Presentation
We have just received from Argentina an "International Proposal" addressed to revolutionary groups and elements. It calls for discussion between, and the regroupment of, revolutionary forces which are today weak and dispersed throughout the world. This proposal, which we present here without our reply, is clearly unequivocally proletarian: it denounces bourgeois democracy, all kinds of ‘anti-fascist' frontism and nationalism. It defends and affirms the necessity of proletarian internationalism against imperialist war.
We salute the spirit and concern of the comrades in their document: the necessity of open discussion, of ‘polemic', of the confrontation of different political positions, of the fraternal political struggle, in order to constitute an international pole of political reference. A pole of reference capable of regroupment and helping the emergence of revolutionary groups and elements. How can we not support the spirit and preoccupation of the comrades when we ourselves affirmed at the constitution of the ICC, in the first issue of our International Review April 1975, our own objective: "to concentrate the weak revolutionary forces dispersed throughout the world is today, in this period of general crisis, pregnant with social convulsions, one of the most urgent and arduous tasks confronting revolutionaries. This task can only be accomplished when placed from the very beginning on the international level. This concern is at the centre of the preoccupations of our Current. It is to this concern that our Review replies, and in launching it we intend to make it an instrument, a pole for the international regroupment of revolutionaries." Even if the results have so far been modest, our intentions remain, and it is in this spirit that we are publishing this ‘International Proposal' signed by two groups: "Workers' Emancipation" and "Revolutionary Class Militant".[1]
The latter group is not known to us. However we know that ‘Workers' Emancipation' is a group which emerged after the Falklands War. It is not linked to any existing group. This group constituted itself little by little throughout the terrible years of the ‘70s in Argentina. It had to confront the repression of the bourgeois state in all its forms:
-- the official: democracy, Peronist, unionist, and of course the police and military;
-- the semi-official, para-state: on one side, that of the infamous commandos of the extreme right, AAA, and on the other side, that of... trotskyism[2] when our comrades denounced the support and participation of the latter in the Falklands War and defended a policy of ‘revolutionary defeatism'.
It was in 1978 that the repression reached its apex at the time of the World Cup in Argentina. It was in 1978 that our comrades decided: "to begin a work of ideological struggle and publish clandestinely ... It's this activity which, when the military government invaded the Falklands, permitted the distribution of leaflets in the streets, opposing the war from its second day. It was in this way that old and new acquaintances regrouped in the struggle against nationalism and the inter-bourgeois war. During these two months, some small groups emerged with an internationalist activity." (‘Workers Emancipation'). After the war, these groups united and "decided to pursue the process of political struggle and discuss the future: product of the discussion, is a document on the future elections and this document is signed: "Workers' Emancipation"."
It's with emotion and joy that we salute these comrades and present here their "International Proposal". In a country where the proletariat has suffered a ferocious repression, the appearance of a proletarian voice is a promise, after Mexico, after India, for the victory in the gigantic class confrontations to come.
It's also the promise for the work and responsibility of the groups already in the international revolutionary milieu. For its part, the ICC will try to fill as well as possible the task it has given itself.
ICC
"International Proposal" to the partisans of the world proletarian revolution
On February 22 and 23 1986, a group of militants from certain countries (especially Argentina and Uruguay) met in Uruguay to discuss the present world situation and the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat.
There was a general agreement between them that in the face of the world-wide attacks of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and the present state of weakness, dispersion and isolation of the small revolutionary class forces, it is necessary to work together to reverse this situation in combating the sectarianism and nationalism which is implicit in certain conceptions of international work. In an attempt to change this situation, the comrades present put forward the following ideas and propositions.
Some preliminary considerations and fundamentals
It might seem strange that here, some groups and a small number of militants, who are certainly generally unknown, suddenly launch an appeal, a proposition to all those who throughout the world uphold with greater or lesser strength, with greater or lesser clarity, the flag of proletarian internationalism, of the world proletarian revolution
But it's not just "here" or "all of a sudden" that once again the anguished cry of revolutionary minorities is raised, trying to break the chains imposed by capital, helplessly witnessing the terrifying blows which the bourgeoisie inflicts on the proletariat and themselves. Whether in periods of rising class struggle or the most violent moments of counter-revolution, these revolutionary minorities discover, one by one, the meaning of isolation, the weakness of their small forces. A weakness which is not only numerical but fundamentally political, since it is impossible to resolve locally or nationally the problems with which revolutionaries are presently posed.
We are convinced that in different places groups are arising which don't identify with the traditional left (Stalinist, Trotskyist and their different varieties), with politics aimed at helping the bourgeoisie to solve its problems, with the position of changing the state form of bourgeois domination or supporting its wars, but who instead try to elaborate a distinctive politics calling for the autonomy of the working class against the bourgeoisie and the struggle to destroy its domination and its state without preliminary (democratic) phases or stages. And we know what it means to swim against the current, without being able to count on any help, without the immediate possibility of reappropriating the historical experience of the revolutionary proletariat, without fundamental theoretical-political texts, and in a dangerous atmosphere of repression.
If, for some, certain definitions or positions are "ABC" which we don't write or talk about sufficiently clearly, for each of us to be able to describe the struggle requires a long process of struggles, of ruptures, of fear and uncertainties.
In the schools here they teach us a saying of a famous man of the last century: "ideas cannot be killed." However, we have learnt that one kills those who have certain ideas (or positions) and that the dominant class can over a long period prevent the reappropriation, the awareness of the link with and the development of experience, of ideas and positions which the revolutionary proletariat lives and builds up in different parts of the world. Thus, paradoxically, it took a monstrous repression (with a subsequent state of exile) and the (Falklands) war to make known here the existence of diverse radical currents and groups throughout the world. To make known - and that still little enough - the experience of Germany and elsewhere after World War One. To get to know other positions in the Spanish Civil War, which were neither Francoist nor Republican. And there is another history closer to us (which we hardly know at all).
Departing from this we have had confirmation that groups currently exist which don't belong to the ‘traditional' political currents, many of whom we didn't know before, and others of whom we don't know when and how they broke with capital and its fractions, but which express to different degrees different moments of rupture with the politics of capital.
But if today we are aware that they exist, this doesn't mean that the present situation of isolation and of weakness has changed. On the contrary, we don't even hear enough about what's going on, not only in far away countries, but not even in a nearby city or in a neighboring quarter. And this shouldn't be understood as a curiosity or as a journalistic question: in Argentina for example, there are continually days when several million workers are in struggle without there being any coordination between them, so they sometimes don't even know that there is a struggle which is going on everywhere. And if this is the case for relatively massive movements, it's even worse with the contact and the awareness of the existence of avant-gardes appearing during these struggles or under their influence.
And we are convinced that in the countries we live in, as elsewhere in the world, groups of workers and militants are being thrown up, trying to break with the politics of conciliation, of subordination to the bourgeoisie, but which, in the absence of an international reference, and with the strong presence of the bourgeoisie in the workers' movement, end up being absorbed by some fraction of capital or simply disintegrating, disappearing.
Few are those who manage to survive the first blows, and those who do so have an uncertain perspective or political isolation ahead of them. Having surmounted different stages and having to double back, they find themselves in an impasse, starting from scratch on new subjects. Something which is transformed into a daily reality, a helplessness which saps those limited forces which already have been politically and economically hammered. Isn't there an alternative to this? Must the preparation of a revolutionary internationalist politics, or at least an attempt at it, proceed step by step, group by group, city by city, nation by nation, generation by generation? Does each one have to go through the same stages, confront the same problems, receive the same blows, decipher the same letters, elaborate the same words, in order after some time and a long hard road, having become strong and "party-like", to join up with ones "equals", or, in their absence, to "spread" to other nations?
We don't believe that this is the only option. We don't even believe that this can lead to anything positive.
On the contrary, we think that the only alternative we must work towards is the international one. Just as it's a mystification to talk about a communist society as long as there still exists even one capitalist country, the same goes for talking about internationalism if it is only conceived of as solidarity with workers' struggles throughout the world or as pompous phrases now and again against war, militarism or imperialism.
For us, proletarian internationalism has a different meaning, and implies making the effort to go beyond general solidarity, since the international dimensions of the proletarian revolution demand the interaction and unification of efforts to work out a unique strategy at the world level and its political corollary in the tasks confronting us in the different zones and countries.
Naturally this can't be resolved through voluntarism or from one day to the next. It will not be the fruit of a long, prolonged "educational" or "scientific" work such as was conceived by the Second International (and not only it), through an "accumulation of forces" ("winning militants one by one" and "elaborating the theory" and structuring the leadership which will be recognized when its time comes) for a far distant future confrontation, whereas every day we see the resistance and the struggle of the proletariat against capital (which in reality, for these "political currents", must be controlled, covered, isolated in such a way that they are adapted for the incessant "task" of supporting some fraction of the bourgeoisie against another, supposedly worse one) .
If the party of the working class is not one of these political groups calling itself such in one or more countries, if one can't agree with "the party for the working class" and the call for "the working class organized as a class, in other words as a party", this is not a simple game of words. If we reject the social-democratic ideas (Stalinists, Trotskyists etc) of the party as an apparatus (intellectuals, workers, etc) carrying the truth, which voluntarily constitutes itself within one nation and awaits recognition from the uncultivated masses, and the international as a federation of parties (or a party which spreads to other nations), this implies a break with these conceptions and practices which are totally opposed to proletarian internationalism and which in fact are just a way of manifesting and defending nationalist ideas.
Among the latter, the most evident is that which conceives of the development of its own group (or their own groups) as a local or national question, with the aim of developing a decisive force for later on, which dedicates itself to making contacts with other groups in other countries in order to absorb them or generally expose them through discussions and declarations.
The international contacts are considered as "private property", with a bilateral practice predominating, something which can include periods of ‘getting together' over so many years, finally coming together in the "United Nations" of "Revolutionaries." The practice of the Second International is a good example of this. We consider that this path can only lead to new frustrations and new mystifications, which is why it is necessary to struggle against all the interests, conceptions and the sectarianism which produce and reproduce the divisions created by the bourgeoisie in the defense of its internal markets, of its states, of "its" proletarians, in other words, of the surplus value it extracts.
On certain accusations
We don't know if the above is sufficient to present this proposition and justify it, or if it requires greater development. However, we believe it necessary to add precisions regarding certain accusations.
To be sure, many will ask themselves: "With whom, to what point and how does one place oneself within a proletarian internationalist perspective? How to determine this? Who is to do so?" It's evident that nobody would think of working with, or even making a leaflet with someone in the enemy camp. Regarding the class enemy there can be neither conciliation nor entryism. But not everybody is an enemy. It cannot be denied that among the groups and persons not belonging to the latter there is often intolerance, static visions and sectarianism. There is a practice of divergence, a dispute over "customers" in common, a nationalism and a "defense of one's own back garden" disguised as intransigence.
We cannot escape this problem in an international proposition. It's natural that nobody would think of working in a common perspective with a group of the Fourth International or with a third world Maoist. But if the character of the enemy class is evident in certain cases, in others it's much more subtle, which makes it difficult to draw up a line of demarcation, all the more so when we are seeking to take a step forward in the present situation of weakness, isolation and dispersion.
We believe that it is impossible to elaborate an ensemble of "programmatic" points, which would only be the proof of opportunism, unless they are so worked out and profound that perhaps only the group itself could agree, if at all.
One shouldn't pretend either that groups and isolated individuals in each country of the world can ripen in the same way as in other zones or that we can take this or that definition which, as widespread as it may be in certain places, is not the product of a shared history, of which as we have already pointed out, little or nothing is known in other zones.
Conversely, the almost one year long strike of the British miners didn't give rise to any serious attempt at coordinating a common response of the different groups and militants scattered across the globe, something which points not only to a weakness and a hesitation, but to sectarianism, to conceptions of the class struggle and of the party like those of social democracy. And in the face of the Iran-Iraq war? And of South Africa and Bolivia and elsewhere where the proletariat in struggle has received the hardest blows? What reply, however minimal, has been attempted at the international level?
How to resolve this? How are the criteria for our recognition to be decided in order that from the outset the proposition to overcome the present situation isn't still-born (either being ambiguous enough to lead to a free for all, or else being so strict that the only ones ‘admitted' are already working together?).
For us, the criteria for our recognition are in practice. And that what the second part of the Proposition deals with, even if the latter, no more than anything else, can evade the essential, unique "guarantee": the struggle.
International Proposition
With the objective of:
-- contributing to the modification of the present state of weakness of the tiny revolutionary and class forces scattered throughout the world, in order to raise its possibilities of action in the class struggle;
-- consolidating and enlarging today's sporadic coming together, in the perspective of organizing and centralizing a proletarian internationalist tendency which exists today, with all its limits and errors, we propose the following:
1) A coordinated response in the face of certain attacks of capital (eg. on the question of the British miners, of the workers of South Africa, Iran-Iraq, etc): joint leaflets and campaigns, political information, moments of practical relations and orientations affecting the world proletariat.
2) International Information:
a) about workers' struggles, in order to make propaganda as much as possible on the most important struggles taking place in each region or country in order to spread their echo and to reinforce the reality of proletarian internationalism and proletarian fraternity;
b) about different political groups, not only participants in the proposal, but also enemies, since this is a necessary element for the political struggle against them;
c) about historical experience, texts and documents produced in the long struggle of the proletariat against capital and all exploitation.
3) Theoretical-political polemic with a view towards taking up joint positions and as a contribution to the development of revolutionary politics.
For those who not only agree on a whole series of points but are in agreement on praxis, and who put forward all the points of this proposition, in particular point 1 (common action), it is vital to organize the discussion. And solely for those, we propose two things:
4) The international organization of correspondence, implying the creation of a fluid network of exchange and of communication, which should be one of the material bases of point 7.
5) An International Review, which should not be conceived of as an ensemble of the political positions of the different groups brought together under a "collective" cover. On the contrary, it should be an instrument to consolidate the realized common activity, to propagate and argue shared positions and, to be sure, to develop the necessary public discussion on the vital questions concerning the tasks of the moment, the proposed activity and the "open" themes, given a common agreement on the necessity to include them.
6) To the degree that there is the necessary agreement, to stimulate the participation of other groups in the press and vice versa and the spreading of texts of intervening groups.
7) Move towards creating a common "internal" discussion: in other words, not limit oneself to the "official and public" polemic between groups, but also the discussion of communists in the face of "open" problems.
All the activities and all the decisions which the participating groups take will be through general agreement, in other words, unanimously.
To whom do we make this proposition?
1. Anyone in the world waging struggle against the attacks of capital, against all imperialist or inter-bourgeois wars, against all bourgeois states (regardless of shade or color) with the aim of the working class imposing its dictatorship against the bourgeoisie, its social system and all forms of exploitation.
2. All those who don't support any fraction of the bourgeoisie against another, but who struggle against them all. Those who don't defend inter-classist fronts, neither adhering to nor participating in them.
3. Those who practically accept that "the workers have no country," this fundamental phrase which doesn't just say that the workers can't defend what they don't have, but that they "can" and "must" intervene in the struggles and tasks posed in the different countries of the world, despite the fact that, from the bourgeois point of view, this would be considered as an interference and against "the right of nations to self-determination." A right which is called for each time the revolutionary proletariat or its avant-garde reinforces its international links in the face of its class enemy, a right which is trampled on each time it comes to putting down and massacring revolutionary movements.
4. Precisely for this reason, those who fight against the politics of "defense of the national economy", of economic recovery, of "sacrifices to resolve crisis", to those who don't swallow the policies of expansion of their own bourgeoisie even when the latter is economically, politically or militarily attacked; to those who always struggle against the entire bourgeoisie, both local and foreign.
5. To those who combat the forces and the ideologies which set out to chain the proletarians to the economy and to the politics of the nation state, disarming them under the pretext of "realism" and the "lesser evil".
6. To those who don't propose to "recuperate" or "reconquer" the unions. On the contrary, to those who characterize the latter as instruments and institutions of the bourgeoisie and of its state. In no way can the unions defend to the end the immediate interests of the proletariat. In no way can they serve the revolutionary interests of the proletariat.
7. Those who agree that one of the tasks on this terrain is to battle to the end against the political line of class collaboration supported by the unions, and who contribute to making the rupture of the class from the unions irreversible.
8. To those who do all they can to contribute to reinforcing all the attempts at unification of the proletariat, in order to confront capital, even partially, all the attempts at extension, generalization and deepening of the struggles of resistance against capital.
9. To those who defend the struggles against all varieties of capitalist repression, whether those exercised by the official (state) military forces of law and order, or that of its civilian colleagues of the left and right of capital. To those who, as best they can, collaborate with groups who suffer the blows of repression.
10. To those avant-gardes who, in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state, pitilessly combat those who limit themselves to criticizing one of the forms which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie takes on (the most violent, military one in fact) and defend democracy or struggle for its development.
11. In this sense, in the face of the bourgeoisie's false alternative of fascism/anti-fascism, to those who denounce the bourgeois class character of anti-fascist fronts and of democracy, and pose the necessity of struggling for the destruction of the bourgeois state, in whatever form it presents itself, with the objective of abolishing the system of wage labor and the world-wide elimination of class society and all forms of exploitation.
12. To those for whom proletarian internationalism implies, first of all, the struggle against one's own bourgeoisie, revolutionary defeatism in case of any war which is not the class war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and for the world proletarian revolution.
13. To those who, with whatever different theorizations on the party, agree on the fact that they are international from birth onwards, or they are nothing.
14. Finally, to those who, in accordance with their strength and their situation have defined their tasks against the bourgeoisie, oriented towards two fundamental aspects:
a) push the development of the class autonomy of the proletariat;
b) contribute to the construction and development of the politics of proletarian internationalism and the world party.
In other words, whereas the means, the tasks and priorities can be adapted in different ways depending on a given situation, all of this must be in relation to one sole perspective: the constitution of the working class as a world-wide force for the destruction of the capitalist system.
Final clarification
We believe that the above formulations can and should be improved, corrected, completed. We aren't going to defend every last dot and comma of this Proposition, but its general sense.
In the first discussions we have had on the present situation and on how to begin to change it, there have been comrades who have expressed a certain pessimism on the reception it will receive and on the possibilities of its realization. We believe that in the face of the terrible blows which the bourgeoisie delivers against a proletariat searching, sometimes desperately, to resolve its problems, in the face of the possibility (and the realities) of inter-bourgeois war, in the face of massacres of the workers, of children and the old, which are repeated in different parts of the world, and in the face of the ever-growing mountain of tasks imposed on revolutionaries at present, the politics of the sect, of greediness, of "leaving things till later" and the implicit or explicit defense of the present "status quo" don't match up.
The recognition of the present situation should be translated through a political initiative capable of recuperating the lost ground and of overcoming grave weaknesses. In this sense, the common engagement must be the struggle for a radical change in the international relations between revolutionaries. In other words, going beyond a simple exchange of positions (sometimes not even that) to a joint taking of positions in the face of the attack of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, to an indispensable coordination orienting the reflection and the debate on questions which consolidate the common perspective.
Among the objections which could be raised in relation to the viability of this proposition, are ones on how to concretize it.
Here we find in point 5, if one agrees with it at all, the means for studying how to organize its realization. We don't pretend to give a reply here to each question and problem, but to manifest an engagement to struggle for its concretization.
It is evident that the rapid execution of certain things requires physical meetings. We don't believe that this is absolutely necessary, that is to say, at present it seems to us to be very difficult to achieve, at least for those of us who live in this part of the world.
At present, we don't see the conditions allowing for the organization of a really international meeting: a trip abroad is (economically) forbidden to us. A trip of 8,000km, the equivalent of more than 15 months wages (more than 20 if we take the minimum defined by the government). That's why we believe that to begin with the relations and discussions, at least between the non-Europeans and the Europeans, should be through correspondence. This will take more time and make the task more difficult, but it's not impossible, far from it (a letter from Europe, for example, if there isn't a strike, takes 15 to 20 days).
Security conditions (those who have confidence in legality are not only childish but a danger for revolutionaries) also pose obstacles, but they can and will be resolved.
Language also creates inconveniences. For our part, and up till now, the only one we have been able to write is Spanish. Some of us can read Italian, Portuguese, and English with difficulty. With a bit of imagination, someone might manage to understand a little French, but there is nothing to be done with German. The other languages "don't exist." Taking this into account, what's in Castillan won't have the same circulation and rapidity as the other languages in the established order.
To conclude, the initiative which we are presenting has been put forward in its fundamentals. Those who show an interest or agree with it will receive a part entitled "More On Organization". In other words, how we see its realization and concretization .
We guarantee that all those who write to us will get a copy of all the replies received. The future organization of the correspondence, discussions, etc, will be with those who agree and will depend on the way they agree among themselves.
For those who agree with the spirit of the proposition, we will ask them to spread it and to give us details (if possible with their address) of groups which have received this convocation. Uruguay, February 1986.
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ICC note: we are not publishing a ‘clarifying note' which appeared as a post-script, due to lack of space. This note was written after the meeting in March ‘86. The comrades make some precisions about the ‘technical' aspects of their proposal and about the assigning of articles. They propose that the review be divided into three parts: "one common to all the intervening groups based on a common agreement which would explain and/or show the bases for the positions shared. A second part, where the subject would be chosen jointly but on which the positions would be individual ones. And a third part where the subject would be freely chosen by each participant, where they could push forward the discussion of themes they thought important and which they did not consider had been correctly approached by the others. Or a ‘new' subject or a particular argumentation. We consider as fundamental the inclusion of three parts in this international proposal". (Emancipation Obrera and Militancia Clasista Revolucionaria).
ICC Reply
Dear Comrades,
We have just seen your pamphlet: "International Proposal to all partisans of the World Proletarian Revolution"[3].
After a first reading and discussion, we salute, before anything else, the spirit which animates your ‘proposal' which we support with determination.
We can only agree that the revolutionary movement not only finds itself today in a position of extreme weakness - numerically, politically and moreover organizationally - but above all suffers from immense dispersal and the isolation of the weak groups which identify with it. Like you, we think that one of the first tasks - indeed the first task today - of each group really situating itself on the revolutionary terrain of the proletariat is to use all its power to put an end to this deplorable situation, to react vigorously against the dispersion and isolation, against the sectarian and shopkeeper spirit, for the development of links, contacts, discussions of regroupments and common action between groups, on the international and national level. Those who, among these groups, don't feel this necessity - and they unfortunately exist - show their incomprehension of our present situation, and thus their tendency to sclerosis.
That a group in Argentina, uncovers in turn, this urgent necessity - which is all to its credit - doesn't surprise us: 1) because the fact that it appreciates this necessity proves its revolutionary vitality and 2) because we have found this same preoccupation in the other groups emerging recently such as the ‘Alptraum' group in Mexico or that of the ‘Internationalist Communist' in India.
Why the awareness of this necessity precisely today? To understand this it's not sufficient to say that the anxious cry of revolutionaries trying to break the ‘cordon sanitaire' of capital, yet again, isn't emerging all at once; it's not sufficient to say that in periods of rising class struggle as much as in moments of the most violent counter-revolution, these minorities "discover, one after the other, what this isolation means, the weakness of their small forces, a numerical if not fundamentally political weakness..." If it is true that revolutionaries always try to break the ‘cordon sanitaire' of the bourgeoisie looking to disperse them and isolate them from their class, one cannot put "periods of heightened class struggle" and "the most violent moments of counterrevolution" on the same level.
Without falling into fatalism, the historical experience of the class struggle teaches us that a period of reflux and of profound defeats of the proletariat leads inevitably to a dispersion of revolutionary forces and the tendency to isolation. The task then imposed on revolutionary groups is that of trying to limit as much as possible the avalanche of the enemy class in order to prevent the latter pushing them into the void. In a sense, isolation in such a situation is not only inevitable but necessary to better resist the temporary force of the current and the risk of being carried along with it. This was the case, for example, in the political attitude of Marx and Engels dissolving the Communist League in the aftermath of the violent defeats suffered by the proletariat during the social turmoil of 1848-51, dissolving the First International after the bloody crushing of the Paris Commune, like the policy of Lenin and Luxemburg at the time of the bankruptcy of the Second International at the outbreak of World War One. One can also cite as an example the constitution and activity of the Fraction of the Italian Left after the collapse of the Third International under Stalinist leadership.
It's quite different for the activity of revolutionary groups in a period of rising class struggle. If, in a period of reflux, revolutionary groups swim against the stream, and therefore on the sides and in small units, in a period of flux it is their duty to be with the stream, as massively and internationally organized as possible. The revolutionary groups who don't understand this, who don't act in this sense, whether because they don't understand the situation, the period in which the class struggle finds itself and its dynamic, or whether having survived the period of reflux and dispersal with difficulty, they have become more of less sclerotic, find themselves incapable of assuming the function for which the class gave rise to them.
The sectarianism which you rightly denounce with so much force, is at root nothing other than the survival of a tendency to close in on oneself, corresponding to a period of reflux. Raising this tendency to the level of theory and practice, to a shopkeeper spirit, above all in a period of flux, is the sign of an extremely dangerous process of sclerosis and eventually death for any revolutionary group.
Only an analysis and a true comprehension of the period opened up at the end of the ‘60s with the outbreak of the world crisis of decadent capitalism and the resurgence of class struggle by a new undefeated generation of the proletariat maintaining all its potentiality and combativity permits an understanding of the imperious necessity posed today to existing revolutionary groups in the world and emerging in different countries; that of consciously engaging in the search for contact, information, discussion, clarification, confrontation of political positions, the taking of positions and common action among the groups resolutely engaged in a process of decantation and regroupment. This work is the only one which leads to the perspective of the organization of the future world party of the proletariat. This understanding of the period and its needs is also the major condition to effectively combat sectarianism and its manifestations which still rage today in the revolutionary milieu.
We have dwelt on this question not to criticize but to support your ‘proposal' with an argumentation which we think reinforces it. The struggle against dispersion and isolation, the struggle against sectarianism has always been and remains a major preoccupation of the ICC since its constitution. We are delighted to find this preoccupation today coming from a group as isolated as yours, reinforcing our conviction in its validity. That's why we are proposing to translate and publish your text without delay in the next issue of our International Review in French and English (and probably later in the International Reviews in Spanish and Italian). We are convinced you won't object to this publication (of course, we will not, for security reasons, give your address without an explicit authorization from you).
This preoccupation with the necessity to break with the dispersion and isolation of revolutionary groups, and the conviction of its validity, were at the basis of the three international conferences of revolutionary groups initiated by us and Battaglia Communista from 1977 to 1980. These conferences which could have become a meeting place and pole of reference and of regroupment for new groups emerging in different countries came to grief in the face of the sectarianism of groups like Battaglia Communista for whom these conferences ought to remain silent, to be a place uniquely for the confrontation of groups fishing for recruits. On our insistence, the reports of these conferences have been published in French, English and Italian. We will send these to you quickly.
The urgent need to break with dispersal and isolation is certainly not an easy task and cannot be accomplished the day after tomorrow. However, that is not a reason to give up but, on the contrary, this difficulty must itself stimulate the efforts of each revolutionary group worthy of the name to do it.
We cannot, in this letter, make a detailed examination of each paragraph let alone each formulation. As you say yourselves, this text doesn't pretend to be complete or definitive. There will be time to discuss this or that formulation, or such and such an argument. For the moment, what matters is the principle, the main concern of the ‘proposal'. It's that which we agree with. However, two fundamental questions raised by this 'proposal' must be looked at:
1) To whom is such a ‘Proposal' addressed?
In response, it's clear we're looking for the largest possible participation of authentic revolutionary groups, even if divergences on particular but secondary points exist amongst these groups. However, it's not a question of linking up with anybody, like a lonely-hearts' club, which would be a negative perspective, a trap, and not a reinforcement of the revolutionary movement. With the dispersion and different degrees of maturity of existing groups in the present movement, there are no selective criteria which can guarantee, all at once, in an absolute way, such a selection. But there are - and they must be formulated - minimum criteria for a general framework in which the groups can adhere while maintaining their own positions which are nevertheless compatible with this framework.
We must reject monolithism as well as the gathering of fundamentally heterogeneous forces on the basis of vague and incoherent political positions.
In your section: "To whom do we make this Proposal?" you try to give a reply by enumerating at length (perhaps at too much length) certain positions to serve as criteria. Whatever improvement in formulations could be made, these positions or critiques of mistaken positions are at root absolutely correct, in our opinion. However, it's the lack of a clear and explicit position on some very important questions which is worrying. We will mention some of them:
-- the rejection of all participation in electoral campaigns in the present period of decadent capitalism;
-- the necessity to conceive and situate oneself in the continuity of the history of the workers' movement, of its theoretical and political acquisitions (not a passive continuity and simple repetition, but a dynamic continuity and surpassing strictly linked to the experiences and evolution of all the contradictions of the capitalist system, putting on the agenda the objective necessity for its destruction). That implies the recognition of Marxism as the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, the identification with the successive contributions of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Internationals and the left communists who came out of them;
-- the unambiguous recognition of the proletarian nature of the Bolshevik Party (before its bankruptcy and its definitive passage into the camp of the counter-revolution) and of the October Revolution.
It is surprising not to find, in your text, any reference to these questions, nor to the recognition of the Workers' Councils, the "finally found form" of the unitary organization of the class in respect of the concrete realization of the proletarian revolution. We are equally astonished not to find any mention of the question of guerilla terrorism (urban or not) and on the categorical rejection of these types of actions (particular to the desperate layers of the petit-bourgeoisie, to nationalism, and which are effectively maintained and manipulated by the fulfilled, this point of the ‘proposal' seems to state), not in the name of pacifism which is only the other side of the same coin, but in the name of its ineffectiveness and of its pretension, at best, to arouse, and at worst, to substitute itself for the only adequate violence - the class violence of the open, massive and generalized struggle of the great masses of the working class. Your silence is all the more surprising since you live and struggle in a continent and a country where these types of adventurist actions of the tupamaros and other guevarist guerillas are infamous.
2) The second question relates to your concrete proposals for the realization of this great project, notably to the publication of a common review of the supporting groups and its mode of functioning. Beginning on this last point you propose unanimity as a rule of all activity and decision. Such a rule doesn't seem to us to be the most appropriate. It carries the risk either of constant agreement - and thus of monolithism - or the paralysis of the participating groups each time one of them finds itself in disagreement. Point 5 of your proposal is on the eventuality of a common publication. It isn't useful to open a discussion on the structure of such a publication (division into 3 parts, etc..) since the very project of such a publication immediately, seems to us, in all respects, largely premature. A common publication of numerous groups presupposes two conditions:
a) a more profound knowledge of the political trajectory of the different groups and of their present positions, an effective integration of these positions in the framework of elaborated criteria and their tendency to converge in the more or less long-term;
b) and on this basis, a serious advance in the experience of a common activity allowing these groups to participate on the organizational level before being able to really confront the inherent difficulties of such a publication (political and technical questions of the nomination of a responsible editorship, question of the languages in which such a review must be published, and finally, questions of administration and financial resources).
Neither of these two conditions being actually is unrealizable for the present nor, consequently, it would be wrong to make it a central point. It would be more prudent and advantageous to content ourselves, for the moment, with the realizable task of assuring the circulation of discussion texts between supporting groups on important themes and as much as possible, agreed in common.
The proposal of reciprocal information, exchange of publications, reciprocal distribution of the different supporting groups, the possibility of publishing articles of other groups in the press and eventually the taking of common positions on important events and thus a common public intervention, remains. This part of your general proposal can be realized in a relatively brief period, always in the spirit of breaking isolation, tightening up contact between existing and emerging revolutionary groups, of developing discussions and favourising a process of decantation and regroupment of revolutionaries.
In a word, better to start prudently and reach the destination than to set off at a gallop only to run out of breath and stop half-way.
With communist greetings,
ICC
[1] We have not published the address of these groups: for all contact readers can write to the postbox of Revolution Internationale in France who will pass it on.
[2] "Workers Emancipation" has suffered the repression and violence of the MAS, a trotskyist group which called for participation in the Falklands War, supporting the generals.
[3] This pamphlet didn't reach us directly (why?) but through our section in Venezuela.
The massive workers' struggles which almost paralyzed not only Scandinavia, but above all Belgium, this spring, announce the opening of a new period of the class struggle. A period where two tendencies will more and more develop at the same time. On the one hand the bourgeoisie's increasingly frontal and massive attacks, and on the other at the level of workers' consciousness, the concretizations of lessons learnt in the course of numerous but dispersed struggles, which have characterized the preceding period above all in Western Europe.[1]
The greater the decomposition of a decadent society, the more the truth, the daily social reality, becomes contradictory to the dominant ideology. The ideology which defends and ,justifies the existence of a social and economic order which is rotten to its core, which is provoking the greatest famines in the history of humanity, which threatens to bring about the self-destruction of the species, which relies on the most insidious political totalitarianism, such an ideology can only rest on lies, for the truth is its negation.
The workers' struggles are the bearers of this simple truth which says that the capitalist mode of production must and can be destroyed if humanity is to survive and pursue its development.
This is why, with detailed scientific planning, the international bourgeoisie organizes a black-out on workers' struggles, in particular on an international level.
How many workers in the world know that in mythical Scandinavia, this homeland of ‘western socialism', the working class is suffering an economic attack without precedent, and that, in response, the workers of Denmark (Spring ‘85) , Sweden (Winter, ‘85) , then those of Finland and Norway (Spring ‘86) have just fought their most important combats since before the second world war?
How many workers know that Belgium, in the months of April and May 1986, saw the development of a ferment of workers' struggles which repeatedly, practically calls blocked the economic life of the country? That in this small country at the heart of industrialized Europe, in the middle of the largest concentration of workers in the world, the workers have multiplied their spontaneous strikes, breaking out of union directives, to respond to the acceleration and threat of new economic attacks from the government; that they have begun to try to unify the struggles, acting collectively without waiting; for the unions, by sending massive delegations - such as the 300 Limburg miners who went to the public service workers' assembly in Brussels - in order to demand the unification of the fight.
The newspapers, the media, say not a word outside of the country concerned; instead they stir up nauseating ideological campaigns, internationally orchestrated, on ‘anti-terrorism', on the need for the strengthening of ‘law and order' (the calls for more ‘security') or on the impotence of poor starving human beings faced with the ‘fatality' of the economic crisis. On the international workers' struggle, the silence is organized. Only some short notes here and there, mainly to announce the end of such and such a strike.
The bourgeoisie fears reality; and the blusterings and braggings of the Reagans express a growing anxiety, not the serenity, of a class sure of its power and its future. And for good reason.
Struggles which show the way
The major characteristic of the struggles this Spring is their massive character: in Norway there were up to 120,000 workers affected by strikes, including lock-outs (10% of the active population); in Finland 250,000 strikers together confronted the state; in Belgium, it's also in hundreds and thousands that we must count the number of workers who, at the time of writing, have already taken part in struggles against the acceleration of the economic attack of capital.
It's no longer a question of a series of isolated, dispersed struggles, enclosed in bankrupt factories. These are massive mobilizations which paralyze a large part of the economy.
From the oil rigs of the North Sea off Norway to the mines of Limburg, from the Finnish Post to the national and local railways in Belgium, the proletariat has shown in a few weeks, in some of the most industrialized countries, a power and a force which announces the opening of a new stage in the class struggle.
Whether through objective economic conditions (the need of the bourgeoisie to make more and more massive and frontal attacks), or whether through the subjective conditions which characterize them (maturation of workers' consciousness, the tendency towards unification), these struggles express the debut of a new acceleration of class struggle: the opening of a new phase in the historic combat of the world proletariat for its emancipation.
I. The objective conditions: the European bourgeoisie can less and less disperse its attack
In the previous issue of the International Review we showed how, during 1985, the bourgeoisie of the industrialized countries of the western bloc conducted a conscious policy of the dispersal of its economic attack (planned and timed sackings, sector by sector attacks, etc) , so as to prevent frontal, unified reactions from the proletariat.
We insisted that the bourgeoisie drew the lessons of experiences such as those of Poland 1980 or the combats which marked the opening of what we call "the third international wave of struggle" since 1968 (after those of 1968-74 and 1978-80), ie the public sector strikes in Belgium and Holland, Autumn ‘83.
But we also underlined that this plan, conducted in close cooperation through governments, political parties and trade unions, by and large was grounded in the economic margin of maneuver given to Europe by the American mini-recovery.
But this ‘margin' is rapidly reducing today under the pressure of the slowing down of the US economy, and under the pressure of the weakening in the competitivity of European exports against US products (see the article ‘Where is the economic crisis?'). The ‘new American plan', of which the sharp decline of the dollar is only the most spectacular aspect, is not a gift for Europe but a declaration of commercial war at the level of the planet. Whatever economies the European countries can make in the short term through the ‘oil factor' they are more than ever forced to lower their expenses and production costs, which means in the first place a more violent attack on the income of the exploited.
What's more, this attack implies - above all in Europe - drastic reductions in the ‘social' expenditure of the state (in Western Europe, above all the northern countries, public administration costs are equivalent to half the national product!). This means taking measures which immediately and simultaneously hit all the workers:
-- the unemployed because their only source of income, when they have one, is government allocations;
-- all wage-earners because it is the ‘social' part of the wage which is under attack (social security, family allowances, education, etc);
-- state employees because thousands of their jobs are being cut.
It's this global reality which is the basis of the world economic attacks which provoked the struggles in Scandinavia and Belgium. The specific economic weaknesses of these countries are not ‘exceptional cases'; these are among the first in Europe to carry out such attacks[2]. The impossibility of continuing to organize the dispersal of economic attacks, the recourse to more and more massive frontal attacks against the working class - such is the future for all the European governments.
II. The subjective conditions: the maturation of class consciousness
In the same way as the governmental plans which have provoked the struggles this Spring are an indication of the future for all capitalist governments, so these struggles, in particular those in Belgium, show the way to the rest of the world proletariat.
The will to fight
All of the struggles confirm the tendency to an international simultaneous development of class combats. Sweden, Britain, Spain, to talk only of Europe, have seen a development of workers' struggles at the same time. We've seen it with the British oil rig workers who joined the strike with their Norwegian colleagues[3]. Internationally there exists, not a mood of resignation but a profound discontent, a combativity which daily belies the official propaganda which says that -with the crisis - the workers have at last understood that their interests are the same as those of ‘their' national capital.
In practice, these struggles are a living negation of the capitalist economic laws based on the profit of the market place, where misery is responded to with more misery (lowering of wages, of benefits, increase in unemployment, etc) , and by the destruction of the means of combating this misery ( factory closures, destruction of stocks, production of armaments and military costs, etc), all at the expense of the exploited.
This will to fight shows that for the workers, it is more and more clear that the question of their means to subsistence is posed in simple terms: either capital's life or theirs. There is no possible conciliation between the interests of decadent capital and those of the exploited. It's in this first of all that the struggles of this Spring announce the future.
Beginning struggles when combativity demands it and not when the unions decide
One of the main weapons used by the state through its union apparatus is the power to decide the moment of combat. The force of the working class lies in the first place in its unity, its capacity to strike together. The unions, by deciding to open the struggles in a dispersed way, staggered in time, by avoiding simultaneity which is the source of unity, by preventing the fight breaking out when anger is most generalized, have a great power for dividing and weakening the movement. A power which they rarely hesitate to use.
In Belgium the unions haven't ceased to try to do this. It's in this way, among many other examples, that they called the public service workers to strike on the 6th May; the teachers on the 7th; the shipyard workers three days later, etc. Systematically, carefully, they tried to organize... the dispersal of the movement.
The response of the workers has been - as is more and more the case in all countries - the ‘spontaneous' strike. That is to say, outside of union directives.
In this way the strike of 16,000 Limburg miners, which marked the beginning of a whole period of strikes which were to follow, broke out spontaneously in mid-April, against the advice of the unions who considered any strike "premature". It's the same for most of the movements which since then, in the railways, post, telecommunications, teaching, local transport, ministries, hospitals, naval dockyards, parts of the private sector, etc, started or stopped, to restart a short time after, spontaneously, outside - sometimes against - the unions' commands.
From May, the unions organized, under pressure from the workers, days of ‘general strike' (6, 16 and then 21 May) in order to take a more efficient control of events. But these ‘days of action' , although they've seen important mobilizations, remain particular moments in a general ferment, which - often in a clumsy and jerky way - is seeking to take things into its own hands.
The Belgian bourgeoisie isn't mistaken about the risks such actions pose to its power. As a union official of the FGTB (J.C. Wardermeeren) declared in the newspaper Le Soir, 23 May:
"The government can impose its will by force... up to the moment when the discontent provoke explosion which will no longer be controlled by the union movement. And which will be more and more difficult to get hold of through sitting down together. You see all the difference between precise negotiations, conducted on the basis of a list of demands, and those which follow from spontaneous actions. And you can calculate the risk." (our emphasis).
The unions know better than anyone ‘the risks' of allowing the strength of proletarian life to escape from the union prison. Professionals in controlling and sabotaging struggles, they are masters in the art of keeping ahead of movements. Faced with spontaneous explosions, they know very well how to radicalize their language as much as necessary, in order to regain control over the direction and organization of the movement as quickly as possible. In this they are aided and abetted by the ‘base unionists' whose criticisms of the union leadership are the last knot tying the workers to the trade union logic.
The proletariat in Belgium has not yet managed to rid itself of all the union shackles (we will come back to this). But the dynamic of the actions it has undertaken is going in the right direction.
The necessity and possibility of launching struggles without waiting for the green light from the union bureaucracies - this is the first lesson about the means to struggle confirmed by the combats in Belgium. We say ‘confirmed' because the tendency towards the proliferation of spontaneous strikes has been manifest for three years, from the very beginning of the third wave.
Looking for extension and unity
But probably the main lessons coming out of the struggles in Belgium this Spring lie at the level of the practical means of building workers' unity. The struggles in Belgium clearly show:
1) that this unity can only be built through the struggle. Capital divides the workers; its political and trade union apparatus organizes the dispersal of the workers' forces. The proletarians can only build their unity by combating those who divide them, by combating capital and its representatives;
2) that this unity doesn't fall from the sky, nor from the unions who are its main saboteurs. It must be built practically, deliberately, consciously. The search for this unity must constitute a permanent objective, by sending massive delegations to seek active solidarity, the extension and unification of struggles, breaking through sectoral, linguistic or professional barriers. This is what the Limburg miners did when, from the beginning of the struggle, they sent massive delegations, from one to several hundred strong, to other sectors of the class: the big Ford-Genk factory (10,000 workers), the postal workers, the railway workers of the SNCB, the high school students as the unemployed of the future - calling them out on strike. The same was done by the workers of the Boel shipyards, near Antwerp, who sent delegations to the miners and joined the struggle. After the outbreak of the struggle itself, this is the first practical step in response to the necessity for the proletarians to constitute themselves into a class, a force capable of acting on the direction of society;
3) that ‘the street' , demonstrations, rallies, play an essential role in the constitution of this class unity. It's not enough for struggles to start up; it's not enough that sectors in struggle meet up through mass delegations. It's also necessary for all the forces in the struggle to recognize each other in common actions, for them to feel and measure their power. In Belgium, it was in the street that the unemployed recognized their class; in the street, the miners and the teachers, the steelworkers and the public transport drivers sought to act as a single class. In the street there is a coming together of all the energies born out of struggles in a thousands workplaces. If the movement has sufficient force, if it is able to neutralize the efforts at divisions of the bourgeoisie, these energies can then return, even stronger, to the workplaces[4].
Through the search for unity, the struggles in Belgium have been drawing the lessons from past defeats, the defeat of the British miners in 84-85 and of many other small or big strikes which died through isolation. A collective memory exists in classes which have an historic mission. There is a progression in collective consciousness, a maturation, sometimes explicit, sometimes subterranean, which links up the principal moments in the collective action of the class. ‘Don't let what happened in ‘83 happen again!' In this phrase, heard so often in discussions amongst strikers in Belgium (referring to the isolation of the public sector strikes in September ‘83), there is an explicit posing of the problem of the search for extension and unity as a priority to be assumed consciously if there is to be any chance of going further than in the past.
Thus the collective experience and consciousness of the revolutionary class moves forward. The practical responses the Belgian workers have made to these questions concern the entire world working class; their present struggles will have consequences that go well beyond Belgium. Here again, they reveal the future.
Seeking self-organization: the struggle to master one's own forces
By launching its strikes, by uniting its struggles, by taking to the streets, the proletariat creates a gigantic, redoubtable force. But what use is this force if it isn't in control of it? Without a minimum of self-mastery, of control over the course of events, this force will soon crumble, first and foremost under the impact of the systematic and demoralizing maneuvers of the unions.
If the workers of Belgium have been able to show such strength, it's not thanks to the unions but despite or against them. This isn't an exaggerated interpretation of the facts. The principal figure of the forces of political and union containment in Belgium, the leader of the Socialist Party (which controls the country's biggest union, the FGTB) recognized this clearly on 30 May, in an in interview with Le Soir:
"The movement has come from people and not from the union apparatuses. People want Martens scalp. Those who believe that the union premeditated the events or that the parties are controlling the actions are making a monumental error. In many places the workers don't follow union slogans. They don't want to go back to work."
This is clear.
However, while it's true that "in many places the workers don' t follow union slogans", at the time of writing at least, the workers haven't created centralized forms of organization regrouping delegates of strike committees elected by assemblies, capable of giving orientations for all the forces of the struggle, of allowing the movement to effectively master its own strength.
The workers in Belgium haven't yet reached this stage of the struggle. But they have advanced in this direction. They have developed their capacity to unmask the demobilizing maneuvers of the unions by launching struggles without waiting for union directives; they've been able to limit the damage done by the unions' efforts to disperse struggles in time; by taking charge of organizing extension through delegations without relying on union structures, they've limited the effects of the unions' efforts to disperse struggles in space. By making the assemblies the real centers of decision in the struggle, they have been able to expose the union maneuvers to get them back to work[5].
And this again is a rich source of lessons for the coming struggle of the world proletariat.
The confrontation with the state is also the confrontation with the unions
The Belgian workers face a bourgeoisie which has been preparing this attack for a long time, which has entered the battle with its left forces, the ‘working class' forces of the bourgeoisie, not in government (where the obligation to take violently anti-working class measures would dangerously expose them) but in opposition, in the midst of the workers in struggle, in order to sabotage the movement from within. The ‘Socialists' have no intention of abandoning their state function of policing the workers. This can be seen clearly through their practice in the streets: "The imposing procession marched calmly and serenely", said an article in Le Soir (23 May) describing a demonstration of 10,000 in Charleroi (the unions had only expected 5,000). "Among the demonstrators close to the Socialist milieu, there was an unease about the ‘tepidity' of the speeches and the absence of top SP leaders. Many see this as a sign that the SP ‘doesn't want power'".
The bourgeoisie needs its left in opposition and will continue to give itself the means to ensure this. The policy of dispersing struggles, as we analyzed in the previous issue of this Review has been based on the one hand on concerted action between the state and ‘private' employers who disperse the attacks, and on the other hand on the divisive actions of the left and the unions. The growing impossibility of the state and the bosses carrying on with the dispersal of the economic attack means that it will be more and more up to the unions and left parties to prevent the unification and strengthening of proletarian resistance.
The Belgian workers have, throughout their struggle, confronted in their own ranks the three faces of trade unionism: ‘moderate' (the Christian union), ‘militant' (the Socialists) and base unionism (the Maoists - particularly in the Limburg mines). Here again the struggles in Belgium reveal the future.
The workers of Belgium, like those in the rest of the world, still have a long process of combat to go through before they can really throw off the union shackles and have a real mastery over their own forces. But this mastery will be the result of the present battles.
* * *
The class movement in Belgium is a political movement, not because it denies economic objectives but because it is assuming the political aspects of this combat. The workers aren't fighting the proprietor of a small provincial enterprise, but against the state and, through that, against the whole ruling class. The proletariat is fighting against the economic policies of the exploiting class. The movement is political because it is confronting the state in all its forms: the government, the police in numerous confrontations in the streets, and finally, the trade unions.
"...the economic struggle is the transmitter from one political centre to another; the political struggle is the periodic fertilization of the soil for the economic struggle. Cause and effect here continuously change places; and thus the economic and the political factor in the period of the mass strike, now widely removed, completely separated or even mutually exclusive, as the theoretical plan would have them, merely form the two interlacing sides of the proletarian class struggle..." (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike).
This is a characteristic of workers' struggles which has been particularly strengthened in decadent capitalism where the working class must confront a capitalism stratified to the extreme.
***
The Belgian state has unleashed a particularly powerful attack on the working class in the last few years. It has imposed economic sacrifices as well as organizing a gigantic strengthening of repression under the pretext of ‘anti-terrorism'.
The bourgeoisie has closely followed the unfolding of this attack: certain papers have even talked about the ‘Belgian test': how would the working class respond? The class has given its response and in doing so has shown the way forward to the rest of its class brothers and sisters.
* * *
At the time we are finishing this article the wave of struggles in Belgium seems to be far from exhausting itself. But right now and whatever the latter development of events, we can say that the class combats which have shaken this country are the most important since Poland 1980.
Their significance is crucial. After the struggles which swept through Norway and Finland, they confirm that in Western Europe and the rest of the world, the class struggle is entering a new phase.
RV
30 May 1986
Readers will find more detailed information and analysis of the struggles in Belgium in our monthly territorial publications: Internationalisme (Belgium), Revolution Internationale (France), World Revolution (Britain).
[1] See International Review no.46, ‘Workers' struggles in 1985: balance sheet and perspectives'.
[2] Norwegian capital, which derives a good part of its profits from the export of oil, has suffered violently from the consequences of overproduction and the world fall in the price of black oil (a 70% fall in its oil revenues). The bourgeoisie has not been slow in making these losses felt through an unprecedented attack on the working class. As for the Belgian economy (certainly one of the most sensitive to the international economic conjuncture because it imports 70% of what it consumes and70% of what it produces!), it's been hit hard by the economic crisis since the beginning of the ‘80s: the industrial sectors which had been Belgium's strength (steel, textiles, coal) are among the most affected by world overproduction; the rate of unemployment (14%) is one of the highest in Europe; the public administration deficit reached 10% of the GNP in 1985 - a rate only surpassed in Europe by Italy (13.4%), Ireland (12.3%) and Greece (11.6%) . Belgian capital is also one of the most indebted countries in the world, since its debt is equivalent to 100% of its annual GNP! The Martens government has pushed 'special powers' through the Assembly, decreeing a new plan for draconian austerity, in order to make the exploitation of labor power more cost effective: massive lay-offs, in particular in the public services, the mines and shipyards; drastic reduction in all social benefits, particularly the suppression of unemployment benefit for the under-21s, etc.
[3] The Swedish bourgeoisie, certainly aware of the danger of contagion, applied an almost total black-out of news about the strikes in neighboring Norway and Finland. When the need is felt, the very ‘modern' democratic European governments know how to behave like the Duvaliers of this world.
Equipping themselves with the means to inform the rest of the world proletariat is an objective which the next mass movements must set for themselves straight away.
[4] The unions know what they are doing when, in each demonstration - and with an attention to detail and material means worthy of a better cause -they organize a careful control and separation of each category into whatever divisions are possible (by factory, region, sector, union organization...).
[5] It was the railway workers' assembly in Charleroi which on the evening of 22 May was able to say no to the Christian union's appeal to end the strike; no to the FGTB's proposal to organize a vote because it considered that the ‘cowardice' of the union bosses meant a terrible weakening of the movement. A few days later, in La Louviere, near Charleroi, a local of the Christian union felt the full force of the anger of a workers' demonstration as it went past. This wasn't the only example of a brutal confrontation between workers and union forces in Belgium.
In no. 9 of its theoretical publication Prometeo, Battaglia Comunista published ‘Proposed theses on the tactics of communists in the peripheral countries', which appeared in English in the third edition of the Communist Review, publication of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP), in the hope of persuading, the IBRP to adopt these theses[1].
The ICC can but greet with delight this attempt to give a well defined guideline for intervention in a sector of the class which is so important, a sector where the absence of clear guidelines led to a precipitate flirtation on the part of Battaglia Comunista (BC) with bourgeois groups such as the UCM from Iran[2] or the RPP in India.
The proposed resolution deals with three kinds of problem. Firstly, the reaffirmation of BC's general positions on these countries; on the whole these positions are the same as ours (end of the period of capitalist development, counter-revolutionary nature of the so-called struggles for nation al liberation, etc). Secondly a definition of the approach to adopt towards groups in these countries who say they are concerned to have a coherence on a class basis. We have already commented many times on the basic opportunism of this approach and we shall not be afraid to return to it in a more systematic way. Thirdly, and this the specific object of these theses, what tactics must communists adopt in these countries which are on the peripheries of capitalism. Our critique is concerned with this last point specifically, not only to point to this or that particular error, but to show up the opportunism inherent in the attempt to get immediate results, which runs through the theses and poisons them.
In fact, many groups, including BC, have turned to work towards the peripheries of capitalism after the failure of the International Conferences of the Communist Left[3] at the beginning of the ‘80s. As they thought it a "waste of time" to engage in "unending discussion" within the Communist Left, they found it more gratifying and more exciting to have hundreds, or even thousands of followers. At this time, rather than contributing to the spread of communist ideas throughout the peripheral countries, they have been party to the penetration of the ideas of the bourgeois groups from the peripheries, such as the UCM-Komala, within the revolutionary milieu of the metropoles.
But the working class is international, as is the resurgence of its struggles, and in the long run, the effects of this resurgence will be felt even where the proletariat is dispersed and small in number. They can't sell us the peripheral countries anymore, only versions improved by the nationalists and third-worldists, but there is also the young voice of tiny groups who move towards a coherence on a class basis in spite of a thousand difficulties. And this voice is a critical voice which asks the communist organizations of the metropoles for clarity above all, for clarity on their own positions and on the real differences between them and other groups.
The debate between the revolutionary groups, which has been interrupted for several years in Europe, today returns to the agenda with force, because of these comrades in the peripheries, in whose name the debate between the groups of the Communist Left was pronounced dead and buried.
The international communists of the metropoles have no reason to be satisfied with the advantage that history and the experience of the proletariat of which they are an expression, has given them in comparison with the comrades in periphery. On the contrary, they should reflect on their lateness in forming a common pole of clarification to serve as a reference point for comrades in all countries. this is the task we set ourselves, the comrades of the IBRP and the whole of the proletarian political milieu. It is a shame that it can't be realized immediately.
The indispensable unity between "program" and "tactics"
"Objectives which are partial, contingent, simply tactical, can never be assimilated to the programmatic objectives of the Communist Party. This means that they can never and should never be a part of the communist program.
To make this thesis clearer by giving an example, we will refer to the question of the base organizations of the proletariat. What is part of the communist program is the centralized nature of the workers' councils at a national and international level, on the basis of units of production and territorial units (...) On the other hand, what isn't part of the communist program, but is certainly part of communist tactics - is the freeing of the proletariat from the prison of unionism in the struggle against capitalism through its autonomous organizations in the general assemblies in the factories, which are coordinated and centralized through elected and revocable delegates" (Preamble). The reason behind this distinction is that "if the movement of the proletariat attains this objective ("tactical") independently of a global strategy of attacks against the bourgeois power, it would be rapidly recuperated (by the bourgeoisie". (ibid)
It's true that any partial victory of the workers can be recuperated by the bourgeoisie, but this can happen whatever its objective is, even if it is what the proposed resolution identifies as the essence of the program: "the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism". In fact, if "the dictatorship of the proletariat" remains isolated in one country alone, it can be - and it even must be - recuperated by capitalism, as the experience of the Russian revolution has shown us.
But our fundamental objection to BC's arguments is that as communists "we do not present ourselves to the world as doctrinaires with a new principle: here is the truth, down on your knees! We do not say to the workers: give up your struggles because they are foolish (...) All we do is to show the world why it is actually struggling..." (Marx). To limit what is said in the program to the need for the centralization of the workers' councils, is to present to the workers a sort of ideal which it would be nice to achieve but which has nothing to do with the struggles they are already involved in. The role of communists is rather that which Marx described - to show that the final objective of the international centralization of the workers' councils is nothing other than the end point of the process which is already taking shape in today's, as yet sporadic attempts at the self-organization of strikes on the level of one factory, or in the efforts to extend the struggles from one sector to another. The fact that the vast majority of workers are not yet aware of the real stakes of their struggles simply confirms the need for communists to put forward before the class as clearly as possible, "why they are actually struggling, and that consciousness is something they must develop, even though they reject it" (Marx, Letter to Ruge).
The program therefore does not consist solely of "the point where we want to arrive", but also "why it's possible and how it's possible to get there". To exclude this essential component from the program and to relegate it to the non-essential as a "communist tactic" which is more flexible, "is one of the historic paradoxes of certain political formations" like Battaglia Comunista, who correctly assert that the distinction between a "maximum program" and a "minimum program" is no longer applicable; who stress the need to eliminate any ambiguities remaining on this question from the Communist International - and then manage to forget the most important one. This is the ambiguity: BC rejects the old out-dated distinction but then reintroduces a new version that takes the form of a growing insistence on a distinction between the program, the bastion of principles, and tactics where you are more free to "maneuver" for the final victory of those principles.
Various groups of the Communist Left came out against this conception, particularly the Italian Left who, through Bordiga, reaffirmed the fact that tactics are simply the concrete application of strategy; that is, of the program. In fact, the intention of the CI's leadership in emphasizing this distinction was two-fold: on the one hand to give itself some margin for maneuver in the realm of tactics, and on the other to insure that momentary and sudden changes of tactics did not contaminate the essence and therefore the purity of the program. Of course, this distinction between tactics and the program existed only in the heads of the leaders of the International: opportunism came in through the back door of tactics, infiltrated the program more and more, and finally opened wide the front door to the Stalinist counter-revolution.
Apparently, the comrades of BC also have illusions, expressed in their belief that it's enough to say specific tactics for the peripheral countries have no place in the program. In this way they run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They want to believe that the "little" tactical concessions needed to more firmly catch hold of groups and elements from the peripheral countries do not have any effect on the program; in this way the program remains pure, it will be easy to correct the contingent deviations that occur at a tactical level. The Communist International too thought this was easy...and we can see how it ended up. If BC - and the IBRP - do not back-track quickly they will run the risk of taking a path from which there is no return.
Illusion on "democratic rights"
Now let's see where the concrete application of this subtle distinction between program and tactics leads:
"The domination of capital in the peripheral countries is maintained through the use of violent repression and the absence of the most basic freedom of speech, of the press, to organize (...) Marxists know how to make a distinction between social movements for such freedoms and for democracy, and liberal-democratic political forces which make use of these movements to preserve capitalism (...) It is not the policy of communists to condemn the whole of the material and social movement and its demands in condemning this political leadership (...) just as it is not up to communists to ignore the immediate, economic demands of the proletariat in the metropoles, because in themselves they do not negate the capitalist mode of production." (Thesis 11)
The enormous differences existing in the social and political conditions of the peripheral countries compared to those of the metropoles are so obvious that no-one can deny them. The question is: what has "freedom and democracy" been doing over here? What does it mean to say that "It is the domination of capitalism - liberal and democratic in the metropoles - which denies freedom and democracy in the peripheral regions"? What capitalism denies, or rather, what it is incapable of guaranteeing, is a minimal development, in capitalist terms, of these areas, which would at least ensure the physical survival of their populations. Capitalism is not "democratic" anywhere in the world, least of all in the metropoles. What does still exist in the metropoles - although to a lesser and lesser extent - is a standard of living that is high enough to feed democratic illusions within the working class. Alternatively, if you want to talk about the fact that in the metropoles there is more freedom to organize, of the press, etc, than there is in the peripheries, you shouldn't forget the part played in this state of affairs by the existence of a balance of forces which is more favorable to the proletariat because of its strength and concentration. To raise the slogan of "democratic rights" in the areas where the proletariat is not strong enough to realize them and where capitalism is not strong enough to grant them; this is to dangle before the eyes of the masses, not a miserable carrot, but the illusion of a miserable carrot.
The distinction between social movements for democracy and their political direction is even more opportunist. As the Theses themselves admit, the "desire for freedom and democracy which is present in all strata of the population" (Thesis 11) is shared by the bourgeoisie as well. The picture, then, is not that of a vague "social movement" which is taken over parasitically by a bourgeois leadership basically alien to it. On the contrary, the movement against apartheid in South Africa (to use the example given in the Theses) is an inter-classist movement in which black workers have to march at the side of black bourgeois, under the direction of black bourgeois and under slogans which defend the interests of the black bourgeoisie in particular and of capitalism in general. The fact that these demands "arise naturally from social life in these countries", in marxist terms is a banality robbed "of all meaning. The demand for "reform of the superstructure" also arises "naturally" in Italy and in other industrialized countries; communists do not refuse to fight it and denounce it with all their strength because of that. In an effort to make "critical" support for these movements more acceptable, the Theses try hard to emphasize their "real", "natural", "material" nature and so on. Rather like the bourgeois philosophers of the 18th Century who thought that "everything that is real is natural" (ie. bourgeois), BC seems to think that everything that is material is proletarian, or at least not anti-proletarian. We are sorry to have to dampen this facile enthusiasm, but phenomena such as nationalism, unionism, racism (or anti-racism) are real forces, which exert a material weight in a very precise way and which arise quite naturally in defense of the existence of capitalism. The parallel with "immediate" proletarian demands, which is supposed to justify marxism in supporting these movements, simply shows how BC is forced to confuse the issue so as to get back on its feet. Immediate demands of the workers are one thing (higher wages, less working hours.); although these are limited, they are in the spirit of the defense of class interests and must therefore be supported by communists. The demand for "free elections", or for more power for its own "oppressed" bourgeoisie is another thing; in the short term as well as in terms of a perspective, these only serve to divert the workers' struggles into a dead-end. In the first instance, communists are in the forefront of the struggle; in the second they are still in the forefront but in warning the workers against the traps laid by the bourgeoisie.
This is the main point: Battaglia Comunista has a clear conscience because it rejects "the inclusion in the communist program of democratic political objectives which push back the real content to the communist program". At the same time it uses these objectives "in defining tactical lines, slogans for the immediate struggle (...) firmly linked to the demands, tactical lines and agitational slogans of the economic struggle, in a way which makes it practical at a material level for the penetration of the real communist program into the heart of the proletarian and dispossessed masses". The catch is that these democratic political (ie. bourgeois) objectives simply "push back" the communist program; they deny it and destroys it from top to bottom! To hold the view that the practical application of these objectives enables "the penetration of the real communist program into the heart of the masses", is to think that to teach someone to swim, you must start by tying his hands together and throwing him into the water.
When they say that these democratic objectives must go hand in hand with economic demands, the comrades of BC are deliberately turning their backs on reality. The experience of proletarian movements in the periphery of capitalism shows that exactly the opposite happens; submitting to nonsense about democracy results in renouncing proletarian political demands. We will again use the example of South Africa: in the Spring of 1985 black miners decided to strike for a large wage increase. The unions and black parties decided that the demands must be "widened" to include political aims such as the abolition of apartheid. Then the economic demands were eliminated - "so as not to ask too much all at once". In the meantime the strike was put off from week to week, giving the bosses time to prepare. The result was that the strike, emptied of all proletarian direction from that moment, was defeated the very day it started and as a result the workers were brainwashed into thinking that, ‘the struggle doesn't pay, only free elections can change things'.
The most worrying thing is that this insistence that the pursuit of democratic objectives can lead the masses towards communist positions, is dangerously close to the well-known and reactionary thesis of the Trotskyists who think that the proletariat isn't ready for class positions and must be brought to them bit by bit through intermediate aims, which are laid out in a lovely manual called "The Transitional Program". To be sure, BC does not share these counterrevolutionary positions and fights them within the western proletariat. But it is not equally firm in excluding the possibility of a tactic that is similar in many ways for the proletariat of the peripheral countries.
Such ambiguity does not even open one tiny window to communist positions in the peripheries: on the contrary, it runs the risk of opening wide the doors to the infiltration of opportunism everywhere.
The conditions of the struggle and of the communist program in the peripheral countries
"... The capitalist mode of production in the peripheral countries was imposed by overturning the old equilibrium and its preservation is based on and translated into the growing wretchedness of the ever increasing masses of proletarians and disposed, political oppression and repression are thus necessary to ensure that the masses submit to this situation. All this means that in the peripheral countries the potential is greater for the radicalization of consciousness than in the social formations of the metropoles." (...)
"Contrary to the countries of the metropoles, this makes possible the existence and activity of mass communist organizations." (Thesis 5)
"The possibility of "mass" organizations controlled by communists (...) must not mean that the communist parties themselves become mass parties."
"Basically the same problem appears in the advanced countries and it is this problem that our current is answering in the theses on "communist factory groups" which regroup the vanguard workers around the party cadres, these workers take their orientation from the party and are under its direct influence. The specificity of the peripheral countries lies in the fact that these conditions do not exist only in the factories and in a very limited way (for the moment) in the field of action of the revolutionary minority, in periods of social calm, but also on a larger scale on the ground, in the towns and in the country. In these countries, then, for the reasons we have given, the organization of communist groups at a territorial level is becoming a possibility." (Thesis 6)
As you can see, BC puts forward two closely linked theses on the "specificities" of the peripheral countries.
The first thesis is that because capitalism is implanted so weakly in these countries, the contradictions are laid bare, which makes "the circulation of the program within the masses" easier.
The second thesis is that this greater openness to revolutionary propaganda makes the formation of mass organizations under the direct influence of the party possible now.
Two theses, two errors. First of all, the thesis that because the contradictions in the peripheral countries are particularly acute they offer the best conditions for revolutionary activity is not an idea unique to BC. It comes from an idea defended by Lenin, known as the theory of "the weak link of capitalism", which sought to make a generalization of the fact that the revolution was victorious in a peripheral country, ie. Tsarist Russia. The ICC has made a detailed critique of this theory, but there is no room to take up the whole of this critique again here[4]. Suffice it to say simply that the international system of bourgeois domination does not consist of so many independent links which can be taken separately. When one of the weakest links is under stress (Poland in 1980, for example), the whole international bourgeoisie intervenes to support this national bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In these countries, the process of a proletarian revolt, confronting only its ‘own' bourgeoisie, would certainly have great possibilities for extension and radicalization. But in the face of a united front of the world bourgeoisie opposing it, these possibilities are very rapidly diminished.
Consequently, the circulation of the communist program in these countries is by no means easier, in spite of the high degree of radicalism and violence often reached in the struggles. Anyone who has had contact with the comrades of these countries can bear witness to this, and the comrades who work in these countries above all can bear witness to it. The daily reality that you have to deal with in a country like Iran, for example, is the enormous influence of Islamic radicalism on the semi-proletarian and dispossessed masses. The reality that you are confronted with every day in India is the existence even within the proletariat of tribal sectarianism which exists between the thousands of ethnic groupings in the country; the reality of the separation of individuals through the caste system.
If you can talk of the ease with which the communist program is circulated in countries where a day's wage is insufficient to buy even one issue of a revolutionary newspaper, in countries where the workers cannot read in the evening after ten hours in the factory because electricity is only supplied for a few hours a day, you are talking cheap humanism - or quite simply, you've never set foot in these countries.
The reality of the situation is exactly the opposite. Very small groups of comrades begin to work in the peripheral countries of capitalism and have to conquer the streets inch by inch, fighting tooth and nail against unbelievable difficulties. In order that they do not collapse under the weight of all these difficulties surrounding them, these comrades need all the support and all the strength of the communist organizations in the metropoles, rather than speeches about how easy their work is.
The practical conclusion that BC draws from the so-called ease of communist propaganda is the possibility of forming mass organizations directed by communists. We can see in this a typical example of bourgeois ideology entering through chinks left by a persistent weakness in revolutionary positions. In the circumstances, it is a case of the meeting of the shameless lies of the nationalists of the CP of Iran (on the existence of "mass communist organizations" in the mountains of Kurdistan and throughout Iran) with BC's hopeless desire to believe these lies which seem to give a breath of life to its old fixation on "communist factory groups". For some years now the ICC has polemicised with BC about its pretence of forming factory groups at the workplace, which regroup workers influenced politically by the party as well as party militants themselves.
BC's chimera: ‘communist factory groups'
In response to our criticisms and warnings on the danger of opportunist slidings, the comrades of BC have always insisted that the "communist factory groups" do not divert the direction of the party and that therefore their existence is not based on a watering-down of the program.
Now this is precisely the issue. While the factory groups are such as they are today, that is, simply initiatives of the party with a few rare sympathizers as well, and at least a little programmatic coherence, they cannot effectively give rise to any great problem, at least at the moment, because only something that has a real existence can really give rise to advantages or problems. It is a different question if we suppose the growth of these groups, a supposition which in fact is not realistic. As the crisis deepens, a growing number of proletarians will be pushed into the search for an alternative to the phony workers' parties and to all their so-called "intermediaries" (workers' groups, factory groups, etc), and we will see the influx of a large number of these elements. Once these factory groups have a real existence, they will consist of a certain number of proletarians who are disgusted by the false workers' parties but who are still partly tied to them ideologically; also a few, rare militants who have a programmatic coherence. This perspective is like the "Promised Land" for the militants of BC: finally the programmatic coherence of the party will be able to influence a greater number of workers! This they understand perfectly. On the other hand, what they can't get into their heads is that it is in the nature of things that all exchanges are made in both directions. This means that if factory groups offer common organizational ground for programmatic coherence and for the illusions which still weigh on the workers, it is not only the illusions which give way to revolutionary positions, but also revolutionary positions must make some small concessions to the workers' illusions if they are to maintain a common area of agreement.
If to the usual surrounding pressure of dominant ideology you add the internal pressure of the tendencies towards activism, localism and ouvrierism of dozens of workers recently awakened to the need to ‘do something'; where will the factory groups end up? The meeting point between coherence and confusion will of necessity tend to be situated closer to the side of confusion, contaminating even the revolutionary militants present in these groups.
BC's reply to these warnings can easily be inferred from the insistence made in the proposed theses on the fact that "the best qualities, the best cadres of the revolutionary proletariat and the best prepared are concentrated in the organs of the party" (Thesis 6).
In short, the guarantee that factory groups or territorial groups will not deviate lies in the existence of a homogeneous and selective party, which ensures the correct political direction. In fact BC is once more prey to the illusion that it is possible to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, in imagining there to be divisions into watertight compartments which do not exist in reality.
We have already seen how, at the level of political positions, the more you leave the coast clear for "agitational slogans" and a margin for maneuver for the "communist tactic", the more you cling to illusions in the possibility of saving your soul by declaring that all that "must not in any way become part of the communist program" (Preamble). It's the same at the organizational level: the more you throw open the doors of the so-called "communist" organs to the mass of proletarians who are only half-convinced, the more you think to save your soul by declaring that only "suitable" elements can enter the party, the real party. What does this correlation mean?
In the first place that these famous mass territorial organs are no more than the organizational concretization of the opportunist division between tactics and program (the practice of the groups is tactical while the party concerns itself with preserving the program).
Secondly, this means that just as an opportunist tactic ends up by sullying the program which was supposed to have inspired it, so every oscillation of the mass of partly conscious elements within the groups necessarily has repercussions on the revolutionary organization which is politically and organizationally responsible for these groups.
In the final analysis, all this talk about tactics and "mass" organizations leads not to the "penetration of the real communist program into the heart of the proletarian and dispossessed masses" (Thesis 11), but more mundanely to the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the rare and precious communist organizations.
The limitations of the amendment: a welcome but inadequate reaction
Any attempt to adapt communist positions to specific conditions in different countries (backwardness, etc) carries a great risk of an opportunist deviation. This is an old acquisition of the Communist Left. The accentuation of opportunist connotations that we see in every line of the proposed resolution was therefore very predictable; even a reaction against this accentuation within the IBRP could have been predicted. At the Bureau's last meeting a "formal amendment" was passed, which replaced "mass communist organizations" with "mass organizations directed by communists". And so, we read: "no concession, not even a formal one, to the mass communist political organizations, but a serious study of the various possibilities for the work of communists in the peripheral countries" (Battaglia Comunista no.l, 1986). In fact, for the comrades of BC, "The subsequent formulation left no room for doubt". Changing a term is more than enough to clarify everything. Perhaps this is true. But let's begin with the observation that these groups were intended to have one adjective too many attached to them: for 30 years, BC called them "trade union factory groups", and it was only after the initial polemics with us that they rechristened them "internationalist factory groups". We therefore made the remark: "If the elimination of the word ‘trade union' were enough to eliminate the ambiguity on the unions, all would be well..." (polemic with the CWO in International Review no.39, p.16). Having said this, in this instance, it isn't a matter of just one adjective too many: the Theses don't just call these territorial groups ‘communist'. They also take pains to say precisely that they are "communist because they are directed by and dependent on communist principles, because they are animated and guided by the party cadres and organs" (Thesis 6). If you were to take these assertions seriously, you would throw overboard, in one single sentence, the whole political-organizational tradition of the Italian Left, by passing off a mass organ composed of non-communists and inevitably subject to the oscillations of the proletarians who compose it, as a communist organization.
The logic of the liquidation of the party which lies behind these organizations cannot be got rid of by simply eliminating an adjective. By setting down these particularly opportunist formulations, those who drew up the proposed theses only developed logically and to its ultimate conclusion what the comrades of BC have always said: that factory groups are communist organs, are party organs, even if they contain workers who are not members of the party. The present supposition of the mass entry of non--communists, non-party militants into these party organisms simply makes apparent, on a larger scale, a contradiction which already existed. If BC wants as usual to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, they must say precisely that an organ can be communist even if the vast majority of its militants are not (it's enough that its leadership is communist). If so it is impossible to understand the need for the agreed amendment. Otherwise they must admit that it isn't a matter of party organs, but semi-political organs, intermediaries between the class and the party, which BC has always denied. And even if they admitted this, it would not be a great step forward: in fact they would be abandoning one of their particular confusions only to sink into the general confusion existing in the proletarian milieu on the question of ‘intermediate organs' or ‘transmission belts'.
In both cases the attempt to develop specific proposals for the comrades of the peripheral countries at a political-organizational level runs aground on the principles on which they are constituted. The comrades of the IBRP should think about this. Very seriously.
Beyle
[1] The IBRP was formed through an initiative of Battaglia Comunista and the Communist Workers' Organization (CWO).
[2] See ‘Address to proletarian political groups - in answer to the replies', in International Review no. 36
[3] See the pamphlets containing the proceedings of these conferences.
[4] See ‘The proletariat of western Europe at the heart of the class struggle', and ‘On the critique of the theory of the weak link' in International Review nos. 31 & 37.
In this issue of the International Review we are publishing the continuation of the history of the Dutch Left. This part of the article deals with the period from 1903 to 1907. The history of the Dutch Left is little known by people in general and for this reason, the work which we are publishing provides a documentation which should be of great value to our readers.
The history of the Dutch Left necessarily contains many specificities. Nevertheless, in order to understand it fully, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is an integral part of a general movement, that of the international working class. It is also necessary to situate it in the context of the period that is at a specific moment in the history of the workers' movement.
Two main points can be drawn out of this article: 1) the great difficulty the working class has in organizing itself as a distinct class and in creating its own organizations; 2) the fragility of these organizations, wracked as they are by crises periodically.
The first point is related to the very nature of the working class, which is what distinguishes it from every other class which has been called upon at certain moments in history to play a revolutionary role for the transformation of society. The political power of every other class has been based on their previously having won economic power. This is not at all the case for the proletariat which has no economic power other than that of being completely dispossessed obliged to sell its labor power and to submit to exploitation for the benefit of others. As a class that is both revolutionary and exploited, the working class can only create its organizations on the basis of its consciousness of its immediate and historic interests spurred on by the oppression it suffers at the hands of the exploiting class.
The second point is related to the fact that its organizations, because they reflect the evolution of the balance of class forces in the struggle, suffer constantly from the pressure of the ideology predominant in society, an ideology which is always that of the dominant class.
The appearance of revolutionary tendencies within the organizations of the working class has its source in the reaction to the inevitable penetration of bourgeois ideology into the class. The search for an organization for ever immune against this penetration, the search for a pure revolutionary organization, is as utopian as the search for a humanity that is totally invulnerable to the germs in the atmosphere. These are the politics of the ostrich which hides its head in the sand so that it doesn't see the danger which is lying in wait for it. Revolutionaries shouldn't have any illusions about the existence of "perfect and infallible organizations." They know that only the struggle - a struggle that must be unceasing and intransigent against the influence of the bourgeoisie - is the sole guarantee that the organizations secreted by the class remain instruments on the road to revolution.
The extract printed here bears witness to this fierce struggle waged by the international revolutionary current of the proletariat at a given historic moment in a specific country.
A) The struggle against opportunism
As so often in the history of the workers' movement, the struggle for the defense of revolutionary principles was engaged at first on a practical terrain. The struggle against opportunism in the Dutch party centered around two problems which today, with historical hindsight, might seem of little importance: the peasant question, and the school question.
The importance of the peasant question was obvious in a country like Holland, whose commercial capital invested in the colonies was accompanied by archaic social structures in the countryside. Apart from its stockbreeding sector, and although beginning to develop, Dutch agriculture remained backward, with a still large mass of equally backward peasants, especially in Frisia, Troestra's ‘fief'. Alongside the peasants, a mass of landless farm workers hired out their labor power to peasants, landlords and farmers. To attract the peasant vote, which sent a substantial proportion of the SDAP's deputies to parliament, in 1901 a modification was proposed to replace the abolition of the existing order through the socialization of the land, and therefore the abolition of private property, by a regulation of the "farm contract". Worse still, from the standpoint of the socialist program, was the point devoted to the agricultural workers. Instead of linking up their struggle to that of the workers in the cities and emphasizing their common interests with the rest of the proletariat, the program proposed nothing less than to transform them into peasant freeholders:
"2. The provision of land and agricultural equipment at a fixed price for landless farm workers, to ensure them an autonomous existence."
These slogans launched by the Troelstra leadership were a clear affirmation of reformism, which proposed not to abolish, but to ameliorate capitalist society. As the Left of the party pointed out: "these two slogans are in contradiction with society's development in a socialist direction".
However, at the Hague Congress of 1905, under the pressure of the Left, and with the support of Kautsky who at the time held to a left-wing position on the agrarian question, these two points were struck from the Party's agrarian program. "It was marxism's first conflict, and its first victory. But also its only victory".
The struggle against reformism was indeed only beginning, and entered a new stage with the debates in the Dutch parliament on the subsidies to be accorded to church schools. For obvious ideological reasons, the lay government wanted the state to support the church schools financially. The marxist struggle against this maneuver of the liberal bourgeoisie had nothing in common with the anti-clericalism of the contemporary French radicals and socialists, which was above all a diversion. The support given to the various religious denominations in the Netherlands was essentially due to the rise of the class struggle, which provoked an ideological reaction from the liberal bourgeoisie in power[1]. Following the classic reasoning of the workers' movement of the time, the Left pointed out that: "with the upsurge of the proletarian class struggle, the liberals, always and everywhere, look on religion as a necessary rampart for capitalism, and little by little abandon their resistance to religious schools".
Imagine the surprise of the marxists, grouped around the review Nieuwe Tijd, to see the revisionists come out openly in Parliament in favor of a vote for state support for the religious schools. Worse still, the social-democracy's Groningen Congress (1902) clearly abandoned the whole marxist combat against the grip of religious ideology. In a country, where for historical reasons religion weighed heavily in its triple form of Catholicism, Calvinism and Judaism, this was a veritable capitulation:
"The Congress...notes that the major part of the laboring class in the Netherlands demands a religious education for its children, and considers it undesirable to oppose this, since it is not for the social-democracy to break - because of theological disagreements - the economic unity of the working class against both religious and non-religious capitalists."
The argument used here - the unity of religious and non-religious workers - presupposed the acceptance of the existing ideological and economic order. Thus, "with this resolution, the party (took) the first step on the road to reformism; it (meant) a break with the revolutionary program, whose demand for the separation of church and state certainly does not mean state money for religious schools". It is interesting to note that the Dutch Left had no intention of glorifying the ‘lay' school, whose pretended ‘neutrality' it denounced. It did not base its position on a choice, false from the marxist viewpoint, between ‘religious' and ‘lay' schools. Its aim was to stand resolutely on the terrain of the class struggle; this meant rejecting any collaboration, under any pretext, with any fraction of the bourgeoisie. The marxists' misgivings about the Party's revisionist orientation were to prove well-founded in the heat of the workers' struggle.
B) The 1903 transport strike
This strike was the most important social movement to stir the Dutch working class before WWI. It was to leave a deep mark on the proletariat, which felt betrayed by social democracy, and whose most militant fractions turned still more towards revolutionary syndicalism. From 1903 onwards, the split between marxism and revisionism was underway, with no possibility of turning back. In this sense, the 1903 strike marks the real beginning of the ‘Tribunist' movement as a revolutionary movement.
The transport strike was first of all a protest against conditions of exploitation that are hard to imagine today. The railwayman's living conditions were worthy of the period of capitalism's primitive accumulation during the 19th century[2]. In 1900, they worked 361 days a year. Moreover, a strong feeling of corporatism reduced the possibilities of a unified struggle, due to the divisions between different trades. The mechanics, engine drivers and permanent way workers all had their own unions. Each union could start strikes, without any of the others joining the struggle. The unions' careful protection of each other's trade specificity rose as a barrier against the mass unity of the workers over and above differences in qualification[3].
Against these conditions, there broke out on 31 January 1901 a wildcat strike, starting from the rank and file of the railwaymen, and not from the trade unions. It appeared as a mass strike: not only did it hit all the transport trades, it spread throughout the country. It was also a mass strike in starting, not on the basis of specific demands, but in solidarity with the workers of Amsterdam harbor who were out on strike. The transport workers refused to act as strike-breakers, and so blocked the bosses' attempts to move their goods by rail. This movement of solidarity, characteristic of mass strikes, then snowballed: the bakers and rolling stock engineers gave their support. but there is no doubt that the originality of the movement - which did not succeed in spreading to other sectors of the Dutch proletariat - lay in the creation of a strike committee, elected by the rank and file and not designated by the transport union and the SDAP, even if their members participated in it.
All these characteristics meant that the mass strike ceased to be a purely trade, economic strike; little by little, through its direct confrontation with the state it became political. On 6 February, a decree of the Dutch government's war ministry declared the mobilization of the army; it also created an organism, within which the Catholic and Protestant unions were active, to regroup the strike breakers. This bourgeois offensive culminated on 25 February with the proposition of a law against the strike: the strikers were threatened with imprisonment, and the government decided to set up a military transport company to break the strike.
But, worse than all the threats and government measures, the strike was undermined from the inside by Troelstra's SDAP. On 20 February, at a meeting representing 60,000 strikers, and which was not held in open session - unlike the strike committee - Troelstra proposed the creation of a ‘Defense Committee' made up of different political and union organizations. This committee was composed of the NAS, and anarchist followers of Nieuwenhuis, the latter having committee was composed of Vliegen, a SDAP revisionist, the transport boss Oudegeest, the NAS, and anarchist followers of Niewenhuis, the latter having refused to take part in such an organism. Its orientation was to prove damaging for the conduct of the proposed strike against the government's measures. Vliegen declared that the strike could not be called, because the liberal Kuyper government had not yet published its decrees. In fact, the attitude of this ‘Defense Committee', self-proclaimed by different organizations, and by the SDAP in particular, rapidly revealed itself as negative. Not only was the committee paralyzed by the opposition between Niewenhuis' libertarian followers; the overbearing weight of Troelstra, who although he had initiated the committee was not a member, meant that it remained an organism outside the struggle. Using the pretext of the struggle against "anarchist adventurism", Troelstra came out against a political strike: he claimed that if the workers were to decide on a political strike in reaction to the "scandalous laws", this would only make them worse in Parliament. This was written in the social democrat daily without any reference either to the Defense Committee or to the Party authorities. This act of indiscipline was clear proof that the revisionist leadership did not consider itself accountable, either to the workers or to the party militants. It acted autonomously, the better to place itself on the terrain of conciliation with the bourgeoisie. Through Pannekoek's pen, the Left vigorously criticized this behavior, which was the beginning of a long series of betrayals of the struggle: "Your flabby and hesitant conduct cannot but serve the possessing class and the government" wrote Pannekoek, against Troelstra.
This betrayal came out into the open during the second transport strike, in April. The government had carried the vote in favor of its anti-strike laws, forbidding all work stoppages in public transport. Instead of adopting an energetic attitude, the social-democrat leaders on the committee, such as Oudegeest, came out against a general strike to include all workers throughout Holland. And yet, at that very moment, strikes had broken out, creating a social context far more favorable to the class struggle than it had been in January/February: in Amsterdam the bargees, blacksmiths, roadworkers, navvies and the engineers were all out on strike, while the municipal workers had walked out in sympathy.
In spite of everything, the general strike was called, under pressure from the rank and file. Its initial weakness lay in the fact that the railway workers' meetings were held in secret, and were therefore closed to workers from other trades. Despite the occupation of the stations and tracks by the army, which should have developed the spreading of the strike, it failed to become general. The movement to extend the struggle was nonetheless spontaneous: in Utrecht and Amsterdam, the engineers and masons joined the solidarity movement. Neither the presence of the army, nor the threat of five years prison for ‘agitators' and two for strikers, provided for by the new laws, were enough to cool the ardor of the striking workers, who since January had experienced "the joy of the struggle".
The workers' impetus and fervor were broken by the decisions taken by the social-democratic leaders of the ‘Defense Committee', which claimed to be directing the struggle. On the 9th of April, Vliegen forced the decision to halt the strike movement. Faced with the transport workers' fury and incredulity, the Committee disappeared. At a mass meeting, the workers shouted down Vliegen with cries of "He's betrayed us!". Even the Left was prevented from speaking: the workers made no distinction between marxists and revisionists, and Roland-Holst's speech was met with the cry of "Strike!". The attitude of the revisionist leaders was thus to provoke a long-lasting rejection by the Dutch working class of the whole social-democracy, including its marxist wing, to the profit of anarcho-syndicalism.
The 1903 transport strike did not have purely ‘Dutch' roots; it marked a turning point in the European class struggle. It broke out as a spontaneous mass strike, becoming a conscious force capable of pushing back the bourgeoisie politically, and giving the workers an unquestionable feeling of victory. But its failure was that of a general strike launched by the unions and parties.
This strike fell within a whole historical period marked by a combination of political and economic strikes, and culminating in the Russian revolutionary movement of 1905. As Rosa Luxemburg emphasized, "only in a revolutionary situation, with the development of the proletariat's political action, does the full dimension of the mass strike's importance and extent appear". Rosa Luxemburg, in her polemic against the revisionists, demonstrated better than anyone except Pannekoek the struggle's homogeneity, that is to say, an identical and simultaneous phenomenon at the turn of the century spreading throughout Europe, including Holland, and as far as the American continent:
"In 1900, according to the American comrades, the mass strike of the Pennsylvanian miners did more for the spread of socialist ideas than ten years of agitation; again in 1900 came the mass strike of the Austrian miners, in 1902 that of the miners in France, in 1902 again a strike paralyzed the whole productive apparatus of Barcelona, in solidarity with the engineers' struggle, while, still in 1902, a mass strike in Sweden demonstrated for universal suffrage; similarly in Belgium during the same year, while more than 200,000 farm workers throughout eastern Galicia struck in defense of the right to form trade unions; in January and April 1903, two mass strikes by Dutch railwaymen, in 1904 a mass strike by rail workers in Hungary, in 1904 strikes and demonstrations in Italy, to protest against the massacres in Sardinia, in January 1905, mass strike by the Ruhr miners, in October 1905, strikes and demonstrations in Prague and the surrounding regions (more than 100,000 workers) for universal suffrage in the Galician regional parliament, in November 1905 mass strikes and demonstrations throughout Austria for universal suffrage in the Imperial Council, in 1905 once again a mass strike of Italian farm workers, and still in 1905, a mass strike of the Italian railway workers..."
By preparing the political confrontation with the state, the mass strike poses the question of the revolution. Not only does it demonstrate the "revolutionary energy" and the "proletarian instinct" of the working masses - as Gorter emphasized after the 1903 strike - it profoundly altered the whole situation at the turn of the century:
"We have every reason to think that we have now embarked on a period of struggles, where what is at stake is the state's power and institutions; combats that may, through all kinds of difficulties, last for decades, whose length cannot yet be foreseen, but which will very probably in the short term usher in a fundamental change in favor of the proletariat in the balance of class forces, if not its seizure of power in Western Europe."
These remarks by Kautsky in his book The Road to Power were to be taken up by the Dutch left against Kautsky and his supporters in the Netherlands, such as Troelstra and Vleigen. The 1903 strike did indeed pose the question of ‘reform or revolution', and inevitably led, within the SDAP, to a confrontation with the reformists, who were betraying not only the Party's revolutionary spirit, but the immediate struggle as well.
C) The opposition within the Party (1903-1907)
The opposition within the Party was to be all the more vigorous, in that the consequences of the defeat of the strike, sabotaged by the Troelstra-Vliegen leadership, were a disaster for the workers' movement. About 40,000 workers were fired for strike action. The membership of the NAS, despite its militant position in the struggle and its opposition to Vliegen, fell from 8,000 in 1903 to 6,000 in 1904. Troelstra's SDAP, now with a reputation for treason, also suffered a considerable drop in membership: from 6,500 members at the end of 1902, to 5,600 at the end of 1903. By contrast, a sign of the reflux or even demoralization at the end of the strike could be seen in the rapid growth of the religious unions. Politically, the most combative union movement, the NAS, which could have become the SDAP's economic organization, drew closer to the anarchist positions of Niewenhuis. The fall in membership continued until the appearance of the Tribunist movement, which increasingly influenced it. By contrast, in 1905 the socialist unions linked to the SDAP created their own central union federation: the NVV (Confederation of Trade Unions of the Netherlands). Strongly influenced by H. Polak's reformist diamond workers' union, it quickly became the major union federation in the country. Right from the start, the NVV refused to help spread the struggle in the building industry; in the years that followed, it adopted the same attitude of holding back and avoiding solidarity with striking workers.
Faced with the development of reformism in the party, and its weakening as a workers' party, the marxists at first adopted a moderate attitude. Not only did they hesitate to form a determined fraction to conquer the leadership of the party, but their attacks on Troelstra remained extremely cautious. Although Troelstra had actively betrayed the strike, they still hesitated to talk of treason. When the balance sheet of the transport strike was discussed at the SDAP's 9th Congress at the end of 1903, Gorter spoke in measured terms. While insisting that he was "an opponent of the Troelstra leadership, not only in this strike, but also in other important matters", he hesitated to speak of the betrayal of the leadership:
"Naturally, there is no question of betrayal, but of the weakness of Troelstra's political conceptions, and of his constant wavering."
The 1903 Congress of Enscheden did not have the salutary effect that the marxists of the Nieuwe Tijd had hoped for. Although Troelstra had to give up the editorship of Het Volk ("The People"), to be replaced by Tak, Gorter was forced to shake his hand in the name of "solidarity" and "unity" in the Party against the "common enemy" outside. He managed to get it believed that Gorter and his partisans were attacking him personally, not politically. Complaining that there were those who wanted to deprive him of his leadership responsibilities, he raised the question of confidence. Instead of appearing as one of the elements most responsible for the opportunist orientation of the Party, he posed as a victim, and thus obtained the ‘confidence' of the party as a whole. In this way the revisionist leadership avoided a discussion of vital questions of principle and tactic in the class struggle. Although it was completely isolated, the marxist minority didn't capitulate and resolutely carried on fighting. From 1905 to 1907, the marxist current found itself confronted with a vigorous counteroffensive by the revisionists.
1. The Consequences of the Utrecht Congress 1905
The parliamentary fraction, which was the real leadership of the party, went further and further in collaborating with the bourgeoisie. In 1905, during the elections for the provincial states, the revisionists raised the question of supporting the liberals against the Kuyper government, which had broken the transport strike. The Left, like the Left in other parties, did not refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal candidates who took a stand in favor of universal suffrage against property-based electoral rights. It adopted a resolution in this sense during the 1905 Hague Congress:
"(the party) declares that during elections it will only support candidates who stand for universal suffrage."
But for the marxists, there could be no question of turning this tactical and temporary support into a principle. Contrary to what Troelstra wished, it wasn't at all a matter of calling workers to vote for "liberals of any stripe", just because they were anti-clerical. From a class standpoint, the fight wasn't against a particular capitalist party but against capitalism as a totality. In order to avoid any confusion about the petty bourgeois and small peasant elements, the workers had to be clear about their true identity:
"On every occasion the party must show the workers that their enemies sit on the left side of parliament just as much as on the right."
But instead of respecting the resolutions of the Congress, the party leadership, the parliamentary fraction and the socialist daily Het Volk left socialist electors free to vote for any liberal candidate who seemed to be all right. Although firm on positions which had been classical ones within the workers' movement, the marxists found themselves isolated from the working masses. Troelstra played on this as much as he could.
There were, however, reactions within the party. Despite the events of 1903, the party was far from having succumbed to revisionism; it was still capable of proletarian reactions against Troelstra's parliamentary fraction. The Hague Congress of 1905, no doubt under the pressure of the revolutionary events taking place in Russia, nominated a new directing committee of the party, this time composed of a majority of marxists, including Gorter. Opposition then grew between the new committee and Troelstra's parliamentary fraction. The latter wanted to support the new liberal government in order to "push it along the road of reform". For the directing committee, based around the Nieuwe Tijd group, this was out of the question. The real issue was to develop an agitation against the limitation of the right to strike, no matter what the government, liberal or clerical. Once again, Troelstra violated party discipline, by taking up a position which condemned workers' agitation. On 9 March 1906, in front of the bourgeois parliamentarians, he openly disclaimed the actions taken by the workers and supported by the party, despite the fact that he was a member of the directing committee.
This conflict posed a vital question in the workers' movement: was it the parliamentary fraction or the directing committee, elected by the party, which determined the policy of the organization? It was a question of whether the party was in the service of an uncontrolled group of parliamentarians conducting a policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie, or whether the activities of this group were to be tightly controlled by the decisions taken at the Congress. This conflict over influence and decision-making wasn't unique to Holland. In Germany, for example, Rosa Luxemburg had to fight against the parliamentary leadership[4]. The problem of the real leadership of the party was the problem of preserving its revolutionary character. In Russia, after 1905, when the Bolsheviks had deputies in the Duma, their parliamentary fraction was tightly controlled by the central committee; and it wasn't at all accidental that it was one of the few who in August 1914 voted against war credits.
This opposition between Troelstra and the directing committee was to pose the real underlying question: reform or revolution. In a pamphlet which he brought out before the Utrecht Congress, Troelstra attacked the new party leadership, pretending as usual that he was being attacked personally, that the new marxist Centrale was "doctrinaire" and "dogmatic". Presenting himself as the ‘innocent' victim of persecution by the Gorter group, he could not however hide what really lay at the root of his thinking: that the SDAP should be a national party and not an internationalist one. The party had to make compromises with the small and big bourgeoisie: not only did it have to take account of the petty-bourgeois prejudices existing within the proletariat - "the religious and partly petty-bourgeois character of the proletariat" - but it also had to make this reformist orientation more acceptable. Troelstra didn't hesitate to resort to anti-intellectual demagogy: the marxists were "ultra-infantile" and wanted to transform the party into a "propaganda club". The marxist dream had to be countered with the ‘solid' reality of parliament:
"Will the party float above the heads of the real workers, basing itself on a dream-proletariat or, as it has done since the beginning of its existence and its activity, in parliament and in the municipal councils, will it penetrate ever-more deeply into the real life of our people?"
Thus for Troelstra, the only possible life for the proletariat - which, what's more, he willfully mixed up with other ‘popular' strata - took place not in the class struggle but in parliament.
To achieve his goals - making the party a purely parliamentary Dutch national party - Troelstra proposed nothing less than the elimination of the marxist leadership, the reorganization of the party giving full powers to the parliamentary fraction, which up to then had according to the statutes only two representatives on the directing committee. The executive of the party committee, elected by the militants, was to be replaced by the ‘executive' of the parliamentary fraction; the latter - according to him - "represents the party - not officially, but in fact, in parliament and in practical policies". The aim was in fact to establish a veritable dictatorship of the revisionist fraction; it wanted nothing less than to direct all the organs of the party in order to deprive the Left of any freedom of criticism.
A whole skilful campaign waged by Troelstra, Vliegen and Schaper among the militants allowed them to pose as victims of a witch-hunt not against revisionism but against themselves personally. They did it so well that a resolution adopted at the Utrecht Congress proposed to limit freedom of discussion and criticism in the party:
"(Considering) that the unity of the party is necessarily under threat, the Congress deplores this abuse of the freedom to criticize, which in our party is something beyond doubt, and imposes on all comrades the need to keep criticism within such limits that comrades respect the dignity and unity of the party."
2. The New Revisionist Course (1906-1907)
There could be no doubt that this resolution was a veritable sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the marxists, with the aim of terrorizing them and, if possible, making them capitulate to revisionism. After the Congress, Troelstra was able to threaten Gorter openly:
"if Gorter talks once more about a ‘rapprochement with bourgeois democracy', the sting in this assertion will be removed by the Resolution."
This triumph of revisionist diktats cleared the way for a revision of the marxist program of the party. A commission for revising the program was formed in contempt of the party's rules of functioning: the party committee which decided to nominate the commission did so without a mandate from the Congress, the only organ with the authority to decide to revise the program. The commission, under the influence of the revisionists, proposed nothing less than changing the marxist conditions for joining the party: if the party was to be based on Marx's system, it was not necessary to accept the underlying materialist philosophy in order to join it. The door was thus open to non-marxist, religious and even bourgeois elements.
The Haarlem Congress of 1907 merely confirmed the triumph of revisionism. The few marxists who were on the commission served merely as a cover for it, hardly making their voice heard. Out of the Congress came a declaration situating the party in the centre, between marxism and revisionism: "The program can be neither orthodox marxist nor revisionist nor a compromise between the two orientations". As for marxism as represented by Gorter, Pannekoek and Roland-Holst, it could only be a matter of "private opinion".
The defeat marxism suffered at this Congress was such that neither Pannekoek nor Van der Gies could distribute their own pamphlets against the party leadership. A Congress resolution, adopted unanimously, made things even harder than the Utrecht Congress: the right to criticize was suspended in the name of the ‘unity of the party'. Party democracy was openly trampled underfoot with the agreement of the great majority of its members, who hoped for an end to what they saw as "mere personal quarrels".
For the marxists, a very small minority, the choice was between capitulation and combat: they chose combat, to fight for the old marxist orientation of the party. They thus founded their own review De Tribune ("The Tribune"), which would give a name to the marxist current.
Chardin
[1] In France on the other hand, the bourgeoisie - in order to combat the development of the workers' and socialist movement - through its ‘radical-socialist' faction, used the anticlerical card to the utmost. It thus hoped, given the ‘popularity' of anti-clericalism in the workers' milieu, to lead socialism away from its own terrain.
[2] It wasn't rare to find workers working six days a week, more than 14 hours a day. On the inhuman conditions of the transport workers and the development of the Dutch workers' movement in this period, see De Spoorwegstakingen van 1903 - Een spiegel der arbeidersbeweging in Nederland ("The railway strikes in 1903 - a mirror of the workers' movement in Holland"), a study by AJC Ruter, Leiden, 1935, re-published, in the 70s, but with no precise date, by SUN reprints, Nijmegen.
[3] These craft unions, a vestige of the artisan period of the workers' movement, were progressively replaced by industrial unions. The latter regrouped all the workers in an industrial branch, whatever crafts they had. The development of the mass strike at the beginning of the century would however show that, in the open struggle against capital, organizing by industrial branches had been superseded by the massive organization of the workers of all branches. The idea of ‘One Big Union' propagated by the American IWW would quickly be shown to be inadequate, since it foresaw only an economic struggle in this or that branch, whereas the mass strike tended to become political, through the confrontation of a whole class, and not just some of its parts, with the state.
[4] Rosa Luxemburg was able to pose the real underlying question: reform or revolution. Thus she could write: "...what counts above all is the general organization of our agitation and our press in order to lead the toiling masses to rely more and more on their own forces and autonomous action and no longer to consider the parliamentary struggle as the central axis of political life." From the revolutionary point of view, it was vital to "warn the conscious working class against the pernicious illusion that it's possible to artificially reanimate democracy and the bourgeois opposition in parliament by moderating and watering down the social democratic class struggle." (Sachsische Arbeiteizeitung 5-6 December 1904).
% share in exports 1984 | ECC | Japan |
to | ||
USA | 9.4 | 35.6 |
OPEC | 6.9 | 9.2 |
COMECON | 2.9 | 2.0 |
TOTAL | 19.2 | 46.8 |
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