as useless as an eye in darkness, and is bound to die. Language is possible only in society, and only there is it necessary as a means of discussion between its members. All social animals possess some means of expressing their intentions, otherwise they would not be able to act together on a collective plan. The sounds that were necessary as a means of understanding during collective labour for primitive man, must have developed slowly into names of activities, and then into names of things.

The use of tools also presupposes a society, for it is only through society that attainments can be preserved. In a state of isolated life everyone must discover this use for themselves, and with the death of the inventor the discovery will also become extinct, and each will have to start anew from the very beginning. It is only through society that the experience and knowledge of former generations can be preserved, perpetuated, and developed. In a group or tribe a few may die, but the group itself is in a way immortal. It survives. Knowledge in the use of tools is not innate, it is acquired later.  This is why an intellectual tradition is indispensable, which is only possible in society.

While these special characteristics of man are inseparable from his social life, they also stand in strong relation to each other. These characteristics have not been developed separately, but have all progressed in common. That thought and language can exist and develop only in common is known to everyone who has tried to describe the nature of their own thoughts. When we think or consider, we, in fact, talk to ourselves; we observe then that it is impossible for us to think clearly without using words. Where we do not think with words our thoughts remain indistinct and we cannot grasp specific thoughts. Everyone can realize this from their own experience. This is because so-called abstract reason is perceptive thought and can take place only by means of concepts. So we can only designate and master concepts by means of words. Every attempt to broaden our minds, every attempt to advance our knowledge, must begin by distinguishing and classifying by means of names or by giving to the old ones a more precise meaning. Language is the body of thought, the only material with which all human science is built.

The difference between the human mind and the animal mind was very aptly shown by Schopenhauer in a citation which is also quoted by Kautsky in his Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History (pages 139-40, English translation). "The animal's actions are dependent upon visual motives, on what it can see, hear, sense or observe.  We can nearly always see and say what induced the animal to do this or the other act, for we, too, can see it if we pay attention. With man, however, it is entirely different. We cannot foretell what he will do, for we do not know the motives that induce him to act; they are thoughts in his head. Man considers, and in so doing, all his knowledge, the result of former experience, comes into play, and it is then that he decides how to act. The acts of an animal depend upon immediate impression, while those of man depend upon abstract conceptions, upon his thoughts and concepts. Man is in some way driven by invisible and subtle threads. Thus all his movements give the impression of being guided by principles and intentions which give them the appearance of independence and obviously distinguishes them from those of animals."[2]

Because they have bodily needs, men and animals are forced to seek to satisfy them in surrounding nature. Sensory perception is the impulse and immediate motive, the satisfaction of the needs is the aim and end of the appropriate act. With the animal, action follows immediately after impression. It sees its prey or food and immediately it jumps, grasps, eats, or does that which is necessary to grasp it, and this is inherited as an instinct. The animal hears some hostile sound, and immediately it runs away if its legs are so developed to run quickly, or lies down and plays dead so as not to be seen if its colour serves as protection. Between man's perceptions and acts, however, there comes into his head a long chain of thoughts and considerations. His actions will depend upon the result of these considerations.

Whence comes this difference? It is not hard to see that it is closely associated with the use of tools. In the same manner that thought comes in between man's perceptions and his actions, the tool comes in between man and the object he seeks to grasp. Furthermore, because the tool comes between man and outside objects, this is also why thought must arise between the perception and the execution. Man does not start out on his objective empty-handed, whether it's against his enemy or to pick fruit, but goes about it in a roundabout manner; he takes a tool, a weapon (weapons are also tools) which he uses with the fruit or against the hostile animal; this is why in his head sensory perception cannot be followed immediately by the act, his mind must make a detour: he must first think of the tools and then follow through to the objective. The material detour causes the mental detour; the additional thought is the result of the additional tool.

Here we took a very simple case of primitive tools and the first stages of mental development. The more complicated technique becomes, the greater is the material detour, and as a result the mind has to make greater detours. When each made his own tools, the memory of hunger and struggle must have directed the human mind to the making of tools. Here we have a longer chain of thoughts between perceptions and the ultimate satisfaction of human needs. When we come down to our own times, we find that this chain is very long and complicated. The worker who is discharged foresees the hunger that is bound to come; he buys a newspaper in order to see whether there are any offers of work; he goes to look for work, offering himself for a wage, which he will not see until much later, with which he can buy food and thus protect himself from starvation. All this will be first thought through in his head before being put into practice. What a long circuitous chain the mind must make before it reaches its goal! But it conforms with the complex development of our society, in which man can satisfy his wants only by means of a highly developed technique.

It is to the above that Schopenhauer draws our attention, the unfolding in the mind of the threads of reflection, which anticipate action and which must be understood as the necessary product of the use of tools. But we have still not come to the most essential point. Man is not the master of one tool only, but of many, which he uses for different purposes, and from which he can choose. Man, because of these tools, is not like the animal. The animal never advances beyond the tools and weapons with which it was born, while man can change artificial tools.  This is the fundamental difference between men and animals.  Man is a kind of animal with changeable organs and this is why he must have the capacity to choose between his tools.  In his head various thoughts come and go, his mind considers all the tools and the consequences of their application, and his actions depend upon this reflection.  He also combines one thought with another, and holds fast to the idea that fits in with his purpose. This deliberation, this free comparison of a series of sequences of selected individual reflections, this property which fundamentally distinguishes human thought from animal thought, must be directly connected to the use of tools chosen at will.

Animals do not have this capacity; it would be useless to them for they would not know what to do with it. On account of their bodily form, their actions are constrained.  The lion can only jump upon his prey, but cannot think of catching it by running after it. The hare is so formed that it can run away; it has no other means of defence even if it would like to have. These animals have nothing to consider except the moment of jumping or running, the moment where impressions gain sufficient power to release action. Every animal is so formed as to fit into some definite mode of life. Their actions become and are handed down as habits, instincts. These habits are obviously not unchangeable. Animals are not machines, when subject to different circumstances they may acquire different habits. Physiologically and as far as their aptitudes are concerned, the functioning of their brain is no different from ours.  It is uniquely practical at the level of results. It is not in the quality of their brains, but in the formation of their bodies that animal restrictions lie. The animal's action is limited by its bodily form and surroundings, which leave it little latitude for reflection. Human reasoning would, for the animal, be a totally useless faculty without any purpose, because it could not use it and would do it more harm than good.

Man, on the other hand, must possess this ability because he exercises discretion in the use of tools and weapons, which he chooses according to particular requirements. If he wants to kill the swift stag, he takes the bow and arrow; if he meets the bear, he uses the axe, and if he wants to break open a certain fruit he takes a hammer. When threatened by danger, man must consider whether he shall run away or defend himself by fighting with weapons. This ability to think and to consider is indispensable to man in his use of artificial tools, just as the awakening of the mind in general is connected to the free mobility of the animal world. 

This strong connection between thoughts, language, and tools, each of which is impossible without the other, shows that they must have developed at the same time. How this development took place, we can only conjecture.

Undoubtedly it was a change in the circumstances of life that made an ape-like animal the ancestor of man. Having migrated from the forests, the original habitat of apes, to the plain, man had to undergo an entire change of life. The difference between hands to grasp and feet to run must have developed then. This was the origin of the two basic conditions for development to a superior level: sociability and the ape-like hand, well adapted for grasping objects. The first rough objects, such as stones or sticks, episodically used in collective labour, came to hand unsought, and were then thrown away. This must have been repeated instinctively and unconsciously so often that it must have left an imprint on the minds of those primitive men.

To the animal, surrounding nature is a single unit, of the details of which it is unconscious. It cannot distinguish between various objects because it lacks the names of the distinct parts and objects that allow it to differentiate. Certainly this environment is not unchanging. To changes which signify "hunger" or "danger", the animal reacts in an appropriate manner, with specific actions. Globally, nevertheless, nature remains a single unit and our primitive man, at his lowest stage, must have been at the same level of consciousness. From the great mass surrounding him, some objects (tools) come into his hands which he used in procuring his existence.

These tools, which are important aids, were given some name, were designated by a sound which at the same time named the particular activity. With this designation, the tool stands out as a particular thing from the rest of the surroundings. Man thus begins to analyse the world by way of concepts and names, self-consciousness appears, artificial objects are purposely sought and consciously made use of while labouring.

This process - for it is a very slow process - marks the beginning of our becoming men. As soon as men deliberately seek and apply certain tools, we can say that these have been ‘produced'; from this stage to the manufacturing of tools, there is only one step. With the first name and the first abstract thought, fundamentally man is born.  Much still remains to be accomplished: the first crude tools already differ according to use; from the sharp stone we get the knife, the bolt, the drill, and the spear; from the stick we get the hatchet. Thus, man is qualified to face the wild animal and the forest and already shows himself as the future king of the earth. With the further differentiation of tools, which later served the division of labour, language and thought develop into richer and newer forms, while thought leads man to use the tools in a better way, to improve old ones and invent new ones.

So we see that one thing brings on the other. The practice of sociability and labour are the springs from which technique, thought, tools and science have their origin and continually develop. By his labour, primitive ape-like man has risen to real manhood. The use of tools marks the great departure that ever more widens between men and animals.

IX. Animal organs and human tools

It is on this point that we have the main difference between men and animals. The animal obtains its food and subdues its enemies with its own bodily organs; man does the same thing with the aid of artificial tools. Organ (organon) is a Greek word which also means tools. Organs are natural tools, connected to the body, of the animal. Tools are the artificial organs of men. Better still, what the organ is to the animal, the hand and tool is to man. The hands and tools perform the functions that the animal organ must perform alone. Owing to its structure, the hand, specialised to hold and direct various tools, becomes a general organ adapted to all kinds of work; tools are the dead things which are grasped by the hand to perform a role and which make the hand a changeable organ that can perform a variety of functions.

With the division of these functions, a broad field of development is opened up for men which animals do not know. Because the human hand can use various tools, it can combine the functions of all possible organs possessed by animals. Every animal is built and adapted to a definite environment and mode of life.  Man, with his tools, is adapted to all circumstances and equipped for all surroundings. The horse is built for the prairie, and the monkey is built for the forest. In the forest, the horse would be just as helpless as the monkey would be if brought to the prairie. Man, on the other hand, uses the axe in the forest, and the spade on the prairie. With his tools, man can force his way in all parts of the world and establish himself all over. While almost all animals can only live in particular regions, which supply their needs, and cannot live elsewhere, man has conquered the whole world. Every animal has, as a zoologist expressed it once, its strong points by which it maintains itself in the struggle for existence, and its weaknesses, which make it a prey to others and prevent it from multiplying itself. In this sense, man has only strength and no weakness. Owing to his having tools, man is the equal of all animals. As these tools do not remain stationary, but continually improve, man grows above every animal. His tools make him master of all creation, the king of the earth.

In the animal world there is also a continuous development and perfection of organs. This development, however, is connected with the changes of the animal's body, which makes the development of the organs infinitely slow, as dictated by biological laws. In the development of the organic world, thousands of years amount to nothing. Man, however, by transferring his organic development upon external objects has been able to free himself from the chain of biological law. Tools can be transformed quickly, and technique makes such rapid strides that, in comparison with the development of animal organs, it can only be called amazing. Owing to this new road, man has been able, within the short period of a few thousand years, to rise above the most evolved of the animals, so much that the latter surpass the less evolved. With the invention of artificial tools, animal evolution in a way is ended.  The child of the apes has developed at a phenomenal speed towards divine power, and he takes possession of the earth as his exclusive dominion. The peaceful and hitherto unhindered development of the organic world ceases to develop according to Darwinian theory. It is man that acts in the plant and animal world as breeder, tamer, cultivator; and it is man that does the weeding. He changes the entire environment, making the further forms of plants and animals suit his aim and will.

This also explains why, with the origin of tools, further changes in the human body cease. The human organs remain what they were, with the always notable exception of the brain. The human brain had to develop together with tools; and, in fact, we see that the difference between the higher and lower races of mankind consists mainly in the contents of their brains. But even the development of this organ had to stop at a certain stage. Since the beginning of civilisation, the functions of the brain are ever more taken away by some artificial means; science is treasured up in the storehouses that are books. Our reasoning faculty of today is not much better than the one possessed by the Greeks, Romans or even the Teutons, but our knowledge has grown immensely, and this is greatly due to the fact that the mental organ was unburdened by its substitutes, books.

Having learned the difference between men and animals, let us now again consider how the two groups are affected by the struggle for existence. That this struggle is the cause of perfection to the extent that the imperfect is eliminated, cannot be denied. In this struggle the animals become ever more perfect. Here, however, it is necessary to be more precise in expression and in observation of what perfection consists. In being so, we can no longer say that it is the animals as a whole that struggle and become perfected. Animals struggle and compete by means of particular organs, which are decisive in the struggle for survival. Lions do not carry on the struggle by means of their tails; hares do not rely on their eyes; nor do the falcons succeed by means of their beaks. Lions carry on the struggle by means of their muscles (for springing) and their teeth; hares rely upon their paws and ears, and falcons succeed on account of their eyes and wings. If now we ask what is it that struggles and what competes, the answer is, the organs struggle, and in this way they become more and more perfect. The muscles and teeth of the lion, the paws and ears of the hare, and the eyes and wings of the falcon carry on the struggle. It is in this struggle that the organs become perfected. The animal as a whole depends upon these organs and shares their fate, in which the strengths will be victorious or the weaknesses will be vanquished.

Let us now ask the same question about the human world. Men do not struggle by means of their natural organs, but by means of artificial organs, by means of tools (and weapons we must understand as tools). Here, too, the principle of perfection and the weeding out of the imperfect, through struggle, holds true. The tools struggle, and this leads to the ever greater perfection of tools. Those groups of tribes that use better tools and weapons can better secure their survival, and when it comes to a direct struggle with another race, the race that is better equipped with artificial tools will win and will exterminate the weaker one. The great improvements in technique and methods of work at the origins of humanity, such as the introduction of agriculture and of stock rearing, make men a physically stronger race that suffers less from the harshness of the elements. Those races whose technical aids are better developed, can drive out or subdue those whose artificial aids are not developed, can secure the better land. The domination of the European race is based on its technical supremacy.[3]

Here we see that the principle of the struggle for existence, formulated by Darwin and emphasised by Spencer, has a different effect on men than on animals. The principle that struggle leads to the perfection of the weapons used in the strife, leads to different results between men and animals. In the animal, it leads to a continuous development of natural organs; that is the foundation of the theory of descent, the essence of Darwinism. In men, it leads to a continuous development of tools, of the techniques of the means of production. And this is the foundation of marxism.

It appears therefore that marxism and Darwinism are not two independent theories, each of which applies to its special domain, without having anything in common with the other. In reality, the same principle underlies both theories. They form a unity. The new course taken with the appearance of man, the substitution of tools for natural organs, causes this fundamental principle to manifest itself differently in the two domains; that of the animal world to develop according to the Darwinian principle, while among mankind it is marxism which determines the law of development. When men freed themselves from the animal world, the development of tools, productive methods, the division of labour and knowledge became the propelling force in social development. It is these that brought about the various economic systems, such as primitive communism, the peasant system, the beginnings of commodity production, feudalism, and now modern capitalism. It only remains for us to place the current mode of production and its passing within this suggested framework and correctly apply to them the basic position of Darwinism. 

X. Capitalism and socialism

The particular form that the Darwinian struggle for existence assumes as the motor force of development in the human world, is determined by men's sociability and their use of tools.  Men struggle collectively in groups. The struggle for existence, while it is still carried on among members of different groups, nevertheless ceases among members of the same group, and its place is taken by mutual aid and social feeling. In the struggle between groups, technical equipment decides who shall be the victor; this results in the progress of technique. These two circumstances lead to different effects under different social systems. Let us see in what manner they show themselves under capitalism.

When the bourgeoisie gained political power and made the capitalist mode of production the dominant one, it began by breaking feudal bonds and making the people free. It was essential for capitalism that each producer should be able to take part freely in the competitive struggle; without anything hindering their freedom of movement, and without their activities being paralysed or curbed by guild duties or fettered by legal statutes, for only thus was it possible for production to develop its full capacity. The workers must have free command over themselves and not be hindered by feudal or guild duties, for only as free workers can they sell their labour-power to the capitalists as a whole commodity, and only as free labourers can the capitalists fully use them. It is for this reason that the bourgeoisie has done away with all the old ties and duties. It made people entirely free, but at the same time left them entirely isolated and unprotected. Formerly people were not isolated; they belonged to some guild; they were under the protection of some lord or commune, and in this they found strength. They were a part of a social group to which they owed duties and from which they received protection. These duties the bourgeoisie abolished; it destroyed the guilds and abolished feudal relations. The freeing of labour also meant that man could no longer find refuge anywhere or rely upon others.

Everyone had to rely upon himself. Alone against all, he must struggle, free of all bonds but also of all protection.

It is for this reason that, under capitalism, the human world more resembles the world of rapacious animals and it is for this very reason that the bourgeois Darwinists looked for the prototype of human society among the solitary animals. To this they were led by their own experience. Their mistake, however, consisted in considering capitalist conditions as eternal human conditions. The relation between our capitalist competitive system and the solitary animals was expressed by Engels in his book, Anti-Dühring (p.293, English edition. This may also be found on p.59 of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific) as follows:

"Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development." [4]

What is in struggle in this capitalist competition, the perfection of which will decide the victory?

First come technical tools, machines. Here again applies the law that struggle leads to perfection. The machine that is more improved outstrips the less improved, poor quality and low output machines are eliminated and industrial technique develops with gigantic strides to ever greater productivity. This is the real application of Darwinism to human society. The particular thing about it is that under capitalism there is private property, and behind every machine there is a man. Behind the gigantic machine there is a big capitalist and behind the small machine there is a small capitalist. With the defeat of the small machine, the small capitalist perishes with all his illusions and his hopes. At the same time the struggle is a race between capitals. Large capital is better equipped; large capital conquers the small, and thus grows even larger. This concentration of capital undermines capital itself, for it reduces the bourgeoisie whose interest it is to maintain capitalism, and it increases that mass which seeks to abolish it. In this development, one of the characteristics of capitalism is gradually abolished. In the world where each struggles against all and all against each, the working class develops a new association, the class organisation. The working class organisations begin by ending the competition existing between workers and combine their separate powers into one great power in their struggle with the outside world. Everything that applies to social groups also applies to this new class organisation, born in external conditions. In the ranks of this class organisation, social motives, moral feelings, self-sacrifice and devotion for the entire body develop in a most remarkable way. This solid organisation gives to the working class that great strength which it needs in order to conquer the capitalist class. The class struggle which is not a struggle with tools but for the possession of tools, a struggle for the possession of the technical equipment of humanity, will be determined by the organised action, by the strength of the new rising class organisation.  Through the organised working class an element of socialist society is already revealed. 

Let us now look at the future system of production as it will exist in socialism. The struggle leading to the perfection of the tools, which has marked the whole history of humanity, does not cease. As before under capitalism, the inferior machine will be overtaken and rejected by the one that is superior. As before, this process will lead to greater productivity of labour. But private ownership of the means of production having been abolished, there will no longer be a man behind each machine calling it his own and sharing its fate. 

With the abolition of classes the entire civilised world will become one great productive community. What applies to it applies to any real collective. Within this community mutual struggle among members ceases and will be carried on uniquely with the outside world. But in the place of small communities, we will see a world community. This signifies that the struggle for existence in the human world is ended.  The fight against the external world will no longer be a struggle against our own kind, but a struggle for subsistence, a struggle against nature.[5] But owing to development of technique and science, this can hardly be called a struggle. Nature is subject to man and with very little effort on his side, she supplies him with abundance. Here a new life's work opens for humanity: the rise of man from the animal world and his fight for existence by the use of tools, ceases.  The human form of the struggle for existence ends, and a new chapter of the history of humanity begins.

Anton Pannekoek

 

 

 

---

 

[1]. We should note that the growing importance of feelings of solidarity within the human race does not escape Darwin when he writes:

"As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures". (The Descent of Man, chapter IV) (ICC note).

[2]. This translation differs from that in the 1912 English translation of Marxism and Darwinism as it has been checked against the Dutch original. However, both translations differ from the English translation of Kautsky's work referred to in the text. This reads "The animal has only visual presentations and consequently only motives which it can visualise. The dependence of its acts of will from the motives is thus clear. In men this is no less the case and they are impelled (always taking the individual character into account) by the motive with the strictest necessity: only these are not for the most part visual but abstract presentations, that is conceptions, thoughts which are nevertheless the result of previous views thus of impression from without. That gives him a certain freedom, in comparison namely with the animals. Because he is not like the animal determined by the visual surroundings present before him but by his thoughts drawn from previous experiences or transmitted to him through teaching. Hence the motive which necessarily moves him is not at once clear to the observer with the deed, but he carries it about with him in his head. That gives not only to his actions taken as a whole, but to all his movements an obviously different character from those of the animal; he is at the same time drawn by finer invisible ones. Thus all his movements bear the impress of being guided by principles and intentions, which gives the appearance of independence and obviously distinguishes them from those of the animal. All these great distinctions depend however entirely from the capacity for abstract presentations, conceptions". Kautsky, Ethics and Materialist Conception of History, p139-40. Charles H. Kerr and Company.

[3]. Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as a European race. This said, the fact that Pannekoek uses the term race to distinguish one grouping of human beings from another does not at all amount to a concession to racism on his part. On this level as well, he is in continuity with Darwin who clearly demarcated himself from the racist theories of the scientists of his day such as Eugene Dally. Furthermore, we should recall that, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the term race did not have the same connotations it has today, as can be seen from the fact that certain writings of the workers' movement even spoke (inappropriately, it's true) about the workers as a race (ICC note) .   

 

[4]. Anti-Duhring. Part III; Socialism, Chapter II Theoretical (ICC note).

[5]. The expression "struggle against nature" is inappropriate. It's a question of the struggle for the mastery of nature: the establishment of a world human community presupposes that it is capable of living in total harmony with nature (ICC note).

 

 

At the end of May, the ICC held its 18th international congress. As we have always done, and as is the tradition in the workers' movement, we are presenting readers with the main elements of this congress, since they are not just internal matters but concern the working class as a whole.

 

The resolution on the ICC's activities adopted by the congress says:

"The acceleration of the historic situation, unprecedented in the history of the workers' movement, is characterised by the conjunction of the two following aspects:

• - the extension of the most serious open economic crisis in the history of capitalism, combined with the exacerbation of inter-imperialist tensions and, since 2003, a slow but progressive advance in the depth and extension of maturation within the working class;
• - and the development of an internationalist milieu, which is particularly obvious in the countries at the periphery of capitalism.

This acceleration takes the political responsibility of the ICC to a new level, making the highest demands in terms of theoretical/political analysis and intervention in the class struggle, and work towards the searching elements."

The balance sheet that we can draw from the 18th international congress of our organisation must therefore be based on its capacity to live up to these responsibilities.

For a really serious communist organisation, it is always a delicate thing to proclaim that this or that aspect of its activities have been a success. For several reasons.

In the first place, because the capacity of an organisation that struggles for the communist revolution to be up to its responsibilities can't be judged in the short term but only in the long term. Its role, while always anchored in the historical reality of its day, for the most part consists not so much of influencing this immediate reality, at least not on a large scale, but of preparing for the events of the future.

In the second place, because for the members of such an organisation there is always the danger of painting things in rosy colours, or being excessively indulgent towards the weakness of a collective body to which they have devoted so much energy and which they have the permanent duty of defending from the attacks levelled at it by all the defenders of capitalist society, open or disguised. History provides us with numerous examples of militants devoted to the communist cause who, because of a "patriotism of the party", have not been able to see the weaknesses, the slidings, even the betrayals of their organisation. Today, among those who defend the perspective of communism, you can find quite a few who consider that their group, whose members can often be counted on the finger of one hand, is the one and only "international communist party", the organisation which one day in the future the masses will rally round, and which, deaf to all debate and criticism, considers other groups of the proletarian milieu to be fraudsters.

Conscious of the danger of these kinds of illusions, and with the prudence that necessarily goes with this, we can still affirm without fear that the 18th Congress of the ICC was indeed up to the responsibilities announced above, and created the conditions for us to continue in the right direction.

We can't here go into all the reasons supporting this affirmation. We will only underline the most important ones:

• - the fact that the congress began its wok by ratifying the integration of two new sections in the Philippines and Turkey;
• - the presence at the congress of four groups of the internationalist milieu;
• - the open attitude towards the outside, which was illustrated in particular by the presence of these groups;
• - the willingness of the congress to look lucidly at the difficulties and weaknesses which our organisation has to surmount;
• - the fraternal and enthusiastic ambiance in which the congress did its work.

The integration of two new territorial sections

Our press has already given an account of the integration of the new ICC sections in the Philippines and Turkey (the responsibility of the congress was to validate the decision to integrate them taken by our central organ at the beginning of 2009).[1] As we wrote then:  "The integration of these two new sections into our organisation thus considerably broadens the ICC's geographical extension." We also made two points about these integrations:

• - they are not the result of a hurried "recruitment" which is the fashion among the Trotskyists and even, unfortunately, among certain groups of the proletarian camp, but, as is the practice of the ICC, are the result of a whole work of discussion over several years with the comrades of the EKS in Turkey and Internasyonalismo in the Philippines;
• - they are a clear refutation of the accusations of "Eurocentrism" often thrown at our organisation.

The integration of two new sections is not something that happens frequently for our organisation. The last integration of a new section took place in 1995 with the section in Switzerland. This is why the arrival of these two sections (which took place shortly after the constitution of a nucleus in Brazil in 2007) was felt to be very important and positive by all the militants of the ICC. It confirms both the analysis our organisation has been putting forward for several years with regard to  the potential contained in the development of class consciousness in the current historic situation, and the validity of the policies we have adopted towards the groups and elements moving towards revolutionary positions. And this was all the more the case in that delegations from four groups of the internationalist milieu were present at the congress.

The presence of internationalist groups

In the balance sheet we drew up for our previous international congress, we underlined the importance of the presence, for the first time in decades, of four groups from the internationalist milieu, from Brazil, Korea, the Philippines and Turkey. This time again there were also four groups present. But this wasn't a simple rerun since two of the groups who had been at the previous congress have since become sections of the ICC, and we now had the pleasure of welcoming two new groups: a second group from Korea and a group from Central America (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), the LECO (Liga por la Emancipacion de la Clase Obrera), which had taken part at the "meeting of internationalist communists" in Latin America, called on the initiative of the ICC and the OPOP, the internationalist group from Brazil with whom we have maintained fraternal and very positive relations for a number of years.[2] This group was again present at our congress. Other groups who took part in the meeting in Latin America were also invited to our congress but were not able to send delegates because Europe is now  more and more becoming a fortress towards people not born in the very narrow circle of the "rich countries".

The presence of groups of the internationalist milieu was a very important element in the success of the congress and in particular in the ambience in which the discussions took place. These comrades showed a good deal of warmth towards the militants of our organisation and raised a number of questions, notably with regard to the economic crisis, in ways which we are not so familiar with in our own debates, something which could only help to stimulate reflection within our organisation.

Finally, the presence of these comrades was an added element in the whole process of opening out which the ICC has taken up as one of its key objectives over the last few years - opening both towards other proletarian groups and towards individual elements moving towards communist positions. In particular, when you have people from outside the organisation present at a meeting, it is very difficult to fall into the trap of reassuring ourselves with nice stories. This opening out also manifests itself in our reflections and preoccupations, notably with regard to research and discovery in the realm of science.[3] This was made concrete by the fact that a member of the scientific community was invited to one of the sessions of the congress.

The invitation of a scientist

To celebrate "Darwin Year" in our own way, and to give voice to the development within the ICC of a growing interest in scientific questions, we asked a researcher who specialises in the evolution of language (the author of a book entitled Why we talk: the evolutionary origins of language, published by OUP) to make a presentation of his work to the congress, which are obviously based on a Darwinian approach. The original reflections of Jean-Louis Desalles[4] on language, its role in the development of social ties and of solidarity in the human species are connected to the discussions we have been having in the ICC, and which are still going on, on the subject of ethics and the culture of debate. The presentation by this researcher was followed by a debate which we had to limit in time because of the constraints of the agenda, but which could have gone on for hours since the questions raised evoked a passionate interest on the part of the comrades present.

We would like to thank Jean-Louis Desalles who, while not sharing our political ideas, very cordially agreed to give up some of his time to enriching reflection inside our organisation. We also want to welcome the very warm and convivial responses which he made to the questions and objections raised by ICC militants.

The discussion on the international situation

The work of the congress examined the classic points always treated by our international congresses:

• - the analysis of the international situation;
• - the activities and life of our organisation.

The resolution on the international situation which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review is a sort of synthesis of the discussions at the congress about the present state of the world. Obviously it cannot take into account all the aspects looked at in these discussions (either at the congress or in the preparatory reports). It has three main aims:

• - to understand the real causes and stakes of the present, unprecedented aggravation of the economic crisis of the capitalist system in the face of all the mystifications which are put about by the system's defenders;
• - to understand the real impact on imperialist conflicts of the accession of the Democrat Barak Obama to the presidency of the world's leading power, since this is being presented as a new element in these conflicts and a hope that they can be attenuated;
• - to draw out the perspectives for the class struggle, notably in the conditions created by the brutal attacks which the proletariat is facing as a result of the violence of the economic crisis.

On the first aspect, understanding what's at stake in the present crisis of capitalism, we need to underline the following aspects:

"The present crisis is the most serious the system has been through since the great depression which began in 1929...Thus, it is not the financial crisis which is at the origin of the current recession. On the contrary, the financial crisis merely illustrates the fact that the flight into debt, which made it possible to overcome overproduction, could not carry on indefinitely... In reality, even though the capitalist system is not going to collapse like pack of cards, the perspective is one of sinking deeper and deeper into a historical impasse, of plunging more and more into the convulsions that affect it today".

Obviously this congress could not make a definitive response to all the questions raised by the present crisis of capitalism. On the one hand, because with every day that passes we are faced with new ramifications of the crisis, obliging revolutionaries to follow the situation very closely and to carry on discussing the significance of these new elements. On the other hand, because our organisation is not homogenous on certain aspects of the analysis of the crisis. This is not at all in our view the sign of a weakness in the ICC. In the whole history of the workers' movement, there have been debates within a marxist framework on the question of the crises of the capitalist system. The ICC has recently been publishing some aspects of its internal debates on this question,[5] seeing that these debates are not the private property of our organisation but belong to the working class as a whole. Furthermore, the resolution on the perspectives for our organisation's activities adopted by the congress explicitly calls for the development of debate on other aspects of the analysis of the crisis, so that the ICC can be as well armed as possible to provide clear answers to the questions posed to the working class and to the elements who have committed themselves to the fight to overthrow capitalism.

Regarding the "new element" provided by the election of Obama, the resolution replies very clearly that:

"the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas".

Finally, with regards to the perspective for the class struggle, the resolution, like the debates at the congress, tried to evaluate the impact of the brutal aggravation of the crisis:

"The considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism today obviously represents a very important element in the development of workers' struggles. At this very moment, in all countries of the world, workers are being faced with massive lay-offs, with an irresistible rise in unemployment. In an extremely concrete manner, in its flesh and bones, the proletariat is experiencing the incapacity of the capitalist system to ensure the basics of a decent life for the workers it exploits. What's more, it is more and more incapable of offering any future to the new generations of the working class, which represents a factor of anxiety and despair not only for them but also for their parents. Thus the conditions are maturing for the idea of overthrowing this system to develop on a significant scale within the proletariat. However, it is not enough for the working class to perceive that the capitalist system is at a dead-end, that it has to give way to another society, for it to be able to take up a revolutionary perspective. It also needs to have the conviction that such a perspective is possible and that it has the strength to carry it out...For consciousness of the possibility of the communist revolution to gain a significant echo within the working class, the latter has to gain confidence in its own strength, and this takes place through the development of massive struggles. The huge attacks which it is now facing on an international scale provides the objective basis for such struggles. However, the main form this attack is taking today, that of massive lay-offs, does not initially favour the emergence of such movements... This is why, in the coming period, the fact that we do not see a wide-scale response from the working class to the attacks should not lead us to consider that it has given up the struggle for the defence of its interests. It is in a second period... when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers".

Discussions on the activities and life of the ICC

A report was presented on the main positions put forward in the discussions going on in the ICC. An important focus of these discussions over the past two years has been the economic question - this article has already referred to the divergences that this question has raised.

Another focal point for our discussions has been the question of human nature, which has given rise to an animated debate, fuelled by numerous and rich contributions, This debate, which is far from being complete, has shown an overall agreement with the orientation texts published in the International Review - "Confidence and solidarity in the struggle of the proletariat" (111), "Marxism and ethics" (127) and "The culture of debate: a weapon of the class struggle" (131). As soon as they are ready, these discussions will be published to the outside, in conformity with the traditions of the workers' movement. We should note the recent expression of a profound disagreement with these three texts on the part of a comrade of the Belgian/Dutch section ("recent" relative to the publications of these texts which have been around for a while now), who considers that they are not marxist (see below).

Concerning the activities and life of the organisation, the congress drew up a positive balance sheet for the preceding period despite a number of weaknesses:

"The balance sheet of the last two years' activities shows the political vitality of the ICC, its capacity to be in phase with the historic situation, to be open and to be an active factor in the development of class consciousness, its will to involve itself in initiatives for common work with other revolutionaries... On the level of the organisation's internal life the balance sheet of the activities is also positive, despite the real difficulties which exist mainly at the organisational level and, to a lesser extent, on the level of centralisation" (Resolution on activities).

The congress devoted part of its discussions to examining the organisational weaknesses that persist in the ICC. These are not specific to our organisation but are the lot of all organisations of the workers' movement, which are permanently faced  with the weight of the dominant bourgeois ideology. The real strength of these organisations has always been to confront these pressures in a lucid manner in order to fight against them, as was the case in particular with the Bolshevik party. This was the spirit that animated the congress debates on this question.

One of the points discussed in particular was the weaknesses which affected our section in Belgium/Holland, where a small number of militants resigned recently, largely in the wake of accusations made by comrade M. For some time, this comrade has been accusing our organisation, and particularly the permanent commission of its central organ, of turning its back on the culture of debate, a question which was discussed at some length in the previous congress[6] and which we see as a necessity for any revolutionary organisation to be able to live up to its responsibilities. Comrade M, who defended a minority position on the analysis of the economic crisis, considered himself to be the victim of "ostracism" and felt that his positions were being deliberately discredited by the ICC which was unable to discuss them. Given these accusations, the central organ of the ICC decided to set up a special commission, whose three members were chosen by comrade M himself, and which, after several months of interviews and examining several hundred pages of documents, came to the conclusion that this was not the case, The congress could only regret that comrade M as well as some other comrades who followed him did not wait for this commission to reach its conclusions before deciding to leave the ICC.

In fact the congress was able to see, notably in the discussion about our internal debates, that there is a real concern in our organisation to develop a culture of debate. And this was noted not only by the militants of the ICC, but also the delegates of the other organisations:

"The culture of debate in the ICC and its militants is very impressive. When I return to Korea, I will share my experience with my comrades" (one of the Korean groups)

"The congress has been a good opportunity for clarifying my positions; in many of the discussions, I encountered a real culture of debate. I think I must do a lot to develop relations between my group and the ICC and I have the intention of doing so. I hope that in the future we will be able to work together for a communist society" (the other Korean group).[7]

The ICC does not practice the culture of debate once every two years on the occasion of its international congress. As the intervention of the OPOP delegation put it in the discussion on the economic crisis, it's part of the continuing relationship between our two organisations, This relationship is capable of getting stronger despite divergences on various questions, such as the analysis of the economic crisis: "In the name of OPOP I want to mark the importance of this congress. For OPOP, the ICC is a sister organisation, like the party of Lenin and the party of Luxemburg. That is to say that there are a whole series of divergent opinions and theoretical conceptions, but above all there is a programmatic unity as regards the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and of capital".

The other difficulty mentioned in the activities resolution concerns the question of centralisation, It is with the aim of overcoming these difficulties that the congress discussed a more general text on the question of centralisation. This discussion, while being useful to the "old guard" of our organisation in reaffirming the communist conception of this question and making it more precise, was particularly important for the new comrades and sections which have recently joined the ICC.

One of the significant aspects of the 18th congress was the presence, noted by the "old" comrades with a certain surprise, of a number of "new faces", among which the younger generation was particularly well represented.

Enthusiasm for the future

The presence of a good number of young people at the congress was a factor making for dynamism and enthusiasm. Contrary to the bourgeois media, the ICC does not indulge in a the cult of youth, but the arrival of a new generation to our organisation  - along with the fact that most of the delegates from the other participating groups were also young people - is extremely important for the perspective of the proletarian revolution. Like icebergs, they are the emerging tip of a deep process of developing consciousness inside the world working class. At the same time this makes it possible for bringing reinforcements to the existing communist forces. As the resolution on the international situation adopted by the congress put it:

"The road towards revolutionary struggles and the overthrow of capitalism is a long and difficult one... but this should in no way serve to discourage revolutionaries or paralyse their commitment, on the contrary!"

Even if the "old" militants of the ICC retain all their commitment and dedication, it's this new generation which will be called upon to make a decisive contribution to the revolutionary struggles of the future. And right now, the fraternal spirit, the desire to come together, to cooperate in exposing the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, the sense of responsibility - all these qualities, possessed in spades by the elements of the new generation at the congress - whether militants of the ICC or of the invited groups - augur well for the capacity of the new generation to live up to its responsibilities. This is something that was expressed by the young delegate from LECO, talking about the internationalist meeting in Latin America last spring: "The debate that is beginning to develop is bringing together groups and individuals who are seeking unity on a proletarian basis. This requires spaces for internationalist debate, contacts between delegates of the communist left. The radicalisation of youth and of minorities in Latin America, in Asia is making it possible for this pole of reference to be made up of a number of groups who are growing both numerically and politically. This gives us weapons to intervene, to confront the issues raised by leftism, ‘21st century socialism', Sandinismo, etc, The position adopted by the meeting in Latin America is already a proletarian weapon. I salute the interventions of the comrades which express a real internationalism, a concern for the political and numerical advance of the communist left on a world scale".

ICC 12/7/9         

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[1]. See "Welcome to the new ICC sections in Philippines and Turkey", ICC online and World Revolution n° 322.

[2]. See the article about this meeting on our website and in World Revolution n° 324.

[3]. As we have already shown in the various articles we have published recently on Darwin and Darwinism.

[4]. The reader who wants to get a better idea of his work can refer to his website https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/jld/ [58]

[5]. See in particular in this issue of International Review the discussion article "In defence of the thesis of Keynesio-Fordist state capitalism".

[6] See "17th congress of the ICC, the proletarian camp reinforced worldwide" in International Review n° 130 and "The culture of debate, a weapon of the class struggle" in International Review n° 131.

[7]. This impression of the quality of the culture of debate at the congress was also noted by the scientist we invited, who sent us the following message: "Thanks again for the excellent interaction I had with the Marx community. I really experienced a very good moment"

1) In March 1991, following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the victory of the coalition in Iraq, President George Bush Senior announced to the US Congress the birth of a "New World Order" based on respect for international law. This new order was going to bring peace and prosperity to the planet. The "end of communism" meant the definitive triumph of liberal capitalism. Some people, like the "philosopher" Francis Fukayama, even predicted the "end of history". But history, the real one and not the propaganda version, soon made these fraudulent claims look ridiculous. Instead of peace, the year 1991 saw the beginning of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, leaving hundreds of thousands dead in the very heart of Europe, a continent which had been spared the scourge of war for nearly half a century. Similarly, the recession of 1993, then the collapse of the Asian "tigers" and "dragons" in 1997, then the new recession in 2002, which put an end to the Internet bubble, visibly dented illusions in the prosperity announced by Bush Senior. But it is typical of the bourgeoisie to forget today what it was saying yesterday. Between 2003 and 2007 the official speeches of the main sectors of the bourgeoisie again had a euphoric tone, celebrating the success of the "Anglo-Saxon model" which was providing exemplary profits, vigorous growth rates and even a significant reduction in unemployment. There were not enough words to sing the praises of the "liberal economy" and the benefits of "deregulation". But since the summer of 2007 and above all since the summer of 2008 this fine optimism has melted away like a snowball in the sun. All of a sudden, words and phrases like "prosperity", "growth", "triumph of liberalism" were discretely dropped. At the grand banqueting table of the capitalist economy there now sat a guest they thought they had banished forever: the crisis, the spectre of a new great depression comparable to the one in the 1930s.

2) In the words of the most responsible representatives of the bourgeoisie, of all the economic specialists, including the most unconditional torchbearers for capitalism, the present crisis is the most serious the system has been through since the great depression which began in 1929. According to the OECD, "The world economy is in the midst of its deepest and most synchronised recession in our lifetimes".[1] Some have no hesitation in saying that it is even more serious than that, arguing that the reason why its effects are not as catastrophic as in the 1930s is that, since that time, the world leaders, strengthened by experience, have learned to face up to this kind of situation, notably by avoiding a general rush towards "every man for himself": "While some have dubbed this severe global downturn a ‘great recession', it will remain far from turning into a repeat of the 1930s ‘Great Depression', thanks to the quality and intensity of government policies that are currently being undertaken. The Great Depression was deepened by terrible policy mistakes, ranging from contractionary monetary policy to beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the form of trade protection and competitive devaluations. In contrast, this recession has broadly elicited the right policy."[2]

However, even if all the sectors of the bourgeoisie admit the gravity of the present convulsions of the capitalist economy, the explanations they give, even though they often diverge among themselves, are obviously incapable of grasping the real significance of these convulsions and the perspective they announce for the whole of society. For some, the responsibility for capitalism's acute difficulties lies in "financial madness", in the fact that since the beginning of the 2000s we have seen the development of a whole series of "toxic financial products" which have permitted an explosion of credits without any guarantee that they could be repaid. Others say that capitalism is suffering from an excess of "deregulation" on an international scale, an orientation that was at the core of the "Reaganomics" which was set in motion at the beginning of 1980s. Still others, in particular the representatives of the left wing of capital, consider that the underlying cause of the crisis lies in the fact that income from wages is insufficient, obliging working people to get into debt to meet their most basic needs. But whatever their differences, what characterises all these interpretations is that they consider that it is not capitalism as a mode of production which is at fault, but this or that form of the system. And it is precisely this premise which prevents all these interpretations from going to the roots of the real causes of the present crisis.

3) In fact, only a global and historical view of the capitalist mode of production allows us to understand the present crisis and the perspectives that flow from it. Today, and this is what is hidden by all the economic "specialists", the reality of the contradictions which assail capitalism is coming out into the open: the crisis of overproduction, the system's inability to sell the mass of commodities which it produces. This is not overproduction in relation to the real needs of humanity, which are very far from being satisfied, but overproduction in relation to solvent demand, demand backed by the ability to pay. The official speeches, as with the measures adopted by most governments, have focused on the financial crisis, on the failure of the banks, but in reality what the commentators call the "real economy" (in contrast to the "fictitious economy") is in the process of illustrating this fact: not a day passes without the announcement of factory closures, massive lay-offs and bankruptcies of industrial enterprises. The fact that General Motors, which for decades was the biggest company in the world, can only survive thanks to massive support from the American state, while Chrysler had to openly declare bankruptcy and has come under the control of the Italian firm FIAT, is a significant sign of the deep problems affecting the capitalist economy. Similarly the fall in world trade, the first since the Second World War, evaluated by the OECD at -13.2% for 2009, shows the difficulty companies have in finding buyers for their products.

This crisis of overproduction, so evident today, is not a mere consequence of the financial crisis as most of the "experts" would have us believe. It resides in the very mechanisms of the capitalist economy, as marxism has shown for a century and a half. As long as the capitalist metropoles were conquering the globe, the new markets obtained in this way made it possible to overcome the temporary crises of overproduction. When this conquest was completed, at the beginning of the 20th century, these metropoles, particularly the one which had arrived late at the concert of colonisation, Germany, had no other recourse than to attack the spheres of influence of the other powers, provoking the First World War even before the crisis of overproduction had fully manifested itself. The latter was actually expressed in a clear way by the 1929 crash and the great depression of the 1930s, which pushed the main capitalist countries into a headlong flight into militarism and a Second World War which easily outdid the first when it came to massacres and barbarism. All of the measures adopted by the great powers in the wake of the Second World War, in particular the organisation of the main components of the capitalist economy, in the area of currency (Bretton Woods) and in the adoption of neo-Keynesian policies, as well as the positive benefits that decolonisation brought in terms of markets, enabled world capitalism for nearly three decades to give the illusion that it had finally overcome its contradictions. But this illusion suffered a major blow in 1974 with the outbreak of a violent recession, especially in the world's leading economy. This recession was not the beginning of the difficulties facing capitalism because it came after those in 1967 and the successive crises of the pound and the dollar, two key international currencies in the Bretton Woods system. In fact, it was towards the end of the 1960s that neo-Keynesianism was proving its historical bankruptcy, a point underlined at the time by the groups that were to constitute the ICC. This said, for all the bourgeois commentators and for the majority of the working class, it was the year 1974 which marked the beginning of a new period in the life of post-war capitalism, notably with the re-appearance of a phenomenon which many believed had been definitely eliminated in the developed countries: mass unemployment. It was at this point that the phenomenon of the flight into debt accelerated very noticeably: at that time it was the countries of the Third World which were at the forefront of the flight into debt and for a time acted as the "locomotive" of the recovery. This situation came to an end at the beginning of the 1980s with the debt crisis, the inability of the countries of the Third World to repay the loans they had been given so that they could act as an outlet for the production of the big industrial countries. But this did not at all halt the flight into debt. The USA began to take up the baton as the "locomotive" but at the price of a considerable increase in its trade deficit and, above all, of its budget deficit, a policy which they were able to undertake thanks to the privileged role of its currency as a world currency. Although Reagan's slogan at the time was "the state is not the solution, its the problem", in order to justify the liquidation of neo-Keynesianism, the American Federal state, through its huge budget deficits, continued to act as the essential agent in national and international economic life. However, "Reaganomics", initially inspired by Margaret Thatcher in Britain, basically represented the dismantling of the "welfare state", i.e. an unprecedented attack on the working class which helped to overcome the galloping inflation which had affected capitalism since the 1970s.

During the 1990s, one of the locomotives of the world economy had been the Asian "tigers" and "dragons", which had experienced spectacular rates of growth but at the price of considerable debts, leading to major convulsions in 1997. At the same moment, the "new" and "democratic" Russia also found itself in a situation of cessation of payments, cruelly disappointing those who had been counting on the "end of communism" to get the world economy going in a lasting way. In turn, the Internet bubble at the end of the 1990s, in fact a form of frenzied speculation on "hi-tech" companies, burst in 2001-2, ending the dream of a revival of the world economy through the development of new information and communication technologies. It was then that debt went through a new phase of acceleration, thanks to the astronomical loans doled out in the sphere of construction in a number of countries, in particular the USA. The latter had accentuated its role as "locomotive of the world economy", but at the price of a colossal rise in debt, especially in the American population, based on all sorts of "financial products" which were supposed to avoid the risk of loans not being repaid. In reality, the broad extension of dubious loans in no way changed their nature as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the American and world economy. On the contrary, it resulted in "toxic debts" accumulating in the capital of the banks and was at the origin of their collapse after 2007.

4) Thus, it is not the financial crisis which is at the origin of the current recession. On the contrary, the financial crisis merely illustrates the fact that the flight into debt, which made it possible to overcome overproduction, could not carry on indefinitely. Sooner or later, the "real economy" would take its revenge In other words, what was at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism, overproduction, the incapacity of the markets to absorb the totality of the commodities produced, had come back onto the scene.

In this sense the measures which were decided in March 2009 at the G20 in London, a doubling of the reserves of the International Monetary Fund, massive support by the states for a banking system in perdition, an encouragement to the latter to put in motion active policies of stimulating the economy at the cost of a spectacular leap in budget deficits, can in no way solve the basic problem. The only "solution" the bourgeoisie can come up with is... a new flight into debt. The G20 could not invent a solution to the crisis for the good reason that there is no solution. Its main task was to avoid a descent into "every man for himself" like the 1930s. It thus aimed at restoring a minimum of confidence among the main economic agencies, knowing that in capitalism this is an essential factor in the operation of credit, which is at the very heart of the system. Having said this, the insistence on the importance of the factor of "psychology" in economic convulsions, the focus on talk and theatrical gestures in the face of material realities, illustrates the fundamentally illusory character of the measures available to capitalism in the face of its historic crisis. In reality, even though the capitalist system is not going to collapse like a pack of cards, the perspective is one of sinking deeper and deeper into a historical impasse, of plunging more and more into the convulsions that affect it today. For more than four decades, the bourgeoisie has not been able to prevent the continual aggravation of the crisis. Today it is facing a situation which is far more degraded than the one it faced in the 60s. In spite of all the experience it has gained in these decades, it can only do worse, not better. In particular, the neo-Keynesian measures put forward at the G20 in London (going as far as nationalising the banks in trouble) have no chance of restoring any "health" to capitalism, since the beginning of its major difficulties at the end of the 1960s were precisely the result of the definitive failure of the neo-Keynesian measures adopted at the end of the Second World War.

5) Although the brutal aggravation of the crisis was quite a surprise for the ruling class, it was not a surprise for revolutionaries. As we said in the resolution on the international situation from our last congress, even before the beginning of the panic of the summer of 2007: "Right now, the threat to the housing boom in the US, which has been one of the motors of the US economy, and which raises the danger of catastrophic bank failures, is causing considerable disquiet amongst the economist." (point four).[3]

This same resolution also threw some cold water on the great hopes being placed in the "Chinese miracle":

"far from representing a breath of air for the capitalist economy, the 'miracle' in China and a certain number of other third world countries is yet another embodiment of the decadence of capitalism. Furthermore, the extreme dependence of the Chinese economy on its exports is a source of considerable vulnerability to any retraction of demand among its present clients, something which can hardly fail to happen seeing that the American economy is going to be obliged to do something about the colossal debts which currently allow it to play the role of locomotive for global demand. Thus, just as the 'miracle' of the double figure growth of the Asian tigers and dragons came to a sorry end in 1997, the current Chinese miracle, even if it does not have identical origins and has far greater assets at its disposal, will sooner or later be confronted with the harsh reality of the historic impasse of the capitalist mode of production." (point 6).

The fall in the growth rate of the Chinese economy, the explosion of unemployment that this has provoked, with the return to their villages of millions of peasants who had been enrolled into the industrial centres but who are now being forced back by unbearable misery, is fully confirming this vision.

In fact, the ICC's capacity to predict what was going to happen does not lie in any particular merit of our organisation. Its only "merit" lies in its faithfulness to the marxist method, in its will to permanently put it into practice in its analysis of the world situation, in its capacity to resist firmly the sirens proclaiming the "definitive failure of marxism".

6) The confirmation of the validity of marxism does not only apply to the question of the economic life of society. At the heart of the mystifications that were being peddled at the beginning of the 90s was the idea that a new age of world peace was dawning. The end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the eastern bloc, which Reagan had presented as the "Evil Empire", were supposed to put an end to the different military conflicts brought about by the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs since 1947. Faced with this mystification about the possibility of peace under capitalism, marxism has always underlined the impossibility for bourgeois states to go beyond their economic and military rivalries, especially in the period of decadence. This is why we were able to write back in January 1990 that "The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and the coming disappearance of the bloc between the American gendarme and its former 'partners', is going to open the door to a whole series of more local rivalries. These rivalries and confrontations cannot, in the present circumstances, degenerate into a world conflict...On the other hand, because of the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the presence of the blocs, these conflicts threaten to become more violent and more numerous, in particular, of course, in zones where the proletariat is weakest".[4] The world scene soon confirmed this analysis, notably with the first Gulf war in January 1991 and the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the autumn of the same year. Since then, there has been no let up in bloody and barbaric conflicts. We cannot enumerate all of them but we can note in particular:

• - the continuation of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, which saw, under the aegis of NATO, the direct involvement of the USA and the main European powers in 1999;
• - the two wars in Chechnya
• - the numerous wars that have continually ravaged the African continent (Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Sudan, etc);
• - the military operations by Israel in Lebanon and, most recently, in Gaza;
• - the war in Afghanistan, which is still going on;
• - the war in Iraq in 2003 whose consequences continue to weigh dramatically on this country, but also on the initiator of the war, the USA.

The direction and implications of US policy have long been analysed by the ICC:

"the spectre of world war no longer haunts the planet, but at the same time, we have seen the unchaining of imperialist antagonisms and local wars directly implicating the great powers, in particular the most powerful of them all, the USA. The USA, which for decades has been the 'world cop', has had to try to carry on and strengthen this role in the face of the ‘new world disorder' which came out of the end of the Cold War. But while it has certainly taken this role to heart, it hasn't at all been done with the aim of contributing to the stability of the planet but fundamentally to conserve its global leadership, which has been more and more put into question by the fact that there is no longer the cement which held each of the two imperialist blocs together - the threat from the rival bloc. In the definitive absence of the 'Soviet threat', the only way the American power could impose its discipline was to rely on its main strength, its huge superiority at the military level. But in doing so, the imperialist policy of the USA has become one of the main factors in global instability."[5]

7) The arrival of the Democrat Barak Obama to the head of the world's leading power has given rise to all kinds of illusions about a possible change in the strategic orientations of the USA, a change opening up an "era of peace". One of the bases for these illusions resides in the fact that Obama was one of the few US senators to vote against the military intervention in Iraq in 2003, and that unlike his Republican rival McCain he has committed himself to a withdrawal of US armed forces from Iraq. However, these illusions have quickly come up against reality. In particular, if Obama has envisaged a US withdrawal from Iraq, it is in order to reinforce its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Furthermore, the continuity in US military policy is well illustrated by the fact that the new administration brought Gates, who had been nominated by Bush, back to the post of Secretary of Defence.

In reality, the new orientation of American diplomacy in no way calls into question the framework outlined above. Its objective is still the reconquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future imperialist interventions by its military, which is currently spaced too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theatre of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, as the ICC has often underlined, there are two different options within the bourgeoisie for pursuing this goal:

• - the option represented by the Democratic Party which is trying as much as possible to associate other powers to this project;
• - the majority option among the Republicans, which consists of taking the initiative for military offensives and imposing itself on other powers at whatever cost.

The first option was taken up by Clinton at the end of the 90s in ex-Yugoslavia, where the US managed to get the main powers of western Europe, in particular Germany and France, to cooperate in the NATO bombing of Serbia to force it to abandon Kosovo.

The second option was typically the one used in unleashing the Iraq war in 2003, which took place against the very determined opposition of Germany and France, this time in conjunction with Russia within the UN Security Council.

However, neither of these options has been capable of reversing the weakening of US leadership. The policy of forcing things through, illustrated during the two terms of Bush Junior, has resulted not only in the chaos in Iraq, which is nowhere near being overcome, but also to the growing isolation of American diplomacy, illustrated in particular by the fact that certain countries who supported the US in 2003, such as Spain and Italy, have jumped ship from the Iraq adventure (not to mention the more discreet way Gordon Brown and the British government have taken their distance from the unconditional support that Tony Blair gave to the Iraq adventure). For its part, the policy of "co-operation" favoured by the Democrats does not really ensure the loyalty of the powers that the US is trying to associate with its military enterprises, particularly because it gives these powers a wider margin of manoeuvre to push forward their own interests

Today, for example, the Obama administration has decided to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards Iran and a firmer one towards Israel, two orientations which go in the same direction as most of the states of the European Union, especially Germany and France, two countries who are aiming to recover some of their former influence in Iraq and Iran. That said, this orientation will not make it possible to prevent the emergence of major conflicts of interest between these two countries and the US, notably in the sphere of eastern Europe (where Germany is trying to preserve its "privileged" relations with Russia) or Africa (where the two factions subjecting Congo to a reign of blood and fire have the support of the US and France respectively).

More generally, the disappearance of the division of the world into two great blocs has opened the door to the ambitions of second level imperialisms who are serving to further destabilise the international situation. This is the case, for example, with Iran whose aim is to gain a dominant position in the Middle East under the banner of resistance to the American "Great Satan" and of the fight against Israel. With much more considerable means, China aims to extend its influence to other continents, particularly in Africa where its growing economic presence is the basis for a diplomatic and military presence, as is already the case in the war in Sudan.

Thus the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas. We also have to consider whether the instability provoked by the considerable aggravation of the crisis in a whole series of countries in the periphery will not result in an intensification of confrontations between military cliques within these countries, with, as ever, the participation of different imperialist powers. Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the warlike policies of their predecessors, as we can see in Afghanistan for example, a policy which is synonymous with growing military barbarism.

8) Just as the good intentions advertised by Obama on the diplomatic level will not stop military chaos from continuing and aggravating across the world, nor will it prevent the USA from being an active factor in this chaos; similarly the reorientation of US policy which he has announced in the area of protecting the environment will not stop its degradation from continuing. This is not a matter of the good or bad intentions of governments, however powerful they may be. Every day that passes demonstrates more and more the real environmental catastrophe menacing the planet: increasingly violent storms in countries which have hitherto been spared by them; droughts and heatwaves; floods and the bursting of flood barriers; countries threatened with sinking into the sea... the perspectives are increasingly sombre. This degradation of the environment also bears with it the threat of an aggravation of military confrontations, particularly with the exhaustion of supplies of drinking water, which is going to be one of the stakes in future conflicts.

As the resolution adopted by the previous international congress put it: "Thus, as the ICC has shown for over 15 years, the decomposition of capitalism brings with it a major threat to humanity's existence. The alternative announced by Engels at the end of the 19th century, socialism or barbarism, has been a sinister reality throughout the 20th century. What the 21st century offers us as a perspective is quite simply socialism or the destruction of humanity. These are the real stakes facing the only force in society capable of overthrowing capitalism: the world working class."[6]

9) This capacity of the working class to put an end to the barbarism engendered by capitalism in decomposition, to bring humanity out of its prehistory and into the "realm of freedom", to use Engels' expression, is being forged right now in its daily struggles against capitalist exploitation. With the collapse of the eastern bloc and the so-called "socialist" regimes, the deafening campaigns about the "end of communism", and even the "end of the class struggle" dealt a severe blow to the consciousness and combativity of the working class; The proletariat suffered a profound retreat on these two levels, a retreat which lasted for over ten years. It was not until 2003, as the ICC has pointed out on a number of occasions, that the world working class returned to the path of struggle against the attacks of capital. Since then, this tendency has been further confirmed and in the two years since the last congress we have seen the development of significant struggles all over the world. At certain moments we have even seen a remarkable simultaneity of workers' struggles on a world scale. Thus at the beginning of 2008 the following countries were hit by workers' struggles at the same time: Russia, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Rumania, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Swaziland, Venezuela, Mexico, USA, Canada and China.

At the same time, we have seen some very significant workers' struggles over the past two years. Without trying to be exhaustive, we can cite the following examples:

• - in Egypt, in the summer of 2007, where massive struggles in the textile industry were met with active solidarity from a number of other sectors (docks, transport, hospitals, etc);
• - in Dubai, in November 2007, where the building workers (essentially immigrants) mobilised massively;
• - in France, in November 2007, where attacks against pensions provoked a very militant strike by railway workers, with examples of solidarity links being established with students who at the same moment were fighting against government attempts to accentuate social segregation in the universities; a strike that openly unmasked the sabotaging role of the big union federations, the CGT and the CFDT, obliging the bourgeoisie to refurbish the image of its apparatus for controlling the working class;
• - in Turkey, at the end of 2007, where 26,000 workers at Turk Telecom were on strike for over a month, the most important mobilisation of the proletariat in this country since 1991, and this at a time when the Turkish government was involved in a military operation in the north of Iraq;
• - in Russia, in November 2008, where important strikes in St Petersburg (notably at the Ford factory) showed the ability of the workers to overcome some very strong police intimidation, especially on the part of the FSB (the former KGB);
• - in Greece, at the end of 2008, where, in a climate of enormous discontent which had already been expressed before, the mobilisation of the students against repression received a profound solidarity from within the working class, with certain sectors going outside the official unions; a solidarity which did not remain inside the frontiers of Greece since this movement met with a very significant echo of sympathy in a number of European countries;
• - in Britain, where the wildcat strike at the Lindsey oil refinery at the beginning of 2009 constituted one of the most significant movement of the working class in this country for two decades, a working class which had suffered some cruel defeats in the 1980s; this movement showed the capacity of the working class to extend its struggles and, in particular, saw the beginnings of a confrontation with the weight of nationalism, with expressions of solidarity between British workers and Polish and Italian immigrant workers.

10) The considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism today obviously represents a very important element in the development of workers' struggles. At this very moment, in all countries of the world, workers are being faced with massive lay-offs, with an irresistible rise in unemployment. In an extremely concrete manner, in its flesh and bones, the proletariat is experiencing the incapacity of the capitalist system to ensure the basics of a decent life for the workers it exploits. What's more, it is more and more incapable of offering any future to the new generations of the working class, which represents a factor of anxiety and despair not only for them but also for their parents. Thus the conditions are maturing for the idea of overthrowing this system to develop on a significant scale within the proletariat. However, it is not enough for the working class to perceive that the capitalist system is at a dead-end, that it has to give way to another society, for it to be able to take up a revolutionary perspective. It also needs to have the conviction that such a perspective is possible and that it has the strength to carry it out. And it is precisely on this level that the bourgeoisie succeeded in scoring some very important points against the working class at the time of the collapse of "really existing socialism". On the one hand, it managed to get across the idea that the perspective of communism is an empty dream: "communism doesn't work. The proof is that it was abandoned in favour of capitalism by the populations who lived in such a system". At the same time, it managed to create a strong feeling of powerlessness within the working class because it was unable to wage any massive struggles. In this sense, the situation today is very different from the one that prevailed at the time of the historic resurgence of the class at the end of the 60s. At that time, the massive character of workers' struggles, especially with the immense strike of May 68 in France and the Italian "hot autumn" of 69, showed that the working class can constitute a major force in the life of society and that the idea it could one day overthrow capitalism was not an unrealisable dream. However, to the extent that the crisis of capitalism was only just beginning, a consciousness of the imperious necessity to overturn this system did not yet have the material base to spread among the workers. We can summarise this situation in the following way: at the end of the 1960s, the idea that the revolution was possible could be relatively widely accepted, but the idea that it was indispensable was far less easy to understand. Today, on the other hand, the idea that the revolution is necessary can meet with an echo that is not negligible, but the idea that it is possible is far less widespread.

11) For consciousness of the possibility of the communist revolution to gain a significant echo within the working class, the latter has to gain confidence in its own strength, and this takes place through the development of massive struggles. The huge attacks which it is now facing on an international scale provides the objective basis for such struggles. However, the main form this attack is taking today, that of massive lay-offs, does not initially favour the emergence of such movements; in general, and this has been verified frequently over the past 40 years, moments of sharply rising unemployment are not the theatre of the most important struggles. Unemployment, massive lay-offs, have a tendency to provoke a temporary feeling of paralysis in the class, which is subjected to the bosses' blackmail: "if you're not happy, lots of other workers are ready to take your place". The bourgeoisie can use this situation to provoke divisions and even outright conflict between those who are losing their jobs and those who have the "privilege" of keeping theirs. On top of this, the bosses and the governments can then fall back on their "decisive" argument: "it's not our fault that unemployment is rising or that you're getting laid off. It's down to the crisis". Finally, when enterprises are being shut down, the strike weapon becomes ineffective, which accentuates the workers' feelings of powerlessness. In a historic situation where the proletariat has not suffered from a historic defeat as it had in the 1930s, massive lay-offs, which have already started, could provoke very hard combats, even explosions of violence. But these would probably, in an initial moment, be desperate and relatively isolated struggles, even if they may win real sympathy from other sectors of the working class. This is why, in the coming period, the fact that we do not see a widescale response from the working class to the attacks should not lead us to consider that it has given up the struggle for the defence of its interests. It is in a second period, when it is less vulnerable to the bourgeoisie's blackmail, that workers will tend to turn to the idea that a united and solid struggle can push back the attacks of the ruling class, especially when the latter tries to make the whole working class pay for the huge budget deficits accumulating today with all the plans for saving the banks and stimulating the economy. This is when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers. This does not mean that revolutionaries should be absent from the present struggles. They are part of the experiences which the proletariat has to go through in order to be able to take the next step in its combat against capitalism. And it is up to communist organisations to put forward, inside these struggles, the general perspectives for the proletarian movement and the steps it has to take in this direction.

12) The road towards revolutionary struggles and the overthrow of capitalism is a long one. Every day that passes shows the necessity for the system to be overturned, but the working class still needs to take a number of essential steps before it can achieve this:

• - the rediscovery of its ability to take control of its struggles since, at the present moment, the majority of struggles, especially in the developed countries, are still in the grip of the unions (in contrast to what we saw in the 1980s);
• - the development of its capacity to unmask the traps and mystifications of the bourgeoisie, which obstruct the road towards massive struggles, and the re-establishment of its self-confidence, since while the massive character of the struggles at the end of the 60s can to a large degree be explained by the fact that the bourgeoisie was caught by surprise after decades of counter-revolution, this is obviously not the case today;
• - the politicisation of its struggles, i.e. its ability to inscribe them in their historic dimension, to see them as a moment in the long, historical struggle of the proletariat against exploitation and for its abolition.

This step is obviously the most difficult to take, above all because of:

• - the rupture that the counter-revolution made between the past and present struggles of the class;
• - the organic break this situation also meant for revolutionary organisations;
• - the retreat in class consciousness after the collapse of the eastern bloc;
• - the deleterious weight of the decomposition of capitalism on the consciousness of the proletariat;
• - the capacity of the ruling class to give rise to organisations (such as the New Anticapitalist Party in France and Die Linke in Germany) whose task is to take the place of the Stalinist parties which have today disappeared or are moribund, or of social democracy which has for decades been discredited by its role of managing the crisis of capitalism. Precisely because they are new these parties are able to sustain major mystifications within the working class.

In fact, the politicisation of the proletarian struggle is linked to the presence of a communist minority within its ranks. The fact that the internationalist milieu is still very weak indicates the distance the working class still has to travel in order to engage in revolutionary struggles and give birth to its world class party, an essential organ without which the victory of the revolution is impossible;

The road is long and difficult, but this should in no way serve to discourage revolutionaries or paralyse their commitment. Quite the contrary!

ICC 5/9

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[1]. World Economic Outlook, Interim Report, March 2009, p.5.

[2]. Ibid., p.7.

[3]. See International Review n° 130 for this and subsequent quotes from the resolution.

[4]. International Review n° 61, "After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilisation and chaos".

[5]. International Review n° 130, "Resolution on the international situation", 17th Congress of the ICC, point 7.

[6]. Ibid, point 10.

 

For the fourth time since we began to publish elements of our internal debate in the International Review n°133 [20] , we reproduce below a text on the explanation of the period of prosperity that followed World War II.[1]

The article below defends the thesis of "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism", which considers that the prosperity of the 1950-60s was based on the bourgeoisie's development of various Keynesian measures. It replies to two articles published in International Review n°136 which defended respectively, the idea that this prosperity was fundamentally the result of the exploitation of the last, but extensive, extra-capitalist markets and of the beginning of a rising level of debt (the "Extra-capitalist markets and debt" thesis),[2] and the idea that it was made possible by the weight of the war economy and state capitalism within society. [3]

In the introduction to these two previous articles, we gave an overview of the evolution of the discussions in the organisation, noting that the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis "now clearly calls into question some of the ICC's positions". The comrades responsible for the article below disagree with this evaluation, and explain why.[4]

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In defence of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis  (reply to Silvio and Jens)

 

We are continuing here the debate begun in the International Review n°133 [20] on the explanation of the period of prosperity during the 1950-60s, which was an exception in capitalism's history since World War I. We intend to reply both to the arguments put forward by comrades Silvio and Jens in International Review n°136 [61] , and to the presentation of these two articles which seems to us to contain several misunderstandings.

The disagreements currently under discussion in our organisation are all set within the framework of the positions defended by revolutionaries in the Second and Third Internationals and within the communist lefts, notably in the contributions of Luxemburg, Bukharin, Trotsky, Pannekoek, Bilan, Mattick and others. We are aware that these contributions cannot simply be combined since they contradict each other on a number of points. But none of them by themselves explain the development of the post-war Reconstruction, for the simple reason that their authors did not live through this period (with the exception of Paul Mattick). We think nonetheless that all of them have something to contribute to the discussion that concerns us today. Revolutionaries today have the responsibility to continue the discussion opened in the revolutionary movement the better to understand the mechanisms that encourage or hold back capitalism's development, especially during its period of decadence.

The authors of the present article defend the thesis known as "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism". This thesis has already been presented in more detail by C.Mcl, in International Review n°135. The latter has decided to abandon the debate and has broken off relations with us. As a result, we do not know if the position that we defend is absolutely identical to his.

What facts are we concerned with?

To continue the debate, we want first of all to point out certain historical facts on which up to now there has been no disagreement among the three different positions:

1)       Between 1945 and 1975, at least within the sphere of the industrialised countries belonging to the bloc dominated by the USA, not only did GDP per inhabitant grow as never before in the history of capitalism,[5] but there was also an increase in the real wages of the working class.[6]

2)       During the same period and in the same sphere, there was also a constant increase in labour productivity, "Gains in productivity never seen in the whole history of capitalism, gains which were founded on the generalisation and maintenance of assembly line production (Fordism)".[7]

3)       The rate of profit (ie the profit realised relative to the total invested capital) was very high throughout this period, but once again tended to fall from 1969 onwards. All the comrades involved in the debate refer to the same statistics in this respect.[8]

4)       At least up until 1971, there was a hitherto unheard of degree of co-ordination between all the states of the US bloc (bloc discipline, Bretton Woods system).

As far as the first three aspects are concerned, one's arguments must be consistent. If we all agree on these facts, then we cannot take a step backwards to insist that: "(...) the real prosperity of the 1950-60s was not all that the bourgeoisie made it out to be, when they proudly display the GDP of the main industrialised countries during this period".[9] The bourgeoisie may very well distort the reality of the period, but we cannot solve the problem simply by saying that it does not exist, because this growth did not exist in reality. Our aim in continuing this debate should be to clarify for ourselves, and for the other workers who have no interest in hiding from reality, what were the mechanisms which made it possible to maintain simultaneously:

• an accumulation without major interruptions (independent of the normal cyclical crises),
• a high rate of profit,
• a growth in real wages.

If we exaggerate this or that aspect, or if we underestimate certain difficulties, then these are only relative arguments (more or less quantity), whereas what concerns us is a qualitative argument: how was it possible for decadent capitalism to undergo a twenty-year phase of prosperity during which wages rose and profits were high?

This is the question we must answer.

How far is the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis compatible with the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg?

The "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis is criticised above all because it rejects a part of Rosa Luxemburg's argumentation (see the article that presents this thesis in International Review n°135 [21] ). There seems to be some confusion as to how far we agree with Luxemburg. Thus comrade Jens, in his article in International Review n°136 [62] , thinks that C.Mcl has changed opinion since his article in International Review n°127 [63] . This article explained (for the ICC, in a polemic with the CWO) that the reduction of the solvent market compared with the needs of capital "is obviously not the only factor analysed by Marx in the appearance of (...) crises", and pointed out that it is also necessary to take account of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the disequilibrium in the rhythm of accumulation of the major sectors of production.

For us, the realisation of surplus value is indeed a fundamental problem for capitalism. It offers not only an explanation of the capitalist crisis, but also of two of its essential causes (we will leave aside for the moment the problem of proportionality). Not only is there the problem of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, as a result of the increase in capital's organic composition, there is also (after the act of production and appropriation of surplus value) the problem of selling the product and so realising the surplus value. It is one of Luxemburg's merits that she localised the difficulty of realising the product in the inadequacy of solvent markets.

Capitalism is a system that is forced to develop. Accumulation is based not on simple but on expanded reproduction. In each cycle, capital must expand its foundation, in other words constant and variable capital. Capitalism developed in a feudal environment, in an extra-capitalist milieu with which it established relations in the first place to obtain the material means of its accumulation: raw materials, labour power, etc.

Another of Luxemburg's merits was to analyse the relations between the capitalist sphere and the extra-capitalist milieu. We do not agree with all the economic arguments of the this analysis (as we will explain later), but we share its central ideas: capitalism continually destroys the other modes of production in its environment, the internal contradiction seeking a solution in the extension of its external domain, there is a qualitative change in the development of capitalism once the latter has conquered the whole planet, in other words once capitalism has created the world market. At this point capitalism has fulfilled its progressive function and enters into its decadent phase. As C.Mcl points out in International Review n°127, "as well as analysing the inseparable historic link between capitalist relations of production and imperialism, showing that the system could not live without expanding, without being imperialist in essence, Rosa Luxemburg also demonstrated at what moment and in what manner the capitalist system entered its phase of decadence (...) The system's entry into decadence was thus characterised not by the disappearance of the extra-capitalist markets (Marx's 'demand exterior to the labourer') but by their insufficiency with regard to the needs for enlarged accumulation".[10]

Does each cycle of capitalist accumulation need extra-capitalist markets?

During capitalism's ascendant phase, it is true that the markets situated outside the capitalist sphere provided the latter with an outlet for the sale of its commodities in a time of overproduction. Capitalism was able temporarily to overcome its internal crises on the one hand through periodic crises and on the other through the sale of products that could not be sold in the purely capitalist sphere, on the extra-capitalist market. In the cyclical crises provoked by the fall in the rate of profit, some capitals are devalued, thus making it possible to re-establish an organic composition sufficiently low for a new cycle of accumulation to begin. Moreover, during the ascendant phase the extra-capitalist market provides capitalism with "an outlet for the sale of commodities suffering from overproduction",[11] thus attenuating the problem of the lack of solvent markets.

Luxemburg's mistake is that she makes these extra-capitalist markets and the surplus value realised there, a vital element in capital's enlarged reproduction. The capitalist produces to sell and not just to produce. Commodities must find buyers. And every capitalist is above all a seller: he only buys in order to invest again, after selling his product at a profit. In short, capital must pass through a money phase, and commodities must be converted into money in order to be realised, but neither in their totality, nor at a given moment, nor annually as Luxemburg imagines: one part may remain in its material form, while another may evolve through multiple commercial transactions during which the same quantity of money serves several times to convert commodities into money, and money into commodities.

If there were no credit, and if it were necessary to realise the whole of each year's production in money form then yes, an outside purchaser would be necessary for capitalist production.

But this is not the case. It is obvious that barriers may appear in the way of this cycle (purchase ® production/extraction of surplus value ® sale ® new purchase). There are several difficulties. But the sale to an extra-capitalist buyer is not a condition sine qua non of accumulation in "normal" conditions. This is only one possible way out if there is overproduction or a disproportion between the production of means of production and the production of means of consumption, and such problems do not appear all the time.

This weak point in Luxemburg's argument has also been criticised by "Luxemburgists" like Fritz Sternberg, who refers to "fundamental errors which it is hard to understand".[12] If these errors of Rosa Luxemburg are "hard to understand" for the partisans of "pure Luxemburgism", this is precisely because they do not take account of Sternberg's critique. Since the beginning of the debates in the ICC on the question of decadence, in the 1970s, Sternberg has been considered a highly important reference precisely because he is also considered to be a Luxemburgist.

Comrade Jens disagrees with the idea put forward, according to him, by the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis, that "the extra-capitalist market is nothing but a sort of overflow pipe for the capitalist market when it gets too full".[13] To avoid any misunderstandings, we think that it is precisely on this point that Sternberg's Luxemburgism differs from the "pure Luxemburgism" of Jens (and Silvio). On this point, we are in agreement with Sternberg.

For us, the mystery of the Reconstruction boom cannot be explained by the remaining extra-capitalist markets, since these have been insufficient for the requirements of expanded capital accumulation ever since World War I.

How does accumulation function during a strong increase in productivity?

For the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis, the prosperity following World War II results from the combination of three essential factors:

• important increases in productivity over a period of two decades;
• a major increase in real wages during the same period;
• the existence of a developed state capitalism (co-ordinated on a supranational level), which adopted Keynesian policies on other levels also (not just that of wages).

In International Review n°136 [64] , comrade Silvio finds himself in some perplexity: "What does it mean to increase the production of profit? It means producing commodities and selling them, but to satisfy what demand? That of the workers?".

We would like to answer the comrade's concerns: if labour productivity rises throughout industry, then the workers' means of consumption are reduced. The capitalist pays his workers less money for the same labour time. The worker's unpaid labour time increases, in other words the surplus value increases. In other words, the rate of surplus value (which is nothing other than the rate of exploitation) rises. Marx called this process the production of relative surplus value. If other factors remain the same (or if constant capital itself falls), an increase in surplus value also means an increase in the rate of profit. If this profit is high enough, then the capitalists can increase wages without losing all the increase in extracted surplus value.

The second question is that of the market. If the workers' wages rise, then they can consume more. As Marx pointed out, labour power must be reproduced. This is the reproduction of variable capital (v), which is just as necessary as the reproduction of constant capital (c). Consequently, variable capital is part of the capitalist market. A general rise in wages also means an increase in the size of the market.

One might reply that such an increase in the size of the market is not enough to realise the whole of the surplus value necessary for accumulation. This is true in general and in the long term. Those of us who defend the "Keynesian-Fordist" thesis do not think that we have discovered a solution to capitalism's inherent contradictions, which could be endlessly repeated. Our analysis is not a new theory, but a prolongation of the critique of the capitalist economy begun by Marx, and continued by those other revolutionaries that we have cited.

But it cannot be denied that such an increase in the size of the market reduces the problem of inadequate demand, in the conditions created after World War II. Perhaps comrade Silvio is still wondering where the demand might come from? Demand in capitalism presupposes two factors: a need (the desire to consume), and solvency (possession of money). The first factor is almost never a problem; there is always a lack of means of consumption. The second factor is on the contrary a permanent problem for capitalism - a problem which it managed to attenuate precisely thanks to the growth in wages during the Reconstruction boom.

But the expansion of the market formed by wage labourers is not the only factor that attenuated the scarcity of markets during this period: we also need to take account of the increase in the costs of the Keynesian state (for example, investment in infrastructure projects, armaments, and so forth). In fact there is a threefold division of the increase in profit: distribution of increased profits thanks to rising productivity among the capitalists (profit), the workers (wages) and the state (taxes). Comrade Silvio seems to agree with this idea when he says: "It is true that workers' consumption and state spending make it possible to sell the product of an increase in production"  However, he sees another problem here: "but as we have seen this results in a sterilisation of the wealth produced since it is unable to be usefully employed to valorise capital" He refers here to the idea that  "increasing wages beyond what is necessary for the reproduction of labour power is - from the capitalist standpoint - nothing other than a pure waste of surplus value which cannot become a part of the accumulation process".

The comrade is confusing here two spheres, which need to be distinguished before we analyse the general dynamic that brings them together:

One problem (in the sphere of circulation, the market) is the realisation of the product. On this level Silvio seems to agree with us if he means that the workers' consumption (like state spending) makes it possible to provide an outlet to increasing production.

Another problem (in the sphere of production) is the valorisation of capital such that accumulation is possible not only with profit, but with an increasing profit.

Obviously, the comrade's objection about the "waste of surplus value" concerns the second level, that of production. Let us then follow him to the factory (after remarking that he agrees with us at least in part at the level of the markets), where the worker is exploited for an increasing wage. What happens if the surplus value increases thanks to a major increase in labour productivity (leaving aside the threefold division of profits, in other words taxes, which are transformed into state spending. The twofold share-out between worker and capitalist is enough to explain the basic mechanism)? The total product of a capitalist entity (be it a company, a country, or the entire capitalist sphere) over a certain period of time, for example one year, can be divided into three parts: constant capital c, variable capital v, and surplus value sv. In the process of accumulation, the capitalist does not consume the whole surplus value, since a part of it must be invested in expanded production. The surplus value is therefore divided into the part consumed by the capitalist (the interest on his investment: I), and the part destined for accumulation (a) so that sv = i + a. We can in turn divide a into the part invested in constant capital (ac) and that which goes to increase variable capital (av) in the next production cycle, so that a = ac + av. The total product of this capitalist entity can therefore be expressed as:

c + v + sv, or:

c + v + (i + a), or:

c + v + (i + ac + av).

If, thanks to a major increase in productivity, the capitalist obtains a sufficiently large surplus value, then the part represented by ac can continue to grow, even if the av grows "beyond what is necessary". If for example, the costs of the means of consumption fall by 50% while unpaid labour time increases from 3 to 5 hours of an 8-hour day, thanks to the effect of the production of relative surplus value, then the rate of surplus value increases from 3/8 to 5/8, for example from $375 to $625, even though the worker has had a 20% increase in his real wages (his wage which originally represented 5 hours labour, but with a doubling of productivity it represents the product of 3 hours instead of 6 hours as previously). The same thing happens if the capitalist increases his consumption (because the cost of his products of consumption also decrease by 50%): the share of surplus value devoted to accumulation can nonetheless grow. And the amount ac can also grow year on year even if av grows "beyond what is necessary", as long as labour productivity continues to increase at the same rhythm. The only "damaging" effect of this "waste of surplus value" is that the increase in capital's organic composition is less frenetic than it would otherwise have been. The growth in organic composition implies that ac grows faster than av: if av grows "beyond what is necessary" then this tendency may be suppressed or even inverted), but we cannot assert that this "waste of surplus value" plays no part in the process of accumulation. On the contrary this distribution of profit obtained through the increase in productivity plays a complete part in accumulation. Not only that, it attenuates the problem identified by Luxemburg in Chapter 25 of The accumulation of capital, where she insists that with a tendency towards an ever-increasing organic composition of capital, the exchange between the two main sectors of capitalist production (production of the means of production on the one hand, and of the means of consumption on the other) becomes impossible in the long term.[14] After only a few cycles, an unsaleable remainder is already left in the second sector of the capitalist economy, that of the production of the means of consumption. The combination of Fordism (increasing productivity) and Keynesianism (increasing wages and state spending) helps to hold back this tendency, attenuating the problem of overproduction in Sector II and that of the disproportion between the two main branches of production. The leaders of the Western economy could not prevent the return of the crisis at the end of the 1960s, but they could delay it.

Before leaving this subject, we have to say that Silvio leaves us perplexed. He seems to have understood at the theoretical level what we have just explained, that is to say the mechanism of the production of relative surplus value as an ideal basis for an accumulation which is as internal as possible, and as little dependent on external factors as possible, when he says that "as long as there are gains in productivity sufficient for consumption to increase at the same rhythm as labour productivity, the problem of overproduction can be resolved without preventing accumulation since profits, which are also increasing, are enough to ensure accumulation".[15] We presume that Silvio knows what he is saying, or at least that he understands what he is saying, since these are his own words which conclude a quotation from Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (a quotation which of course proves nothing in itself). But Silvio fails to answer at this theoretical level, or at least fails to follow the logic of the argument, preferring to change the subject and to object: "During his lifetime, Marx never witnessed an increase in wages at the same rhythm as the productivity of labour, and moreover thought that this was impossible. Nonetheless, this has happened at certain moments in the life of capitalism; however this fact in no way allows us to deduce that it could resolve, even temporarily, the fundamental problem of overproduction that Marx highlighted". What a reply! We are about to come to a conclusion on the basis of a line of reasoning - but instead of verifying or contradicting the conclusion on the basis of a series of facts, we continue to speak of its empirical probability or improbability. As if he feels that this is inadequate, the comrade counters in advance that "Marxism does not reduce this contradiction of overproduction simply to the proportion between increasing wages and increasing productivity". Since the authority of Marx is not enough, we need that of "marxism". An appeal to orthodoxy! But which one?

Let us have more coherent reasoning, more open and daring conclusions!

The value of the schemas of capitalist accumulation

In the second volume of Capital, Marx presents the problem of expanded reproduction (ie accumulation) by using schemas, for example:

Sector I: 4000c + 1000v + 1000sv = 6000

Sector II: 1500c + 750v + 750sv = 3000

We ask the reader's indulgence and patience if reading and understanding these schemas is heavy going. But we don't think that there is any reason to be afraid of them.

Sector I is the branch of the economy that produces the means of production, Sector II the branch that produces the means of consumption. 4000c is the quantity of value produced in Sector I one for the reproduction of constant capital c; 1000v is the sum of wages paid in Sector I; 1000sv is the surplus value extracted from the workers in Sector I - and the same reasoning is true for Sector II. For expanded reproduction to take place, it is essential to respect the proportions between the different parts of the two sectors. The workers of Sector I produce, for example, machines, but for their own reproduction need means of consumption produced in the other branch. Exchange takes place between the two sectors according to certain rules. If for example, half the surplus value of Sector I is used to expand production while the organic composition of capital remains the same, then of the 500sv reinvested, 400 are devoted to the increase of constant capital and only 100 to the increase of total wages in this Sector. Marx thus gave the following example of the second cycle:

Sector I: 4400c + 1100v + 1100sv = 6600

Sector II: 1600c + 800v + 800sv = 3200

He continued with possible schemas for various cycles of accumulation. These schemas have since been enlarged, criticised, and refined by Luxemburg, Bauer, Bukharin, Sternberg, Grossmann and others. From all this we can draw a certain law which can be summarised as follows:

If we have

Sector I with c1 + v1 + i1 + ac1 + av1

Sector II with c2 + v2 + i2 + ac2 + av2

then expanded reproduction demands that:

c2 + av2 = v1 + i1 + av1. [16]

In other words, the value of constant capital in Sector II (c2) plus the share of surplus value in the same sector devoted to the increase of constant capital (ac2)[17] must be exchanged with the value of the variable capital of Sector I (total wages, v1) plus the consumption of the capitalists of the same Sector (i1) plus the share of surplus value of this sector devoted to the employment of new workers (v1).[18]

These schemas do not take account of certain factors, for example:

1)       The fact that the economy needs certain conditions for its "permanent" expansion; it demands ever more workers and raw materials.

2)       The fact that there is no direct exchange between the entities, but an exchange of transactions by the intermediary of money, the universal commodity. For example, the products materialised in the value ac1 must be exchanged within the sector: these are means of production necessary in the same sector, they must be sold and then bought if before they can be used.

At the same time, these schemas have some relatively awkward consequences, for example the fact that Sector II has no autonomy relative to Sector I. The rhythm of growth of the sector of the production of the means of consumption, as well as its organic composition, depend entirely on the proportions in the accumulation of Sector I.[19]

We cannot force the partisans of the necessity of capitalist markets to see a certain problem, in other words what Marx was looking for in his schemas of capitalist accumulation. Instead of looking at the different problems and placing each one in its context, they prefer to mix up the different contradictions by constantly insisting on one aspect of the problem: who in the final analysis buys the commodities necessary for the extension of production? This fixation blinds them. But if we follow the logic of the schemas presented by Marx, then we cannot avoid the following conclusion: if the conditions are such as those assumed in the schemas, and if we accept the consequences (conditions and consequences which can be analysed separately), then a government which controls the entire economy can theoretically organise it in such a way that accumulation functions according to the schema: c2 + av2 = v1 + i1 + av1. At this level there is no need for extra-capitalist markets. If we accept this conclusion then we can analyse separately (ie differentiate) the other problems, for example:

1)       How can an economy grow permanently in a necessarily limited world?

2)       What are the conditions for the use of money? How can money work effectively in the different acts of transformation of one element of global capital into another?

3)       What are the effects of a growing organic composition (when constant capital grows more quickly than variable capital)?

4)       What are the effects of increases in wages "beyond what is necessary"?

Clearly, as Luxemburg said, mathematical schemas prove nothing in themselves, neither the possibility nor the impossibility of accumulation. But if we know precisely what they say (and of what they are an abstraction) then we can distinguish between the different problems. Luxemburg also studied the first three of the problems enumerated here. She contributed above all to analysing questions (1) and (3). But as far as problem (2) is concerned, she mixed up certain contradictions and reduced them to a single difficulty, that of realising the share of surplus value devoted to expanded reproduction: the transformation into money is a problem not only for this part of the global product (ac1, av1, ac2, av2) but for all the elements of production (c1, v1, c2, v2) and even of the product itself: the owner of a chocolate factory cannot live on chocolate. The transformation of product into money and then into new material elements of production can fail. Every seller must find a buyer, every sale is a challenge - this is a distinct problem which can be separated theoretically from problem (1): the necessary growth of the sphere of capitalist production, which contains within it the necessity of the growth of the market. Such a growth must necessarily take place at the expense of the extra-capitalist sphere.[20] This growth presupposes only that capitalism has available all the material elements necessary for expanded reproduction (labour power, raw materials, etc.); this problem has nothing to do with the sale of a part of capitalist production to the producers of non-capitalist commodities. As we have said already: the sale to extra-capitalist markets may ease problems of overproduction, but is not necessary for accumulation.

What is our attitude to the ICC's Platform?

The editorial commission's presentation to the discussion on International Review n°136 tried to demonstrate an opposition between certain positions of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis and the positions of the ICC, and notably with our Platform. This was motivated by certain notes included by C.Mcl in the complete version of his article published in International Review n°135 (only available on our French web site [23] ; see notes 16, 22, 39, 41). C.Mcl has criticised certain formulations of the Platform's Point 3, but from a theoretical point of view without proposing any alternatives. We do not know C.Mcl's present attitude to the Platform since he has abandoned the discussion. We are not able to speak in his place. But we ourselves are in agreement with our Platform which was conceived from the outset to integrate all those who agree with the analysis that capitalism entered into its decadent phase with World War I. The Platform's Point 3 was in no way intended to exclude those who explain decadence by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, although the formulation of this Point has a certain "Luxemburgist" tonality. If we consider the Platform's Point 3 as a common denominator between revolutionary marxists who explain decadence by the inadequacy of extra-capitalist markets, and those who explain it by the falling rate of profit, then we see no reason to quit this framework since we defend not just one but both of these ideas. In this sense, we have no reason in excluding one or other of the explanations for capitalism's decadence  from our Platform. The present formulation is preferable, although with the advance in the discussion on the Reconstruction boom one might be able to find a different formulation that more consciously reflects the different analyses of capitalism's decadence.

We thus want to clarify our position with regard to the presentation in International Review n°136 on the "calling into question of some of the ICC's positions" by the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis. We want to clarify three supposed contradictions between the Platform and the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis presented under the heading "The evolution of the positions in the debate".

1)       "[According to the 'Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism' thesis], Capitalism 'generates a growing social demand through the employment of new workers and reinvestment in extra means of production and consumption' whereas for the ICC 'Contrary to what the idolaters of capital claim, capitalist production does not create automatically and at will the markets necessary for its growth' (ICC Platform)". Although the idea that "Capitalism generates a growing social demand through the employment of new workers and reinvestment in extra means of production and consumption" is indeed to be found in International Review n°135, we cannot isolate it from its context. As we have seen in the previous part of the present text, capitalism (for us, but also for those who explain decadence solely through the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) has a built-in dynamic of extension of its market. But none of the defenders of the "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis has claimed that these markets are sufficient. They may offer a temporary way out, but there is no escape from the elementary contradiction that the market grows more slowly than production.

2)       "Capitalism's apogee corresponds to 'a certain stage [of] the extension of wage labour and its domination through the formation of the world market', whereas for the ICC on the contrary its apogee corresponds to the world's division between the major powers and the fact that 'capitalism reached a point where the outlets which allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated' (ICC Platform)". This second point of our supposed disagreement with the ICC's positions concerns capitalism's entry into its decadent phase. The "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" thesis is totally in agreement that capitalism's apogee is reached when the major imperialist powers have shared out the world between them. The only difference between the "Luxemburgism" of the Platform and ourselves lies in the role of the extra-capitalist market. However this difference is much less than that with the defenders of the falling rate of profit as the sole factor in capital's entry into decadence (Grossmann, Mattick).

3)       "The evolution of the rate of profit and the size of the market are completely independent, whereas for the ICC 'the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realisation of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion' (ICC Platform)". With regard to this last point, we can say that overall we agree with the presentation, although we did not speak of a "total" but only a "theoretical" independence. We have always said that the rate of profit influences the market and vice versa, but are "not linked theoretically".

What are the consequences of these disagreements?

At first sight, it must be said, none.

We obviously have a different interpretation of certain dynamics of the capitalist economy. These can also lead to disagreement on other issues, for example the analysis of the present crisis and capitalism's perspectives in the short term. The evaluation of the role played by credit in the present crisis, the explanation of inflation and the role of the class struggle appear to us to be subjects that may be analysed differently depending on the various positions in the debate on the Reconstruction boom.

Despite the disagreements put forward in this debate, during both the 17th and the 18th Congresses, we discuss the present economic crisis together, and have voted together for the same resolutions on the International Situation. Even if different analyses on the fundamental mechanisms of the capitalist economy coexist in the organisation, we can still reach very similar conclusions as to our immediate perspectives and the tasks of revolutionaries. This does not mean that debate is not necessary, but on the contrary that it demands patience and the ability to listen to each other with an open mind.

 

Salome and Ferdinand (4 June 2009)

---

[1]. We invite our readers who want to follow the whole debate to consult the articles published in International Review n°133, 135, and 136.

[2]. See "The bases of capitalist accumulation".

[3]. See "War economy and state capitalism".

[4]. In the article that follows ("Reply to Silvio and Jens", co-signed by Salome and Ferdinand), the authors point out that some of the notes in C.Mcl's article "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism" are missing from the Spanish and English versions. We will correct this on our web site in order to make the terms of the debate as clear as possible, in particular since, as Salome and Ferdinand point out, C.Mcl "criticises certain formulations in Point 3 of the Platform", "from a theoretical point of view, but without proposing any alternatives".

[5]. See note 2 in the introduction to the debate in International Review n°133.

[6]. See Silvio's article in International Review n°136, citing Mattick.

[7]. International Review n°133, introductory article, in the section on "Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism".

[8]. See International Review n°121, "Economic crisis: the descent into the abyss".

[9]. Silvio in International Review n°136.

[10]. International Review n°127, "War in the decadent phase of capitalism".

[11]. International Review n° 135, "The origins, dynamics, and limits of Keynesian-Fordist state capitalism".

[12]. Fritz Sternberg, El imperialismo, ed. Siglo XXI, p75.

[13]. International Review n°136.

[14]. Sternberg considers that this point made by Luxemburg is the most important "of all those that have been carefully avoided by those who criticise Luxemburg" (see El imperialismo, p70).

[15]. See International Review n°136.

[16]. See for example Nicholas Bukharin, Imperialism and the accumulation of capital, his reply to Rosa Luxemburg, Chapter III.

[17]. These two elements were produced in Sector II, in other words appear in the form of means of  consumption.

[18]. These three elements appear in the form of means of production, and must be bought in one way or another by the capitalists of Sector II ("transformed" into c2 + ac2).

[19]. In our view this is the economic reason for the suffering of the workers exploited under Stalinism (or Maoism): a rigid state capitalism forced a maximum of industrialisation by giving the priority to Sector I, which reduced the Sector of the production of the means of consumption to a minimum.

[20]. A sphere is not necessarily a market: washing laundry at home is an activity outside the capitalist sphere. This sphere can be conquered by capitalism if wages are high enough for the worker to take his dirty clothes to the laundry. But there is no extra-capitalist market in this example.

Twenty years ago one of the most important events of the second half of the twentieth century occurred: the collapse of the imperialist bloc of the East and of the European Stalinist regimes, including the principal one: the USSR.

This event was used by the ruling class to unleash one of the most pernicious and massive ideological campaigns against the working class. By once again fraudulently identifying Stalinism with communism, by making the economic bankruptcy and barbarity of the Stalinist regimes the inevitable consequence of the proletarian revolution, the bourgeoisie aimed to turn the working class away from any revolutionary perspective and deal a decisive blow to the struggles of the working class.

At the same time, the bourgeoisie tried to profit from a second big lie: with the disappearance of Stalinism, capitalism was going to enter a period of peace and prosperity and would finally really blossom out. The future, the promise went, would be radiant.

March 6, 1991, George Bush Senior, President of the United States of America, buoyed up from his recent victory over the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein, announced the arrival of a "New World Order" and the advent of a "world of united nations, freed from the impasse of the Cold War, about to realise the historic vision of their founders: a world in which liberty and the rights of man are respected by all nations."

Twenty years later, you could almost laugh, if the world disorder and the proliferation of conflicts to the four corners of the globe hadn't spread so much death and misery. And in this respect, the balance sheet gets heavier year after year.

As to prosperity, forget it! In fact, since the summer 2007 and above all 2008, "All of a sudden, words and phrases like ‘prosperity', ‘growth', ‘triumph of liberalism' were discretely dropped. At the grand banqueting table of the capitalist economy there now sat a guest that they thought they had banished forever: the crisis, the spectre of a new great depression comparable to the one in the 1930s."[1] Yesterday, the collapse of Stalinism signified the triumph of liberal capitalism. Today it's the same liberalism that is accused of all evils by all the politicians and specialists, even among its most desperate defenders, such as President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Gordon Brown!

One obviously can't choose anniversary dates and the least that one can say is that this one falls badly for the bourgeoisie. If, on this occasion, it is deliberately avoiding its campaign on "the death of communism" and "the end of the class struggle", it is not that it lacks the desire to do so but that the calamitous situation of capitalism being what it is, such a campaign would run the risk of revealing the true nature of these ideological themes more completely. That is why the bourgeoisie is sparing us from big celebrations of the collapse of the "last world tyranny" and of the great victory of "freedom". Instead of that, apart from some perfunctory historic references, there's neither euphoria nor exaltation.

If history has settled the reality of the peace and prosperity that capitalism was supposed to offer us, this doesn't mean that the poverty and barbarity we are seeing today is appearing clearly in the eyes of the exploited as ineluctable consequences of the insurmountable contradictions of capitalism. In fact, the propaganda of the bourgeoisie today is oriented towards the necessity to "humanise" and to "reform" capitalism, and this has the objective of putting off for as long as possible the development of consciousness of this reality by the exploited. So, since reality only reveals part of the lie, the other part, the identification of Stalinism with communism, still continues today to weigh on the minds of the living, even if it is evidently in a less massive and brutal fashion that during the 90s. Faced with this, it's necessary to recall some historical elements.

The same crisis of capitalism at the origins of the collapse of Stalinism and the present recession

"All the countries under Stalinist regimes are in the same dead-end. Their economies have been particularly brutally hit by the world capitalist crisis, not only because of their backwardness, but because they are totally incapable of adapting to an exacerbation of inter-capitalist competition. The attempts to improve their competitiveness by introducing some of the ‘classical' norms of capitalist management have only succeeded in provoking a still greater shambles, as can be seen from the utter failure of ‘Perestroika' in the USSR.  (...) What's in store for the Stalinist regimes though is not a ‘peaceful', still less an economic ‘recovery'. With the deepening of the worldwide crisis of capitalism, these countries have entered a period of convulsions to an extent unheard of in the past which is nonetheless rich in violent upheavals."[2]

This catastrophic situation of the eastern countries didn't prevent the bourgeoisie presenting them as new, immense markets to be exploited once they had been completely liberated from the yoke of "communism". To achieve this it was necessary for them to develop a modern economy, which would have the added virtue of filling the order books of western businesses for decades to come. Reality was somewhere else: there was certainly much to construct, but no one to pay for it.

The expected boom came to nothing. Quite the contrary, the economic difficulties that appeared in the west were, without the slightest scruple, put down to the cost of assimilating the backward countries of the east. It was the same thing with the inflation that was becoming a difficult problem for Europe. From 1993, the situation wasn't long in turning into an open recession on the Old Continent.[3] Thus, the new configuration of the world market, with the complete integration of these countries, changed absolutely nothing about the fundamental laws that govern capitalism. In particular, debt continued to occupy an even more important place in financing the economy, rendering it increasingly vulnerable even to minor cases of destabilisation. The bourgeoisie's illusions disappeared in front of the hard economic reality of its system. Then in December 1994, Mexico cracked, a result of an influx of speculators fleeing the crisis in Europe: the Peso collapsed and risked bringing a good part of the economies of the American continent down with it. The threat was real and well understood. The United States mobilised 50 billion dollars in order to underwrite the Mexican currency. At the time it seemed a fantastic amount of money... Twenty years later, the United States has used forty times that amount for its economy alone!

From 1997, crisis in Asia: this time it's the currencies of South East Asia that brutally collapse. These famous Dragons and Tigers, model countries for economic development, show-case of the ‘new world order' where even the smallest countries have access to prosperity, also submitted to the severity of capitalism's laws.

The allure of these economies had attracted a speculative bubble, which burst at the beginning of 1997. In less than a year, every country of the region was hit. Twenty-four million people were made unemployed within a year. Revolts and lootings multiplied, causing the deaths of 1,200 people. The number of suicides exploded. In the year following, the risk of international contagion was constant, with the appearance of serious difficulties in Russia.

The Asian model, the famous "third way", was dead and buried alongside the model of "communism". It was necessary to find something else in order to prove that capitalism was the sole creator of wealth on the Earth. This something else was the economic miracle of the Internet. Since everything in the real world was collapsing, then let's invest in the virtual world! Since lending to the rich was no longer sufficient, let's lend to those that promise us they will become rich! Capitalism has a horror of the void, above all in its wallet, and when the world economy seems incapable of the greater profits corresponding to the insatiable needs of capital, when nothing more profitable exists, they invent a new market out of thin air. The system worked for a while, stocks rose on share dealings that bore no reasonable link to reality. Companies lost billions of dollars on the market. The bubble had been inflated, and then it burst. The madness gripped a bourgeoisie totally deluded about the everlasting life of the "new economy", to the point of dragging down the old one. The traditional sectors of the economy were also involved here, hoping to find the profitability lost in their traditional forms of activity. The "new economy" overran the old,[4] and then took it down the pan.

The fall was hard. The collapse of such a contrivance, based on nothing other than mutual confidence between actors hoping that no one would flinch, could only be brutal. The bursting of the bubble provoked losses of 148 billion dollars in the companies of the sector. Bankruptcies multiplied, the survivors' assets depreciating at a stroke by hundreds of billions of dollars. At least half a million jobs were lost in the telecommunications sector. The "new economy" was shown to be no more fruitful than the old and the funds that got out of the mire in time had to find another sector in which to invest.

And it went into bricks and mortar. Finally, after lending to countries living beyond their means, after lending to companies built up on thin air, who was there left to lend to? The bourgeoisie has no limit to its thirst for profits. Henceforth, the old adage "you can only lend to the rich" would be definitely ditched, since there are not enough rich people to go round. The bourgeoisie thus went on to attack a new market... the poor. Beyond the evident cynicism of this approach, there is also the total contempt for the lives of people who became the prey of these vultures. The loans arranged were underwritten by the value of the property. But when these properties rose in value with the rise of the market, it provided the opportunity for families to increase their debt even more, placing them in a potentially disastrous situation. Because when the model collapsed, which it did in 2008, the bourgeoisie cried for its own dead, the merchant banks and other financial houses, but it forgot the millions of families who had everything that they possessed - although that was hardly worth very much at all - taken from them, and who were then thrown out onto the street or into improvised shanty-towns.

What followed is sufficiently well known for us not to return to it here in detail, but it can be summed up perfectly in a few words: an open world recession, the most serious since the Second World War, throwing millions of workers onto the street in every country, a considerable increase in poverty.

Wars before and after 1990, the product of the same contradictions of capitalism

The global imperialist configuration was evidently overturned by the collapse of the eastern bloc. Before this event, the world was divided into two rival blocs constituted around their leading powers. The whole period after World War II, up to the collapse of the eastern bloc, was marked by very strong tensions between the blocs, taking the form of open conflicts through their pawns in the Third World. To cite just some of them: war in Korea at the beginning of the 1950s, the Vietnam War throughout the 60s and into the middle of the 70s, war in Afghanistan from1979, etc. The collapse of the Stalinist edifice in 1989 was in fact the product of its economic and military inferiority faced with the opposing bloc.

Through western propaganda, the "Evil Empire" of the Russian bloc had always been presented as the "aggressor", the warlike bloc against the "peaceful" west. So, with the collapse of the Russian bloc, shouldn't that mean the end to aggression and war? This, however, was the analysis of the ICC defended in January 1990: "The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and the resulting effects on the American gendarme vis-à-vis its main ‘partners' of yesterday, opens the door to unleashing a whole series of more local rivalries. These rivalries and confrontations cannot, at this present time, degenerate into a world conflict (...) On the other hand, from the fact of the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the presence of the blocs, these conflicts risk becoming more violent and more numerous, particularly in the zones where the proletariat is weakest."[5] It wasn't long before world events confirmed this analysis, notably with the first Gulf War in January 1991 and the war in ex-Yugoslavia from the autumn of the same year. Since then bloody and barbaric confrontations have not ceased. There's too many to enumerate here but we can underline some in particular: the pursuit of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, which saw the direct engagement, under the aegis of NATO, of the United States and the principal European powers in 1999; the two wars in Chechnya; the numerous wars ravaging the African continent (Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Sudan, etc); the military operations of Israel against Lebanon and, quite recently, against the Gaza Strip; the war in Afghanistan of 2001 which is still going on today; the war in Iraq of 2003 whose consequences continue to weigh dramatically on this country, but also on the initiator of this war, American imperialism.

Stalinism, a particularly brutal form of state capitalism

The following quote, analysing and denouncing Stalinism, was part of a supplement to our intervention which was widely distributed in January 1990 (the supplement in question is published as a whole in the article ‘1989-1999 - the world proletariat faced with the collapse of the eastern bloc and the bankruptcy of Stalinism' in International Review n° 99). Considering that, 20 years afterwards, this position remains perfectly valid, we are reproducing it here without any changes:

"This is how the regime of Stalinist terror was set up, on the ruins of the 1917 October revolution. Thanks to this negation of communism - ‘socialism in one country' - the USSR became once again a wholly capitalist state where the proletariat was subjected at gunpoint to the interests of the national capital, in the name of the defence of the ‘socialist fatherland'.

"Thanks to the power of the workers' councils, proletarian October brought World War I to a halt. The Stalinist counter-revolution, by destroying all revolutionary thought, by muzzling every attempt at class struggle, by subjecting the whole of social life to terror and militarisation, heralded the second world slaughter.

"Each step in Stalinism's development on the international scene during the 1930s was in fact marked by imperialist bargaining with the major capitalist powers, which were preparing to subject Europe once again to blood and destruction. Having used his alliance with German imperialism to thwart the latter's expansion towards the East, Stalin turned his coat in the mid-30s to ally with the ‘democratic' bloc (in 1934, Russia joined the ‘den of thieves' as Lenin had described the League of Nations). 1935 saw the Stalin-Laval pact between the USSR and France.

"The CPs took part in the ‘Popular Fronts' and in the Spanish Civil War, in the course of which the Stalinists did not hesitate to massacre any workers or revolutionaries who questioned their policies. On the eve of war, Stalin turned his coat yet again and sold the USSR's neutrality to Hitler, in exchange for several territories, before finally joining the ‘Allied' camp in the imperialist massacre of World War II, where the Stalinist state was to sacrifice the lives of more than 20 million of its own citizens. This was the result of all Stalinism's sordid dealings with the different imperialist sharks of Western Europe. Over heaps of corpses, Stalinism built its empire, and imposed its will on all the states that the treaty of Yalta brought under its exclusive domination.

"But although Stalin was a ‘gift from heaven' for world capitalism in suppressing Bolshevism, one individual alone, however paranoid, was not the architect of this terrible counter-revolution. The Stalinist state was controlled by the same ruling class as everywhere else: the national bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie was reconstituted as the revolution degenerated from within, not from the old Tsarist ruling class which the revolution had eliminated in 1917, but on the basis of the parasitic bureaucracy of the state apparatus which under Stalin's leadership was increasingly identified with the Bolshevik Party.

"At the end of the 1920s, this Party-state bureaucracy wiped out all those sectors capable of forming a private bourgeoisie, and with which it had been allied (speculators and NEP landowners). In doing so, it took control of the economy. These conditions explain why, contrary to what happened in other countries, state capitalism in Russia took on this totalitarian and caricatural form. State capitalism is capitalism's universal mode of domination in its period of decadence, when capitalism has to keep its grip on the whole of social life.

"It gives rise to parasitic sectors everywhere. But in other capitalist countries, state control over the whole of society is not hostile to the existence of private, competitive sectors, preventing the complete domination of the economy by its parasitic sectors. The particular form of state capitalism in the USSR was characterised by an extreme development of the parasitic sector, which sprang from the state bureaucracy. Their only concern was not to make capital productive by taking account of market laws, but to fill their own pockets, even to the detriment of the national economy. From the viewpoint of the functioning of capitalism, this form of state capitalism was an aberration which could not but collapse as the world economic crisis accelerated. The collapse of the state capitalism which emerged from the Russian counter-revolution has signalled the irredeemable bankruptcy of the whole brutal ideology which, for more than half a century, had held the Stalinist regime together and held sway over millions of human beings.

"This is how Stalinism was born; this is why it died. It appeared on the historical stage covered in the filth and blood of the counter-revolution. And covered in filth and blood, it is now leaving it, as we can see yet again in the horrible events in Romania which do no more than announce the imminence of still worse massacres at the heart of Stalinism: in the USSR itself.

"Whatever the bourgeoisie and its venal media may say, this monstrous hydra has nothing whatever in common with the October revolution, either in form or content. The proletariat must become fully aware of this radical break, this total antagonism between Stalinism and the October revolution, if it is not to fall victim to another form of bourgeois dictatorship: that of the ‘democratic' state."

The destruction of capitalism or the destruction of humanity

The world more and more resembles a desert with billions of human beings just about surviving. Each day, close to 20,000 children die of hunger in the world, several thousand jobs are lost, leaving whole families in distress; wages are cut for those who still have a job.

Here's the "new world order" promised nearly twenty years ago by George Bush Senior. It's closer to absolute chaos! This terrifying spectacle totally invalidates any idea that the collapse of the eastern bloc marked the "end of history" (with the sub-plot that it was the beginning of the eternal history of capitalism) as the "philosopher" Francis Fukuyama claimed at the time. It was rather an important stage in the decadence of capitalism: as the system more and more came up against its historic limits, its most fragile parts definitively collapsed. There is nothing healthy for the system of capitalism in the collapse of the eastern bloc. The limits are still there and they still threaten the very heart of capitalism. Each new crisis is more serious than the last.

That's why the sole lesson concerning the last twenty years is this: there can be no hope of peace and prosperity within capitalism. The stakes are, and will remain, the destruction of capitalism or the destruction of humanity.

If the campaigns on the "death of communism" dealt a severe blow to the consciousness of the working class, the latter is far from beaten, and it can still regain lost ground and renew the development of class struggle at the international level. And indeed, since the beginning of the 2000s, with the campaign of the death of communism and the end of class struggle getting used up, and in the face of growing attacks on its conditions of life, the working class has rediscovered the road to the class struggle. This recovery of class struggle, which here and now is expressing itself in the development of politicised minorities on an international scale, is preparing the ground for massive struggles which, in the future, will once again pose the real perspective for the proletariat and humanity: the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of communism.

GDS, 1/11/09.

---

[1]. Resolution on the International Situation of the 18th Congress of the ICC published in International Review n° 138.

[2]. "Capitalist convulsions and workers' struggles", International Review n° 59.

[3]. See for example "La récession de 1993 réexaminée", Persée, journal of the OECD, 1994, volume 49, n° 1.

[4]. They even bought up parts of it: the acquisition of Time Warner by the Internet company AOL, remains a symbol of the irrationality that gripped the bourgeoisie at this time.

[5]. "After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilisation and chaos", International Review n° 61.

In the first part of this series on the question of the environment, published in International Review n° 135, we looked at the current state of affairs and tried to show the nature of the threat facing the whole of humanity with the development on a planetary scale of phenomena such as:

• the growth of the greenhouse effect;
• the massive production of waste and the problem of dealing with it;
• the increasing dissemination of toxic products and the growing process of bio-concentration of toxins in the food chain;
• the exhaustion of natural resources and/or the fact that they are menaced by pollution.

We continue this series with a second article in which we will try to show that the problems of the environment are not the fault of a few individuals or enterprises which don't respect the law - even though, of course, particular individuals and enterprises do bear a level of responsibility - but that it is capitalism, with its logic of maximum profit, which is really responsible.

We will thus try to show, through a series of examples, how it is the specific mechanisms of capitalism which generate the most decisive ecological problems, independent of the will of this or that capitalist. Furthermore, the widely held idea that scientific developments will shield us from natural catastrophes and help us avoid environmental problems will be firmly opposed. In this article, we will show, by quoting at length from Bordiga, how modern capitalist technology is not really synonymous with safety and how the development of the sciences and of scientific research is not motivated by the satisfaction of human need but are subordinated to the capitalist imperative of realising the maximum profit; that they are subjected to the demands of capital and competition on the market and, when necessary, in the field of war. In a third and final article we will analyse the responses given by the different "Green" movements in order to demonstrate their total ineffectiveness, despite the good intentions of many of those who are active inside these movements, and to show that the only possible solution is the world communist revolution.

The identification of the problem and its causes

Who is responsible for the various environmental problems? The answer to this question is of the greatest importance, not only from the ethical or moral point of view, but also and above all because the correct or erroneous identification of the origin of the problem will lead either to the correct solution of the problem or into an impasse. We are first going to comment on a series of commonplaces, false responses or partial truths, none of which really succeed in identifying the origin of and responsibility for the growing degradation of the environment that we are facing every day, with the aim of showing how this process is the consequence, neither conscious nor willed, but objective, of the capitalist system.

"The problem is not as serious as they would have us believe"

Today as each government tries to be greener than the next, this idea, which was the prevailing one for many decades, is no longer the most common one to come from the mouths of the politicians. It nevertheless remains a classic position in the world of business, which, faced with the threat to workers, the population, or the environment posed by a particular form of economic activity, tends to minimise the gravity of the problem, quite simply because ensuring the safety of labour means spending more and extracting less profit from the workers. We see this every day with the hundreds of deaths at work, something that employers generally see as the result of Fate, when in fact it is a real product of the capitalist exploitation of labour power

"The problem exists but its origins are controversial"

For some, the huge quantity of waste produced by today's society is the fruit of "our" frenzy to consume. But the real issue here is an economic policy which, in order to make commodities more competitive, has for decades tried to minimise costs by using non-biodegradable packaging (see the previous article in this series).

Again, for some, the pollution of the planet is the result of a lack of civic responsibility, so the answer is to promote campaigns for cleaning up beaches, parks, etc, and for educating the population. In the same vein, governments are criticised for their inability to ensure that the laws of marine transport and so on are properly enforced. Or the problem is the mafia and its dangerous traffic in waste, as though it was the mafia which produced the waste and not the world of industry which, in order to reduce the costs of production, uses the mafia to do its dirty work. But then we are told: the responsibility may lie with industrialists, but only with the bad ones....

When, finally, we are faced with an episode like the fire at Thyssen Krupp in December 2007 in Turin, which cost the lives of 7 workers because of the total neglect of the norms of fire safety rules, there was a considerable wave of solidarity, but the dominant idea that arose was that if there are disasters, it's simply because there are unscrupulous businesses which try to enrich themselves at others' expense. But is this really the case? Are there, on the one side, nasty capitalists and on the other side those who are responsible capitalists who manage their enterprises well?

The system of capitalist production is responsible for the environmental catastrophe

All the societies based on exploitation, which came before capitalism, have made their contribution to the pollution of the planet, generally in relation to the process of production. Certain societies have exploited the resources at their disposal so excessively that they disappeared when the point of exhaustion was reached, as is probably the case with Easter Island (see the first article in this series). However, the damage cause by these societies could never put the very survival of life on the planet into question, as is the case today with capitalism. One reason for this is that having conquered the entire planet, the damage inflicted by capitalism now affects the entire globe. But this isn't an explanation in itself because the development of the productive forces does not necessarily mean that they have to escape human control. The key question here is how these productive forces are used and managed by society. Now, capitalism appears as the culmination of the historic development of the commodity, to the point where it constitutes a system of universal commodity production where everything is for sale. If society is plunged into chaos by the domination of commodity relations, which involves not just the phenomenon of pollution but also the accelerating impoverishment of the planet's resources, a growing vulnerability to "natural" disasters etc, then it's for a whole number of reasons which can be briefly summarised here:

• the division of labour and, even more, the reign of money and capital over production, which divides humanity into an infinity of competing units;
• the fact that the goal of production is not use value, but exchange value, commodities which must at all cost be sold, whatever the consequences for humanity and the planet, in order to realise a profit.

It is this necessity which, irrespective of the greater or lesser moral rectitude of this or that capitalist, forces them to adapt their enterprises to the logic of the maximum exploitation of the working class.

This leads to a vast waste and spoliation of human labour power and of the planet's resources, as Marx already showed in Capital Volume 1, chapter 15, section 10: "Modern Industry and Agriculture":

"In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organisation of labour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and independence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer."

The irrationality and absurdity of production under capitalism is shown by the fact that you can often find enterprises which make highly polluting chemical products and systems for purifying the soil and water of these same pollutants; others who make cigarettes and products that help you give up smoking; and others who control armaments sectors while at the same time turning out pharmaceuticals and medicines.

These are peaks which were not reached by previous societies, where goods were essentially produced for their use value - useful either for the producers, the exploited, or for enhancing the splendour of the ruling class.

The real nature of commodity production prevents the capitalists from being interested in the usefulness, the type or the composition of the goods produced. The only real interest is how to make money from them. This mechanism explains why so many commodities only have a limited usefulness, when they are not altogether useless.

Capitalist society is essentially based on competition; even when capitalists come to circumstantial agreements, they remain fundamentally and ferociously in competition with each other. The logic of the market implies that the good fortune of one means the bad fortune of another. This means that each capitalist produces for himself, that each one is the rival to all the rest and that there cannot be a real planning by all the capitalists locally or internationally, but only a permanent competition with winners and losers. And in this war, one of the losers is precisely nature.

In fact, in the choice of a site for a new industrial installation, or land for agricultural production, the enterprise only take its immediate interests into account and no place is reserved for ecological considerations. There is no organ centralised at the international level with the authority to give an orientation or impose limits and criteria to be respected. Under capitalism, decisions are taken solely with a view to realising the maximum profit, so that a particular capitalist can produce and sell in the most profitable manner or in the greatest quantities, or so that the state can impose norms which correspond to the interests of the national capital and thus of the totality of national capitalists.

Of course at the level of each country there is legislation which imposes certain constraints. When they become too restrictive, it is not uncommon for businesses to export part of its production to countries where the rules are less severe and where it can make a bigger profit. Thus, Union Carbide, an American multinational chemical firm, implanted one of its enterprises in Bhopal in India, without equipping itself with a refrigerating system. In 1984, this factory allowed a cloud of toxic chemicals of 40 tons of pesticides which either immediately or in the years that followed killed 16,000 people and caused irreversible damage to a million others (see previous article). As for regions and seas in the third world, they often constitute a cheap dumping ground, legal or not, for established companies in the more advanced countries, who use them to get rid of their dangerous or toxic waste, because it would cost them much more to dispose of the waste in their own countries.

As long as there is no industrial and agricultural planning, coordinated and centralised on an international scale, able to harmonise the needs of today with safeguarding the environment of tomorrow, then the mechanisms of capitalism will continue to destroy nature with all the dramatic consequences we have seen.

It is widely held that the responsibility for this state of affairs lies with the multinationals or a particular sector of industry, or it is simply attributed to the anonymous mechanisms of the free market.

But could the state put an end to this madness by being more interventionist? No, because the state can do no more than "regulate" this anarchy. By defending national interests, the state serves to strengthen competition. Contrary to the demands of the NGOs or the "anti-capitalist" movement, increased intervention by the state - something which in any case has never really let up despite appearances in the hey-day of "neo-liberalism", and which is now being shown by all the state interventionism we've seen in response to the current acceleration of the economic crisis - is not capable of overcoming the problem of capitalist anarchy.

Quantity against quality

The only concern of the capitalists is, as we have seen, to sell at a maximum profit. But the issue here is not the egoism of this or that capitalist but a law of the system from which no enterprise, large or small, can withdraw. The growing weight of the cost of industrial equipment means that the huge investments involved can only be made profitable by very widespread sales.

For example, Airbus, which makes planes, has to sell at least 600 of its gigantic A380 models before making a profit. Similarly, the car industry has to sell hundreds of thousands of cars to make up for the amount spent on the equipment needed to build them. In short, each capitalist has to sell as much as possible and is constantly on the hunt for new markets. But to make use of them he has to outdo his rivals on a glutted market, which means spending huge amounts on advertising, an enormous waste of human labour and of natural resources, for example the number of trees used to make millions of tons of sales brochures and leaflets.

These laws of the economy (which, by enforcing the reduction of costs, imply a diminution of the quality of products) mean that the capitalist is not at all concerned about the composition of his products and whether or not they may be dangerous. So although the risk of fossil fuels to health (as a cause of cancer for example) have been known for a long time, industry takes no real measures to palliate them. The risks associated with asbestos have also been known about for a long time. But only the illness and deaths of thousands of workers finally compelled the industry to react. Many foods are stuffed full of sugar, salt and monosodium glutamate in order to increase sales, with considerable consequences for health. An incredible quantity of additives have been put in food without any real understanding of the risk for consumers, even though many cancers can be attributed to diet.

Some notable irrationalities in production and marketing

One of the most irrational elements of the present system of production is the fact that commodities travel all round the planet before arriving on the market as a finished product. This is not linked to the nature of the commodities or a demand of production, but simply to the fact that it's cheaper to apply certain processes in particular countries. A well-known example is that of yoghurt: the milk is transported across the Alps, from Germany to Italy, where it is transformed into yoghurt and then transported back from Italy to Germany. Another example is the car, where very often each separate component comes from a different country in the world before it is actually assembled. Prior to being put on the market, its components have often travelled for thousands of miles by various means. In the same way, electronic goods or domestic appliances are made in China because the wages there are very low and because there is hardly any environmental protection, even when, from a technological point of view, it would have been easy to have made them in the countries where they are being sold. Often, the production process begins in the countries where they are going to be consumed before being relocated to other countries where the costs of production, above all wages, are lower.

We also have the example of wines that are produced in Chile, Australia or California and sold on European markets while grapes grown in Europe rot on the vine as a result of overproduction; or again there is the example of apples imported from Africa when European cultivators don't know what to do with their excess apple crop.

Thus, as a result of the logic of maximum profit to the detriment of rationality and the minimum expenditure of human energy and natural resources, commodities are made somewhere on the planet and then transported to another part in order to be sold. So there's nothing surprising about the fact that commodities with the same technological efficiency, like cars, are made in Europe to then be exported to Japan and the USA, while others cars are being made in Japan or Korea to be sold on the European market. This network of transporting commodities which are very often very similar to each other and which go from one country to another simply to obey the logic of profit, of competition and the laws of the market, is a total aberration and has disastrous consequences for the environment.

A rational planning of production and distribution would be able to make these goods available without going through these irrational journeys, expressions of the folly of capitalist production.

The basic antagonism between town and country

The destruction of the environment resulting from the pollution caused by the hypertrophy of transport is not a merely contingent phenomenon because it has its deepest roots in the antagonism between town and country. Originally, the division of labour within nations separated industry and commerce from agricultural labour. From this was born the opposition between town and country with the resulting conflicts of interests. Under capitalism this opposition has reached a paroxysm[1].

In the period of the agricultural exploitations of the Middle Ages, devoted to subsistence production, there was little necessity to transport commodities over long distances. At the beginning of the 19th century, when workers often lived close to the factory or mine, it was possible to go there on foot. Since then, however, the distance between your workplace and your home has increased. Furthermore, the concentration of capital in certain localities (as in the case of enterprises implanted in certain industrial zones or other inhabited areas, in order to take advantage of financial exemptions or low land prices), as well as deindustrialisation and the explosion of unemployment linked to the suppression of many kinds of jobs, have profoundly altered the whole physiognomy of transport.

Now, every day, hundreds of millions of workers have to travel long distances to get to work. Many of them have to use a car because public transport can't get them there.

But it's worse than that: the concentration of a vast mass of individuals in the same place has a series of consequences for public health and for the environment. Concentrations of 10-20 million people presuppose an accumulation of waste (faecal matter, household waste, emissions from vehicles, from industry and from heating) in a space which, however wide it is, is till going to be too small to really digest all this.

The nightmare of food and water shortages

With the development of capitalism, agriculture has been through the most profound changes in its 10,000 year history. This has come about because, under capitalism, contrary to previous modes of production where agriculture responded directly to needs, now agricultural producers have to submit to the laws of the world market, which means producing at a lower cost. The necessity to increase profitability has catastrophic consequences for the quality of the soil.

These consequences, which are inseparably linked to the appearance of a strong antagonism between town and country, were already being denounced by the workers' movement in the 19th century. We can see in the quote that follows how Marx pointed to the direct link between the exploitation of the working class and the pillaging of the soil:

"On the other hand, large landed property reduces the agricultural population to a constantly falling minimum, and confronts it with a constantly growing industrial population crowded together in large cities. It thereby creates conditions which cause an irreparable break in the coherence of social interchange prescribed by the natural laws of life. As a result, the vitality of the soil is squandered, and this prodigality is carried by commerce far beyond the borders of a particular state."[2]

Agriculture has had to constantly increase the use of chemical products in order to intensify the exploitation of the soil and to extend the area under cultivation. Thus, in most parts of the planet, peasants practice ways of cultivating which would be impossible without the import of large quantities of pesticides and fertilisers, or without irrigation, whereas in the past they could do without them or at least have less need for them. Planting medicinal herbs in California, citrus fruit in Israel, cotton around the Aral Sea in the former USSR, wheat in Saudi Arabia or Yemen, i.e. planting crops in regions which don't offer the natural conditions for growing them, leads to a huge waste of water. The list of examples is truly endless since today around 40% of agricultural products depend on irrigation, with the result that 75% of the world's drinkable water is used for agriculture.

For example, Saudi Arabia has spent a fortune on pumping water from an underground spring in order to make a million hectares of the desert capable of growing what. For each ton of what grown, the government supplies 3,000 cubic meters of water, more than three times what is actually necessary to grow this cereal. And the water comes from sources which are not fed by the rain. A third of all irrigation works on the planet use the water from underground springs. And even though these non-renewable sources are often drying up, the cultivators of the region of Gujarat, in India, for example, deprived of rainwater, persist in the raising of milk cows, which requires 2,000 litres of water to produce just one litre of milk! In certain regions of the Earth, the production of one kilo of rice requires up to 3,000 litres of water. The consequences of irrigation and the generalised use of chemical products are disastrous: the land is inundated with salt, or overdosed with fertilisers; desertification, soil erosion, major falls in the water levels in springs and consequent reduction in reserves of drinking water.

Waste, urbanisation, drought and pollution are sharpening the worldwide water crisis. Millions and millions of litres of water are evaporating by being transported in open irrigation canals. The zones around the mega-cities, above all, but also whole regions of the planet, are seeing their water reserves falling rapidly and irreversibly.

In the past, China was the country of hydrology. Its economy and civilisation developed thanks to its capacity to irrigate arid lands and to build barrages that could protect flood regions. But in today's China, the waters of the mighty Yellow River, the great artery of the North, don't reach the sea for several months of the year. 400-600 cities in China are short of water. A third of China's wells have run dry. In India, 30% of cultivable land is threatened with turning into salt. In the whole world, around 25% of agricultural land faces the same threat.

But the cultivation of agricultural products in regions which are not adapted to it because of their climate or the dryness of their soil is not the only absurdity of today's agriculture. In particular, because of the shortage of water, the control of rivers and dykes has become a basic strategic question, leading national states to intervene heavy-handedly with no regard for the impact on nature.

More than 80 countries have already expressed their concerns about water shortages. According to a UN forecast, the number of people facing water shortages will reach 5.4 billion in the next 25 years. Despite the availability of agricultural land, the really cultivatable areas are constantly diminishing as a result of salinity and other factors. In earlier societies, nomadic tribes had to move on when water became scarce. Under capitalism, the most basic foodstuffs are in short supply at the same time as we have overproduction. Thus, as a result of the enormous damage done by modern agriculture, food shortages are inevitable. After 1984, for example, the worldwide production of cereals did not keep up with the growth of the world population. In the space of 20 years, this production has fallen further from 343 kg per person per year to 303.

Thus the spectre that has always accompanied humanity since its origins, the nightmare of hunger, seems to be returning in force, not through lack of cultivable land or lack of tools and methods at the service of agriculture, but because of the totally irrational use of the planet's resources.

More advanced technology is no guarantee of greater safety

While it's true that the development of science and technology puts at humanity's disposal instruments which were unimaginable in the past and which make it possible to foresee natural disasters and prevent accidents, it's also true that the use of these technologies is expensive and is only put into effect when here is an economic benefit. We want to stress once again that it's not the wanton egoism of this or that enterprise which is the issue here, but a necessity imposed on any enterprise or country to reduce the cost of producing goods and services to a minimum in order to cope with global competition.

In our press, we have often raised this problem, showing how so-called natural disasters are not due to chance or Fate, but are the logical result of the reduction of preventative and safety measures in order to make cost savings. This is what we wrote for example about the catastrophe brought about by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005:

"The argument that this disaster was unanticipated is equally nonsense. For nearly 100 years, scientists, engineers and politicians have debated how to cope with New Orleans' vulnerability to hurricanes and flooding. In the mid-1990s, several rival plans were developed by different groups of scientists and engineers, which finally led to a 1998 proposal (during the Clinton administration) called Coast 2050. This plan called for strengthening and reengineering the existing levees, constructing a system of floodgates, and the digging of new channels that bring sediment-bearing water to restore the depleted wetland buffer zones in the delta, and had a price tag of $14 billion dollars to be invested over a ten year period. It failed to win approval in Washington, on Clinton's watch, not Bush's.  Last year, the Army Corps requested $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans, but the government approved only $42 million.  Yet at the same time, Congress approved $231 million for the construction of a bridge to a small, uninhabited island in Alaska."[3]

We also denounced the cynicism and responsibility of the bourgeoisie in the case of the 160,000 deaths that followed the tsunami on 26 December 2004.

In fact, it is clearly and officially recognised today that the tsunami alert was not sent out for fear of ...damaging the tourist industry! In other words: tens of thousand of human lives were sacrificed to defend sordid economic and financial interests.

The irresponsibility of governments in these situations is a new illustration of the mode of life of this class of sharks which runs the productive activity of society. Bourgeois states are ready to sacrifice as many human lives as is necessary to preserve capitalist exploitation and profit.

It is always capitalist interests which dictate the policy of the ruling class, and under capitalism prevention is not a profitable activity, as the media now recognise: "Countries in the region have so far turned a deaf ear to installing a warning system given the enormous financial cost. According to the experts, a warning system would cost millions of dollars, but it would make it possible to save thousands of human lives."[4]

We could also take the example of the oil that is spilled into the sea every year (both intentionally and accidentally); we are talking about 3 to 4 million tons of oil a year. According to a report by Legambiente: "In analysing the causes of these incidents, it is possible to estimate that 64% of these cases can be put down to human error, 16% to mechanical breakdown and 10% to the problem of the structure of boats, while 10% cannot be put down to a definite cause."[5]

We can easily understand that when human error is cited - as for example in the case of railway accidents attributed to train drivers - they are talking about errors made by an operative because he is working in conditions of exhaustion and stress. Furthermore, the oil companies have the habit of using old and decrepit tankers to carry oil because, if they sink, they will only incur the cost of a penalty, whereas acquiring a new boat would cost a lot more. This is why the spectacle of tankers which break up very near coastlines and spill their whole cargo has become a regular occurrence. We can say, taking all this into account, that at least 90% of "black seas" are the result of a total lack if vigilance by the oil companies, and that this, once again, is the result of their interest in keeping costs to the minimum and profits to the maximum.

We are indebted to Amadeo Bordiga[6], writing in the period following World War Two, for a systematic, incisive, profound and well-argued condemnation of the disasters caused by capitalism. In the preface to the book Drammi gialli e sinistri della moderna decadenza sociale, a collection of articles by Bordiga, we read: "as capitalism develops then rots on its feet, it more and more prostitutes techniques which could have a liberating role to its need for exploitation, domination and imperialist plunder, to the point where it transmits its own rottenness into them and turns them against the species. In all areas of daily life, in the ‘peaceful' phases between two imperialist massacres or in between two operations of repression, capitalism, ceaselessly spurred on by the search for a better rate of profit, crowds together, poisons, asphyxiates, mutilates and massacres human individuals through such prostituted technology...Neither is capitalism innocent of the so-called ‘natural' catastrophes. Without ignoring the existence of natural forces beyond human control, marxism shows that many disasters have been indirectly provoked or aggravated by social causes.... Not only does bourgeois civilisation directly provoke these catastrophes through its thirst for profit and the domination of business interests over the administrative machine...it also shows itself incapable of organising effective protection to the extent that prevention is not a profitable activity".[7]

Bordiga demystifies the legend that "contemporary capitalist society, with the joint development of sciences, technique and production will put the human species in an excellent position for struggling against the difficulties of the natural milieu."[8] In fact, as Bordiga adds "while it is true that the industrial and economic potential of the capitalist world is growing and not declining, it is also true that the greater its strength, the worse are the living conditions of masses of human beings in the face of natural and historical cataclysms"[9]. To demonstrate his argument, Bordiga analyses a whole series of disasters around the world, showing each time that they were not the result of chance or Fate, but of capitalism's intrinsic tendency to draw the maximum profit by investing as little as possible, as in the case of the sinking of the Flying Enterprise

"The brand new luxury boat made by Carlsen to shine like a mirror, and supposedly ultra-safe, had a flat keel...how was it that the very modern Flying Enterprise was constructed with a flat keel, like a lake-going barge? A newspaper put it succinctly: to reduce the costs of production...Here is the key to all modern applied science. Its studies, its research, its calculations, its innovations have one goal: to reduce costs and increase income. Hence the splendid salons with their mirrors and hangings to attract the better off customer, and the rotten stinginess of the mechanical structures in their weight and dimensions. This tendency characterises all modern engineering, from building to machinery, i.e. the key thing is to look rich, to ‘ape the bourgeois', using finishing touches and additions that any idiot can admire (given that he has a cheap culture acquired in the cinema or glossy magazines), while indecently skimping on the solidity of the basic structures which are invisible and incomprehensible to the profane".[10]  

The fact that the disasters analysed by Bordiga did not have ecological consequences doesn't change anything. Through this example, and others referred to in the preface to his articles in Espèce humaine et croût terretre which we will come to, we can easily imagine the effects of the same capitalist logic when they operate in an area that has a direct impact on the environment, as for example in the maintenance of nuclear reactors:

"In the 1960s, several British Comet aircraft, the last word in sophisticated technology, exploded in mid-air, killing everyone on board: the long inquiry eventually revealed that the explosions were due to metal fatigue in the frame - the metal had been too thin because it was necessary to economise on metal, the effectiveness of reactors and production costs in general in order to increase profit. In 1974, the explosion of a DC10 over Ermenoville left more than 300 dead: it was known that the system for closing the baggage hold was defective but re-doing it would have cost money...but the most astonishing things was reported by the British journal The Economist (24.9.77): after the discovery of cracks in the metal of six Trident planes and the inexplicable explosion of a Boeing: according to the ‘new thinking' presiding over construction of transport planes, these were no longer taken in for a complete check-up after a certain number of flying hours but were marked ‘safe'...until the appearance of the first cracks resulting from metal fatigue. They could therefore be used to the maximum, whereas calling them in for a check-up would have meant the companies losing money."[11]   

In the previous article in this series we have already referred to the case of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986. In essence, we're dealing with the same problem, and this also applies to the Three Mile Island disaster in the USA in 1979.

Science in the service of the development of capitalist society

Understanding the role played by technology and science within capitalist society is of the greatest importance when it comes to answering whether they can constitute a starting point for preventing the advance of the ecological catastrophe we are facing and for struggling against some of the consequences that are already with us.

If, as we have seen, technology has been prostituted by the demands of the market, does the same go for science and scientific research? Is it possible for the latter to remain outside of any kind of partisan interest?

To reply to this question, we have to begin from the recognition that science is a productive force, that its development allows society as a whole to develop more rapidly, to increase its resources. The control of the development of the sciences is not and cannot be a matter of indifference to those who manage the economy, at the level both of the state and of business. This is why scientific research, and certain areas of it in particular, receives important financial backing. Science is not - and could never be in a class society like capitalism - a neutral terrain where there is freedom of research without interference by economic interests, for the simple reason that the ruling class has everything to gain from subjecting science to its own interests. We can really say that the development of science and of knowledge in the capitalist epoch did not come about as a result of an autonomous, independent dynamic but from the start has been subordinated to the objective of realising maximum profits.

This has very important consequences that only rarely emerge clearly. Let's take the development of modern medicine for example. The medical study and treatment of the human being has been fragmented into dozens of different specialisms, without any vision of the functioning of the human organism as a whole. Why have we come to this? Because the main goal of medicine in the capitalist world is not that each person lives well, but to repair the "human machine" when it breaks down and to fix it as quickly as possible so it can be sent back to work. In this framework, we can understand very well the massive resort to antibiotics and to diagnoses which always look for the causes of illnesses in specific factors rather than in the general conditions of life of the person being examined.

Another consequence of the dependence of scientific development on the logic of capital is that research is constantly pushed towards the production of new materials (more resistant, less expensive) whose impact from the toxicological point of view has never been seen as a big problem...for now, which means that little or nothing is spent on trying to eliminate or render harmless whatever is dangerous in these products. But then decades later the bill has to be paid, most often in damage to human beings.

The strongest link is the one between scientific research and the needs of the military sector and war. Here we can look at a few concrete examples of different scientific domains, in particular the one which might seem to be the "purest" scientifically speaking - mathematics

In the quotations that follow, we can see just how far scientific development has been subordinated to the control of the state and to military needs, to the point where, in the post-war period, we saw a whole blossoming of "commissions" of scientists who were working in secret for the military complex by giving a major part of their time to it, while other scientists knew nothing about the real aim of their research.

"The importance of mathematics for the offices of the war fleet and artillery required a specific education in mathematics; thus, from the 17th century on, the most important group that could claim a knowledge of mathematics, at least in its basics, was the army officers...In the Great War, many new weapons were created and perfected during the course of the war - planes, submarines, sonar equipment to combat the latter, chemical weapons. After some hesitation on the part of the military apparatuses, numerous scientists were employed to try to develop the military sphere, even if it was not to do research but to act as creative engineers at the highest level...In 1944, too late to be effective during the Second War, the Matematisches Forschunginstitut Oberwolfach was created in Germany. This was not set up for the pleasure of German mathematicians, but it was a very well thought-out structure, whose aim was to make the whole mathematics sector a ‘useful' one: the nucleus was made up of a small group of mathematicians who were completely up-to-date with the problems facing the military, and thus in a position to detect problems that could be solved mathematically. Around this nucleus, other mathematicians, very competent and very knowledgeable about the milieu of mathematics, had to translate these problems into mathematical ones and in this form pass them on to specialised mathematicians (who didn't need to understand the military problem behind it, or even to know about it). Afterwards, the result obtained, the solution would be passed back through the network.

"In the USA, a similar structure, even if it was somewhat improvised, was already operating around Marston Morse during the war. In the post-war period, an analogous structure, this time not improvised, was formed by the Wisconsin Army Mathematics Research Centre.

"The advantage of such structures is that they allow the military machine to exploit the abilities of many mathematicians without needing to ‘have them at home', with all that this implies: contracts, necessity for consensus and subordination, etc"[12] 

In 1943, in the USA, research groups were set up, specifically focused on areas such as submarine warfare, the protection of naval convoys, the choice of air raid targets, or the tracking and intercepting of enemy aircraft. During the Second World War more than 700 mathematicians were employed in the UK, Canada and the US:

"Compared to British research, American research has from the beginning been characterised by a more sophisticated use of mathematics and, in particular, the calculation of probabilities and the more frequent recourse to modelling...operations research (which in the 1950s became an autonomous branch of applied mathematics) thus took its first steps through examining strategic difficulties and ways of optimising military resources. What are the best aerial combat tactics? What is the best way of deploying a certain number of soldiers at certain points of attack? How can we distribute rations to soldiers with the least possible waste?"[13]

"The Manhattan Project was the signal for a major turn-around, not only because it concentrated the work of thousands of scientists and technicians from numerous areas around a single project, directed and controlled by the military, but also because it represented an enormous leap for fundamental research, inaugurating what was thereafter known as Big Science...The enrolment of the scientific community for work on a precise project under the direct control of the military, had been an emergency measure, but couldn't last forever, for a number of reasons (the least of which was ‘freedom of research' claimed by the scientists). But the Pentagon could not afford to give up on this precious and indispensable cooperation of the scientific community, nor renounce a form of control over its activity: by the force of events, it was necessary to put forward a different strategy and change the terms of the problem...In 1959, on the initiative of a number of recognised scientists, consultants to the US government, a semi-permanent group of experts was created, a group which held regular study meetings. This group was given the name ‘The Jason Division', from the hero of Greek mythology who went with the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece. This was an elite group of 50 eminent scientists, among them several Nobel Prize winners, who met every summer for several weeks to examine in complete liberty problems linked to security, defence and arms control. This was arranged by the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and other Federal agencies; they supplied detailed reports, to a large extent secret, which directly influenced national policy. The Jason Division played a key role, along with Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, during the Vietnam war, furnishing three particularly important reports which had an impact on US concepts and strategy: on the effectiveness of strategic bombing in cutting off Vietcong supply routes, on the construction of an electronic barrier across Vietnam, and on tactical nuclear weapons".[14]   

These long quotations should help us understand that science today is one of the foundation stones for maintaining the status quo of the capitalist system. The important role it played during the Second World War, as we have just seen, has only grown with time, however much the bourgeoisie tries to hide it.

In conclusion, what we have tried to show is how ecological catastrophes, even if they can be unleashed by natural phenomena, are descending ferociously on the populations of the world, above all the most deprived ones; and that this comes from a conscious choice of the ruling class with regard to sharing out resources and using scientific research itself. The idea that modernisation, the development of science and technology are automatically associated with the degradation of the environment and the greater exploitation of man must therefore be categorically rejected. On the contrary, there is a huge potential for the development of human resources, not only at the level of producing goods but, and this is what counts, as regards the possibility of producing in another way, in harmony with the environment and the welfare of the ecosystem that man belongs to. The perspective is therefore not one of returning to the past by invoking a futile and impossible return to an original state where the environment was much less affected by human activity. On the contrary, it is one of going forward in a different way, of developing in a way that is really in harmony with the planet Earth.

Ezechiele 5 April 2009  

 

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[1]. The 20th century saw an explosion of mega-cities. At the beginning of the century, there were only six cities with more than a million inhabitants; in the middle of the century, there were only four cities with over five million inhabitants. Before the Second World War, the mega-cities were a phenomenon seen only in the industrialised countries. Today the majority of these mega-cities are concentrated in the peripheral countries. In some of them, the population has multiplied tenfold in a few decades. Today, half of the world's population lives in cities: in 2020, it will be two thirds. But none of these huge cities, which may have an influx of immigrants of more than 5,000 a day, is really capable of dealing with this increase in population, which means that the immigrants, who can't really be integrated into the social tissue of the city, end up swelling the slums on the outskirts, where there is a total lack of infrastructure and services.

[2]. Capital, Volume III, Chapter 47, Section V.

[3]. "Hurricane Katrina: Capitalism is responsible for the social disaster", International Review n° 123.

[4]. Les Échos, 30.12 - see "Raz-de-marée meutriers en Asie du Sud-est; la vrai catastrophe sociale, c'est le capitalisme!" Révolution Internationale n° 353.

 

[5]. www.legambientearcipelagotoscano.it/globalmente/petrolio/incident.htm [66].

[6]. Bordiga: leader of the left wing of the Communist Party of Italy, who contributed a great deal to its foundation in 1921 and who was expelled in 1930 after the process of Stalinisation. Participated actively in the foundation of the Internationalist Communist Party in 1945.

[7]. (Anonymous) Preface to Drammi gialli e sinistri dell moderna decadenza sociale by Amadeo Bordiga, Iskra editions, pp 6-9. In French in the preface to Espèce humaine et croûte terestre, Petite Bibliotehque Payot 1978, pp 7, 9 and 10. An English version of some of Bordiga's writings on disasters can be found in Murdering the Dead, Amadeo Bordiga on capitalism and other disasters, Antagonism Press 2001.

[8]. Battaglia Comunista n° 23, 1951 and also on p.19 of Drammi gialli.

[9]. Ibid.

[10]. Bordiga, "Politica e ‘construzione'", published in Prometeo series II, n° 304 and again in Drammi gialli, pp 62-63

[11]. Preface to Espèce humaine....

[12]. Jens Hoyrup, University of Roskilde, Denmark. "Mathematics and war", Palermo Conference 15 May 2003. Cahiers de la recherche en didactique, n°13, GRIM (Department of Mathematics, University of Palermo, Italy) math.unips.it/-grim/Horyup_mat_guerra_quad13.pdf.

[13]. Annaratone, www.scienzaesperienza.it/news.php?/id=0057 [67].

[14]. Angelo Baracca, "Fisica fondamentale, ricerca e realizzazione di nuove armi nucleari.".

The decade from 1914 to 1923 was one of the most intense periods in the history of mankind. This short lapse of time saw the terrible slaughter of the First World War, which ended thirty years of prosperity and uninterrupted progress for the capitalist economy and society as a whole. In the face of this hecatomb, the international proletariat rose up with, at its head, the Russian workers in 1917, and it was not until 1923 that echoes of this revolutionary wave began to fade, crushed by the bourgeois reaction. These ten years saw the world war, which opened up the period of capitalist decadence, the revolution in Russia and revolutionary attempts worldwide and, finally, the start of the barbarous bourgeois counter-revolution. Capitalist decadence, world war, revolution and counter-revolution marked the economic, social, cultural and psychological life of humanity for nearly a century, and they all took place within a single decade.

It is vital for the present generation to know and understand this decade, to think about what it represents and learn lessons from it. It is vital because there is a huge ignorance of its real meaning today, owing to the lies with which the dominant ideology has tried to obscure it, as well as the attitude it promotes, consciously or unconsciously, of living in the present moment and forgetting both the past and any perspective for the future.[1]

This fixation on the immediate and circumstantial, this "living in the here and now" without reflecting on or understanding its roots, without framing it in a future perspective, makes it very difficult to understand the real nature of these ten incredible years, and so by making a critical study of them we should be able to help clarify  the  current situation.

Today it's hard to imagine the huge shock that people must have experienced at the start of the First World War, with the qualitative leap into barbarism that it represented.[2] Today, after nearly a century of imperialist wars with their share of terror, destruction and above all the worst ideological and psychological brutality, it all seems to be "the most natural thing in the world", and it's as if we are not disturbed or angered by it or want to revolt against it. But this was not at all the attitude of people living through these events; they were profoundly shaken by the savagery of the war, which was unlike anything that had gone before.

It's even less understood that this terrible slaughter was brought to an abrupt end with the widespread revolt of the international proletariat, with its Russian brothers at the head.[3]  Little is known of the enormous sympathy that the Russian revolution aroused among the exploited of the world.[4] There is a heavy blanket of silence and misinformation surrounding the many episodes of solidarity with the Russian workers, and the many attempts to follow their lead and extend the revolution internationally. The atrocities committed by the various democratic governments, particularly by the German government, in order to crush the revolutionary movement of the masses are again little known to most people. The worst deformation of all concerns the October revolution of 1917. This is commonly presented as a Russian phenomenon, totally isolated from the historic context we have set out above, and on this basis it has given free rein to the worst lies and most absurd speculation: that it was the work - brilliant according to the Stalinists, diabolical according to its detractors - of Lenin and the Bolsheviks; that it was a bourgeois revolution in response to tsarist backwardness; that in this country the socialist revolution was impossible, and only the Bolsheviks' fanatical determination led it in the direction  where it could only end up as it did.

From this premise we are led to see in the international repercussions of the revolution of October 1917 a model to be exported to other countries; this is the deformation most commonly used by Stalinism. This notion of a "model" is doubly wrong and pernicious. On the one hand, the Russian revolution is seen as a national phenomenon and, on the other, it is conceived as a "social experiment" that can be carried out at will by any group that is sufficiently motivated and experienced.

This approach grossly distorts the reality of this historic period. The Russian revolution was not a laboratory experiment carried out within the four walls of its immense territory. It was an active and living part of a worldwide proletarian response provoked by capitalism's entry into the war and the terrible suffering that it caused. The Bolsheviks did not have the least intention of imposing a fanatical model, with the Russian people as the guinea pigs. A resolution adopted by the party in April 1917 stated that: "...‘the objective conditions of the socialist revolution, which were undoubtedly present before the war in the most advanced countries, have ripened further and continue to ripen further in consequence of the war with extreme rapidity'; that ‘the Russian revolution is only the first stage in the first of the proletarian revolutions inevitably resulting from the war'; and that common action by the workers of different countries was the only way to guarantee ‘the most regular development and the surest success of the world socialist revolution'."[5]

It is important to understand that bourgeois history underestimates - when it does not distort it completely - the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. And Stalinism equally joins in with this distortion. For example at the enlarged meeting of Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1925, that is to say at the beginning of Stalinisation, the German revolution was described as a "bourgeois revolution", throwing into the dustbin everything the Bolsheviks had defended from 1917 to 1923.[6]

This "opinion", which is broadcast widely today as much by historians as by politicians about this period, wasn't at all shared by their counterparts back then. Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, said in 1919: "The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent but also of anger and revolt amongst the workmen against conditions following the war. The existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other."[7]

The Russian revolution can only be understood as part of a world revolutionary attempt by the whole international proletariat, but this requires us to take into consideration the historical epoch that produced it, and recognise the deeper meaning of the outbreak of the First World War; that is to say, as the start of capitalism's historic decline, its decadent phase. Otherwise, the foundation of a real understanding is lost, and it has no meaning. And the world war and all subsequent events are meaningless since they appear either as exceptional events that have no consequences, or as the result of an unfortunate situation that is now past, so that events today have no connection with what happened then.

Our articles are written to debunk these conceptions. They are based on the historical and global perspective characteristic of marxism. We believe we can provide a coherent explanation of this historical period, an explanation that will provide a perspective and offer material to stimulate reflection about the current situation and point the way ahead for humanity to free itself from the yoke of capitalism. Otherwise, the situation both then and now is robbed of meaning and perspective, and the activities of all those who want to contribute to a world revolution are condemned to the most basic empiricism and to wearing themselves out by shooting in the dark.

The proposed theme of these articles, in continuity with the many contributions we have already made, is an attempt to reconstruct this period using the testimonies and the stories of the protagonists themselves.[8]

We have devoted many pages to the revolutions in Russia and in Germany.[9] Therefore, we are publishing this work on lesser-known experiences in various countries with the aim of giving a global perspective. Studying this period a little, one is astonished by the number of struggles that took place, by the magnitude of the echo from the revolution of 1917.[10] We consider the scope of this series of articles as open and therefore as an invitation to debate, and we welcome any contributions from comrades and from revolutionary groups.

ICC.

 

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[1]. An historian who is reasonably serious and penetrating in many ways, Eric Hobsbawm, recognises in his history of the 20th Century that "The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one's contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late Twentieth Century. Most young men and women at the century's end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any relation to the public past of the times they live in" (The Age of Extremes, Abacus History Greats, page 3).

[2]. We find evidence of the way in which the world war upset its contemporaries in Sigmund Freud's article "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death" in 1915, in which he points out the following: "In the confusion of wartime in which we are caught up, relying as we must on one-sided information, standing too close to the great changes that have already taken place or are beginning to, and without a glimmering of the future that is being shaped, we ourselves are at a loss as to the significance of the impressions which bear down upon us and as to the value of the judgements which we form. We cannot but feel that no event has ever destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest. Science herself has lost her passionless impartiality; her deeply embittered servants seek for weapons from her with which to contribute towards the struggle with the enemy. Anthropologists feel driven to declare that enemy inferior and degenerate, psychiatrists issue a diagnosis of his disease of mind or spirit." (https://www.panarchy.org/freud/war.1915.html [71]).

[3]. The history books make a study of the military evolution of the war and, when they arrive at 1917 and 1918, suddenly insert the Russian revolution and the insurrectionary movement in Germany in 1918, as if these were events from another planet. We can see, for example, the article on the First World War from Wikipedia, which has the reputation as an alternative encyclopaedia.

[4]. Today the vast majority of anarchist ideologues denigrate the 1917 revolution and shower the Bolsheviks with the worst insults. However, this was not the case in 1917-21. In "The CNT faced with war and revolution" (International Review n° 129) we show how many Spanish anarchists - while maintaining their own criteria and with a critical spirit - supported the Russian revolution enthusiastically and, in an editorial in Solidaritad, the CNT paper, we read: "The Russians are showing us the way to go. The Russian people are winning: we are learning from their actions in order to win in our turn, in taking by force what they refuse to give us". Elsewhere Manuel Bonacasa, well renowned anarchist, says the following in his memoirs: "Who in Spain - as an anarchist - would scorn to call himself a Bolshevik?" Emma Goldman, an American anarchist, points out in her book Living my Life: "The American press, never able to see beneath the surface, denounced the October upheaval as German propaganda, and its protagonists, Lenin, Trotsky and their co-workers, as the Kaiser's hirelings. For months the scribes fabricated fantastic inventions about Bolshevik Russia. Their ignorance of the forces that led up to the October Revolution was as appalling as their puerile attempts to interpret the movement headed by Lenin. Hardly a single newspaper evidenced the least understanding of Bolshevism as a social conception entertained by men of brilliant minds, with the zeal and courage of martyrs. ... It was the more urgent for the anarchists and other real revolutionists to take up cudgels for the vilified men and their part in hastening events in Russia." (Living my life, Penguin Classics, page 362). [The French version of this article refers to "L'épopée d'une anarchiste" a translation/adaptation by Cathy Bernheim and Annette Levy-Willard who are very conscious of their treason when they write: "If she met us today, she would probably regard us with distrust for our ‘adaptation' ... Such would without doubt have been her appreciation of our work. But the only thing that Emma Goldman, fanatic for liberty, could not reproach us for is having made a free adaptation of her memoirs." Proof of this "free treason" is found in the fact that after the first sentence this passage only appears in a watered down version in the book by these ladies, and had to be translated from the original by our comrades.]

[5]. Quoted by E.H. Carr in The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-23: History of Soviet Russia, Norton edition, pages 83-4.

[6]. In The International Workers' Movement volume 4, published by Progress in Moscow, there is a note that: "at the start of the Second World War, as a result of broad discussions in Marxist historiography, it was decided that the revolutions of 1918-19 in countries of central Europe were completely bourgeois democratic (or national democratic) revolutions", (page 277 of the Spanish edition).

[7]. E.H Carr, op cit, volume 3, page 128.

[8]. In the preface to the book already quoted from, Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, the author reflects on the correct method for analysing historical facts. Criticising the supposedly "neutral and objective" approach advocated by the French historian who asserts that "a historian must climb the ramparts of the threatened and, from there regard the besiegers as the besieged", Trotsky replies that: "The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a scientific conscientiousness which for its sympathies and antipathies - open and undisguised - seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the casual laws of their movement. That is the only possible historic objectivism, and moreover it is amply sufficient, for it is verified and attested not by the good intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but by the natural laws revealed by him of the historic process itself."

[9]. For a knowledge of the Russian Revolution, there are two books that are classics in the workers' movement: Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and the famous book by John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World.

[10]. The book by E.H. Carr, mentioned above, quotes another statement by Lloyd George in 1919: "If military action was taken against the Bolsheviks, then England would become Bolshevik and there would be a soviet in London", and to this the author adds: "Lloyd George was speaking as usual to create a stir but his shrewd mind had correctly diagnosed the symptoms ".

The example of Russia 1917 inspired the workers in Hungary

 

The revolutionary attempt by the Hungarian proletariat had a strong international motivation. It was the result of two factors: the unbearable situation provoked by war and the example of the revolution of October 1917.

As we said in the introduction to this section, the First World War was an explosion of barbarism. In some ways, the "peace" was even worse; a peace signed in haste by the major capitalist powers in November 1918 when the revolution broke out in Germany.[1] It did not bring any relief to the suffering masses or a decrease in the chaos and disruption of social life that the war had caused. Winter 1918 and spring 1919 were a nightmare: there was famine, paralysis of the transport system, deranged conflicts between politicians, military occupation of the conquered countries, war against Soviet Russia, extreme disorder at all levels of society and the rapid spread of an epidemic called Spanish flu, that caused as many deaths as the war, if not more... In the eyes of the population, the "peace" was worse than the war.

The economic apparatus had been stretched to its extreme limit, which produced a strange phenomenon of under-production, as Béla Szantò outlines for Hungary:[2] "As a result of the effort put into war production, driven by the quest for super-profits, the means of production were left completely worn out and machines out of action. Their conversion would have required huge investments when there was absolutely no possibility of money being available. There were no raw materials. The factories were shut down. After demobilisation, with the factories closed, there was huge unemployment."[3]

The Times of London declared (19/07/19): "The spirit of disorder reigns over the whole world, from America in the west to China in the east, from the Black Sea to the Baltic; no society, no civilisation, as strong as it is, no constitution as democratic as it is, can escape this malign influence. Everywhere there are signs of the collapse of the most basic social bonds, caused by this prolonged tension."[4] In this context, the example set in Russia provoked a wave of enthusiasm and hope for the world's proletariat. The workers had an antidote to the deadly virus of a capitalism deep in chaos: the world revolutionary struggle, taking its lead from the example of October 1917.

The democratic republic of October 1918

Hungary, which was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and one of the losers in the war, suffered as the situation worsened, but the proletariat - heavily concentrated in Budapest with one seventh of the country's population and almost 80% of its industry there - proved itself to be highly combative.

A period of apathy had ensued after the uprisings of 1915 were crushed with the scandalous help of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with some hesitant reactions in 1916 and 1917. But in January 1918, the social agitation led to what was probably the first international mass strike in history, which extended across many central European countries from its epicentres in Vienna and Budapest. It started in Budapest on January 14th; moved to Lower Austria and Styria by the 16th, to Vienna by the 17th and on the 23rd into the large armaments factories of Berlin, with numerous echoes in Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Croatia.[5] The struggle was focused around three aims: against the war, against food shortages, and in solidarity with the Russian revolution. Two common slogans were raised in numerous languages: "Down with the war" and  "Long live the Russian proletariat".

In Budapest, the strike erupted beyond the control of the Social Democrat leaders and the unions, and in numerous factories, enthused by the Russian example, resolutions were voted in favour of workers' councils... without any success in actually setting them up. The movement wasn't organised, which gave the unions the opportunity to take control and impose their own demands, particularly for universal suffrage, with disregard for the concerns of the masses. The government attempted to overpower the strike using troops armed with artillery and machine guns. The lack of success of this show of force and the growing doubts of the soldiers who did not want to fight at the Front and even less against the workers dissuaded the government which, in 24 hours, changed its mind and "conceded" to the demands - but only those of the unions and the Social Democrats - for universal suffrage.

Encouraged by this success, the unions went back into the factories to take control of the strike. They got a cool reception. However, fatigue, the lack of news from Austria and Germany and the gradual resumption of work in the most vulnerable sectors, dented the morale of the workers in the big metalworks who finally decided to return to work.

Strengthened by this victory, the Social Democrats "led a campaign of reprisals against all those committed to reviving revolutionary class struggle amongst the masses. In the Népszava - the main publication of the party - defamatory articles and even denunciations appeared that provided an abundance of ammunition for political persecutions by the reactionary government of Wkerle-Vaszonyi".[6]

The agitation continued despite the repression. In May, soldiers of the regiment at Ojvideck mutinied against being sent to the Front. They took control of the main telephone exchange and the railway station. The workers of the town supported them. The government sent two special regiments that bombarded the city for three days before taking back control. The repression was pitiless: one soldier in ten - whether part of the mutiny or not - was shot, and thousands were imprisoned.

In June, police fired on striking workers from a metalworks in the capital, leaving many dead and wounded. The workers quickly went to the neighbouring factories, which stopped work straight away and came out onto the streets. The whole of Budapest was paralysed in a few hours. The next day, the strike spread across the whole country. Impromptu assemblies, in a revolutionary atmosphere, decided on what measures to take The government arrested the delegates, sending the most implicated workers to the Front, and put the tramways back into operation using strike-breakers, each escorted by a squad of soldiers with bayonets at the ready. After eight days of struggle, the strike ended in defeat.

However, consciousness was developing inside the class: "Little by little, in numerous workers' circles there was a growing belief that the policy of the SDP and the stand taken by the Party leaders was not giving them support and was not in favour of revolution (...). The revolutionary forces had begun to come together; contacts were being established between workers in the big factories. The meetings and the secret deliberations were taking place on a semi-permanent basis and the outlines of independent proletarian political positions were being drawn up."[7] These workers' circles came to be known as the Revolutionary Group.

Mutinies by soldiers were becoming more and more frequent despite repression. Strikes were happening daily. The government - incapable of conducting a lost war, with its army more and more in retreat, disorganised, its economy paralysed and with a complete lack of provisions - collapsed. In such a dangerous power vacuum, the SDP, once again showing which side it was on, decided to bring the bourgeois parties together in a National Council.

On October 28th the Soldiers' Council co-ordinating with the Revolutionary Group organised a large demonstration in Budapest with the intention of marching on the Citadel to present a letter to the Royal representative. There was an enormous cordon of soldiers and police. The soldiers moved aside to let the crowd pass but the police opened fire, killing many people. "The anger at the police was indescribable. The following day workers in the armaments factory broke open the stores and armed themselves."[8]

The government attempted to send out of Budapest military units that had been in the avant-garde of the Soldiers' Councils, which caused a general uproar: thousands of workers and soldiers assembled in Rakóczi Street - the main artery of the city - to prevent their departure. One company of soldiers with orders to depart refused, and joined with the crowd outside the Astoria Hotel. Near midnight, the two main telephone exchanges were seized.

In the morning and during the following day, groups of armed soldiers and workers occupied the public buildings, barracks, central station and food shops. Massive detachments went to the prisons and freed political prisoners. The unions, posing as the mouthpiece of the movement, demanded power for the National Council. In the middle of the morning of October 31st, Count Hadik, head of government, handed power over to another Count, Károlyi, leader of the Independence Party and president of the National Council.

He found himself with total power without having lifted a finger. But his hold on power was still tenuous because of the threat from the as yet unorganised and unconscious working masses. This is why the government rejected all revolutionary endorsement and sought its legitimacy from the Hungarian monarchy, which was part of the fading "Austro-Hungarian Empire". In the absence of the king, members of the National Council, with the Social Democrats at their head, went to find the Emperor's representative, Archduke Joseph, who authorised the new government.

This news angered many workers. A rally was held at the Tisza Calman-Tér. Despite torrential rain, a large crowd gathered and decided to go to the HQ of the Social Democratic Party to demand the proclamation of a Republic.

During the 19th century the demand for a Republic became a slogan of the workers' movement, which considered that this form of government was more sympathetic to its interests than the constitutional monarchy. However, faced with this new situation, where the only alternative was bourgeois power or proletarian power, the Republic presented itself as the last resort of capital. Indeed, the Republic was born with the blessing of the monarchy and the high clergy, whose leader, the Archbishop of Hungary, received a visit from the entire National Council. The Social Democrat Kunfi made this famous speech: "I am, myself a convinced Social Democrat, charged with the overwhelming responsibility to say that we do not wish to act in line with the methods of class hatred or class struggle. And we are appealing to everyone to set aside class interests and partisan positions to help us deal with the burden of work before us."[9] The whole Hungarian bourgeoisie united behind its new saviour, the National Council, whose driving force was the SDP. On November 16th the new Republic was solemnly proclaimed.

The constitution of the Communist Party

The working class cannot launch a revolutionary offensive without creating the vital tool that is the communist party. But it's not enough for the party to defend internationalist programmatic positions; it must also put them into practice, with concrete proposals for the proletariat, through its capacity for careful analysis, with a broad vision of current events and the orientations to follow. To do this, the party must be international and not a simple sum of national parties, so that it can combat the confusing and suffocating weight of the immediate, local and national particularities and also promote solidarity, common debate and a global vision of the perspectives ahead.

The tragedy of the revolutionary attempts in Germany and Hungary was the absence of the International. It was constituted too late, in March 1919, when the Berlin insurrection had been crushed and after the revolutionary attempt in Hungary had already begun.[10]

The Hungarian Communist Party suffered cruelly from this difficulty. One of its founding organisations was the Revolutionary Group, formed by delegates and individual militant workers from the big factories in Budapest.[11] It was joined by elements coming from Russia in November 1918 who had founded the Communist Group, led by Béla Kun, by the anarchist Union of Revolutionary Socialists, and by the members of the Socialist Opposition, a nucleus formed inside the Hungarian SDP at the outbreak of the First World War.

Before Béla Kun and his comrades arrived, the members of the Revolutionary Group had considered the possibility of forming a communist party. The debate on this question led to an impasse because there were two tendencies that could not reach agreement: on one side were the supporters of the Internationalist Fraction inside the SDP and, on the other, those who considered that there was an urgent need to form a new party. The decision was finally taken to form a Union that took the name of Ervin Szabo,[12] which decided to continue the discussion. Militants arriving from Russia radically changed the situation. The prestige of the Russian Revolution and the persuasiveness of Béla Kun tipped the balance towards the immediate formation of the Communist Party, which was founded on 24th November. The programmatic document adopted included some very clear points:[13]

"while the SDP aimed to put the working class into service rebuilding capitalism, the new party's task is to show the workers how capitalism has already suffered a mortal blow and has reached a stage of development, both morally and economically, that is taking it to the brink of ruin";

"mass strike and armed insurrection: these are the means acknowledged by communists for taking power. They do not aspire to a bourgeois republic (...) but to the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the councils";

it gave itself the means of: "assisting the conscious development of the Hungarian proletariat, freeing it from its old ties to the dishonest, ignorant and corrupt ruling class (...) reawakening within it the spirit of international solidarity, systematically stifled until now", and linking the Hungarian proletariat to "the Russian dictatorship of the councils and with any other country where a similar revolution could break out".

A newspaper was founded - Vörös Ujsàg ("Red Gazette") and the party launched itself into feverish agitation that was moreover made necessary given the decisive nature of the events it faced.[14] However this agitation was not backed up by an in-depth programmatic debate, with a methodical, collective analysis of the events. The Party was in reality too young and inexperienced, and besides had little cohesion. This all led, as we will see in the next article, to it committing grave errors.

Trade unions or workers' councils?

During the historic period 1914-23, a very complex question was posed for the proletariat. The trade unions had behaved as recruiting sergeants for capital during the imperialist war and the subsequent workers' responses had gone beyond their control. Nevertheless, the heroic times when the workers' struggles had been organised through the unions were still very recent; they had cost a lot of economic effort, many hours in meetings, and had suffered a lot of repression too. The workers still considered them their own and hoped to be able to win them back.

At the same time, there was huge enthusiasm for the Russian example of the workers' councils that had taken power in 1917. In Hungary, in Austria and in Germany, struggles led to the formation of workers' councils. But whereas in Russia the workers had accumulated a lot of experience of what they were, how they worked, what their weaknesses were, and how the class enemy tried to sabotage them, in both Austria and Hungary this experience was very limited.

This combination of historical factors produced a hybrid situation that was cleverly exploited by the SDP and the unions, who on November 2nd formed the Budapest Workers' Council with a strange mixture of union chiefs, SDP leaders and elected delegates from a few large factories. In the following days all sorts of "councils" appeared that were only unions and professional organisations following the new fashion: councils of police (founded on November 2nd under Social Democrat control), councils of civil servants, councils of students. There was even a council of priests formed on November 8th! This proliferation of councils had the goal of short-circuiting their formation by the workers.

The economy was paralysed. The state's coffers were empty and with everyone asking it for help, its only response was to print more paper money, to pay for grants, the salaries of state employees and current expenses... In December 1918, the Minister of Finance met the unions to ask them to put an end to wage demands, to co-operate with the government in re-launching the economy and if necessary taking the reins, of the management of industry. The unions were very receptive.

But the workers were outraged. There were more massive assemblies. The newly formed Communist Party took the lead in the protests. It decided to participate in the unions and quickly achieved a majority in several organisations in the large factories. Its programme was to create workers' councils; but these were considered compatible with the trade unions.[15] This situation produced a continual to-ing and fro-ing. The Budapest Workers' Council, created by the Social Democrats as a diversionary tactic, had become a lifeless body. At this time, efforts at organising and developing consciousness were taking place on a terrain where the unions had less and less control, such as the massive assembly of the Metalworkers' Union which in response to the plans of the Minister after two days of debates adopted some very radical positions: "From the perspective of the working class, state control of production can have no effect given that the People's Republic is only a modified form of capitalist rule where the State continues to be what it was before: the collective organ of the class that has ownership of the means of production and oppresses the working class."[16]

The radicalisation of the workers' struggles

The disorganisation and paralysis of the economy pushed the workers and the majority of the population to the brink of starvation. In these circumstances, the Assembly decided that "In all the big firms there should be Councils of Factory Control which, as organs of workers' power, control factory production, the supply of raw materials and also the functioning and smooth running of business".[17] However, they did not consider themselves as in partnership with the state, or as organs of "self-management", but as levers and as supporters of the struggle for political power: "Workers' control is only a phase of transition to the system of workers' management in which first seizing political power is a necessary condition (...) Taking all this into consideration, the Assembly of delegates and members of the organisation condemn any suspension, even provisional, of the class struggle, any adherence to constitutional principles, and considers that the immediate task is the organisation of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Councils, as representatives of the dictatorship of the proletariat."[18]

On December 17th, the Workers' Council of Szeged - the second largest city - decided to disband the municipality and "take power". This was an isolated act, which illustrated the tension in the deteriorating situation. The government reacted cautiously and began negotiations that led to the reestablishment of the municipality with a "social democratic majority". At Christmas 1918, the workers of one factory in Budapest demanded a pay rise. In two days the whole of Budapest took up the same demand that began to spread to the provinces. The factory owners had no other choice than to give in.[19]

At the beginning of January, the miners of Salgótarján formed a workers' council that decided to take power and organise a militia. The central government was alarmed and immediately sent in elite troops, who occupied the district, killing eighteen people and wounding thirty. Two days later, workers from the region of Satoralja-Llihely took the same decision and received the same response from the government, provoking a new bloodbath. In Kiskunfélegyháza, when women staged a protest against food shortages and high prices, the police fired into the crowd, killing ten and wounding thirty. Two days later it was the turn of the workers of Poszony where the workers' council declared the dictatorship of the proletariat. The government, its forces stretched, asked the Czech government to militarily occupy the town, which was in a border area.[20]

The peasant problem intensified. Demobilised soldiers returned to their villages and spread the agitation. Meetings were held demanding that the land be divided up. The Budapest Workers' Council[21] showed great solidarity that led to a proposal for a meeting: "to impose a solution on the government to the agrarian problem". The first meeting did not reach any agreement and it was necessary to hold a second that ended with acceptance of the SDP proposal that made provision for the creation "of individual farms with compensation for the former owners." This temporarily calmed the situation, but only for a few weeks, as we shall see in the next article. Indeed, in Arad near Romania, in late January the peasants occupied the land and the government had to use a large contingent of troops to stop them, which led to a further slaughter.

February 1919: Repression against the communists

In February, the Union of Journalists formed itself into a council and demanded censure of all articles hostile to the revolution. The assemblies of printers and other related sectors were growing and gave this measure their support. The metalworkers participated in this activity that led to the workers taking control of most newspapers. From this point, the publication of news and written articles was submitted to the collective decision of the workers.

Budapest had been transformed into a gigantic debating chamber.[22] Every day, every hour, discussions were held on a variety of topics. Premises were occupied everywhere. Only generals and big bosses were denied the right of assembly, since when they tried they were dispersed by groups of metalworkers and soldiers, who eventually took control of their luxurious premises.

Alongside the development of workers' councils and in the context of the chaos and disruption of production, a second type of organisation developed in the factories, the factory councils, which took control of the production and supply of essential goods and services in order prevent shortages. At the end of January, the Budapest Workers' Council took a bold centralising initiative: taking control of gas production, armaments factories, major construction sites, the newspaper, Deli Hirlap, and the Hungaria Hotel. 

This was a challenge to the government, and the socialist Garami responded by proposing a bill that reduced the factory councils to mere underlings of the bosses who were again put in charge of production and the management of their businesses. Massive protests against this measure grew. In the Budapest Workers' Council discussion was very animated. On February 20th, the SDP "dropped a bomb" during the third session on the bill; their delegates interrupting the meeting with sensational news: "the communists have launched an attack against the Népszava. The editorial offices have been stormed with machine gun fire! Several editors are already dead! The street is littered with corpses and the wounded!".[23]

This allowed the proposal against the factory councils to be passed by a narrow majority, but it also opened the door to a crucial stage: the attempt to crush the Communist Party by force.

The storming of the Népszava was soon found to have been a provocation staged by the SDP. The operation came at a particularly delicate time; the workers' councils were growing everywhere in the country and increasingly rising up against the government - and crowned a campaign against the Communist Party by the SDP that had been prepared months before.

Already, by December 1918, following an SDP proposal the government had forbidden the use of all kind of printing paper with the aim of preventing publication and distribution of Vörös Ujsàg. In February 1919, the government resorted to force: "One morning, a detachment of 160 policemen armed with grenades and machine guns, surrounded the Secretariat. Claiming to conduct an investigation, the police invaded the premises, smashing the furniture and equipment and taking everything away in eight big cars."[24]

Szanto tells us that "the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the white counter-revolution in Germany was considered to be the signal for the fight against Bolshevism by the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries ".[25] A very influential bourgeois journalist, Ladislas Fényes, launched a persistent campaign against the communists. He said "they had to disarm".

The SDP continued to claim that Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg "had paid with their lives for challenging the unity of the workers' movement". Alexandre Garbai, who was later to become the chairman of the Hungarian worker's councils, stated that "communists should be lined up and shot because no one can divide the social democratic party without paying with his life".[26] Workers' unity, which is fundamental to the proletariat, was fraudulently used to support and expand the bourgeoisie's offensive.[27]

The question of "the threat to workers' unity" was brought before the Workers' Council by the SDP. The workers' councils which were just beginning to function found themselves confronted with a thorny question that eventually paralysed them: on several occasions the social democrats put forward motions demanding the exclusion of the communists from meetings for "having split the workers' movement". They were only replaying the ferocious campaign of their German acolytes who, after November 1918, had made unity the main basis for excluding the Spartacists, fostering a pogrom atmosphere against them.

The attack on the Népszava has to be seen in the same context. Seven policemen die there. In the course of this same night of February 20th there is a wave of arrests of communist militants. The police, revolted by the death of their colleagues, torture prisoners. On February 21st, the Népszava broadcasts a statement that brands communists "counter-revolutionary mercenaries in the pay of the capitalists" and calls for a general strike in protest. A demonstration outside parliament is called the same afternoon.

The demonstration is huge. Many workers go, outraged by the attack attributed to the communists, but it is the Social Democrats in particular who mobilise civil servants, petty bourgeois, army officers, tradesmen, etc, who demand harsh bourgeois justice for the communists.

On February 22nd, the press reports torture inflicted on prisoners. The Népszava defends the police: "We understand the resentment of the police and deeply sympathise with their grief for their fallen colleagues defending the workers' press. We can be grateful that the police have given their support to our party, that they are organised and that they have feelings of solidarity with the proletariat ".[28]

These repugnant words are the alpha and omega of a two-stage offensive against the proletariat led by the SDP: first, crush the communists as the revolutionary avant-garde, and then defeat the proletarian masses more and more forcefully.

On the very same 22nd, the motion to expel the communists from the Workers' Council is approved. Are the communists going to be completely decapitated? It looks like the counter-revolution is about to win.

In the next article, we will see how this offensive will be defeated by a strong response from the proletariat.

C Mir 3/3/09

 

  Part 2 [73]

---

[1]. The general armistice was signed on November 11th 1918, just days after the emergence of the revolution in Kiel (northern Germany) and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm, the German Emperor.  See the series of articles we have published on this subject, starting in International Review n° 133.

[2]. See the book by this author The Hungarian Republic of the Councils, page 40 of the Spanish edition.

[3]. Thus phenomenon of under-production caused by the total and complete mobilisation of all the resources into armaments and war is also noted by Gers Hardach in his book The First World War (page 86 of the Spanish edition) with regard to Germany which, from 1917, showed signs of its economy collapsing, causing disruption to supplies and chaos, which in turn ended up blocking war production.

[4]. Karl Radek, quoted in Szantò (page 10 of the Spanish edition).

[5]. In his book World Communism, the Austrian, Franz Borkenau, an old communist militant, says that: "..it was in more than one sense the biggest revolutionary movement of properly proletarian origin which the modern world has ever seen (...) The international co-ordination which the Comintern later so often tried to bring about was here produced automatically, within the borders of the Central Powers, out of the community of interests in all the countries concerned, and the common predominance of two main problems, bread and the Brest-Litovsk negotiations [peace negotiations between the Soviet government and the German Empire in January-March 1918]. The slogans everywhere demanded a peace with Russia without annexation or compensation, better rations, and full political democracy" (page 92).

[6]. Béla Szantò, The Hungarian Revolution of 1919, Spanish edition, page 21.

[7]. Szantò, op. cit, page 24.

[8]. Szantò, op. cit, page 28.

[9].  Quoted by Szantò, page 35.

[10]. See "Germany 1918: Formation of the Party, absence of the International" in International Review n° 135.

[11]. Very similar to the revolutionary delegates in Germany. Indeed, there is a significant coincidence in the constituents that lead to the formation of the Bolshevik Party in Russia, the KPD in Germany and the Hungarian CP: "It is no peculiarity of the situation in Germany that the three above mentioned forces within the working class played crucial roles in the drama of the formation of the class party. One of the characteristics of Bolshevism during the revolution in Russia was the way it united basically the same forces within the working class: the pre-war party representing the programme and the organisational experience; the advanced, class conscious workers in the factories and work places, who anchored the party in the class, played a decisive, positive role in resolving the different crises in the organisation; and revolutionary youth politicised by the struggle against war." (Op. cit., International Review n° 135).

[12]. A militant on the left of social democracy who left the party in 1910 and moved towards anarchist positions. He died in 1918 after having energetically opposed the war with an internationalist position.

[13]. We are quoting the summary of principles by Béla Szantó in the book referred to above.

[14]. The party showed considerable success in its agitation and recruitment of militants. In four months it grew from 4,000 to 70,000 militants.

[15]. This same position prevailed inside the Russian proletariat and among the Bolsheviks. But whereas the unions were very weak in Russia, in Hungary and other countries they were much stronger.

[16]. Szantò, op. cit., page 43.

[17].  Idem.

[18].  Idem.

[19]. In compensation, the SDP minister Garami proposed granting the factory owners 15 million kroner in credit. This meant the increases obtained by the workers would evaporate in a few days due to the inflation this lending would cause. The subsidy was approved even though the official bourgeois ministers of the cabinet were opposed to it.

[20]. This area would stay under Czech rule until the outbreak of the revolution in August 1919.

[21]. From January, it had returned to life with the to-ings and fro-ings that we have referred to above. The large factories sent delegates - a lot of them communists - who demanded the resumption of its meetings.

[22]. This was one of the remarkable characteristics of the Russian Revolution that was underlined, for example, by John Reed in his book, Ten days that shook the world.

[23]. Szantò, page 60.

[24]. Szantò, page 51.

[25]. Ibid.

[26]. Szantò, page 52.

[27]. We will see in a subsequent article how unity was the Trojan horse used by the Social Democrats to keep control of the workers' councils when the latter took power.

[28]. Szantò, page 63.

The Italian left communist Bordiga once described Marx's entire work as "the necrology of capital" - in other words, as a study of the inner contradictions from which bourgeois society could not escape and which would eventually lead to its demise. 

Acknowledging the certainty of death is problematic for the human being in general - alone among the animal species, mankind is burdened with the consciousness of the inevitability of death, and the weight of this burden is demonstrated, among other things, by the ubiquity of mythologies about the afterlife in all epochs of history and in all social formations.

By the same token, ruling, exploiting classes and their individual representatives are apt to flee from death into consoling fantasies about the eternal foundations and destiny of their reign. The class regime of pharaohs and divine emperors is thus legitimised by the sacred stories from the primordial beginning to the unforeseeable future.

The bourgeoisie, despite priding itself on its rational and scientific outlook, is no less prone to mythological projections: as Marx observed, this can easily be discerned in its attitude to past history, into which it projects its "Robinsonades" about private property being at the very foundation of human existence. And it is not more inclined than the despots of ancient times to envisage the end of its system of exploitation. Even in its revolutionary heyday, even in the thought of the philosopher of dialectical movement par excellence, Hegel, we find the same tendency to proclaim that the rule of bourgeois society marks the "end of history": Marx remarked that, for Hegel, the restless advance of the World Spirit had finally achieved peace and repose in the shape of the bureaucratic Prussian state (which was still largely stuck in the feudal past anyway).  

We thus take it as a basic axiom of the ideologically distorted world view of the bourgeoisie that it cannot tolerate any theory which points to the purely transitory nature of its class rule. Whereas marxism, which expresses the theoretical standpoint of the first exploited class in history to carry within it the seeds of a new social order, has no such blockages to its vision.

Thus the Communist Manifesto of 1848 opens with the famous passage about history being the history of class struggles, which had in all hitherto existing modes of production served to explode the social fabric from within, ending  "either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes...."  Bourgeois society has simplified class contrasts to the point where they are to all intents and purposes reduced to two great social camps defending irreconcilably antagonistic interests - capitalist on the one hand, proletarian on the other. And the proletariat is destined to be the gravedigger of the bourgeois order.

But the Manifesto did not expect this decisive clash between the classes to arise merely as a result of capitalism's simplification of class differences or of the evident injustice of the bourgeoisie's monopoly of privilege and wealth. It was first necessary for the bourgeois system to be unable to function "normally", to have reached the point where "the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society".  In sum, the overthrow of bourgeois society becomes a vital necessity for the very survival of the exploited class and of social life as a whole.

The Manifesto saw in the economic crises which periodically wracked capitalist society in that era as harbingers of this approaching point:

"In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented".

Several points need to be made about this oft-quoted passage.

It maintains that the economic crises are a result of the overproduction of commodities, as the enormous productive powers unleashed by capitalism come up against the limits of their capitalist appropriation and distribution. As Marx explained later, this was not overproduction in relation to need. On the contrary, it resulted from the fact that the needs of the vast majority were necessarily restricted by the existence of antagonistic relations of production. This was overproduction in relation to effective demand - demand backed by the ability to pay.

It considers that capitalist relations of production have already become a definitive fetter on the development of these productive forces, a straitjacket which is holding them in check

At the same time capitalism has at its disposal various mechanisms for overcoming these crises: on the one hand the destruction of capital, by which Marx principally meant not the physical destruction of unprofitable factories and machines but their destruction as value because the crisis forced them to stand idle. This, as Marx was to explain in later works, both uncluttered the market of dead-wood competitors and had a "beneficial" effect on the average rate of profit; on the other hand, "the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones", allowing a temporary escape from the engorgement of the market in those areas already conquered by capitalism.

These very mechanisms of escape actually only paved the way for increasingly destructive crises and tended to cancel themselves out as means of overcoming the crisis. In short, capitalism was necessarily heading towards a historical impasse.

The Manifesto was written on the very eve of the great wave of uprisings that swept across Europe in the year of 1848. But although these uprisings had very material roots - in particular, an outbreak of famine in a whole series of countries - and although they saw the first massive expressions of proletarian political autonomy (the Chartist movement in Britain, the July uprisings of the Parisian working class), these were essentially the last fires of the bourgeois revolution against feudal absolutism. In his efforts to understand the failure of these uprisings from the proletarian point of view - even the bourgeois goals of the revolution had rarely been achieved and the French bourgeoisie had not hesitated in crushing the insurgent Parisian workers - Marx began to recognise that the prediction of imminent proletarian revolution had been premature.  Not only was the working class knocked backwards politically by the defeat of the 1848 uprisings, but capitalism was very far from having exhausted its historic mission as it spread imperiously around the globe, continuing to "create a world in its own image" as the Manifesto had put it. The dynamism of the bourgeoisie, as the Manifesto had itself acknowledged, was still very much a reality. Against the impatient activists of his own "party", who thought that mere will could stir the masses into action, he insisted that the working class probably faced decades of struggle before it could expect a decisive conflict with the class enemy. He also argued forcefully that "a new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis".[1]

Marx responds to the apologists

It was this conviction that led Marx to devote himself to the study - or rather, the critique of - political economy, a profound and immensely detailed inquiry that was to find written form in the Grundrisse and the four volumes of Capital.  In order to understand the material conditions for the proletarian revolution, it was necessary to understand in greater depth the contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production, the fatal flaws that would eventually condemn it to death.  

In these works, Marx acknowledged his debt to the bourgeois political economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo who had contributed a great deal to the understanding of the bourgeois economic system, not least because, in their polemics with the apologists of outmoded, semi-feudal forms of production, they had defended the view that the "value" of commodities was not some inherent quality of the soil or a figure determined by the vagaries of supply and demand, but was based on the real labour of human beings. But Marx also showed that these polemicists of the bourgeoisie were also apologists, to the extent that their writings:

• reflected the "common sense" view of bourgeois ideology, which while condemning previous modes of production like slavery and feudalism as systems of class privilege, denied that capitalism was in turn founded on the exploitation of labour, since for them the basic transaction at the heart of capitalist production was a fair exchange between the worker's capacity to work and the wages offered to him by the capitalist. Marx however showed that, just as previous modes of production had been founded on the extraction of surplus labour by an exploiting class, so too was capitalism - only this took the form of the extraction of surplus value, the "free" labour time extorted from the worker but hidden in the wage contract;
• tended to argue that capitalism, despite the problem of periodic economic crises, had no immanent barriers to its development and therefore would never reach the point where it would need to be superseded by a higher form of society. If there were crises, they were due to the action of speculators, or to temporary disproportions between different branches of industry, or to some other contingent factor; and since every product was eventually destined to find its buyer, eventually the very operation of the market would overcome these problems and provide the basis for further phases of growth. 

What is fundamental to all the varieties of bourgeois political economy is the denial that the crises of capitalism are proof that there exist fundamental and ineradicable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production - ravens of doom whose harsh croak prophesies the Ragnarok[2] of bourgeois society.

"The apologetic phrases used to deny crises are important in so far as they always prove the opposite of what they are meant to prove.  In order to deny crises, they assert unity where there is conflict and contradiction.  They are therefore important in so far as one can say they prove that there would be no crises if the contradictions which they have erased in their imagination, did not exist in fact.  But in reality crises exist because these contradictions exist.  Every reason which they put forward against crisis is an exorcised contradiction, and, therefore, a real contradiction, which can cause crises.  The desire to convince oneself of the non-existence of contradictions, is at the same time the expression of a pious wish that the contradictions, which are really present, should not exist."[3]

First raven of doom: "Overproduction, the fundamental contradiction of advanced capital...."

The apology for capital by the political economists is to a large extent rooted in the denial that the crises of overproduction, which began to make their appearance in the second or third decade of the 19th century, indicated the existence of any insurmountable barriers to the bourgeois mode of production.

Faced with the concrete reality of the crisis, the apologists' denials took various forms, most of which we have seen repeated by the economic experts of the past few decades. Marx points out, for example, that Ricardo sought to explain the first crises of the world market through various contingent factors, such as poor harvests, the devaluation of paper money, falling prices, or the difficulties of transition between peace and war and war and peace in the early years of the 19th century. Obviously these factors could play their role in exacerbating or even provoking the outbreak of crises, but they hardly penetrated to the heart of the problem. These evasions remind us of the more recent pronouncements by the economic "experts", locating the "cause" of the crisis in the rise in oil process in the 70s or the greed of the bankers today. When, towards the middle of the 19th century, the cycle of commercial crises became harder to ignore, the political economists were obliged to develop more sophisticated arguments, for example accepting the idea that there is too much capital while denying that this also means that there are too many unsale-able commodities.

Or, if the problem of overproduction was accepted, it was relativised. At root, for the apologists, "no man produces, but with a view to consume or sell, and he never sells, but with an intention to purchase some other commodity, which may be immediately useful to him, or which may contribute to future production".[4] In other words, there is a basic harmony between production and sale and, at least in the best of all possible worlds, every commodity should find a buyer. If there are crises, they are no more than possibilities contained in the metamorphosis of commodities into money, as John Stuart Mill argued, or are the result of a simple disproportionality between one sector of production and another.

Marx certainly does not deny that there can be disproportions between the different branches of production - indeed he insists that this always be a tendency in an unplanned economy where it is impossible to produce all commodities in relation to an immediate demand. What he objects to is the attempt to use the "disproportionality" problem as a pretext for wishing away the more fundamental contradictions involved in the capitalist social relationship:

"To say that there is no general over-production, but rather a disproportion within the various branches of production, is no more than to say that under capitalist production the proportionality of the individual branches of production springs as a continual process from disproportionality, because the cohesion of the aggregate production imposes itself as a blind law upon the agents of production, and not as a law which, being understood and hence controlled by their common mind, brings the productive process under their joint control."[5]

By the same token, Marx rejects the argument that there can be partial overproduction but no general overproduction:

"That is why Ricardo admits that a glut of certain commodities is possible.  What is supposed to be impossible is only a simultaneous general glut of the market.  The possibility of overproduction in any particular sphere of production is therefore not denied.  It is the simultaneity of this phenomenon for all spheres of production which is said to be impossible and therefore makes impossible [general] over-production and thus a general glut of the market." [6]

The historical specificity of capitalism

What all these arguments had in common was that they denied the historical specificity of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism is the first economic form to have generalised commodity production, production for sale and profit, to the entire process of production and distribution; and its tendency towards overproduction was to be found in this distinction. Not, Marx is at pains to point out, overproduction in relation to need:

"The word over-production in itself leads to error.  So long as the most urgent needs of a large part of society are not satisfied, or only the most immediate needs are satisfied, there can of course be absolutely no talk of an over-production of products- in the sense that the amount of products is excessive in relation to the need for them.  On the contrary, it must be said that on the basis of capitalist production, there is constant under-production in this sense.  The limits to production are set by the profit of the capitalist and in no way by the needs of the producers.  But over-production of products and over-production of commodities are two entirely different things.  If Ricardo thinks that the commodity form makes no difference to the product, and furthermore, that commodity circulation differs only formally from barter, that in this context the exchange-value is only a fleeting form of the exchange of things, and that money is therefore merely a formal means of circulation-then this in fact is in line with his presupposition that the bourgeois mode of production is the absolute mode of production, hence it is a mode of production without any definite specific characteristics, its distinctive traits are merely formal.  He cannot therefore admit that the bourgeois mode of production contains within itself a barrier to the free development of the productive forces, a barrier which comes to the surface in crises and, in particular, in over-production-the basic phenomenon in crises."[7]

Marx then contrasts capitalist production with previous modes of production, which did not seek to accumulate wealth, but to consume it, and which were faced with a problem of underproduction rather than overproduction:

"...the ancients never thought of transforming the surplus-product into capital.  Or at least only to a very limited extent.  (The fact that the hoarding of treasure in the narrow sense was widespread among them shows how much surplus-product lay completely idle.)  They used a large part of the surplus-product for unproductive expenditure on art, religious works and public works.  Still less was their production directed to the release and development of the material productive forces-division of labour, machinery, the application of the powers of nature and science to private production.  In fact, by and large, they never went beyond handicraft labour.  The wealth which they produced for private consumption was therefore relatively small and only appears great because it was amassed in the hands of a few persons, who, incidentally, did not know what to do with it.  Although, therefore, there was no over-production among the ancients, there was over-consumption by the rich, which in the final periods of Rome and Greece turned into mad extravagance.  The few trading peoples among them lived partly at the expense of all these essentially poor nations.  It is the unconditional development of the productive forces and therefore mass production on the basis of a mass of producers who are confined within the bounds of the necessary means of subsistence on the one hand and, on the other, the barrier set up by the capitalists' profit, which [forms] the basis of modern over-production."[8]

The problem with the political economists is that they think about capitalism as if it were already a harmonious social system - a kind of socialism in which production is fundamentally determined by need:

"All the objections which Ricardo and others raise against overproduction etc. rest on the fact that they regard bourgeois production either as a mode of production in which no distinction exists between purchase and sale-direct barter-or as social production, implying that society, as if according to a plan, distributes its means of production and productive forces in the degree and measure which is required for the fulfilment of the various social needs, so that each sphere of production receives the quota of social capital required to satisfy the corresponding need.  This fiction arises entirely from the inability to grasp the specific form of bourgeois production and this inability in turn arises from the obsession that bourgeois production is production as such, just like a man who believes in a particular religion and sees it as the religion, and everything outside of it only as false religions."[9]

The roots of overproduction lie in capitalist social relations

Against these distortions, Marx located the crises of overproduction in the very social relation that defined capital as a distinct mode of production: the wage labour relation.

"By reducing these relations simply to those of consumer and producer, one leaves out of account that the wage-labourer who produces and the capitalist who produces are two producers of a completely different kind, quite apart from the fact that some consumers do not produce at all.  Once again, a contradiction is denied, by abstracting from a contradiction which really exists in production.  The mere relationship of wage-labourer and capitalist implies:

1.  that the majority of the producers (the workers) are non-consumers (non-buyers) of a very large part of their product, namely, of the means of production and the raw material;

2.  that the majority of the producers, the workers, can consume an equivalent for their product only so long as they produce more than this equivalent, that is, so long as they produce surplus-value or surplus-product.  They must always be over-producers, produce over and above their needs, in order to be able to be consumers or buyers within the limits of their needs."[10]

Of course, capitalism does not start every phase of the accumulation process with an immediate problem of overproduction: it is born and it develops as a dynamic system in constant expansion into new areas of productive exchange, both within the domestic economy and on a world scale. But given the unavoidable nature of the contradiction that Marx has just described, this constant expansion is a necessity for capital in order to postpone or overcome the crisis of overproduction, and here again Marx had to assert this against the apologists who saw the expansion of the market more as a convenience than a life or death question, given their tendency to see capital as a self-contained and harmonious system:

"However, the mere admission that the market must expand with production, is, on the other hand, again an admission of the possibility of over-production, for the market is limited externally in the geographical sense, the internal market is limited as compared with a market that is both internal and external, the latter in turn is limited as compared with the world market, which however is, in turn, limited at each moment of time, [though] in itself capable of expansion.  The admission that the market must expand if there is to be no over-production, is therefore also an admission that there can be over-production."[11]

In the same passage, Marx goes on to show that while the expansion of the world market allows capitalism to overcome its crises and to further expand the productive forces, the previous expansion of the market rapidly becomes inadequate for absorbing the new development of production. He did not consider that this was an eternal process: there are inherent limits to the capacity of capital to become a truly universal system, and once it has encountered these limits, they will push capitalism towards the abyss:   

"But from the fact that capital posits every such limit as a barrier and hence gets ideally beyond it, it does not by any means follow that it has really overcome it, and, since every such barrier contradicts its character, its production moves in contradictions which are constantly overcome but just as constantly posited. Furthermore. The universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers in its own nature, which will, at a certain stage of its development, allow it to be recognised as being itself the greatest barrier to this tendency, and hence will drive towards its own suspension."[12]

And thus we come to the conclusion that the crisis of overproduction is the first raven of doom for capitalism, a concrete illustration, within capitalism, of Marx's basic formula explaining the rise and decline of all hitherto existing modes of production: yesterday's forms of development (in this case, the global expansion of commodity production) becomes today's fetter on the further development of mankind's productive powers:

"To approach the matter more closely: First of all, there is a limit, not inherent to production generally, but to production founded on capital. This limit is double, or rather the same regarded from two directions. It is enough here to demonstrate that capital contains a particular restriction of production - which contradicts its general tendency to drive beyond every barrier to production - in order to have uncovered the foundation of overproduction, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital; in order to have uncovered, more generally, the fact that capital is not, as the economists believe, the absolute form for the development of the forces of production - not the absolute form for that, nor the form of wealth which absolutely coincides with the development of the forces of production. The stages of production which precede capital appear, regarded from its standpoint, as so many fetters upon the productive forces. It itself, however, correctly understood, appears as the condition of the development of the forces of production as long as they require an external spur, which appears at the same time as their bridle. It is a discipline over them, which becomes superfluous and burdensome at a certain level of their development, just like the guilds etc."[13]

Second raven of doom: the falling rate of profit

A further critique that Marx makes of the political economists is their incoherence in denying the overproduction of commodities while admitting the overproduction of capital:

"To the best of his knowledge, Ricardo is always consistent.  For him, therefore, the statement that no over-production (of commodities) is possible, is synonymous with the statement that no plethora or over-abundance of capital is possible...What then would Ricardo have said to the stupidity of his successors, who deny over-production in one form (as a general glut of commodities in the market) and who, not only admit its existence in another form, as over-production of capital, plethora of capital, over-abundance of capital, but actually turn it into an essential point in their doctrine?"[14]

However, Marx, especially in the third volume of Capital, shows that there is no comfort to be drawn from the assertion that there is a tendency for capital, above all in its form as means of production, to become "overabundant". This is because such overabundance merely brings forth another deadly contradiction, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, which Marx refers to as being "in every respect the most important law of modern political economy, and the most essential for understanding the most difficult relations."[15] This contradiction is no less inscribed in the basic social relation of capitalism: since only living labour can add new value and this is the "secret" of capitalist profit; and since at the same time the capitalists are driven by the whip of competition to constantly "revolutionise the means of production", i.e. increase the ratio between dead labour of machines and the living labour of human beings, it is faced with an inbuilt tendency for the proportion of new value contained in each commodity to shrink, and thus for the rate of profit to decline.

Again, bourgeois apologists fled in terror from the implications of all this, since the law of the falling rate of profit also points to the transitory nature of capital:

"On the other hand, the rate of self-expansion of the total capital, or the rate of profit, being the goad of capitalist production (just as self-expansion of capital is its only purpose), its fall checks the formation of new independent capitals and thus appears as a threat to the development of the capitalist production process. It breeds over-production, speculation, crises, and surplus-capital alongside surplus-population. Those economists, therefore, who, like Ricardo, regard the capitalist mode of production as absolute, feel at this point that it creates a barrier itself, and for this reason attribute the barrier to Nature (in the theory of rent), not to production. But the main thing about their horror of the falling rate of profit is the feeling that capitalist production meets in the development of its productive forces a barrier which has nothing to do with the production of wealth as such; and this peculiar barrier testifies to the limitations and to the merely historical, transitory character of the capitalist mode of production; testifies that for the production of wealth, it is not an absolute mode, moreover, that at a certain stage it rather conflicts with its further development".[16] 

And here, in the Grundrisse, Marx's reflections on the falling rate of profit bring out perhaps his most explicit announcement of the perspective that capitalism, like previous forms of servitude, cannot avoid entering an era of obsolescence or senility, in which a growing tendency towards self-destruction will confront humanity with the necessity to advance towards a higher form of social life:

"...hence it is evident that the material productive power already present, already worked out, existing in the form of fixed capital, together with the population etc., in short all conditions of wealth, that the greatest conditions for the reproduction of wealth, i.e. the abundant development of the social individual-that the development of the productive forces brought about by the historical development of capital itself, when it reaches a certain point, suspends the self-realization of capital, instead of positing it. Beyond a certain point, the development of the powers of production becomes a barrier for capital; hence the capital relation a barrier for the development of the productive powers of labour. When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage labour, enters into the same relation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter. The last form of servitude assumed by human activity, that of wage labour on one side, capital on the other, is thereby cast off like a skin, and this casting-off itself is the result of the mode of production corresponding to capital; the material and mental conditions of the negation of wage labour and of capital, themselves already the negation of earlier forms of unfree social production, are themselves results of its production process. The growing incompatibility between the productive development of society and its hitherto existing relations of production expresses itself in bitter contradictions, crises, spasms. The violent destruction of capital not by relations external to it, but rather as a condition of its self- preservation, is the most striking form in which advice is given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social production."[17]

The vicious circle of capitalist contradictions

Certainly Marx was peering into the future in passages such as the above: he recognised that there are counter-tendencies which make the fall in the rate of the profit a long-term rather than an immediate barrier for capitalist production. These include: increasing the intensity of exploitation; depression of wages below the value of labour power; cheapening of elements of constant capital, and foreign trade. Marx's treatment of the latter in particular shows how the two contradictions at the heart of the system are closely linked. Foreign trade partly implies investing (as we see today in the phenomenon of "outsourcing") in cheaper sources of labour power and through selling home-produced goods "above their value even though cheaper than the competing countries."[18] But the same section also touches on the "the innate necessity of this mode of production, its need for an ever-expanding market."[19] This is also connected to the attempt to offset the fall in the rate of profit, since even if each commodity embodies less profit, as long as the capitalist can sell more commodities, then he is able to realise a greater mass of profit. But here again capitalism again comes up against its inherent limits:

"This same foreign trade develops the capitalist mode of production in the home country, which implies the decrease of variable capital in relation to constant, and, on the other hand, causes over-production in respect to foreign markets, so that in the long run it again has an opposite effect."[20]

Or again:

"Compensation of a fall in the rate of profit by a rise in the mass of profit applies only to the total social capital and to the big, firmly placed capitalists. The new additional capital operating independently does not enjoy any such compensating conditions. It must still win them, and so it is that a fall in the rate of profit calls forth a competitive struggle among capitalists, not vice versa. To be sure, the competitive struggle is accompanied by a temporary rise in wages and a resultant further temporary fall of the rate of profit. The same occurs when there is an over-production of commodities, when markets are overstocked. Since the aim of capital is not to minister to certain wants, but to produce profit, and since it accomplishes this purpose by methods which adapt the mass of production to the scale of production, not vice versa, a rift must continually ensue between the limited dimensions of consumption under capitalism and a production which forever tends to exceed this immanent barrier. Furthermore, capital consists of commodities, and therefore over-production of capital implies over-production of commodities."[21]

In seeking to escape from one contradiction, capitalism merely came up against the barriers imposed by another. Thus Marx saw the inevitability of "bitter contradictions, crises, spasms", "the more extensive and more destructive crises" which he had already talked about in the Manifesto. Marx's deep immersion in his studies of capitalist political economy had confirmed his view that capitalism would reach a point at which it had exhausted its progressive mission and begun to threaten the very capacity of human society to reproduce itself. Marx did not speculate about the exact form this downfall would take. He had not yet seen the emergence of world imperialist wars which, while seeking to "solve" the economic crisis for particular capitals, tend to become increasingly ruinous for capital as a whole and an increasing menace to the survival of humanity. By the same token, he had only glimpsed capitalism's propensity to destroy the natural environment upon which all social reproduction is ultimately based. He did, on the other hand, pose the question of capitalism reaching the end of its epoch of ascent in more concrete terms: as we have noted in a previous article in this series, already in 1858 Marx considered that the opening up of far-flung areas such as China, Australia and California indicated that capitalism's task of creating a world market and production based on that market was reaching completion; by 1881 he was talking about capitalism in the advanced countries being transformed into a "regressive" system, although in both cases he saw that capitalism still had some way to go (above all in the more peripheral regions) before it had ceased to be a globally ascendant system. 

Marx had initially conceived his studies of capital as part of a greater work which would encompass other key areas for research such as the state and the history of socialist thought. In the event, his life was too short even to complete the "economic" part, so that Capital remains an unfinished masterpiece. And besides, to pretend to elaborate a definitive and final theory of capitalist evolution would have been alien to the basic premises of Marx's method, which saw history as an unending movement, and the dialectical "Cunning of Reason" as necessarily full of surprises.  Consequently, in the sphere of economics, Marx did not provide a definitive answer as to which of the two ravens of doom (the problem of the market or the problem of the falling rate of profit) would play the more decisive role in the onset of the crises that would ultimately drive the proletariat to revolt against the system. But one thing was certainly clear: both the overproduction of commodities and the overproduction of capital provide proof that humanity has at last reached a stage in which it has become possible to provide the necessities of life for all and thus to create the material basis for the elimination of all class divisions. Whether people starve while commodities go unsold in warehouses, or whether factories that produce life's necessities close because there is no profit to be made from producing them, the gap between the vast potential stored in the productive forces, and their constriction by the envelope of value, provides the foundations for the emergence of a communist consciousness among those who are most directly faced with the consequences of capitalism's absurdities.  

Gerrard, 1/11/09.

 

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[1]. The Class Struggles in France.

[2]. Ragnarok -in Norse mythology, the Downfall of the Gods, the final battle of the gods and giants.

[3]. Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 12, p 519.

[4]. Ricardo, quoted in Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 8 p 502.

[5]. Capital Vol. 3, chapter XV, III, p 257.

[6]. Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 14, p 529.

[7]. Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 14, p 527.

[8]. Ibid. p528.

[9]. Ibid. p 528-9.

[10]. Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 12, p519-520.

[11]. Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, chapter XVII, 13, p 524.

[12]. Grundrisse, Notebook IV, "Circulation Process of Capital", p 410 in the Penguin and Marxist.org version.

[13]. Ibid. p 415.

[14]. Theories of Surplus Value,  Part Two, chapter XVII, 7, p 496.

[15]. Grundrisse, Notebook VII, "Capital as Fructiferous. Transformation of Surplus Value into Profit", p748-9.

[16]. Capital Vol. 3, chapter XV, I, p 241-2.

[17]. Grundrisse, p749.

[18]. Capital volume 3, chapter XIV, V,  p238.

[19]. Ibid, 237.

[20]. Ibid. p. 239.

[21]. Ibid. Chapter XV, III, p 256-257.

We are publishing two articles from Internationalisme, organ of the Gauche Communiste de France[1] dedicated to the question of Trotskyism and written in 1947. At this time, Trotskyism had already abandoned proletarian internationalism by participating in the Second World War, unlike the groups of the communist left[2] who, in the 1930s, had resisted the gathering wave of opportunism engendered by the defeat of the worldwide revolutionary upsurge of 1917-23. Among these groups, the Italian left around the review Bilan, founded in 1933, had correctly defined the tasks of the hour: faced with the march towards war, don't betray the elementary principles of internationalism; draw up the balance-sheet ("bilan" in French) of the failure of the revolutionary wave and of the Russian revolution in particular. The communist left fought against the opportunist positions adopted by the degenerating Third International, in particular the position defended by Trotsky on the United Front with the Socialist parties, which threw overboard all the clarity so dearly acquired regarding the transformation of the latter into parties of capital. On numerous occasions it had to confront its political approach with the very different one of the current formed around Trotsky's positions - which was still proletarian at that time - in particular in the attempts to reunify the various groups opposed to the policies of the Communist International and the Stalinised CPs.[3]

It was with the same method as Bilan that the Gauche Communise de France analysed the basic premises of Trotskyist politics, which were not so much "the defence of the USSR", even if this question most clearly showed how far it had strayed from the rails, but the attitude towards imperialist war. As the first article, "The function of Trotskyism" shows, Trotskyism's involvement in the war was not in the first instance determined by the defence of the USSR, as proved by the fact that certain of its tendencies, which rejected the theory of the degenerated workers' state, had also participated in the imperialist war. What was even more crucial was the idea of the "lesser evil", of joining the struggle against "foreign occupation" and for "antifascism". This characteristic of Trotskyism is exposed in particular in the second article, "Bravo Abd el-Krim or a little history of Trotskyism", which notes that "the whole history of Trotskyism revolves around the ‘defence' of something' in the name of the lesser evil, this something being anything except the interests of the proletariat". This trademark of Trotskyism has not at all altered with time, as witness the numerous expressions of contemporary Trotskyist activism, and its promptness in choosing one camp against another in the multiple conflicts that ravage the planet, including those that have come after the disappearance of the USSR. 

At the roots of this tendency in Trotskyism we find, as the first article says, the attempt to attribute a progressive role "to certain factions of capitalism, to certain capitalist countries (and as the Transitional Programme expressly puts it, this applies to the majority of countries)". In this conception, as the article puts it, "the emancipation of the proletariat is the not the result of a struggle which places the proletariat as a class against the whole of capitalism, but is the result of a series of political struggles in the narrow sense of the term, and in which the working class, allied in succession to diverse political factions of the bourgeoisie, will eliminate certain other factions and by stages and degrees will succeed in gradually weakening the bourgeoisie, in triumphing over it by dividing it and beating it in separate bits". In all this there is nothing left of revolutionary marxism. 

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The function of Trotskyism (Internationalisme n° 26, September 1947)

It is a major and very widespread error to consider that what distinguishes revolutionaries from Trotskyism is the question of the "defence of the USSR".

It goes without saying that revolutionary groups, which the Trotskyists contemptuously refer to as "ultra-left" (a pejorative term the Trotskyists use in much the same spirit as the term "Hitler-Trotskyites" which the Stalinists used against them) naturally reject any defence of the Russian capitalist state (or state capitalism). But the non-defence of the Russian state does not at all constitute the theoretical and programmatic foundation-stone of revolutionary groups - it is merely the political consequence of their general conceptions, of their revolutionary class platform. Inversely, the "defence of the USSR" is not something specific to Trotskyism.

While out of all the political positions that make up their programme, the "defence of the USSR" is the one which most clearly shows their blindness and loss of direction, we would make a serious error if we only looked at Trotskyism through the lens of this position. At most we can see this position as the most typical, complete expression of the basic fixation of Trotskyism. This fixation, this abscess is so monstrously evident that it is repelling more and more adherents of the Fourth International and it is quite probably one of the main reasons that a number of sympathisers have hesitated to join the ranks of this organisation.  However, an abscess is not the same as the illness itself; it is simply its localised, external expression.

If we insist so much on this point, it is because so many of the people frightened by the external signs of the illness have too much of a tendency to rest easy as soon as the outward signs seem to have disappeared. They forget that an illness that has been covered up is not the same as an illness cured.  People like this are just as dangerous, just as much capable of spreading the disease, perhaps even more so, as those who sincerely believe that the illness has been fully cured.

The "Workers Party" in the USA (a dissident Trotskyist organisation known by its leader Schachtman), the Munis tendency in Mexico,[4] the Gallien and Chaulieu minorities in France, all the minority tendencies in the "IVth International", because they reject the traditional position of defence of Russia, think they are cured of the "opportunism" (as they put it) of the Trotskyist movement. In reality the changes are largely cosmetic and underneath they are still totally trapped by this ideology.

This is so much the case that for proof you only have to take the most burning question, the one which offers the least possibilities of evasion, which poses the most irreducibly the proletarian class position against that of the bourgeoisie, the question of the attitude to take in the face of imperialist war. What do we see?

Both one and the other, majority and minority, with different slogans, all participate in the imperialist war.

We won't take the trouble to cite the verbal declarations of the Trotskyists against the war. We know them very well. What counts are not declarations but the real political practice which flow from theoretical positions and which was concretised here in ideological and practical support for the war effort. It matters little what arguments were used to justify this participation in the war. The defence of the USSR was certainly one of the most important threads that tied the proletariat to the imperialist war. However it is not the only one, The Trotskyist minorities who reject the defence of the USSR, like the left socialists and the anarchists, found other reasons, no less "valid", no less inspired by bourgeois ideology, to justify their participation in the imperialist war. For some it was the defence of "democracy", for others "the struggle against fascism" or "national liberation" or "the right of peoples to self-determination". 

For all of them it was a question of the "lesser evil" which led them to participate in the war or in the resistance, fighting for one imperialist bloc against another.

The Party of Schachtman is quite right to reproach the official Trotskyists with supporting Russian imperialism which, for him, is no longer a "Workers' State"; but this doesn't make Schachtman a revolutionary because this reproach is not made on the basis of a proletarian class standpoint against imperialist war, but in virtue of the fact that Russia is a totalitarian country, that there is less democracy there than anywhere else, and that for this reason it was necessary to support Finland, which was less totalitarian and more democratic, against Russian aggression.[5]

To show the nature of its ideology, notably on the primordial question of imperialist war, Trotskyism has no need, as we have seen, for the position of the defence of the USSR. This defence of the USSR does enormously facilitate its position of participation in the war, enabling it to camouflage itself with a pseudo-revolutionary phraseology, but by itself it can obscure the real question and prevent us from clearly posing the problem of the nature of Trotskyist ideology.

For the sake of clarity, then, let's put to one side the existence of Russia or, if you prefer, all this sophistry about the socialist nature of the Russian state, through which the Trotskyists manage to obscure the central problem of imperialist war and the attitude of the proletariat towards it. Let's pose brutally the question of the attitude of the Trotskyists towards the war. The Trotskyists will obviously respond with a general declaration against the war.

But once they have correctly quoted from the litany about "revolutionary defeatism", they get onto the concrete issues, and start making distinctions, start with the ifs and buts which, in practice, leads them to join existing war fronts and to invite the workers to participate in the imperialist butchery.

Anyone who has had any relationship with the Trotskyist milieu in France during the years between 1939 and 1945 can bear witness that the dominant sentiments among them were not so much dictated by the position of defence of Russia as by the choice of the "lesser evil", the choice of the struggle against "foreign occupation" and for "antifascism".

This is what explains their participation in the "Resistance",[6] in the FFI[7] and the "Liberation". And when the PCI[8] in France was praised by sections in other countries for the part it played in what it calls the "Popular Uprising" of the Liberation, we leave them with the satisfaction of bluffing about the importance of the part a few dozen Trotskyists played in this "great" popular uprising. Let's stick to the political content of this praise. 

What is the criterion for a revolutionary attitude to imperialist war?

Revolutionaries begin from the recognition that the world economy has reached its imperialist stage. Imperialism is not a national phenomenon (the violence of the capitalist contradiction between the level of the development of the productive forces - of the total social capital - and the development of the market determines the violence of the inter-imperialist contradiction). In this stage there can no longer be any national wars. The world imperialist structure determines the structure of every war: in this imperialist epoch there can no longer be any "progressive" wars. Progress can only take place through the social revolution. The historical alternative posed to humanity is social revolution or decadence and the descent into barbarism through the annihilation of the riches accumulated by humanity, the destruction of the productive forces and the continuous massacre of the proletariat in an interminable succession of localised and generalised wars. This is therefore a class criterion, related to the analysis by revolutionaries of the historic evolution of society.

Let's see how Trotskyism poses the question theoretically:

"But not all countries of the world are imperialist countries. On the contrary, the majority are victims of imperialism. Some of the colonial or semi colonial countries will undoubtedly attempt to utilise the war in order to cast off the yoke of slavery. Their war will be not imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed countries in their war against oppressors".[9]

Thus the Trotskyist criterion is not connected to the historical period in which we live but is based on an abstract and false notion of imperialism. Only the bourgeoisie of a dominant country is seen as imperialist. Imperialism is not a politico-economic stage of world capitalism but strictly an expression of the capitalism of certain countries, whereas the "majority" of other capitalist countries are not imperialist. In fact, if you look at it in a purely formal manner, all the countries of the world are currently dominated economically by two countries: the USA and Russia. Are we to conclude that only the bourgeoisies of these two countries are imperialist and that the proletariat's hostility to war only applies within these two countries?

Even better: if we follow the Trotskyists, for whom Russia is by definition "not imperialist", we arrive at this monstrous absurdity which holds that there is only one imperialist country in the word, the USA. This leads us to the comforting conclusion that all the other countries of the world are "non-imperialist" and "oppressed" and that therefore the proletariat has the duty to come to their aid.

Let's look at the way this Trotskyist distinction works concretely, in practice.

In 1939, France is an imperialist country: revolutionary defeatism.

In 1940-45, France is occupied. From being an imperialist country it has now become an oppressed country; its war is "liberating"; "the duty of the proletariat is to support its struggle". Perfect. But suddenly in 1945 it's Germany that becomes an occupied, "oppressed" country: the duty of the proletariat should now be to support Germany's liberation from France. What is true for France and Germany is equally true for any other country: Japan, Italy, Belgium etc, not to mention the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Any country that, in the imperialist epoch, in the ferocious competition between imperialisms, doesn't have the luck or the strength to be the victor becomes in fact an "oppressed" country. Example: Germany and Japan and, in the opposite direction, China.

The proletariat's duty is therefore to spend its time going from one side of the imperialist scales to another, jumping to the commands of the Trotskyists, and to get itself massacred for what the Trotskyists call  "giving aid in a just and progressive war" (see the Transitional Programme, same chapter).

It is the fundamental character of Trotskyism which, in all situations and in all its current positions, offers the proletariat an alternative: not by putting forward the class opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie, but by calling on it to choose between two equally "oppressed" capitalist formations.

Between the fascist bourgeoisie and the anti-fascist bourgeoisie; between "reaction" and "democracy"; between monarchy and republic; between imperialist war and "just and progressive wars".

It is starting from the eternal choice of the "lesser evil" that the Trotskyists participated in the imperialist war, and this was not all limited to the need to defend the USSR. Before defending the latter, they participated in the war in Spain (1936-8) for the defence of Republican Spain against Franco. It was then the defence of Chiang Kai Shek's China against Japan.

The defence of the USSR thus appears not as the starting point for these positions, but as their culmination, one expression among others of the Trotskyists' basic platform, a platform in which the proletariat does not have its own class position in an imperialist war but can and must make a distinction between the various national capitalist formations, momentarily antagonistic towards each other, and where the proletariat must proclaim which side is "progressive" and thus to be supported - as a general rule, the weakest, most backward formations, the "oppressed" bourgeoisie.

This position in a question as crucial as that of war immediately places Trotskyism as a political current outside the camp of the proletariat and in itself demands that any revolutionary proletarian element has to make a total break with it.   

The Trotskyists call on workers to be at the rear of the "progressive" bourgeoisie

However, we have only drawn out one of the roots of Trotskyism. In a more general way, the Trotskyist conception is based on the idea that the emancipation of the proletariat is the not the result of a struggle which places the proletariat as a class against the whole of capitalism, but is the result of a series of political struggles in the narrow sense of the term, and in which the working class, allied in succession to diverse political factions of the bourgeoisie, will eliminate certain other factions and by stages and degrees will succeed in gradually weakening the bourgeoisie, in triumphing over it by dividing it and beating it in separate bits.

The fact that this is not simply a very subtle and insidious strategic conception, best formulated in the slogan "march separately but strike together", but is connected to one of the bases of the Trotskyist conception, is confirmed by the theory of the "permanent revolution" (New Look), which sees the revolution itself as a series of political events, in which the seizure of power by the proletariat is one event among many other intermediate events. In this view, the revolution is certainly not a process involving the economic and political liquidation of a class-divided society, a process in which the building of socialism can only get underway AFTER THE SEIZURE OF POWER BY THE PROLETARIAT.

It is true that this conception of revolution is in some sense "faithful" to the schema of Marx. But this is just faithfulness to the letter. Marx developed this schema in 1848, at a time when the bourgeoisie was still a historically revolutionary class, and it was in the heat of the bourgeois revolutions which unfolded across a whole series of European countries that Marx hoped that it would not end at the bourgeois stage but would be outflanked by the proletariat pushing forward towards the socialist revolution. 

If reality invalidated Marx's hopes, this was at that time a daring revolutionary vision, in advance of what was historically possible. The Trotskyist view of permanent revolution is very different. Faithful to the letter but unfaithful to the spirit, a century after the end of the bourgeois revolutions, in the epoch of world imperialism, when the whole of capitalist society has entered its decadent phase, it attributes a progressive role to certain factions of capitalism, certain capitalist countries (and as the Transitional Programme expressly puts it, this applies to the majority of countries).

In 1848 Marx's aim was to put the proletariat forward at the head of society; the Trotskyists, in 1947, put the proletariat in the rear of the so-called "progressive" bourgeoisie. It would be hard to imagine a more grotesque caricature, a worse deformation of Marx's schema of permanent revolution.

When Trotsky took up the formula in 1905, the theory of the permanent revolution still retained a revolutionary significance. In 1905, at the beginning of the imperialist era, when capitalism still seemed to have wonderful years of prosperity ahead of it, in one of the most backward countries in Europe where a feudal political superstructure still survived, where the workers' movement was still taking its first steps - in this situation, in the face of all the Russian social democrats who were announcing the coming of the bourgeois revolution, in the face of Lenin who at that time didn't dare go further than assigning the future revolution the task of carrying out bourgeois reforms under a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, Trotsky had the undeniable merit of proclaiming that the revolution would be socialist - the dictatorship of the proletariat - or it would not be.

Then the emphasis of the theory of the permanent revolution was on the role of the proletariat, from now on the only revolutionary class. This was an audacious revolutionary proclamation, entirely directed against the frightened and sceptical petty bourgeois socialist theoreticians, and against hesitant revolutionaries who lacked confidence in the proletariat.

Today, when the experience of the last 40 years has fully confirmed these theoretical givens, in a fully formed and already decadent capitalist world, the theory of the New Look permanent revolution is directed only against the revolutionary "illusions" of these ultra-left oddballs, the bête noire of Trotskyism.  

Today, the emphasis is on the backward illusions of the workers, on the inevitability of intermediate stages, on the necessity for a realistic and positive policy, on workers' and peasants' governments, on just wars and progressive national revolutions.

This is the fate of the theory of permanent revolution in the hands of disciples who have only managed to retain and assimilate the weaknesses of the master and not his grandeur, strength and revolutionary worth.

Supporting the "progressive" factions and tendencies in the bourgeoisie and strengthening the revolutionary advance of the proletariat by exploiting inter-capitalist divisions and antagonisms, are the twin peaks of Trotskyist theory. We have seen what the first means, now let's look at the second. 

What is the basis for divergences inside the capitalist camp?

Trotsky, who often allowed himself to get carried away by his own metaphors and images, to the point of losing sight of their real social content, insisted a great deal on the aspect of the divergence of economic interests between the various groups that make up the capitalist class. "It would be wrong to consider capitalism as a unified whole", he taught. "Music is also a whole, but it would be a poor musician who could not distinguish one note from another". And he applied this metaphor to social movements and struggles. No one denies or ignores the existence of clashes of interest within the capitalist class, and the struggles that result from them. The question is to know what place they occupy in society and in various struggles. It would be a very mediocre revolutionary marxist who put struggle between the classes, and struggles between groups inside the same class, on the same level.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the class struggle". This fundamental thesis of the Communist Manifesto obviously does not ignore the existence of secondary struggles between various groups and economic entities inside classes, and their relative importance. But the motor of history is not these secondary factors, but the struggle between dominant class and dominated class. When a new class in history is called upon to take the place of an older class that is no longer able to maintain the leadership of society, i.e. in a historic period of transformation and social revolution, the struggle between these two classes absolutely determines and dominates all social events and all secondary conflicts. In such historical periods, like ours, to insist on secondary conflicts in order to determine and condition the direction and breadth of the class struggle shows with startling clarity that you understand nothing of the essentials of marxist social analysis. All you have done is juggle with abstract phrases about musical notes, and in concrete terms, you have subordinated the historical social struggle of the proletariat to the contingencies of inter-capitalist political conflicts.

This whole kind of politics is fundamentally based on a singular lack of confidence in the proletariat's own forces. Certainly the last three decades of uninterrupted defeats have tragically illustrated the immaturity and weakness of the proletariat. But it would be wrong to seek the source of this weakness in the self-isolation of the proletariat, in the absence of a sufficiently supple line of approach towards anti-proletarian classes, strata and political formations. It's the other way round. Since the foundation of the Communist International, the infantile disease of "leftism" has been constantly decried, in favour of elaborating strategies for winning over the broad masses, conquering the unions, using parliament as a revolutionary tribune, the political united front with what Trotsky called "the devil and his grandmother", the participation in the workers' government in Saxony...

What has been the result?

A disaster. Each time a new supple strategy was put forward, there followed a greater, deeper defeat for the workers.  To make up for a weakness that is attributed to the proletariat, to "strengthen" the working class, we were going to rely not only on extra-proletarian political forces (social democracy) but also on ultra-reactionary social forces: "revolutionary" peasant parties, international peasants' conferences, international conferences of the colonial peoples. The more catastrophes rained on the proletariat's head, the more the rage for alliances triumphed in the CI. Of course the origins of this whole policy must be sought in the existence of the Russian state, which began to find its reason for existence in itself, having by nature nothing in common with the socialist revolution, since the state is alien to the proletariat and its finality as a class.

The state, in order to conserve and strengthen itself, has to look for and find allies in the "oppressed" bourgeoisies, in the "progressive" colonial peoples and countries, because these social categories are naturally called upon to build up a state themselves. It can speculate about divisions and conflicts between other states and capitalist groups, because it is of the same social and class nature as them

In these conflicts, the weakening of one of its antagonists can become the condition for the strengthening of the state. It's not the same for the proletariat and its revolution. It cannot count on any one of these allies; it cannot rely on any of these forces. It is alone and what's more is placed in a situation of irreducible opposition to all these forces and elements who for their part are indivisibly united against it.

To make the proletariat conscious of its position, of its historical mission, hiding nothing about the extreme difficulties of its struggle, but at the same time teaching that it has no choice, that it must fight and conquer despite these difficulties or else sacrifice its human and physical existence - this is the only way to arm the proletariat for victory.

But trying to get round the difficulty by trying to find possible allies, even temporary ones, portraying them as progressive elements of other classes which the working class can rely upon - this is to consoling it with deception, this is disarming and disorienting it.

This is effectively the function of the Trotskyist movement today.

Marc

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"Bravo Abd el-Krim", or a little history of Trotskyism (Internationalisme n° 24, July 1947)

Some people suffer from feelings of inferiority, others from feelings of guilt, still others from persecution mania. Trotskyism is afflicted with an illness, which for want of a better word we will call "defencism". The whole history of Trotskyism revolves around the "defence" of something or other. And when they sadly go through a week when there is nothing and nobody to defend, they really do fall ill. You can recognise them by their sad, defeated faces, haggard eyes, searching like a drug addict for his daily fix: a cause or a victim for them to take up the defence.

Thank God there is a Russia which once had a revolution. It will serve the Trotskyists' need for defence till the end of their days. Whatever happens to Russia, the Trotskyists will be unshakeable in their "defence of the USSR" because Russia is an inexhaustible source for satisfying their "defencist" vice.

But it's not the big defences that count. To fulfil a Trotskyist's life, he needs something more than the great, immortal, unconditional "defence of the USSR", even though it's the foundation and raison d'être of Trotskyism. He also needs lesser defences, day-to-day defences....

Capitalism, in its phase of decadence, unleashes such generalised destruction that as well as the proletariat, which is always a prime victim of the system, repression and massacre are also spreading within the capitalist class itself. Hitler massacres the bourgeois republicans, Churchill and Truman shoots and hangs Goering and Co, Stalin massacres left, right and centre. Widespread bloody chaos, the perfection of brutality and sadism on a scale never before seen, are the inevitable ransom for capitalism's inability to overcome its contradictions, and the absence of the conscious will of the proletariat to do away with it. But God be praised! What prospects all this offers for those seeking causes to defend! Our Trotskyists can rest easy. Every day there is a new opportunity for our latter day knights, allowing them to show off their great and generous nature in righting wrongs and obtaining vengeance for the maltreated.

We only have to cast an eye on the chronicles of Trotskyist history

In autumn 1935, Italy began a military campaign against Ethiopia. It was without doubt an imperialist war of colonial conquest between, on the one hand, an advanced capitalist country, Italy and, on the other, Ethiopia, a backward country, economically and politically semi-feudal. Italy had the regime of Mussolini, Ethiopia, the regime of the Negus, the "King of Kings". But the Italian-Ethiopian war was more than a classic colonial war. It was a preparation for and prelude to the imminent world war.  But the Trotskyists had no need to look ahead that far. For them it was enough to know that Mussolini was the wicked aggressor against the poor kingdom of the Negus for them to immediately take up the unconditional defence of the national independence of Ethiopia. And how! They added their voices to the general choir (above all the choir of the "democratic" Anglo-Saxon bloc in formation) to demand international sanctions against "fascist aggression". Not needing lessons in defencism from anyone, they denounced the League of Nations for not defending Ethiopia enough, and called on the workers of the world to assume the defence of Ethiopia and the Negus. It's true that being defended by the Trotskyists didn't add much to the fortunes of the Negus, who, despite this defence, was defeated. But you can hardly blame them for this, because when it comes to defending, even defending a Negus, the Trotskyists have done their duty!

In 1936, the war broke out in Spain, in the form of an internal "civil war" that divided the Spanish bourgeoisie between a Francoist clan and a Republican clan. It used up the life and blood of the workers and was a general rehearsal for the imminent world war. The Republican/Stalinist/anarchist government was in a clearly inferior situation. The Trotskyists naturally ran to the aid of the Republic "in danger against fascism". A war obviously can't be fought with combatants and without materiel; otherwise it would come to a halt. Frightened by such a prospect, where there can no longer be any defence, the Trotskyists used all their strength to recruit combatants for the international brigades and poured their energies into the "guns for Spain" campaign. The Republican government, the Azanas and Negrins, had been the friends of Franco yesterday against the working class, and would be again tomorrow. But the Trotskyists didn't look too closely. Their help is not for sale. Either you are for or against Defence. We Trotskyists are neo-defenders, and that's that.

In 1938, war raged in the Far East. Japan attacked Chiang Kai Shek's China. Ah! No hesitation possible: "all as one for the defence of China!" Trotsky himself explained that this wasn't the moment to recall the bloody massacre of thousands and thousands of workers in Shanghai and Canton by the same Chiang Kai Shek in the 1927 revolution. The Chiang Kai Shek government may well be a capitalist government in hock to American imperialism and every bit the equal of the Japanese regime when it comes to the exploitation and repression of the workers. But this matters little next to the higher principle of national independence. The international proletariat mobilised for the independence of Chinese capitalism nevertheless remains dependent.... on Yankee imperialism, but Japan effectively lost China and was defeated. The Trotskyists can be happy. At least they had achieved one half of their goal! It's true however that this victory against the Japanese[10] cost the lives of tens of thousands of workers slaughtered over 7 years on all the fronts of the last world war.

1939: Hitler's Germany attacks Poland. Forward for the defence of Poland! But then the Russian "Workers" State" also attacks Poland, and what's more makes war on Finland and seizes territory by force from Romania. These actions befuddled Trotskyist minds a bit; like the Stalinists they didn't fully return to their senses until the opening of hostilities between Russia and Germany. Then it all became simple, too simple, tragically simple. For five years the Trotskyists called on the workers of all countries to massacre each other for the "defence of the USSR", and on the rebound everything that was allied to the USSR. They fought against the Vichy government, which wanted to place the French colonial empire at the service of Germany and thus threaten "its unity". They fought against Petain and the various Quislings.[11] In the USA, they called for the control of the army by the trade unions in order to better ensure the defence of the USA against the menace of German fascism. They were all maquis and fought in all the Resistances in all countries. This was the very zenith of "defence".

The war came to an end, but the deep need for "defence" among the Trotskyists has no end. The worldwide chaos that followed the official cessation of the war, the various movements of exasperated nationalism, the bourgeois nationalist uprisings in the colonies, all of them expressions of this worldwide chaos, everywhere used and fomented by the great powers for their imperialist interests, continued to supply ample matter for the Trotskyists to defend. It was above all the bourgeois nationalist movements in the colonies which, under the flag of "national liberation", and the "struggle against imperialism", continued to slaughter tens of thousands of workers, but which led the Trotskyists to the heights of their exaltation of defence.

In Greece, the Anglo-American and Russian blocs came into conflict over the control of the Balkans, draped in the local colours of a partisan war against the official government. The Trotskyists joined the dance: "hands off Greece" they cried, and announced the good news to the workers: the constitution of international brigades on Yugoslav territory under the "liberator" Tito.[12] The Trotskyists invited workers to join them for the liberation of Greece.

With no less enthusiasm they recounted their heroic tales of armed struggle in China in the ranks of the so-called Communist army - in reality this army was no more Communist than Stalin's Russian government of which it was an emanation.  Indochina, where the massacre was equally well organised, was a chosen territory for the Trotskyist defence of the "national independence of Vietnam". With the same general enthusiasm the Trotskyists supported and defended the bourgeois national party of Destour in Tunisia and the bourgeois national party in Algeria (the PPA). They discovered the liberating virtues of the MDRM, a bourgeois nationalist movement in Madagascar. The arrest of its members, councillors of the Republic and deputies in Madagascar, by the French capitalist government, drove the indignation of the Trotskyists through the roof. Every week La Vérité was filled with appeals for the defence of the poor Madagascan deputies. "Free Ravohanguy, free Raharivelo, free Roseta!" The paper didn't have enough pages to cover all the "defences" supported by the Trotskyists. Defence of the Stalinist party under threat in the USA! Defence of the Pan-Arab movement against Jewish Zionist colonisation in Palestine, and defence of the chauvinist Jewish colonisers, the terrorist leaders of the Irgun, against Britain!  Defence of the Young Socialists against the Directing Committee of the SFIO. Defence of the SFIO against the neo-Socialist Ramadier. Defence of the CGT against its leaders. Defence of "freedoms" against the "fascist" threats of De Gaulle. Defence of the Constitution against Reaction. Defence of the PC-PS-CGT government against the MRP. And, dominating it all, defence of poor Russia under Stalin, THREATENED BY US ENCIRCLEMENT!

Poor, poor Trotskyists, on whose narrow shoulders rests the heavy burden of so many "defences"!

On 31 May there was a rather sensational event: Abd el-Krim, the old leader of the Rif[13] exploited the politeness of the French government by escaping during his transfer to France.  This escape was prepared and carried out with the complicity of King Faruk of Egypt, who gave him what you could call a royal asylum, and with the benevolent indifference of the USA. The French government and press were in consternation. France's position in its colonies is far from certain and it doesn't need new problems. But more than the real danger, the escape by Abd el-Krim is pouring a bit more ridicule on France, whose prestige in the world has already been shaken. We can thus understand very well the recriminations in all the press, complaining about Abd el-Krim's abuse of trust towards the democratic French government in escaping despite giving his word of honour to the contrary.

For our Trotskyists, this was indeed a formidable event which had them jumping with joy. La Vérité for 6 June, under the title "Bravo Abd el-Krim" told us all about this "leader of the heroic struggle of Moroccan people" and explained the revolutionary grandeur of his action. "If you deceived these gentlemen of the HQ and Ministry of the Colonies - you have done well. Lenin taught us that we have to learn how to deceive the bourgeoisie, lie to it and outwit it". So here we have Abd el-Krim transformed into a pupil of Lenin - perhaps he will soon be an honorary member of the Executive Committee of the 4th International!

The Trotskyists are keen to assure this "old Rif fighter, who as in the past aims for the independence of his country", that "as long as Abd el-Krim fights on, all the communists of the world will give him aid and assistance". And they conclude: "What the Stalinists said yesterday we Trotskyists repeat today".

We couldn't put it better ourselves. We won't reproach the Trotskyists for repeating today what the Stalinists said yesterday and for doing what the Stalinists have always done. Neither will we argue with them for "defending" whatever they want. That is their role after all.

But if we can express one single wish - for God's sake, let's hope that the Trotskyists' need to defend doesn't one day extend to the proletariat. Because with a defence like that, the proletariat will never recover. The experience of Stalinism is proof enough of that!

Marc

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[1]. See our pamphlet (in French) La Gauche Communiste de France: https://fr.internationalism.org/brochure/gcf [76]

[2].  See our article "The communist left and the continuity of marxism", https://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left [77]

[3]. See the first chapter of La Gauche Communise de France: "The aborted attempts to create a communist left in France".

[4]. Editorial note: A particular reference has to be made to Munis who did break with Trotskyism on the basis of the defence of proletarian internationalism. See our article on this point in International Review n°58, "Farewell to Munis, a revolutionary militant". (https://en.internationalism.org/node/3077 [78] ).

[5]. Editorial note: this is a reference to the Russian offensive in 1939 which as well as Finland also took in Poland (at the moment that Hitler was invading it) and Rumania

[6]. This is quite characteristic of the Johnson-Forest group which has just split from Schachtman's party and which sees itself as being very "left wing" because it rejects both the defence of the USSR and the anti-Russian position of Schachtman. This same group severely criticises the French Trotskyists which, it considers, didn't participate in the Resistance actively enough. This is a typical offshoot of Trotskyism.

[7]. Editorial note: Forces Français de L'Intérieur, the umbrella organisation of the military groups of the French Resistance in occupied France and in March 1944 placed under the command of General Koenig and under the political authority of General de Gaulle.

[8]. Editorial note: Parti Communiste Internationaliste: a result of the regroupment in 1944 between the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste and the Comité Communiste Internationaliste

[9]. The Transitional Programme: "The struggle against imperialism and war".

[10]. Read for example in La Véritė 20.6.47 in "The heroic struggle of the Chinese Trotskyists": "In the province of Chantoung our comrades became the best guerrilla fighters...in the province of Kung-Si...the Trotskyists were saluted by the Stalinists as the most loyal anti-Japanese fighters", etc

[11]. Editorial note: Vidkun Quisling was the leader of the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling (a Nazi party) and chief of the puppet government set up by the Germans after the invasion of Norway

[12]. Editorial note: Josip Tito was one of the leaders of the Yugoslav resistance and took power in Yugoslavia at the end of the war.

[13]. Editorial note: Abd el-Krim El-Khattabi (born around 1882 in Ajdir in Morocco, died 6 February 1963 in Cairo in Egypt) led a long campaign of resistance against the colonial occupation of the Rif - a mountainous region of Morocco - first by the Spanish, then by the French, and succeeded in setting up a ‘Confederate Republic of the Tribes of the Rif' in 1922. The war to crush this new republic was fought by an army of 450,000 men put together by the French and Spanish governments. Seeing his cause was lost, Abd el-Krim let himself be taken as a prisoner of war in order to spare the lives of civilians, which didn't prevent the French from bombing villages with mustard gas, resulting in 150,000 civilian deaths. Abd el-Krim was exiled to La Réunion in 1926 and lived there under house arrest, but received permission to return to live in France in 1947. When his boat docked in Egypt, he managed to trick his guards and escape, ending his life in Cairo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_el-Krim [79]