The bourgeoisie recently celebrated the end of the First World War. Obviously, there have been many emotional declarations about the terrible tragedy of this war. But in all these commemorations, in the declarations of the politicians and in the newspapers and on the TV, the events which actually led the governments to put an end to the war are never mentioned. Reference is made to the military defeat of the central empires, Germany and its Austrian ally, but the decisive element which led the latter to ask for an armistice is carefully avoided: the revolutionary movement which developed in Germany at the end of-1918. Neither has there been any question of identifying the real responsibilities for this butchery - and this is quite understandable. Of course, the "specialists" have pored over the archives of the different governments to conclude that it was Germany and Austria who pushed hardest for war. The historians have also shown that the war aims of the Entente were quite specific. However, in none of their "analyses" is the real cause of the war pointed out: the capitalist system itself. And this is again perfectly understandable: only marxism can explain why it wasn't the "will" or the "rapacity" of this or that government which lay at the root of the war, but the very laws of capitalism. For our part, the anniversary of the end of the First World War is an occasion to return to the analyses made by revolutionaries at the time, and to the struggle they waged against the war. We will base ourselves in particular on the writings and attitude of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, for we are also commemorating the 80th anniversary of their murder by the bourgeoisie. This is the best homage we can give to these two magnificent fighters for the world proletariat[1] at a time when the bourgeoisie is seeking in all sorts of ways to kill their memory.

The war which broke out in Europe in August 1914 had been preceded by numerous other wars on this continent. We can recall, for example (if we limit ourselves to the 19th century) the Napoleonic wars and the war between Prussia and Prance in 1870. However there are fundamental differences between the conflict of 1914 and all the previous ones. The most obvious one was the carnage and barbarity it inflicted on the continent of "civilisation", Today, after the much greater barbarity of the Second World War, what happened in World War I appears almost modest. But in the Europe of the turn of the century, when the last military conflict of any importance had been in 1870, and when there was still a glow from the last embers of the "belle époque", the epoch of the zenith of the capitalist mode of production which had allowed the working class to make significant improvements in its living conditions, the brutal plunge into mass slaughter, into the daily horror of the trenches and a poverty not seen for half a century, was seen as an incomparable summit of barbarism, especially by the exploited. On both sides, among the main belligerents, Germany and France, the soldiers and the population had heard from their forebears about the war of 1870 and its cruelty. But what they were going through had little in common with that episode. The conflict of 1870 had only lasted a few months, and had involved a far smaller number of victims (some hundred thousand); neither did it result in the ruin of either victor or vanquished. With the First World War, the numbers of the dead, mutilated and wounded had to be counted in millions[2]. The daily hell suffered at the front and at the rear lasted more than 4 years. At the front, this horror took the form of an underground existence, of living in mud and filth, with the stench of corpses, in permanent fear from shells and machine gun fire, and of the spectacle that awaited the survivors: mutilated corpses, the wounded lying for days in shell craters. At the rear, the majority faced backbreaking labour to supply the troops and produce ever more weapons; they faced price rises which slashed their wages two or five times, interminable queues in front of empty shops; hunger; the permanent anguish of learning of the death of a husband, a brother, a father or a son; the pain and despair, the broken lives, when the terrible news arrived, as it did millions of times.

The other clear and unprecedented feature of this war, and which explains its massive barbarism, is that it was a total war. The whole power of industry, the entire workforce was subjugated to a single goal: the production of armaments. All males from the end of adolescence to the beginning of old age were mobilised. It was also total from the point of view of the damage it did to the economy. The countries which had been the actual fields of battle were destroyed; the economies of the European countries were ruined by the war; it was the end of their centuries-old power and the beginning of their decline to the benefit of the USA. It was total, finally, because it was not restricted to the original belligerents: practically all the European countries were dragged in and it swept over other continents, with war fronts in the Middle East, with the mobilisation of the colonial troops and with the entry into the war on the Allied side of Japan. the USA, and several countries of Latin America.

In fact, the scale of the barbarism and the destruction that it provoked itself shows the 1914-18 war was a tragic illustration of what marxists had foreseen: the entrance of the capitalist mode of production into its period of decline. of decadence. It strikingly confirmed the alternative predicted Marx and Engels in the previous century: socialism or a collapse into barbarism.

But it is also the task of marxism and marxists to give a theoretical explanation of this new phase in the life of capitalist society.

The fundamental causes of the World War

The aim of the book that Lenin wrote in 1916, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was to identify the fundamental causes of the war; but it fell to Rosa Luxemburg, in her book The Accumulation of Capital, written in 1912, two years before the world war broke out, to make the most profound analysis of the conditions that were about to hit capitalism in this new period of its existence.

"Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment ... With the high development of the capitalist countries and their increasingly severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence, both in aggression against the non-capitalist world and in ever more serious 'conflicts among the competing capitalist countries. But the more violently, ruthlessly and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of non-capitalist civilisations, the more rapidly it cuts the very ground from under the feet of capitalist accumulation. Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the career of capitalism, it is also a sure means of bringing it to a swift conclusion. This is not to say that capitalist development must be actually driven to this extreme: the mere tendency towards imperialism of itself takes forms which make the final phase of capitalism a period of catastrophe" (ibid, 'Protective Tariffs and Accumulation', p 446).

"The more ruthlessly capital sets about the destruction of non-capitalist strata at home and in the outside world, the more it lowers the standard of living for the workers as a whole, the greater also is the change in the day to day history of capital. It becomes a string of political and social disasters and convulsions, and under these conditions, punctuated by periodical economic catastrophes or crises, accumulation can go on no longer.

But even before this natural economic impasse of capital 's own creating is properly reached it becomes a necessity for the international working class to revolt against the rule of capital.

Capitalism is the first mode of economy with the weapon of propaganda, a mode which tends to engulf the entire globe and to stamp out all other economies, tolerating no rival at its side. Yet at the same time it is also the first mode of economy which is unable to exist by itself, which needs other economic systems as a medium and soil. Although it strives to become universal, and, indeed, on account of this tendency, it must break down - because it is immanently incapable of becoming a universal form of production. In its living history it is a contradiction in itself, and its movement of accumulation provides a solution to the conflict and aggravates it at the same time. At a certain stage of development there will be no other way out than the application of socialist principles. The aim of socialism is not accumulation hut the satisfaction of toiling humanity's wants by developing the productive forces of the entire globe. And so we find that socialism is by its very nature an harmonious and universal system of economy" (ibid, 'Militarism as a province of accumulation', p 467).

After the outbreak of the war, in the Anticritique, written in 1915 in response to the criticisms her book had provoked, Luxemburg updated her analysis:

"What distinguishes imperialism as the last struggle for capitalist world domination is not simply the remarkable energy and universality of expansion but - and this is the specific sign that the circle of development is beginning to close - the return of the decisive struggle for expansion from those areas which are being fought over back to its home countries. In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of' existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure. The expansion of capital, which for four centuries had given the existence and civilisation of all non-capitalist peoples in Asia, Africa, America and Australia over to ceaseless convulsions and general and complete decline, is now plunging the civilised peoples of Europe itself into a series of catastrophes whose final result can only be the decline. of civilisation or the transition to the socialist mode of production " (in Monthly Review Press, 1972, p 147). 

At the same time Lenin's book, in defining imperialism, insisted on one of its particular aspects - the export of capital from the developed countries to the backward countries in order to counter-act the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the result of the rise in the proportion of constant capital (machines, raw materials) in relation to variable capital (wages), which is alone able to create profit.

For Lenin, the rivalries between the industrialised countries to grab hold of the less developed zones and export their capital there had led to the confrontation between the great powers.

However, even if there are differences in the analyses elaborated by Luxemburg, Lenin and other revolutionaries of the day, they all converged on an essential point: this war was not the result of the bad policies or the ill will of this or that governing clique; it was the ineluctable consequence of the development of the capitalist mode of production. In this sense, these two revolutionaries denounced with the same energy any "analysis" which sought to make the workers think that there was an "alternative" to imperialism, militarism and war within capitalism. Thus Lenin demolished Kautsky's thesis about the possibility of a "super-imperialism" which could establish an equilibrium between the great powers and eliminate their military conflicts. He also destroyed all the illusions about "international arbitration" which men of "good will" and the pacifist sectors of the bourgeoisie presented as the means to reconcile the antagonists and put an end to the war. This is exactly what Luxemburg put forward in her book:

"Seen in this light, the position of the proletariat with regard to imperialism leads to a general confrontation with the rule of capital. The specific rules of its conduct are given by that historical alternative [ie between the ruin of civilisation and the arrival of socialist production].

According to official 'expert' marxism, the rules are quite different. The belief in the possibility of accumulation in an 'isolated capitalist society', the belief that capitalism is conceivable even without expansion, are the theoretical formula of a quite distinct tactical tendency. The logical conclusion of this idea is to look to imperialism not as a historical necessity, as the decisive conflict for socialism, but as the wicked invention of a small group of people who profit from it. This leads to convincing the bourgeoisie that, even from the point of view of their capitalist interests, imperialism and militarism are  harmful, thus isolating the alleged small group of beneficiaries of this imperialism and forming a bloc of the proletariat with broad sections of the bourgeoisie in order to 'moderate' imperialism, starve it out by 'partial disarmament' and 'draw its claws '! ... The final confrontation between proletariat and capital to settle their world-historic contradiction is converted into the utopia of a historical compromise between proletariat and bourgeoisie to 'moderate' the imperialist contradictions between capitalist states" (ibid, p147-8).

Finally, Luxemburg and Lenin used the same terms to explain why it was Germany which played the role of sparking off the World War (the big idea of those who are looking for the country responsible for the war) while at the same time treating the two camps in exactly the same way:

of the policies of the two colossi which, well before the present hostilities, had extended the tentacles of their financial exploitation all over the world and had divided it up economically. They had to clash with each other, because from the capitalist point of view, a new division of the world had become inevitable" (Lenin, The war and the revolution).

This unity in the analysis of the causes of the war coming from revolutionaries originating from countries in opposing camps also applied  to the policy they put forward for the proletariat and to their denunciation of the social democratic parties who had betrayed the class.

The role of revolutionaries during the war

However difficult it was for the revolutionaries to carry out their propaganda at a time when the bourgeoisie had installed a real state of siege, preventing any expression of a proletarian voice, this action by Rosa and her comrades was an essential preparation for the future. Although she was imprisoned in April 1915 she wrote The Crisis in German Social Democracy which was "the spiritual dynamite to turn the bourgeois order upside down" as Clara Zetkin, a close comrade of Rosa, wrote in her preface of May 1919.

This book is pitiless charge-sheet against the' war itself and against every aspect of bourgeois propaganda; the best homage we can render to Rosa Luxemburg today is to publish a few (too) short extracts from it.

At a time when in all belligerent countries, all the different mouthpieces of bourgeois propaganda were trying to outdo each other in their nationalist frenzy, she began the book by denouncing the chauvinist hysteria which had seized hold of the population.

"The excesses of a spy-hunting populace, the singing throngs, the coffee-shops with their patriotic songs ... the violent mobs, ready to denounce, ready to persecute women, ready to whip themselves into a delirious frenzy over every wild rumour ... the atmosphere of ritual murder, the Kishinev (pogrom) air that left the policeman at the comer as the only remaining representative of human dignity" (Junius Pamphlet, p4).

Then, she exposes the reality of this war:

"Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics - but as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity - so it appears in all its hideous nakedness" (ibid, p5). Thus, from the very start, Rosa goes to the heart of the question: against the pacifist illusions which pined for a bourgeois society "without its excesses", she pointed the finger at the real guilty party: capitalism as a whole. And immediately she took care to denounce the role and content of capitalist propaganda, whether it came from the traditional bourgeois parties or from Social-Democracy:

"War is methodical, organised, gigantic murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is possible only when a state of intoxication has been previously created. This has always been the tried and proven method of those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a commensurate bestiality of thought and senses; the latter must prepare
and accompany the former" (p 20).

"The world war that began officially on 4th August 1914 was the same world war toward which German imperialism had been driving for decades, the same war whose coming the social democracy had prophesied year after year. This same war has been denounced by social democratic parliamentarians, newspapers and leaflets a thousand times as a frivolous imperialistic crime, as a war that is against every interest of culture and against every interest of the nation" (ibid, p 67).

Obviously, she made a particularly sharp critique of German Social-Democracy, which had been the beacon of the Socialist International, and whose treason had made the work of enrolling the proletariat so much easier for the government, in Germany but also in the other countries. She concentrated her fire against the social-democrat argument that on the German side the aim of the war was to defend "civilisation" and the "freedom of the peoples" against Tsarist barbarism.

In particular she denounced the justifications of Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the party, which appealed to the old analysis of Marx and Engels which had stigmatised Russia as the "prison-house of peoples" and the main bulwark of reaction in Europe.

"After the Social-Democratic [parliamentary] group had stamped the war as a war of defence of the German nations and European culture, the Social-Democratic press proceeded to hail it as the 'saviour of the oppressed nations '. Hindenberg became the executor of Marx and Engels" (ibid, p72).

In denouncing the lies of social democracy, Rosa pointed out the real role it was playing:

"In refuting the existence of the class struggle, the Social-Democracy has denied the very basis of its own existence.. It has thrown aside the most important weapon it possessed, the power of criticism of the war from the peculiar point of view of the working class. Its only mission now is to play the role of gendarme over the working class under a state of military rule" (ibid, p87).

Finally, one of the most important aspects of Rosa's book is the perspective it puts forward for the proletariat: putting an end to the war through revolutionary action. Just as she affirmed (and she cited bourgeois politicians who were very clear about this) that the only force that could have prevented the outbreak of the war bad been the struggle of the proletariat. So she went back to the resolution of the 1907 congress of the International, confirmed by the 1912 congress (the extraordinary congress held in Basle):

"Should war nevertheless break out, it shall be the duty of the social democracy to work for a speedy peace, and to strive with every means in its power to utilise the industrial and political crisis to accomplish the awakening of the people, thus hastening the overthrow of capitalist class rule".

Rosa based herself on this resolution to denounce the treason of social democracy, which did exactly the opposite to what it had committed itself to do. She called for the united action of the world proletariat to put an end to the war while underlining the danger that the war represented for the future of socialism.

"But here is proof also that the war is not only grandiose murder, but the suicide of the European working class. The soldiers of socialism, the workers (if England, of France, of Germany, of Italy, of Belgium are murdering each other at the bidding of capitalism, are thrust in cold, murderous irons into each other's breasts, are toile ring over their graves, grappling in each other's death-bringing arms ...

This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell will not cease until the workers of Germany, of France, of Russia and of England will wake up out their drunken sleep; will clasp each other's hands ill brotherhood and will drown the bestial chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas with the mighty cry of labour: "Workers of the world, unite!"" (ibid, pI34) .

It should be noted that in her hook, Rosa Luxemburg, like the rest of the left or the party which firmly opposed the war (unlike the "marxist centre" animated by Kautsky, which with all sorts of contortions justified the policy of the leadership) did not draw all the consequences of the Basle resolution by putting forward the slogan which Lenin expressed very clearly: "turn the imperialist war into a civil war". And it was for this reason that at the Zimmerwald conference of September 1915, the representatives of the current around Luxemburg and Liebknecht were on the "centrist" position represented by Trotsky and not the position of the left around Lenin. It was only at the Kienthal conference in April 1916 that this current joined the Zimmerwald left.

However, even with these insufficiencies, there is no question that Luxemburg and her comrades carried out a considerable work in this period, which was to bear fruit in 1918.

But before going on to this last period, we must highlight the extremely important role played by Rosa's comrade, assassinated on the same day by the bourgeoisie: Karl Liebknecht.

While sharing her political positions, Liebknecht lacked the theoretical depth of Rosa and her talent for writing articles (this is why, for lack of space, we haven't cited his writings here). But his determined and courageous attitude, his extremely clear denunciations of the imperialist war, of all those who justified it, whether openly or in a roundabout way, as well as his denunciation of pacifist illusions, made Liebknecht during this period the symbol of the proletarian struggle against the imperialist war. Without going into details about his activities (see our article "Revolutionaries in Germany during the First World War", in International Review no.81), we will recall here a significant episode: his participation, on 1 May 1916, in a demonstration in Berlin of 10,000 workers against the war, where he made a speech and raised the slogan "Down with the war, down with the government", which led to his immediate arrest. This in turn resulted in the first political mass strike in Germany, which broke out at the end of May. We should also note that before the military tribunal which sat in judgement over him on 28th June, he fully defended his action, knowing that this attitude could only make his punishment more severe, and he used the platform of the tribunal to make another denunciation of the imperialist war, of capitalism which was responsible for it; and he once again called the workers to the struggle. From then on, in all the countries of Europe, the name and example of Liebknecht became one of the rallying flags of all those who were fighting against the imperialist war and for the proletarian revolution, not least Lenin himself.

The proletarian revolution and the end of the war

The perspective outlined in the Basle resolution was concretised for the first time in February 1917 in Russia, with the revolution that overthrew the Tsarist regime. After three years of nameless butchery and misery, the proletariat began to raise its head, overturning the old regime and advancing towards the socialist revolution. We will not go back over the events in Russia which we have examined recently in this Review[4]. But it is important here to say that it was not only in Russia that the year 1917 saw the workers in uniform revolting against the barbarism of the war. Not long after the February revolution massive mutinies broke out in a number of armies at the front. Thus, the three other main countries of the Entente - Britain, France and Italy - faced major mutinies which led their governments to exert a ferocious repression. In Prance, around 40,000 troops collectively disobeyed orders and a part of them even attempted to march on Paris where there were workers' strikes going on in the arms factories. This convergence between the class struggle in the rear and the revolt of the soldiers is probably one of the reasons why the repression carried out by the French bourgeoisie was relatively moderate: out of 554 condemned to death by military courts martial, only 50 were shot. This "moderation" had no place in the British and Italian armies, where there were 306 and 750 executions respectively.

Last November, during the celebrations of the end of the First World War, the bourgeoisie. and the particularly the social-democratic parties which form the government in the majority of European countries today, have given us a new angle on their hypocrisy about the mutinies of 1917, new proof of their desire to destroy the memory of the working class. In Italy, the minister of defence made it known that we should "render honour" to the shot mutineers, and in Britain they have been paid "public homage". As for the chief of the French "Socialist" government, he decided to "fully reintegrate into the collective national memory" those who had been "shot as an example". "Comrade" Jospin is a front runner in the hypocrisy stakes, for who were the ministers of munitions and of war at the time the mutineers were shot? The "Socialists" Albert Thomas and Paul Painleve.

In fact, what these "Socialists" who make all kinds of pacifist speeches and who are so moved by the atrocities of the First World War forget to say is that in 1914, in the main European countries, they were in the front lint' for the task of mobilising the workers and sending them to the slaughter. By trying to reintegrate the mutineers of the First World War "into the collective national memory", the left wing of the bourgeoisie is trying to make us forget that they really belong to the memory of the world proletariat[5].

As for the official interpretation of the politicians and tame historians, that the revolts of 1917 were only directed against an incompetent command, it does not stand up to the fact that these movements took place in both camps all along the different fronts. Are we to believe that World War I was entirely led by incompetents'} Moreover, these revolts began when the first news of the Russian revolution reached the other countries[6]. In fact, what the bourgeoisie is trying to hide is the undeniably proletarian content of the mutinies and the fact that the only real opposition to the war came from the working class.

During the same period, the mutinies hit the country with the most powerful proletariat and whose soldiers were in direct contact with the Russian soldiers on the eastern front: Germany. The events in Russia were greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm among the German troops and there were frequent outbreaks of fraternisation on this front[7]. The mutinies began in the fleet during the summer of 1917. The fact that it was the sailors who led these movements is significant: nearly all of them were workers in uniform (whereas there were a lot more peasants among the footsoldiers). The revolutionary groups, especially the Spartakists, had an important influence on the sailors and this was growing. The Spartakists put forward a clear perspective for the whole working class:

"Only through revolution and the conquest of the people's republic in Germany can the genocide be ended and generalised peace installed. And this is also the only way that the Russian revolution can succeed. Only the world proletarian revolution can liquidate the world imperialist war" (Spartakus letter no. 6, August 1917).

And it was this programme that was to come alive through the growing struggles of the working class in Germany. In the framework of this article we cannot go into these struggles in detail (see our series in the International Review, beginning with 11.0.81), but it is necessary to recall that one of the reasons that pushed Lenin and the Bolsheviks to consider in October 1917 that the conditions were ripe for the seizure of power by the proletariat in Russia was precisely the development of the struggle amongst the workers and soldiers in Germany.

What we have to highlight is how the intensification of the workers' struggles and the soldiers' revolts on a proletarian terrain was the decisive element that pushed the German ruling class to ask for an armistice, and so brought the war to an end.

"Spurred on by the revolutionary developments in Russia and in the wake of several precursory movements, a mass strike broke out in April 1917. In January 1918 about a million workers threw themselves into a new strike movement and formed a workers' council in Berlin. Under the influence of the Russian events the military fronts crumbled more and more throughout the summer of 1918, the factories were at boiling point: more and more workers gathered in the streets to strengthen the response to war ... " ("The German Revolution, Part II", International Review no.82).

In October 1918, the bourgeoisie changed the Chancellor. Prince Max von Baden replaced Count Georg Hertling, and brought the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) into government. The revolutionaries immediately understood the role that social-democracy was to play. Rosa Luxemburg wrote: "By entering the ministry, government socialism is putting itself forward as capitalism's defender and is barring the way to the mounting proletarian revolution".

During this same period the Spartakists held a conference with other revolutionary groups which launched an appeal to the workers:

"We must support in every way the mutinies of the soldiers, go on to the armed insurrection, broaden the armed insurrection into a struggle to transfer power to the workers and soldiers and ensure victory through the workers' mass strikes. This is the task of the coming days and weeks".

"On 23rf October Liebknecht was freed from prison. More than 20,000 workers came to greet him when he arrived in Berlin ...

On 28th October there began in Austria, in the Czech and Slovak provinces as well as in Budapest, a wave of strikes which led to the overthrow of the monarchy. Workers' and soldiers' councils in the image of the Russian soviets sprang up everywhere ...

When on 3rd November the fleet in Kiel was to go to sea to continue the war, the sailors mutinied. Soldiers' councils were created and workers' councils followed in the same wave ...

The Spartakists produced an appeal to the workers of Berlin on 8 November which went as follows:

"Workers and soldiers! What your comrades have managed to do in Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Rostock, Flensburg, Hanover, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Munich and Stuttgart you too must do. Because the victory of your brothers there, and the victory of the proletariat of the whole world, depends on the height that your struggle is able to Teach, its tenacity and success ... Workers and soldiers! The immediate aims of your struggle must be ...

- the election of workers and soldiers councils, the election of delegates in all factories and all military units

- the immediate establishing of relations with other workers' councils in Germany

- the government to be controlled by the commissars of the workers' and soldiers' councils

- immediate liaison with the international proletariat and particularly with the Russian workers' republic.

Long live the socialist republic!
Long live the International!"

On the same day, a Spartakist leaflet called on the workers to come out onto the streets:

"Come out of the factories! Come out of the barracks! Hold out your hands! Long live the socialist republic!"

That evening, the revolutionary workers and soldiers occupied the printing press of a bourgeois newspaper and published the first issue of Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the daily paper of the Spartakists, which immediately warned against the SPD: "There is no community of interests with those who have betrayed you for the last four years. Down with capitalism and its agents! Long live the International!".

On the same day, faced with the rising tide of revolution, the bourgeoisie took steps. It forced the abdication of Kaiser Wihelm II, proclaimed the Republic, and named a Social-Democrat leader, Ebert, as chancellor. The latter also received the blessing of the executive committee of the councils which contained a number of social democratic functionaries. A "Council of People's Commissars" was nominated, composed of members of the SPD and the USPD (ie the "centrists" expelled from the SPD in February at the same time as the Spartakists). In fact, behind this very "revolutionary" title (the same as that of the soviet government in Russia) hid a perfectly bourgeois government which was to do everything it could to prevent the proletarian revolution and to prepare the massacre of the workers.

The first measure taken by the government was to sign the armistice the day after it was set up (and while German troops were still occupying enemy territory). After the experience of the revolution in Russia, where the continuation of the war had been a decisive factor in the mobilisation of the proletariat and the development of its consciousness up to the point where it overthrew the bourgeois regime in October 1917, the German bourgeoisie knew quite well that it had to stop the war immediately if it did not want to end up like the Russian bourgeoisie.

Although today the spokesmen of the ruling class carefully hide the role of the proletarian revolution in putting an end to the war, it is a reality which has not escaped serious and scrupulous historians (whose writing is reserved for a small minority):

"Having decided to continue negotiations despite Ludendorff, the German government was soon forced to do so. First of all, the capitulation of Austria had created a new and terrible threat to the south of the country. Then, and most importantly, the revolution broke out in Germany (...) [the German delegation] signed the armistice on 11th November, at 05:20, in Foch's famous railway carriage. It signed in the name of the new government, which was urging it to make haste (...) The German delegation won some meagre advantages, which according to Pierre Renouvin, "all had the same aim: to leave the German government with the means to fight Bolshevism ". In particular, the army gave up 30,000 machine guns instead of 25,000. It was allowed to remain in occupation of the Ruhr, the heart of the revolution, instead of it being "demilitarised?" (Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, in Le Monde, 12th November 1998[8]).

Once the armistice was signed; the social democratic government developed a whole strategy to hold back the proletarian movement and to smash it. In particular, it worked on the divisions between the soldiers and the advanced workers, since the majority of the soldiers saw no need to carry on the struggle once the war" was over. At the same time, the social democracy was to rely on the illusions which a good pan of the working class still had in it, in order to isolate the Spartakists from the great majority of the workers.

We will not go into details here about the period from the armistice to the events which led to the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht (this period is examined in nos 82 and 83 of our Review). However, the public writings a few years later by general Groener, commander in chief of the army from the end of 1918 to the beginning of 1919 are extremely edifying as regards the policies carried out by Ebert, who was in daily contact with him:

influence with the people and the masses and able to reconstruct a governing force along with the military command (...) In the first place the issue was to take the power out of the hands of the workers' and soldiers' councils of Berlin. An enterprise was undertaken with this aim. Ten divisions were to enter Berlin. Ebert agreed (...) We elaborated a programme which envisaged, after the entry of the troops, the cleaning up of Berlin and the disarmament of the Spartakists. This was also agreed with Ebert, whom I recognised for his absolute love of his country (...) This alliance was sealed against the Bolshevik danger and the council system" (October-November 1925, Zeugenaussage).

In January 1919 the government delivered a decisive blow against the revolution. Having amassed 80,000 soldiers around Berlin, on 4th January it launched a provocation by dismissing the prefect of police, Eichorn, a member of the USPD. Huge demonstrations responded to this provocation. Although the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany, led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, had four days earlier estimated that the situation was not yet ripe for insurrection, Liebknecht allowed himself to be drawn into the trap and took part in an Action Committee which called precisely for the insurrection. This was a real disaster for the working Class. Thousands of workers, and particularly the Spartakists, were massacred. Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who did not want to leave Berlin, were arrested on 15th January and coldly executed without trial by the soldiery, on the pretext of "trying to escape". Two months later, Leo Jogisches, Rosa's former partner and also a leader of the Communist Party, was murdered in jail.

Today we can understand why the bourgeoisie, and especially its "socialist" parties, try to throw a veil over the events which put an end to the World War.

In the first place, the "democratic" parties, and above all the "socialists", have no wish to have their role in the massacre of the working class exposed, a role which today is supposed to be only carried out by "Fascist or Communist dictatorships" .

Fabienne

[1] We should recall that, a few weeks after their murder, the first session of the first congress of the Communist International began by paying homage to these two militants and that afterwards the organisations of the workers' movement have regularly saluted their memory.

[2] For a country like France, 16.8% of those mobilised were killed. The proportion is not much lower for Germany: 15.4%, but it goes up to 22% for Bulgaria, 25% for Romania, 27% for Turkey, 37 % for Serbia. Certain categories of combatants went through an even more terrible decimation: thus, for France, 25 % of the infantry were killed and a third of the young men who were 20 in 1914. In this country, it was not until 1950 that the population return to its August 1914 level. Moreover, we should not forget the human tragedy of all those injured and mutilated. Some mutilations were particularly atrocious: on the French side alone there were some 20,000 gueules cassees (lit., "broken faces "). soldiers so hideously disfigured that they were incapable of reintegrating into society and ended their days in the ghetto of special institutions. Then there were the hundreds of thousands of young men who returned from war completely insane, and whom the authorities generally preferred to treat as malingerers.

[3] On both sides, the lies of the bourgeois press competed in grossness and infamy. "In August 1914, the Allies were already denouncing the "atrocities" committed by the invaders against the populations of Belgium and northern France: children's hands cut off rape, hostages shot and villages burned "to set an example" (...) Meanwhile, the German press published daily accounts of the "atrocities" committed by Belgian civilians against German troops: eyes put out, fingers cut off prisoners burnt alive" ("Realite et propagande: la barbarie allemande", in L'Histoire, November 1998).

[4] See nos. 88-91 of the International Review.

[5] The French prime minister cited in his speech a verse from the "Chanson de Craonne" composed after the mutinies. But he carefully avoided citing the passage which says:

"Ceux qu'ontle pognon, ceux la reviendront,
Car c'est pour eux qu'on creve.

Mais c'est fini, car les troujjions

Vont tous se mettre en greve"

("Those with the money will return/we're getting killed for them but it's all finished, for the infantry/ will all go out on strike")

[6] Following the mutinies in the French army, ten thousand Russian soldiers who had been fighting on the western front alongside the French soldiers were withdrawn from the front and spent the rest of the war in the camp of La Courtine. It was vital that the enthusiasm they were expressing for the revolution evolving in their country should not contaminate the French soldiers.

[7] It should be noted that fratemisation on the front began only a few months after the beginning of the war, and the first departures for the front with flowers in the guns and the slogans "A Berlin!" or "Nach Paris!". "25th December 1914: no enemy activity. During the night and the day of the 25", communication established between the French and Bavarians, from trench to trench (conversations, cigarettes and flattering notes sent by the enemy ... , even visits by some soldiers to the German trenches)" (Log book of the 139th Brigade). One general writes to another on 1st January 1915: "It should be noted that when the men stay too long in the same place, they end up too familiar with their neighbours opposite; the result is conversations and sometimes even visits which usually have inconvenient consequences". This continued throughout the war, especially in 1917. In a letter written in November 1917 and intercepted by the postal censorship, a French soldier writes to his brother-in-law: "We are only 20 metres from the Boches, but they are pretty decent since they send us cigars and cigarettes, and we send them our bread" (quotations taken from L'Histoire, January 1998).

[8] Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Pierre Renouvin are widely respected historians who specialise in this period.

In the last article in this series (International Review no.95), we examined in some detail the 1919 programme of the Communist Party of Russia, considering it to be an important gauge of the highest levels of understanding that the revolutionaries of those days had reached about the forms, methods, and goals of the communist transformation of society. But any such examination would be incomplete if we ignored that period's most serious effort to elaborate, alongside the practical measures outlined in the RCP programme, a more general and theoretical framework for analysing the problems of the transition period. This, like the Programme itself, was the work of Nikolai Bukharin, whom Lenin considered to be "the most valuable and most prominent theoretician of the party"; and the text in question is the Economics of the Transformation Period (henceforward ETP), written in 1920. According to the editor of the 1971 English edition of this book, "Up until the introduction of the Five-year plan, in 1928, which coincided with Bukharin's downfall as the leader of the Comintern, Economics of the Transformation Period was considered as an achievement of Bolshevik theory next in importance to Lenin's State and Revolution"(Bergman Publishers, New York, and Pluto Press, p 212)

As we will show, Bukharin's book contains some fundamental weaknesses which have not allowed it to pass the test of time in the way that State and Revolution has. It nevertheless remains an important contribution to marxist theory.

Bukharin had risen to prominence during the great imperialist war, when along with Piatakov and others, he was active in a group of Bolshevik exiles in Switzerland (the so-called 'Baugy group'), which was situated on the, extreme left of the party. In 1915 he published Imperialism and World Economy, in which he showed that capitalism, precisely by becoming a global system, a world economy, had created the conditions for its own superseding; but that far from evolving peacefully into a harmonious world order, this 'globalisation' had plunged the system into the throes of violent collapse. This line of thought paralleled the work of Rosa Luxemburg. In her book The Accumulation of Capital (1913) Luxemburg, with a more profound reference to the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, had demonstrated why capitalism's period of expansion was now at an end. Like Luxemburg, Bukharin showed that the concrete form of capitalism's decline was the exacerbation of inter-imperialist competition, culminating in the World War. Imperialism and World Economy was also a landmark in the marxist analysis of state capitalism, the totalitarian political and economic regime required by the sharpening of both imperialist antagonisms 'externally' and of social antagonisms 'internally'. The relative subordination of competition within each capitalist country had, Bukharin emphasised only been the corollary of the accentuation of conflict between national "state capitalist trusts" for the domination of the world market.

In his article 'Towards a Theory of the Imperialist State' (1916), Bukharin went further into the implications of these developments. The rise of this national state capitalist kraken, which was spreading its tentacles into all aspects of social and economic life, led Bukharin (as Pannekoek had done a few years earlier) to revisit the classics of marxism and to return defending the view that the proletarian revolution could not conquer such a state but would have to fight for its "revolutionary destruction" and the creation of new organs of political power. Another equally radical conclusion drawn from his analysis of the new stage in capitalism was summarised in the theses that the Baugy group presented to the Berne Bolshevik conference in 1915. Here, Bukharin and Piatakov, in line with the arguments put forward by Rosa Luxemburg at the same time called for the party to reject the slogans of 'national self-determination' and 'national liberation':

"The imperialist epoch is an epoch of the absorption of small states by the large states units ... It is therefore impossible to struggle against the enslavement of nations otherwise than by struggling against imperialism, ergo - by struggling against finance capital, ergo against capitalism in general. Any deviation from that road, any advancement of 'partial' tasks, of the 'liberation of nations' within the realms of capitalist civilisation, means a diverting of proletarian forces from the actual solution of the problem" (quoted in D Gluckstein, The Tragedy of Bukharin, Pluto Press, 1994, p15).

Initially, Lenin was furious with Bukharin on both counts. But whereas he never changed his mind on the national question, he was step by step converted to what he had initially termed Bukharin's "semi-anarchist" position on the state - and of course was in turn accused of "semi-anarchism" when he expounded his new vision in State and Revolution in 1917.

It is thus clear that at this stage in the germination and flowering of the proletarian revolution provoked by the World War, Bukharin was at the very spearhead of the marxist effort to understand the new conditions brought about by the decadence of capitalism; and a number of his most important theoretical contributions not only appear in the ETP, but are further elaborated within it.

In the first place, Bukharin's book has to be seen alongside such seminal works as Lenin's The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky and Trotsky's Terrorism and Communism, which led the Bolsheviks' response to the bastardised marxism of Karl Kautsky, who had passed from a position of centrism and pacifism to one of out and out defence of the bourgeois order against the threat of revolution - but who still claimed the crown of marxist orthodoxy in doing so. Lenin had mainly replied to Kautsky's advocacy of bourgeois democracy against the proletarian democracy of the soviets, while Trotsky's book focussed on the problem of revolutionary violence. For his part, Bukharin had already seen Imperialism and World Economy and similar works as a polemic against Kautsky's theory of 'ultra-imperialism', which pretended that capitalism was advancing towards a unified world order in which war could only be an aberration. Now, in the ETP, Bukharin set about re-establishing the marxist conception of social change in opposition to the Kautskyite idyll of a peaceful and orderly transition to socialism. Echoing Marx, Bukharin insists that for any new social order to emerge, the old one has to pass through a phase of profound crisis and collapse - and that this is more than ever true of the passage from capitalism to communism: " ... the experience of all revolutions, which from the very point of view of the development of productive powers had a powerful, positive influence, shows that this development was bought at the price of an enormous plundering and destruction of these powers. (...) If that is so ... then it must be a priori evident that the proletarian revolution is inevitably accompanied by a strong decline of productive powers, for no revolution experiences such a broad and deep break in old relationships and their rebuilding in a new way" (p105-6). ETP is to a very large extent a defence of the Russian revolution despite the considerable "costs" it involved, and against all those who pointed to those costs in order to counsel the workers to be good law-abiding citizens whose only hope for social change lay with the ballot box.

Secondly, ETP reiterates the argument that, although it has effectively established itself as a world economy, capitalism is incapable of organising humanity's productive forces as a unified, conscious subject, since it is precisely upon reaching this stage that capitalist competition is pushed to its most extreme and catastrophic conclusions. But here Bukharin goes further and arrives at a number of brilliant anticipations about capitalism's mode of functioning in its decadent epoch, i.e. its obligation to survive through the sterilisation and outright destruction of the productive forces, above all through the war economy and war itself. This is where Bukharin introduces his concept of "expanded negative reproduction" - a term that may be open to question, but which certainly grapples with a fundamental reality, as where Bukharin shows that despite the apparent growth it brings about, war production actually signifies not an expansion but a destruction of capital: "War production has a completely different meaning: a cannon does not transform itself into an element of the new cycle of production; powder is shot into the air and in no way appears in a new shell in the following cycle. On the contrary. The economic effect of these elements in actu is of purely negative quality ... Let us observe the means of consumption with which the army is supplied. Here we perceive the same thing. The means of consumption do not produce labour powers, for the soldiers do not figure in the process of production; they are eliminated from it, they are outside of the process of production ... the process of reproduction assumes with the war a 'deformed', regressive, negative character, namely: with every successive production cycle, the real base of production grows narrower and narrower, the 'development' is carried out not in a widening but in a continually narrowing spiral" (p44-45). In decadent capitalism, this ever-narrowing spiral is the essential reality of economic activity even outside of periods of open global warfare, both because of the tendency towards a permanent war economy and because more and more capitalism finances its 'growth' through the totally artificial stimulus of debt. Bukharin's insights offer an excellent rebuttal to all those worshippers of economic growth who scoff at the notion of capitalism being decadent because they cannot see the decadent, fictitious essence of this growth.

Again, on the question of state capitalism, ETP repeats previous formulations about state capitalism, showing it to be the characteristic form of capital political organisation in the epoch of decay. Bukharin recalls its dual function: both to limit economic competition within each national capital, the better to a e economic and above all military competition on the world arena; and to preserve social peace in a situation where the miseries provoked by economic crisis and war tend to push the proletariat towards a confrontation with the bourgeois regime. Of particular interest is Bukharin's recognition that the most important way that state capitalism guards the existing order is through the annexation of the old workers' organisations, their incorporation into the state Leviathan: "The method of restructuring was the same method as the subordination to the all-encompassing bourgeois state. The betrayal of the socialist parties and the unions expressed itself in the very fact that they entered into the service of the bourgeois state, that they were actually nationalised by this imperialist state, that they transformed themselves into labour departments of the military machine" (p41).

This lucidity about the characteristics and forms of capitalism in decay was accompanied by a genuine grasp of the methods and aims of the proletarian revolution. ETP shows that a revolution which aims to replace the blind laws of the commodity with the conscious regulation of social life by a liberated humanity can only be conscious revolution, founded on the self-activity and self-organisation of the proletariat through its new organs of political power such as the soviets and the factory committees. At the same time, the revolution engendered by the collapse of the capitalist world economy can only be a world-wide revolution, and it can only arrive at its ultimate goals on the scale of the entire globe. Bukharin's concluding paragraphs summarise the authentic, internationalist hopes of the day, anticipating a future in which "for the first time since humanity existed, a system arises which is constructed harmonically in all its parts; it knows neither social hierarchy nor hierarchy of production. It annihilates once and for all the struggle of people against people and welds the entire human race into a community which rapidly seizes the countless riches of nature" (p173. The French edition of the text uses the word "anarchy" rather than "hierarchy" in the above passage. We are not sure how the original Russian text put it).

Mistaking the embryo for the full-grown man

The recognition of the authentic means and goals of the revolution cannot, however, remain at the level of generality; it has to be applied and concretised in the revolutionary process itself - an extremely difficult task which, in the case of the Russian revolution, required much painful experience and many years of reflection. Globally, this work of drawing and deepening the lessons of the Russian revolution was carried out by the communist left in the wake of the revolution's defeat. But even in the heat of the revolution, and within the Bolshevik party itself, critical voices emerged who were already laying the bases for future reflection. However, although Bukharin's name is generally connected to the Left Communist opposition in the party in 1918,the Bukharin of ETP had by 1920 embarked on a trajectory that was to take him away from the communist left as a whole; and the book reflects this in that, alongside its significant contributions to marxist theory, it has a deeply 'conservative' side, in which the author slides away from the radical critique of the status quo - even the 'revolutionary' status quo - towards an apologia for things as they were. To be more exact, Bukharin - and in this he was by no means alone, but merely provided the theoretical underpinning of a more widespread illusion - tends to conflate the methods and exigencies of 'war communism' with the actual emergence of communism itself; he looks at a contingent - and extremely difficult situation - for the revolution, and deduces from this certain 'laws' or norms which are universally applicable to the transition period as a whole. Before going further with this line of argument, it is necessary to point out that Bukharin was quick to defend himself against it. In December 1921, he wrote an 'afterword' to the German edition which begins: "Since this book was written, some time has elapsed. Since then in Russia the so-called 'new direction in economic policy' has been adopted, which for the first time brought socialised industry, petit-bourgeois economy, private-capitalist business, and the 'mixed' enterprises into correct economic relation to each other. This specifically Russian change, the deepest precondition of which is the peasant-agrarian character of the country, caused some of my ingenious critics to remark that I must rewrite my work from the beginning. This view rests on the total illiteracy of these clever ones, who in their sacred simplicity do not grasp the difference between an abstract examination, which depicts things and processes in their 'ideal cross-cut' - according to the expression used by Marx - and the empirical reality, which is always and under all circumstances infinitely more complicated than its abstract representation. 1 have not written an economic history of Soviet Russia but rather a general theory of the transition period, for which the powers of comprehension of the journalists par excellence and of the narrow 'practical men' who are unable to comprehend the general problems, are no match" (p202)[1].

Bukharin's strictures against his bourgeois critics are no doubt valid. The fact remains that Bukharin himself, throughout the ETP, also fails to grasp the difference between general theory and empirical reality. A number of examples could be given in support of this contention; we will restrict ourselves only to the most significant.

One of the great illusions of the war communism period was precisely that it was indeed communism; and one of the main sources of this illusion was the apparent disappearance of capitalist categories such as money and wages. It was this same illusion - together with war communism's statification of vast swathes of the economy - which later gave rise to the idea that the NEP of 1921 represented a step back towards capitalism because it restored a considerable amount of formal private ownership and brought the commodity economy back into the open. In fact, the disappearance of money and wages in the period 1918-20 was by no means the result of a deliberate, pre-planned policy by the soviet power; rather it directly expressed the catastrophic collapse of the economy in the face of economic blockade, imperialist invasion and internal civil war. It went hand in hand with widespread famine and disease, the depletion of the cities, and the physical and social decimation of the working class. Of course, this very heavy 'cost' of the revolution was imposed on it by the furious class hatred of the entire world bourgeoisie; and the Russian proletariat paid it willingly, making the most gigantic and heroic sacrifices to ensure the military crushing of the forces of counter-revolution. But, as we shall see later on, the biggest 'cost' of this struggle was the very rapid political enfeeblement of the working class and of its real dictatorship over society. To confuse this terrible situation with the conscious construction of communist society is a very serious error; and as the following passage shows, Bukharin did make this error:

"This phenomenon (the tendency towards the disappearance of value) is for its part also tied to the collapse of the money system. Money represents the real social tie, those knots, in which the entire developed commodity system is entangled. It is conceivable that in the transition period, in the process of the annihilation of the commodity system as such, a process of 'self-negation' of money occurs. It is expressed at first in the so-called 'money devaluation', second, in the fact that the distribution of money symbols become dependent on the distribution of products, and vice versa. Money ceases to be a universal equivalent and becomes a conventional - and thereby highly imperfect - symbol of the circulation of products.

Wages become an illusory quantity which has no content. As long as the working class is the ruling class, wage labour disappears. In socialised production there is no wage labour, and insofar as there is no wage labour, there are also no wages as the price of the labour power sold to the capitalists. Only the outer shell remains of wages - the money form, which together with the money system approaches self-annihilation. In the system of the proletarian dictatorship, the 'worker' receives a social share (in Russian, 'payok'), but no wages" (p147).

It is evident that Bukharin is confusing a number of different things here. First, he confuses the period of the civil war - the period of life and death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie - with the real transition period, which can only begin its proper, constructive work once the civil war has been won on a world scale. Secondly, and consequently, he confuses the collapse of the money system as a result of economic breakdown - devaluation, dire scarcity - with the real overcoming of the commodity economy, which can only be completed through the communist unification of global society and the emergence of a society of abundance. Otherwise, any 'abolition' of money or wages in a given region remains under the overall domination of the law of value and in no way guarantees an automatic movement towards communism. And yet Bukharin clearly gives the impression that in Russia this desirable stage has already been reached - there is even a Russian word for it, and the worker has got inverted commas around himself, implying that he is no longer part of the exploited. And this is the most dangerous error in this passage: the idea that once the proletariat has won political power, established its political dictatorship, and got rid of private ownership of the means of production, there is no wage labour, no more exploitation. Bukharin states this even more explicitly elsewhere, when he says that "capitalist production relations are absolutely inconceivable under the political rule of the working class" (p50). In appearance very radical, such formulations actually came to justify the increasing exploitation of the working class.

Before going further into this point, it is instructive to give another example of Bukharin's methodological error. War communism was also characterised by the application of military solutions to more and more areas of the revolution's life - most perniciously, to areas where it is vital that political aspects take precedence over military ones. One of the most important of these concerns the international extension of the revolution. A proletarian bastion that has established itself in one region cannot extend the revolution by imposing it militarily on other sectors of the world working class; the revolution extends itself above all by political means, by propaganda, by example, by calling on the workers of the world to rise up against their own bourgeoisies. And indeed, at the height of the revolutionary wave that began in 1917, this was exactly how the revolution did extend. By 1920, however, the Russian revolution was already experiencing the deadly consequences of isolation, of the defeat of the revolutionary assaults in other countries. In this situation - which was coupled with a growing military success in the internal civil war - many Bolsheviks began to put their hopes in spreading the revolution at bayonet point. The Red Army's advance on Warsaw was fuelled by these hopes - and the failure of this 'experiment', which merely pushed the Polish workers into a common front with their own bourgeoisie, was to confirm how misplaced these hopes had been. Bukharin, on the other hand, had been a fervent advocate of "revolutionary war" during the 1918 debates over the Brest-Litovsk treaty; and his 1920 work contains strong echoes of this position. Once again, he takes a contingent reality of the Russian situation - the necessity for a war of fronts across the huge territory of Russia, and the unavoidable formation of a standing army - and turns it into a 'norm' of the entire civil war period: "With the growth of the revolutionary process into the revolutionary world process, the civil war is transformed into a class war, which is led by a regular 'red army' on the part of the proletariat" (p109). In fact the opposite is more likely to be true: the more the revolution spreads worldwide, the more it will be led directly by the workers' councils and their militias, the more the political aspects of the struggle will predominate over the military, the less there will be a need for a 'red army' to lead the struggle. A war of fronts is not at all the proletariat's strong point. In purely military terms, the bourgeoisie will always have the best weapons. The proletariat's strength resides in its capacity to organise, to spread its struggles, to win over more and more sectors of the class, to undermine the armed forces of the enemy through fraternisation and the development of class consciousness. In another passage, Bukharin shows even more clearly that he has turned things on their head by identifying class war with military conflict between states:

"Socialist war is class war, which must be distinguished from simple civil war. The latter is not war in the true sense of the word, for it is not war between two state organisations. In class war, on the other hand, both sides are organised as state powers - on the one side the state of finance capital, on the other side the state of the proletariat". This idea is even more dangerous than the position Bukharin put forward in 1918, where he largely envisaged a defensive war of resistance by partisan units; here, the world revolution itself becomes an apocalyptic battle between two kinds of state power. It is significant that Lenin, who had firmly opposed Bukharin in the Brest-Litovsk debate, but whose marginal notes on the ETP rarely raise substantial criticisms, has no patience with this argument, which he calls a "total confusion" (p213).

Blindness to the danger from the state

One of the ironies of the ETP is that Bukharin, who had expressed such a high point of clarity in the understanding of state capitalism, completely fails to recognise the danger of state capitalism emerging out of the degeneration of the revolution. We have already noted that Bukharin insists that capitalist relations cannot exist under the political dictatorship of the proletariat. In another passage, Bukharin says explicitly that "since state capitalism is a growing together of the bourgeois state with capitalist trusts, it is evident that one can speak of no kind of 'state capitalism' in the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in principle excludes such a possibility" (p116). And he elaborates this further with the following argument: "In the system of state capitalism, the economically active subject is the capitalist state, the collective total capitalist. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, the economically active subject is the proletarian state, the collectively organised working class, 'the proletariat organised as state power'. In state capitalism, the production process is a process of production of surplus value which falls into the hands of the capitalist class, with the tendency to transform this value into surplus product. In the proletarian dictatorship, the production process serves as a means of systematic satisfaction of social needs. The system of state capitalism is the most perfect form of exploitation of the masses by a handful of oligarchs. The system of proletarian dictatorship makes any kind of exploitation whatsoever inconceivable, for it transforms the collective capitalist property and its private capitalist form into collective proletarian property '. Therefore, according to its essence, in spite of the formal similarity, the diametrical opposite is provided" (p117). And finally: "If one does not - as the representatives of bourgeois science do - regard the state apparatus as all organisation of neutrally mystical nature, then one must comprehend that all functions of the state also bear a class character. It follows that one must keep strictly separate bourgeois nationalisation and proletarian nationalisation. Bourgeois nationalisation leads to a system of state capitalism. Proletarian nationalisation leads to a state form of socialism. Just as the proletarian dictatorship. is the negation, the antipode of bourgeois dictatorship, proletarian nationalisation is the negation, the complete opposite of bourgeois nationalisation" (p120).

Of the numerous flaws in these arguments, two stand out most clearly. To begin with, we have, once again, Bukharin's confusion between the period of civil war, where proletarian bastions can exist temporarily in individual countries or regions, and the period of transition proper, which commences once the proletariat has won power on a global scale. The whole experience of the Russian revolution teaches us that the appropriation by the state of the means of production, even by the soviet state, does not do away with exploitation. This would be true in a proletarian dictatorship operating under 'optimal' conditions (an expanding world revolutionary process, maximum workers' democracy, etc), since the worldwide exigencies of the law of value would still exert their pitiless pressure on the workers. It is even more true in a proletarian bastion suffering from isolation and extreme material deprivation: in such circumstances, a tendency towards degeneration would appear straight away, as it did in Russia. The workers would be faced with the' imminent danger of losing their political authority and independence, while on the economic front they would be subjected to ever more draconian demands on their living and working conditions. To talk in such circumstances of the 'impossibility of exploitation', simply because the private capitalists have been expropriated, can only weaken the efforts of the proletariat to defend itself on both the political and economic fronts.

Secondly, history has indeed confirmed that the organ through which this process of degeneration expresses itself most readily is precisely the 'proletarian' state. Bukharin's simplistic definition of ' the state as a mere 'tool' of the ruling class ignores the more profound marxist understanding that the state, in its historic origins, was not the ex nihilo creation of a ruling class, but "arose" out of a situation of growing class antagonisms that threatened to pull society apart. This does not mean that is "mystically neutral": it arises to defend a divided order and can thus only operate on behalf of the economically dominant class. But neither does it mean that the state no more than a passive tool of such a class. In fact, state capitalism is precisely the expression of the fact that, in its epoch of decline, capital has had to function more and more 'without capitalists'. Even in the so-called mixed economies, it is the private capitalist, the 'finance capitalists' and the rest, who have had to subordinate their particular interests to the impersonal and general needs of the national capital, which are imposed above all by the state.

In the period of instability that follows the destruction of the old bourgeois state, a new state emerges, once again out of the need to hold society together, to prevent class antagonisms from tearing it asunder. But this time, there is no 'economically dominant' class: the new ruling class is also an exploited class which does not own any means of production. Consequently, there is even less reason for assuming that the new state automatically operates on behalf of the proletariat. It will only do so if the working class is organised and conscious, and imposes its revolutionary direction on the new state power. The moment the revolution enters into retreat, the forces of social conservation will tend to gather around the state and make it their instrument against the interests of the proletariat. And this is why state capitalism remains a profound danger even under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

For the proletariat to guard against such dangers, it needs to maintain its own class organs as intact and as vibrant as possible both its unitary organs (councils, factory committees, etc) and its political vanguard, the party. But the ETP, far from seeing the need for these organs to avoid entangling themselves with the state, calls for the authentic class organs of the proletariat to fuse themselves into the state - to subordinate themselves entirely to it:

"Now we must raise the question as to the general principle of the system of the proletarian apparatus, i. e. as to the interchanging relationships between different forms of the proletarian organisations. It is clear that the same method is formally necessary for the working class as for the bourgeoisie at the time of state capitalism. This organisational method exists in the coordination of all proletarian organisations with one all-encompassing organisation, i.e. with the state organisation of the working class, with the soviet state of the proletariat. The 'nationalisation' of the trade unions and the effectual nationalisation of all mass organisations of the proletariat result from the internal logic of the process of transformation itself. The minutest cells of the labour apparatus must transform themselves into agents of the general process of organisation, which is systematically directed and led by the collective reason of the working class, which finds its highest and most all-encompassing organisation in its state apparatus. Thus the system of state capitalism dialectically transforms itself into its own inversion, into the state form of workers' socialism" (p 79).

By the same "dialectic", Bukharin explains elsewhere that the system of one-man management, of appointment from above in the running of industry - a practice which became almost universal in the war communism period and was in reality a set-back resulting from the break-down of the industrial proletariat and the loss of its self-organisation -actually expresses a higher phase of revolutionary maturation. This is because it "does not rest on the principal change of relations of production but in the discovery of such a form of administration which guarantees maximum efficiency. The principle of far-reaching eligibility from below upward (usually even by the workers within the factories) is replaced by the principle of painstaking selection in dependence on technological and administrative personnel, on the competence and the reliability of the candidates" (p 130). In other words, since capitalist relations have already been abolished by the 'proletarian state', the military principle of "maximum efficiency" can replace the political principle of the self-education of the proletariat through its direct and collective participation in the running of the economy and the state.

And by the same dialectic, state coercion of the proletariat becomes the highest form of class self-activity: "It is obvious that this element of compulsion, which is here the self-compulsion of the working class, grows from the crystallised centre towards the significantly more amorphous and dispersed periphery. This is the conscious power of cohesion of the little parts of the working class, which, power represents for some categories, subjectively, an external pressure, which constitutes, for the entire working class, objectively, its accelerated self-organisation" (p156-7). By the "amorphous periphery", Bukharin means not simply the other, non-exploiting strata of society, but "the less revolutionary" strata of the working class itself, for whom there is "the necessity of compulsory discipline, the compulsory character of which is that much more tangible the less the internal voluntary discipline"(p156). It is certainly true that the working class, in a revolution, will have to practice a gigantic self-discipline, and that it will have to ensure that majority decisions are adhered to. But there can be no question of 'compelling' the more backward layers of the class to adhere to the communist project; and the experience of the Kronstadt tragedy has taught us that settling even the most acute conflicts within the class by violence can only weaken the proletariat's hold on society. Bukharin's dialectics, by contrast, already appear as an apology for an increasingly intolerable militarisation of the proletariat. Taken to their logical conclusion, they lead straight to the terrible error committed at Kronstadt, herein the "crystallised centre" - the party- state apparatus, which had increasingly divorced itself from the masses - imposed "compulsory discipline" on what it judged to be the "amorphous periphery", the "less revolutionary" layers of the proletariat - who were actually calling for the very necessary regeneration of the soviets and an end to the excesses of war communism.

Bukharin's trajectory: reflection of the revolution's course

After initially criticising the NEP, Bukharin soon became its most enthusiastic advocate. Just as the ETP tended to see war communism as the 'finally discovered' road to the new society, Bukharin's later writings more and more presented the NEP, with its pragmatic, cautious approach, as the exemplary model of the transition period. His sudden conversion to a kind of 'market socialism' has provoked a revival of interest in Bukharin among latter day bourgeois economists, repentant Stalinists and others, but naturally not in the authentically revolutionary writings of his earlier period. By 1924 Bukharin had gone even further: the NEP had already achieved socialism - socialism in a single country. At this point, Bukharin had begun to operate as Stalin's ally against the left, as his tame theoretician - even though, within a few years, Bukharin himself was to be crushed under the Stalinist juggernaut.

This rapid about-face is not quite so startling as it might appear. The apologia for war communism and NEP alike were based on significant concessions to the idea that some kind of socialism was being built within the confines of Russia, or at the very least that a "primitive socialist accumulation" (a term used in the ETP) was taking place. From here to the conclusion that socialism had already arrived was not altogether too dizzying a leap - although it needed the counter-revolution to act as a stepping stone.

Nonetheless, Bukharin's trajectory from the extreme left of the party in the 1915-19 period, to the extreme right after 1921, does need some explaining. In The Tragedy of Bukharin (1994), Donny Gluckstein approaches the question from the standpoint of the Trotskyist SWP. This is an extremely sophisticated work, and contains many criticisms of Bukharin's thought, including the ETP, which are formally identical to those made by the communist left. But the fundamentally leftist approach of Gluckstein's book reveals itself when, in answering the question about Bukharin's trajectory, it focuses on the question of Bukharin's 'philosophical' method, its tendency towards scholasticism, towards formal logic, towards posing rigid 'either/or' alternatives, as well as its penchant for Bogdanov's 'monist' philosophy and for amalgamating marxism with sociology. Thus, the jump from uncritical advocacy of war communism to the equally uncritical embracing of the NEP betrays a lack of dialectical thinking, an inability to see the complex and ever-changing nature of reality. By the same token, Bukharin's call for revolutionary war in the Brest-Litovsk debate is also based on a set of methodological errors, since it assumes that the Russian revolution was faced with an absolute and immediate choice between 'selling out' to German imperialism, or making a heroic if doomed gesture in front of the world proletariat; and just as the ETP had reduced the extension of the world revolution to little more than a concluding flourish, an afterthought to the creation of communist relations in Russia, so the Bukharin of 1918 had been prepared to sacrifice the entire proletarian bastion in Russia for a world revolution which was not yet an immediate reality and was thus treated as a kind of abstract ideal. Certainly, both Lenin and Trotsky made a number of incisive criticisms of Bukharin's method - some of Lenin's appear in his marginal notes to the ETP. But behind his emphasis on this point, Gluckstein has another agenda - proving that Bukharin's rigid either/or method was fundamentally that of left communism. The book's critique of Bukharin is thus a 'warning' against what happens when you mess around with left communist positions and politics.

We do not intend to refute Gluckstein's attack on the "theoretical roots of left communism" here. While there is undoubtedly a connection between Bukharin's political errors and some of his underlying 'philosophical' conceptions, the latter are by no means identical with left communism and are more often antithetical to it. In any case, it is much more instructive to consider Bukharin's over-all trajectory as a reflection of the course of the revolution in general. It is often the case that the 'personal' trajectory of a revolutionary has an almost symbolic relationship to the more general one. Trotsky, for example, was expelled from Russia in the wake of the defeat of the 1905 revolution, returned to lead the October victory, and was expelled again in 1929 when the counter- revolution had swept all before it. Bukharin's trajectory is different, but equally significant: his best contributions to marxism were in the years 1915-19, when the revolutionary wave was either building up or reaching its high point, and the Bolshevik party was acting as a real laboratory of revolutionary thought. But although, as we have mentioned, Bukharin's name was closely associated with the Left Communist group in 1918, he followed a different road from that of the other leading left communists after 1919. Bukharin's main bone of contention in 1918 had been the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Once this debate was closed, other committed 'lefts' trained their attention on the internal problems of the regime, particularly the danger of opportunism and bureaucratism in the party and the state. Some of these elements - such as Sapranov and V Smirnov - maintained and elaborated their criticisms throughout the period of degeneration and even into the depths of the counter-revolution. Bukharin, on the other hand, was to more and become a 'man of the state' - one might say, the 'theoretician of the state'. Certainly this trajectory explains the ambiguities and inconsistencies of the ETP, with its melange of radical theory and conservative apologia for the status quo, for at this point the Russian revolution itself had reached a watershed where both the upward movement and the downward movement were in contention. After 1921, the downward movement clearly predominated, and now Bukharin more and more became the spokesman and rationaliser of the process of degeneration, even though he became yet another of its victims in the end. Behind this personal history of intellectual decline lies the history of the Bolshevik party, which, the more it fused itself with the state, the more it became unable to play the role of a real political and theoretical avant-garde. The story of how the most far-seeing elements of the Bolshevik party, and of the international communist movement, resisted this course will have to be told in future articles in this series.

CDW

[1] In this same afterword, Bukharin also says that his work has been wrongly taken as a justification for the theory of the "offensive under all circumstances", which had a considerable following in the German party and which had contributed to the disaster of the March Action in 1921.

Nevertheless, there are certain connections, notably in the way that the ETP tends to present the decline of capitalism not as a whole epoch but as a final, once and for all death crisis, from which a "restoration of industry, of which the utopians of capitalism dream, is impossible" (p57). The theory of the offensive was based precisely on the idea that there was no prospect of any capitalist reconstruction and that the open crisis could only get worse and worse.

Perhaps more to the point, Bukharin's apocalyptic view of the crisis also lends support to his tendency to equate the collapse of capitalism with the emergence of communism. In the face of the bourgeoisie, Bukharin was right to insist that the proletarian revolution inevitably involved a certain level of social anarchy, of breakdown in the productive activities of society. But there is in the ETP a definite underestimation of the dangers posed to the proletariat if this process of breakdown goes too far - dangers that were very real in the Russia of 1920, where the working class had been decimated and to a certain extent decomposed by the ravages of the civil war. Certain passages of the book give the impression that the more the economy disintegrates, the more salutary this is, the more it is hastening the development of communist social relations.

The ruling class' speeches about the "good health" and perpetuity of its system of exploitation have been increasingly exposed by the numerous economic convulsions over the last 30 years: the recessions of 1974-75, of 1980-82 or the especially acute one of 1990-93; cataclysms on the stock market like that of October 1987, or the "Tequila effect" of 1994 etc. However, the swelling stream of bad economic news since August 1997 - the collapse of the Thai currency, the debacle of the Asiatic "tigers" and "dragons", the brutal purge of world stock markets; the bankruptcy of Russia, the fragile situation of Brazil and other "emerging" economies in Latin America, and above all the serious state of the world's second economy, Japan - constitutes the most serious episode in the historic crisis of capitalism. It clearly confirms the analysis of marxism and demonstrates the necessity for the overthrow of capitalism through the world proletarian revolution.

The form taken by the crisis over the last 30 years, above all in the main industrialised countries, has not been that of the brutal depression that occurred in the 1930's. What we have seen is a slow and progressive descent into the hell of unemployment and poverty, through successive recessions. At the same time, the worst ravages have been most concentrated in the countries of the periphery: Africa, South America, Asia that have sunk irremediably into a total morass of barbarism and decomposition.

For the bourgeoisie of the main industrialised countries, where the most important proletarian masses are concentrated, this hitherto unknown form taken by the historic crisis of capitalism has the advantage of concealing the death agony of capitalism and creating the illusion that its convulsions will be transitory, and that they will correspond to the cyclical crises typical of the previous century, which were followed by periods of intense development.

As a weapon in the struggle against such mystifications we are publishing a study of the last 30 years. On the one hand, it will demonstrate that the slow and escalating rhythm of the crisis has been the result of the state's "managing" the crisis by cheating the laws of the capitalist system (notably through the recourse to astronomical levels of debt, the likes of which have never been seen in the history of humanity) and on the other hand, that these policies are not any kind of solution to capitalism's incurable disease. The price of deferring its most catastrophic expressions in the most important countries is: increasingly explosive contradictions and the aggravation of the incurable cancer of world capitalism.

Crash or progressive collapse?

Marxism has made clear that capitalism has no solution to its historic crisis, a crisis that goes back to the First World War. Nevertheless, the form and causes of this crisis have been the object of discussion amongst the revolutionaries of  the Communist Left[1]. Is the form that of the deflationary depression typical of the cyclical crisis of the ascendant period (between 1820 and 1913)? Or rather, is it one of a process of progressive degeneration during which the whole world economy collapses into an increasingly acute state of stagnation and decomposition?

In the 1920s, some tendencies in the KAPD put forward the "Theory of the crash" according to which the historic crisis of capitalism would take the form of an irreversible brutal collapse that would impose on the proletariat the need to make the revolution. Some Bordigist currents who think that a sudden crisis will force the proletariat to resort to revolutionary action also express this vision.

We cannot enter here into a detailed analysis of this theory. However, it is to clear that the evolution of capitalism since 1914 has disproved it at the political as much as at the economic level. Historical experience has confirmed that the bourgeoisie is capable of moving mountains to prevent the spontaneous and sudden crash of its system of production. The problem of the outcome of the historic crisis of capitalism is not strictly economic but above all and essentially political, dependent on the evolution of the class struggle:

* Will the proletariat develop its struggles towards the imposition of its revolutionary dictatorship which will rescue humanity from the present morass and lead to communism as a new mode of production that overcomes and resolves the insoluble contradictions of capitalism?

* Will the survival of the system plunge humanity into barbarity and definitive destruction, be it through generalised world war, or through the slow agony of progressive and systematic decomposition[2]?

The bourgeoisie has responded to the permanent crisis of its system with the universal tendency of state capitalism. State capitalism is not only an economic response, but also a political one, as much a necessity for the carrying out of imperialist war as for confronting the proletariat. From the economic point of view, state capitalism constitutes an effort not so much at overcoming or solving this crisis, but at managing and slowing it[3].

Just as the proletariat's international revolutionary wave of 1917-23 made clear the threat to its system at the decisive political level, so the brutal depression of 1929 demonstrated to the bourgeoisie the grave dangers that its historical crisis contained at the economic level. The bourgeoisie did not give up on either of these two fronts. It developed the totalitarian form of its state to serve as a defensive bastion against the proletarian threat and against the economic contradictions of its system of exploitation. This totalitarian state expressed itself on the economic level as the general tendency to state capitalism, which took different forms: Nazi, Stalinist, and "democratic".

In the la 30 years, marked as much by the open reappearance of the historic crisis of capitalism as by the rebirth of the proletarian struggle, we have seen the bourgeoisie perfect and generalise its state mechanisms for managing the economic crisis in order to avoid its abrupt and uncontrolled explosion, at least in the main industrial concentrations (Europe, North America, Japan) which is where the historic outcome of the incurable crisis of capitalism will be determined[4].

At its formation, our Current stated that "At given moments, the confluence of some of these indicators could trigger a massive slump in a given national capital such as Britain, Italy, Portugal, or Spain. This is a possibility that we don't dismiss. However, although such a collapse would give an irreparable blow to the world economy (British assets and investments abroad alone amount to £20 billion), the world capitalist system could still drag on as long as a modicum of production were maintained in some advanced countries such as the US, Germany, Japan and the Eastern European countries. All such events of course lend 10 engulf the whole system, and crises are inevitably world crises today, But for the reasons we have outlined above, we have reason to believe that the crisis will be drawn-out - extremely convulsive and with jagged curves, but more like a snowballing effect than a steep sudden fall. Even the disintegration of a national economy will not necessarily send all the capitalists to hang themselves, as Rosa Luxemburg remarked in a slightly different context. For this to happen, the personification of national capital, the state, must be strangled by none other than the revolutionary proletariat"[5].

Similarly, after the violent economic events of the 1980s we showed that "the capitalist machine has not completely collapsed. Despite the record number of bankruptcies, despite the increasingly frequent and serious cracks in the system, the profit machine continues to junction, concentrating new and gigantic fortunes - the product of the carnage among different capitals - and boasts with cynical arrogance of the benefits of ‘liberalism'".[6]

A ruling class does not commit suicide or lock up shop and give the keys to the class that is replacing it. We can see this with the feudal class which after a furious resistance made a pact with the bourgeoisie that gave it a place in the new order. It will be even less the case with the bourgeoisie which knows full well that it can expect nothing but its own disappearance from the social order represented by the proletariat.

As much for the mystification and defeat of the proletariat as to keep its economic system afloat, it is necessary that members of the bourgeoisie do not become demoralised and throw in the towel. This means that the state has to maintain at all costs the economic edifice, to give it the best possible appearance of normality and effectiveness, in order to assure the minimum of confidence and credibility in the economy.

At all events, the crisis is the best ally of the proletariat for the completion of its revolutionary mission. However, this is not something spontaneous and mechanical, but takes place through the development of its struggle and its consciousness. If the proletariat is to develop its reflection on the fundamental causes of the crisis the groups of the Communist Left have to carry out a tenacious and obstinate struggle to show the reality of the death agony of capitalism and denounce all the efforts of state capitalism to avoid the crisis through, slowing it down, hiding it, deflecting it from the nerve centres of world capitalism on to the more peripheral regions where the proletariat has less social weight.

Managing the crisis

The notion of "managing the crisis" to use the terms of the Report from our last International Congress[7], is crucial. Since 1967, world capitalism has responded to the open reappearance of its historic crisis through a policy of managing the crisis, which is central to understanding both the course of economic evolution over this period, and the success the bourgeoisie has had until now in hiding the gravity and magnitude of the crisis from the proletariat.

This policy of managing the crisis constitutes the most finished expression of the general historical tendency to state capitalism. In reality over the last 30 years the Western states have developed a practice of manipulating the law of value, of massive and generalised debt, of authoritarian state intervention towards economic agents and the productive process, of tricks with money, foreign trade and public debt, which make the state planning methods of the Stalinist bureaucracies look like child's play. All of the Western bourgeoisie's chatter about the "market economy", the "play of free market forces", the "superiority of liberalism" and the like is in reality an enormous mystification. For the last 70 years, as the Communist Left has affirmed, there have not been two "economic systems", one of them "a planned economy" and the other a "free economy", but one system: capitalism, which in its long drawn out death agony is sustained by increasingly enveloping and totalitarian state intervention.

This state intervention to manage the crisis, that seeks to adapt itself to it and seeks to slow it down and postpone it, has allowed the main industrial countries to avoid a brutal collapse, a general disintegration of the system. However, it has neither solved the crisis nor resolved any of its most acute expressions such as unemployment or inflation. The only achievement of 30 years of "managing the crisis" is a kind of organised descent towards the abyss, a chance for the planned fall through successive recessions whose only real result has been to indefinitely prolong the suffering insecurity and desperation of the working class and the immense majority of the world's population. On the one hand, the working class of the great industrial centres has been subjected to a systematic policy of gradual but progressive cuts in its wages, its living conditions, its stability of employment, its very survival. On the other hand, the great majority of the world's population, which lives in misery in the enormous periphery that surrounds the nerve centres of capitalism, has been submerged in a situation of barbarity, hunger and death that could well be classed as the greatest genocide ever suffered by humanity.

This policy of managing the crisis however, is the only one possible for the whole of world capitalism, the only one that can keep it afloat even if it is at the price of leaving increasingly large parts of its own economic body to fall into the abyss. The most important and decisive countries from the imperialist and economic point of view, but above all for the confrontation between the classes, concentrate all their efforts on deflecting the crisis onto the weaker countries, with less resources faced with its devastating effects and with less importance in the struggle against the proletariat. Thus, in the 1980's, a large part of Africa, a good slice of South and Latin America and a series of Asian countries collapsed. Since 1989, it has been the turn of the countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia etc, which until then had been subject to the domination of that giant with feet of clay called Russia. Now it is the turn of the former Asian "dragons" and "tigers", that in the case of Indonesia is confronted with the most brutal and rapid fall of any country's economy for 80 years.

We have had a lot of talk from politicians, union leaders, or "experts" in "economic models", about "appropriate economic policies" and "solutions to the crisis". The harsh reality of the crisis over the last 30 years has shown up all this talk for what it is: unutterable stupidity, or the vulgar tricks of mountebanks. The "Swedish model of the social market economy" is no longer heard about, the "Japanese model" has been hurriedly withdrawn from the propaganda catalogues, the "German model" has been discreetly consigned to the museum, the endlessly repeated scratched record of the "success" of the Asian "tigers" and "dragons" has been dropped from the ideological jukebox in the course of a few months. In practice the only possible policy for all governments, be they Right wing, Left wing, dictatorial or "democratic", "liberal" or "interventionist", is to manage the crisis, the planned and most gradual possible descent into the inferno.

This policy of managing and accompanying the crisis cannot have the effect of keeping world capitalism in a static situation, where the brutal contradictions of the regime of exploitation can be perpetually contained and limited. Such "stability" is impossible because of the nature of capitalism itself, the dynamism of its internal contradictions that unceasingly push it to seek the valorisation of capital, to compete for the re-division of the world market. For these reasons, the policy of palliatives, of slowing the crisis has the perverse effect of aggravating, making more violent and profound capitalism's contradictions. The "success" of capitalism's economic policies over the last 30 years can be reduced to the avoiding of the worst of the crisis but, meanwhile, the time-bomb has increased in size, it has become more explosive, more dangerous, more destructive:

* Thirty years of debt have increased the overall fragility of the financial mechanisms that make their use for managing the crisis much more difficult and dangerous.

* Thirty years of generalised overproduction has meant successive amputations of the industrial and agricultural apparatus of the world economy that reduces the size of the market and makes this overproduction much more serious and burdensome.

* Thirty years of postponement and dosage of unemployment mean that today it is much more serious and causes an endless chain of lay-offs, the casualisation of work, underemployment etc.

All of capitalism's cheating of its own economic laws means that the crisis has not taken the form of a sudden collapse of production as happened in the cyclical crisis of ascendant capitalism last century or as we saw in the depression of 1929. Nevertheless, the crisis has taken a more widespread form, more destructive for the living conditions of the proletariat and the whole of humanity: a descent by successive, progressively more brutal, stages towards a situation of increasingly generalised stagnation and decomposition.

The convulsions that have been taking place since August 1997 mark a new stage in the descent towards the abyss. We can have no doubt that this is the worst episode of the last 30 years, the biggest step that capitalism has taken in this descent. In order to better grasp its effects on the living conditions of the proletariat and on the aggravation of the capitalist crisis it seems to us necessary to go back over the entire period.  

In International Review no.8 (article on "The international political situation"), we showed that capitalism's policy of "managing and accompanying the crisis" has three axes: "Deflecting the crisis onto other countries, the intermediate classes, and the proletariat". These three axes have marked the policy of managing the crisis and had been defined in the different stages of the collapse of the system.

The policy of the 1970s

In 1967, the devaluation of the pound sterling was one of the first clear signs of a new open crisis of capitalism after the years of relative prosperity granted by the reconstruction of the world economy following the enormous destruction of the Second World War. There was the first shock of unemployment that rose to 2 % in some European countries. Governments responded with policies of increased public spending which rapidly hid the situation and allowed a recovery of production during 1969-71.

In 1971, the crisis took the form of violent monetary storms concentrated around the world's main currency: the dollar. The Nixon government was able to postpone the problem temporarily, but this had serious consequences for the future evolution of capitalism: it dismantled the Bretton Woods Agreement adopted in 1944, and which since then had regulated the world economy.

Bretton Woods itself definitively abandoned the gold standard and replaced it with the dollar standard. At the time, this already marked a step towards the weakening of the world monetary system and a stimulus to the policy of debt. In its 'ascendant period capitalism tied currencies to the reserves of gold and silver, which established a more or less coherent correspondence between the extension of production and the monetary mass in circulation avoiding or at least alleviated the uncontrolled recourse to credit. Linking currencies to the dollar standard eliminated this control mechanism and, leaving aside the substantial advantage it gave to American capitalism over its competitors, it involved a considerable risk of monetary and credit instability.

This threat remained latent as long as reconstruction provided the room for the sale of continually expanding production. However, it exploded from 1967 when this margin for manoeuvre was dramatically reduced. The abandoning of the dollar standard and its replacement by IMF Special Drawing Rights allowed each state to issue its currency without any guarantee beyond itself. The threat of instability and the uncontrolled growth of debt became more tangible and dangerous.

The 1972-73 "boom" not only hid these problems but brought with it one of the illusions which capitalism has used to disguise its mortal crisis: in these two years production reached record levels. These were essentially based on the unleashing of consumption.

Drunk with this ephemeral "success", capitalism boasted about overcoming the crisis and the failure of marxism in its assertion of the system's mortal collapse. These proclamations were soon unmasked by the so-called "oil crisis" of 1974-75, the worst since the Second World War: levels of production in the industrialised countries fell by between 2% and 4%.

The response to this new convulsion was based around two axes:

* the striking growth of public deficits in the industrialised countries, especially in the United States;

* but above all, the enormous growth of debt in the Third World and the countries of the East. The years between 1974-1977 saw what the biggest wave of lending in history was then: $78 billion were loaned to Third World countries, not including those that belonged to the Russian bloc. To give some idea of the unprecedented nature of the level of these loans one only bas to compare them to those issued to European countries between 1948-53 under the Marshall Plan: a total of $15 billion which was already a record for the time.

These measures brought about a recovery of production although this never reached the levels of 1972-73. However, the cost was the explosion of inflation which in some central countries surpassed 20% (in Italy it reached 30%). Inflation is a characteristic feature of decadent capitalism[8], due to the immense mass of unproductive spending that the system bears in order to survive: war production, hypertrophy of the state apparatus, gigantic financial costs, advertising etc. These costs are incomparably greater than the costs of circulation and growth typical of the ascendant period. However, in the mid-1970s, this permanent and structural inflation became galloping inflation because of the accumulation of public deficits brought about by the uncontrolled emission of money without any counter-part.

The evolution of the world economy in the second half of the 1970s oscillated between recovery and recession. Each effort to revive the economy lead to the outburst of inflation (which the capitalists called "overbeating"), which meant that governments bad to impose a "freeze" on growth by increasing interest rates, sudden reductions in the rate of circulation of money, etc, which led to recession. This clearly demonstrated the general impasse of the capitalist economy due to over-production.

The balance-sheet of the 1970s

After this brief description of economic evolution during the 1970s, we can draw some conclusions at two levels:

* the economic situation,

* the decline in working class living conditions .

The general economic situation

1. Levels of production were high. The average level of growth in production during the decade in the 24 countries of the OECD was 4.1 %. During the 1972-73 boom it reached 8%, and even 10% in Japan. Nevertheless, it is possible to see a clear tendency towards decline in comparison to the previous decade:

Average levels of production in the countries of the OECD

2. Massive lending to the Third World allowed the exploitation and incorporation into the world market of the last, although very small, pre-capitalist vestiges. We can thus say that the world market underwent a very limited expansion, as it bad during the reconstruction period after 1945.

3. The whole productive sector grew, including the traditional sectors such as ship-building, mining, iron and steel that experienced a great expansion between 1972-78. However, this expansion was their swan song: from 1978 the signs of increasing market saturation led to the infamous "restructuring" (euphemism concealing massive lay-offs) that began in 1979 and made their mark in the following decade.

4. The phases of recovery affected the whole world economy more or less evenly. With a few exceptions (a significant example was the decline in production in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) all countries benefited from the increase of production. There were no countries "disconnected" from recovery, such a we saw in the 1980s.

5.The price of raw materials maintained a constant tendency to increase, which peaked with the speculative oil boom (between 1972 and 19 after which the tendency began to reverse.

6. Armaments production took off in relation to the 1960 and increased spectacularly from 1976.

7. From 1975 levels of debt accelerated strongly. although in comparison to what was to come they were minuscule. They were characterised by:

* fairly moderate growth in the central countries (although from 1977 there was a spectacular . e in the United States during the Carter administration);

* but a massive increase in the countries of the Third World.

"Underdeveloped" countries' debts
(source: World Bank)

8. The banking system was solid: loans (for consumption and investment, to families, businesses, and institutions) were subject to a series of very rigorous controls and guarantee .

9. Speculation was still a limited phenomenon although the feverish speculation in oil (the famous petrodollars) heralded a tendency towards its generalisation in the following decade.

The situation of the working class

1. Unemployment remained relatively limited although it grew constantly from 1975. In the 24 OECD countries, there were 7 million unemployed in 1968; by 1979, the figure had risen to 18 million.

2. There were significant nominal increases in wages (these reached 20-25 %) and in countries like Italy sliding wage scales index-linked to inflation were introduced. This growth in wages was misleading since globally wages lost ground faced with galloping inflation

3. Permanent jobs massively predominated and in the most important countries there was a strong growth in public sector jobs.

4. Social spending, subsidies, social security systems, housing, health and education benefits, all grew significantly.

5. During the decade, the decline in living conditions was real but fairly smooth. The bourgeoisie, alerted by the historic rebirth of the class struggle and enjoying considerable room for manoeuvre on the economic terrain, preferred to concentrate its attacks on the weakest sectors of the national capital rather than on the working class. The decade of the 1970's was the "years of illusion" characterised by the political dynamic of "the left in power".

In the next part of this article we will draw a balance-sheet of the 1980s and 1990s which will allow us on the one hand to evaluate the violent degradation of the economy and the situation of the working class and on the other to comprehend more clearly the sombre perspectives of the new descent towards the inferno, that the period opened up by August 1997 contains.

Adalen

[1] There are essentially two theories as to the cause of the crisis: the saturation of the world market and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. See in relation to this question the articles in International Review nos. 13, 16, 23, 29, 30,76 and 83.

[2] See International Review no.62 "The decomposition of capitalism".

[3] See International Review no.21 "On state capitalism" and International Review No 23 "The proletariat in decadent capitalism".

[4] See International Review no.31 "The proletariat of Western Europe at the centre of the class struggle".

[5] See the article on the international situation in International Review no. 1.

[6] See International Review no.56.

[7] See the Report we published in International Review no.92.

[8] See our pamphlet The decadence of capitalism

Ever since the end of the 1960s and the formation of the groups which were to create the ICC in 1975, we have been subjected to a dual criticism. For some - generally the various organisations that go under the name of “International Communist Party”, directly descended from the Italian Left - we are idealists on the question of class consciousness and organisational anarchists. For others - usually from anarchism or the councilist current which reject, or at least under-estimate the need for political organisation and a communist party - we are supposed to be “partyists” and “Leninists”. The former base their assertions on our rejection of the “classical” position of the workers’ movement on the seizure of power by the communist party during the dictatorship of the proletariat, and our non-monolithic view of the functioning of a political organisation. The latter reject our rigorous conception of the revolutionary militant, and our constant efforts to build a united, centralised international organisation.

Today, another criticism of the councilist variety, but more virulent, has made its appearance: the ICC is degenerating, has become a “Leninist”[1] [14] sect, and is on the point of abandoning its own platform and political principles. We defy anyone to prove this lie, which cannot be justified by anything in our publications or our programmatic texts. The outrageousness of this denunciation - we are no longer in the realm of criticism - cannot be doubted by anybody who reads the ICC’s press seriously and without bias. However, the fact that this lie is put about by ex-militants of the organisation, might lead the inattentive or inexperienced reader to conclude that “there is no smoke without fire”. In fact, these ex-militants have joined the milieu of what we call “political parasitism”.[2] [15] This milieu is opposed to our constant fight for the international regroupment of revolutionary forces, and for the unity of the proletarian political movement in the historic struggle against capitalism. Consequently, it tries to undermine and weaken both our fight against informalism and dilettantism in militant activity and our ardent defence of an internationally united and centralised organisation.

Have we become Leninists as our critics and denouncers claim? This is a serious accusation, and we cannot just run away from it. But to answer it seriously, we must first know what we are talking about. What is “Leninism”? What has it represented in the history of the workers’ movement?

“Leninism” and Lenin 

“Leninism” and the cult of Lenin appeared at the same time, just after Lenin’s death in 1924, following two years of illness which drastically reduced his political activity. The ebb of the international revolutionary wave which had put an end to World War I and the isolation of the proletariat in Russia are the fundamental causes for the rising power of the counter-revolution. The main signs of this process were the annihilation of the power of the workers’ councils, and of all proletarian life within them, the bureaucratisation and the rise of Stalinism within Russia itself, and especially within the Bolshevik Party. Dramatic political mistakes - in particular, for example, the identification of the party and the proletariat with the Russian state which justified the repression of Kronstadt - played a major part in the development of both the bureaucracy and Stalinism. Lenin is not exempt from criticism, even though he was often the one best able to oppose the process of bureaucratisation, as he did in 1920 (against Trotsky and many of the Bolshevik leaders who advocated the militarisation of the trades unions), and at the end of his life when he denounced Stalin’s growing power and proposed to Trotsky to form an alliance, or a bloc as he said, “against bureaucratism in general, and against the organisation bureau [under Stalin’s thumb] in particular”.[3] [16] Only once death had ended his political authority did the counter-revolutionary bureaucratic tendency develop the personality cult of Lenin:[4] [17] Petrograd was rechristened Leningrad, his body mummified, and above all an ideology of “Leninism” and “Marxism-Leninism” was developed. The troika of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev thus aimed to appropriate Lenin’s “legacy” as a means of struggle against Trotsky within the Russian party, and of seizing power within the Communist International. The Stalinist offensive to take control of the different communist parties was based around the “Bolshevisation” of these parties and the exclusion of militants who refused to accept the new policy.

“Leninism” is the counter-revolutionary betrayal of Lenin 

In his 1939 biography of Stalin, Boris Souvarine emphasises the opposition between Lenin and “Leninism”: “There is no continuity, properly speaking, between the old Bolshevism and the new “Leninism”.[5] [18] This is how he defines “Leninism”: “Stalin made himself its first classical author, with his pamphlet Foundations of Leninism, an anthology of lectures to the “red students” of the Sverdlov communist university at the beginning of April 1924. In this laborious compilation, where uninspired sentences alternate with quotations, we search in vain for the critical thought of Lenin. Everything living, relative, conditional, and dialectic in his work, becomes passive, absolute, catechising, and littered moreover with contradictions”.[6] [19]

“Leninism” is the “theory” of Socialism in one country, utterly opposed to Lenin’s internationalism.

The advent of “Leninism” marks the victory of the opportunist course charted by the Communist International since its 3rd Congress, in particular with the tactic of the United Front and the slogan of “going to the masses”, as isolation weighed more and more heavily on revolutionary Russia. The errors of the Bolsheviks were a negative factor that encouraged this opportunist course. It is worth recalling here that the incorrect position on “the party holding power” was shared by the whole revolutionary movement of the time, including Rosa Luxemburg and the German Left. It was only in the early 1920s that the KAPD began to point out the contradiction inherent in a revolutionary party taking power and identifying itself with the new state created by the victorious insurrection.

Various oppositions began to develop against this opportunist, then frankly counter-revolutionary gangrene. The most coherent were the left oppositions in Russia, Italy, Germany and Holland, which remained faithful to internationalism and October 1917. They fought against the increasing opportunism of the CI, and were expelled one after the other during the 1920s. Those of them that managed to maintain an organised existence opposed the practical implications of “Leninism”, in other words the policy of “Bolshevisation” of the communist parties. Especially, they fought against the replacement of organisation in local sections, in other words on a territorial, geographical basis, by organisation in factory cells, which ended up by regrouping militants on a corporatist basis and helped to empty the parties of any really communist life, dependent as it is on general political debate and discussion.

The propagation of “Leninism” sharpened the struggle between Stalinism and the left oppositions. It was accompanied by the development of the theory of “socialism in one country”, which is a complete break with Lenin’s intransigent internationalism, and with the experience of October. This rise of opportunism marked the definitive victory of the counter-revolution. By abandoning internationalism and adopting “socialism in one country” as a part of its programme, the CI died - as an International - at its 6th Congress in 1928.

“Leninism” means division between Lenin and Luxemburg, between the Bolshevik fraction and other internationalist lefts

In 1925, the adoption by the CI’s 5th Congress of the “Theses on Bolshevisation” revealed the Stalinist bureaucracy’s increasing grip on both the CI and the Communist Parties. Itself a product of the Stalinist counter-revolution, Bolshevisation became the main organisational vector of the CI’s member parties’ accelerated degeneration. The increasing use of repression and state terror in Russia, and the expulsions from the other parties, show how bitter and fierce was the struggle. For Stalinism, there still existed a serious danger of the formation of a strong international opposition around Trotsky, who alone would have been able to regroup the major part of the surviving revolutionary forces. This opposition stood against the policy of opportunism, and had every chance of success in wresting the party leaderships from Stalinism, as we can see from the examples of Italy and Germany.

One of the aims of “Bolshevisation” was thus to erect an opposition between Lenin and the other great figures of communism from the other left currents - between Lenin and Trotsky, of course, but also between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg: “A real Bolshevisation is impossible without overcoming the errors of Luxemburgism. “Leninism” must be the unique compass for the communist parties throughout the world. Anything that is distanced from “Leninism” is also distanced from marxism”.[7] [20]

Stalinism thus tore apart the unity between Lenin and Luxemburg, between the Bolshevik tradition and the other lefts that emerged from the 2nd International. In the wake of Stalinism, the social-democratic parties also helped to erect a water-tight barrier between the “good democratic” Rosa Luxemburg, and the “bad dictatorial” Lenin. Nor does this belong solely to the past. The unity between these two great revolutionaries is still subject to attack. Hypocritical praise is heaped on Luxemburg’s “farsightedness” for her criticism of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution, as often as not by the direct political descendants of her social-democrat assassins, in other words by today’s socialist parties. Especially by the German socialist party, doubtless on the grounds that Rosa Luxemburg was... German!

This is yet another confirmation of the alliance and common interests of the “classic” forces of capitalism, and the Stalinist counter-revolution. In particular, it confirms the alliance between Stalinism and social-democracy to falsify the history of the workers’ movement and to destroy marxism. We can bet that the bourgeoisie will not miss the opportunity to celebrate - in its own way - the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartakists in Berlin in 1919.

“It is a painful spectacle for revolutionary militants to see the assassins of those who made the October Revolution allied to the assassins of the Spartakists and daring to commemorate the death of these proletarian leaders. Those who have heaped betrayal on betrayal to lead the international counter-revolution have no right to talk of Rosa Luxemburg, whose life was one of intransigence, struggle against opportunism, and revolutionary firmness”.[8] [21]

Hands off Luxemburg and Lenin - they belong to the revolutionary proletariat! 

Today, most of the elements of the parasitic milieu find it all the easier to contribute to these falsifications of history, in that they hang about with the anarchists, another milieu which specialises in attacking Lenin and everything he represents.

Unfortunately, most of the truly proletarian groups and currents are lacking in political clarity. By its theoretical weaknesses and political mistakes, councilism makes its own little contribution to the wall that the ruling class would like to erect between the Bolshevik party and the Dutch and German lefts, between Lenin on the one hand, Luxemburg on the other. In the same way, their political weaknesses - or aberrations, when it comes to the theory of “invariance” dear to the Bordigists - mean that the Bordigist Groups and even Battaglia Comunista (PCInt) do not understand the importance of defending Lenin, Luxemburg, and all the left fractions that came out of the Communist International.

It is important that we remember the unity and continuity of the struggle waged not just by the individuals Lenin and Luxemburg, but by the Bolshevik party and the other lefts within the 2nd International. Despite their debates and disagreements, they were always on the same side of the barricades when the working class was confronted with decisive events. Lenin and Luxemburg were the leaders of the revolutionary left at the Stuttgart Congress of the Socialist International (1907), when together they successfully put forward an amendment to the resolution on the attitude of socialists to war, calling on them “by every means possible to use the economic and political crisis provoked by the war to awaken the people and thereby to hasten the overthrow of capitalist domination”; Lenin even entrusted Rosa Luxemburg with the Russian party’s mandate in the discussion on this question. Faithful to their internationalist struggle within their respective parties, they stood against the imperialist war. Luxemburg’s Spartakist current took part, with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in the internationalist conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal (1915 and 1916). With all the lefts, they were wholeheartedly enthusiastic in their support for the Russian revolution:

“The Russian Revolution is the mightiest event of the World War (...) That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political farsightedness and firmness of principle, and of the bold scope of their policies (...) The party of Lenin was the only one which grasped the mandate and duty of a truly revolutionary party and which, by the slogan “All power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry”, ensured the continued development of the revolution (...) Moreover, the Bolsheviks immediately set as the aim of this seizure of power a complete, far-reaching revolutionary programme: not the safeguarding of bourgeois democracy, but a dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of realising socialism. Thereby they won for themselves the imperishable historic distinction of having for the first time proclaimed the final aim of socialism as the direct programme of practical politics”.[9] [22]

Does this mean that there were no differences between these great figures of the workers’ movement? Obviously not. Nor does it mean that we should ignore them. But if we are to learn from these differences, then we must first be able to recognise and defend what united them: the class struggle, the consistent revolutionary struggle against capitalism, the bourgeoisie, and all its political forces. Luxemburg’s text, that we have quoted above, is an unsparing criticism of the policy of the Bolshevik party in Russia. But she is careful to establish the framework within which her criticisms are to be understood: solidarity and common struggle with the Bolsheviks. She violently denounces the opposition by Kautsky and the Mensheviks to the proletarian insurrection. And to avoid any ambiguity as to her class position, or any distortion of her words, she ends thus: “In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to “Bolshevism””.

The defence of these comrades, and their class unity, is a task bequeathed to us by the Italian Left, and one which we intend to continue. Lenin and Luxemburg belong to the revolutionary proletariat. Here is how the Italian fraction of the communist left understood the defence of this legacy against Stalinist “Leninism” and social-democracy:

“But alongside this brilliant proletarian leader [Lenin], stand the equally imposing figures of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. These products of an international struggle against revisionism and opportunism, expression of the German proletariat’s revolutionary will, belong to us and not to those who want to make Rosa a standard-bearer against Lenin and the Party, or to make Liebknecht the standard-bearer for an anti-militarism which in reality finds expression in votes for arms spending in the different “democratic” countries”.[10] [23]

We have not yet answered the accusation that we have changed position on Lenin. However, the reader can already see clearly and concretely that we are resolutely opposed to “Leninism”, and that we remain faithful to the tradition of the left fractions from which we spring, and in particular of the Italian fraction of the 1930s. We try to apply the method which struggles for the defence of the historic unity and continuity of the workers’ movement, against “Leninism”, and against all the attempts to divide and oppose its different marxist fractions. Against abstract and mechanical oppositions made from quotations taken out of context, we situate the positions adopted by different currents, their debates and polemics, within their real historical context, inside the workers’ movement - in other words within the same camp. This is the method that marxism has already tried to apply. This is the very opposite of “Leninism”, which indeed is completely rejected by those who really follow Lenin’s example today. It is amusing to see that those who continue at least this aspect of the Stalinist “method” today, include precisely those who accuse the ICC of becoming “Leninist”!

Hands off the Dutch Left, Pannekoek and Gorter! 

The contemporary adepts of the “method” of “Leninism”, at least in this respect, can easily be identified in different milieus. It is fashionable among the anarcho-councilists, and amongst the parasitic elements, to try - fraudulently - to appropriate the Dutch Left, and to oppose it to the other left fractions, and of course to Lenin. Just as Stalin and his “Leninism” betrayed Lenin, so these elements betray the tradition of the Dutch Left and its great figures like Anton Pannekoek - hailed with respect and admiration by Lenin in State and Revolution - or like Herman Gorter, who was swift to translate this marxist classic as early as 1918. Before becoming a councilist theoretician during the 1930s, Pannekoek was one of the foremost elements of the marxist wing of the 2nd International, alongside Luxemburg and Lenin. Because of his councilist critiques of the Bolsheviks from the 1930s onwards, it is easier to distort Pannekoek’s place in the workers’ movement than it is, for example, with Bordiga. Today, Pannekoek is the object of particular attention aimed at eradicating any memory of his membership of the Communist International, or of his enthusiastic and resolute support for the October Revolution. The Dutch and German Left, as much as the Russians and Italians within the CI, belong to the proletariat and to communism. In identifying our origins with all the left fractions that emerged from the CI, we are also using the method of the Dutch Left, like all the Lefts:

“The World War and the revolution which it has engendered have shown that there is only one tendency in the workers’ movement which really leads the workers towards communism. Only the extreme left of the social-democratic parties, the marxist fractions, the party of Lenin in Russia, of Bela Kun in Hungary, of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, have found the one correct path.

The tendency which always aimed at the violent destruction of capitalism, which in the evolutionary period used the political struggle and parliamentary action for revolutionary propaganda and to organise the proletariat, is today using state power for the revolution. The same tendency has also found the means to break the capitalist state, to transform it into a socialist state, and to build communism: the workers’ councils, which contain within themselves all political and economic forces; the same tendency, finally, has discovered and established forever what the class did not know until now: the organisation by which the working class can overthrow and replace capitalism”.[11] [24]

Even after the KAPD was excluded from the CI in 1921, it tried to remain faithful to its principles, and in solidarity with the Bolsheviks:

“Despite the exclusion of our tendency from the Moscow Congress, we remain in complete solidarity with the Russian Bolsheviks (...) We remain in solidarity not just with the Russian proletariat, but also with its Bolshevik leaders, even though we must vigorously criticise their behaviour within international communism”.[12] [25]

In defending the unity and continuity of, and tracing our origins “to the successive contributions of the Communist League of Marx and Engels (1847-52), the three Internationals (the International Workingmen’s Association, 1864-72, the Second International, 1889-1914, the Communist International, 1919-28), the left fractions which detached themselves from the degenerating Third International in the years 1920-30, in particular the German, Dutch and Italian Lefts”,[13] [26] the ICC is remaining faithful to the marxist tradition within the workers’ movement. In particular, it is part of the constant and unified struggle of the “tendency” defined by Gorter: the left fractions within the Second and Third Internationals. In this sense, we are faithful to Lenin, to Rosa Luxemburg, to Pannekoek and Gorter, and to the tradition of the left fractions during the 1930s, Bilan first and foremost.

Today’s “Leninists” are not in the ICC

Faithful to the left fractions who fought Stalinism in the most difficult conditions, we reject any accusation of “Leninism”. And we also denounce our accusers: they use the same method as Stalin to identify “Leninism” with Lenin. Ever armed with the Stalinist “method”, they do not even try to base their accusations on real, concrete evidence - such as our written or verbal positions - but rather on hear-say and lies. They claim that our organisation has become a sect, and is degenerating, in order to drive away all those elements who are trying to find a consistent revolutionary political perspective. The accusation is all the more slanderous, in that behind “Leninism” hides the accusation of Stalinism, when it is not declared outright.

The denunciation of our supposed “Leninism” is essentially based on tittle-tattle concerning our internal functioning, in particular on the claimed impossibility of debate within the organisation. We have already answered these accusations,[14] [27] and will not return to them here. Suffice it to return the compliment, after we have shown who are the real followers of the non-marxist, falsely revolutionary, “Leninist” method.

The ICC has always identified with Lenin’s struggle to build the Party 

Once we have rejected the accusation of “Leninism”, a much more serious accusation remains: have we abandoned our critical spirit towards Lenin on the question of political organisation? Has the ICC changed position on Lenin, specifically as far as the role and functioning of the political organisation and the party is concerned? For our part, we see no discontinuity in the ICC’s position on Lenin and the organisational question between our beginnings in the 1970s, and 1999.

We stand alongside Lenin in the struggle against economism and Menshevism. This is nothing new. We are in agreement with the method used and the critique developed against economism and the Mensheviks. And we consider that we agree also with most of the different points developed by Lenin. There is nothing new here.

We maintain our criticism of some of Lenin’s positions on the organisation question: “Some of the ideas defended by Lenin (notably in One step forward, two steps back) on the hierarchical and “military” nature of the organisation, which have been exploited by Stalinists to justify their methods, are to be rejected”.[15] [28] We have not changed position on these criticisms either. However, the question deserves an answer in greater depth, both to understand the real extent of Lenin’s mistakes and to understand the historical significance of the debates within the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).

This question is a central one for revolutionaries, and to treat it seriously - including Lenin’s errors - we must remain faithful to the method and lessons of the different communist lefts, as we have emphasised in the first part of this article. We refuse to pick out the bits we like in the workers’ movement and ignore the bits we dislike. Such an attitude is a-historical, and worthy only of those who presume to judge, 100 years on, a historical process made of hesitations, successes and failures, numerous debates and contributions, at the price of immense sacrifice and difficult political struggle. This is true for theoretical and political questions. It is equally true for questions of organisation. The fact that Plekhanov turned chauvinist in World War I and ended as a Menshevik, that Trotsky ended up in “Trotskyism”, or that Pannekoek ended in councilism, deprives their political and theoretical contributions of none of their richness, relevance, or militant interest. The shameful deaths of the Second and Third Internationals, the Bolshevik party’s end in Stalinism, in no way diminish either their role in the history of the workers’ movement, or the validity of their organisational gains.

Have we changed our opinion on this? Not in the least: “There exist organisational gains just as there are theoretical gains, and one conditions the other in a permanent way”.[16] [29]

Just as Rosa Luxemburg’s criticism of the Bolsheviks in The Russian Revolution must be situated within the context of the class unity between her and the Bolsheviks, so our criticisms of Lenin on the organisational question must be placed in the framework of our unity with Lenin in his struggle - both before and after the formation of the Bolshevik fraction, for the construction of the party. This position is not new, and there is nothing surprising about it. Today, as we “repeated” in 1991, “we reaffirm[17] [30] that “the history of the fractions is the history of Lenin”[18] [31] and that only on the basis of the work that they accomplished will it be possible to reconstruct tomorrow’s world communist party”.[19] [32]

Does this mean that our understanding of the revolutionary organisation has remained unchanged since the formation of the ICC? Does it mean that our understanding has not been enriched, deepened, during the debates and organisational struggles that the ICC has been through? If this were the case, then the ICC could stand accused of being a lifeless organisation without internal debate, a sect content with reciting the holy texts of the workers’ movement. This is not the place to go back over all the ICC’s organisational debates and struggles since its formation. On each occasion - if the ICC were not to be weakened or even liquidated - we have had to return to the study of the “organisational gains” of the workers’ movement, to reappropriate, sharpen, and enrich them.

But the reappropriation and enrichment that we have accomplished on the organisational question does not mean that we have changed our general position on this question, nor even our position on Lenin. The work we have done lies in continuity with history, and with the organisational legacy of the workers’ movement. We defy anyone to show that there has been a break in our position. The organisational question is as political as any other. Indeed, we consider that it is the central question which, in the final analysis, determines the ability to deal with all other theoretical and political questions. In this, we are in accord with Lenin. In this, our position remains the same one that we have always defended. We have always maintained that it was greater clarity on the organisational question, especially on the role of the fraction, that made it possible for the Italian Left not only to survive as an organisation, but even to be able to draw the clearest and most coherent theoretical and political lessons - including by taking up and developing the initial contributions of the Dutch and German Lefts - on the trades unions, state capitalism, and the state in the transitional period.

The ICC alongside Lenin in the fight against economism and the Mensheviks 

The ICC has always identified with the struggle of the Bolsheviks on the organisational question. Their example lay behind our insistence that “The idea that a revolutionary organisation builds itself voluntarily, consciously, with premeditation, far from being a voluntarist idea is on the contrary one of the concrete results of all marxist praxis”.[20] [33]

In particular, we have always declared our support for Lenin’s fight against economism. In the same way, we have always supported his struggle against those who were to become the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP. This is not new. Nor is it new that we consider What is to be done? (1902) as an essential work in the fight against economism, and One step forward, two steps back (1903) as a vital text in understanding what was at stake and along what lines the RSDLP split. It is nothing new for us to affirm that these two texts are classics of marxism, and that the main lessons that Lenin draws in them are still relevant today. To say that we agree with the struggle, the method used, and many of the arguments given in both texts in no way diminishes our criticism of Lenin’s errors.

What was essential in What is to be done? in the context of the time, in the Russia of 1902? What made it possible to take a step forward for the workers’ movement? What side should we have taken? The side of the economists, because Lenin repeats Kautsky’s incorrect conception of class consciousness? Or Lenin’s side, against the economist obstacle to the formation of a coherent organisation of revolutionaries?

What was essential in One step forward, two steps back? To side with the Mensheviks because Lenin, in the heat of the polemic, defended false ideas on certain points? Or to side with Lenin for the adoption of rigorous membership criteria, for a unified and centralised party against the continued existence of autonomous circles?

In this case, to pose the question is to answer it. Lenin himself corrected his mistakes on consciousness and the vision of a “militarised” party, especially after the experience of the 1905 mass strike in Russia. The existence of a Bolshevik fraction and a rigorous organisation gave the Bolsheviks the means to draw the most fruitful political lessons from 1905, although they were less clear at the outset on the dynamic of the mass strike, especially in comparison to Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, or even Plekhanov. It allowed them to overcome their previous mistakes.

What were Lenin’s mistakes? Some were linked to his polemics. Others were concerned with theoretical questions, especially on class consciousness.

Lenin “twists the bar” in his polemics 

Lenin’s defects were those of his qualities. A great polemicist, he would “twist the bar” (exaggerate) by taking up his opponents’ arguments and turning them around against their authors. “We all know now that the economists twisted the bar one way. To straighten it, I had to twist it in the opposite direction, which I did”.[21] [34] But this method, which is very effective in polemic and in clearly polarising the argument - vital in any debate - also has its limitations, and can become a weakness. By “twisting the bar”, Lenin exaggerated and deformed his real positions. What is to be done? illustrates the point, as he himself recognised:

“At the 2nd Congress, I had no notion of setting up my formulations in What is to be done? as special principles or “programmatic points”. On the contrary, I used the expression “straightening what has been twisted”, which was to be so extensively quoted afterwards. In What is to be done? I said that we had to correct everything that had been distorted (“twisted”) by the “economists” (...) The meaning of these words is clear: What is to be done? corrects economism polemically, and it would be wrong to judge the pamphlet from any other standpoint”.[22] [35]

Unfortunately, there are many today who judge What is to be done? and One step forward, two steps back “from another standpoint”, concerned more with the letter of the text than its spirit. There are many who take Lenin’s exaggerations literally. First, there were his contemporary critics, amongst them Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg who answered the second work in The organisation question in Russian social-democracy (1904). Twenty years later, the Stalinists used these words to justify “Leninism” and the Stalinist dictatorship, on the basis of these unfortunate formulations used in the heat of the polemic. When Lenin is accused of being dictatorial, bureaucratic, of Jacobinism, or preaching military discipline and a conspiratorial vision, out of a narrow spirit of party struggle, he takes up his opponents’ terms and develops them, “twisting the bar” in his turn. He is accused of having a conspiratorial view of the organisation when he defends the need for strict membership criteria, and for discipline in the conditions of repression and illegality? This is his response, as a polemicist:

“According to its form a strong revolutionary organisation of that kind in an autocratic country may also be described as a “conspirative” organisation, because the French word “conspiration” means in Russian “conspiracy”, and we must have the utmost conspiracy for an organisation of that kind. Secrecy is such a necessary condition for such an organisation that all the other conditions (number and selection of members, functions, etc) must all be subordinated to it. It would indeed be extremely naïve, therefore, to fear the accusation that we Social-Democrats desire to create a conspirative organisation. Such an accusation would be as flattering to every opponent of Economism as the accusation of being followers of Naro-dovolism[23] [36] would be”.[24] [37]

In his reply to Rosa Luxemburg (1904), which Kautsky and the German SPD leadership refused to publish, he denied being the source of the formulations that he adopted:

“Comrade Luxemburg says that according to me, “The Central Committee is the only active nucleus of the Party”. In reality, this is not exact. I have never defended such an opinion (...) Comrade Luxemburg writes that I preach the educational value of the factory. This is inexact: it was not me, but my adversary who claimed that I identify the Party with a factory. I derided my opponent appropriately by using his own words to demonstrate that he confused two aspects of factory discipline, which is unfortunately also the case with comrade Luxemburg”.[25] [38]

The error of What is to be done? on class consciousness 

By contrast, it is much more important to criticise a theoretical error by Lenin in What is to be done?. According to Lenin, “We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without”.[26] [39] We will not here go back over our criticism and our position on the question of consciousness.[27] [40] It is obvious that this position - which Lenin adopted from Kautsky - is not only false but extremely dangerous. It was to justify the party’s exercise of power in the place of the working class after October 1917. It was later to serve as an effective weapon of Stalinism, in particular in justifying the putschist uprisings in Germany in the 1920s, and above all in justifying the bloody repression of the working class in Russia.

Do we really need to point out that our position on this question remains unchanged?

The weaknesses of Rosa Luxemburg’s critique 

Lenin had to confront much criticism after the RSDLP’s 2nd Congress and the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Plekhanov and Trotsky were the only ones to reject explicitly the position that class consciousness “could only be brought from without”. The best-known critique was Rosa Luxemburg’s Organisation question in Russian social-democracy, which is used by today’s detractors of Lenin to... set the two great militants against each other and prove that the Stalinist worm was already present in the “Leninist” fruit. This, in other words, is the Stalinist lie turned on its head. In fact, Luxemburg deals mainly with the exaggerated positions (the “twisted bar”), and develops ideas which although correct in themselves remain abstract and detached from the real, practical struggle that took place at the Congress.

“Comrade Luxemburg sublimely ignores our party struggles, and discourses at length on questions which it is impossible to treat seriously (...) The comrade does not want to know what positions I upheld at the Congress, nor against whom my theses were directed. She prefers to treat me to a lesson on opportunism... in the countries of parliamentary democracy!”.[28] [41]

One step forward, two steps back clearly highlights what was at stake at the Congress, and in the struggle that took place there: the struggle against the continued existence of circles in the party, and for a clear and rigorous demarcation between the working class and the political organisation. Although she failed to appreciate the way they were posed concretely, Luxemburg remained clear as to the general aims:

“How to effect a transition from the type of organisation characteristic of the preparatory stage of the socialist movement - usually featured by disconnected local groups and clubs, with propaganda as a principal activity - to the unity of a large, national body suitable for concerted political action over the entire vast territory ruled by the Russian state? That is the specific problem which the Russian social-democracy has mulled over for some time”.[29] [42]

When we read this passage, it is clear that Luxemburg shared Lenin’s aims, and stood on the same ground. Considering the “centralist”, “authoritarian” even, position of both Luxemburg and Leo Jogisches in the Polish social-democracy - the SDKPiL - there can be no doubt that had she been a member of the RSDLP, she would have taken part in the fight against the circles and the Mensheviks. Lenin would surely have been obliged to rein in her energy, perhaps even her excesses.

As for us, today almost a century later, our position on the precise distinction between the political and unitary organisations of the working class comes to us from the Socialist International, and especially from the advances achieved by Lenin. In effect, he was the first - in the particular situation of Tsarist Russia - to pose the conditions for the development of a small minority organisation, whereas the replies of both Trotsky and Luxemburg were still governed by the idea of the mass party. Similarly, it is from Lenin’s struggle against the Mensheviks on Point 1 of the Statutes at the RSDLP’s 2nd Congress that we draw our rigorous and clearly defined position on membership of the communist organisation. Finally, we consider that this Congress and Lenin’s activity in it represent a high point in the theoretical and political development of the organisation question, especially on the issue of centralisation against federalist, individualist, and petty-bourgeois ideas. While recognising the positive part played by the circles in the initial regroupment of revolutionary forces, this is the point where it was necessary to go beyond this stage, and to form real unified organisations, to develop political relationships based on fraternity and mutual confidence among all the militants.

We have not changed our position on Lenin. Our basic organisational principles, especially our Statutes, which are based on and synthesise the experience of the workers’ movement on the question, are extensively inspired by the contributions made by Lenin in his struggle for the organisation. Without the experience of the Bolsheviks on the organisational question, there would be a large gap in the ICC’s organisational foundations, and in those of the communist party of tomorrow.

In the second part of this article, we will return to what is said, and what is not said, in What is to be done?, whose aim and contents have been and are largely ignored, or intentionally distorted. We will show that Lenin’s work is a real classic of marxism, and a historical contribution to the workers’ movement, on the level of both consciousness and organisation. In short, how far the ICC identifies also with What is to be done?.

RL

Between 16th and 19th December 1998, Iraq was hit by more cruise missiles than during the entire 1991 Gulf War. After threats which were not followed up in February and November 1998, the US has unleashed a new hell on an Iraqi population which has already been subjected to the terrible war of 1991 and the sanctions that followed, bringing in their wake famine, disease, and an intolerable poverty. When the Russian bloc collapsed in 1989, US President Bush announced "a new world order of peace and prosperity". Since then, we have seen increasing chaos, still more war, and an unprecedented chaos, still more war, and an unprecedented spread of poverty throughout the world. The recent bombing of Iraq has only added to the list. They also confirm what we wrote in the following article, which was completed before the last bombardment: "A bloody spiral of destruction in which the force employed by the US in defence of its authority tends to become more frequent and massive, the political results of these efforts more questionable, the generalisation of chaos and militarism more certain, the abandonment of common rules of the game more pronounced".

As the article demonstrates, the US is increasingly forced to act on its own account, without bothering to obtain the agreement of the UN, supposedly the guardian of "international law". This time, the bombing began during TV prime time in America, while the Security Council was still in session to examine the report drawn up by Richard Butler, head of UNSCOM, which was supposed to have been the pretext for the US intervention. This report is now notorious for being stuffed with lies, completely in contradiction with another report examined at the same time, drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Commission and which came to the conclusion that Iraq had complied with the UN�s decisions (1). The decidedly unenthusiastic reaction of the USA�s "allies" (with the exception of Britain (2)), including in particular Kofi Annan, to the US coup is a clear illustration that the American government has come rounund to a position long since adopted by a substantial part of the US bourgeoisie, represented especially by the Republican Party: undertaking unilaterally those interventions considered necessary to uphold US hegemony, rather than trying to obtain the agreement of other powers or of the UN (in order to hold them hostage). This disagreement within the US bourgeoisie as to the best means to uphold an increasingly beleaguered US hegemony in the world allows us to explain the "Monicagate" affair. In this sense, the abundance of "analyses" published in the press of other countries, explaining US strikes by Clinton�s desire to put off his impeachment, is solely intended to discredit US foreign policy by presenting it as sowing death and destruction to serve the president�s own sordid self-interest. In fact, Clinton did not launch unilateral strikes on Iraq because of Monicagate, rather there was a Monicagate because Clinton failed to adopt this line earlier, notably in February 1998. However, as the article that follows demonstrates, this new orientation of US policy will not be able to alter the essential given of international relations: growing chaos, and repeated use of armed force by the US to enforce its continually declining authority. Already, we can see that the only real success achieved by the American government is to have sabotaged the military rapprochement between Britain and the other European countries. As for the rest, the US strikes have only strengthened Saddam Hussein, while the diplomatic failure of Clinton�s journey to Israel and Palestine only highlights the limited success of the Wye Plantation agreement.

According to the bourgeois media, the year 1998 ended with an important strengthening of peace, international collaboration and the defence of human rights in the world. In the Persian Gulf, the threat of American and British force - backed up this time by the "international community" - imposed on Iraq the continuation of arms inspections aimed at removing weapons of mass destruction from the "irresponsible hands" of the bloody dictator Saddam Hussein. In the Middle East, the American sponsored "peace process" - on the verge of collapse - was salvaged by the Wye Plantation Agreement, through which US President Clinton, thanks to "endless hours of patient persuasion" pushed Arafat and Netanyahu to begin implementing parts of the "Oslo Agreement" based on the celebrated formula "land for peace". In the Balkans, NATO - again through the threat of violence - put an end to open, large scale military operations between Serbian and Kosovo-Albanian forces and imposed a fragile cease fire to be patrolled by international "observers for peace". And at the end of the year, U.S. and South African diplomacy launched a new offensive claimed to be capable of ending the war in the Congo, while the French President Chirac was even reready to shake the hand of the "Congolese dictator" Kabila at the Francophone African Summit in Paris, allegedly in pursuit of the same goal.

Has the bourgeoisie - at the end of a century during which it smashed the Communist International and turned the world into a gigantic imperialist slaughterhouse - begun to rule society according to the peace keeping charter of the United Nations and the humanitarian principles of Amnesty International? The propaganda of the ruling class, whether concerning the democratic crusade against Pinochet or the alleged peace established in The Middle East or in the Balkans, does all it can to place the imperialist conflicts of the present in this deceptive light. But the reality of these conflicts reveals exactly the opposite: the aggravation of the militarist barbarism of a capitalist system in agony, the continuing explosion of the imperialist struggle of each against all, the growing necessity for the USA to employ military force in defence of its global authority.

Behind the imposition of the "authority of the United Nations" (UN) on Iraq, the imposition of "negotiations" between Serbia and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), or of "land for peace" on the Israeli and Palestinian bourgeoisie, there lies the counter-offensive of American imperialism, against the global undermining of its authority. In reality, America has imposed itself in Iraq and in Kosovo precisely througrough a demonstrative disregard for the "rules" and "authority" of the United Nations, which in the past years has been increasingly employed against American interests.

Iraq: the US humiliates France and Russia in the UN Security Council

This in turn marks an important turning point in American policy towards the rest of the world, towards a more aggressively "unilateral" pursuit of its national interests. It was the USA itself which, in preparing a new military strike against Iraq in November, threw in the dustbin of history the charade of "unity" and "international legality" of the UN so dear to the heart of bourgeois propaganda. This was not always the US position. After the collapse of the world order of Yalta with the disintegration of the Russian imperialist bloc, it was the USA itself- at the height of its authority as the sole remaining world power - which used the UN and its Security Council to force the Gulf War on the rest of the world. By luring Saddam into invading Kuwait, Washington was able to present this war as a necessary defence of "international law" (which in class society has always been the right of the strongest), legitimised by the "international community". Saddam was trapped: he could not pull out of Kuwait without a fight, as this might have led to the fall of his regime. But with Saddam, the rest of the imperialist world, and above all the other main powers of the now the now defunct Western bloc were also trapped: obliged to take part in or pay for a war aimed in reality at crushing their ambitions towards a greater independence from the USA.

A year ago Iraq, having drawn the lessons of the Gulf War, turned the tables by itself using the UN and its Security Council against America. As opposed to the question of the occupation of Kuwait, Saddam now placed at the centre of the new Gulf crisis the obstruction of the UN armaments inspections: a secondary question which made it difficult for Washington to justify a common military action, and easy for Iraq to back down at any moment. This time the US, not Iraq was trapped, enabling the allies and advisors of Baghdad in the Security Council, France and Russia, and the UN Secretary General Annan to implement a "diplomatic solution", the main result of which was to prevent the deployment of American and British armed force, and thus humiliate the world�s leading power. This was the high point to date in the undermining of the authority of the sole remaining super-power, which already became manifest soon after the Gulf War when a recently re-united Germany sponsored the independence of Croatia and Slovenia and thus the break-up of Yugoslavia, against the will of Washington.

It is in response to this undermining of its leadership that the American counter-offensive is now responding, shaking off the shackle represented by the UN iUN in the process. In an attempt to shake off the embargo against Iraq and profit from the conflict of interest within the UN Security Council, Saddam again deployed the obstruction of the arms inspections in order to provoke a crisis, and again backed down at the last moment to prevent an American military strike. But this time Saddam had to back down so fast and under such humiliating circumstances, that the outcome of this crisis was undoubtedly a strengthening of America�s authority world wide. The difference this time was that the US, as opposed both to the Gulf War and to the crisis a year ago, no longer gave a damn about getting permission to strike from the UN. The "sympathy" and "understanding" which the other major powers showed for Washington�s "impatience with Saddam" - presented by bourgeois propaganda as a revival of the spirit of unity among the "great democracies" - is explained solely by the fact that the US was visibly no longer in the mood to be stopped by anybody. Openly criticising the aggressive American policy under such circumstances, while lacking the concrete means to obstruct it, would for the other powers have been equivalent to publicly sharing in the humiliation imposed on Saddam.

Kosovo: the US lays down the law via NATO

Long before the Iraq crisis of last year, the use of the UN against Washington was already clearly demonstrated by the different military conflictconflicts in ex-Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Here already, the principle big power backers of Serbia - Britain, France and Russia - used the UN in order to prevent the United States, for as long as possible, from playing a leading role, especially in the Bosnian conflict. And this is why, when the USA finally succeeded (momentarily) in imposing its authority on its European rivals in Bosnia via military strikes and the Dayton Agreement, this was done, not through the UN but through NATO, once the specific military organisation of the US imperialist bloc, and the one which Washington is still able to dominate. Alongside its show of might in the Gulf, the threat of a NATO military intervention in Kosovo and the rest of Serbia under US leadership constituted the second pillar of the American counter-offensive in defence of its leadership. The principle American success was not that it obliged Milosevic to withdraw troops from Kosovo: in reality Washington allowed the Serb army to remain there long enough to severely weaken the German backed Kosovo-Albanian KLA. Its success lay above all in obliging its pro-Serb NATO ex-Allies Britain and France to line up in support of its intervention threat against Serbia - a repetition of its success in Bosnia and, as far as France is concerned, during the Gulf War. Just like Saddam, Milosevic had to back down on time to prevent American missiles raining on his head. And here again (as with Iraq), the anti-American strategy of demanding a UN Security Council mandate for the use of military force against Serbia, a card openly played in the Kosovo crisis above all by Russia, was foiled by Washington�s newly pronounced "unilateralism". In view of the coming winter and the homelessness of the war refugees in Kosovo, declared Clinton, there could no longer be any question of the world�s leader waiting for "permission" to strike from the UN, Russia or anybody else.

The UN and NATO: the leftovers of the post-World War II world order become battlefields of the great powers

The United Nations, like its predecessor the League of Nations, is not a peace-keeping organisation uniting the capitalist powers under a common international law, but an imperialist den of thieves, the role of which is completely determined by the balance of power between the main capitalist rivals. It is precisely for this reason that the evolution of the policy of the USA towards the UN is not without significance. During the Cold War the UN, strictly divided between the two imperialist blocs, mainly served bourgeois pacifist propaganda, although it could sometimes be used by the Western bloc with its clear majority among the permanent members of the Security Council (composed of the winning powers from World War II). After 1989, the capacity of the USA to exploit the UN for its own interests was to prove short-lived. Tlived. The Gulf War, that dramatic demonstration of the superiority of the US over the rest of the imperialist world, was quickly followed by the explosion of "every man for himself" in the relations between capitalist states, and thus the undermining of US leadership. Since, in a world without imperialist blocs, chaos and "every man for himself" inevitably became the dominant tendency in the world, the UN itself inevitably began to be used to undermine American authority. This is why the American bourgeoisie, throughout the 1990s, has taken an increasingly hostile stance towards that organisation, regularly refusing to pay its membership fees. Nevertheless, until the present American offensive, the Clinton Administration hesitated to write off the United Nations as a possible instrument for the mobilisation of other powers behind itself. Indeed, the dissatisfaction of important parts of the American bourgeoisie in the face of these hesitations partly explains the recent pressure on Clinton through the Lewinsky Affair. Present US policy towards Iraq and Serbia shows that the US has indeed been obliged to pursue much more of a "go it alone" policy than at the time of the Gulf War or even Dayton. In reality, this policy is the admission by the world�s super-power itself that the dominant trend is towards every man for himself, not American leadership. Of course, when the United States sets its armed forces in motion, there is no power in the world capable of opposing it. But in so doing the US, while enhancing its status as first power, will only undermine its own leadership, and increase international chaos.

By tossing aside the rules of the game of the UN, Washington has effectively rendered this dinosaur from the end of the last World War more or less irrelevant. But this development will benefit not only America, but also its most important rivals: the vanquished powers of World War II, Germany and Japan, both excluded from the Security Council. More important: from now on NATO itself will become the most important political body within which the rivalries between the ex-allies of the Western Bloc will be fought out. It was not least in response to the imposition of US policy towards Kosovo via the NATO that Germany�s new foreign minister Fischer called for a renunciation of the alliance�s first strike nuclear strategy (3), and that Blair at the summit meeting with the French government in St. Malo officially committed Britain to what is called "strengthening the European pillar of NATO" - at the expense of America of course. This represents a raising of the stakes in the conflict between the great powers. NATO, like the UN, is a left over from a past world order. But it is a much more important remnant, still representing the main instrument of America�s military presence in Europe.

The Wye Agreement: an American warning rning to its European rivals

But if the threat of war against Saddam and Milosevic is an expression, not of unity but rivalry between the great powers, surely the Wye Plantation Agreement between Clinton, Netanyahu and Arafat is a triumph of peaceful persuasion, warmly welcomed in Europe? In reality Wye, however modest and fragile the agreement between Israel and the PLO, is another victory for US imperialism, not least because the CIA has officially been charged with implementing part of it. Nor was the "persuasion" exercised by the USA quite so peaceful: the American military mobilisation in the Gulf at the same moment was intended, indirectly, as a warning to Netanyahu and Arafat as much as to Saddam. Above all, it was a warning to the European rivals of America not to poke their noses too closely into one of the strategically most important and explosive zones of the world, where America intends to maintain its dominance at all costs.

Such warnings are more than necessary. Despite the present US offensive, the struggle of the other powers to shake off American domination can only sharpen. Precisely because the US is militarily able to impose its interests at the expense of any other existing power, none of these other imperialisms have a basic interest in a further strengthening of the American position. This also goes for Britain, which has common interests with America in relation to Iraq, but oppos opposed interests in Europe, Africa, and not least in the Middle East. The other powers are condemned to contest the USA, whether they want to or not, thus plunging the world into barbarism. The US, as the sole possible representative of capitalist world order, is condemned to impose its order, thus plunging the world into barbarism. The basis of this contradiction is the absence of blocs. When blocs exist, the strengthening of the leader enforces the position of the other bloc members against the rival bloc. In the absence of such a rival, and thus of imperialist blocs, the strengthening of the leader contradicts the interest of the others. This is why the explosion of each for himself, as well as the counter-offensives of the US, are a given of the present historical situation. Today, as during the Gulf War, the US is on the offensive. Although no American missiles were fired against Iraq or Serbia this time, today�s situation represents not a repetition of the early 90s, but an escalation. A bloody spiral of destruction in which the force employed by the US in defence of its authority tends to become more frequent and massive, the political results of these efforts more questionable, the generalisation of chaos and militarism more certain, the abandonment of common rules of the game more pronounced. The rivalry between the "western democracies", the alleged "vanquishers of Communism" is at the very heart of this barbarism, which in the long term threatens the survival of humanity even without a Third World War. Understanding the essence of this imperialist barbarism must become part of the proletariat�s class consciousness and its determination to destroy the capitalist system.

6 December 1998

1)In fact, we have since learnt that the report was written in close collaboration with the US government. Nor is this the first time that the latter has produced falsified evidence to justify military action. For example, the 5th August 1964 attack on two US destroyers by the North-Vietnamese fleet, which served as the pretext for beginning the bombardment of North Vietnam, turned out afterwards to have been a pure fabrication. The technique is as old as war itself, and one of its best-known cases was the famous "Ems telegram" of 13th July 1870, which allowed Bismarck to push France into declaring war on Prussia - a war which the latter was sure of winning.

2)Although we should note that Blair�s support for US action was not unanimously approved by the British bourgeoisie, being severely criticised by much of the press.

3)Existing NATO strategy envisages being the first to use nuclear strikes.

From the Left Opposition's debate within the CI to the rejection of national liberation struggles by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left.

However, the situation in China was also one of the questions which allowed the "Left Opposition" to structure itself, and the "Italian Left" (which published the review Bilan) to affirm itself politically as one of the most important currents within the international opposition, a current which in the years that followed developed an activity and a political reflection of inestimable value.

The crushing of the revolution in China

The mid-1920s were a crucial period for the working class and its revolutionary organisations. Could the revolution still develop and advance on a world level? If not, could the Russian revolution survive for long in its isolation? These were questions that preoccupied the communist movement, and the whole CI was hanging on the possibilities of the revolution in Germany. Since 1923, the policy 0 the CI had been to push for insurrection. Zinoviev, who was still its president, had totally underestimated the scale of the defeat in Germany[2]. He declared that it was merely an episode and that new revolutionary assaults were on the agenda in several countries. The CI clearly had a feeble political compass, and in trying to make up for the ebb of the revolutionary wave, it fell into an increasingly opportunist strategy. From 1923 onwards, Trotsky and the first Left Opposition denounced its grave errors and showed their tragic consequences, but did not go so far as to speak of treason. The degeneration of the CI gathered pace; at the end of 1925 the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin triumvirate came apart, and the CI was then under the leadership of Stalin and Bukharin. The "putschist" policy which had prevailed under Zinoviev was replaced by a policy based on the view that capitalism had entered a long phase of "stabilisation". This was the right wing course, which in Europe centred round the united front with the "reformist" parties[3]. In China the CI adopted a policy which went beyond even what the Mensheviks had advocated for the economically undeveloped countries. From 1925 onwards, it put forward the idea that what was on the agenda was the Kuomintang's policy and the bourgeois revolution: the communist revolution would have to come afterwards. This position ended up leading the Chinese workers to the slaughter.

In fact it was during the ultra-leftist, putschist period that the CI harassed the CCP into entering into the Kuomintang, which at the CI's 5th Congress was declared a "sympathising party" of the International (Pravda, 25 June 1924). It was a "sympathising" party that would be the gravedigger of the proletariat!

The Stalinised CI "considered the Koumintang to be an organ of the Chinese national revolution. The communists went en masse under the name and banner of the Kuomintang. This policy led to the communists entering the national government in March 1927. They were given the portfolios of Agriculture (after the party declared itself opposed to any agrarian revolution and in favour of "stopping the overly vigorous actions by the peasants"), and of Labour, in order to channel the working masses towards a policy of compromise and treason. The CCP July plenum also pronounced itself to be against the seizure of the land, against the arming of the workers and peasants - in other words, for the liquidation of the party and the class movements of the workers and for subjecting them totally to the Kuomintang, in order to avoid a break with the latter at any cost. All were in agreement with this criminal policy. From the right under Peng Chou Chek, to the centre under Chen Duxiu and the so-called left under Tsiou Tsiou-Bo" (Bilan no. 9, July 1934).

This opportunist policy, so brilliantly analysed by Bilan a few years later, having pushed the CCP to more or less dissolve into the Kuomintang, resulted in a terrible defeat for the Chinese workers: "on 26'h March, Chiang Kai-Chek began his coup by arresting a number of communists and sympathisers ... These facts were hidden from the Executive Committee of the CI, whereas much noise had been made about Chiang Kai-Chek's anti-imperialist speech at the Congress of Labour in 1926. The Kuomintang troops began their march towards the north. This would serve as a pretext for stopping the strikes in Canton, Hongkong, etc ... As the troops approached there was an uprising in Shanghai, the first between 19 and 24 February; the second, on 21 March, was victorious. Chiang Kai-Chek's troops only entered the city on 26 March. On 3 April, Trotsky wrote a warning against the 'Chinese Pilsudski'[4]. On 5 April Stalin declared that Chiang Kai-Chek had accepted discipline, that the Kuomintang was a kind of revolutionary bloc or parliament"[5].

"Following these events, the delegation of the Communist International, on 17 April, gave its support at Hunan to the 'left Kuomintang'[6], in which the communist ministers participated. There, on 15 July, there was a re-edition of the Shanghai coup. The victory of the counter-revolution was ensured. A period of systematic massacre followed: it was estimated discretely that 25, 000 communists were killed". And, in September 1927 "the new leadership of the CP ... fixed the insurrection for 13 December ... A soviet was set up from above. The uprising was brought forward to the 10 December. On the 13th, it was totally repressed. The second Chinese revolution had been definitively crushed"[7].

The Chinese question and the Russian opposition

The defeat of the Chinese revolution represented the most severe condemnation of the strategy of the CI after the death of Lenin, and above all of the Stalinised CI.

In his letter to the VIth Congress of the CI, July 1928 (see The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder Press, 1970), Trotsky wrote that the opportunist policy of the CI had first weakened the proletariat in Germany in 1923, then deceived it and betrayed it in Britain and finally in China. "Here are the immediate and indisputable causes of the defeats". And he went on "In order to grasp the significance of the present left turn[9], we have to have a complete view not only of the slide towards the general right-centrist line which was totally unmasked in 1926-27, but also of the previous ultra-left period of 1923-25 in preparing this slide".

In effect, the CI leadership had repeated over and over again in 1924 that the revolutionary situation was still developing and that "there would be decisive battles in the near future". "It was on the basis of this fundamentally false judgement that the Vth Cngress established its whole orientation, around the middle of 1924"[10]. The Opposition expressed its disagreement with this vision and "sounded the alarm"[11]. "In spite of the political reflux, the Vth Congress demonstrably oriented itself towards insurrection ... 1924 became the year of adventures in Bulgaria[12] and Estonia[13]". This ultra-leftism of 1924-25, "completely disoriented in front of the situation, was replaced by a right deviation"[14].

The Left Opposition stood against the line of a "bloc with the Kuomintang", maintained by Stalin and theorised by Bukharin and the ex-Menshevik Martynov. The problems debated were the role of the national bourgeoisie, of nationalism and the class independence of the proletariat.

• that the Chinese revolution depended on the general course of the world proletarian revolution. And against the vision of the CI which advocated support for the Kuomintang in order to carry out the bourgeois revolution, he called on the Chinese communists to leave the Kuomintang;
• that in order to move towards revolution, the Chinese workers should arm themselves and form soviets[16].

This text was followed on 14th April by Zinoviev's Theses addressed to the Politburo of the CP of the USSR[17]. Here he reaffirmed Lenin's position on national liberation struggles, in particular that a Communist Party must not subordinate itself to any other party and that the proletariat must not stray onto the terrain of interclassism. He also reaffirmed the idea that "the history of the revolution has shown that any bourgeois democratic revolution, if it does not transform itself into a socialist revolution, inevitably lakes the path of reaction".

However, even if was defeated, the Opposition's combat within the CI was fundamental. It had an enormous international echo, in all the CPs. Above all, it is certain that without it, the present-day left communist currents would not exist. In China itself, where the Stalinists imposed a black-out on the texts of the Opposition, Chen Duxiu managed to send his Letter to all members of the CCP (he was excluded from the party in August 1929; his letter is dated 10 December of the same year), in which he took position against Stalin's opportunism on the Chinese question.

There was finally a regroupment after Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, a regroupment which took the name International Left Opposition (ILO), but this also failed to make use of many of the energies of the time.

• the Communist League (Opposition) for France, A Rosmer
• the united left opposition of the German Communist Party, K Landau
• the Spanish Communist Opposition, J Andrade, J Gorkin
• the Belgian Communist Opposition, Hennaut
• the Communist League of America, M Schachtman, M Abern
• the Communist Opposition (Communist Left of Austria), D Karl, C Mayer
• the Austrian CP (Opposition), Prey * the "Internal Group" of the Austrian CP, Frank
• the Czechoslovak Left Opposition, W Krieger
• the Italian Left Fraction, Candiani
• the New Italian Opposition (NOI), Santini, Blasco,

pronounced in favour of the positions defended by Trotsky then those developed in his Letter to the VIth Congress of the CI in 1928. They even signed a joint declaration "To the communists of China and the whole world" (12 December 1930). Candiani[19] signed it in the name of the Italian Fraction.

The lessons drawn by the Italian Left

While the ILO had been moving towards a clear understanding of the tasks of the hour, very quickly its uncritical political attachment to the first four congresses of the CI made it tilt towards opportunist positions as soon as the revolutionary tide patently went into retreat. This was not the same with the Italian Fraction which clearly differentiated itself on the three issues under debate concerning the colonial countries (national liberation struggles, democratic slogans and wars between imperialists in these countries).

The national question and the revolution in the countries on the capitalist periphery

Contrary to the theses of the IInd Congress of the CI, the Fraction adopted a Resolution on the Sino-Japanese conflict (February 1932), in which it posed this question in a radically new way for the workers' movement. It make a break with the classic position on national liberation struggles[20]:

It goes on: "The role of the proletariat is to struggle for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat ...

During the course of the 1930s, the Fraction's position became even more precise, as can be seen from the Resolution on the Sino-Japanese conflict, December 1937 (Bilan 45):

Democratic Slogans

With the question of democratic slogans the same problem was being posed - that of national liberation struggles. Could there still be different programmes for the proletariat of the developed countries and for those where the bourgeoisie had not yet carried out its revolution?

"We said that in countries where capitalism had not established its economic and political leadership over society (the example of the colonies), the conditions existed - for a certain period - for a struggle by the proletariat for democracy. But we also insisted that this should not be defined in a vague way, that we had to be precise about the class basis for this struggle ... In the present situation of the mortal crisis of capitalism, this would be destined to precipitate the dictatorship of the party of the proletariat ...

• slogans which are directly linked to the exercising of power by a given class;
• slogans which express the content of bourgeois revolutions and which capitalism - in the present situation - does not have the possibility or the function of carrying out;
• slogans which relate to the colonial countries where there is a crossover between the problems of the struggle against imperialism, of the bourgeois revolution and of the proletarian revolution;
• 'false' democratic slogans, ie those which correspond to the vital needs of the labouring masses.

To the second point belong above all the tasks of social transformation in the countryside.

"The institutional democratic slogans

... the political disagreement between our Fraction and the Russian left has expressed itself more clearly. But we have to be definite that this disagreement remains in the realm of tactics, as has been proved by a meeting between Bordiga and Lenin ..."

In Spain, the fact that the Opposition has adopted the political position of supporting the so-called democratic transformation of the state, has removed any possibility of a serious development in our section of the questions that relate to the resolution of the communist crisis.

Democratic slogans and the agrarian question

(...) A transformation (the liberation of the agrarian economy from the social relations of feudalism) of the economy of a country like Spain into an economy like the ones in the more advanced countries will coincide with the victory of the proletarian revolution. But this does not mean at all that capitalism cannot set out on the road towards this transformation ... The communist programmatic position must continue to fully reaffirm the demand for the 'socialisation of the land'":

"The institutional slogans of the colonial question

We want to deal here with the colonial countries, where, despite the industrialisation of an important part of the economy, capitalism still does not exist as a governing class in power"

The partial demands of the working class

The bourgeois parties and above all the social democracy insist particularly on the need to guide the masses towards the defence of democracy. They demand - and because of the lack of a communist party, have obtained this - that the workers abandon the struggle for the defence of wages and in general of the masses' living standards, as is now happening in Germany".

The imperialist war and the Chinese Trotskyists

In this domain, Trotsky ended up reneging on the positions he had defended in 1925-27, the ones he had defended in The International After Lenin (as well as in his declaration 'To the communists in China and the whole world' in 1930). At that time he had stood by the idea that the bourgeois solution of imperialist war must be opposed by the proletariat's struggle for its own revolutionary interests, since "the bourgeoisie has definitively gone over to the camp of the counter-revolution". In addressing the members of the Chinese Communist Party, he had added: "Your coalition with the bourgeoisie was correct up until 1924, even up to the end of 1927, but now it has no value".

Bilan violently attacked Trotsky's position in its Resolution on the Sino-Japanese conflict in February 1932.

The Fraction even published an article, in Bilan no. 46, January 1938, which was entitled "A great renegade with a peacock's tail: Leon Trotsky"[24].

At the end of this article it is important to note that only the Italian Fraction was able to develop the arguments which showed why national liberation struggles were no longer 'progressive' but had become counter-revolutionary in the present phase of the development of capitalism. It was the Gauche Communiste de France, and later on the ICC, who were to strengthen this position by giving it a solid theoretical foundation.

MR

[1] Zinoviev's Theses for the Politburo of the CP of the USSR, 14 April 1927.

[2] Cf. the articles in recent issues of the International Review on the German revolution. Trotsky wrote that the failure in 1923 in Germany was "a gigantic defeat" (The International after Lenin).

[3] The name given to the socialist or social democratic parties which had betrayed during the First World War.

[4] The Polish dictator who had just crushed the Polish working class: a founding member of the Polish Socialist Party which was a reformist and nationalist tendency.

[5] Trotsky in The International after Lenin.

[6] The existence of a "Left Koumintang" was a fable invented by the Stalinised CI.

[7] Harold Isaacs. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution 1925-27

[8] Bilan no. 9 July 1934

[9] This was the term for the course followed by the CI after 1927

[10] Underlined by Trotsky himself

[11] idem, Trotsky

[12] An uprising which took place from the 19 to the 28 September before being crushed

[13] In December 1924 an uprising was organised involving 200 CP members. It was smashed in a matter of hours.

[14] ibid Trotsky

[15] At the end of 1925, the Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev triumvirate fell apart. An oppositional 'bloc' was formed called the United Opposition.

[16] We know today that this slogan wasn't adequate: Trotsky himself questioned its validity since the course was no longer favourable to revolution

[17] Theses which were to have been discussed at the future 7th Plenum of the CI and the 15th Congress of the CP of the USSR.

[18] This was what the opposition called "The Thermidor of the Russian revolution".

[19] Enrico Russo (Candiani), a member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Fraction

[20] Even today the Bordigist component has trouble taking up the position of the Fraction: for example it accuses the lCC's position of being "indifferentist".

[21] The only tendency which took up the same position as Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Communist Left was constituted by the Revolutionary Workers' League (known after the name of its representative, Oelher) and the Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas (also known after its representative Eiffels).

[22] This referred to the "Aventin " tactic in which the CP withdrew from the parliament dominated by the fascists and regrouped at Aventin with the centrists and social-democrats. This policy was denounced as opportunist by Bordiga.

[23] This refers to the Stalinised CI and CPs.

[24] For our part, we consider that Trotsky did not betray the working class since he dies before the generalisation of the world war. This doesn't apply to the Trotskyists (Cf our pamphlet Le Trotskyisme contre la Classe Ouvierre).

The plunge into an open recession which will be still deeper than its predecessors - some are even talking of "depression" - is silencing the "experts’" talk about lasting economic growth. If the latter are to be believed, the domino collapse of the South-East Asian economies since summer 1997 should have been no more than a blip, without any great effect on the economies of the developed countries. Since then, a tidal wave has passed over countries from Russia to Brazil, from Venezuela to Japan, to strike the heart of the great capitalist powers: "the time has come for an agonising reappraisal". has come for an agonising reappraisal".

Perspectives for the main countries - Annual GDP in %

Between July and December 1998, at least $3.5 trillion have gone up in smoke as the stock markets collapsed: the equivalent to 12% of annual world production has been lost, half in the USA, the rest in Europe and Asia. In Japan, the state has decided to inject $520 billion "into its banks, in order to save them from sinking and to reanimate the world’s second economy". Everywhere, "analysts are revising abruptly downwards forecast company profits, just as the first massive redundancies are being announced". The self-satisfaction among the West European ruling classes at the launch of the euro can barely hide their deep anxiety. They are talking less and less about Europe’s supposedly "sheltered" status from the rest of the world economy. Everywhere, "the forecast of 2% growth for 1999, originally considered too pessimistic, may well turn out, on the contrary, very difficult to achieve".

All this would be laughable, were it not that the first to suffer the cost of this new and dramatic acceleration in the crisis will be the hundreds of millions of workers and unemployed, who willemployed, who will be plunged into growing poverty with no hope of a way out. The African continent has already been virtually abandoned to its fate, prey to the ravages of famine, disease, massacres, and constant "local" wars. Now it is the turn of the South-East Asian countries to be dragged down in the spiral of social decomposition sweeping all before it. In the USA, the losses on the stock exchange directly affect millions of workers whose savings and pension funds are invested in the stock market. In the developed countries, despite all the reassuring talk, the ruling class is unleashing new attacks against working class living conditions: cuts in wages and in all kinds of social benefits, "flexibility", lay-offs, "job cuts", savage cuts in health service budgets, housing and education; the list of measures being concocted in the "democratic" countries is a long one, as the bourgeoisie tries to save its profits in the world financial storm.

What is happening is neither a "healthy purge" nor a "readjustment", in the face of excessive speculation, which need simply be regulated to stave off disaster. Unbridled speculation is only a symptom of the dead-end in which the world economy finds itself. It is the result of the impossibility of countering the shrinking world market and the falling rate of profit. In a merciless trade war between all the world’s capitalists, the capital that cannot be invested in production because the inanadequacy of the market means that it would make a loss, takes refuge in a financial speculation which is all the more hazardous in that it corresponds, not to any production in the real economy, but simply to massive and generalised debt. The shattering failure of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund is a striking illustration: "Although this speculative fund only had $4.7 billion of capital, its debt had risen to $100 billion. According to some estimates, its total commitments on the market represented $1.3 trillion, almost the value of France’s GDP! A giddy rise in commitments involving some of the great names in world finance". We are certainly confronted with unbridled speculation. But those who today are outraged at "such practices" neglect, above all, to mention that these are the "normal" functioning of capitalism today. "All the great names of world finance" - banks, companies, private and state financial institutions - behave in the same way, following the instructions of the states which fix the rules of the game, and the advice of international organisms like the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD and others, which can be summed up as "reduce the cost of labour by every means possible!".

With disaster at the heart of the industrialised world, the "experts" seem to have discovered the "damage" done by the "reduction in the state" and "globalisation" that for almost 20 years have been the main themes of p propaganda for a "rich, free, and prosperous" capitalism. During the same 20 years, the working class has learned to its cost what this propaganda is worth: a mystification to justify the attacks on workers’ living conditions, and a proliferation of measures intended to maintain the competitiveness of each national capital against its rivals in the economic war. Apart from its use against the working class, the defence of "less state" and "globalisation" has above all been a weapon of the powerful against the weak. The "less state" and the denunciation of "protectionism" by the North American bourgeoisie has not stopped the US increasing from 20% to 35% the proportion of imports subjected to draconian controls in the name of "safety" or "pollution", or any other alibi to hide its own protectionism. While the state has disposed of a whole series of responsibilities in the management of large companies, through privatisation, this does not mean that it has given up its prerogative of political control over the national capital, or that the framework of capitalist economic management has gone beyond national frontiers. Quite the contrary: "less state" was nothing but the form of each national capital’s necessary adaptation to the intensification of an economic war in which the state has always played the commanding role, hand in hand with the major companies. "Globalisation" was nothing but the imposition of rules for the same economic war, to give the great capitalist powers as much of a free hand as possible to pillage their rivals on the battleground of the world market. Today, the idea of "more state" is making a comeback in the bourgeoisie’s propaganda, especially on the part of Western Europe’s social-democratic governments, because the new acceleration of world capitalism’s inexorable bankruptcy has once again brought to the fore the elementary demands of capital: close ranks against each national capital to confront the competition and attack the living conditions of the working class.

After 30 years of descent into the abyss of economic crisis (whose main characteristics and moments of acceleration since the 1970s we summarise in the article that follows), today the heart of the capitalist "world economic order" is unsteady. Behind the international solidarity put forward to confront the "Asian crisis", and the apparent common desire to "rethink the international monetary system", or to "reinvent Bretton Woods", the bourgeoisie of the main industrialised countries has in fact been drawn into an ever sharper struggle of "each against all", a considerable reinforcement of state capitalism as the policy of determined defence of each national capital, whose main target in every country is the working class, and a flight into conflict as we can see from the sharpening imperialist tensions that we also deal with in this issue.

4 January 1999

Note: Sources for this article include L’Expansion [78], December 1998; World Bank [79], December 1998; Le Monde Diplomatique [80], "Anatomie d’une crise financière", November-December 1998.

The 20th century began with the entry of the capitalist system into its phase of decadence: with the First World War, and with the first world wide revolutionary storm of the proletariat which brought that war to a halt and opened the combat for a communist society. Already at that time, revolutionary marxism announced the alternative facing humanity - socialism or barbarism - and predicted that in the event of the failure of the revolution, the First World War would be followed by a second one, and by the greatest and most dangerous regression of human culture in the history of humanity. With the isolation and strangulation of the October revolution in Russia  - the result of the defeat of the world revolution -  the most profound counter-revolution in history triumphed for half a century. In 1968 a new undefeated generation of proletarians brought this counter-revolution to an end, and barred the road to the inherent culmination of capitalism’s descent into a third world war and the probable destruction of humanity. Twenty years later, Stalinism was toppled - not however by the proletariat, but as the result of the entry of the decadent capitalism into its final phase of decomposition.

Ten years on, the century is ending as it begun: with economic convulsions, imperialist conflicts and developing class struggles. The year 1999 especially is already marked by a considerable aggravation in imperialist conflicts, clearly shown by the NATO military offensive unleashed against Serbia at the end of March.

Today, a capitalism in its death throes is facing one of the most difficult and dangerous moments in modern history, comparable in gravity to that of the two world wars, to the outbreak of proletarian revolution in 1917-19, or to the Great Depression which began in 1929. But today, neither world war nor world revolution are pending in the foreseeable future. Rather, the gravity of the situation is conditioned by a sharpening of contradictions  at all levels:

- imperialist tensions and the development of world disorder;

- a very advanced and dangerous moment in the crisis of capitalism;

- attacks against the world proletariat unprecedented since the last world war;

- and an accelerating decomposition of bourgeois society.

In this situation, so full of danger, the bourgeoisie has placed the reins of government in the hands of that political current best able to take care of its interests: Social Democracy, the current mainly responsible for crushing the world revolution after 1917-18. The current which saved capitalism at that time, and is now returning to the controls in order to defend the threatened interests of the capitalist class.

The responsibility weighing on the proletariat today is enormous. Only by developing its militancy and consciousness can it bring forth the revolutionary alternative which alone can secure the survival and the further ascent of human society. But the most important responsibility weighs on the shoulders of the communist left, the existing organisations of the proletarian  camp. They alone can furnish the theoretical and historical lessons and the political method without which the revolutionary minorities emerging today cannot attach themselves to the preparation of the class party of the future. In some ways, the communist left finds itself in a similar situation today to that of Bilan in the 1930s, in the sense that it is obliged to understand a new and unprecedented historical situation. Such a situation requires both a profound attachment to the theoretical and historical approach of marxism, and revolutionary audacity in understanding situations which are not really covered by the schemas of the past. In order to fulfil this task, open debates between the existing organisations of the proletarian milieu are indispensable. In this sense, the discussion, clarification and regroupment, the propaganda and intervention of the small revolutionary minorities is an essential part of the proletarian response to the gravity of the world situation on the threshold of the next millennium.

Furthermore, faced with the unprecedented intensification of capitalist military barbarity, the working class demands of its communist vanguard the full assumption of its responsibilities in defence of proletarian internationalism. Today, the groups of the communist left are alone in defending the classic positions of the workers’ movement against imperialist war. Only the groups which belong to this current - the only one which did not betray during World War II - can give a class response to the questioning which is bound to appear within the working class.

The revolutionary groups must give as united a response as possible, thereby giving expression to the indispensable unity of the proletariat against the unleashing of chauvinism and conflicts between nations. In doing so, the revolutionaries will adopt the tradition of the workers’ movement which figured especially in the conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and in the policies of the left within these conferences.     

Imperialist conflicts

1) The new war which has just broken out in ex-Yugoslavia with NATO’s bombardment of Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, is the most important event on the imperialist scene since the collapse of the Eastern bloc at the end of the 1980s. This is because:

- this war does not just concern a peripheral country, as was the case with the Gulf War in 1991, but a European one;

- this is the first time since World War II that a European country and its capital has been massively bombarded;

- this is the also first time since World War II that the main defeated country of World War II - Germany - has intervened by committing combat troops directly in battle;

- this war is an additional major step forward in the process of the destabilisation of Europe, with an immense impact on the exacerbation of worldwide chaos.

Thus, after the breakup of Yugoslavia from 1991 onwards, its main component, Serbia, is now itself threatened with disintegration, while at the same time the eventual disappearance of the remains of the old Yugoslav federation (Montenegro and Serbia) is looming on the horizon. More generally, the present war, notably through the massive arrival of refugees in Macedonia, is bringing with it a destabilisation of this country and threatens to involve Bulgaria and Greece which both have their own pretensions to be considered as its “godfathers”. The involvement of Greece also threatens to draw in Turkey, and thus to provoke a conflagration throughout the Balkans and much of the Mediterranean.

Moreover, the war which has just broken out is likely to create serious difficulties within a whole series of European bourgeoisies.

In the first place, the intervention of NATO against a traditional ally of Russia is for the bourgeoisie of this country a veritable provocation which threatens to destabilise it still further. On the one hand, it is clear that Russia no longer has the means to weigh on the world situation as soon as the great powers, and especially the USA, are involved. At the same time, a whole series of sectors within the Russia bourgeoisie are protesting at Russia’s present impotence, especially the ex-Stalinist and ultra-nationalist sectors, which will destabilise the country’s government even more. Moreover, the paralysis of the Moscow government’s authority can only incite the different republics of the Russian Federation to contest the central government.

Furthermore, although a real homogeneity exists within the German bourgeoisie in favour of intervention, other bourgeoisies such as the French may be affected by the contradiction between their traditional alliance with Serbia, and their participation in the NATO action. Similarly, bourgeoisies like the Italian bourgeoisie have reason to fear the repercussions of the present situation in the shape of a new influx of refugees from this part of the world.          

2) One aspect which most emphasises the extreme gravity of the war taking place today is precisely the fact that it is happening at the heart of the Balkans, which  since the beginning of the century has been seen as the powder-keg of Europe.

The war of 1914 was preceded by two Balkan wars, which already contained some of the premises of World War I. Above all, the first world slaughter began in the Balkans with Austria’s desire to tame Serbia, and Russia’s reaction in favour of its Serbian ally. The formation of the first Yugoslav state after World War I was an expression of the military defeat of Austria and Germany. In this sense it was, like the Versailles Treaty, one of the main points of friction which opened the way to World War II. During the war the different components of Yugoslavia lined up behind their traditional allies (Croatia with Germany, Serbia with the Allies); the reconstitution of the Yugoslav state after World War II, within frontiers very close to those of the first Yugoslav state, was once again a concretisation of the defeat of the German bloc and of the fact that the Allies intended to maintain a barrier to the ambitions of German imperialism in the direction of the Middle East.

In this sense, Germany’s very offensive attitude in the direction of the Balkans immediately after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, once there was no longer any need for solidarity against the USSR (an attitude which stimulated the break-up of Yugoslavia with the formation of the independent states of Slovenia and Croatia), highlighted the fact that this region was becoming once again a major theatre of confrontation between the imperialist powers in Europe.

Today, a further factor in the seriousness of the situation is that, contrary to the First or even the Second World Wars, the USA now has a definite military presence in this part of the world. The world’s greatest power could not remain outside one of the major theatres of imperialist confrontation in Europe and the Mediterranean. It has thus demonstrated its intention to be present in all the crucial zones of confrontation between different imperialist interests.          

3) Although the Balkans are an epicentre of imperialist tension, the form of the present war (all the NATO countries against Serbia) does not reflect the real antagonistic interests of the different belligerent countries. Before we put forward the real war aims of the the countries involved, it is necessary to reject the false explanations which have been given for the war.

The official justification by the NATO countries (ie that this is a humanitarian operation in favour of the Kosovo Albanian population) is utterly disproved by the mere fact that this population has never before suffered such repression on the part of the Serbian armed forces, and the fact that both the American and the other NATO bourgeoisies knew perfectly well that this would happen before the operation, as indeed some sectors of the US bourgeoisie are pointing out today. The NATO operation is not the first military intervention to dress itself up as a humanitarian action, but it is one of those where the lie appears most blatantly.

We must also reject any idea that the present NATO action represents a reconstitution of a Western camp against the power of Russia. The fact that the Russian bourgeoisie is seriously affected by the present war does not mean that this was one of the aims of the NATO countries. These countries, and particularly the USA, have no interest in aggravating the chaos reigning in Russia today.

Moreover, those explanations (which we find even amongst the revolutionary groups) which try to interpret the present NATO offensive as an attempt to control the region’s raw materials express an under-estimation of, or even a blindness towards, what is really at stake in the present situation. By trying to give a narrowly materialist explanation based solely on immediate economic interests, they are leaving the terrain of a real marxist understanding of the present situation.

This situation is determined in the first place by the need for the world’s greatest power constantly to assert its military supremacy despite the evaporation of its authority over its ex-allies following the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

Secondly, Germany’s active presence in this conflict, for the first time in half a century, is the expression of a new step in the assertion of its status as a candidate to the leadership of a future imperialist bloc. This status presupposes that Germany is recognised as a first class power, able to play a direct part at the military level. Today, NATO gives Germany the perfect cover for getting around the implicit prohibition on military intervention in imperialist conflicts, imposed on it since its defeat in World War II.

To the extent that it can only weaken Serbia, Germany’s traditional enemy in its ambitions directed towards the Middle East, the present operation corresponds to the interests of German imperialism, especially if this operation leads to the dismemberment of the Yugoslav Federation, and of Serbia itself through the loss of Kosovo.

For the other powers involved in the war, particularly for France and Britain, there is a contradiction between their traditional alliance with Serbia, clearly expressed during the period when these powers were responsible for the command of UNPROFOR, and the present operation against it. But for both these countries, a failure to take part in “Operation Allied Force” would have meant being excluded from the game in a region as important as the Balkans. For these two countries, the role that they could hope to play in the diplomatic resolution of the Yugoslav crisis will be conditioned by the scale of their participation in this military operation.

4) In this sense, the participation of countries like France or Britain in the present Operation Determined Force contains important similarities with the direct military (eg France) or financial (eg Japan) participation of countries in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. However, there remain very important differences between the present war and that in the Gulf.

One of the main characteristics of the Gulf War was the American bourgeoisie’s planning of the entire operation, from the trap set for Iraq in 1990 right up to the cessation of hostilities concretised by Saddam Hussein’s retreat from Kuwait. This expressed the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the Eastern bloc’s collapse, leading to the disappearance of the Western bloc, the USA still maintained a powerful leadership over the world situation, which permitted it to keep a complete grip on both military and diplomatic operations. Although the purpose of the Gulf War was to force the USA’s ex-allies like France and Germany to toe the line and to restrain their desire to contest American hegemony, these ex-allies had still not had the opportunity to develop their own imperialist aims in contradiction with those of the USA.

The war unfolding today does not correspond to a scenario written from first to last by the American power. Since 1991, there have been many expressions of opposition to US authority, on the part both of second-rate powers like Israel, and of the most faithful allies of the Cold War such as Great Britain. It was precisely in Yugoslavia that there occurred the unprecedented divorce between the two best allies of the 20th Century, when Britain decided to play its own hand alongside the French. The difficulties of the USA in asserting their own imperialist interests in Yugoslavia were one of the reasons for the replacement of Bush by Clinton.

The USA’s eventual victory through the Dayton Accords in 1996 was not a definitive victory in this part of the world, nor did it halt the general tendency to lose its position as the world’s dominant power.

Today, although the USA is leading the anti-Milosevic crusade, it is obliged to take into consideration far more than before the specific play of the other powers - especially Germany - which introduces a considerable factor of uncertainty into the outcome of the whole operation.

In particular, the US bourgeoisie did not have a single scenario worked out in advance, but several. The first, which the American bourgeoisie would have preferred, involved a retreat by Milosevic in the face of the threat of military strikes, as had already been the case with the Dayton Accords.  This was the scenario which the US envoy Holbrooke tried to play out to the end, even after the failure of the Paris conference.            

In this sense, while in 1991 the USA’s massive military intervention was the only option envisaged for the Gulf crisis (and they made sure that no others were possible by preventing any diplomatic solution), the military option taking place today is the result of the failure of the diplomatic option: the military blackmail represented by the conferences of Paris and Rambouillet.

The present war, with the new destabilisation of the European and world situation that it represents, is another illustration of the inescapable dilemma confronting the USA today. The tendency to “every man for himself” and the more and more explicit assertion of their imperialist pretensions by the ex-allies of the USA increasingly forces the latter to display and use its enormous military superiority. At the same time, this policy can only lead to a still greater aggravation of the chaos that reigns already in the world situation.

One aspect of this dilemma appears in the present case - as it did already before Dayton when the US encouraged Croat ambitions in the Krajina - in the fact that US military intervention is in some sense playing into the hands of its main potential rival. However, the respective imperialist interests of the USA and Germany are expressed on very different timescales. Germany is obliged to envisage its rise to the status of superpower in the long term, whereas America is confronted in the here and now - as it has been for several years - with the loss of its leadership and the rise of world chaos.          

5) An essential feature of the present world disorder is thus the absence of imperialist blocs. Indeed, in the struggle for survival of all against all in decadent capitalism, the only form which a more or less stable world order can assume is that of the bi-polar organisation in two rival war camps. This however does not mean that the present absence of imperialist blocs is the cause of contemporary chaos, since capitalism has already undergone a period without imperialist blocs - the 1920s - without this involving any particular chaos in the world situation.

In this sense, the disappearance of the existing blocs in 1989, and the ensuing breakdown of world order, are signs that we have now reached a much more advanced stage in the decadence of capitalism than in 1914 or 1939. This is the stage of decomposition, the final phase of the decadence of capitalism.

In the last analysis, this phase is the result of the permanent burden of the historic crisis,  the accumulation of all the contradictions of a declining mode of production over an entire century. But the period of decomposition was inaugurated by  a specific factor: the blockage of the road to world war over two decades by an undefeated generation of the proletariat. In particular, the weaker Eastern bloc finally collapsed under the weight of the economic crisis because, in the last analysis, it was unable to fulfil its reason for existence: the march towards generalised warfare.

This confirms a fundamental thesis of marxism about 20th century capitalism: that war has become its mode of existence in its epoch of decline. This does not mean that war is a solution to the crisis of capitalism - quite the contrary. What it means is that the drive towards world war - and thus ultimately the destruction of humanity - has become the means through which imperialist order is maintained. It is the move towards global war which obliges the imperialist states to group together and accept the discipline of bloc leaders. It is this same factor which allows the nation state to maintain a minimum of unity within the bourgeoisie itself, and which, until now, has allowed the system to limit the total atomisation of a bourgeois society in its death throes by imposing on it the discipline of the barracks; which has countered the ideological void of a society without a future by creating the community of the battlefield.

 Without the perspective of world war, the way is clear for the fullest development of capitalist decomposition: a development which even without world war has the potential to destroy humanity.

The perspective today is that of a multiplication and omnipresence of local wars and of interventions of the great powers, which the bourgeois states are able to develop to a certain extent even without the adherence of the proletariat.          

6) Nothing allows us to exclude the possibility of the formation of new blocs in the future. The bi-polar organisation of imperialist competition, being a “natural” tendency of declining capitalism, appeared already embryonically at the very beginning of the new phase in 1989-90 with the unification of Germany, and has continued to assert itself since then through the latter’s rising power.

While remaining an important factor of the international situation, the tendency towards the formation of blocs cannot however be realised in the foreseeable future: the counter-tendencies working against it are stronger than ever before (the growing instability both of alliances and of the internal situation of most of the capitalist powers). For the moment, the tendency towards new blocs has itself mainly the effect of strengthening the dominant trend of “each for himself”.

In fact, the process of formation of new blocs is not fortuitous, but follows a certain pattern, and requires certain conditions of development, as the blocs of the two world wars and the Cold War clearly demonstrate. In each of these cases, imperialist blocs grouped on the one hand a number of “have not” nations out to contest the existing division of the world, and thus assuming the offensive role of the “trouble-makers”, and on the other hand a bloc of “satiated” powers as the main beneficiaries and defenders of the status quo. To come into existence, the challenger bloc needs a leader militarily strong enough to contest the main powers of the status quo, and behind which the other “have nots” can rally.

At present there is no power even remotely capable of militarily challenging the USA.  Germany and Japan, the strongest rivals of Washington, still lack atomic weapons, an essential attribute of a modern great power. As for Germany, the “designated” leader of an eventual future bloc against the USA because of its central position in Europe, it does not at present belong to the “have not” states. In 1933, in particular, Germany was almost a caricature of such a state: cut off from its neighbouring strategic zones of influence in central and south-eastern Europe through the Versailles system; financially bankrupt and cut off from the world market through the Great Depression and the economic autarchy of the colonial empires of its rivals. Today on the contrary the rise of German influence in its former zones of influence is proving irresistible; it is the economic and financial heart of the European economy. This is why Germany, as opposed to its attitude before the two wars, belongs today to the more “patient” powers, able to develop its power in a determined and aggressive, but methodical and - to date - often discreet manner.

In reality, the manner in which the Yalta world order disappeared - an implosion under the pressure of the economic crisis and decomposition, and not through a re-division of the world via war - has given rise to a situation in which there no longer exist clearly defined and recognised zones of influence of the different powers. Even those areas which 10 years ago appeared as the imperialist backyard of certain powers (the USA in Latin America or the Middle East, France in its language zone of Africa) are being engulfed by the ambient “each for himself”. In such a situation, it is still far from decided which powers will belong in the end to the group of the “satiated” countries, and which will end up empty-handed.          

7) In reality, it is not so much Germany or any of the other challengers of the world’s remaining super-power, but the United States itself which in the 1990s has assumed the role of the “aggressive” power militarily on the offensive. This in turn is the clearest expression of a new stage in the development of the irrationality of war in decadent capitalism, directly linked to the phase of its decomposition.

The irrationality of  war is the result of the fact that modern military conflicts - as opposed to those of capitalist ascendancy (wars of national unification, or of colonial conquest which served the economic and geographic expansion of capitalism) - are aimed solely at the re-division of already existing economic and  strategic positions. Under these circumstances, the wars of decadence, through the devastation they cause and their gigantic cost represent not a stimulus, but a dead weight for the capitalist mode of production. Through their permanent, totalitarian and destructive character they threaten the very existence of modern states. As a result, although the cause of capitalist wars remains the same - the competition between nation states - their goal changes. Rather than wars in pursuit of definite economic gains, they increasingly become wars in pursuit of strategic advantages designed to assure the survival of the nation in the case of a global conflagration. Whereas in capitalist ascendancy the military served the interests of the economy, in decadence it is  increasingly the economy which serves the needs of the military. Capitalist economy becomes a war economy.

Like the other major expressions of decomposition, the irrationality of war is thus a  general tendency unfolding throughout decadent capitalism. Already in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet recognised the primacy of global strategic considerations over immediate economic interests for the main protagonists of World War I. By the end of World War II the Communist Left of France could already formulate the thesis of the irrationality of war.

But during these wars, and the ensuing Cold War, a remnant of economic rationality survived in the fact that the offensive role was mainly assumed, not by those powers that drew the main economic advantages from the existing division of the world, but by those largely excluded from these advantages.

Today, the war in ex-Yugoslavia - from which none of its belligerents can expect to draw the slightest economic advantage - only confirms what was already strikingly evident during the Gulf War in 1991: the absolute irrationality of war from the economic viewpoint.          

8) The fact that war today has lost even a semblance of economic rationality, and has become simply synonymous with chaos, does not at all mean that the bourgeoisie is confronting the situation in a disorderly or empirical manner. On the contrary: this situation is forcing the ruling class to take a particularly systematic and long-term grip on its military preparations. During the recent period, this has been expressed notably by:

- the development of ever more sophisticated and expensive armaments systems in America, Europe and Japan in particular - armaments which the great powers above all require for eventual future conflicts against each other;

- the rise in “defence” budgets, with the USA taking the lead (an additional $100 billion allocated for the modernisation of the armed forces in the coming six years), reversing a certain trend towards a decline in military budgets at the end of the Cold War (the so-called “peace dividend”);

At the political and ideological level, signs of serious war preparations include:

- the development of a whole ideology to justify military interventions: that of “humanitarianism” and the defence of “human rights”;

- the coming to government, in most of the leading industrialised countries, of left wing parties, those best able to represent this humanitarian war-mongering (this is of particular importance in Germany, where the SPD-Green coalition has the task of overcoming the political obstacles to its military intervention abroad);

- the orchestration of systematic political attacks against the internationalist traditions of the proletariat against imperialist war (slandering of Lenin as an agent of German imperialism in World War I and Bordiga as collaborator of the fascist bloc in World War II, of Rosa Luxemburg - recently in Germany - as a predecessor of Stalinism etc). The more capitalism moves towards war, the more the heritage and present organisations of the communist left will become the favoured target of the bourgeoisie.

In fact, these bourgeois ideological campaigns are not aimed solely at preparing the ground politically for war. The fundamental objective of the ruling class is to turn the proletariat away from its own revolutionary perspective, a perspective which the incessant aggravation of the capitalist crisis will inevitably put more and more on the agenda. 

The Economic Crisis

9) If, in the epoch of capitalist decline, the economic crisis takes on a permanent and chronic character, it has mainly been at the end of periods of reconstruction after world wars that this crisis has assumed an openly catastrophic character, with brutal drops in production, profits and workers’ living standards, and a dramatic rise in mass unemployment. This was the case from 1929 until World War II. It is the case today.

Although since the late 1960s the crisis has unfolded in a slower and less spectacular manner than after 1929, the way in which the economic contradictions of a declining mode of production have accumulated over three decades becomes today increasingly difficult to hide. The 1990s in particular - despite all the propaganda about the “economic health” and the “fantastic profits” of capitalism - have been years of tremendous acceleration of the economic crisis, dominated by faltering markets, bankrupt companies, and an unprecedented development of unemployment and pauperisation.

At the beginning of the decade the bourgeoisie hid this fact by presenting the collapse of the Eastern bloc as the final victory of capitalism over communism. In reality the ruin of the east was a key moment in the deepening world capitalist crisis. It revealed the bankruptcy of one bourgeois model of crisis management: Stalinism. Since then, one economic model after another has bit the dust, beginning with the second and third industrial powers of the world, Japan and Germany. They were to be followed by the failure of the Asian tigers and dragons, and of the “emerging” economies of Latin America. The open bankruptcy of Russia confirmed the incapacity of  “western liberalism” to rejuvenate the countries of Eastern Europe.

Until now the bourgeoisie, despite decades of chronic crisis, has always been convinced that there can no longer be economic convulsions as profound as  those of the Great Depression, which after 1929 shook the very foundations of capitalism. Although bourgeois propaganda  still tries to present the economic catastrophe which engulfed east and south-east Asia in 1997, Russia in  1998, and Brazil at the beginning of 1999 as a particularly severe, but temporary and con-junctural recession, what these countries have in reality suffered is a  depression every bit as brutal and devastating at that of  the 1930s. Such figures as the trebling of unemployment or falls in production of 10% or more in one year speak for themselves. Moreover, such areas as the former USSR or Latin America are today incomparably more  affected by the crisis than was the case during the 30s.

It is true that ravages on this scale are still mainly restricted to the peripheries of capitalism. But this “periphery” includes not only agricultural and  raw material producers, but industrial countries containing tens of millions of proletarians. It includes the eight and the tenth economies of the world: Brazil and South Korea. It includes the largest country on Earth, Russia. It will soon include the most populous country, China, where after the insolvency of the largest investment house, the Gitic, the confidence of international investors has begun to crumble.

What all of these bankruptcies show is that the state of health of the world economy is much worse than in the 1930s. As opposed to 1929, the bourgeoisie in the last 30 years has not been surprised or inactive in the face of the crisis, but has constantly acted to control its course. This is what gives the unfolding of the crisis today its protracted, remorselessly deepening nature. It deepens despite all the efforts of the ruling class. The sudden, brutal and uncontrolled character of the crisis in 1929 is also explained by the fact that the bourgeoisie had dismantled its state capitalist control of the economy (which it was forced to introduce during World War I), and only reintroduced and enforced this regime from the early 30s on. In other words: the crisis struck so brutally because such instruments as the war economy of the 30s and the international co-ordination of the western economies after 1945 had not yet been developed. In 1929 there did not yet exist a permanent state supervision of the economy, of the stock markets and international trade agreements, no  lender of last resort, no international fire brigade to bail out those in difficulties. Between 1997-99 on the contrary whole economies with considerable economic and political significance for the capitalist world have gone down the drain despite the existence of all of these state capitalist instruments. The International Monetary Fund, for instance, supported Brazil with massive funding already before the recent crisis, in pursuit of its new strategy of crisis prevention. It promised to defend the Brazilian currency “at all costs” - and failed. 

10) Although the central countries of capitalism have escaped this fate until now, they are certainly facing their worst recession since the war - in Japan it has already begun.

Today the bourgeoisie tries to blame the increasing difficulties of the central economies on the “Asian”, “Russian” and “Brazilian” crises. In fact the opposite is the case: it is the growing impasse of the central economies of capitalism, due to the exhaustion of solvent markets, which has produced the successive collapse of the “Tigers” and “Dragons”, of Russia, Brazil, etc.

The recession in Japan reveals the considerable reduction of the central countries’ economic room for manoeuvre. A series of massive “Keynesian” conjunctural programmes of the government (the recipe discovered by the bourgeoisie  in the 30s) have failed to refloat the economy and avoid recession;

- the latest rescue operation - $520 billion to bail out insolvent banks - has failed to restore confidence in the financial system;

- the traditional aggressive policy of maintaining employment at home through export offensives on the world market has reached its limit: unemployment is rising fast, the policy of negative interest rates to supply sufficient liquidity and maintain a weak yen favourable to exports has run out of steam; it is now clear that these goals, as well as a reduction in the public debt, can only be  achieved through a  return to the inflationist policy of the 70s. This trend, which other industrial countries will follow, spells the beginning of the end of the famous “victory over inflation”, and new dangers to world trade.

In America, the alleged “boom” of the past years has been achieved at the expense of the rest of the world through a veritable explosion of its balance of trade and payments deficits, and through the soaring debts of private households (household savings in the US are now virtually non-existent). The limits of such a policy are now being reached, with or without the “Asian flu”.

The situation is no better in “Euroland”, along with America the sole remaining capitalist model: in the main western European countries, the shortest and weakest post-war recovery is already coming to a close, with falling growth rates and rising unemployment in Germany in particular.

It is the recession in the central  countries which at the beginning of the new century is destined to reveal the full extent of the agony of  the capitalist mode of production. 

11) But if historically the impasse of capitalism is much more flagrant than in the 30s, and if the present phase represents the most important acceleration in the past three decades, this does not mean we can expect an abrupt and catastrophic collapse in the heartlands of capitalism as in the 30s. This is what happened in Germany between 1929-32, when (according to the statistics of the day) industrial production dropped 50%, prices 30%, wages 60%, and unemployment increased from two to eight million within three years.

Today on the contrary, while considerably deepening and accelerating, the crisis retains its more or less controlled, protracted character. The bourgeoisie has proven its capacity to avoid a repetition of the 1929 crash. It has achieved this not only through the erection of a permanent state capitalist regime from the 30s on, but above all through an internationally co-ordinated crisis management in favour of the strongest powers. It learnt to do this after 1945 in the framework of the Western bloc, which brought together North America, western Europe and eastern Asia under US leadership. After 1989 it proved its capacity to maintain this crisis management even without imperialist blocs. Thus, whereas at the imperialist level 1989 was the beginning of the rule of world chaos and “each for himself”, at the economic level this is not as yet the case.

The two most dramatic consequences of the crisis of 1929 were:

- the collapse of world trade under an avalanche of competitive devaluations and protectionist measures leading to the autarchy of the pre-war years;

- the fact that the two strongest capitalist nations, the United States and Germany, were the first and the worst affected by industrial depression and mass unemployment.

The national state capitalist programmes which were then adopted in the different countries - the Five Year Plans in the USSR, the Four Year  Plans in Germany, the New Deal in the USA etc. - in no way altered this fragmentation of the world market: they accepted this framework as their point of departure. As opposed to this, in face of the crisis of the 70s and 80s the western bourgeoisie acted rigorously to prevent a return to the extreme protectionism of the 30s, since this was the precondition for assuring that the central countries would not be the first victims like in 29, but the last to suffer the most brutal consequences of the crisis. The result of this system has been that whole portions of the world  economy such as Africa, most of eastern Europe, the greater part of Asia and Latin America have been or are being for all intents and purposes eliminated as actors on the world stage and plunged into the most unspeakable barbarism.

In his struggle against Stalin in the mid 1920s, Trotsky demonstrated that not only socialism, but even a highly developed capitalism is impossible in one country. In this sense the autarchy of the 1930s was a gigantic step backwards for the capitalist system. In fact, it was only possible because the road  to world war was open - something which is not the case today. 

12)The present international state capitalist crisis management imposes certain rules for the commercial war between national capitals - trade, financial, currency or investment agreements and treaties, rules without which world trade under present conditions would be impossible.

That this capacity of the main powers (underestimated by the ICC at the beginning of the 1990s) has not yet reached its limits is demonstrated by the project of a common European currency, showing how the bourgeoisie is obliged by the advance of the crisis to take increasingly complicated and audacious measures to protect itself. The Euro is first and foremost a gigantic state capitalist measure to counteract one of the  most dangerous weak points in the defence lines of the system: that fact that of the two centres of world capitalism, North America and western Europe, the latter is divided into  a series of national capitals, each with their own currency. Dramatic monetary fluctuations between them, such as that which smashed the European Monetary System in the early 90s, or competitive devaluations like in the 30s, threaten to paralyse trade within  Europe. Thus, far from representing a step towards a European imperialist bloc, the Euro project is supported by the United States, which would be one of the main victims of such a collapse of the European market.

The Euro, like the European Union itself, also illustrates the way in which this co-ordination between states, far from abolishing the trade war between them, is a method of organising it in favour of the strongest. If the common currency is a stability anchor for the European economy, it is at the same time a system designed to assure the survival of the strongest powers (above all the country which dictated the conditions of its construction, Germany) at the expense of the weaker participants (which is why Britain, due to its traditional strength as a world financial power, still affords itself the luxury of remaining outside). 

We are confronted with an infinitely more developed state capitalist system than that of Stalin, Hitler or Roosevelt in the 1930s, in which not only the competition within each nation state, but to a certain extent that of national capitals on the world market assume a less spontaneous, more regulated -  in fact more political character. Thus, after the debacle of the “Asian crisis” the leaders of the main industrial countries insisted that in future the IMF should adopt more political criteria in deciding which countries to bail out and at what price (and conversely which ones can be eliminated from the world market). 

13) With the acceleration of the crisis, the bourgeoisie today finds itself obliged to revise its economic policy: this is one of the meanings of the establishment of left governments in Europe and the United States. In Britain, France or Germany the new left governments have developed a critique of the previous policy of “globalisation” and “liberalisation” launched in the 80s under Reagan and Thatcher, calling for more state intervention in the economy, and for a regulation of the international flow of capital. The bourgeoisie realises today that this policy has reached its limit.

“Globalisation”, by lowering trade and investment barriers in favour of the circulation of capital, was the response of the leading powers to the danger of a return to the protectionism and autarchy of the 1930s: a state capitalist measure protecting the strongest competitors at the expense of the weaker ones. But today, this measure is in turn in need of stronger state regulation, aimed not at revoking, but controlling the global movement of capital.

“Globalisation” is not the cause of the insane international speculation of the past years - but it has opened the door wide to its development. As a result, from being a refuge for capital  menaced by the absence of real profitable investment outlets, speculation has itself become an enormous danger to capital. If the bourgeoisie is reacting to this danger today, this is not only because this development is capable of bringing entire, more peripheral national economies to their knees almost overnight (Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil etc) but above all because leading capitalist groupings in the main countries are likely to go bankrupt in the process. In fact, the principal goal of the IMF programmes for these different countries in the past two years was to save not the countries directly affected, but the speculative investments of  western capitalists, whose bankruptcy would have destabilised the international finance structures themselves.

Just as “globalisation” never replaced the competition of the nation state by that of the multinationals, as bourgeois ideology pretended, but was a policy of certain national capitals, in the same way the policy of “liberalisation” was never a weakening of state capitalism, but a means of making it more efficient, and of justifying enormous cuts in social budgets in particular. Today’s situation of sharpened crisis, however, demands a much more direct and obvious state intervention (such as the recent nationalisation of failing Japanese banks, a measure which was publicly called for by the G7 states). Such circumstances are no longer compatible with a credible “liberal” ideology.

At this level also, the left of capital is better equipped to implement the new “corrective measures” (something the resolution of the 10th congress of the ICC 1993 already pointed out regarding the replacement of Bush by Clinton in the USA). Politically, because the left is historically less tied to the clientele of private capitalist interests than the right, and thus better able to adopt measures that go against the will of particular groupings, but which defend the national capital as a whole. Ideologically, because it was the right which invented and mainly implemented the previous policy now being revised.

This modification does not mean that the so-called “neo-liberal” economic policy will be completely abandoned. In fact, a sign of the gravity of the situation is that the bourgeoisie is compelled to combine the two policies, both of which have increasingly serious effects on the world economy. Such a combination, balancing on a tight rope between the two policies, can only further aggravate the situation.

This does not however imply that there is an economic “point of no return” beyond which the system is irretrievably doomed to disappear. Nor is there any theoretically fixed limit to the amount of debt (the main drug of dying capitalism) which the system can administer to itself without making its own existence impossible. In fact, capitalism passed its economic limits with the entry into its phase of decadence. Since then, capitalism has only been able to survive by an increasing manipulation of its own laws, a  task which only the state can perform.

 In this sense the limits to the existence of capitalism are political and not economic. The denouement of the historic crisis of capitalism depends on the evolution of the balance of forces between the classes:

 - either the proletariat will develop its struggle until it imposes its worldwide revolutionary dictatorship;

 - or capitalism, through its tendency towards war, will plunge humanity into barbarism and definitive destruction

The Class Struggle

14) In response to the first signs of the new open crisis at the end of the 60s, the return of the class struggle in 1968, ending four decades of counter-revolution, barred the road to world war, and began to open up a renewed perspective for humanity. During the first great struggles of the late sixties and early seventies a new generation of revolutionaries began to be secreted by the class, and the necessity of proletarian revolution was debated in the general assemblies of the class. During the different waves of workers’ struggles between 1968 and 1989, a difficult but important experience of struggle was acquired, and consciousness within the class developed in confrontation with the left of capital, particularly the unions, despite a series of obstacles placed in the path of the proletariat. The high point of this whole period was the mass strike of 1980 in Poland, demonstrating that in the Russian bloc also - historically condemned by its weakened position, to be the “aggressor” in any war - the proletariat was not prepared to die for the bourgeois state.

However, if the proletariat barred the road to war, it was unable to take significant steps towards its answer to the crisis of capitalism: the proletarian revolution. It was this stalemate in the balance of class forces, with neither of the two main classes of modern society able to enforce its own solution, which opened up the period of the decomposition of capitalism.

By contrast, it was the first truly world historical event of this period of decomposition - the collapse of the Stalinist (so-called Communist) regimes in 1989 - which brought the period of developing struggles and consciousness since 1968 to a close. The result of this historical earthquake was the most profound retreat in combativity and above all in consciousness since the end of the counter-revolution.

This set-back did not represent an historic defeat of the class, as the ICC already pointed out at the time. By 1992, with the important struggles in Italy, the working class had already returned to the path of struggle. But in the course of the 1990s, this path was to prove much slower and more difficult then in the previous two decades. Despite such struggles, the bourgeoisie, in  1995 in France, and soon afterwards in Belgium, Germany, and the USA, was still able to profit from the hesitant combativity and political disorientation of the class in order  to organise spectacular movements aimed specifically at restoring the credibility of the unions, and which further weakened  the class consciousness of the workers. Through such actions, the unions attained their highest level of popularity since more than a decade. After the massive union manoeuvres in November-December 1995 in France, the resolution on the international situation of the 12th congress of the ICC’s section in France (1996) noted: that “in the main capitalist countries, the working class has been brought back to a situation which is comparable to that of the 1970s as far as its relations to unions and unionism is concerned (...) the bourgeoisie has temporarily succeeded in wiping out from working class consciousness the lessons learnt during the 80s, following repeated experience  of confrontations with the unions”.

This whole development confirmed that after 1989 the path towards decisive class confrontations had become longer and more difficult. 

15) Despite these enormous difficulties  the 90s has been a decade of the re-development of class struggles. This was already confirmed, in the mid-90s, through the strategy of the bourgeoisie itself:

- the highly publicised union manoeuvres aimed  at strengthening the unions before an important build-up of workers’ combativity rendered such large scale mobilisations too dangerous;

- the subsequent equally artificially orchestrated “unemployed movements” in France, Germany and other countries during 1997-98, designed to divide employed from unemployed workers — making the former feel guilty, creating unionist structures for the future containment of the latter - revealed the concern of the ruling class about the long term radicalising potential of unemployment and the unemployed;

- enormous and incessant ideological campaigns - often using themes linked to decomposition such as the Dutroux affair in Belgium, ETA terrorism in Spain, the extreme right in France, Austria or Germany - calling for the defence of bourgeois democracy, were multiplied to sabotage the reflection of the workers. All this showed  that the ruling class itself was convinced that the worsening of the crisis and of attacks would give rise to new expressions of working class militancy. Furthermore, all of these preventative actions were co-ordinated and  publicised at the international level.

The correctness of the class instinct of the bourgeoisie was soon demonstrated by a significant  increase in workers’ struggles towards the end of the decade.

Not for the first time, the first important sign of a serious development of combativity came from the Benelux countries, with strikes in different sectors during 1997 in the Netherlands, notably in the world’s largest port, Rotterdam. This important signal was soon to be confirmed in another small, but highly developed western European country, Denmark, when almost half a million employees of the private  sector (a quarter of all wage labourers of that country) went on strike for almost two weeks in May 1998. This movement revealed:

- a tendency towards massive struggles;

- the necessity for the unions to revert to their task of controlling, isolating and defeating movements, so that the workers at the end were not euphoric (as in France in 1995), but had lost their first illusions;

- the necessity for the bourgeoisie to return to the  policy of internationally playing down or, where possible blacking-out, news of struggles, in order not to spread the “bad example” of workers’ resistance.

Since then, this strike wave has continued in two directions:

- large scale actions organised by the unions (Norway, Greece, United States, South Korea) under the pressure of growing workers’ discontent;

- a multiplication of smaller, unofficial, sometimes even spontaneous struggles in the central capitalist nations of Europe - France, Britain, Belgium, Germany - where the unions take the lead in order to contain and isolate them.

Also noteworthy are:

- the growing national and international simultaneity of struggles, especially in western Europe;

- the outbreak of combat in response to the different aspects of the capitalist attacks: lays-offs and unemployment, falling real wages and cuts in the social wage, intolerable conditions of exploitation, reduction in holiday benefits etc;

- the embryonic beginnings of a reflection within the class about which demands to raise and how to struggle, and even about the present state of society;

- the obligation for the bourgeoisie - although the official unions have not yet been seriously discredited in the recent movements - to develop the card of “fighting unionism” and “base unionism” with the heavy involvement of leftism. 

16) Despite these steps forward, the evolution of the class struggle since 1989 has remained painful and not without set-backs, above all because of:

- the weight of decomposition, a growing factor against the development of collective solidarity and of an historical and coherent theoretical reflection within the class;

- the very extent of the set-back which began in 1989, which at the level of consciousness will weigh negatively for a long time to come, since it is the perspective of communism itself which has been attacked.

Underlying this set-back - which threw the proletarian struggle back more than a decade - is the fact that in the epoch of decomposition, time is no longer on the side of the proletariat. Although an undefeated class can prevent the slide towards world war, it cannot prevent the proliferation of all the manifestations of the rotting of the social order. 

In fact, this set-back was itself the expression of the fact that the proletarian struggle lagged behind the general acceleration of the decline of capitalism. In particular: despite the whole significance of Poland 1980 for the world situation, nine years later  it was not the international class struggle which toppled the Stalinist regimes in eastern Europe - the working class was completely absent at the moment of their collapse.

Nevertheless, the proletariat’s central weakness between 1968 and 1989 lay not in a general backwardness (contrary to the rapid development of the revolutionary situation which emerged from World War I, the slow evolution of struggle post-1968 in response to the crisis has many advantages), but above all in a difficulty in politicising its fight.

This difficulty is the result of the fact that the generation which in 68 ended the longest counter-revolution in history was cut off from the experience of past generations of its class, and reacted to the trauma inflicted on it by Social Democracy and Stalinism with a general tendency to reject “politics”.

Thus the development of a “political culture” becomes the central question of the coming struggles. This question in fact contains the answer to a second one: how to compensate the lost ground of the past years, to overcome the present amnesia of the class concerning the lessons of its struggles before 1989?

It is clear that this cannot be done through repeating the combats of the two preceding decades: history does not permit such repetitions, least of all today when time is running out for humanity. But above all, the proletariat is an historical class, even if the lessons of twenty years are presently absent from its consciousness. In reality the process of politicisation is nothing other than that of rediscovering the lessons of the past and so developing a  perspective for future struggles. 

17) We have a number of good reasons for  assuming that the coming period, in the long term, will in many ways be particularly  favourable for such a politicisation. These favourable factors include:

- the advanced state of the crisis itself, pushing forward proletarian reflection on the need to confront and overcome the system;

- the increasingly massive, simultaneous, and generalised character of the attacks, posing the need for a generalised class response. This includes the enormous question of unemployment, the embodiment of the bankruptcy of capitalism, and a question around which struggles of the future will develop. It will also tend to include the question of inflation, a prime means of capitalism to put pressure on the working class and other layers of society;

- the increase in state repression as the bourgeoisie is more and more compelled to outlaw all real expressions of the proletarian struggle;

- the omnipresence of war, destroying the illusions in the possibility of a peaceful capitalism. The present war in the Balkans, a war at the very heart of the capitalist system, will in itself have an important impact on the workers’ consciousness. For all its humanitarian disguises, and whatever immediate effect it may have on the class struggle, this and future wars will tend to expose the catastrophic perspective that this system offers humanity.  In addition to which, the accelerating slide towards war will demand increasing military budgets and thus growing sacrifices from the working class, forcing the latter to defend its own interests against the imperialist interests of the national capital.

Other favorable factors include:

- the strengthening of the combativity of an undefeated class. It is only by entering the combat that the workers can regain the experience of being part of a collective class, recover their lost self-confidence, begin to pose class issues on a class terrain, and once more cross swords with unionism and leftism;

- the entry into struggle of a second undefeated generation of workers. The combativity of this generation is still fully intact. Already born into a capitalism in crisis, it is free of some of the illusions of the generation after 68. Above all, as opposed to the workers after 68, the young workers of today can learn from a generation before them which already has a considerable experience of struggle to pass on. In this way the “lost” lessons of the past can be reconquered in struggle by the combined efforts of two generations of proletarians. This is the normal process of accumulation of historical experience which the counter-revolution brutally interrupted;

* this experience of common reflection on the past, in face of the need for generalised combat against a dying system, will give rise to proletarian discussion circles, to nuclei of advanced workers who will in particular try to reappropriate the lessons of the whole history of the workers’ movement. In such a perspective, the responsibility of the communist left will be much greater than in the past 30 years.

This potential is not wishful thinking. It is already confirmed by the bourgeoisie, which is fully aware of this potential danger, and is already taking preventive action with incessant denigrations against the revolutionary past and present of its class enemy.

Above all: in view of the degradation of the world situation the bourgeoisie is afraid that the class will discover those episodes which demonstrate the power of the proletariat, which show that it is the class which holds the future of humanity in its hands: the revolutionary wave of 1917-23; the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in Russia, the ending of World War I through the revolutionary movement in Germany. 

18) This concern of the ruling class with the proletarian danger is reflected not least in the coming to government of the left in 13 of the 15 countries of the European Union.

The return of the left to government in so many important countries, beginning with the USA after the Gulf War, is made possible by the blow to proletarian consciousness inflicted by the events of 1989, as the ICC already pointed out in 1990:

“This is why, in particular, we have to update the ICC’s analysis of the ‘left in opposition’. This was a necessary card for the bourgeoisie at the end of the 70s and throughout the 80s due to the class’ general dynamic towards increasingly determined and conscious combats, and its growing rejection of democratic, electoral, and trade union mystifications. (...) By contrast, the class’ present reflux means that for a while this strategy will no longer be a priority for the bourgeoisie. This does not necessarily mean that these countries will see the left return to government: as we have said on several occasions (...) this is only absolutely necessary in periods of war or revolution. By contrast, we should not be surprised if it does happen, nor should we put t down to ‘accident’ or to a ‘specific weakness’ of the bourgeoisie in these countries” (International Review no61).

The 12th ICC congress resolution, of spring 1997, after correctly predicting the victory of Labour at the May 1997 general elections in Britain, added:

“it is important to underline the fact that the ruling class is not going to return to the themes of the 70s when the ‘left alternative’ with its programme of ‘social’ measures, even of nationalisations, was put forward in order to break the elan of the wave of struggles which had begun in 1968, by derailing discontent and militancy onto the election dead-end”.

The autumn 98 electoral victory of Schröder-Fischer over Kohl in Germany confirmed:

- that the return of left governments is in no way a return to the 70s: the SPD did not come to power in the midst of big struggles, as had once been the case under Brandt. It made no unrealistic electoral promises beforehand, and is pursuing a very “moderate” and “responsible” course in government;

- that in the present phase of the class struggle it is normally not a problem for the bourgeoisie to put  the left, in particular the Social Democrats, in government. In Germany it would have been easier than other countries to leave the right in government. As opposed to most other western powers, where the right wing parties are either is a state of disarray (France, Sweden), divided on foreign policy (Italy, Britain) or weighed down by backward, irresponsible tendencies (USA), in Germany the right, although somewhat worn down by 16 years in government, is in an orderly state, and is quite capable to dealing with the affairs of the German state.

However, the fact that Germany, the country today possessing the most ordered and cohesive political apparatus (reflecting its status as potential imperialist bloc leader) brought back the SPD, reveals that the card of the left in government is not only possible today, but has become a relative necessity (just as the left in power in the 80s was a relative necessity). In other words it would be a mistake for the bourgeoisie not to play this card now.

We have already shown which necessities at the level of imperialist policy and crisis management have paved the way for left governments. But on the social front also there are above all two important reasons for such a government today:

- after long years of right wing governments in key countries like Britain and Germany, the reinforcement of the electoral mystification demands the democratic alternation now - all the more so since in the future it will become much more difficult to have the left in government. Already at the time of  the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and even more so since the fall of Stalinism, bourgeois democracy is the most important anti-proletarian mystification of the ruling class, which must permanently be cultivated;

- although the left is not necessarily the most suitable for attacking the working class today,  it has the advantage over the right of attacking in a more prudent and above all less provocative manner than the right. This is a very important quality at present, where it is vital for the bourgeoisie, wherever possible, to avoid important and massive struggles of its mortal enemy, since such struggles possess today an important potential for the development of the self-confidence and political consciousness of the proletariat as a whole.

International Communist Current,
April 5 1999

With the publication of the 1920 programme of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), we complete the section of this series devoted to the communist party programmes which came out during to the communist party programmes which came out during the height of the revolutionary wave (see International Review no.93, the 1918 programme of the KPD; International Review no.94, the platform of the Communist International; International Review no.95, the programme of the Russian Communist Party).

We have dealt elsewhere with the historic background to the formation of the KAPD (see our series on the German revolution, in particular International Review no.89). The split in the young KPD was in many ways a tragedy for the development of the proletarian revolution, but this isn’t the place to analyse its causes and consequences. Our aim here is to show the degree of revolutionary clarity this document represents, since there is no question that nearly all the best forces of communism in Germany went with the KAPD.

According to the leftist legend (unfortunately based on the false conceptions adopted by the Communist International after 1920), the KAPD was the manifestation of an insignificant, sectarian, semi-anarchist current that was trounced once and for all by the publication of Lenin’s Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder. In fact, as we have also shown elsewhere (for example in our introduction to the platform of the CI, and in the article on the degeneration of the Communist International in this issue), at the high water mark of the revolutionary tide, the positions of the left were to a great extent dominant both in the KPD and the CI itself. It is true that, by 1920, within the CI and its component parties, the first effects of the stagnation of the world revolution and of the isolation of Soviet Russia were beginning to make themselves felt, giving rise to a conservative reaction which was to increasingly place the left in an oppositional stance. But even as an opposition, the left communists were very far from being an infantile or anarchist sect. Indeed, what stands out more than anything else in this programme is the degree to which the characteristic positions of the KAPD - the rejection of the parliamentary and trade union tactics then being adopted by the CI - were based on a real assimilation of the marxist concept of the decadence of capitalism, which is affirmed in the very opening paragraph of the programme proper. This conception had been affirmed with equal insistence at the founding congress of the CI, but the International as a whole subsequently proved unable to follow through all its implications at the programmatic level.

The KAPD’s position on parliament and the trade unions had nothing in common with the moralism and anti-politicism preached by the anarchists, since, as the KAPD spokesman Jan Appel (Hempel) argued at the third congress of the CI in 1921, it was based on a recognition that participation in parliament and the unions had indeed been valid tactics in the ascendant period of capitalism but had become obsolete in the new period of capitalist decline. In particular, the programme shows that the German left had already established the theoretical bases for explaining how the unions had become "one of the main pillars of the capitalist state".

The accusation of sectarianism was also applied to what the KAPD put forward as an alternative to the trade unions. In his Infantile Disorder, for example, Lenin charges the KAPD with trying to replace the existing mass union organisations with artificially constructed "pure revolutionary unions". In fact, the KAPD’s method was the quintessentially marxist one which consists in particular of relating to the real movement of the class. As Hempel put it at the third congress, "as communists, as people who want to and must take the leadership of the revolution, we are obliged to examine the organisation of the proletariat under this angle. What we in the KAPD say was not born, as comrade Radek believes, in the head of comrade Gorter in Holland, but through the experience of the struggles we have waged since 1919" (La Gauche Allemande, Invariance, 1973, p 32). It was the real movement of the class which had given rise to the workers’ councils or soviets in the first explosion of the revolution, in direct opposition both to parliamentarism and trade unionism. With the dissolution or recuperation of the original workers’ councils in Germany, the most militant struggles had given rise to the "factory organisations" which are referred to at some length in the programme. It is true that the emphasis on these more localised, workplace organs rather than on the centralised soviets was the result of the movement going onto the defensive, and that, not fully understanding this development, the KAPD was led into the mistaken view that these factory organisations, regrouped into "Unionen", could be maintained almost as a permanent nucleus of the councils of the future. But since at the time of the programme the Unionen regrouped up to 100,000 militant workers, they were by no means an artificial construct of the KAPD.

Another accusation frequently levelled at the KAPD was that it was "anti-party". This formulation completely distorts the complex reality of the German revolutionary movement of the time. To a certain extent, the KAPD actually expressed a real high point in the clarification of the role of the communist party. We have already published the KAPD’s Theses on the Role of the Party (see International Review no.41, 1985), which are founded on the recognition - derived to no small measure from the Bolshevik experience - that in the epoch of the revolution the party could not be a "mass" organisation but was a programmatically advanced minority whose essential task, as expressed in the programme, was, through its determined participation in the class struggle, to elevate the "self consciousness of the proletariat". The programme also contains the first hints of the criticism of the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised by the party, a conception (or rather a practise, since it was not theorised till later) which was to have such disastrous consequences for the Bolsheviks in Russia.

There is no doubt, however, that there were other trends within the KAPD at the time, and that some of these were indeed influenced by anarchism, in particular the "councilist" current around Otto Ruhle. The ransom paid to this current is reflected in the preface to the programme which contained the federalist and even individualist notion that "the autonomy of the members in all circumstances is the basic principle of a proletarian party, which is not a party in the traditional sense". Since the KAPD had to a large extent been forced out of the KPD through the manoeuvrings of an irresponsible clique around Paul Levi, this reaction against uncontrolled "chiefs" and bourgeois politicking was understandable, but it also expressed a weakness on the organisation question which, with the further retreat of the revolution, was to have catastrophic consequences for the very survival of the German left.

The "councilist" trend also expressed a tendency to break solidarity with the Russian revolution when it was faced with the difficult conditions imposed by isolation and civil war - a tendency which later expressed itself in an open renunciation of the whole Russian experience as being no more than a belated bourgeois revolution. But on this point there is no ambiguity at all in the programme: solidarity with the beleaguered Soviet power is made explicit from the beginning, and it also very correctly identifies the victory of the revolution in Germany as the key to the victory of the world revolution and thus to the salvation of the proletarian bastion in Russia.

A comparison with the "practical measures" contained in the KPD programme of 1918 shows a great deal of similarity with those of the KAPD programme, which should come as no surprise. The latter, however, is clearer on the international tasks of the German revolution. It also goes further into the question of the economic content of the revolution, emphasising the necessity to take immediate steps towards gearing production to need rather thaearing production to need rather than accumulation (even if we might question how rapidly such a transformation could take place, as well as the programme’s conception that a "socialist economic bloc" formed with Russia alone could make significant steps towards communism). Finally, the programme raises some "new" issues not dealt with by the 1918 programme, such as the proletarian revolution’s approach to art, science, education and youth. The KAPD’s concern for these questions is also interesting because it shows that it was not - as has often been argued - a purely "workerist" current blind to the more general problems posed by the communist transformation of social life.

Programme of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD)

(May 1920) (1)

It was in the whirlwind of revolution and counter-revolution that the foundations of the German Communist Workers Party were laid. But the birth of the new party doesn’t date from Easter 1920, when the "opposition", which up to then had only been united through vague contacts, came together in an organisational sense. The birth of the KAPD coincides with a phase of the development of the KPD (Spartacus League), during the course of which a clique of irresponsible leaders, placing their personal interests above those of the proletarian revolution, attempted to impose a personal conception of the "death" of the German revolution on the majority of the party. The latter energetically stood up against this manifestation of personal interest. The KAPD was born when this clique, basing itself on the personal conception that it had elaborated, tried to transform the tactic of the party, which, up to then had been revolutionary, into a reformist tactic. This treacherous attitude of Levi, Posner and Company led to the recognition of the fact that the radical elimination of any policy of leaders must constitute the first condition for the progress of the proletarian revolution in Germany. It is in reality the root of the opposition which appeared between us and the Spartacus League, an opposition of such depth that the gulf which separates us from the KPD is greater than the opposition which exists between the likes of Levi, Pieck, Thalheimer, etc., on one side, and the Hilferdings, Crispiens, Stampfers, Legiens (2) on the other. The idea that in a really proletarian organisation the revolutionary will of the masses is the preponderant factor in the taking of tactical positions is the leitmotif in the organisational construction of our party. To express the autonomy of the members in all circumstances is the basic principle of a proletarian party, which is not a party in the traditional sense.

It is thus evident to us that the programme of the party that we are conveying here. and which has been drawn up by the programme commission mandated by the congress, must remain a draft programme up until the next ordinary congress declares itself in agreement with the present version (3). Of the remainder of the proposed amendments, which could concern the fundamental positions and tactics of the party, they are hardly likely to be adopted given that the programme has faithfully formulated, in a broader framework, the content of the programmatic declaration adopted unanimously by the party congress. But eventual formal amendments will change nothing of the revolutionary spirit which animates each line of the programme. The marxist recognition of the historic necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat rests for us an immutable and steadfast guide for the international class struggle. Under this flag, the victory of the proletariat is assured.

Berlin. Mid-May 1920.

The world economic crisis, born from the world war, with its monstrous social and economic effects which produce the thunderstruck impression of a field of ruins of colossal dimensions, can only signify one thing: the Twilight of the Gods of the bourgeois-capitalist world order is nigh. Today, it is not a question of the periodic economic crises which were once a part of the capitalist mode of production; it is the crisis of capitalism itself; we are witnessing convulsive spasms of the whole of the social organism, formidable outbursts of class antagonisms of an unprecedented pitch, general misery for wide layers of populations: all this is a fateful warning to bourgeois society. It appears more and more clearly that the ever-growing antagonism between exploiters and exploited, that the contradiction between capital and labour, the consciousness of which is becoming more widespread even among those previously aparead even among those previously apathetic layers of the proletariat, cannot be resolved. Capitalism is experiencing its definitive failure, it has plunged itself into the abyss in a war of imperialist robbery; it has created a chaos whose unbearable prolongation places the proletariat in front of the historic alternative: relapse into barbarism or construction of a socialist world.

Of all the peoples of the Earth only the Russian proletariat has up to now succeeded in its titanic struggle to overthrow the domination of its capitalist class and seize political power. In a heroic resistance it has pushed back the concentrated attack of the army of mercenaries organised by international capital, and it now confronts a task of unsurpassed difficulty: that of reconstructing, on a socialist basis, an economy totally destroyed by world war and the civil war which followed it for more than two years. The fate of the Russian republic of councils depends on the development of the proletarian revolution in Germany. After the victory of the German revolution we will see the emergence of a socialist economic bloc which, through the reciprocal exchange of the products of industry and agriculture, will be capable of establishing a real socialist mode of production, no longer obliged to make economic, and thus also political, concessions to world capital. If the German proletariat doesn’t fulfil its historic task very soon, the development of the world revolution will be called into question for years, if not for decades. In fact it is Germany which is today the key to the world revolution. The revolution in the "victor" countries of the Entente can only get underway when the great barrier of central Europe has been raised. The economic conditions of the proletarian revolution are incomparably more favourable in Germany than in the "victor" countries of western Europe. The German economy, ruthlessly plundered after the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty, has brought to a head a degree of pauperisation which demands a rapid and radical solution. Furthermore, the peace of the brigands of Versailles does not only weigh on the capitalist mode of production in Germany, but makes life increasingly unendurable for the proletariat as well. Its most dangerous aspect is that it undermines the economic foundations of the future socialist economy in Germany, and thus, in this sense, also calls into question the development of the world revolution. Only one headlong push forward by the German proletarian revolution can bring us out of this dilemma. The economic and political situation in Germany is more than ripe for the outbreak of proletarian revolution. At this stage of historic evolution, where the process of the decomposition of capitalism can no longer be artificially obscured, the proletariat has to become aware that it needs an energetic intervention in order to effectively use the power that it already possesses. In an epoch of revolutionary class struggle like this, where the last phase of the struggle between capital and labour has begun and where the decisive combat itself is already underway, there can be no question of compromise with the enemy, but only a fight to the death. In particular, it is necessary to attack the institutions which seek to make a bridge across the gulf of class antagonisms and which orient themselves towards class collaboration (4) between exploiters and exploited. At a time when the objective conditions for the outbreak of the proletarian revolution have already arrived, and when the permanent crisis can only get worse and worse, there must be reasons of a subjective nature that are holding back the accelerated progress of the revolution. In other words: the consciousness of the proletariat is still partly trapped by bourgeois or petty-bourgeois ideology. The psychology of the German proletariat, in its present aspect, shows very distinct traces of a long-standing enslavement to militarism, and is characterised by a real lack of self-awareness. This is the natural product of the parliamentary cretinism of the old Social Democracy and of the USPD on one side, and of the absolutism of the union bureaucracy on the other. These subjective elements play a decisive role in the German revolution. The problem of the German revolution is the problem of the development of the German proletariat’s consciousness of itself.

Recognising this situation and the necessity to accelerate the rhythm of the development of the revolution in the world, as well as being faithful to the spirit of the 3rd International, the KAPD is fighting for the maximum demand of the immediate abolition of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of the dictatorship of the working class. It rejects in the democratic constitution the principle, doubly absurd and untenable in the present period, of conceding to the exploiting capitalist class political rights and the power to exclusively dispose of the means of production.

In conformity with its maximalist views the KAPD equally declares itself for the rejection of all reformist and opportunist methods of struggle, which is only a way of avoiding serious and decisive struggles with the bourgeois class. The party doesn’t seek to avoid these struggles, but on the contrary actively encourages them. In a State which carries all the symptoms of the period of the decadence of capitalism, the participation in parliamentarism is also part of these reformist and opportunist methods. In such a period, to exhort the proletariat to participate in parliamentary elections can only nourish the dangerous illusion that the crisis can be overcome through parliamentary means. It means resorting to a means used in the past by the bourgeoisie in its class struggle, whereas we are now in a situation where only the methods of proletarian class struggle, applied in a resolute and forthright manner, can have a decisive effect. Participation in bourgeois parliamentarism in the thick of the proletarian revolution can only signify the sabotage of the idea of the councils.

The idea of the councils in the period of proletarian struggle for political power is at the centre of the revolutionary process. The more or less strong echo that the idea of the councils arouses in the consciousness of the masses is the thermometer which makes it possible to measure the development of the social revolution. The struggle for the recognition of the revolutionary factory councils and political workers’ councils in the framework of a given revolutionary situation logically gives rise to the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat against the dictatorship of capitalism. This revolutionary struggle, whose specific political axis is constituted by the idea of the councils, is compelled, under the pressure of historic necessity, to come up against the totality of bourgeois social order and thus also against its political form, bourgeois parliamentarism. The system of councils or parliamentarism? It is a question of historic importance. To build a proletarian-communist world or to be shipwrecked in the storms of bourgeois-capitalist anarchy? In a situation as totally revolchy? In a situation as totally revolutionary as the present situation in Germany, participation in parliamentarism thus signifies not only the sabotage of the idea of councils, but also helps to give the putrefying bourgeois order a new lease of life, and thus to obstruct the progress of the proletarian revolution.

Aside from bourgeois parliamentarism, the unions form the principal rampart against the further development of the proletarian revolution in Germany. Their attitude during the world war is well-known. Their decisive influence on the principal orientation and tactics of the old Social Democratic Party led to the proclamation of the "Union Sacrée" with the German bourgeoisie, which was equivalent to a declaration of war on the international proletariat. Their effectiveness as social-traitors found its logical continuation at the time of the outbreak of the November 1918 revolution in Germany. Here they showed their counter-revolutionary intentions by co-operating with crisis-ridden German industrialists to set up a "community of labour" (Arbeitsgemeinschaft) for social peace. They have maintained their counter-revolutionary attitude up to today, throughout the whole period of the German revolution. It is the bureaucracy of the unions which have most violently opposed the idea of the councils which was taking more and more profound root in the German working class; it is the unions who found the means to successfully paralyse all strivings for proletarian political power, which logically resulted from mass actions on the economic terrain. The counter-revolutionary character of the union organisations is so notorious that numerous bosses in Germany will only take on workers belonging to a union group. This reveals to the whole world that the union bureaucracy will take an active part in the maintenance of a capitalist system which is coming apart at the seams. The unions are thus, alongside the bourgeois substructure, one of the principal pillars of the capitalist state. Union history over these last 18 months has amply demonstrated that this counter-revolutionary formation cannot be transformed from the inside. The revolutionising of the unions is not a question of individuals: the counter-revolutionary character of these organisation is located in their structure and in their specific way of operating. From this it flows logically that only the destruction of the unions can clear the road for social revolution in Germany. The building of socialism needs something other than these fossilised organisations.

It is in the mass struggles that the factory organisation appears. It surfaces as something which hasn’t had and couldn’t have any equivalent, but that is not its novelty. What is new is that it penetrates everywhere during the revolution, as a necessary arm of the class struggle against the old spirit and the old foundations which were its base. It corresponds to the idea of the councils; that is why it is absolutely not a pure form or a new organisational trick, or even a "dark mystery"; organically born in the future, constituting the future, it is the form of expression of a social revolution which tends towards a society without classes. It is an organisation of pure proletarian struggle. The proletariat cannot be organised for the merciless overthrow of the old society if it is torn into strips by job category, away from its terrain of struggle; it must carry out its struggle in the factory. It is here that workers stand side by side as comrades; it is here that all are forced to be equal. It is here that the masses are the motor of production and are ceaselessly pushed to take control of production, to unveil its secrets. It is here that the ideological struggle, the revolutionising of consciousness, undergoes a permanent tumult, from man to man, from mass to mass. Everything is oriented towards the supreme class interest, not towards the craze for founding organisations, and the particular job interests are reduced to the measure which is due to them. Such an organisation, the backbone of the factory councils, becomes an infinitely more supple instrument of the class struggle, always an organism receiving fresh blood, owing to the permanent possibility of re-elections, revocation, etc. Going forward in the mass actions and along with them, the factory organisations will naturally have to create for themselves the centralised organs which correspond to their revolutionary development. Their principal business will be the development of the revolution and not programmes, statutes and plans in detail. It is not a credit bank or life assurance, even if - this goes without saying - it makes collections when it’s necessary to support strikes. Uninterrupted propaganda for socialism, factory assemblies, political discussions etc., all that is part of its tasks; in brief, it is the revolution in the factory.

In the main, the aim of the factory organisation is twofold. The first aim is the destruction of the unions, the totality of their bases and all the non-proletarian ideas which are concentrated around them. No doubt of course in this struggle the factory organisation will meet as desperate enemies all the bourgeois formations; but the same applies to the partisans of the USPD and the KPD, in so far as the latter are trapped unawares in the old schemas of Social Democracy (even if they adopt a politically different programme, they essentially remain a politico-moral critique of the "errors" of Social Democracy). These tendencies can even act as open enemies, inasmuch as in their eyes political trafficking and the diplomatic arts are still "above" the gigantic social struggle in general. Faced with these petty drudges one can have no scruples. There can be no agreement with the USPD (5) as they do not recognise the justification of factory organisations, on the basis of the struggle for workers’ councils. A great number of the masses already recognise them, rather than the USPD, as their political leadership. This is a good sign. The factory organisation, by unleashing mass strikes and by transforming their political orientation, basing themselves every time on the political situation of the moment, will contribute much more rapidly and much more thoroughly to unmasking and destroying the counter-revolutionary trade unions.

The second great aim of the factory organisation is to prepare for the building of communist society. Any worker who declares for the dictatorship of the proletariat can become a member (6). Moreover it is necessary to resolutely reject the trade unions, and to be resolutely free from their ideological orientation. This last condition will be the cornerstone for being admitted into the factory organisation. It is through this that one shows one’s adhesion to the proletarian class struggle and to its own methods; we do not demand adhesion to a more precise party programme. Through its nature and its inherent tendencies the factory organisation serves communism and leads to the communist society. Its kernel will always be expressly communist, its struggle pushes everyone in the same direction. On the other hand, the programme of the party has to deal with social reality in its widest sense; and the most serious intellectual qualities are demanded from party members. A political party like the KAPD, which goes forward and rapidly modifies itself in liaison with the world revolutionary process, can never have a great quantitative importance (if it is not to regress and become corrupt). But the revolutionary masses are, on the contrary, united in the factory organisations through their class solidarity, through the consciousness of belonging to the proletariat. It is this which organically prepares the unity of the proletariat; whereas on the basis of a party programme alone this unity is never possible. The factory organisation is the beginning of the communist form and becomes the foundation of the communist society to come.

The factory organisation carries out its tasks in close union with the KAPD.

The political organisation has the task of bringing together the most advanced elements of the working class on the basis of the party programme.

The relationship of the party to the factory organisation comes from the nature of the factory organisation. The work of the KAPD inside these organisations will be that of an unflagging propaganda, as well as putting forward the slogans of the struggle. The revolutionary cadres in the factory become the mobile arm of the party. Further, it is naturally necessary that the party always takes on for itself a more proletarian character, that it complies with the dictatorship from below. Through this the circle of its tasks grows wider, but at the same time it acquires the most powerful support. What has to be achieved is that the victory (the taking of power by the proletariat) ends up in the dictatorship of the class and not the dictatorship of a few party leaders and their clique. The factory organisation is the guarantee of this.

The phase of taking political power by the proletariat demands the firmest repression of capitalist-bourgeois movements. That will be achieved by putting in place an organisation of councils exercising the totality of political and economic power. In this phase the factory organisation itself becomes an element of the proletarian dictatorship, carried through into the factory. This latter moreover has the task of transforming itself into the base unit of the councils’ economic system.

The factory organisation is an economic condition for the construction of the communist community (Gemeinwesen). The political form of the organisation of the communist community is the system of the councils. The factory organisation intervenes so that political power is only exercised by the executive of the councils.

The KAPD thus struggles for the realisation of the maximum revolutionary programme, the concrete demands of which are contained in the following points:

Political domain:

1. Immediate political and economic fusion with all victorious proletarian countries (Soviet Russia, etc.), in the spirit of the international class struggle, with the aim of a common self-defence against the aggressive actions of world capital.

2. Arming of the politically organised revolutionary working class, setting up local military defence groups (Ortswehren), the formation of a Red Army; disarmament of the bourgeoisie, of all police, all officers,rgeoisie, of all police, all officers, of "citizens’ defence groups" (Einwohnerwehren) (7), etc.

3. Dissolution of all parliaments and all municipal councils.

4. Formation of workers’ councils as legislative and executive organs of power. Election of a central council of delegates of the workers’ councils of Germany.

5. Meeting of a congress of German councils as a supreme political authority of the Councils of Germany.

6. Taking over control of the press by the working class under the leadership of the local political councils.

7. Destruction of the bourgeois judicial apparatus and the immediate installation of revolutionary tribunals. Taking charge of the bourgeois prison system and the security services by appropriate proletarian organs.

Economic, social and cultural domain

1. Cancellation of state and other public debts, cancellation of war reparations (9).

2. Expropriation by the republic of councils of all banks, mines, foundries as well as the large firms of industry and commerce.

3. Confiscation of all wealth over a certain threshold, the latter fixed by the central council of the workers’ councils of Germany.

4. Transformation of private landed property into collective property under the leadership of the competent local and rural councils (Gutsräte).

5. The republic of councils to take charge of all public transports.

6. Regulation and central management of the totality of production by the higher economic councils, which must be mandated by the congress of economic councils.

7. Adaption of the whole of production to need, based on the most detailed statistical economic calculations.

8. Ruthless enforcement of the obligation to work.

9. Guarantee of individual existence relative to food, clothing, housing, old age, sickness, invalidity, etc.

10. Abolition of all caste, decorative and titled differences. Complete juridical and social equality of the sexesdical and social equality of the sexes.

11. Immediate radical transformation of provisions, housing and health in the interests of the proletarian population.

12. At the same time as the KAPD declares the most resolute war on the capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois state, it directs its attack against the totality of bourgeois ideology and makes itself the pioneer of a world proletarian-revolutionary conception. An essential factor in the acceleration of the social revolution resides in the revolutionising of the whole intellectual world of the proletariat. Conscious of this fact, the KAPD supports all revolutionary tendencies in science and the arts, all those elements which correspond to the spirit of the proletarian revolution.

In particular, the KAPD encourages all serious revolutionary efforts which allow the youth of both sexes to express themselves. The KAPD rejects all domination over youth.

The political struggle compels the youth to attain a superior development of its forces; this gives us the certitude that it will accomplish its greatest tasks with a total clarity and resolution.

In the interests of the revolution, it is the duty of the KAPD that youth gets all the support possible in its struggle.

The KAPD is conscious also that after the conquest of political power by the proletariat, a great domain of activity falls upon youth in the construction of communist society: the defence of the republic of councils by the Red Army, the transformation of the process of production, the creation of communist labour schools which will carry out their creative tasks in close connection with the factory.

This then is the programme of the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany. Faithful to the spirit of the Third International, the KAPD remains attached to the idea of the founders of scientific socialism, according to which the conquest of political power by the proletariat signifies the destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie. To destroy the totality of the bourgeois state apparatus with its capitalist army under the leadership of bourgeois and landed officers, with its police, its gaolers and its judges, with its priests and bureaucrats - here is the first task of the prole here is the first task of the proletarian revolution. The victorious proletariat must be steeled against the blows of the bourgeois counter-revolution. When this is imposed on it by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat must strive to crush the exploiters’ civil war with a ruthless violence. The KAPD is conscious that the final struggle between capital and labour cannot be settled inside national frontiers. As little as capitalism stops in front of national frontiers and holds back due to some national scruple or other in its incursion through the world, as little can the proletariat afford to be hypnotised by nationalist ideology and lose sight of the fundamental idea of international class solidarity. The more the idea of the international class struggle is clearly grasped by the proletariat, the more it will become the leitmotif of world proletarian policy, and the more impulsive and massive will be the blows of the world revolution which will break into pieces the decomposing capitalist world. Beyond all national particularities, beyond all frontiers and all fatherlands, the eternal beacon shines for the proletariat: PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE.

Berlin. 1920.

In the last issue of the International Review we saw how, since 1967, capitalism has confronted the open reappearance of its historic crisis, by developing state intervention in the economy in order to try to slow down and push its worst effects on to the periphery, the weakest sectors of its own national capital and, of course, onto the whole of the working class. We analysed the evolution of the crisis and the response of capitalism in the 1970s. We are now going to look at the development of its evolution during the 1980’s. This analysis will allow us to understand that the state’s policy of “accompanying the crisis in order to  slow it down and spread it out” resolved nothing, nor did it bring about anything but the aggravation of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.

The crisis of 1980-82

At the 2nd International Congress of the ICC held in 1977[1], we highlighted the way that the expansionist policies employed by capitalism were becoming increasingly less effective and were comng to a dead-end. The oscillations between “recovery” which provoked inflation and sudden slow-downs ending in recession led to what was called “stagflation” (recession and inflation at the same time) and demonstrated capitalism’s serious situation and the insoluble character of these contradictions. The incurable illness of overproduction, in its turn, globally aggravated the imperialist tensions in such a way that in the last years of the decade there was a considerable aggravation of military confrontations and the development of  the arms race at both the nuclear and the convention level[2].

The 1980s began with an open recession that lasted until 1982 and which in many ways was worse than the previous recession in 1974-75: production stagnated (growth rates were negative in Great Britain and the European countries), unemployment grow spectacularly (in 1982, the USA registered in one month alone half a million job losses); industrial production fell in Great Britain in 1982 to the level of 1967 and for the first time since 1945, world trade fell for two consecutive years[3]. This lead to the closure of factories and mass unemployment at levels not seen since 1929. What has been called industrial and agricultural desertification began to develop and has continued ever since. On the one hand, entire regions of old traditional industries saw the systematic closure of factories and mines and unemployment levels shooting towards 30%. This happened in such areas as Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle in Great Britain, Charleroi in Belgium; the Lorraine in France or Detroit in the United States. On the other hand, in many countries agricultural overproduction was such that governments financed the abandoning of vast areas of agriculture, and aid for farming and fishing was brutally cut causing the increasing ruin of small and medium peasants and unemployment amongst agricultural workers.

However, after 1983, there was an economic recovery, which initially remained, limited to the United States but spread to Europe and Japan from 1984-85. This recovery was basically brought about by the United States’ colossal levels of debt which raised production and progressively allowed the economies of Japan and Western Europe to get onto the bandwagon of growth.

This was the famous “Reaganomics” which at the time was presented as the great solution to the crisis of capitalism. This “solution” was also presented as the return to the “basics of capitalism”. Faced with the “excess” of state intervention which characterised state economic policies during the 1970’s (Keynesianism) and which was called “socialism” or the “proclivity” to socialism, the new economic theoreticians presented themselves as “neo-liberals” and their recipes for “less state”, the “free market”, etc were vaunted far and wide.

In reality, Reaganomics was not a great solution (from 1985, as we will see, it was necessary to pay the price of the USA’s levels of debt) nor was it a supposed “retreat of the state”. What the Reagan government did was to launch a massive rearmament program (under the name “Star Wars”, it made a powerful contribution to bringing its rival bloc to its knees) through the classic recourse to state debt. The famous locomotive was not fuelled by the healthy combustibles of a real expansion of the market but by the adulterated fuel of generalised debt.

The “new” politics of debt.

The only new thing about Reagan’s policy was the form for achieving these levels of debt. During the 1970s, the state was directly responsible for financing the growing deficits in public spending through increasing the monetary mass. This meant that the state supplied the money that the banks needed in order to lend money to businesses, to private borrowers, or to other states. This caused money to depreciate continually and so led to an explosion of inflation.

We have already seen the growing impasse in which the world economy found itself, especially that of America at the end of the 1970s. In order to get out of this episode, in the last two years of the Carter administration, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Volker, radically changed credit policy. He closed the taps of monetary emission, this provoked the 1980-82 recession, but simultaneously opened the way for massive financing through the emission of bonds and securities that were constantly renewed in the market. This orientation was taken up and generalised by the Reagan administration and spread throughout the world.

The mechanism of “financial engineering” was as follows. On the one hand, the state issued bonds and securities in order to finance its enormous and ever growing deficits which were subscribed to by the financial markets (banks, business and individuals). On the other hand, it pushed the banks to search for loans in the financial markets, and at the same time to issue bonds and securities and to carry out successive expansions of capital (issuing of shares). It was a question of a highly speculative mechanism which tried to exploit the development of a growing mass of fictitious capital (idle surplus value incapable of being invested in new capital).

In this way, the weight of private funds became more important than public funds in the financing of debt (public and private).

The financing of public debt in the USA

 in billions of dollars

(Global Development Finance)

This does not mean that there was a lessening of the weight of the state (as the “liberals” proclaim), but rather there was a reply to the increasing needs of financing (and particularly immediate liquidity) which meant a massive mobilisation of all the available disposable capital.

This supposedly “liberal” and “monetarist” policy meant that the rest of the world economy financed the famous US locomotive. Japanese capitalism especially, with its enormous trade surplus, bought massive amounts of Treasury bonds and securities, as well as the different issues by companies in this country. The result was that the United States, which since 1914 had been the world’s main creditor, from 1985 was converted into a net debtor and, from 1988, it became the world’s main debtor. Another consequence was that from the end of the 80s, Japanese banks held almost 50% of American property shares. Finally this form of indebtedness meant that “while in the period 1980-82 the industrialised countries poured $49,000 million more than they received into the so-called developing countries, in the period 1983-89 the latter supplied to the former $242,000 million more” ( Prometeo no 16, organ of Battaglia Communista, article “A new phase in the capitalist crisis”, December 1998).

The method used for repay the interest and principle on the issued bonds was the issuing of new bonds and securities. This meant increasing levels of debt and the risk of borrowers not subscribing to new issues. In order to continue to attract investors there were regular re-appropriations of dollars through various artificial revaluations of foreign exchange rates. The result of this was that, on the one hand, an enormous flood of dollars entered the world economy and, on the other hand, the USA developed a gigantic trade deficit that year after year broke new records. The majority of the industrialised countries more or less followed the same policy: using money as an instrument for attracting capital.

All of this encouraged a tendency which was to deepen throughout the 90s: the complete adulteration and manipulation of money. The classic function of money under capitalism was to be the measure of value and standard of price, in order to do this the money of the different states had to be backed by a minimal proportion of precious metals[4]. These reserves of noble metals tended to reflect the growth and development of the wealth of a country, this also tended to reflected through the price of its money.

We have already seen in the previous article how capitalism throughout the 20th century has abandoned these reserves and this has meant that money has circulated without any equivalent, with all the risks that entails. Nonetheless, the 80s constituted a real qualitative leap towards the abyss: the phenomenon, already serious, of money being completely separated from a counter-part in gold or silver, worsened throughout the decade. This was joined: firstly by the game of appreciation/depreciation in order to attract capital which caused tremendous speculation in these and, secondly; the increasingly systematic recourse to “competitive devaluation”: ie, the lowering of the price of money by decree with the aim of helping exports.

The pillars of this “new” economic policy were, on the one hand, the constant snowballing of the massive emission of bonds and securities, and, on the other, the incoherent manipulation of money by means of a sophisticated and complicated “financial system” which in reality was the work of the whole state and the large financial institutions (banks, savings banks and investment companies, which have very close links with the state). In appearance it was a “liberal” and “non-interventionist” mechanism, in practice it was a typical construction of Western state capitalism, which is to say a management based on the combination of the sectors dominated by private and state capital.

This policy was presented as the magic potion capable of bringing about economic growth without inflation. In the 70s, capitalism had found itself confronted by the insoluble dilemma of inflation or recession, now, whatever their political colouring (“socialist”, “leftist” or “centre”), governments converted to the “neo-liberal” and “monetarist” credo, and proclaimed that capitalism had overcome this dilemma and that inflation had been reduced to levels of 2 to 5% without harming economic growth.

This policy of the “struggle against inflation” and of supposed “growth without inflation” was based on the following means:

1. The elimination of “surplus” industrial and agricultural productive capacity which led to the closure of numerous industrial installations and massive lay-offs.

2. The drastic cutting of subsidies to industry and agriculture that also brought with it unemployment and closures.

3. The pressure to reduce costs and to increase productivity meant in reality a masked and gradual deflation based on brutal attacks against the working class of the central countries and a permanent lowering of the price of raw materials

4. The pushing of the inflationary effects onto the most peripheral countries, through mechanisms of monetary pressure and, especially, through the devaluation of the dollar. Thus, in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia etc, there were explosions of hyperinflation leading to price increases reaching 30% a day!

5. Above all, the repaying debts with new debts. The financing of debt went from the issuing of paper money to it being carried out by the issuing of bonds (state bonds and securities, business shares etc), which led to the slowing down of the long-term effects of inflation. The debts contracted through the issue of bonds were repaid through new issues. These bonds were the objects of unstoppable speculation. The over-valuation of their price (this over-valuation was complemented by the manipulation of the price of money) meant that the underlying enormous inflationary pressures were delayed to a future date.

Measure (4) did not resolve inflation but simply changed its location (pushing it onto the weakest countries). Measure (5) may have delayed inflation until the future but at the cost of stoking up its counter-part: the bomb of monetary and financial instability and disorder.

As for measures (1) and (3) these may have reduced inflation in the short-term but their consequences will be much more serious in the medium to long-term. In fact, these measures constitute a hidden deflation, that is, a methodical and organised reduction by the state of real productive capacity. As we underlined in International Review no59 “This production may correspond to goods that are really made, but it’s not a production of values (...) capitalism hasn’t grown richer. On the contrary, it has grown poorer” (5).

The process of industrial and agricultural desertification; the enormous reduction in costs, lay-offs and general impoverishment of the working class, was methodically and systematically carried out by all governments throughout the 1980s and this has seen a major escalation in the 1990s which has taken the form of a hidden and permanent deflation. While 1929 produced a brutal and open deflation, in the 80s capitalism unleashed a hitherto unknown tendency: controlled and planned deflation, a form of gradual and methodical demolition of the bases of capitalist accumulation, a state of slow but irreversible de-accumulation.

The cutting of costs, the elimination of obsolete, and uncompetitive sectors, the gigantic growth of productivity were not symptoms in themselves of the growth and development of capitalism. It is certain that these phenomena accompanied the phases of capitalism’s development in the 19th Century. However, then they had meaning because they were at the service of the extension and broadening of the capitalist relations of production and the growth and formation of the world market. Their function in the 80s correspondent to a diametrically opposed aim: to protect from overproduction and their results are counter-productive, making it even worse.

For this reason, if these policies of “competitive deflation”, as the economists modestly call them, in the short-term reduce the bases of inflation, in the medium to long term they will reinforce and stimulate them, since the reduction of the basis of the reproduction of global capital can only be compensated for, on the one hand, by an always increasing  mass of debt, and on the other, unproductive spending (armaments, state, financial and commercial bureaucracy). As we said in the Report on the Economic Crisis to our 12th International Congress: “the real danger of ‘growth’ leading to inflation is situated elsewhere: in the fact that any such growth today, any so-called recovery, is based on a huge increase in debt, on the artificial stimulation of demand - in other words on fictitious capital. This is the matrix which gives birth to inflation because it expresses a profound tendency in decadent capitalism: the growing divorce between money and value, between what goes on in the “real” world of the production of things and a process of exchange that has become such an “extremely complex and artificial mechanism” that even Rosa Luxemburg would be astounded if she could witness it today” (International Review. No 92).

Therefore, in reality, the only thing that has sustained the fall in inflation during the 80s and 90s has been the systematic postponing of debt through the merry-go-round of the issuing of new debts which have replaced the previous ones and the explosion of global inflation in the increasingly numerous weakest countries.

All of this was illustrated clearly by the debt crisis that exploded from 1982 in the Third World countries (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria etc). These states who had fed their expansion in the 70s through enormous debts (see the first part of this article) threatened to declare themselves bankrupt. The most important countries reacted rapidly and came to their “aid” with plans for debt “reconstruction” (the Brady Plan) or through direct intervention by the International Monetary Fund. In reality, what they were seeking to do was to avoid a brutal collapse of these states which would have destabilised all of the world economic system.

The remedies that were employed were a copy of the “new policy of debt”:

- The application of brutal plans for deflation under the direct control of the IMF and the World Bank that meant terrible attacks on the working class and the whole population. Those countries that in the 70s had lived the dream of “development” woke up to find themselves in a nightmare of generalised poverty from which they could not escape.

- The conversion of the loans in the National Debt into bonds that carried very high interest rates (10 to 20% more than the world average) and formidable speculation in them. The debt did not disappear: it was transformed into deferred debt. Far from the debt of the Third World countries falling it grew vertiginously throughout the 80s and 90s.

The crash of 1987

From 1985, the American locomotive began to run out of steam. Growth rates fell slowly, but inexorably and this was gradually transmitted to the European countries. Politicians and economists talked about a “soft landing”, that is to say they tried to put a break on the mechanism of debt that lay behind an increasingly uncontrollable speculation. The dollar, after years of revaluation, underwent a brutal devaluation: falling by more than 50% between 1985 and 1987. This momentarily eased the American deficit and brought about a reduction in the payment of interest on this debt, but the counter-part was the brutal 27% fall of the New York stock exchange in October 1987.

This figure was quantitatively less than the fall recorded in 1929 (more than 30%), however a comparative table of the situations in 1987 and 1929 allows one to understand that in 1987 the problems were much worse (see the bottom of this page).

The stock market crisis of 1987 meant a brutal purging of the speculative bubble that had fed the reactivation of the economy by Reaganomics. Since then, this reactivation has drained away. In the last half of the 80s we saw rates of growth between 1% and 3%: in effect, stagnation. But at the same time, the decade ended with the collapse of Russia and its satellites in the Eastern bloc, a phenomenon that although it had its roots in the particularities of these regimes was fundamentally a consequence of the brutal aggravation of the world economic crisis.

Along with the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc a very dangerous tendency appeared from 1987: the instability of the whole of the world financial system, which was to lead to increasingly frequent tremors that demonstrate its growing fragility and vulnerability.

General balance sheet of the 1980s

We are going to draw some conclusions about the whole of the decade; as with the previous article these will concern the evolution of the economy as much as the situation of the working class. A comparison with the 1970s reveals a serious decline.

Evolution of the economic situation

1. Levels of growth in production reached their peak in 1984: 4.9%. The average for the period was 3.4%, whilst that for the previous decade was 4.1%.

2. There was an severe contraction of the industrial and agricultural apparatus. This was a new phenomenon after 1945 which affected the main industrialised countries. The following table which refers to three central countries (Germany, Great Britain and the USA) demonstrates a fall in industry and mining and a growing displacement towards unproductive and speculative sectors.

Evolution of production by sectors between 1974 and 1987 (%)

(source OECD)

3. The majority of productive sectors suffered a fall in their levels of production. This could be seen as much in cutting edge sectors (cars, electronics, white goods) as in the “tradition-al” sectors (shipyards, engineering, tex-tiles, mining). Thus, for example, levels of car production in 1987 were the same as in 1978.

4. The situation in agriculture was disastrous:

 - The countries of the East and the 3rd World were obliged for the first time since 1945 to import basic foodstuffs.

 - The European Union decided to leave 20 million hectares fallow.

5. Production did grow in information technology, telecommunications, and electronics, nevertheless, this growth did not compensate for the fall in heavy industry and agriculture.

6. The periods of recovery did not affect the whole of the world economy; they were also short and accompanied by periods of stagnation (for example, between 1987 and 1989).

 - The recovery in the USA during the period 1983-85 was high but  between 1986-89 it was well below the average of 1970.

 - The recoveries were weaker (a global situation of semi-stagnation) in all the countries of Western Europe except in Germany.

 - A good number of Third World countries were uncoupled from the train of growth and fell into stagnation.

 - The countries of the East suffered an almost general stagnation during the whole of the decade (except Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

7. Japan and Germany managed to maintain levels of acceptable growth from 1983. This growth was higher than the average and permitted enormous trade surpluses which transformed them into important financial creditors. However, these levels of growth were not as high as in the two previous decades.

Average annual growth of GDP in Japan

 (source: OECD)

8. The price of raw materials fell throughout the whole decade (save the period 1987-88). This allowed the industrialised countries to alleviate the underlying weight of inflation at the cost of the “Third World” countries (producers of raw materials) that progressively collapsed into total stagnation.

9. Armaments production under went its most important historical growth: between 1980-1988 it grow by 41% in the USA according to official figures. This growth means, as the Communist Left had already demonstrated, terminally weakening the economy. This is proved by American capital: at the same time as it was unceasingly increasing its share of world armaments production; the share of its exports in the world trade of important sectors fell, as can be seen from the following table:

% of exports in world trade

10. Debt underwent a brutal explosion as much at the quantitative level as the qualitative:

 At the quantitative level:

 - In the “Third World”, it grew in an uncontrollable way:

 The total debt in millions of $ of the underdeveloped countries

 (source the World Bank)

 - it took off spectacularly in the USA:

 The total debt in $ of the USA

 (source OECD)

- however, it was moderate in Japan and Germany.

At the qualitative level:

- the USA became a debtor country in 1985 after being a creditor for 71 years;

- in 1988, the United States was transformed into the most indebted country on the planet not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. This can be clearly seen from the fact that, while Mexico’s foreign debt represented 9 months of its GDP and Brazil’s 6 months, in the USA it represented 2 years of GDP!

- in the industrialised countries, the weight interest payments on loans represented on average 19% of the state budget.

11. The financial apparatus, which had previously been relatively stable and healthy, from 1987 became to suffering increasingly server storms:

 - Significant banking collapses, the most serious of which was that of the  Savings and Loans banks in American in 1988 with debts of $500,000 million.

 - A succession of stock exchange crashes began in 1987: in 1989 there was another crash, though it was less serious due to state measures which immediately stopped trading when prices fell by 10%.

 - Speculation took on a spectacular form. In Japan, for example, excessive property  speculation caused a crash in 1989 whose consequences have been felt ever since.

The situation of the working class

1. We have seen the worst wave of unemployment since 1945. Unemployment rose brutally in the industrialised countries:

The number of unemployed in the 24 countries of the OECD

 (source: OECD)

2. The appearance in the industrialised countries of a tendency towards under-employment (temporary, part-time and precarious work) while in the “Third World” under-employment became generalised.

3. From 1985 the governments of the industrialised countries adopted measures which encouraged  temporary contracts under the pretext of “the struggle against unemployment”. In this way by 1990, temporary contracts effected 8% of the workforce in the OECD, while permanent jobs were declining.

4. Nominal wages grow very modestly (the average in the OECD countries between 1980-88 was 3%) and did not compensate for inflation despite its very low level.

5. Social spending (social security systems, housing subsidies, health, education, etc) suffered its first important cuts.

This decline in the living conditions of the working class was dramatic in the “underdeveloped” countries and serious in the industrialised countries. In the latter it was not as smooth or slow as in the previous decade despite the fact that governments, in order to avoid the unification of the struggles, organised the attacks in a gradual and planned way in order to avert them being too sudden and generalised.

However, for the first time since 1945 capitalism was incapable of increasing the total work force: the number of wage earners grew at a rate lower than the increase in the world population. In 1990 the International Labour  Organisation put forward a figure of 800 million unemployed. This clearly shows the aggravation in capitalism’s crisis and thoroughly exposes the lying discourse of the bourgeoisie about the recovery of the economy.

Adalen

In the first part of this article, we answered the accusation that we have become “Leninists”, and that we have changed position on the organisational question. We have shown not only that “Leninism” is opposed to our political principles, but also that it aims to destroy the historic unity of the workers’ movement. In particular, it rejects the struggle of the marxist lefts first within, then outside, the 2nd and 3rd Internationals by setting Lenin against Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek, etc. “Leninism” is the negation of the communist militant Lenin. It is the expression of the Stalinist counter-revolution of the early 1920s.

We also reaffirmed that, while we have always identified with Lenin’s struggle against economism and the Mensheviks for the construction of the party, we also continue to reject his errors on the organisational question, especially on the hierarchical and “military” nature of the organisation. On the theoretical level, we disagree with Lenin on the question of class consciousness, supposedly introduced into the class from the outside. At the same time, these errors have to be situated within their historical context in order to understand their importance and their real meaning.

What is the ICC’s position on What is to be done? and on Two steps forward, one step back? Why do we say that these two texts of Lenin’s are invaluable gains on the theoretical, organisational, and political level? Do our criticisms of these texts - on points which are by no means secondary, in particular on the issue of class consciousness in What is to be done? - call into question our fundamental agreement with Lenin.

The ICC’s position on What is to be done?

“It would be wrong and caricatural to oppose a substitutionist Lenin of What is to be done? to the clear and healthy vision of a Rosa Luxemburg or a Leon Trotsky (who during the 1920s was to become the ardent advocate of the militarisation of labour and the all-powerful dictatorship of the party!)”.[1] [86] Our position on What is to be done? begins with our method for understanding the history of the workers’ movement, based on its unity and continuity, as we explained in the first part of this article. It is not new, and dates from the foundation of the ICC.

There are two main sections to What is to be done?, written in 1902. The first deals with the question of class consciousness and the role of revolutionaries. The second deals directly with organisational questions. The whole constitutes a merciless critique of the “economists”, who thought that consciousness could develop within the working class solely on the basis of the economic struggle. They therefore tended to under-estimate revolutionary organisations, and to deny them any active political role: their task was limited to “helping” the economic struggle. As a natural consequence of this under-estimation of the role of revolutionaries, economism opposed the formation of a centralised organisation able to intervene broadly and with one voice on all questions, whether economic or political.

Lenin’s 1903 text One step forward, two steps back complements What is to be done? on the historical level, and gives an account of the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP which had just taken place.

As we have said, the main weakness of What is to be done? is on class consciousness. What was the attitude of other revolutionaries on this question? Prior to the 2nd Congress, only the “economist” Martinov opposed Lenin’s position. It was only after the Congress that Plekhanov and Trotsky criticised Lenin’s incorrect idea of a consciousness imported into the working class from outside. They were the only ones to reject explicitly Kautsky’s position, adopted by Lenin, that “socialism and the class struggle emerge in parallel, and do not engender each other [and that] science is born not by the proletariat but by bourgeois intellectuals”.[2] [87]

Trotsky’s response on this issue is correct enough, though it remains very limited. We should not forget that we are in 1903, while Trotsky’s reply (Our political tasks) dates from 1904. The debate on the mass strike had barely begun in Germany, and was only really to develop with the experience of 1905 in Russia. Trotsky clearly rejects Kautsky’s position, and stresses the danger of substitutionism inherent in it. But although Trotsky makes a virulent attack on Lenin’s organisational positions, he does not distinguish himself completely from Lenin on the consciousness issue. Indeed, he understands and explains the reasons behind Lenin’s position:

“When Lenin adopted Kautsky’s absurd idea of the relationship between the “spontaneous” and “conscious” elements in the proletariat’s revolutionary movement, he was only making a rough sketch of the tasks of his time”.[3] [88]

We should also point out that nobody amongst Lenin’s new opponents protested at Kautsky’s position on consciousness before the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, when they were all united in the struggle against economism. At the Congress, Martov, the Menshevik leader, adopted exactly the same position as Lenin and Kautsky: “We are the conscious expression of an unconscious process”.[4] [89] After the Congress, so little importance was accorded the subject that the Mensheviks were still denying any programmatic disagreement, and putting the split down to Lenin’s “crazy ideas” about organisation: “With my poor intelligence, I am unable to understand what may be meant by ‘opportunism on organisational problems’ posed as something autonomous, bereft of any organic tie to programmatic and tactical ideas”.[5] [90]

Plekhanov’s criticism, while true, remains somewhat general and is limited to re-establishing the marxist position on the question. His main argument is that it is not true that “the intellectuals ‘worked out’ their own socialist theories ‘completely independently from the spontaneous growth of the workers’ movement’ - this has never happened and could never happen”.[6] [91]

Before and during the Congress, when he was still in agreement with Lenin, Plekhanov limited himself to the theoretical level on the class consciousness issue. But he failed either to deal with the debates of the 2nd Congress, or to answer the central question: what kind of Party, and what role for the Party? Only Lenin gave a response.

The central question in What is to be done? - raise the consciousness of the class

In his polemic against economism, Lenin had one central concern on the theoretical level: the question of class consciousness and its development in the working class. We know that Lenin soon went back on his adoption of Kautsky’s position, in particular with the experience of the mass strike in 1905 and the appearance of the first Soviets. In January 1917 - before the beginning of the Russian revolution and in the midst of imperialist war - Lenin returned to the mass strike of 1905. Whole passages - on “the interlocking of economic and political strikes” - could have been written by Luxemburg or Trotsky.[7] [92] And they give an idea of Lenin’s rejection of his initial idea, itself largely the result of “overstating the case” for polemical reasons.[8] [93]

“The real education of the masses can never be separated from an independent political struggle, and above all from the revolutionary struggle of the masses themselves. Only action educates the exploited class, action alone allows it to measure its strength, broaden its horizon, increase its capacities, enlighten its intelligence and temper its will”.[9] [94] This is a far cry from Kautsky.

But even in What is to be done?, the passages on consciousness are contradictory. Alongside the incorrect position, for example, Lenin adds: “This shows us that the ‘spontaneous element’ is fundamentally nothing other than the embryonic form of the conscious element”.[10] [95]

These contradictions are the expression of the fact that Lenin, in common with the rest of the workers’ movement in 1902, did not have a very clear or precise position on class consciousness.[11] [96] The contradictions in What is to be done?, as well as his later positions, show that Lenin was not particularly attached to Kautsky’s position. In fact, there are only three passages in What is to be done? where Lenin writes that “consciousness must be imported from the outside”, and of these one has nothing to do with Kautsky.

Rejecting the idea that it is possible “to develop the workers’ political class consciousness from within their economic struggle, that is to say on the basis solely (or at least principally) of the struggle... [Lenin replies that] ...political class consciousness can only be brought to the worker from outside, in other words from outside the economic struggle, outside the sphere of the relations between workers and employers”.[12] [97] The formulation is confused, but the idea is correct and does not correspond to the two other passages where he speaks of consciousness being brought “from outside”. His thinking is much more precise in another passage: “The political struggle of the social-democracy is much wider and more complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the bosses and the government”.[13] [98]

Lenin very clearly rejects the position developed by the “economists”, that class consciousness is a direct, mechanical, and exclusive product of the economic struggle.

We stand with What is to be done? in the struggle against economism. We agree also with the critical arguments used against economism, and we believe that their theoretical and political content remains relevant today.

“The idea that class consciousness does not appear mechanically from the economic struggle is entirely correct. But Lenin’s error is to think that class consciousness cannot be developed from the economic struggle, and must be introduced from the outside by a party”.[14] [99]

Is this a new appreciation on the part of the ICC? Here are some quotations from What is to be done? that we adopted, in 1989, in a polemic with the IBRP[15] [100] in order to support then what we are saying today: “The socialist consciousness of the worker masses is the only basis that can assure our triumph (...) The party must always have the possibility to reveal to the working class the hostile antagonisms between its interests and those of the bourgeoisie. [The class consciousness attained by the party] must be infused into the working masses with an increasing fervour (...) it is necessary to concern oneself as much as possible with the development of the consciousness of the workers in general. [The task of the party is to] use the sparks of political consciousness that the economic struggle generates in the spirit of the workers to raise them to the level of social-democratic consciousness”.[16] [101]

For Lenin’s detractors, the conceptions set out in What is to be done? prefigure Stalinism. There is therefore supposedly a link between Lenin and Stalin, including on the organisational issue.[17] [102] We have already dealt with this lie, on the historical level, in the first part of this article. We also reject it on the political level, including on the questions of class consciousness and political organisation.

There is a continuity running from What is to be done? to the Russian revolution, but certainly not to the Stalinist counter-revolution. This unity and continuity exists with the whole revolutionary process which links the mass strikes of 1905 and 1917, which ran from February 1917 to the revolution in October. For us, What is to be done? heralds the April Theses of 1917: “... in view of the fact that [the masses] are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capitalism and the imperialist war (...) The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is (...) to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation (...) especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses”.[18] [103] For us, What is to be done? heralds the October insurrection and the power of the Soviets.

Our present-day “anti-Leninist” detractors completely ignore this central concern of What is to be done? with consciousness, thus adopting one element of the Stalinist method which we have already denounced in the first part of this article. Just as Stalin had the images of old Bolshevik militants erased from photographs, so they erase the essential parts of Lenin’s thinking and accuse us of becoming “Leninists”, in other words Stalinist.

For Lenin’s uncritical adulators, like the Bordigist current, we are hopeless idealists because we insist on the role and importance of “class consciousness in the working class” for the proletariat’s historical and revolutionary struggle. For anyone who takes the trouble to read what Lenin wrote, and to immerse themselves in the real process of political confrontation and discussion of the time, both accusations are false.

What is to be done?’s distinction between the political and the unitary organisation

What is to be done? brings other fundamental contributions at the political and organisational level, in particular Lenin’s clear distinction between the unitary organisations that the class creates for its day-to-day struggle, and its political organisations.

“These circles, professional associations and organisations of workers are necessary everywhere; they must be as widespread as possible, and their functions as varied as possible; but it is absurd and damaging to confuse them with the organisation of revolutionaries, to erase the line that separates them (...) the organisation of a revolutionary social-democratic party must of necessity be different in type to the organisation of the workers for the economic struggle”.[19] [104]

At this level, the distinction was not a new discovery for the workers’ movement. International, and especially German, social-democracy was clear on the question. But in its struggle against economism (the Russian variety of opportunism), and taking account of the particular conditions of the class struggle in Tsarist Russia, What is to be done? goes further and puts forward a new idea.

“The organisation of revolutionaries must include mainly and above all men whose profession is revolutionary action. This characteristic common to all members of such an organisation should efface any distinction between workers and intellectuals, and still more between different professions. Necessarily, such an organisation should not be very large, and it should be as clandestine as possible”.[20] [105]

Let us pause for a moment here. It would be wrong to see this passage as solely determined to the historical conditions within which Russian revolutionaries were working, in particular of illegality, clandestinity, and repression. Lenin puts forward three points which are universally and historically valid, whose validity has indeed been confirmed over and over to this day. The first is that to be a communist militant is a voluntary and serious act (he uses the word “professional”, which was also taken up by the Mensheviks in the debates at the Congress). We have always agreed with this conception of militant commitment, which combats and rejects any dilettante attitude.

Secondly, Lenin defends a vision of the relations between militants which goes beyond the division between worker and intellectual,[21] [106] or “leader and led” as we would say today, which goes beyond any vision based on hierarchy or individual superiority, in a community of struggle within the party. He also opposes any division between militants by trade or industrial branch. He rejects in advance the factory cells which were set up during the “Bolshevisation” of the party, in the name of “Leninism”.[22] [107]

Finally, he considered that the party should “not be very large”. He was the first to see that the period of mass workers’ parties was coming to an end.[23] [108] Certainly, this clarity was fostered by conditions inside Russia. But it was the new conditions of the proletariat’s life and struggle, expressed especially in the “mass strike”, which also determined the new conditions of the activity of revolutionaries, in particular the “smaller”, minority nature of the revolutionary organisations in the period of capitalist decadence which opened at the beginning of the century.

“But it would be (...) ‘tail-endism’ to think that under capitalism the whole class, or almost the whole class, could one day raise itself to the point of acquiring the degree of consciousness and action of its vanguard, of its Social-Democratic Party”.[24] [109]

While Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek, and Trotsky were among the first to draw the lessons of the appearance of the mass strike and the workers’ councils, they remained prisoners of a vision of workers’ parties as mass political organisations. Rosa Luxemburg criticised Lenin from the standpoint of a mass party,[25] [110] to such a point that she too could fall into error, as when she wrote: “in reality, the social-democracy is not linked to the organisation of the working class, it is the very movement of the working class”.[26] [111] She too was a victim of her own “over-stating the case” in polemic, and of her position alongside the Mensheviks on the organisation question during the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, and so slid unhappily onto the terrain of the Mensheviks and the “economists” by drowning the organisation of revolutionaries in the class.[27] [112] She was to correct her position later, but it was Lenin who formulated most clearly the distinction between the organisation of the whole working class and the organisation of revolutionaries.

Who is a member of the party? 

What is to be done?, and One step forward, two steps back, are thus essential political advances in the history of the workers’ movement. More precisely, the two works represent “practical” political gains on the organisational level. Like Lenin, the ICC has always considered the organisational question as a political question in its own right. The political organisation of the class is different from its unitary organisation, and this has practical implications, at its own level. Amongst them, it is essential to have a strict definition of what it means to join and belong to the party, in other words a definition of the militant, his tasks, his duties, his rights, in short his relation to the organisation. The battle at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP around the first article of the statutes is well known: this was the first confrontation, within the Congress itself, between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The difference between the formulations proposed by Lenin and Martov may appear insignificant:

For Lenin, “A party member is one who accepts the Party’s programme and supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party organisations”. For Martov, “A member of the RSDLP is one who accepts the Party’s programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations”.

The divergence lies in the recognition as members of the Party either militants who belong to the Party and are recognised as such by the latter — Lenin’s position — or militants who do not formally belong to the Party, but who support it at one time or another, in one activity or another, or even simply who declare themselves as Social-Democrats. This position of Martov and the Mensheviks is thus broader, more “flexible”, less restrictive and less precise than Lenin’s.

Behind this difference lies a fundamental question which quickly came to light in the Congress, and which confronts revolutionary organisations to this day: who is a member of the Party, and — still more difficult to define — who is not?

For Martov, things were clear: “The more widespread the appellation of Party member, the better. We can only be glad if every striker, every demonstrator, taking responsibility for his actions, can declare himself a member of the Party”.[28] [113]

Martov’s position tends to dissolve the revolutionary organisation into the class. It comes back to the same “economism” which he had previously fought against, alongside Lenin. His argument in favour of his proposed Statute boils down to liquidating the very idea of a vanguard, unified Party, centralised and disciplined around a precise political programme, and a rigorous collective will to action. It also opens the door to opportunist policies of unprincipled “recruitment” of militants, which puts the Party’s long term development in hock to immediate results. It is Lenin who is correct:

“On the contrary, the stronger our organisations of real social-democrats, the less will be the hesitation and instability within the Party, and the wider, more varied, richer and more fruitful will be the Party’s influence on the elements of the working class around it, and led by it. It is impossible to confuse the Party, the vanguard of the working class, with the class as a whole”.[29] [114]

The extreme danger of Martov’s opportunist position on the organisation, recruitment, and membership of the Party very quickly appeared in the Congress with the intervention of Axelrod: “It is possible to be a sincere and devoted member of the social-democratic party, and yet be completely inapt for the organisation of a rigorously centralised combat”.[30] [115]

How can one be a member of the Party, a communist militant, an yet “inapt for the organisation of a rigorously centralised combat”? To accept such an idea would be as absurd as to accept the idea of a revolutionary and militant worker “inapt” for any collective class action. Any communist organisation can only accept militants who are apt for its discipline and the centralisation of its combat. How could it be otherwise? Unless we are to accept that there is no imperative demand on militants to respect the relationships of the organisation, the decisions it adopts, and the necessity of its combat. Unless, indeed, we reduce to ridicule the very notion of a communist organisation, which must be “the most determined fraction of all the workers’ parties in every country, the fraction that pulls forward all the others”.[31] [116] The proletariat’s historic struggle is a united class combat on the historical level, collective and centralised on the international level. Like their class, the communists’ combat is historic, international, permanent, united, collective and centralised, which is opposed to any individualist vision. “While critical consciousness and initiative are of a very limited value for individuals, they are fully realised in the collectivity of the Party”.[32] [117] Whoever is unable to take part in this centralised combat is inapt for militant activity and cannot be recognised as a member of the Party. “The Party should only admit elements capable of at least a minimum of organisation”.[33] [118]

This “aptitude” is the fruit of communists’ political and militant conviction. It is gained and developed in participation in the historic struggle of the proletariat, especially within its organised political minorities. For any consistent communist organisation, every new militant’s conviction in and “practical” — not platonic — aptitude for a rigorously centralised fighting organisation are both preconditions for his membership and a concrete expression of his political agreement with the communist programme.

The definition of the militant, of what it means to be a member of a communist organisation, is an essential question today. What is to be done? and One step forward, two steps back provide the foundations for our answers to many organisational questions. This is why the ICC has always based itself on the Bolshevik combat at the 2nd RSDLP Congress to distinguish clearly and firmly between a militant, who “participates personally in one of the Party organisations”, as Lenin insisted, and a sympathiser, a fellow-traveller who “accepts the Party’s programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular [or irregular, we would add] personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations”, as it is put in Martov’s definition, which was eventually adopted by the 2nd Congress. In the same way, we have always defended the principle that “once you want to be a member of the Party, you must also recognise the relationships of the organisation, and not just platonically”.[34] [119]

None of this is new for the ICC. It is at the core of its constitution, as is proven by the Statutes adopted at its first International Congress in January 1976.

It would be wrong to think that this question no longer poses any problems today. Firstly, although its last political expressions are silent or on the point of disappearing,[35] [120] councilism remains today in some sort the heir to economism and Menshevism at the organisational level. In a period of greater working class activity, there is no doubt that councilist pressure to “deceive oneself, close one’s eyes to the immensity of our tasks, restrict these tasks [by forgetting] the difference between the vanguard detachment and the masses that surround it”,[36] [121] will find a renewed vigour. Then again, even in the milieu which claims its heritage solely from the Italian Left and from Lenin, in other words the Bordigist current and the IBRP, Lenin’s method and political thought on organisation issues is far from being put fully into practice. We need only consider the Bordigist PCI’s unprincipled recruitment policy during the 1970s. This kind of activist and immediatist policy ended up provoking the PCI’s explosion in 1982. We need only consider the lack of rigour of the IBRP (which regroups the CWO in Britain and Battaglia Comunista in Italy), which sometimes has difficulty in deciding who is a militant of the organisation and who is only a sympathiser or a close contact, despite all the dangers of such organisational vagueness.[37] [122] Opportunism on the organisational question is today one of the most dangerous poisons for the proletarian political milieu. Unfortunately, the incantation of Lenin and the “compact and powerful party” are no antidote.

Lenin and the ICC - the same conception of militant activity 

What does Rosa Luxemburg say in her polemic with Lenin on the question of the militant and his membership of the party?

“The conception expressed here [ie., in One step forward, two steps back] in a rigorous and exhaustive manner is that of a relentless centralism. The life-principle of this centralism is, on the one hand, the sharp accentuation of the distinction of the organised troops of explicit and active revolutionaries from the unorganised, though revolutionary, milieu which surrounds them; on the other hand, it is the strict discipline and the direct, decisive, and determining intervention of the central committee in all activities of the local organisations of the party”.[38] [123]

Although Luxemburg does not take an explicit position against Lenin’s precise definition of the militant, her ironic tone in writing of “the organised troops of explicit and active revolutionaries”, and her complete silence when it comes to the political battle in the Congress around article 1 of the Statutes, show that her position at the time was incorrect, and paralleled that of the Mensheviks. She remained a prisoner of the vision of a mass party which the German social-democracy of the day put forward as an example. She did not see the problem, and in fact avoids it by missing the point of the debate. Her silence on the debate around article 1 of the Statutes means that Lenin was right to reply that she “limits herself to repeating empty phrases without trying to give them a meaning. She holds up scarecrows without going to the heart of the debate. She has me uttering commonplaces, general ideas, and absolute truths and tries to remain silent on the relative truths which are based on precise facts”.[39] [124]

As with Plekhanov and many others, Luxemburg’s general considerations — even when they are correct in themselves — do not answer the real political questions posed by Lenin. As we said in 1979, “Luxemburg’s general concern was correct — the insistence on the collective character of the workers’ movement — but the insistence that ‘the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves’ brought with it incorrect practical conclusions”.[40] [125] She misses the political gains in the Bolsheviks’ combat.

Without the debate on article 1, the question of the party, clearly defined and clearly distinct both organisationally and politically from the working class as a whole, would not have been definitively settled. Without Lenin’s fight for article 1, the question would not be a prime political gain on organisational matters, on which today’s communists must lean in building their organisation, not just when it comes to accepting new militants, but also and above all for establishing clear, rigorous relations between the militants and the revolutionary organisation.

Is this defence of Lenin’s position on article 1 something new for the ICC? Have we changed position? “To be a member of the ICC, [the militant] must integrate into the organisation, participate actively in its work, and carry out the tasks which are allotted to him” says the article in our own Statutes which deals with the question of militant membership of the ICC. It is perfectly clear that we have adopted, without any ambiguity, Lenin’s conception, the spirit and even the letter of the Statutes that he proposed to the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, and certainly not those of Martov or Trotsky. It is a pity that the ex-members of the ICC who today accuse us of becoming “Leninists” have forgotten what they themselves adopted at the time. Undoubtedly they were guilty of doing so without thinking, in the flush of post-68 student enthusiasm. At all events, it is particularly dishonest of them to accuse the ICC of having changed position, and to claim that it is they who are faithful to the true, original ICC.

The ICC alongside Lenin on the Statutes 

We have briefly presented our conception of the revolutionary militant, and shown how much it owes to Lenin’s contribution in What is to be done? and One step forward, two steps back. We have emphasised the importance of translating this definition of the militant as faithfully and as rigorously as possible into daily militant practice, through the organisation’s Statutes. Here again, we have always been faithful to Lenin’s method and the lessons he has left on organisational matters. The political struggle to establish precise rules regulating organisational relationships, in other words Statutes, is fundamental. The struggle to have them respected is equally so, of course. Without this, grand declarations on the Party remain mere empty words.

In the framework of this article, space prevents us from setting out our conception of the unity of the political organisation, and showing how Lenin’s struggle at the RSDLP’s 2nd Congress against the survival of circles, is a considerable theoretical and political contribution. But we want to insist on the necessity of the practical importance of translating the need for this unity into the organisation’s Statutes:: “The unitary nature of the ICC is also expressed in these Statutes” (ICC Statutes). Lenin expressed this reason and necessity very well.

“Aristocratic anarchism does not understand that formal Statutes are necessary precisely to replace the limited ties of the circles with the wider ties of the Party. The ties within or between circles neither could nor should have taken on a precise form, since it was based on camaraderie and uncontrolled and unmotivated ‘confidence’. Party ties cannot and must not be based on either the one or the other, but on formal statutes, drawn up ‘bureaucratically’[41] [126] (from the standpoint of the undisciplined intellectual), and whose strict observation will alone guard us from the whims and caprices of the circles, against their petty arguments called the free ‘process’ of ideological struggle”.[42] [127]

The same is true of the organisation’s centralisation against any federalism, localism, or vision which sees the organisation as a sum of parties or even autonomous revolutionary individuals. “The international congress is the sovereign body of the ICC” (ICC Statutes). On this level also, we consider ourselves the heirs of Lenin and of the necessary practical expression of his combat in the organisation’s statutes, both for the RSDLP of the time, and for the organisations of today.

“At the time when we are re-establishing the real unity of the Party, and dissolving in this unity the circles which have outlived their usefulness, this summit is necessarily the Congress of the Party, which is its supreme organism”.[43] [128]

The same is true for internal political life: Lenin’s contribution is particularly concerned with internal debate, the duty — not merely the right — to express any disagreement within an organisational framework and to the organisation as a whole; and once debates are settled and decisions taken by the Congress (which is the sovereign body, the organisation’s general assembly in effect), then the subordination of both parts and individual militants to the whole. Contrary to the widespread ieda that Lenin was a dictator who sought only to stifle debate and political life within the organisation, in reality he consistently opposed the Menshevik vision of the Congress as “a recorder, a controller, but not a creator”.[44] [129]

For Lenin and for the ICC, the Congress is a “creator”. In particular, we utterly reject the idea of binding mandates for delegates to the Congress, which is contrary to the widest, most dynamic, and most fruitful debate, and which would reduce the Congress to being nothing but a “recorder”, as Trotsky wanted in 1903. A “recording” congress would enshrine the supremacy of the parts over the whole, the reign of “everyman master in his own house”, of localism and federalism. A “recording and controlling” congress is the negation of the congress’ sovereign nature. Like Lenin, we are for the congress as “sovereign body” of the party, and which must have the power of decision and “creation”. The “creative” congress implies delegates who are not the prisoners of binding mandates.[45] [130]

The fact that the congress is the sovereign body also implies its preponderance over all the different parts of the communist organisation, in programmatic, political, and organisational terms.

“‘The Congress is the supreme instance of the Party’. Consequently, anyone who in one way or another prevents a delegate from addressing the Congress on any question of the life of the Party, without reserve or exception, transgresses the discipline of the Party and the rule of the Congress. The controversy thus boils down to the dilemma: circle spirit or Party spirit? Limitation of the rights of the delegates to the Congress, in the name of the imaginary rights or rules of all sorts of colleges or circles, or the complete, effective, and not merely verbal dissolution of all inferior instances, of all the little groups, before the Congress”.[46] [131]

On these points also we not only claim the heritage of Lenin’s combat, we express these conceptions whose heirs we are, and which we believe we continue, in our own organisational rules, in other words in our Statutes.

The Statutes are not exceptional measures

We have seen that neither Luxemburg nor Trotsky reply to Lenin on article 1 of the Statutes. They completely ignore both this question and that of the Statutes in general. They prefer to remain at the level of abstract generalities. And when they deign to evoke the Statutes, they completely underestimate them. At best, they consider the political organisation’s Statutes as nothing more than safety barriers, indicating the edge of the road and the limits not to be crossed. At worst, they see them as nothing more than tools of repression, exceptional measures to be used only with extreme caution. We should point out in passing that this vision of the statutes is the same as that of Stalinism, which also sees the statutes as instruments of repression, though without the “caution”.

For Trotsky, Lenin’s formulation of article 1 would have left “the platonic satisfaction [of having] discovered the surest statutory remedy against opportunism (...) Without a doubt this a simplistic, typically administrative way of resolving a serious practical question”.[47] [132]

Without realising it of course, Luxemburg herself answers Trotsky, when she says that in the case of a party that is already formed (eg a mass social-democratic party as in Germany), “a more rigorous application of the idea of centralism in the constitution and a stricter application of party discipline can no doubt be a useful safeguard against the opportunist current”.[48] [133] She agrees with Lenin for the German case, ie in general. By contrast, for the Russian case, she begins with “abstract truths” (“opportunist errors cannot be warded off in advance; only after they have taken on tangible forms in practice can they be overcome through the movement itself”), which are meaningless, and which in reality justify “in advance” any renunciation in the struggle against opportunism on organisational matters. Which she does not fail to do later on, still in the case of the Russian party, by making fun of the statutes as “paper paragraphs”, and “penpushers’ methods”, considering them as exceptional measures:

“The party constitution should not be seen as a kind of self-sufficient weapon against opportunism but merely as an external means through which the decisive influence of the present proletarian-revolutionary majority of the party can be exercised”.[49] [134]

We have never agreed with Rosa Luxemburg on this point: “Luxemburg continued to reiterate that it was for the mass movement to overcome opportunism; revolutionaries could not accelerate this movement artificially (...) Luxemburg never came to understand the fact that the collective character of revolutionary activity is something which grows and develops”.[50] [135] On the question of the statutes, we are and always have been in agreement with Lenin.

The Statutes as a rule of life and weapon of struggle 

For Lenin, the statutes are much more than mere formal rules of functioning, rules to which we appeal in exceptional circumstances. Unlike Luxemburg, or the Mensheviks, Lenin defined the statutes as rules of conduct, the spirit which should animate the organisation and its militants from day to day. Far from understanding the statutes as a means of coercion and repression, Lenin saw them as weapons determining the responsibility of different parts of the organisation and of militants towards the whole political organisation; imposing a duty of open, public expression of political difficulties and disagreements before the whole organisation.

Lenin did not think of the expression of viewpoints, nuances, discussions, or disagreements as a right of militants, a right of the individual against the organisation, but rather as a duty and responsibility towards the whole party and its members. The communist militant is responsible, before his comrades in struggle, for the party’s political and organisational unity. The statutes are tools at the service of the unity and centralisation of the organisation, and therefore weapons against federalism, against the circle spirit, against cronyism, against any parallel life and discussion within the organisation. For Lenin, the statutes are not simply external limits, they are more than just rules: they are a political, organisational, and militant way of life.

“Controversial questions, within the circles, were not settled according to the statutes, ‘but through struggle and threats to leave’ (..) When I was only a member of a circle (...) I had the right, to justify for example my refusal to work with X, merely to invoke my uncontrolled, unmotivated distrust. Now that I am a member of the Party, I no longer have the right to invoke solely a vague suspicion, since this would open the door to the crazes and extravagances of the old circles; I am obliged to give a motive for my confidence or ‘suspicion’ with formal arguments, in other words to this or that formally established measure of our programme, our tactics, or our statutes. My duty is to no longer content myself with an uncontrolled ‘I have confidence’ or ‘I have no confidence’, but to recognise that I am accountable for my decisions, just as any fraction of the Party is for its, before the Party as a whole; I must follow a formally defined path to express my ‘distrust’, to win others over to the ideas and desires which spring from this distrust. We have risen from the uncontrolled ‘confidence’ of the circles to a party conception, which demands the observation of strict procedures and determined motives to express and verify confidence”.[51] [136]

The revolutionary organisation’s statutes are not merely exceptional measures, safety barriers. They are the concretisation of the organisational principles proper to the proletariat’s political vanguards. They are the products of these principles, at one and the same time a weapon in the fight against organisational opportunism, and the foundation on which the revolutionary organisation must be built. They are the expression of its unity, its centralisation, its political and organisational life, and its class character. They are the rule and the spirit which must guide the militants from day to day in their relations with the organisation and other militants, in the tasks entrusted to them, in their rights and duties, and in their daily personal life, which can be in contradiction neither with their militant activity nor with communist principles.

For us, as for Lenin, the organisational question is a political question in its own right. More than that, it is a fundamental political question. The adoption of statutes and the constant fight for their observance lie at the heart of an understanding of and the battle for the construction of the political organisation. The statutes are also a theoretical and political question in their own right. Is this a discovery for our organisation? A change of position?

“The ICC’s unitary nature is expressed also in the present statutes, which are valid for the whole organisation (...) These statutes constitute a concrete application of the ICC’s conceptions in organisational matters. As such, they form an integral part of the ICC’s platform” (Statutes of the ICC).

The Communist Party will be built on the basis of Lenin’s political and organisational contribution 

In the struggle of the proletariat, this struggle of Lenin was an essential moment in the formation of its political organ, which was finally concretised with the foundation of the Communist International in March 1919. Before Lenin, the First International (the International Workingmen’s Association) had been an equally important moment. An important moment after Lenin was the fight of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left for its own organisational survival.

There is a red thread, a continuity of organisational theory, principles, and politics, that runs through these different experiences. Today’s revolutionaries can only anchor their action in this historic continuity.

We have quoted extensively from our own texts, which show unambiguously what is our heritage as far as the organisational question is concerned. Our method, in re-appropriating the political and theoretical gains of the workers’ movement is not an invention of the ICC. We are the heirs of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left and its publication Bilan in the 1930s, and of the Communist Left of France and its review Internationalisme in the 1940s. This is the same method we have always used, and without which the ICC would not exist, or at least not in its present form.

“The most complete expression of the solution to the problem of the role of the conscious element, the Party, in the victory of socialism, has been given by the group of Russian marxists of the old Iskra, and notably by Lenin who as early as 1902 has given a definition in principle of the problem of the party in his remarkable work What is to be done? Lenin’s notion of the Party was to serve as a backbone to the Bolsheviks, and was to be one of that party’s greatest contributions to the international struggle of the proletariat”.[52] [137]

There is no doubt that the world communist party of tomorrow will not be formed without Lenin’s contributions in the matter of principle, theory, politics, and organisation. The real — and not merely verbal — re-appropriation of these gains, along with their rigorous and systematic application to today’s conditions, is one of the most important tasks for today’s little communist groups, if they are to contribute to the process of formation of this Party.

RL

The war which has just broken out in ex-Yugoslavia, with the bombardment of Serbia by NATO forces, is the most serious event on the scene of world imperialism since the collapse of the Eastern bl of world imperialism since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. Although the forces in operation remain far fewer, for the moment, than during the Gulf War in 1991, the significance of the present conflict is of a different order of magnitude altogether. Today, the barbarity of war is unleashed in the heart of Europe, no more than a couple of hours away from its major capitals. This was already true during the previous conflicts which have ravaged ex-Yugoslavia since 1991 and which have already claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. But this time, it is the great capitalist powers themselves, including the USA, which are the direct protagonists of the war.

This war in Europe is of such importance because this is the continent where capitalism was born, which is still the world’s major industrial region, and which has been both the major prize and the epicentre of all the 20th Century’s great imperialist conflicts, from the First and Second World Wars onwards. Europe was the stake in the Cold War which opposed the US and Russian blocs for more than 40 years, even though the episodes of open war were fought out in the periphery (Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, etc). Amongst other things, the present conflict is taking place in a particularly sensitive area of the continent: the Balkans, whose geographical (far more than its economic) position has made it one of the most fought-over places on the planet ever since World War I. We should not forget that World War I began in Sarajevo.

Finally, another element gives a particular dimension to the present conflict: the direct and active participation of Germany in the fighting, and in an important position. For more than 50 years, its defeat in World War II has forced Germany to forego any military intervention. The fact that the German bourgeoisie has today returned to the battlefield is indicative of the general aggravation of military tension, which can only get worse as decadent capitalism sinks further into its insoluble economic crisis.

The politicians and media of NATO present the war as an action in defence of "human rights", against a peculiarly revolting regime which is responsible, amongst its other misdeeds, for the "ethnic cleansing" which has stained Yugoslavia in blood since 1991. In reality, the "democratic" powers care not a jot for the population of Kosot a jot for the population of Kosovo, just as they are completely indifferent to the fate of the Kurd and Shiite populations of Iraq, which they left to be massacred by the troops of Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War. The sufferings inflicted by dictators on persecuted civilian populations have always been the pretext for the great "democracies" to unleash "just" war. This was the case, in particular, during World War II, when the extermination of the Jews by the Hitler regime (which the Allies did nothing to stop, even when they could have done so) served as a justification for the crimes committed by the "democracies": amongst others, the 250,000 killed by Allied bombardments in Dresden alone during the night of 13th-14th February 1945, or the civilian populations liquidated by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945. If the media have been inundating us for weeks with images of the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees fleeing Milosevic’s barbarity, it is to justify NATO’s military campaign, which was initially greeted with considerable scepticism, if not outright hostility, by the populations of the NATO countries. It is also intended to gain their support for the last phase of Operation "Determined Force", should the bombing fail to subdue Milosevic: a ground offensive, which could lead to extensive casualties amongst Allied troops as well as the Serbs.

In reality, the "humanitarian disaster" of the refugees from Kosovo was both foreseen and desired by the "democracies", to justify their war plans: just as the massacre of the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq was provoked deliberately when the Allies called on them to revolt against Saddam Hussein during the war.

But it is not at Belgrade’s door, or even Washington’s, that we should lay responsibility for this war. It is capitalism as a whole that is responsible for the war, and the barbarism of war, with all the massacres, genocide, and atrocities that it brings in its wake, will only come to an end when capitalism is overthrown by the world working class. Otherwise, capitalism will drag the whole of human society down with it in its death throes.

Communists have a duty of solidarity in the face of imperialist war and all its atrocities. But this solidarity does not go to this or that nation or people, which include both victims and executioners, the exploited and the exploiters, whether the latter have the face of a Milosevic, or the nationalist clique of the KLA which is already forcibly recruiting men of fighting age from the refugee columns. Communist solidarity is class solidarity, towards the workers and exploited whether Serb or Albanian, to the workers in uniform who are killed or transformed into assassins in the name of the "Fatherland" or "Democracy". And it is first and foremost up to the world proletariat’s biggest battalions, the workers of Europe and North America, to demonstrate this solidarity, not by marching behind the banners of pacifism but by developing their struggles against capitalism, against their exploiters in their own countries.

Communists have the duty to denounce with equal force both the pacifists and the warmongers. Pacifism is one of the proletariat’s worst enemies. It cultivates the illusion that "good will" or "international negotiations" can put an end to wars. By doing so, it maintains the lie that there could exist a "goie that there could exist a "good" capitalism, respectful of "peace" and "human" rights, and so turns the workers away from the class struggle against capitalism as a whole. Worse still, they become the recruiting sergeants for military "crusades", with the argument: "Since wars are provoked by ‘bad’, ‘nationalist’, ‘bloodthirsty’ capitalists, we will only have peace when we liquidate these ‘bad’ capitalists... by making war on them if need be". We have seen exactly this in Germany, where the main leader of the 1980s pacifist movements, Joschka Fischer, is today the man mainly responsible for his country’s imperialist policy. He is even proud of it, declaring that "For the first time for a long time, Germany is making war in a good cause".

From the first days of the war, the internationalists, with their modest means, have spoken out against the imperialist barbarism. On 25th March, the ICC published a leaflet which it is distributing to the workers of 13 countries, and which our readers will find in our territorial publications. Nor was our organisation the only one to react in defence of the internationalist position. All the groups which consider themselves part of the Communist Left reacted at the same moment, putting forward the same internationalist principles (1). In the next issue of the International Review, we will return in more detail to the positions and analyses developed by these different groups. But we must start by emphasising everything that unites us (the defence of internationalist positions, as they were expressed at the conferences of Kienthal and Zimmerwald during World War I, as well as in the first congresses of the Communist International), and which opposes us to all those organisations (Trotskyists, Stalinists, etc.), which while claiming to belong to the working class inject the poison of nationalism or pacifism into it.

Obviously, the role of communists is not limited to defending their principles, however important and fundamental this task may be. It consists also of providing an analysis which will allow the working class to understand what is at stake, what are the elements in play, what are the main aspects of the international situation. The analysis of the war in Yugoslavia, which had only just begun, was one of the main axes of the un, was one of the main axes of the ICC’s 13th Congress, held at the beginning of April. In the next issue of the International Review, we will return to this Congress, but in this issue we are publishing the resolution on the international situation which it adopted, much of which is devoted to the present war.

10th April, 1999

1) International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, Partito Comunista Internazionale -- Il Programma Comunista, Partito Comunista Internazionale --

Il Comunista, Partito Comunista Internazionale --

Il Partito Comunista.

In the previous article in this series, in International Review no 95, we showed how the capacity of the bourgeoisie to prevent the international extension of the revolution, and the reflux of the international wave of struggles, sparked off an opportunist reaction in the Communist International. This opportunistic turn by the CI met the resistance of those forces who were later to be called the communist left. The slogan of the 2nd Congress “to the masses” - rejected by the left communist groups - was already at the centre of the debate in 1920; and the 3rd Congress of the CI, held in 1921, was a vital moment in the battle of the communist left against the tendency to subordinate the interests of the world revolution to the interests of the Russian state.

The contribution of the KAPD

At the 3rd World Congress of the CI, the KAPD intervened for the first time directly in the debates, developing a whole range of criticisms of the CI’s entire approach. In its interventions in the sessions on the economic crisis and the new tasks of the CI, on the activities report of the ECCI, on the question of tactics and the union question, and above all in relation to the developments in Russia, the KAPD always stressed the leading role of revolutionaries; but in contrast to the concepts of the majority of the CI, the KAPD insisted that it was no longer possible to form mass parties.

While the delegates from Italy, who in 1920 had defended their minority position on parliamentarism so heroically against the CI, said very little on the developments in Russia and on the relationship between the Soviet government and the CI, it was the merit of the KAPD to have raised this question at the 3rd Congress.

Before we deal in more depth with the positions and the attitude of the KAPD, it should be stressed that in view of the new epoch, and the rapid unfolding of events, the KAPD was far from being a homogenous and united party. While the KAPD had the courage to start drawing the lessons of the new epoch in relation to the parliamentary and union question, and  saw that it was no longer possible to maintain a mass party, it also lacked a certain caution, circumspection and political rigor in the assessment of the balance of forces and in relation to the organisation question. Rather than using all available means to struggle for the defence of the organisation, it tended to take hasty decisions.

Not surprisingly the KAPD shared many confusions of the revolutionary movement of the time. Like the Bolsheviks they also thought the party would have to seize power. And according to the KAPD the post-insurrectionary state would be made up of the workers’ councils.

At the 3rd Congress the KAPD delegation addressed the question of the relationship between the state and the party in the following manner: “We do not for a moment forget the difficulties into which Russian Soviet power has fallen owing to the postponement of the world revolution. But we also see the danger that out of these difficulties there may arise an apparent or real contradiction between the interests of the revolutionary world proletariat and the momentary interests of Soviet Russia’ (Hempel, cited in Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-23, Volume 3, p. 393). “But the political and organisational separation of the 3rd International from the system of Russian State policy is the goal that we have to work towards, if we want to meet the conditions of revolution in Western Europe (Minutes of the Congress, p224).

At the 3rd Congress the KAPD tended to underestimate the consequences of the fact that the bourgeoisie had managed to prevent the revolutionary wave from spreading. They should have seen the implications of the fact that the international extension of the revolution had been thwarted. They should have taken up the argumentation of Rosa Luxemburg, who had already understood in 1917 that “in Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia, it can only be solved internationally”. And they should have based themselves on the appeal of the Spartakusbund of November 1918, who warned that “if the ruling classes in your countries manage to strangle the proletarian revolution in Germany and in Russia, then they will turn against you with even bigger force (...) Germany is pregnant with social revolution, but socialism can only be accomplished by the world proletariat.” (Spartakusbund, November 1918). The KAPD did not place sufficient emphasis on the disastrous consequences of the failure of the revolution to extend. Instead it tended to look for the roots of the problems within Russia itself.

“The shining idea of a Communist International is and remains alive, but it is no longer tied to the existence of Soviet Russia. The star of Soviet Russia has lost much of its attraction in the eyes of revolutionary workers, to the extent that Soviet Russia is developing more and more into an anti-proletarian, petty-capitalist peasant state. It is no pleasure to say such a thing, but we have to know that the clear understanding even of the toughest facts, that the ruthless expression of such insights is the only condition for developing the atmosphere which the revolution needs to remain alive. (...) We have to understand that the Russian Communists, due to the conditions of the country, due to the composition of the population, due to the context of the international situation, had no other choice but to establish a dictatorship of the party, which was the only firmly functioning, disciplined organism in the country; we have to understand that the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was absolutely correct despite all the difficulties, and that the workers of western and central Europe carry the main responsibility for the fact that today Soviet Russia, since it cannot rely on the revolutionary forces of other countries, is compelled to rely on the capitalist forces.

It is a fact that Soviet Russia has to rely on the capitalist forces of Europe and America (...). Since Soviet Russia is forced today to rely on capitalist forces in the area of internal and external economic policy, how long will Soviet Russia remain what it is? How long and how will the RCP still remain the same RCP that it used to be? Will it be able to do this by remaining a governing party? And if - in order to remain a communist party -  it can no longer be a governing party, what do we think the further development of Russia would look like? (‘The Soviet Government and the 3rd International’, Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung, autumn 1921).

While the KAPD had become aware of the dangers threatening the working class, it offered the wrong explanation. Instead of underlining that the lifeblood of the revolution, the activity of the soviets, was being cut off because the revolution had became more and more isolated; instead of seeing that this made it possible for the state to strengthen at the expense of the working class, leading to the disarming of the soviets, strangling the workers’ initiatives, and to the Bolshevik Party being more and more absorbed by the state - the KAPD tended to opt for a deterministic, and in reality fatalistic argumentation. By claiming, as the KAPD did, that “the Russian Communists due to the conditions of the country, due to the composition of the population, due to the context of the international situation had no other choice but to establish a dictatorship of the party”, it made it  impossible to understand how the working class in Russia, organised in its soviets, was able to seize power in October 1917. The idea of the rise of a “petty-capitalist peasant state” is also a distortion of reality, since it downplayed the danger of the consequences of the  international isolation of the revolution and of the  rise of state capitalism. These ideas, formulated in this text only as a first explanation, were later developed into a fully fledged theoretical explanation by the council communists.

The ICC has exposed the mistaken and unmarxist ideas of the councilists in relation to the development in Russia (see our articles in International Review 12 & 13, reproduced in our pamphlet October 1917, Start of the World Revolution, and our book on the Dutch left).

In particular we reject:

-the theory of a double revolution, which arose in some parts of the KAPD in 1921 with the reflux in the revolutionary wave and the emergence of state capitalism. According to this view,  a proletarian revolution had occurred in Russia in the industrial centres and at the same time there had been a democratic peasant revolution on the countryside;

-the fatalism which is hidden behind the idea that the revolution in Russia was necessarily going to succumb to the weight of the peasantry and that the Bolsheviks were predestined from the start to degenerate;

-the separation between different geographical areas (the theory of the meridian), according to which there are different conditions and means of revolution in Russia and in western Europe;

-the wrong approach to the question of trade relations with the west, because this gave rise to the illusion that money could be abolished immediately in one country and that it was possible to hold out or to even construct socialism in one country in the longer term.

We shall now go into the debate at that time and take up in a more detailed manner the positions of the KAPD, to show how much the groups of the communist left were searching for clarity.

The growing conflict between the Russian state and the interests of the world revolution

At a time when the CI was unconditionally supporting the foreign policy of the Russian state, the KAPD delegation put its finger on the real issue:

‘We all remember the incredibly strong propagandistic effect of the diplomatic declarations of Soviet Russia at a time when the Workers’ and Peasant Government did not have to take into consideration the need to sign trade deals... The revolutionary movement of Asia, which is a great hope for all of us and a necessity for the world revolution, can be supported by Soviet Russia neither officially nor unofficially. The English agents in Afghanistan, Persia, and Turkey are working very cleverly, and every revolutionary step of Russia undermines the implementation of the trade deals. Given this situation, who has to direct the foreign policy of Soviet Russia? Who has to take decisions? The Russian trade representatives in England, Germany, America, Sweden etc.? Whether they are communists or not, they have to practice a policy of agreement.

As far as the situation within Russia is concerned there are similar if not more dangerous effects.  In reality political power now lies in the hands of the Communist Party (and not in the hands of the soviets) (...) whereas the scarce revolutionary masses in the party feel that their initiatives are being inhibited and look at the tactics of manoeuvring with growing suspicion; in particular there is a big apparatus of functionaries, a growing influence of those forces who joined the Communist Party not because it is a Communist Party, but because it is a governing party’

Whereas most delegates more and more uncritically backed up the Bolshevik party, which was in the process of being integrated into the state apparatus, the delegation had the courage to point to the contradiction between the working class and its party on the one hand, and the state on the other:

‘Since the RCP has eliminated the initiative of revolutionary workers and eliminates it even more, since it has to offer more space to capital than previously, it has started to change its character despite all precautionary measures; however long it remains a governing party it cannot prevent the economic basis that it is founded upon as a governing party from becoming more and more shattered, which means that the foundations of its political power are becoming more and more limited.

What  would  happen to Russia, and to the revolutionary development in the whole world, once the Russian party was no longer a governing party, is a question that can hardly be overlooked. And yet things are moving in a direction, whereby if there are no revolutionary risings in Europe acting as a counterweight, it will become necessary for this question to be posed in all seriousness.  We have to pose the question very seriously: would it not be better to give up state power in Russia in the interest of proletarian revolution instead of clinging to it (...)

The same Russian Communist Party, which is now in such a critical situation in relation to its role as a communist and as a governing party, is also the absolutely leading party of the 3rd International (...). This is where the tragic knot can be seen, where the 3rd International has been caught up in such a way that its revolutionary lifeblood is being strangled. The Russian comrades under the decisive influence of Lenin not only do not create a counter-weight in the 3rd International against the Russian state’s policy of regression, but they do everything to synchronise the politics of the International with this curve of regression (...) Today the 3rd International is a tool of the Soviet government’s reformist policy of entente.

Surely, Lenin, Bukharin etc are real revolutionaries to the bottom of their in their hearts, but they have become like the whole central committee of the party carriers of state authority, and they thus inevitably have submitted to the law of the development of a necessarily conservative policy’ (KAZ, ‘Moscow Politics’, autumn 1921).

At the ensuing extraordinary congress of the KAPD in September 1921 Goldstein said the following: “...Will it be possible for the CP of Russia to reconcile these two contradictions in some way or other in the long-term? Today the RCP shows already a double character. On the one hand since it is still a governing party in Russia, it has to represent the interests of Russia as a state, and on the other hand it has to and wants to represent the interests of  international class struggle’ (Extraordinary Congress of the KAPD, Sept. 1921, p. 59).

The German left communists were quite right to point out the role of the Russian state in the opportunistic degeneration of the Communist International, and to defend the interests of the world revolution against the interests of the Russian state.

However, as we said above, the first and principal cause of the opportunist turn of the International was not the role of the Russian state, but the failure of the extension of the revolution to the western countries, and the subsequent retreat of the international class struggle. Thus, whereas the KAPD tended to mainly blame the Russian CP for this opportunism, in reality the unprincipled “adjustment” to the social democratic illusions of the masses profoundly affected all the workers’ parties at that time. In fact, well before the Russian Communists, and in defiance of the policies of the CI at that moment, it was the leadership of the KPD in Germany itself which was the first to impose this opportunist turn after the defeat of January 1919 in Berlin, excluding the left, the future KAPD, from the party in the process.

In reality, the weaknesses of the KAPD itself were first and foremost the product of the disorientation resulting from the defeat and ensuing reflux of the revolutionary movement, particularly in Germany itself. Robbed of the authority of its revolutionary leadership, which had been murdered by Social Democracy in 1919, reacting with revolutionary impatience to the retreat of the revolution, which it long refused to recognise, and with an insufficient assimilation of the organisational traditions of the workers’ movement, German left communism, one of the clearest and most determined political expressions of the rising revolutionary wave, was unable (as opposed to the Italian Left) to cope with the defeat of that revolution. Which factors aggravated these weaknesses of the KAPD?

The weaknesses of the KAPD on the organisation question

In order to explore the reasons for the weaknesses on the organisation question in the KAPD we must go back somewhat.

We have to recall that as a result of mistaken organisational conceptions within the KPD, the Zentrale led by P.Levi had expelled the majority of the party at the October 1919 Party Congress because of its position on the union and parliamentary question. Those who had been expelled founded the KAPD in April 1920 following the gigantic struggles of the working class against the Kapp coup. This early split amongst communists in Germany, the result of a false approach to  the organisation question, led to a fatal weakening of the class. And the tragedy was that the left wing in turn - after having been expelled from the KPD - became an active defender of this mistaken concept.

A few months later we can see an illustration of this weakness, when the KAPD delegation to the 2nd Congress of the CI, O. Rühle and P. Merges, withdrew from the work of the congress and “deserted”. One year later, when being confronted with the ultimatum of the 3rd Congress of the CI, either to join forces with the VKPD or face expulsion from the International, the KAPD once again showed this great weakness in relation to the defence of the organisation. The expulsion of the KAPD from the CI provoked a lot of hostility and anger within the ranks of the KAPD towards the International.

On the one hand this was  to prevent the newly arising forces of the communist left from working together. The German and Dutch wing of the communist left did not manage to oppose the enormous pressure of the Bolshevik party and to build up together with the Italian left around Bordiga a common resistance from within the CI against its growing opportunism. Moreover, at the same time the KAPD had a strong inclination towards rash and hasty decisions, as the following statements of the KAPD show. 

How to react to the danger of degeneration of the Comintern?
Flight or fight?

 “In the future, Soviet Russia will no longer be a factor of world revolution; it will become a bastion of the international counter-revolution.

 The Russian proletariat thus has already lost control over the State.

This doesn’t mean anything else but that the Soviet government now has to become the defender of the interests of the international bourgeoisie (...) The Soviet government has to become a government ruling against the working class, after having joined openly the camp of the bourgeoisie. The Soviet government is the Communist Party of Russia. Therefore the RCP has become an opponent of the working class, because being the Soviet government it has to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat. This won’t last long; the RCP will have to undergo a split.

It won’t last long before the Soviet government will be forced to show its real face as a national-bourgeois state. Soviet Russia is no longer a proletarian-revolutionary state, or to put it more precisely Soviet Russia cannot yet become a proletarian-revolutionary state.

Because only the victory of the German proletariat through the conquest of political power could have prevented the Russian proletariat from its present fate, could have saved it from the misery and repression imposed by  its own Soviet government. Only a revolution  in Germany, and then  a western European revolution could have helped the outcome of the class struggle between Russian workers and Russian peasants in favour of the Russian workers.

The 3rd Congress submitted the interests of proletarian world revolution to the interests of a bourgeois revolution in a single country. The supreme organ of the proletarian International has submitted the International to the service of a bourgeois state. The autonomy of the 3rd International has thus been suppressed and submitted to direct dependence on the bourgeoisie.

The 3rd International is now lost for proletarian world revolution. In the same way as the 2nd International the 3rd International is now in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Therefore the 3rd International will always prove its worth whenever it will be necessary to defend the bourgeois state of Russia. But it will always fail whenever it will be necessary to support proletarian world revolution. Its activities will be form a chain of continuous betrayals of proletarian world revolution...

The 3rd international is lost for the proletarian world revolution.

From being a vanguard for proletarian world revolution the 3rd International has become its most bitter enemy (...) It was because of the disastrous intertwining of the leadership of the state - whose originally proletarian character has been transformed over the past years into a totally bourgeois character - with the leadership of the proletarian International, in the hands of one and the same organ, that the 3rd International failed in its original task. Confronted with the alternative of bourgeois state policy and proletarian world revolution, the Russian communists voted for the interests of the former and they placed the 3rd International into its service’ (‘The Soviet government and the 3rd International taken in tow by the international bourgeoisie’, August 1921).

While the KAPD was right in denouncing the growing opportunism of the CI, while it detected the danger of the CI being strangled at the hands of the Russian state and being turned into its instrument, the KAPD made the mistake of considering these dangers as an already finished process.

Even if the balance of forces had already tilted in 1921 and the international wave of struggles was in reflux, the KAPD showed a dangerous impatience and an underestimation of the need for a persevering and tenacious struggle for the defence of the organisation. This is why the basic idea of the KAPD that the CI is “a tool of the Soviet government’s reformist policy of entente”, that “The 3rd International is now lost for proletarian world revolution. From being a vanguard for proletarian world revolution the 3rd International has become its most bitter enemy...” is exaggerated because premature at that time. Within the KAPD itself it led to the feeling that the battle for the CI was already over. The KAPD had sensed something which was to become true later, but the wrong estimate of the level of opportunism and degeneration that the CI had reached led to a global, indiscriminate rejection of the vital struggle against opportunism WITHIN the CI.

Although the ultimatum of the 3rd World Congress has to be taken into consideration in explaining the anger and outrage of the KAPD, this  should not hide the fact that the comrades of the KAPD withdrew in a precipitous manner from the battle and failed in their duty to defend the organisation.

Once again it was a tragedy to see how false and insufficient organisational concepts can have such a disastrous effect, and how much they undermine the impact of correct political positions. This highlights once again that a correct stand on the organisation question itself can become decisive for the survival of an organisation.

Another example of this weakness can be seen through the attitude of the KAPD delegation at the 3rd Congress. While the  KAPD delegation at the 2nd World Congress had left without any fight whatsoever, the delegation to the 3rd World Congress raised its voice as a minority and called for a special congress of the KAPD afterwards.

Although the KAPD delegation complained that the 3rd Congress had already started to put a brake on the debate by distorting the positions of the KAPD, by limiting speaking time, by changing the agenda, and by selecting participation at discussions (the KAPD delegation reported that it had been excluded from participation in a debate of the ECCI, which met during the Congress discussing the status of the KAPD), the KAPD delegation itself declined to take the floor during the debate on the status of the KAPD, because they said they “wanted to avoid being unwilling players in a comedy”. They withdrew from the debate under protest.

Instead of understanding that the degeneration of an organisation is a process, in which a long persevering struggle is indispensable; in which precipitous action needs to be avoided; in short, where it is necessary to lead a struggle like the Italian left did, the KAPD jumped to conclusions and condemned the CI very quickly instead of trying to continue to fight from within.

The same delegation declared the CI and the RCP to be “lost for the proletariat”. To some extent the overwhelming weight of the RCP had played a major role when the KAPD neglected the task of regrouping other delegates to form a fraction. Although there were some episodic contacts, no common line could be found between the Italian delegates and the KAPD, although the Italian left had stood up against the rising opportunism in the CI regarding the parliamentary question.

The expulsion of the KAPD from the CI meant a weakening of the position of the Italian left at the 4th Congress, when the Communist Party of Italy, under the leadership of Bordiga, was forced by the CI to fuse with the Italian Socialist Party. Thus the ‘German’ and ‘Italian’ Left always found themselves fighting in isolation against the opportunism of the CI, unable to lead a common struggle. But the current around Bordiga had grasped the need for a tenacious fight in defence of the organisation. For example when Bordiga in 1923 was thinking of writing a manifesto announcing a break with the CI, he finally withdrew the draft, because he was convinced of the need to continue his fight within the CI and within the Italian Party.

At the extraordinary conference of the KAPD in September 1921 the KAPD hardly dealt with the assessment of the balance of forces on a world scale. The party was able to see, as Reichenbach put it at the conference, that “in times where external factors, factors due to (the weight) of capital, or confusion, lack of clarity in the class, slow down the pulse of the revolution, to the extent that the belief in revolution recedes, then the proletarian party of combat, which is the carrier of the idea of revolution, will be smaller in size. But this doesn’t mean that it will disappear’ (p. 27). But the KAPD did not draw the conclusions regarding the immediate tasks of the organisation. The majority of the party still considered revolution to be immediately on the agenda. Sheer will seemed more important than an assessment of the balance of forces. Moreover a part of the KAPD was to start the adventure of the foundation of the Communist Workers International (KAI) in spring 1922.

This incapacity to grasp the retreat of the class struggle finally played a decisive role in the incapacity of the KAPD to survive after the wave of struggles went into reflux and when the rising counter-revolution imposed new conditions.

Mistaken answers from Russia:

the incapacity of the communists to draw the right lessons

Despite all its shortcomings and its wrong conclusions, the KAPD did have the merit of posing the problem of the growing conflict between the Russian state, the working class and the CI,  even if it was unable to offer the right answers. The communists in Russia, on the other hand were to have the greatest difficulties in understanding the nature of this conflict.

Because of the growing integration of the party into the state apparatus they could only develop a very limited view of the problem. Lenin, who had synthethised the lessons of Marxism on the question of state and revolution in 1917 in the clearest manner, had at the same time had been part of the state leadership since 1917, and he brought these growing contradictions and difficulties to the fore.

Today, bourgeois propaganda takes great pains to present Lenin as the father of Russian totalitarian state capitalism. In reality, of all the Russian communists at the time, Lenin, with a brilliant revolutionary intuition, came closest to recognising that the transitional state which arose after the October revolution does not really represent the interests and politics of the proletariat. From this Lenin concluded that the working class must struggle to impose its policies on the state, and must have the right to defend itself against that state.

At the 11th party conference in March 1922 Lenin observed with great concern: “Well, we have lived through a year, the state is in our hands, but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted this past year? No. But we refuse to admit that that it did not operate in the way we wanted. How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired, as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand” (volume 33, March/April 1922, 11th party conference).

Lenin had also defended this concern, in particular against Trotsky, during the trade union debate in 1921. On the surface, the issue was the role of the trade unions within the proletarian dictatorship; in reality, the central question was whether or not the working class should have the right to engage in its own class struggle to defend itself against the traditional state. According to Trotsky, since the state is by definition a workers’ state, the idea of the proletariat defending itself against the state is an absurdity. Thus Trotsky, who at least had the quality of following the logic of his position to its conclusion, openly advocated the militarisation of labour. Although he was not yet able to clearly recognise that the transitional state was not a workers’ state (a position later developed and defended by Bilan in the 30s), Lenin insisted on the necessity for the workers to defend themselves against the state.

Despite this correct concern on the part of Lenin, it is evident that the Russian communists were unable to achieve any real clarity on this question. Lenin himself, like other communists of the time, continued to consider the enormous weight of the petty bourgeoisie in Russia to be the main source of counter-revolutionary potential and not the bureaucratised state. “At the present moment the enemy is not the same as it was yesterday. The enemy is not the scores of White armies... The enemy is the grey day to day running of the economy in a country dominated by small peasants with a ruined big industry. The enemy is the petty bourgeois element; the proletariat is fragmented, split, exhausted. The ‘forces’ of the working class are not unlimited... The influx of new forces from the proletariat is weak, sometimes very weak (...) We still will have to put up with the inevitable slow-down in the growth of new forces of the working class” (‘New times, old mistakes in new form’, Lenin, 20.8.1921, volume 33, German edition).

The reflux of the class struggle - oxygen for state capitalism

After the defeats of the working class internationally in 1920 conditions for the working class in Russia were to worsen considerably. More and more isolated, the workers in Russia faced a state, headed by the Bolshevik Party, which was more and more  imposing its violence on them, as in Kronstadt in 1921. The crushing of the revolt in Kronstadt led to the strengthening of those forces in the party who were aiming at the strengthening of the state at the expense of the working class and who also sought to chain the CI to the Russian state.

The Russian state was aspiring more and more to a ‘normal’ position amongst the other capitalist states.

The orientation of the Russian state towards recognition by the other capitalist states

Already in spring 1921 the German bourgeoisie had secretly made contact with Moscow in order to explore the possibility of rearming the Reichswehr (after the signing of Versailles treaty) and of modernising the Russian armaments industry once the civil war had come to an end. Above all, German heavy industry, which had modernised its equipment during WW1, was eager to co-operate with Russia. Aeroplanes were planned to be manufactured by Albatrosswerke, submarines by Blöhm & Voss, guns and shells by Krupp. The Reichswehr was to train Red Army officers, making it possible for German troops to train on Russian soil.

At the end of 1921 the Soviet state proposed a general conference to settle relations between Soviet Russia and the capitalist world, involving all the European powers and the USA. But by then secret negotiations between Germany and Russia had long been underway. Of course on the Russian side these negotiations were not led by the CI but by leaders of the state apparatus. At the Genoa conference, Chicherin, the leader of the Russian delegation, talked about the vast potential of Russia’s untapped resources, and the possibility that they could be developed and made available through the co-operation of western capitalists.  While the Genoa conference broke up, Germany and Russia had concluded in nearby Rapallo a secret agreement - which - as E.H. Carr writes, “was the first major diplomatic occasion on which either Soviet Russia or the Weimar republic had negotiated as an equal”. But Rapallo was  more than that.

During the winter 1917-18 the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was only signed after the German offensive against Russia because it was the aim of the Bolsheviks to protect the isolated workers’ bastion against the offensive of German imperialism. The treaty had been imposed on the Russian working class, and it was only signed after a wide and open debate in the Bolshevik party. However, this principle was to be broken with the signing of Rapallo. Not only did the treaty signed by Russian state representatives involve secret arms deals, but at the 4th World Congress in November 1922 it was not even mentioned!.

The instruction of the CI to the CP in Turkey and Persia “to support the movement in favour of national freedom in Turkey (and in Persia)” in reality led to a situation where the respective national bourgeoisies could massacre the working class much easier. The interests of the Russian state, which required firm links with these states, had prevailed.

Step by step the CI was subordinated to the needs of the foreign policy of the Russian state. Whereas in 1919, at the time of the foundation of the CI, the whole orientation had been the destruction of capitalist states, from 1921 on the orientation of the Russian state was more and more clearly towards stabilisation in foreign affairs. The failure of the world revolution to spread had given enough space for the Russian State to claim its position.

At the common conference of the ‘workers’ parties’ which met at the beginning of April 1922 in Berlin, to which the CI had invited the parties of the 2nd and 2 ½ Internationals, the CI delegation tried above all to look for support for the diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia, for the establishment of trade relations between Russia and the west, and for help for Russia to reconstruct. In 1919 the 2nd International had been denounced as the butcher of the revolution; in 1920, at the 2nd Congress, 21 conditions of admission had been adopted in order to delineate the CI from and fight against the 2nd International. Now, on behalf of the Russian state, the CI delegation sat at the same table with the parties of the 2nd International. It had become obvious that the Russian state was not interested in the extension of world revolution but aimed above all at strengthening its own position. The more the CI was taken in tow by the state, the more clearly it turned its back on internationalism.

Within Russia: cancerous growth of the state apparatus

The orientation of the Russian state towards recognition by the other states went hand in hand with the strengthening of the state apparatus within Russia.

The ever increasing integration of the party into the state, the growing concentration of power in the hands of an ever more concentrated and limited circle of ‘ruling forces’, the growing dictatorship of the state over the working class were now being accelerated by the single-minded and systematic efforts of those forces who aimed at the expansion and fortification of the state apparatus at the expense of the working class, at the strangling of working class life.

In April 1922 Stalin was nominated General Secretary of the party at the 11th party congress. By then Stalin occupied three important posts at the same time: he was head of the Peoples’ Commissariat for Nationality Questions, of the Peoples’ Commissariat for Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, and he was a member of the Politburo. By being appointed General Secretary, Stalin could quickly take over the day to day running of the party, and he managed to make the Politburo dependent on the General Secretary. Already at an earlier stage, Stalin had been appointed head of the ‘purging activities’ in March 1921 at the 10th party congress[1]. In March 1921 some members of the Workers’ Opposition group had asked the ECCI to “denounce the suppression of autonomy, of workers’ initiative, and the fight against members who had divergent opinions... The united forces of the party and union bureaucracy, by taking advantage of their power and their position, breach the principle of workers’ democracy” (Rosmer, p. 110) But after the RCP put pressure on the ECCI, the ECCI rejected the complaint of the Workers’ Opposition group.

Instead of leaving the initiative for nominating their delegates in the hands of the local party units, as the integration of the party into the state advanced, these nominations were taken over by the leadership of the party and thus the state. Elections and votes within the party on a local party unit level were no longer desired, since the power of decision was placed more and more in the hands of the General Secretary and the Org-bureau which was headed by Stalin. All the delegates for the 12th party congress in 1923 were nominated by the party leadership.

If we underline the role of Stalin here, it is not because we want to reduce the problem of the state to one person - Stalin - and thus limit and underestimate the danger flowing from the state. The reason is that the state, which had arisen out of the very survival-needs of capitalism itself, which had absorbed the Bolshevik Party into its structures, and which was now stretching out its tentacles to the CI, had become the centre of counter-revolution. But counter-revolution was not an anonymous or purely passive activity of unknown, faceless, invisible forces. It was to take shape concretely in the party and state apparatus. Stalin, the General Secretary, was an important force pulling the strings of the party on different levels - in the Politburo, in the provinces, and he became the driving force behind those forces who were fighting against any revolutionary residues in the party.

Within the Bolshevik Party this process of degeneration provoked resistance and convulsions that we have dealt with more specifically in our articles in International Review nos. 8 & 9.

Despite the above-mentioned confusions, Lenin was going to be one of the most determined opponents of the state apparatus. After Lenin was hit by a first stroke in May 1922 and a second on March 9 1923, he drafted a document - later to be known as his Testament - in which he demanded the replacement of Stalin as General Secretary. Thus Lenin, who had worked together with Stalin for years, broke with him and declared war upon him. However, being paralysed in bed, fighting against his agony, this break and declaration of war was never published in the party press, which by then was in  the firm grip of the General Secretary himself - Stalin!.

At the same time it was no coincidence that Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin defended the typically bourgeois concept of the need for a ‘successor’ to Lenin, according to which a triumvirate composed of these three members should constitute the leadership. It was against this background of a power struggle by the ‘triumvirate’ within the party that a group of opponents to this trend issued a “Platform of the 46” in the summer of 1923, criticising the strangling of proletarian life in the party, which for the first time since October 1917 had refused to make any calls for world revolution on May 1st 1922.

In the summer of 1923 a number of strikes erupted in Russia, in particular in Moscow.

At a time when the Russian state was strengthening its position within Russia and was striving for recognition by other capitalist states, the process of degeneration in the CI after the opportunist turn at the 3rd Congress was to accelerate, due to the pressure of the Russian state.

The 4th World Congress: submission to the Russian state

By adopting the policy of the United Front, in December 1921 through the ECCI, and  at the 4th Congress in November 1922, the CI was about  to throw overboard the principles of the 1st and 2nd congress, during which the CI had insisted on the need for the sharpest demarcation and fight against Social Democracy.

To justify this policy, the CI argued that with the current balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat “the broadest masses of the proletariat have lost belief in their ability to conquer power in any foreseeable time. They are driven back to the defensive....  the conquest of power as an immediate task of the day is not on the agenda” (cited in Carr, op cit,p 439) .

Therefore it was necessary to unite with the workers who were still under the influence of Social Democracy:

‘The slogan of the 3rd congress, ‘to the masses’ is more valid than ever (...) The tactics of the united front is the offer of a united struggle of communists with all workers, who belong to other parties or groups(...)  Under certain circumstances communists must be ready to work together with non-communist workers’ parties and with workers’ organisation in order to form a workers’ government’.(Theses on tactics, 4th Congress).

It was the German KPD which was the first party to push for this tactic - as we shall see in the next article in this series.

Within the CI this new opportunist step, which pushed the workers into the arms of Social Democracy, met with the fiercest resistance from the Italian left.

Already in March 1922, once the theses on the united front had been adopted, Bordiga wrote in Il Comunista:  “As far as the workers’ government is concerned, as ask: why do we want to ally with the Social Democrats? To do the only things that they know how to, can and will do, or to ask them to do what they don’t know how to, cannot or will not do? Are we to say to the Social Democrats that we are ready to collaborate with them, even in parliament and even in this government baptised as a ‘workers’ government? In this case, that is to say if we are asked to elaborate in the name of the Communist Party a project of a workers’ government in which communists have to participate along with the socialists, and to present this government to the masses as ‘anti-bourgeois’, we reply, and we take full responsibility for this reply, that such an attitude is opposed to all the fundamental principles of communism. To accept this political formula would in fact mean tearing up our flag, on which it its written: there can be no proletarian government which is not formed on the basis of the revolutionary victory of the proletariat” (Il Comunista, 26. 3. 1922).

At the 4th congress the Italian party declared:  “ The Communist Party of Italy does not agree to taking part in organisms that are made up of different political organisations_It will thus avoid participating in common declarations with political parties when these declarations contradict its programme and are presented to the proletariat as the result of negotiations aimed at finding a common line of action... to talk about a workers’ government... amounts to denying in practise the political programme of communism, ie the necessity to prepare the masses for the struggle for the dictatorship of the  proletariat’ (Relazione del PCI al IV Congresso dell’Internaionale Comunista, November 1922).

But after the exclusion of the KAPD from the CI in autumn 1921, and when the most critical voice against the degeneration of the Comintern was silenced, the Italian left once again had to defend the position of the communist left on its own.

At the same time an additional aggravating factor has to be taken into consideration. In October 1922 Mussolini’s troops seized   power in Italy, which led to a worsening of the conditions for revolutionaries. The group around Bordiga obviously had to take a position on the rise of fascism. Being absorbed by this question, the Italian left had far less time to focus on the unfolding degeneration of the CI and the Bolshevik party.

At the same time the 4th Congress created the conditions for a further submission of the CI to the interests of the Russian state. Mixing up the interests of the Russian state and the interests of the CI, the chairman of the Comintern, Zinoviev, said this in relation to the stabilisation of capitalism and the termination of attacks against Russia: “We may now say without exaggeration that the Communist International has survived its most difficult time, and is so strengthened that it need fear no attack from world reaction” (cited in Carr, op cit, p 439). 

Since the perspective of the conquest of power was no longer immediately on the agenda, the 4th Congress gave the orientation that apart from united front tactics, the working class should focus on the support for and defence of Russia. The resolution on the Russian revolution highlights the extent to which the CI analysed the situation through the spectacles of the Russian state and no longer from the point of view of the international working class. The problem of the reconstruction of Russia was pushed into the foreground:

“The 4th World Congress of the CI expresses its greatest gratitude and highest admiration to the toiling masses of Soviet Russia that they have been able (...) to defend the acquisitions of the revolution up until today against all enemies from within and from without.

The 4th World Congress observes with great satisfaction that the first workers’ state in the world (...) has fully proven its vitality and its force to develop. The Soviet state has  come out of the horrors of the civil war strengthened. The 4th World Congress observes with satisfaction that the policy of Soviet Russia has created and strengthened the most important preconditions for the construction and development towards a communist society: i.e. the Soviet power, the Soviet order, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because this dictatorship alone.... guarantees the complete overcoming of capitalism and paves the way for the realisation of communism.

Hands off Soviet Russia! Legal recognition of Soviet Russia! Each strengthening of Soviet Russia means a weakening of the world bourgeoisie’ (Resolution on the Question of the Russian Revolution).

The degree to which the CI was under the thumb of the Russian state half a year after Rapallo also became visible when, against the background of rising imperialist tensions, the possibility was considered that Russia could establish a military bloc with another capitalist state. Although the CI still asserted that such an alliance would serve the purpose of overthrowing a bourgeois regime, in reality the CI had more and more become a tool of the Russian state: “I assert that we are already great enough to conclude an alliance with a foreign bourgeoisie in order, by means of this bourgeois state, to be able to overthrow another bourgeoisie... Supposing that a military alliance has been concluded with a bourgeois state, the duty of the comrades in each country consists in contributing to the victory of the two allies”. Bukharin, cited in Carr, op cit, p. 442), A few months later the CI and the German KPD were to put forward this perspective in relation to an alliance between the ‘oppressed German nation’ and Russia. In the confrontation between Germany and the victorious countries of WW1 the CI and the Russian state took sides with Germany, calling it a victim of French imperialists interests.

Already in January 1922, at the ‘First Congress of the Toilers of the Far East’, the CI had proclaimed the need for co-operation between communists and ‘non-communist revolutionaries’ as the key orientation. The 4th Congress now decided in its theses on tactics  “to support to the best of their capacities the national-revolutionary movements which are directed against imperialism”; at the same time it rejected firmly “the refusal of the communists of the colonies to take part in the struggle against imperialist violation under the pretexts of the abandoning of a supposed ‘defence’ of autonomous class interests. This is the worst type of opportunism, which can only discredit proletarian revolution in the East’ (Guidelines on the Eastern Question).

Thus the CI contributed to a major weakening and disorientation of the working class.

Once the culminating point of the revolutionary wave had been reached in 1919, once the international extension of the revolution had been prevented, permitting the Russian state to strengthen its position and subordinate the CI to its interests, the bourgeoisie felt stronger internationally and drafted plans in order to deal a final blow against that part of the working class which had remained most combative - the proletariat in Germany. We shall therefore examine the events of 1923 in Germany in the next article.       

Dv.

The ICC held its 13th Congress at the end of March and beginning of April 1999. As for any organisation in the workers’ movement, the Congress is an extremely important moment in our organisation’s life and activity. This Congress, however, was particularly important. On the one hand, it was the last one of the 20th century, and the preparatory reports were intended even more than usual to give a historical dimension to the subjects they dealt with. On the other, irrespective of any demands of the calendar, the Congress was held at a moment marked by the acceleration of history constituted by the war in Yugoslavia.

This is an event of the utmost historical importance, since:

“- this war does not just concern a peripheral country, as was the case with the Gulf War in 1991, but a European one;

- this is the first time since World War II that a European country and its capital has been massively bombarded;

- this is the also first time since World War II that the main defeated country of World War II - Germany - has intervened by committing combat troops directly in battle...” (Resolution on the International Situation).

In this sense, the war in Yugoslavia and its analysis, its implications for the working class and for the communist organisations, were at the heart of the Congress’ concerns, which it expressed in its decision to publish its resolution on the international situation immediately in the International Review no.97.

This resolution, a synthesis of the reports presented to the Congress and its discussions, emphasised the fact that:

“Today, a capitalism in its death throes is facing one of the most difficult and dangerous moments in modern history, comparable in gravity to that of the two world wars, to the outbreak of proletarian revolution in 1917-19, or to the Great Depression which began in 1929. But today, neither world war nor world revolution are pending in the foreseeable future. Rather, the gravity of the situation is conditioned by a sharpening of contradictions  at all levels:

- imperialist tensions and the development of world disorder;

- a very advanced and dangerous moment in the crisis of capitalism;

- attacks against the world proletariat unprecedented since the last world war;

- and an accelerating decomposition of bourgeois society” (ibid).

All these elements are dealt with at length in the resolution. In this issue, they are developed further in the form of extensive extracts from the report presented to the Congress on the burning issue of the hour: that of imperialist conflicts.

Moreover, the Congress resolution notes that: “In this situation, so full of danger, the bourgeoisie has placed the reins of government in the hands of that political current best able to take care of its interests: Social Democracy, the current mainly responsible for crushing the world revolution after 1917-18. The current which saved capitalism at that time, and is now returning to the controls in order to defend the threatened interests of the capitalist class” (ibid).

In this sense, the Congress adopted an orientation text entitled “The reasons for the presence of left parties in government in the majority of European states today”, which we are also publishing below, along with several additions which draw together elements put forward in the discussion.

Of course, the evolution of the capitalist crisis and the class struggle were also the object of important discussions during the Congress. In this issue of the International Review, we are publishing the third part of the article on “Thirty years of open capitalist crisis”, which deals with much the same issues as the report presented to the Congress. In the next issue, we will publish the report, adopted by the Congress, on the evolution of the class struggle, which is illustrated in particular by this passage in the resolution: “The responsibility weighing on the proletariat today is enormous. Only by developing its militancy and consciousness can it bring forth the revolutionary alternative which alone can secure the survival and the further ascent of human society” (ibid).

Apart from the analysis of different aspects of the international situation, and its extreme seriousness, the Congress’ main concern was to examine the responsibility of revolutionaries confronted with this situation, as the resolution highlights: “But the most important responsibility weighs on the shoulders of the communist left, the existing organisations of the proletarian  camp. They alone can furnish the theoretical and historical lessons and the political method without which the revolutionary minorities emerging today cannot attach themselves to the preparation of the class party of the future. In some ways, the communist left finds itself in a similar situation today to that of Bilan in the 1930s, in the sense that it is obliged to understand a new and unprecedented historical situation. Such a situation requires both a profound attachment to the theoretical and historical approach of marxism, and revolutionary audacity in understanding situations which are not really covered by the schemas of the past. In order to fulfil this task, open debates between the existing organisations of the proletarian milieu are indispensable. In this sense, the discussion, clarification and regroupment, the propaganda and intervention of the small revolutionary minorities is an essential part of the proletarian response to the gravity of the world situation on the threshold of the next millennium.

Furthermore, faced with the unprecedented intensification of capitalist military barbarity, the working class demands of its communist vanguard the full assumption of its responsibilities in defence of proletarian internationalism. Today, the groups of the communist left are alone in defending the classic positions of the workers’ movement against imperialist war. Only the groups which belong to this current - the only one which did not betray during World War II - can give a class response to the questioning which is bound to appear within the working class.

The revolutionary groups must give as united a response as possible, thereby giving expression to the indispensable unity of the proletariat against the unleashing of chauvinism and conflicts between nations. In doing so, the revolutionaries will adopt the tradition of the workers’ movement which figured especially in the conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and in the policies of the left within these conferences”.

This was the framework for the 13th ICC Congress’ discussions on its activities.

The third part of this history of the capitalist crisis is dedicated to the decade of the 90s. This decade has still not drawn to a close, and yet the last 30 months have been especially serious at the economic level[1].

The last decade has seen the collapse of all the models of economic management that capitalism has presented as a panacea and solution to its crises: 1989 saw the disintegration of the Stalinist model, which the bourgeoisie presented as “communism”, the better sell the lie of the “triumph of capitalism”. Since then, the much praised German, Japanese, Swedish, Swiss models, and finally, the “tigers” and “dragons” have fallen one after the other, though in a more discreet way. This series of failures demonstrates that capitalism has no solution to its historical crisis and that all the years of cheating and manipulating economic laws have only made the situation worse.

 The collapse of the Eastern bloc and the world recession of 1991-93

 The fall of the countries of the old Russian[2] bloc was a genuine disaster: between 1989 and 1993 production fell regularly by between 10% to 30%. Between 1989 and 1997 Russia lost 70% of its productive industry! Whilst the rhythm of this fall has moderated since 1994, the balance-sheet remains devastating: the figures are still negative in countries such as Bulgaria, Romania or Russia, while only in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are they positive.

The collapse of these economies, which cover more than a sixth of the world’s surface, has been the most serious of the 20th century in times of “peace”. To this should be added the list of victims of the 80’s: the majority of the African countries and good number of the Asiatic, Caribbean, Central American and South American countries. The foundations of capitalist reproduction at the world level suffered a new and important amputation.

However, the collapse of the countries of the old Eastern bloc was not an isolated event, it heralded a new convulsion of the world economy: after five years of stagnation and financial tensions (see our previous article), from the end of 1990 recession gripped the main industrial heart-lands:

- The United States suffered a slow-down in growth between 1989 and 1990 (2% and 0.5%), which turned negative in 1991: -0.8%,

- Great Britain experienced its worst recession since 1945, lasting until 1993,

- In Sweden the recession was the most violent of the post-war period leading to a situation of semi-stagnation (the famous “Swedish model” has disappeared from the text books),

- Although the recession was delayed in Germany and in the other countries of Western Europe, it exploded from the middle of 1992 and lasted throughout 1993-94. In 1993 German industrial production fell by 8.3% and for all the countries of the EU it fell by a total of 1%,

- Japan from 1990 fell into a state of gradually evolving recession: average growth during the period 1990-97 was a wretched 1,2% and this despite the fact that the government launched 11 recovery plans!

- Unemployment hit new records. This is made clear enough by a few figures:

           - in 1991 the 24 countries of the OECD eliminated 6 million jobs,

           - between 1991 and 1993 in the 12 countries of the European Union 8 million jobs were destroyed,

           - in 1992, German unemployment reached levels not seen since the 1930s and since then far from falling it has continued growing, to reach 4 million in 1994 and 5 million in 1997.

Although in the terms of the fall in indices of production, the recession of 1991-93 looks smoother than those of  1974-75 and 1980-82 there are a series of qualitative elements that demonstrate the contrary:

- Unlike the previous recession no sector was spared by the crisis,

- The recession hit the armaments and computer sectors, which had not been affected before, especially hard. In 1991 IBM laid off 20,000 (80,000 in 1993); NCR 18,000; 10,000 at Digital Equipment; Wang 8,000 etc. In 1993 the modernised and powerful German car industry planned 100,000 layoffs,

- This gave rise to phenomena not seen in the previous recessions. These had occurred because governments, confronted with the threat of inflation, turned off the taps of credit. Between 1991-93, on the contrary, enormous injections of credit failed to stimulate the economic machine: “Unlike the recessions of 1967, 1970, 1974-75, 1980-82, the increase in monetary volume created directly by the state (notes and coins issued by the central bank) no longer produces an increase in the volume of bank credits. The American government has put its foot down on the accelerator, the banking machine has not responded” (International Review no 70  “A recession unlike its predecessors”). Thus, between 1989 and 1992 the United States Federal Reserve lowered interest rates 22 times, from 10% to 3% (a level lower than the inflation rate which meant that money was being lent to banks practically for free) but this still did not stimulate the economy. This was what the experts call the “credit-crunch”, the “contraction of credit”.

- This caused a major outbreak of inflation. The figures for 1989-90 are:

USA                              6%

Great Britain             10.4%

E.E.C                          6.1%

Brazil                       1800%

Bulgaria                       70%

Poland                          50%

Hungary                       40%

USSR                          34%

 The recession of 1991-93 saw the tendency to the return of the feared combination that so scared the bourgeois governments in the 1970’s: recession and inflation, or “stagflation”. This demonstrates in a general way that the “management of the crisis” which we analysed in the first article of this series, cannot either overcome or even attenuate capitalism’s illnesses and can do no more than put them off, such that each recession is worse than its predecessor but not as bad as the one to come. Thus, that of 1991-93 manifested 3 very important qualitative features:

- Credit was increasingly incapable of relaunching production,

- The worsening threat of a combination between the stagnation of production, on the one hand, and the explosion of inflation on the other,

- The cutting-edge sectors: computers, telecommunications, armaments, which until then had been free from the crisis, were now being hit.

 A recovery without jobs

 Following 1994 and after some timid attempts in 1993, the economy of the United States, accompanied by Great Britain and Canada, began to show increased growth, though never greater than 5%. This allowed the bourgeoisie to cry victory and to proclaim economic “recovery” to the four winds with talk of “years of uninterrupted growth” etc.

This “recovery” was based on:

- The massive increase in the debt of the United States and the world economy as a whole:

           - Between 1987 and 1997 the USA’s total debt grew by $628 million every day. The foundations of this debt were: on the one hand, a drainage of the enormous mass of dollars that circulate throughout the world[3] and, on the other hand, the uncontrolled stimulation of domestic consumption which brought about such a collapse in savings that in 1996 the value of savings was negative for the first time in 53 years;

           - China and the so-called Asiatic “tigers” and “dragons” received substantial funds based on the parity between their currencies and the dollar (a great deal for the foreign investors), which fuelled their rapid but illusory growth;

           - A series of important Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico) were the centre of enormous speculative loans paid for by high short-term interest rates.

-  A spectacular growth of labour productivity which allowed the lowering of costs and made American goods more competitive.

- An aggressive trade policy on the part of American capital whose pillars were:

           - Obliging its rivals to dismantle their tariffs and other protectionist mechanisms

           - The manipulation of the dollar, allowing its exchange rate to fall when the priority was to stimulate exports and making it rise when it was essential to attract funds

           - Taking full advantage of all the instruments that the USA has as the main imperialist power (military, diplomatic, economic) in order to improve its position on the world market.

The European countries followed the same route as the USA and from 1995 also enjoyed “growth” although at a much lower level (figures fluctuated between 1% and 3%).

The most distinct characteristic of this new “recovery” is that it is a recovery without jobs, which constituted a new development compared to previous ones. Thus:

- unemployment did not stop growing between 1993-96 in the countries of the OECD

- large companies, far from increasing jobs continued to destroy them: it is calculated that in the USA the Fortune 500 companies shed 500,000 posts between 1993-96

- For the first time since 1945 the number of civil servants fell. The American federal administration cut 118,000 jobs between 1994-96

- Unlike the previous phases of recovery the growth in business profits was not accompanied by a growth in employment, quite the contrary.

The new jobs that have been created are badly paid, and part time.

This recovery that increased unemployment is eloquent testimony to the level of gravity that the historic crisis of capitalism has reached since as we pointed out in International Review no 80 “When the capitalist economy is functioning in a healthy manner, the increase or maintenance of profits is the result of the growth in the number of workers exploited and the capacity to extract greater masses of surplus value from them. When it is suffering from a chronic illness, despite the reinforcement of exploitation and productivity, the lack of markets prevents it from maintaining its profits without reducing the number of workers to exploit, without destroying capitalism”.

As with the open recession of 1991-93, the recovery of 1994-97, due to its fragility and its violent contradictions, is a new expression of the aggravation of the capitalist crisis; but it differs from previous ones in that:

- Many fewer countries were involved

- The USA no longer played the role of world locomotive giving an impetus to its “partners”, rather this recovery was achieved at the cost of others, principally Germany and Japan

- Unemployment continued to grow; the best that can be said is that it grew more slowly

- The recovery was accompanied by continuous financial and stock market convulsions. Amongst others:

           - The collapse of the Mexican economy (1994)

           - The upheaval in the European Monetary System (1995)

           - The bankruptcy of Barings Bank (1996)

We can conclude that in the evolution of the capitalist crisis over the last 30 years each moment of recovery has been weaker than the previous one although stronger than the one to follow, whereas each phase of recession is worse than the previous one although not as bad as the following one.

 So-called “globalisation”

 During the 90s, we have seen the flowering of the ideology of “globalisation”. According to this the imposition throughout the globe of the laws of the market, budgetary rigour, labour flexibility and the unrestricted circulation of capital, will permit the “definitive” overcoming of the crisis (to be sure, along with a whole new load of crushing sacrifices on the backs of the proletariat). As with all the “models” that have proceeded it, this new alchemy is another attempt by the main capitalist states to “accompany” the crisis and to try to slow it down. There are three main elements to this:

-  A formidable increase in productivity

-  A reduction in trade barriers and restrictions on world trade

-  A spectacular development of financial transactions.

 The increase in productivity

 Throughout the 90s, the most industrialised countries have experienced a major increase in productivity. In this growth we can distinguish between on the one hand, the reduction in costs; on the other, the growth in the organic composition of capital (the proportion between constant and variable capital).

Many factors have contributed to the reduction in costs:

-  A tremendous pressure on wage costs: reduction of the nominal wage and increasing cuts in that part of wages materialised in social spending

-  A vertiginous fall in the prices of raw materials

-  The organised and systematic elimination of the unprofitable parts of the productive apparatus - as much in the private sector as in the public - through various mechanisms: closures pure and simple, privatisation of  state property, mergers, sale and transfer of shares

-  So-called “delocalisation”, in other words the transfer of low added value production to Third World countries with very low labour costs and ridiculously low prices (frequently due to dumping), allowing the central countries to lower their costs.

The overall result was a universal reduction in labour costs (a brutal increase in both absolute and relative surplus value).

Levels of annual variation of
Unit Labour Costs
(source: the OECD)

 As far as the growth in the composition of capital is concerned, this has continued throughout the period of decadence since it is indispensable to compensate the fall in the rate of profit. During the 90s, the systematic introduction of robotics, information technology, and telecommunications has given this a new impetus.

This growth in organic composition gives this or that individual capital, or even a whole nation, a certain advantage over its competitors, but what does this mean from the point of view of the whole of world capital? In the ascendant period, when the system was able to incorporate new masses of workers into its relations of exploitation, the growth in organic composition constituted an accelerating factor of capitalist expansion. In the present context of decadence and 30 years of chronic crisis, the effect of these increases in organic composition is completely different. While they are vital to each individual capital, to allow it to compensate the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, they have a different effect for capitalism as a whole in that they aggravate overproduction and reduce the very base of exploitation by lowering the amount of variable capital, ie by throwing ever-greater masses of workers onto the streets.

 The reduction in customs barriers

 Bourgeois propaganda has presented the elimination of customs barriers over the decade as a “triumph of the market”. We cannot make a detailed analysis here[4], but it is necessary to reveal the reality that is hidden behind the ideological smoke screen:

- This elimination of tariff barriers and protectionist measures has been essentially one-way: it has been carried out by the weakest countries for the benefit of the strongest and has particularly affected Brazil, Russia, India, etc. Far from reducing their customs barriers, the most industrialised countries have created new ones using the alibis of environmental protection, “human rights” etc. Contrary to its presentation by bourgeois ideology, this policy has sharpened imperialist tensions.

- Faced with the aggravation of the crisis, the most industrialised countries have imposed a policy of “co-operation” whose content is focused on:

           - Pushing the effects of the crisis and the aggravation of competition onto the weakest countries,

           - Impeding by all means a collapse of world trade that will do nothing but increase even more the crisis with especially serious consequences in the central countries.

 Globalisation of financial transactions

 A new escalation of debt took place during the 1990’s. Quantity was transformed into quality, and we can say that debt was converted into super-debt:

- During the 70’s debt could be reduced by running the risk of provoking a recession; since the mid-1980’s debt has become a permanent and growing necessity for every state during recovery as much as in periods of recession: “Debt is not a choice, an economic policy that the world’s leaders can decide to use, or not. It is a constraint, a necessity forced on them by the very functioning and contradictions of the capitalist system” (International Review no 87 “The casino economy”)

- On the one hand, states, banks and businesses need an influx of fresh credits which could only be obtained through the financial markets. This leads to a frenzied competition to attract lenders. Increasingly elaborate devices have been developed to this end: establishing a forced parity between local currencies and the dollar (this is the device used by China or the famous “tigers” and “dragons”), currencies re-valuations to attract funds, increasing interest rates etc.

- On the other hand, “profits made from production no longer find enough outlets in profitable investment to increase productive capacity. ‘Crisis management’ thus means finding other outlets for this excess floating capital, to avoid their abrupt devaluation” (idem). It is the states and the most respectable financial institutions themselves that have stimulated a frenzied speculation not only to avoid this gigantic bubble of fictitious capital bursting, but also to alleviate the cost of ever-increasing debt.

It is thus this super-debt, and the exuberant and irrational speculation which it has caused, that has led to this famous “free movement” of capital, the use of electronics and the Internet in financial transactions, the indexing of currencies in relation to the dollar, the free repatriation of profits_ The complicated financial engineering of the 80’s (see the previous articles) looks like child’s play compared to the sophisticated and labyrinthine gimmicks of the financial “global-isation” of the 90’s. Until the middle of the 80’s speculation, which has always existed under capitalism, had not gone beyond being a more or less temporary phenomenon. Since then it has turned into a deadly, but indispensable, poison which has become inseparable from the process of super-indebtedness, and which has to be integrated into the functioning of the system. The weight of speculation is enormous: according to figures from the World Bank so-called “hot money” has risen to $30 billion, of which $24 billion come from the industrialised countries.

 A provisional balance-sheet of the 1990s

 We want to offer some provisional conclusions (for the period 1990-96, before the explosion that has been called “the Asiatic Crisis”), that, however, appear significant to us.

 I - Evolution of the economic situation.

1. The average levels of growth have continued falling:

Levels of increase in GNP
(average for the 24 OECD countries)

2. The amputation of the directly productive industrial and agricultural sectors has become permanent and affects all sectors, the “out-dated” as much as the “cutting-edge ”.

Evolution of the % of GDP taken up by directly productive sectors
(industry and agriculture)

 3. In the struggle against the inevitable fall in the rate of profit, businesses resort to a whole series of measures which will alleviate the fall in the short-term, but will only aggravate the problem in the medium term:

- Lowering of labour costs and increasing the organic composition of capital

- Decapitalisation: the massive transfer of assets (factories, property, financial investments etc) in order to boost profits

- Concentration: business mergers have undergone a spectacular growth.

The value of mergers in billions of $
(source JP Morgan)

Whilst the gigantic process of the concentration of capital between 1850 and 1910 reflected a development of production and was positive for the evolution of the economy, the present process expresses the opposite. It is a a defensive response, designed to compensate for the strong contraction of demand, organising the reduction of productive capacity (in 1998 the industrialised countries cut their productive capacity by 10%) and reducing the work force: prudent estimates put the total reduction of jobs due to mergers carried out in 1998 at 11%.

4. There was a new reduction in the foundations of the world market: a large part of Africa, a certain number of Asian and American countries, have participated very weakly as they have sunk into a situation of decomposition; these have become known as “black holes”: a state of chaos, the resurgence of forms of slavery, an economy based on barter and looting, etc.

5. The countries once considered as “models” have fallen into prolonged stagnation. This is the case in Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Sweden where:

- The average rate of increase of production for the period 1990-97 did not exceed 2%;

- Unemployment grew significantly: between 1990-97 it practically doubled (for example, in Switzerland average unemployment between 1970-1990 was 1%; in 1997 it had increased to 5.2%);

- From being creditors, all four countries became debtors (Swiss households are the most indebted in the world after the USA and Japan);

- Most significant is the situation of the Swiss economy, until recently considered the healthiest in the world:

Growth of Swiss GNP

1992       - 0.3%

1993       - 0.8%

1994       - 0.5%

1995       - 0.8%

1996       - 0.2%

1997       - 0.7%

6. The level of debt continued its unstoppable escalation turning into super-debt:

- World debt rose to a figure of  $30 trillion (one and a half years of world production);

- Germany, Japan and all the countries of Western Europe joined the ranks of the highly indebted (in the previous decade it had been much more moderate):

 % of debt to GNP (source: World Bank)

- The countries of the Third World suffered a new overdose of debt:

Total debt of the “underdeveloped”
countries (source: World Bank)

1990   1.480,000 million $

1994   1.927,000 million $

1996   2.177,000 million $

7. The financial apparatus suffered the worst convulsions since 1929 leaving it no longer the secure place it had been up until the middle of the 1980s. Its deterioration has gone along with a gigantic development of speculation which has affected all activity: shares on the stock markets, property, art, agriculture etc.

8. Two phenomena, which have always existed under capitalism, have taken on alarming proportions over the decade:

- The corruption of politicians and economic managers, which is the product of two combined factors:

           - The increasingly overwhelming weight of the state in the economy (businesses are increasingly dependent on its investment plans, its subsidies, its purchases),

           - The growing difficulty of gaining a reasonable profit through “legal” means.

- The gangsterisation of the economy, the increasingly strong inter-penetration between states, banks, businesses and traffickers (of drugs, arms, children, emigrants etc). The most dubious businesses are the most profitable and the most ‘respected’ institutions both governmental and private cannot help but satisfy their appetites. This makes increasingly clear a tendency towards the decomposition of the economy.

9. In line with the above, a phenomenon has appeared in the industrialised states, that of the increasingly obvious falsification of economic indicators and “creative” accounting tricks of all kinds, which until now have been the preserve of banana republics and Stalinist regimes. This is another expression of the aggravation of the crisis since for the bourgeoisie it has always been necessary to dispose of reliable statistics (especially, in the countries of “Western” state capitalism that need the market to impose its final verdict on the functioning of the economy).

The World Bank, the source of many statistics, includes as a part of GDP the notion of “non-tradable services”, which includes the pay of the military, civil servants and teachers. Another method of exaggerating the figures is to consider as “self-consumption” not only agricultural activities, but a whole series of services. The much praised “budget surplus” of the American state, is a fiction gained through playing with the surpluses of the Social Security funds[5]. However, due to their great social and political importance, the most scandalous tricks are played on the unemployment statistics with a view to substantially lowering them:

- In the USA our publication Internationalism no 105 has made clear the tricks used by the Clinton administration to achieve its “magnificent” unemployment figures: including as active workers those working part time, eliminating from the statistics the unemployed who refuse meaningless jobs, count the various part time jobs done by one worker as if they were done by different individuals, etc.

- In Germany only those who look for jobs of at least 18 hours a week are considered unemployed, whilst in Holland the figure is 12 hours a week and in Luxembourg 20 hours[6].

- Austria and Greece have got rid of monthly statistics in preference for quarterly ones which allow them to mask the real figures.

- In Italy, those who work between 20 and 40 hours a week or who work between 4 and 6 months a year are not considered unemployed. In Great Britain those unemployed that receive no state benefits are eradicated from the figures.

 II - The situation of the working class

 1. Unemployment has accelerated brutally throughout the decade:

Unemployment in the 24 countries of the OECD

           1989        30 million

           1993        35 million

           1996        38 million

% of unemployment in the industrialised countries (source: ILO)

 The ILO showed that in 1996 world-wide unemployment or under-employment had reached the threshold of one billion people.

2. The chronic under-employment of the Third World has spread to the industrialised countries:

- In 1995 part time contracts (also known as “dustbin contracts”) made up 20% of the workforce in the 24 countries of the OECD;

- The ILO report for 1996 observed that “between 25% and 30% of the world’s workers rely on a shorter day’s work than they would want, or on a wage which is less than the minimum necessary to live decently”.

3. In the Third World there has been a massive development in forms of exploitation such as: child labour (some 200 million according to statistics from the World Bank for 1996); slavery or forced labour - even in a developed country like France, diplomats have been condemned for treating as slaves domestic personnel brought from Madagascar or Indonesia.

4. Along with generalised mass layoffs (especially in the large companies) governments have adopted policies of “reducing the costs of redundancy”:

- Reduction in layoff compensation,

- Cuts in unemployment benefits, and in the number of beneficiaries.

5. Wages have suffered their first nominal fall since the 1930s:

- Wage levels in Spain in 1997 were lower than those in 1980,

- In the USA the average wage fell by 20% between 1974 and 1997,

- In Japan wages have fallen for the first time since 1955 (by 0.9% in 1998).

6. Substantial cuts in social spending have become permanent. By contrast taxes, prices, and Social Security levies all continue to grow.

7. Since the middle of the decade, capital has opened another front of attack: the elimination of legal minimum working conditions. This has had a number of consequences:

- The increase in the working day (particularly through the demagogy about the “35 hour week” which presupposes the flexible calculation of working hours on a yearly basis and therefore the reduction in overtime payments)

- The elimination of limits on the retirement age,

- The elimination of limits on the age for beginning work (2 million children already work in the European Union)

- Reduced protection against work accidents, work-related illnesses etc.

8. Another, non-negligible aspect is that banks, insurance companies etc are pushing workers to place their small savings (or help from parents or grandparents) in the Russian roulette of the stock market, making them the first victims of its continuous summersaults. However, a worse problem is that, with the elimination or the cutting of the derisory pensions from Social Security, workers are being forced to depend for their retirement on Pension Funds which invest the bulk of their capital on the stock market which causes serious uncertainty: for example the main Fund for education workers in the USA lost 11% of its value in 1997 (see Internationalism no 105).

Bourgeois propaganda has insisted ad nauseam about the lessening of inequality, about the “democratisation” of wealth and consumption. Thirty years of capitalism’s deepening historic crisis has systematically given the lie to these proclamations and confirmed the marxist analysis of the tendency of increasing impoverishment of the working class and the whole exploited population brought about by the aggravation of crisis. Capitalism is concentrated into on the one hand, an ever smaller minority with enormous and provocative riches and on the other a growing majority suffering terrible and lacerating poverty. Some figures gathered in the 1998 Annual Report of the UN are significant: whilst in 1996 the 358 richest people in the world concentrated in their hands the same amount of money as the 2.5 billion poorest, in 1997 the first 225 held the same equivalent.

Adalen

[6] These and the following figures have been taken from the Official Diary of the European Community (1997). 

“The world we live in is a little mad. In Kosovo we discover crimes against humanity every day; other less spectacular but equally horrible conflicts in Africa and Asia; economic and financial crises which break out suddenly, unforeseen and destructive; growing poverty in many parts of the world...” (quoted in Le Monde, 22/6/99). Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the break-up of the Eastern bloc and the disappearance of the USSR, ten years after the enthusiastic declarations about the “victory of capitalism” and the opening of a new “era of peace and prosperity”, this is the disillusioned - or rather discreetly cynical - observation of one of the bourgeoisie’s principal leaders: Jacques Chirac, president of France. Another eminent bourgeois politician, ex-US president Jimmy Carter has much the same to say about capitalism’s reality since 1989: “When the Cold War came to an end ten years ago, we expected an era of peace. Instead, we have had a decade of war” (quoted in International Herald Tribune of 17/6/99). The situation of the capitalist world is catastrophic. The economic crisis has reduced billions of human beings to abject poverty. According to Le Monde Diplomatique of June 1999, “Half the world’s population lives with less than $1.50 per day, and a billion men and women live with less than $1". Every continent is ravaged by the atrocities of war. This madness - in J. Chirac’s words - is implacable, devastating, bloody; it is the consequence of the historic impasse of the capitalist world, and its latest expressions are the wars in Serbia and Kosovo, and between India and Pakistan, these two latter in possession of nuclear weapons.

As the air war comes to an end in Yugoslavia, and the great imperialist powers once again cry victory, as the media develop huge campaigns on the humanitarian benefits of NATO’s war and the noble cause that it defended, as the talk is of reconstruction, peace, and prosperity for the Balkans, it is good to bear in mind these discreet confidences - offered in a moment of weariness? - of Carter and Chirac. They reveal the reality behind the deceitful propaganda that we are subjected to day after day.

For us communists, they are nothing new. Marxism[1] has always insisted within the workers’ movement that capitalism could only lead to an economic impasse, to crisis, poverty, and bloody conflicts between bourgeois states. Marxism has always, especially since World War I, insisted that “capitalism is war”. Peacetime is only a moment in the preparation of imperialist war. The more the capitalists talk of peace, the more they prepare for war.

During the last ten years, the columns of our International Review have denounced, over and over again, the talk of a “victory of capitalism”, the “end of communism”, the “prosperity to come” and the “disappearance of war”. We have constantly denounced the “peace that prepares war”. We have denounced the responsibility of the great imperialist powers in the proliferation of local conflicts around the world. The imperialist antagonisms between the main capitalist countries are responsible for the vivisection of Yugoslavia, the explosion of robbery and murder of every kind on the part of the smaller nationalist gangsters, and for the unleashing of war. In this Review, we have already denounced the inevitable development of military chaos in the Balkans: “The butchery which has now been raging in ex-Yugoslavia for three years is not about to end. It is potent proof of how the wars and chaos born out of the decomposition of capitalism are aggravated by the big imperialist powers. And also that, in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the only alternative they can propose is either to bomb the Serb forces or to arm the Bosnians. In other words, faced with the war and chaos provoked by the decomposition of the capitalist system, the most powerful and industrialised nations can only respond by adding more war” (International Review no.78, 3rd quarter 1994).

When this was written, the alternative was between bombing the Serbs or arming the Bosnians. In the end, they bombed the Serbs and armed the Bosnians. As a result, the war claimed still more victims; Bosnia is divided into three “ethnically cleansed” zones and occupied by the armies of the great powers; the population lives in poverty, many of them are refugees who will never return home. Populations that lived side by side for centuries are now torn apart and divided by blood and slaughter.

Great and small imperialisms sow terror and death

In Kosovo, “learning the lesson of Bosnia”, the great imperialisms straight away bombed the Serb forces and sent weapons to the Kosovar UCK, adding still more to the war. The enthusiastic admiration of military experts and journalists for NATO’s 1,100 aircraft, the 35,000 sorties, the 18,000 bombs and missiles used to “treat” - it’s the term they use - 2,000 targets, are sickening. The result of this terror exercised by imperialisms great and small, by NATO, the Serbian forces, and the UCK: tens of thousands of deaths, appalling crimes committed by the soldiery of the minor imperialist gangsters, by the Serb paramilitaries and the UCK, a million Kosovars and 100,000 Serbs forced to flee, leaving their houses burning and their belongings looted, held to ransom by both sides. The great imperialist powers are responsible for the terror and massacres perpetrated by the Serb militia and the UCK. The Serb and Kosovar populations are the victims of imperialism, just as the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs were during the war in Bosnia, and remain to this day. Since 1991, the nationalist and imperialist division of Yugoslavia has been the cause of more than 250,000 deaths and 3 million refugees.

What do the democratic states have to say to this? “We have to accept a few deaths in order to save a greater number” (Jamie Shea on 15th April, quoted in the supplement to Le Monde of 19/6/99). This declaration by the NATO spokesman, to justify the murder of innocent Serb and Kosovar civilians by the “collateral damage” of the “great democracies” is no better than the fanaticism of the dictators demonised for the benefit of propaganda, whether they be Milosevic today, Saddam yesterday, or Hitler before them. This is the reality of the “humanitarian interference” by the great powers. Democracy and dictatorship both come from the same capitalist world.

Imperialism has ruined the Balkans and caused an ecological disaster

As Chirac and Carter have shown us, it does sometimes happen that the bourgeoisie tells the truth. Sometimes it even keeps its promises. NATO’s generals promised to destroy Serbia and retard it by 50 years. They have kept their word. “After 79 days of bombing, the [Yugoslav] federation has been taken 50 years back to the past. The power stations and oil refineries have been, if not completely destroyed, rendered incapable of supplying sufficient energy - at least for the winter; the transport and telecommunications infrastructures are unusable, the rivers virtually impracticable. Unemployment, which stood at 35% before the bombing began, will probably double. According to the expert Pavle Petrovic, economic activity has shrunk by 60% since 1968” (Le Monde, op. Cit.). Yugoslavia’s ruin has been an economic disaster for its neighbours - Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, already amongst the poorest countries in Europe - as a result of the influx of refugees, the paralysis of their economies, the end of trade with Serbia, and the disruption of transport by road and the Danube.

The bombardments have been an ecological disaster for Serbia and the surrounding countries: unused bombs dropped in the Adriatic, much to the alarm of Italian fishermen, acid rains in Rumania, “abnormal levels of dioxin” in Greece, “atmospheric concentrations of sulphur dioxide and heavy metals” in Bulgaria, and frequent oil slicks on the Danube. “In Serbia, the ecological damage seems much more worrying (...) According to one UN official, speaking under cover of anonymity, ‘in other circumstances, nobody would hesitate to call this an environmental disaster’” (Le Monde, 26/5/99). As our brave anonymous official says, “in other circumstances”, many would be indignant - the ecologists to start with. But in today’s circumstances, the Greens in power in Germany and France have been amongst the worst warmongers, and they share responsibility for one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time. They took part in the decision to launch graphite bombs, which spread carcinogenic particles which will have incalculable consequences for years to come. They did the same for the cluster bombs - whose effects are the same as anti-personnel mines - which are now spread over Serbia, and above all Kosovo, where they are beginning to kill children (and British soldiers...)! Their “pacifism” and “defence of the eco-system” are at the service of capital and anyway subordinated to the fundamental interests of their national capital, especially when these are at stake. In other words, they are pacifists and ecologists as long as there is no war. In reality, in imperialist war and for the needs of the national capital, they are war-mongers and large-scale polluters just like all the other bourgeois parties.

The lie of NATO’s “just and humanitarian” war

Wasn’t it necessary to intervene to stop Serb state terror against the Kosovars? Didn’t we have to stop Milosevic? This is like the pyromaniac fireman. The arsonists who lit the fuse in 1991 are using their own misdeeds to justify their intervention. Who allowed the worst nationalist Mafia cliques in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and now Kosovo, to unleash nationalist hysteria and bloody ethnic cleansing, if not the great imperialist powers? Who, if not Germany, pushed for the unilateral declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, encouraging and precipitating the unleashing of nationalism in the Balkans which led to the massacres and exile of the Serbian, then the Bosnian populations? Who, if not Britain and France, turned a blind eye to the repression and massacre of the Croat and Bosnian populations, and the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Milosevic and the “Greater Serbia” nationalists? Who, if not the United States, supported and equipped the different rival gangs depending on how their rivals were positioned at any given moment? When they justify the bombing campaign on the grounds of “humanitarian interference”, the “Allied” western democracies demonstrate an unlimited hypocrisy and duplicity. Just as the rivalries between the great powers liberated and precipitated nationalist hysteria by provoking the break-up of Yugoslavia, so NATO’s massive intervention allowed Milosevic to increase his repression against the Kosovars, and to give free rein to his soldiery. Even the bourgeoisie’s own experts recognise this - discreetly of course - when they pretend to wonder: “The intensification of the ethnic cleansing was foreseeable (...). Was the massive ethnic cleansing at the beginning of the bombing campaign foreseen? If the answer is yes, then how can the low level of NATO operations [ie to help the refugees] during the first month, until the Washington summit, be justified?” (François Heisbourg, president of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, quoted in Le Monde supplement of 19/6/99). And yet the answer is clear enough: a million refugees, their terrible stories, the conditions of their expulsion, the threats and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the Serb militia, were cynically used to justify the military occupation of Kosovo (and an eventual ground war “if necessary”) in the eyes of the great powers’ own populations. Today, the discovery and media use of mass graves is again being used to justify the continuing war situation, and to hide where the real responsibilities lie.

But in the final analysis, has not NATO’s military success restored peace and allowed the refugees to return home? Some of the refugees (“It is already clear that many Kosovar Albanians will never return to their devastated homes”, Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, 4/6/99) will return to find the region devastated, and often enough, their home a smouldering ruin. As for the Serbs living in Kosovo, they in their turn have become refugees - whom the Serb bourgeoisie does not want, and whom it is trying to push back into a Kosovo where they are the target of universal hatred - unless they are simply assassinated by the UCK. As in Bosnia, a river of blood and hatred now separates the different populations. As in Bosnia, the entire area must be rebuilt. But also as in Bosnia, reconstruction and economic development will remain mere media promises of the great imperialist powers. A few repairs will be done to roads and bridges, to allow the rapid movement of the KFOR occupying army. The media will use these for a new wash of propaganda on the “humanitarian benefits” of military intervention. We have no doubt that there will be no recovery in a Kosovo already poor before the war began. By contrast, the war situation will not come to an end. NATO’s pyromaniac firemen have poured oil on the fire, and destabilised the region still further: the occupation and division of Kosovo between the different imperialist powers in KFOR uniform has reproduced the situation in Bosnia, where IFOR, then SFOR, have occupied the country since 1995 and the Dayton “peace” agreement. “Along with Bosnia, the whole region will be militarised by NATO for 20 or 30 years” (William Zimmerman, the last US ambassador in Belgrade, quoted in Le Monde of 7/6/99). What about the local population? At best, and at first, they will enjoy an armed peace in the midst of a ruined country, poverty, prey to the militias and under the reign of armed gangs and the local Mafia. This will be followed by new military confrontations both in Kosovo and in the surrounding region (Montenegro, Macedonia...?), expressions, yet again, of the great powers’ imperialist rivalries. Kosovo will then endure the reign of petty warlords and different Mafia clans, often in UCK uniform, behind which each imperialist power - especially in the zone it occupies - will try to hold its rivals in check.

Had we any doubts about this, they would be dissipated by the spectacle of Russian parachutists racing to be the first in Pristina, and to occupy its airport; this action is an open caricature of the implacable logic that drives the great imperialist gangsters. They have no hope of making any economic gains, either to win the “reconstruction market”, or even to gain control of a few wretched mineral resources. Direct economic interest in the war in Kosovo is non-existent, or else so minimal that it is in no way a reason, even one of the reasons, for the war. It would be absurd to think that the war against Serbia was aimed at controlling Serb economic resources, or even at gaining control of the Danube, important thoroughfare though it is. In this war, what matters for each imperialism is to secure the best possible position in the irreversible development of great-power rivalries in order to defend its imperialist interests: in other words, its strategic, diplomatic, and military interests.

One of the main consequences of capitalism’s economic impasse and the resulting frantic competition, is that this economic competition is taken to the imperialist level, to end in generalised war, as the two world imperialist wars this century have shown. Though they are historically the consequence of an economic impasse, imperialist antagonisms have their own dynamic: they are not the direct expression of economic or commercial rivalries, as we can see from the various imperialist line-ups throughout the century, particularly during and immediately after the two world wars. More and more, the search for direct economic advantage is only a secondary imperialist motivation.

An understanding of the strategic stakes in the present war can be found amongst some of the “thinkers” of the bourgeois class (though of course only in publications aimed at an “enlightened few”, not at the working masses): “As for the final goals, the real aims of this war, the European Union and the USA are each pursuing, for very different motives, separate plans which are very precise but never public. The European Union is involved for strategic reasons [while for the US] the Kosovo business provides an ideal pretext for settling an issue that is of prime concern to them: renewing the legitimacy of NATO (...) ‘because of the political influence that it gives the US in Europe, and because it blocks the development of a strategic system to rival that of the USA’” (Ignacio Ramonet in Le Monde Diplomatique of June 1999, quoting William Pfaf’s article “What good is NATO if America intends to go it alone?” in International Herald Tribune 20/5/99).

Imperialist rivalries are the real cause of the war in Kosovo

This implacable logic of imperialism, consisting of increasingly sharp rivalries, antagonisms and conflicts, expressed itself in the way the war broke out and the way it unfolded. The unity of the western allies in NATO was itself merely the result of a momentary and unstable balance of forces between rivals. At the Rambouillet negotiations, under the auspices of Britain and France - and from which Germany was absent - it was at first the Kosovar representatives who rejected the conditions for an agreement under the pressure of the USA. Then, with the impromptu arrival of the American Madeleine Albright in response to the impotence of the Europeans, it was the Serbs who rejected the conditions that the USA wanted to impose on them, and which in fact demanded the complete capitulation of Milosevic without a fight: NATO forces were to have the right to freely circulate, without any authorisation, anywhere in the territory of Yugoslavia[2]. Why such an unacceptable ultimatum? “The showdown at Rambouillet, one of her (Mrs Albright) aides said recently, has ‘only one purpose’: to get the war started with the Europeans locked in” (International Herald Tribune, 11/6/99). Yet another rebuttal of the humanitarian lies of the bourgeoisie about the reasons for the war. And indeed it was the case that the British and French bourgeoisies, traditional allies of Serbia, got “locked in” to the military operation against Serbia. Refusing to join in would have put them out of the game at the end of the conflict. From then on, all the imperialist forces belonging to NATO, from the biggest to the smallest, had to take part in the bombing. Absent from Rambouillet, Germany then had the “humanitarian” opportunity to get back into the game and participate in a military intervention for the first time since 1945. The direct result of these antagonisms was to offer a carte blanche to Milosevic to get on with “ethnic cleansing”, and to plunge millions of people in Serbia and Kosovo into a sheer hell.

The imperialist occupation and carve-up of Kosovo: a success for Britain 

And today, the result of these imperialist divisions has been the division of Kosovo into five occupation zones - with a Russian occupation force in the middle of it all - in which each imperialism will play its cards against the others. The murderous imperialist game will take on a new form, with a new alignment of forces. If Britain and France had not participated in the air war against Yugoslavia they would have been relegated to the same level as Russia. Participating in the NATO bombing gave them much better cards, especially the British, who are now at the head of the land occupation. Leading KFOR, occupying the centre of the country and its capital, British imperialism has emerged considerably strengthened both at the military and diplomatic levels. Today in Kosovo, from the end of the bombing and the beginning of the land intervention, Britain holds the best cards, both as the historic ally of Serbia (in spite of the bombings), and thanks to its ability to send the biggest number of soldiers faster than anyone else, and thanks also to the extreme professionalism of its ground troops. Hence the incessant calls from Tony Blair for a land intervention throughout the war. The American bourgeoisie, absolute master of the air war, by trying to sabotage each diplomatic advance, tried to delay the agreement of a ceasefire in which it would totally lose control of events[3]. France, though to a much lesser degree than Britain, is still in the game, as is Italy, though more as a neighbour than as an important great power. Finally, Russia has managed to grab a foothold but one which does not allow it to play any decisive role, except as a troublemaker.

A new step in the imperialist ambitions of  Germany

But throughout this last bloody decade in the Balkans, there has been only one imperialist power which has really advanced towards its objectives: Germany. Whereas the USA, Britain and France - to mention only the most important powers - have been against the break-up of Yugoslavia since the  beginning of 1991, Germany has made the Yugoslav affair its battle-horse[4], pursuing a strategy always aimed at the Serb “bad guy”. The most recent expression of this has been its arming and financing of the KLA while building up a strong position in Albania. Germany has been advancing its imperialist pawns throughout this decade. The dislocation of Yugoslavia has enabled it to enlarge its imperialist influence from Slovenia and Croatia to Albania. The war against Serbia, its isolation and ruin, has allowed it to participate in air and land military operations for the first time since 1945. Germany was excluded from Rambouillet, but it was in Bonn and Cologne, under its presidency, that the G8 - the group of the richest countries plus Russia - discussed and adopted the peace accords and the UN resolution. With 8500 soldiers, it is the second biggest army in KFOR. At the beginning of the 90s Germany was called an economic giant and a military dwarf; but since then Germany has been the power that has scored most points against its rivals.

Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, expressed the hopes and objectives of German imperialism very well: “For a long time the 20th century has been bi-polar. Today there are many, including the USA, who are attached to the idea that the 21st century will be uni-polar and American. This is an error” (Courier International, 12/5/99). He doesn’t say it, but he certainly hopes that the 21st century will be bi-polar with Germany as America’s rival.

The division of Kosovo aggravates the rivalries between the big powers    

All the imperialist powers are thus squaring up to each other in Kosovo, directly and militarily. Even if direct armed confrontations between the big powers are not on the agenda in the present period, this face-to-face represents a new aggravation, a new step, in the development and sharpening of imperialist antagonisms. Directly on the ground for “twenty years”, as the former US ambassador to Yugoslavia put it, all of them will be arming the armed gangs and their local proteges, Serb militias and Albanian mafia bands, in order to embarrass and entrap their rivals. All sorts of trip wires and provocations will be used. In sum: for rival geo-strategic, i.e. imperialist interests, millions of people in ex-Yugoslavia have been through hell and will carry on paying for the imperialist “madness” of the capitalist world in misery and despair. 

The war in Kosovo will lead to a multiplication of local conflicts

There can be no doubt: the infernal machine of imperialist conflicts is going to be further accentuated and aggravated, going from one from part of the globe to another. In this devastating spiral, all continents and all states, small or big, will be hit. The outbreak of the armed conflict between India and Pakistan at a time when these two countries have embarked upon a frenzied arms race is an expression of this, as are the recent confrontations between the two Koreas. The armed intervention of NATO has already poured oil on the flames globally and heralds the conflagrations to come: “The success of the multinational coalition led by the US in Kosovo will reinforce the dissemination of missiles and arms of mass destruction in Asia...It is now imperative for nations to have the best military technology” (International Herald Tribune, 19/6/99)

Why this imperative? Because “in the period of capitalist decadence, ALL states are imperialist, and take the necessary measures to satisfy their appetites: war economy, arms production, etc. We must state clearly that the deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the opposition between different states, including and increasingly on the military level. The difference, in the coming period (after the disappearance of the eastern bloc and the USSR) will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time ‘partners’ are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war  (even supposing that the proletariat were no longer capable of putting up a resistance). However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest” (International Review 61, February 1990).

This position has been confirmed throughout this decade. At least at the level of local imperialist conflicts. But what does this mean for our position on the role of the international proletariat in the evolution of the situation?

The proletariat and war

The international proletariat has been unable to prevent the outbreak of local imperialist conflicts throughout this decade. Even in Europe, in Yugoslavia, a stone’s throw from the main working class concentrations in the world, the impotence of the proletariat at this level has been shown again by the war in Kosovo. Neither the international proletariat, still less the proletariat in Serbia, has expressed a direct opposition to war.

Of course we are in solidarity with the Serb population which has demonstrated against the return of its soldiers in coffins. Just as we are in solidarity with the collective desertions which took place in connection with these demonstrations. They are a clear refutation of the shameful lies of the NATO powers which present all the Serbs as torturers and murderers united behind Milosevic. Unfortunately these reactions against the war did not develop into a real expression of the working class, which alone is capable of offering even the beginnings of a proletarian response to imperialist war. It was essentially the international isolation of Serbia, the despair amongst significant factions of the Serb bourgeoisie faced with the destruction of the country’s economic apparatus, the prospect of a NATO land intervention, and the exhaustion of a population subjected to daily bombings, which pushed Milosevic to sign the peace agreement. “We are alone. NATO isn’t going to collapse. Russia will not aid Yugoslavia militarily and international opinion is against us” (Vuk Draskovic, Milosevic’s vice-premier who changed his colours on 26/4/99, quoted in Le Monde’s Supplement, 19/6/99).

Does this mean that the proletariat was completely absent faced with the war in Kosovo? Does this mean that the balance of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie at a historic level has no weight in the present situation? No. In the first place, the present historic situation, deriving from the end of the imperialist blocs, is the result of the balance of forces between the two classes. The proletariat’s opposition, throughout the 70s and 80s, to economic and political attacks has also been expressed, particularly in the central countries of capitalism, by its resistance and ‘insubordination’ towards the defence of national interests at the economic level, and thus towards the defence of the nation’s imperialist interests (see the article on the historic course in International Review no.18). And this historic course, this proletarian resistance, has once again been confirmed by the way the war in Kosovo evolved, even if the proletariat was not able to prevent it.

During this war, the working class remained a constant preoccupation of the bourgeoisie. It spent a lot of time and effort, an intensive media barrage, to make sure that the themes of the propaganda campaign were accepted - not without difficulty, and somewhat by default - and obtained a small majority in favour of the war in the public opinion polls in the NATO countries. And this wasn’t the case in all countries. And certainly not at the beginning. It needed the dramatic and unbearable pictures of the exhausted, starving Albanian families for the bourgeoisie to get a minimum of acceptance (you can’t really say that it was a positive support). And despite this the “Vietnam syndrome”, i.e. disquiet about the land war and the risks of popular reactions to the return of dead soldiers, was an obstacle for the bourgeoisie in the commitment of its armed forces. “The option of the air war aims to preserve the lives of the pilots as far as possible, since the loss or capture of a few of them could have negative effects on public support for the operation” (Jamie Shea, Le Monde Supplement 19/6/99). And yet with most of the western armies you are talking about professional soldiers rather than conscripts. It’s not we who say this; it’s the bourgeois politicians themselves who are obliged to recognise that the proletariat of the big imperialist countries is an obstacle to war. Even if “public opinion” is not identical to the proletariat, within the population as a whole the latter is the only class that carries any weight with the bourgeoisie.

This “insubordination” - latent and instinctive - of the international proletariat has also been expressed in various workers’ actions. Despite the war, despite the nationalist and democratic campaigns, significant strikes took place in certain countries. The railway workers’ strike in France, against the advice of the main union federations, the CGT and the CFDT, and against the introduction of added flexibility under the cover of the 35-hour week; a demonstration organised by the unions which attracted more than 25,000 municipal workers in New York; these are two of the most significant expressions of the slow but real rise in workers’ militancy and “resistance”, at the very moment that the war was being unleashed. In contrast to the Gulf war which created a feeling of apathy and powerlessness in the working class, the war in the Balkans has not caused the same disarray.

Of course this working class resistance is limited to the economic terrain, and the link between the economic impasse of capitalism, its economic attacks, and the proliferation of imperialist wars has yet to be made. This link must however be made because it is an important, essential element in the development of revolutionary consciousness among the workers. From this point of view, the interest we encountered while distributing our international leaflet denouncing the imperialist war in Kosovo - for example the discussions it raised at the demonstration in New York, even though this had been called for another reason altogether, are encouraging. It is up to communist groups not only to denounce the war and defend internationalist positions, but also to facilitate  the development of consciousness about the dead-end that capitalism has reached[5]. Its economic crisis raises economic rivalries and competition to a higher level and pushes ineluctably towards the sharpening of imperialist antagonisms and the proliferation of wars. Even if economic rivalries don’t always correspond to imperialist ones, which have their own dynamic, the economic contradictions which are expressed in the crisis of capitalism are at the source of imperialist war. Capitalism is economic crisis and war. It is poverty and death.

Faced with the war, and at moments of massive media “bombardment”, in the midst of intense media campaigns, revolutionaries cannot sit and wait for things to blow over, to hold onto their internationalist positions for a brighter day (see in this issue the article on the ICC’s appeal about the war in Serbia). They must do all they can to intervene and defend internationalist positions within the working class, as widely as possible, as effectively as possible, while still seeing their activities in a long term perspective. They must show the working class that there is an alternative to this barbarism, and that this alternative grows out of the workers’ “insubordination” at the economic and political level. That it grows out of the rejection of sacrifices in living and working conditions  and the rejection of sacrifices for imperialist wars. If in the last instance imperialist wars are the product of the economic failure of capitalism, they are also a factor which aggravates the economic crisis and so lead to the terrible accentuation of economic attacks on the workers.

The intensity of the war in Kosovo, the fact that it has broken out in Europe, the bloody military participation of all the imperialist powers, the repercussions of this war on every continent, the dramatic aggravation and acceleration of imperialist conflicts on a planetary scale, the extent, the depth and the urgency of the current historical stakes, place the international proletariat and communist groups in front of their historic responsibility. The proletariat is not beaten. It still bears within itself the possibility of overthrowing capitalism and ending its horrors. Socialism or the aggravation of capitalist barbarism is still the historic alternative.

RL 25/6/99

In the previous articles of the International Review we saw how the proletariat in Russia remained isolated after the highest point of the revolutionary wave was reached in 1919. While the Comintern tried to react against the reflux of the wave of struggles through an opportunistic turn, thus entering a downward path of degeneration, the Russian state became more and more autonomous from the movement of the class, and tried to bring the Comintern under its wing.

At the same time the bourgeoisie realised that with the end of the civil war in Russia, the workers in Russia no longer represented the same threat, and that the international wave of struggles was beginning to ebb. They became aware that the Comintern was no longer fighting energetically against Social-Democracy but instead was trying to establish alliances within it through the policy of the United Front. The bourgeoisie’s class instinct made it sense that the Russian state was no longer a force in the service of the revolution trying to expand, but had become a force aiming at the establishment of its own position as a State, as the conference of Rapallo had clearly demonstrated. The bourgeoisie felt that it could exploit the opportunistic turn and the degeneration of the Comintern as well as the balance of forces within the Russian state to its own benefit. The international bourgeoisie felt that it could engage an offensive against the working class. Germany was to be the focus of this offensive.

Apart from Russia in 1917, the proletariat’s most radical struggles had developed in Germany and Italy. Even after the defeat of the workers in their fight against the Kapp putsch in spring 1920, and after the defeat in March 1921, the working class in Germany was still very combative, but it was also relatively isolated internationally. With the workers in Austria, Hungary and Italy already defeated and under massive attack, and the proletariat of Germany, Poland and Bulgaria pushed into desperate reactions, the situation in France and in Britain remained comparatively stable. In order to inflict a decisive defeat on the working class in Germany, hoping thus to weaken the international working class altogether, the bourgeoisie could count on the international support of the entire capitalist class, which in the meantime had been able to strengthen its ranks with the integration of Social-Democracy and the Trade Unions into the State apparatus.

In 1923 the bourgeoisie tried to pull the working class in Germany into a nationalist trap, with the hope of derailing its struggles against capitalism.

The disastrous policy of the KPD: Defence of Democracy and United Front

We saw previously how the expulsion of the “Left radicals” (Linksradikalen), who were later to found the KAPD, weakened the KPD and facilitated the blossoming of opportunism in its ranks.

While the KAPD warned of the dangers of opportunism and the degeneration of the Comintern and rising state capitalism in Russia, the KDP reacted opportunistically. In an “Open Letter to the Workers’ Parties” of 1921 it was the first party to call for a United Front.

“The struggle for a United Front leads to the conquest of the old proletarian class organisations (Trade Unions, co-operatives etc.). It transforms these organs of the working class, which because of the tactics of the reformists have become tools of the bourgeoisie, into organs of proletarian class struggle once again”. At the same time the Trade Unions were proudly declaring: “it remains a fact, that the unions are the only solid dyke which has so far protected Germany from the Bolshevik flood” (Korrespondenzblatt der Gewerkschaften, June 1921).

The founding congress of the KPD was not mistaken, when it declared through the voice of Rosa Luxemburg that “the official unions proved during the war and in the war up until today that they are an organisation of the bourgeois State and of the rule of the capitalist class”. Now the same KPD stood for the retransformation of these organs which had gone over to the class enemy.

At the same time the KPD leadership under Brandler stood for a united front from above with the SPD-leadership. Within the KPD this orientation was opposed by a wing around Fischer and Maslow, who put forward the slogan of “workers’ government”. They declared that “support for the Social-Democratic minority government [does not mean] an increased decomposition of the SPD”; not only would such a position foster “illusions among the masses, as if a Social-Democratic cabinet were a weapon of the working class”, but it would tend to “eliminate the KPD, since it supposes that the SPD could lead a revolutionary struggle”.

But it was above all the currents of the Communist Left, which had just emerged in Italy and Germany, that took position against this idea.

“As far as a workers’ government is concerned, we ask: why are we being asked to ally ourselves with the Social-Democrats? To do the only things that they know how, are able, and want to do, or to ask them to do what they do not know how, cannot, and do not want to do? Are we being asked to tell the Social-Democrats that we are ready to collaborate with them, even in Parliament, and even in this government that has been baptised a ‘workers’ government’? In this case, in other words if we are being asked to set out in the name of the Communist Party a proposal for a workers’ government which will include communists and socialists, and to present this government to the masses as ‘the anti-bourgeois government’, then we reply, taking complete responsibility for our response, that such an attitude is opposed to all the fundamental principles of communism” (Il Comunista, no.26, March 1922).

At the 4th congress “the PCI will not therefore accept to take part in joint organisms with other political organisations... [it] will also avoid taking part in joint declarations with political parties when these declarations contradict its own programme and are presented to the proletariat as the result of negotiations aimed at finding a common line of action.

Talk of a workers’ government... comes down to denying in practice the political programme of communism, in other words the necessity of preparing the masses for the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat” (PCI Report to the 4th Congress of the Communist International, November 1922).

Ignoring these critiques by the Left Communists, the KPD had already proposed to form a coalition government with the SPD in Saxony in November 1922, a proposal which was rejected by the Comintern.

The same KPD which in its founding Conference at the beginning of 1919 still said, “Spartakusbund refuses to work together with the lackeys of the bourgeoisie, to share governmental power with Ebert-Scheidemann, because such a co-operation would be a betrayal of the principles of socialism, a strengthening of counter-revolution and a paralysis of the revolution”, now stood for the opposite.

At the same time the KPD was deceived by the number of votes it received, believing that these votes expressed a real balance of forces or even that they reflected the influence of the party.

While the first fascist groups were being set up by members of the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie, many armed right wing groups started to organise military training. The state was perfectly informed about these groups. Most of them had emerged directly from the Freikorps, which the SPD-led government had set up against the workers during the revolutionary struggles of 1918-1919. Already in August 1921 Rote Fahne declared: “The working class has the right and the duty to protect the republic against reaction”  (31.8.1921). One year later, in November 1922, the KPD signed a deal with the Trade Unions and the SPD (the Berlin agreement), with the aim of “democratising the republic” (protection of the republic, elimination of reactionaries from the administration, the judiciary, and the army). The KPD thus increased the illusions amongst the workers about bourgeois democracy and found itself in direct contradiction with the position of the Italian Left around Bordiga, which at the 4th World Congress of the Comintern emphasised in its analysis of fascism that bourgeois democracy was only one facet of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

In an earlier article we have already shown that the Comintern, in particular through its representative Radek, criticised the politics of the KPD outside of the organisational framework and that it started to weaken the leadership by building up a parallel functioning. At the same time petty bourgeois influences began to penetrate the party. Instead of expressing critique whenever necessary in a fraternal manner, an atmosphere of suspicion and incriminations was spreading, all of which led to a weakening of the organisation[1].

The ruling class realised that the KPD was beginning to spread confusion within the class instead of taking on a real vanguard role based on its clarity and determination. The bourgeoisie felt it could turn this opportunistic attitude of the KPD against the working class.

Following the reflux of the revolutionary wave — intensification of imperialist conflicts

The changing balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat following the reflux of the revolutionary wave after 1920 also became tangible in the imperialist relations between states. As soon as the immediate threat from the working class receded, and when the revolutionary flame was extinguished in the Russian working class, imperialist tensions were on the rise again.

Germany tried everything to reverse the weakening of its position by its defeat in World War I and the Versailles Treaty. In the West, its strategy was to try to set France and Britain against each other, since no open military confrontation was possible with either. At the same time Germany tried to renew its traditionally close relations with its neighbour to the East.  We have already described in previous articles how the German bourgeoisie, in the context of the imperialist tensions in the West, proceeded determinedly to supply arms to the new Russian state, and signed secret agreements for the delivery of weapons and military co-operation. One of Germany’s principle military leaders recognised that: “The relationship between Germany and Russia is the first and hitherto almost the only accession of strength we have achieved since the conclusion of peace. That the beginning of this link lies in the economic field, is in the nature of the situation as a whole; but its strength lies in the fact that this economic rapprochement prepares the possibility of a political and therefore also a military link” (Carr, p. 434, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol.3).

At the same time the Russian state, with the support of the Comintern declared through Bukharin : “I assert that we are already great enough to conclude an alliance with a foreign bourgeoisie in order, by means of this bourgeois state, to be able to overthrow another bourgeoisie... Supposing that a military alliance has been concluded with a bourgeois state, the duty of the comrades in each country consists in contributing to the victory of the two allies” (Carr, p. 442). “We tell the gentlemen of the German bourgeoisie... if you really want to struggle against the occupation, if you want to struggle against the insults of the Entente, nothing is left for you but to seek a rapprochement with the first proletarian country, which cannot help supporting those countries which are now in servile dependence on international imperialism” (Zinoviev, 12th party congress, April 1923).

Nationalist propaganda spoke of Germany’s humiliation and subjection by foreign capital, especially by France. German military leaders as well as prominent representatives of the German bourgeoisie repeatedly made public declarations to the effect that the only possible salvation for the German nation from the subjugation of Versailles was a military alliance with Soviet Russia and a “revolutionary people’s war” against French imperialism 

This policy was received with great interest by the new strata of state-capitalist bureaucrats within the Russian state.

The remaining proletarian internationalists within the Comintern and the Russian Communist Party, who remained faithful to the aim of spreading world revolution, were themselves blinded by these seductive speeches. Whereas it was unthinkable for German capital to establish a real alliance with Russia against its imperialist rivals from the West, the Russian state leaders and the Comintern leadership let themselves be fooled and fell into the trap. They thus actively helped to push the working class into the same trap.

With the help of the entire capitalist class, the German bourgeoisie worked out a plot against the working class in Germany. On the one hand Germany wanted to escape from the pressure of the Versailles treaty, by delaying the payments of reparations to France, and threatening to stop them altogether, on the other it pushed the working class in Germany into the nationalist trap. However, the co-operation of the Russian state and the Comintern was vital to this plot.

The German bourgeoisie took the conscious decision to provoke French capitalism by refusing to pay war reparations. The latter reacted by occupying the Ruhr on 11th January, 1923.

At the same time German capital complemented its tactics by the decision to give a free rein to the inflationary tendencies which had sprung from the crisis. It used inflation as a means of lowering the cost of reparation and alleviating the weight of war credits. At the same time it set about modernising its factories.

The bourgeoisie was also very well aware that rising inflation would push the working class into struggle. It hoped to divert the expected workers defensive struggles onto the nationalist terrain. The bait held out to the working class was the occupation of the Ruhr by the French army, a price the Germany bourgeoisie was ready to pay. The key question was going to be the capacity of the working class and revolutionaries to spring the trap of the defence of national capital. Otherwise, the German bourgeoisie would be able to inflict a decisive defeat on the working class. The ruling class was ready to challenge the proletariat once again, because it felt that the international balance of forces was favourable, and that parts of the Russian state apparatus would be attracted by this orientation and that even the Comintern could be pulled into the trap.

The provocation of the Ruhr: what tasks for the working class?

By occupying the Ruhr, the French bourgeoisie hoped to become Europe’s biggest steel and coal producer, since the Ruhr provided 72 % of Germany’s coal supply, 50% of its iron and steel, and 25% of total industrial production. It was obvious that as soon as Germany were deprived of these resources, the abrupt drop in production would lead to a shortage of goods and to profound economic convulsions. The German bourgeoisie was ready to make such a sacrifice because the stakes were so high. German Capital took the risk of pushing the workers to strike, in order to draw them onto a nationalist terrain. The employers and the government decided to lock-out the workers. Any worker who was willing to work under the rule of the French occupying forces was threatened with the sack. SPD President Ebert announced heavy penalties on March 4th for any worker who continued to work in the mines or on the railways. On January 24th the employers’ association and the ADGB (German Trades Union Federation) launched an appeal for funds for the fight against France. The consequence was that more and more companies threw their workers on the street. All this against the background of exploding inflation: whereas the US dollar was still worth 1,000 Marks in April 1922, by November it had already fallen to 6,000 Marks, and it fell again to 20,000 Marks in February 1923 after the occupation of the Ruhr. By June 1923 it had fallen to 100,000 to the dollar, at the end of July it reached 1 million, at the end of August it had dropped again to 10 million, by mid-September 100 million. In November 1923, the Mark reached its nadir of 4.2 billion to the dollar.

This did not hit the Ruhr coal bosses too hard, since they had introduced a system of payment in gold or barter. However, for the working class it meant starvation. Very often the unemployed and those still in work demonstrated together to put forward their demands. Time and time again there were violent confrontations with French occupying forces.

The Comintern pushes the workers into the trap of nationalism

Falling into the trap of the German capitalists, who called for a common struggle by “the oppressed German nation” and Russia, the Comintern started to spread the idea that Germany needed a strong government, which would be able to confront the French occupying forces without the class struggle stabbing the government in its back. The Comintern was willing to sacrifice proletarian internationalism in the interests of the Russian state[2].

This policy was inaugurated under the banner of “national-Bolshevism”. Whereas in autumn 1920 the Comintern had acted with great determination and energy against the “national-Bolshevik tendencies” and insisted in its discussions with the delegates of the KAPD on the expulsion of the “national-Bolsheviks” Laufenberg and Wolffheim from the KAPD, the Comintern itself now began to propagate this line.

This turn-about of the Comintern cannot just be explained by the confusions and the opportunism of the ECCI; we have to look at the “invisible hand” of those forces who were not interested in revolution but in the strengthening of the Russian state. National-Bolshevism could only take hold when the Comintern had already started to degenerate and was already in the grip of the Russian state and being absorbed by it. Radek argued thus: “The Soviet Union is in danger. All tasks must be subordinated to the defence of the Soviet Union, because with this analysis a revolutionary movement in Germany would be dangerous and would undermine the interests of the Soviet Union...

The German communist movement is not capable of overthrowing German capitalism, it must serve as a pillar of Russian foreign policy. The countries of Europe, organised under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, using the military capacities of the German army against the West, this is the perspective, this is the only way out...”.

In January 1923 Rote Fahne wrote: “The German nation will be pushed into the abyss, if it is not saved by the German proletariat. The nation will be sold and destroyed by the German capitalists, unless the working class prevents them. Either the German nation will starve to death and fall apart because of the dictatorship of the French bayonet or it will be saved through the dictatorship of the proletariat”. “However, today national-Bolshevism means that everything is being permeated by the feeling that we can only be saved by the communists. Today, we are the only way out. The strong emphasis on the nation in Germany is a revolutionary act, in the same way as the emphasis on the nation in the colonies” (Rote Fahne, 21.06.23). Rakosi, a delegate of the Comintern, praised this orientation of the KPD: “a communist party has to tackle the national question. The German party has taken up this question in a very skilful, adequate manner. It is in the process of tearing this nationalistic weapon out of the hands of the fascists” (Schüddelkopf, p. 177).

In a manifesto to Soviet Russia, the KPD wrote: “The party conference expresses its gratitude to Soviet Russia for the great lesson, which has been written down in history with streams of blood and incredible sacrifices, that the concern of the nation still remains the concern of the proletariat”.

On April 18th, Thalheimer even declared: “it remains the privileged task of the proletarian revolution not only to liberate Germany, but to complete Bismarck’s work of integrating Austria into the Reich. The proletariat has to accomplish this task in an alliance with the petty-bourgeoisie” (Die Internationale, V 8, 18.4.23, p. 242-247).

What a perversion of the basic communist position on the nation! What a rejection of the internationalist position of revolutionaries during World War I, with at their head Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg who fought for the destruction of all nations!

In the Rhineland and in Bavaria the separatist movement had been on the rise after the war. These forces felt their chances increasing and hoped, with French support, to split off the Rhineland from the Ruhr. With pride the KPD press reported how it helped the Cuno government in its fight against the separatists. “Small armed detachments were mobilised from the Ruhr to move to Düsseldorf. They had the task of preventing the proclamation of a ‘Republic of the Rhineland’. When at 14:00 the separatists gathered on the banks of the river Rhine and were about to start their meeting, some combat groups, armed with hand-grenades, attacked the separatists. It needed only a few hand-grenades and the whole bunch of separatists, gripped by panic, ran away and abandoned the banks of the river Rhine. We had prevented them from gathering and from proclaiming a ‘Republic of the Rhineland’” (W. Ulbricht, Memoirs, p. 132, Volume I).

“We are not revealing any secrets if we say openly that the communist combat detachments, which dispersed the separatists in the Palatinate, in the Eifel and at Düsseldorf with guns and grenades, were under the military command of nationalistic minded Prussian officers” (Vorwärts).

This nationalist orientation, however, was not the work of the KPD alone; it was also the product of the policy of the Russian state and of certain parts of the Comintern.

After co-ordination with the ECCI the KPD leadership pushed for the struggle to be directed in the first instance against France and only afterwards against the German bourgeoisie. This is why the KPD leadership claimed: “The defeat of French imperialism in the world war was not a communist goal, the defeat of French imperialism in the Ruhr, however, is a communist goal”.

The KPD and the hope of a “nationalist alliance”

The KPD leadership stood against strikes. Already at the Leipzig party conference at the end of January, shortly after the occupation of the Ruhr, the leadership - with the support of the Comintern - prevented a discussion on this national-Bolshevik orientation, out of fear it would be rejected by the majority of the party.

When the sections of the KPD in the Ruhr held a regional party conference in March 1923, the party leadership spoke against the orientations of the KPD’s local groups in the Ruhr. The Zentrale claimed: “only a strong government can save Germany, a government, which is carried by the living forces of the nation” (Rote Fahne, 1.4.23).

In the Ruhr area itself the majority of the KPD conference put forward the following orientation:

- downing tools in all zones occupied by the military forces,

- workers taking over factories by making use of the German-French conflict and if possible local seizure of power.

Within the KPD two different orientations clashed: a proletarian, internationalist orientation, which stood for a confrontation with the Cuno government and a radicalisation of the movement in the Ruhr[3].

This was contrary to the position of the KPD Zentrale, which with the help of the Comintern energetically opposed the strikes and tried to push the working class onto a nationalist terrain.

The ruling class could even be so sure of this policy of sabotaging the workers’ struggles, that the Secretary of State, Malzahn, after a discussion with Radek on May 26th reported to Ebert and the most important ministers in a top secret memorandum: “He [Radek] could assure me, that Russian sympathies were already out of their own interests siding with the German government (...) He energetically spoke to and urged the communist party leaders during the past week to show the stupidity and the mistaken approach of their previous attitude vis-à-vis the German government. We can be sure that in a few days the communist coup attempts in the Ruhr will recede” (Foreign Office Archives, Bonn, Deutschland 637.442ff, in Dupeux, p. 181).

After the offer of a united front with the counter-revolutionary SPD and the parties of the 2nd International, now the policy of keeping quiet vis-à-vis the capitalist German government.

The extent to which the KPD leadership were clear about the fact that they could not “stab the government in the back”, can be seen through a statement in Rote Fahne on 27.5.1923: “The government knows that the KPD has remained silent about many questions because of  the danger from French capitalism, since otherwise this would have made the government lose face in any international negotiation. As long as the social-democratic workers do not fight together with us for a workers’ government the Communist Party has no interest in the replacement of this headless government by another bourgeois government... Either the government drops the assassination campaign against the CP or we will break our silence” (27.5.1923, Rote Fahne, Dupeux p. 1818).

Appeals to nationalism aim to seduce the patriotic petty bourgeoisie

Since inflation also expropriated the petty bourgeoisie and the middle classes, the KPD believed it could offer these strata an alliance. Instead of insisting on the autonomous struggle of the working class, which alone is able to pull other non-exploiting strata into its orbit inasmuch as its struggles increase in strength and impact, they sent a message of flattery and seduction to these strata, saying that they could enter into an alliance with the working class: “we have to address ourselves to the suffering, confused, outraged masses of the proletarian petty bourgeoisie and tell them, that they can only defend themselves and the future of Germany if they unite with the proletariat in their fight against the bourgeoisie” (Carr, The Interregnum, p. 176).

“It is the task of the KPD, to open the eyes of the broader petty bourgeois and intellectual nationalist masses to the fact that only the working class — once it has achieved a victory — will be able to defend German soil, the treasures of German culture and the future of the German nation” (Rote Fahne, 13.5.1923).

This policy of unity on a nationalist basis was not the work of the KPD alone;  it was also supported by the Comintern. Radek’s speech to the ECCI on June 20th 1923 is a testimony of this. In this speech he praised the member of right wing separatist circles, Schlageter, who had been arrested and shot by the French Army on May 26th during the sabotage of railway bridges near Düsseldorf. This was the same Radek, who, within the ranks of the Comintern in 1919 and 1920, had urged the KPD and the KAPD to expel the Hamburg national-Bolsheviks. “But we believe that the great majority of the masses who are swayed by nationalist feeling, are not part of the camp of capital but of the camp of labour. We want to and we shall look for and find a way to reach these masses. We shall do all we can so that men like Schlageter who are ready to sacrifice their life for a general cause, are not people fighting for a void, but that they become fighters for a better future of all humanity” (Radek, 20.6.23, quoted in Broué, p. 693). “It is obvious that the German working class will never conquer power if it is not able to inspire trust in the broad masses of the German people, that its best forces are engaged in the fight to get rid of the yoke of foreign capital” (Dupeux, p. 190).

This idea, that the “proletariat could act as the vanguard, the nationalist petty bourgeoisie as the rearguard”, in short that the whole people could stand up for revolution, that the nationalists might follow the working class, was supported unconditionally by the 5th Congress of the Comintern in 1924.

While the opposition stood up against this policy of “remaining quiet”, which was practised by the KPD leadership until September 1923, this did not protect it from driving the working class into nationalist dead-ends. Thus R. Fischer propagated anti-Semitic slogans “Whoever speaks up against Jewish capital... is already a class fighter, even if he doesn’t know this...  Fight against the Jewish capitalists, hang them from lamp posts, crush them...  French imperialism now is the biggest danger in the world, France is the country of reaction... Only by establishing an alliance with Russia... can the German people chase French capitalism out of the Ruhr” (Flechtheim, p. 178).

The working class defends itself on its class terrain

While the bourgeoisie was aiming at pulling the working class in Germany onto a nationalist terrain, preventing it from defending its class interests, with the ECCI and the KPD leadership pushing the class in the same direction, the majority of workers in the cities of the Ruhr and elsewhere did not let themselves get pulled onto this terrain. Hardly a factory was unaffected by strikes.

Time and time again there were small waves of strikes and protests. Thus on March 9th 40,000 miners downed tools in Upper Silesia; on March 17th in Dortmund, the miners stopped work. In addition, the unemployed joined workers’ demonstrations, for example on April 2nd at Mühlheim/Ruhr.

Whereas parts of the KPD leadership were seduced and deceived by nationalist flattery, as soon as the strikes erupted in the Ruhr it became clear to the German bourgeoisie that they needed the help of other capitalist states against the working class. At Mühlheim/Ruhr workers occupied several factories. Almost the entire town was hit by a strike wave, the Town Hall was occupied. Since regular German troops of the Reichswehr could not intervene because of the Ruhr’s occupation by the French, the police was called in, but their troops proved insufficient to suppress the workers. The mayor of Düsseldorf appealed for support to the commander-in-chief of the French occupying forces: “I have to remind you that the German supreme command helped the French troops at the time of the Paris Commune at any moment, in order to smash the rising together. I request you to offer us the same support, if you want to avoid a similar situation arising” (Dr. Lutherbeck, letter to General de Goutte, in French in Broué p. 674).

On several occasions the Reichswehr was sent to smash workers’ struggles in different cities - as in Gelsenkirchen and Bochum. While the German bourgeoisie displayed an open animosity towards France, it never hesitated to send its army against the workers who resisted nationalism.

The rapid acceleration of the economic crisis, above all of inflation, gave added impetus to the workers’ combativity. Wages lost their value by the hour. Purchasing power fell to a quarter of its pre-war level. More and more workers lost their jobs. In the summer some 60% of the workforce was jobless. Even civil servants only received ridiculous wages. Companies wanted to print their own currency, local authorities introduced “emergency money” to pay their civil servants. Since the sale of their crops no longer yielded any profit, the farmers hoarded their produce. Food supply was on the point of breaking down completely. Workers and the unemployed demonstrated more and more together. Everywhere there were reports of hunger revolts and shops being looted. The police were often only impotent spectators of these revolts.

At the end of May some 400,000 workers went on strike in the Ruhr ; in June 100,000 miners and steelworkers struck in Silesia, along with 150,000 Berlin metal workers . In July another wave of strikes broke out which led to a series of violent clashes.

A common characteristic of these strikes was typical of all workers’ struggles in the period of capitalist decadence: large numbers of workers left the unions. In the factories workers met in general assemblies, there were more and more meetings in the streets. The workers spent more time on the street, in discussions and demonstrations, than they did at work. The unions opposed this movement as best they could. The workers tried spontaneously to unite in mass meetings and factory committees on the shop floor. The trend was towards unification. The movement gained further momentum. Its driving force was not to regroup around nationalist slogans but to look for a class orientation.

Where were the revolutionary forces? The KAPD, weakened by the fiasco of the split between the Essen and Berlin factions and again reduced in number and organisationally weakened by the foundation of the KAI (Communist Workers’ International) was not able to make an organised intervention in this situation, although it expressed loudly enough its rejection of the national-Bolshevik trap.

The KPD, which was attracting more and more members, nonetheless put a rope around its own neck. The KPD was unable to offer a clear orientation for the class. What did the KPD propose?[4] The KPD refused to work towards the overthrow of the government. In fact, the KPD and the Comintern increased confusion and contributed to the weakening of the working class.

On the one hand the KPD competed on a nationalist level with the fascists. On August 10th for example (on the same day that a wave of strikes broke out in Berlin), KPD leaders like Thalheimer in Stuttgart were still holding nationalist rallies together with the national-socialists. At the same time the KPD called for a struggle against the fascist danger. Whereas the Berlin government forbade any demonstration, and the KPD leadership wanted to submit to this prohibition, the left wing of the party wanted at all costs to hold a demonstration on June 29th, whose slogan was to be a united front mobilisation against the fascists!

But the KPD was unable to take a clear decision, so that on the day of the demonstration some 250,000 workers were in the street in front of the party offices, waiting in vain for instructions.

In August 1923, the KPD against an intensification of the struggle

In August a new wave of strikes began. Almost every day workers demonstrated — both employed and unemployed. In the factories there was turmoil, and factory committees were formed. The influence of the KPD was at its height.

On August 10th the printers at the national mint went on strike. In an economy where every hour the state had to print more money, the strike of the bank-note printers had a particularly paralysing effect. Within a few hours the reserves of paper money were used up. Wages could no longer be paid. The printers’ strike, which started in Berlin, spread like a bush-fire to other parts of the class. From Berlin it spread to Northern Germany, the Rhineland, Wurttemberg, Upper Silesia, Thuringia and as far as Eastern Prussia. More and more parts of the class joined the movement. On August 11th and 12th there were violent confrontations in several cities; more than 35 workers were shot by the police. Like all the movements since 1914 they were characterised by the fact that they took place outside of and against the will of the unions. The Trade Unions understood how serious the situation was. Some of them at first pretended to support the strikes, in order to be able to sabotage them better from within. Other unions opposed the strikes openly. The KPD itself took up position, once the strikes had started to spread: “For an intensification of the economic strikes, no to raising political demands”. And as soon as the union leadership announced that it would not support the strike, the KPD leadership called upon the workers to bring it to an end. The KPD leadership was not willing to support any strike outside of the union framework.

Whereas Brandler insisted that the strike should be stopped, since the ADGB was opposed to it, local party sections wanted to spread the numerous local strikes and to weld them into one big movement against the Cuno government. The rest of the working class “was called upon to unite the powerful movement of the Berlin proletariat and to spread the general strike across Germany”.

The party had arrived at an impasse. The party leadership spoke against a continuation and extension of the strikes, since this would also imply the rejection of the nationalist terrain onto which capital wanted to pull the workers. At the same time the much acclaimed united front with the SPD and unions would be put into danger. Even on August 18th Rote Fahne still wrote: “If they want to, we shall even combine our forces with the people who murdered Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg”. (Rote Fahne, 18.08.23).

The orientation of a United Front, the obligation to work in the unions under the pretext of winning over more workers from within, meant in reality to submit to the union structure, contribute to preventing the workers from taking the struggle into their own hands. All this meant a terrible conflict for the KPD: either it recognised the dynamic of the class struggle, rejected its nationalist orientation and fought against union sabotage, or else it turned against the strikes, to be absorbed by the union apparatus, and in the final analysis to become a protective wall for the state and act as an obstacle to the working class. For the first time in its history the KPD had come into open conflict with the fighting working class because of its union orientation, and because the dynamic of the workers’ struggles was forcing the workers to break down the union framework. Confrontation with the unions is inevitable. Instead of assuming it, the KPD leadership was discussing how it could win over the Trades Union leadership to support for the strike.

Under the pressure of this wave of strikes the Cuno government resigned on August 12th. On August 13th the KPD leadership issued an appeal to end the strike. This appeal by the leadership of the KPD encountered resistance from the radicalised shop stewards in the factories in Berlin. Local party sections were also opposed, since they wanted the movement to continue. The local party sections were waiting for instructions from the Zentrale. They wanted to avoid isolated clashes with the army, until the weapons which the Zentrale claimed to possess could be distributed.

The KPD had become victim of its own national-Bolshevik policy and its United Front tactics; the working class was plunged in confusion and perplexity as to what to do. The bourgeoisie, by contrast, was ready to take the initiative.

As in previous situations of rising combativity the SPD was to play a decisive role of breaking the movement. The Cuno government, close to the Centre Party, was replaced by a “grand coalition”, headed by the Centre’s leader Gustav Stresemann, supported by 4 SPD ministers (Hilferding became Minister of Finance). When the SPD joined the government, this was not an expression of capital’s paralysed helplessness and inability to act, as the KPD believed, it was a conscious tactical step by the bourgeoisie to contain the movement. The SPD was in no way on the point of breaking up, as the KPD leadership later claimed, nor was the bourgeoisie split or unable to nominate a new government.

On August 14th, Stresemann announced the introduction of a new currency and stable wages. The bourgeoisie had managed to keep the situation under control and decided consciously to put an end to the spiral of inflation — in the same way as one year before it had consciously decided to “kick-start” inflation.

At the same time the government called upon the workers in the Ruhr to end their “passive resistance” against France and after flirting with Russia it declared the “war against Bolshevism” to be one of the major goals of German policy.

By promising to curb inflation the bourgeoisie managed to bring about a change in the balance of forces — because even if after the end of the movement in Berlin a series of strikes erupted in the Rhineland and in the Ruhr on August 20th, the movement as a whole had come to an end.

Although it could not be pulled onto the nationalist terrain, the working class was unable to push forward its movement — one of the reasons being that the KPD itself was a victim of its own national-Bolshevik policy. Thus the bourgeoisie had been able to take another step towards its goal of inflicting a decisive defeat on the working class.

The working class for its part came out of these struggles disoriented, with a feeling of helplessness in the face of the crisis.

The left fractions of the Comintern, who felt even more isolated after the cancellation of the proposed alliance between “oppressed Germany” and Russia, and the fiasco of national-Bolshevism, were now led to try to turn the tide again by launching a desperate attempt at insurrection. We will deal with this in the next part of this article.                   

Dv.

[4] Many workers, with little theoretical and political training, were attracted to the party. The party opened its doors to a mass membership. Everyone was welcome. In April 1922 the KPD announced: “in the present political situation the KPD has the duty of integrating any worker in our ranks, who wants to join us”. In the summer of 1923 many provincial sections fell into the hands of young, radical elements. Thus more and more impatient, inexperienced elements joined the party. Within 6 months party membership rose from 225,000 to 295,000; between September 1922 and September 1923 the number of local party groups increased from 2,481 to 3,321. At the time, the KPD had its own press service and published 34 daily papers and a number of reviews. The party was also joined by many elements infiltrated into the membership with a view to sabotage from the inside. 

On the ICC’s appeal over the war in Serbia: The military offensive of the bourgeoisie demands a united response from revolutionaries

The war in Serbia has unmasked the false revolutionaries and has shown the fundamental unity of the truly revolutionary groups

Wars, like revolutions, are historic events of capital importance in demarcating the bourgeois camp from the revolutionary camp; they provide proof of the class nature of political forces. This was the case with the First World War which provoked the betrayal of Social-Democracy at the international level, the death of the Second International and the emergence of a minority which formed the new Communist Parties and the Third International. It was also the case with the Second World War, which confirmed the integration of the various Stalinist parties into the defence of the bourgeois state through their support for the “democratic” imperialist front against fascism. The same applies to the different Trotskyist formations that called on the working class to defend the Russian “workers’ state” against the aggression of the Nazi-fascist dictatorships. The Second World War also saw the courageous resistance of a tiny minority of revolutionaries who were able to stay on course during this terrible historical ordeal. Today we are not yet facing a third world war; the conditions for this have not ripened and we don’t think that they will do so in the near future. Nevertheless, the military operation in Serbia is certainly the most serious event since the end of World War II and it has resulted in a polarisation of political forces around the two main classes in society: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

While the divers leftist formations have confirmed their bourgeois function through their support either for the NATO attack or their defence of Serbia [1] [194], we can by contrast say with great satisfaction that the main revolutionary political groups have all taken up a coherent internationalist position by defending the following fundamental points:

1. The present war is an imperialist war (like all wars today) and the working class has nothing to gain from supporting either front:

 “Whichever camp you consider - American or Serb, Italian or French, British or Russian - these are still inter-imperialist conflicts born out of the contradictions of the bourgeois economy... Not a man, not a soldier for the imperialist war; open struggle against our own national bourgeoisie, Serb or Kosovar, Italian or American, German or French” (Il Programma Comunista no. 4, 30th April 1999).

“For genuine communists the choice therefore is not between imperialisms. We don’t distinguish between the small and larger imperialisms. The politics of choosing the supposed lesser of two evils is opportunist and dishonest. Any support for this or that imperialist front is support for capitalism. It is a betrayal of the international working class and the cause of socialism.

The only way to escape from the logic of war is through the revival of class struggle, in Kosovo as well as the rest of Europe, in the USA as well as Russia” (from the IBRP leaflet, “Capitalism means imperialism, imperialism means war”, 25th March 1999).

2. The war in Serbia, far from being motivated by humanitarian concerns about this or that population, is the logical consequence of the inter-imperialist conflict at a global level:

“The warnings and the pressure on Turkey, and even the war against Iraq, have not stopped the repression and massacre of the Kurds, just as the warnings to Israel have not stopped the repression and massacre of the Palestinians. UN missions, so-called peacemaking forces, embargoes, none prevented yesterday’s wars in ex-Yugoslavia between Serbia and Croatia, between Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, of each against all. And the military intervention of the western bourgeoisies against Serbia organised by NATO will not prevent “ethnic cleansing” against the Kosovars any more than they have prevented the bombing of Belgrade and Pristina.

“The humanitarian missions of the UN... have in fact prepared the ground for even more horrible repressions and massacres. This is the demonstration that humanitarian, pacifist views and actions are just illusory and impotent” (“The real opposition to military intervention and to war is the class struggle of the proletariat, its classist and internationalist reorganisation against all forms of bourgeois oppression and nationalism” - supplement to Il Comunista no. 64-65, April 1999).  

3. This war, behind the facade of unity, is really the outcome of the confrontation between the imperialist powers engaged in NATO, particularly between the US on the one hand and Germany and France on the other:

“The firm will of the US to create a ‘casus belli’ through direct intervention against Serbia was apparent during the Rambouillet negotiations: these conferences, far from seeking a peaceful solution to the inextricable question of Kosovo, had the main aim of placing the responsibility for the war onto the Yugoslav government... The real problem for the US was in fact its own allies and Rambouillet served to put pressure on them and to oblige them to approve NATO intervention” (Il Partito Comunista no. 226, April 1999) 

“The United States is trying to prevent the formation of a new imperialist bloc which might be able to compete with them for primacy in the world. This is why they have expanded NATO throughout the entire Balkan region and in Eastern Europe... they aim... perhaps most importantly, to deliver a heavy blow to European hopes of playing an independent imperialist role.

“The Europeans, in their turn, are putting a brave face on things by supporting NATO military action only to avoid the risk of being totally excluded from an area of such vital importance” (IBRP leaflet, 25.3.99).

4. Pacifism, as always, is again showing that it is an instrument not of the working class and of the popular masses against war, but the means to hypnotise them used by the parties of the left; this also confirms the role of the latter as recruiting sergeants for any future carnage:

“Which means that it is necessary to abandon all the pacifist and reformist illusions which can only disarm us, and turn to the objectives and methods of the class struggle which have always belonged to the proletarian tradition” (Il Programma Comunista no. 4, 30th April 1999)

“This motley front addresses the same pacifist appeal to all those which capital has used to make war: the Constitution, The United Nations, the governments... Finally, in the most ridiculous way, they ask the same government which is waging war to be nice and work for peace” (Battaglia Comunista no. 5, May 1999).     

Our appeal to the proletarian political milieu

As we can see, there is here a complete convergence on all the fundamental questions about the conflict in the Balkans between the different organisations who are part of the proletarian political milieu. However, there naturally exist divergences that relate to different analyses of imperialism in the present period, and of the balance of forces between the classes. But without underestimating these divergences, we consider that the aspects which unite are far more important and significant than what distinguishes them, considering the seriousness of what is at stake today. It was on this basis that on 29th March 1999, we sent an appeal to all these groups [2] [195], to take up a common initiative against the war.

“Comrades,

(...) Today the Left Communist groups are the only ones to defend these traditional positions of the workers’ movement. Only the groups that attach themselves to this current, the only one that didn’t betray in the Second World War, can give a class response to the questions that the working class is asking. Their duty is to intervene throughout the class to denounce the flood of lies spread by all parts of the bourgeoisie and to defend the internationalist principles passed down to us by the Communist International and its Left Fractions. For its part, the ICC has already published a leaflet, a copy of which is enclosed. But we think that the stakes are so grave that all the groups should publish and distribute a joint position, affirming proletarian class positions against the war and the barbarity of capitalism. This is the first time for more than half a century that the main imperialist gangsters have conducted a war in Europe itself, the main theatre of the two world wars as well as greatest concentration of workers in the world. This is the gravity of the present situation. It gives communists the responsibility of uniting their forces to get internationalist principles heard as widely as possible, to give the declaration of these principles the greatest possible impact that our weak forces will allow.

“It is clear to the ICC that taking such a position would mean changes to some of the things contained in the leaflet we have published since we well understand that there are disagreements inside the Communist Left over some of our analyses of the world situation. However, we are firmly convinced that all the groups of the communist left can produce a document reaffirming the basic principles of internationalism without glossing over these principles. Therefore we propose that our organisations get together as soon as possible to develop a joint appeal against the imperialist war, against all the lies of the bourgeoisie, against all the pacifist campaigns and for the proletarian perspective of overthrowing capitalism.

“With this proposal, we consider ourselves faithful to the approach of the internationalists, particularly Lenin, at the time of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in 1915 and 1916. This approach made it possible to overcome or set to one side the differences that existed between different parts of the European workers’ movement, and to put forward the proletarian perspective against imperialist war. Clearly, we are open to any other initiative that your organisation may take, to all proposals putting forward the proletarian point of view against the bourgeoisie’s butchery and lies...

Communist greetings. The ICC.”

The responses to our appeal

Unfortunately the response to this appeal was not equal to the gravity of the situation and our expectations. Two of the Bordigist formations, Il Comunista-le Proletaire and Il Partito Comunista have not yet replied to our appeal, despite our sending a second letter on 14th April to try to get an answer. The third Bordigist group, Programma Comunista, promised a (negative) written response but we have received nothing. Finally the IBRP did us the honour of replying to our invitation with a fraternal refusal. It is obvious that we can only regret the failure of this appeal, which confirms once again, if confirmation were necessary, the difficulties facing the proletarian political milieu today, which is still strongly impregnated with the sectarianism of the counter-revolutionary climate in which the milieu was reconstituted. But at this moment, with regard to the problem of war, our main concern is not to further fuel the frictions in the proletarian milieu by developing a polemic on the irresponsibility of a negative response, or the absence of any response, to our appeal, but to take forward the arguments in favour of the necessity, the interest for the working class, of a common initiative by all the internationalist groups. To do this we will analyse the arguments put forward by the IBRP (the only ones to have replied to us!), either by letter or in the direct meetings we have had with this group, since many of the IBRP’s arguments are probably the same as those the Bordigist groups would have put forward if they had but deigned to reply. In this way we hope to be able to advance our proposal for a common initiative faced with all the comrades and political formations of the working class, and so obtain a better result in the future.

Is it true that a united response of the political milieu is necessarily based on the “very low political profile”?

The first argument used by the IBRP is that the positions of the various groups are too different, so that any joint position would be based on a “low political profile” and would therefore not be effective in “making heard the proletarian point of view in front of the barbarity and lies of the bourgeoisie”

And it adds to this assertion:

“It’s true that ‘today, the groups of the communist left are the only ones to defend these classic positions of the workers’ movement’, but it’s also true that each current does so in a way that seems radically different today. We won’t indicate here the specific differences that any attentive observer can easily point out, we will just underline that these differences show a strong decantation between the forces that generally make reference to the Communist Left”.

We have just shown exactly the opposite. The quotes at the beginning of this article could easily be interchanged among the different groups without producing any political deformation; and taken as a whole they form the basic political elements of a common statement that is so needed by the working class at this time.

Why then does the IBRP talk about “radical differences” that would make any effort towards a joint initiative ineffectual? Because the IBRP puts at the same level basic positions (the defeatist attitude towards the war) and the political analyses of the present phase (the causes of the war in Serbia, the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat). We certainly don’t seek to underestimate the importance of the current differences in the proletarian political milieu over these analyses. We will come back to these issues in another article and in particular will put forward our criticisms of what we consider to be an economistic position developed in particular by Battaglia Comunista and Il Partito. Today we consider that the most important problem is the underestimation by the IBRP, and with it all the other groups, of the echo that such a joint initiative could have.

It is not for nothing that, to reject this possibility, the IBRP is led to deal with the significance of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and that it enormously underestimates them.

The significance of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences

“For this reason the reference to Zimmerwald and Kienthal made in your letter/appeal has no relevance whatsoever to the present historic situation. Zimmerwald and Kienthal were not initiatives of the Bolsheviks or Lenin, but of Italian and Swiss socialists who regrouped within them a majority of the ‘radical’ tendencies within the parties of the Second International. Lenin and the Bolsheviks participated in them to push for a break within the Second International but (a) the rupture certainly didn’t take place there, in fact Lenin remained in an absolute minority in both conferences; and (b) it certainly wasn’t the Zimmerwald manifesto that ‘clearly affirmed the proletarian perspective in face of imperialist war’, but rather the motion of Lenin that was rejected by the conference. So to present the participation of the Bolsheviks at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences as a model to refer to in the present situation is senseless” (IBRP response to our appeal).

In this passage, the IBRP begins by recalling obvious things such as the fact that the conferences were initiated by Italian and Swiss socialists and not the Bolsheviks, that Lenin participated with the intention of pushing for a break with the Second International and that consequently Lenin remained in an absolute minority in both conferences. It ends up casting an anathema on those who present these conferences “as a model to follow in the present situation”.

The IBRP - obviously through not reading our letter with sufficient attention - does not understand that what we said was that “the approach of the internationalists, particularly Lenin, at the time of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in 1915 and 1916 [which was able] to put forward the proletarian perspective against imperialist war”. The problem is that the IBRP seems to be unaware of the history of our class. While it is true that the Bolsheviks, who were on the left of the workers’ movement at that time, always tried to push the results of these conferences as far as possible, they never imagined staying outside them because they understood the necessity of gathering forces and coming together at a particularly vital moment of political decantation. Lenin himself carried out a very important role in animating what he called the “Zimmerwald left”, which was the crucible for the political forces that were to construct the Third International. And as for the idea that “Zimmerwald and Kienthal were not Bolshevik initiatives”, here is what the revolutionary left at Zimmerwald thought:

“The Manifesto accepted by the conference does not completely satisfy us. In particular there is nothing in it about open opportunism or about the opportunism which hides behind radical phrases - about the opportunism which not only bears the main responsibility for the collapse of the International but also wants to perpetuate it. The Manifesto does not clearly specify the means to oppose the war...

We accept the Manifesto because we see it as a call to struggle and because, in this struggle, we want to march side by side with other groups of the International...”
(Declaration of the Zimmerwald left at the Zimmerwald conference, signed by N Lenin, G Zinoviev, Radek, Neuman, Hoglund and Winter).

And this is what Zinoviev said after the Kienthal conference: “We Zimmerwaldians have the advantage of already existing at the international level, while the social patriots have not yet been able to do this. We must therefore make the best of this advantage to organise the struggle against social patriotism...

At root the resolution represents a step forward. Those who are comparing this resolution with the draft of the Zimmerwald left in September 1915, and with the writings of the German, Dutch, Polish and Russian left, must admit that our ideas have gone in the same direction as the principles accepted by the conference...

“When we look at it clearly, we can see that the second Zimmerwald conference represents a step forward. Life is working for us... The second Zimmerwald conference will be historically and politically a new step towards the Third International”.

In conclusion, Zimmerwald and Kienthal were two crucial stages in the battle that revolutionaries waged for the rapprochement of proletarian forces, for their separation from the social patriots, and for the formation of the Third International.

The Bolsheviks and Lenin were able to understand that Zimmerwald and Kienthal represented an immense hope for the workers who had felt isolated and desperate at the fronts - it was a doorway out of hell. This is what the IBRP unfortunately does not understand. There are moments in history when an advance by revolutionaries is more important than a thousand of the clearest political programmes, to paraphrase Marx.          

What’s left?

The last thing that still needs to be understood as regards the IBRP specifically, is this: up till only a few months ago, and for several years now, this organisation has taken a series of common initiatives with us, the most significant of which were:

*          co-ordinated participation, and sometimes interventions in the name of the two organisations, in the second conference on the political heritage of Trotsky organised in Moscow in 1997 by the Trotskyist or semi-Trotskyist milieu there;

*          holding a joint public meeting in London on the Russian revolution, with a single introduction for the two groups, a single praesidium and a balance sheet article drawn up by the two groups and published in our respective English-language publications, World Revolution and Revolutionary Perspectives;

*          a coordinated intervention by the two organisations in a confrontation with parasitic groups in Britain.

But now, the IBRP rejects any initiative of this kind. When we posed this question to the comrades of Battaglia Comunista, they replied that it was possible to work together on the Russian revolution because “the lessons have been drawn a long time ago”; this was a matter of consolidated analyses, of things of the past, whereas war is a different problem, a contemporary problem which has implications for the perspectives. But leaving aside the fact that as well as the public meeting on the Russian revolution, there was also the intervention at the conferences in Russia which was in no way limited to the past but concerns the present and future of the workers’ movement, it’s curious that the discussion on October 1917 is presented as an element of political archaeology rather than as an instrument for sharpening the weapons of intervention in the working class today. In sum, once again, the IBRP’s arguments are not only invalid, but false.

In reality, looking at it a bit closer, this turnaround by the IBRP is not such a mystery since it corresponds to what the comrades wrote in their conclusions to the “Resolution on international work” from the 6th Congress of Battaglia Comunista, which was adopted by the whole Bureau and is referred to in the IBRP’s response to our appeal.

“‘It is by now an acquired principle of our political line of conduct that, except for very exceptional circumstances, any new international conferences and meetings undertaken by the Bureau and its organisatiions must be completely situated in the direction that leads to the consolidation, strengthening and extension of the revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat. The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party and the organisations belonging to it adhere to this principle’...And it’s clear from its context and from the entirety of the other documents of the Bureau that by ‘revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat’ we mean all of the forces that will go to form an International Party of the Proletariat. And - given the present political method of your organisation and of the others - we don’t think that you can be part of that”.

Behind this passage, leaving aside the first part which we can only agree with (“any new international conferences and meetings...must be completely situated in the direction that leads to the consolidation, strengthening and extension of the revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat” ...), there hides the idea that the IBRP is today the only credible organisation within the Communist Left (we wonder where such a proclamation, quite new in the workers’ movement, could come from - perhaps the IBRP, like the pope, has an arrangement with heaven). This is because the ICC is “idealist” and the Bordigists are “sclerotic”: “given the present political method of your organisation and of the others - we don’t think that you can be part of that”. So it’s better to follow one’s own path with one’s sister organisations, and not waste any time making conferences or joint initiatives which can only have sterile results.

This is the only clear position of the IBRP on all this; but it’s completely incoherent or at least based on specious arguments.

We will return to these issues. As far as we are concerned we are sure that the party will emerge from the confrontation and political decantation that has to take place among the existing revolutionary organisations.

Ezechiele, 31st May 1999

Once again, war has broken out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Once again, the bourgeoisie has pushed workers in uniform to die and to kill each other at altitudes and climatic conditions where men may die even without war. While soldiers kill each other, populations living near the borders have been uprooted and turned into refugees. Condemned to poverty and misery even without war, they suffer in open-air camps at temperatures below zero. All this matters little to the ruling gangs for whom war in Kashmir is yet another opportunity to pit their bloated imperialist ambitions against each other.

So far, this latest India-Pakistan war is limited only to Kashmir. But both India and Pakistan have mobilised their military machines all across their borders stretching over thousands of miles. Already, behind the armies, civilian populations from Ran of Kutch in Gujrat to Chamb in Jammu are being ‘relocated’ in preparation for war. Given the jingoism that the bourgeoisie has spread and the desperation of the ruling gangs in both  countries, an all-out war may ignite any time all across the borders between the two states.

This is not the first war between India and Pakistan. These two states were born on 15th August 1947, when departing British imperialism ripped apart the Indian sub-continent, unleashing mutual slaughter and genocide that took several million lives and left tens of millions of refugees. This led immediately to war in 1948. Despite poverty, despite hunger and starvation among their populations, they fought again in 1965 and 1971. In addition to these declared and open wars, the two countries have been in a condition of permanent war and carry out not so hidden wars in each others’ territory, fanning terrorism and separatism. In this sense, it may seem ‘business as usual’ between the two warring bourgeois gangs ruling over wretchedly poor populations.

But it is not. This war denotes a raising of the conflict and increases the potentialities of destruction to an unprecedentedly higher level.  For one thing, since May 1998, both India and Pakistan possess nuclear arsenals. A conflict between the two could escalate into a nuclear Armageddon, destroying both countries and killing tens of millions. An even bigger factor giving a new dimension to this war in the sub-continent is the condition of free for all in the world after the collapse of the superpower blocs. Even the  world’s sole remaining superpower, the USA, has limited leverage to contain it.

In this context tensions between the main states operating in the sub-continent have sharpened. Only in May-June 1998, India and China engaged in a verbal war with India dubbing China its enemy number one, while India and Pakistan indulged in competitive nuclear explosions. Since then the conflicts between them have only intensified.

The present war in Kashmir expresses the growing desperation of Pakistan against its rival India. It is also an expression of China giving a kick in the arse to the Indian state after last year’s verbal duel between the two. On the other hand the Indian bourgeoisie is also getting desperate. A ‘conviction’ about the ‘inevitability’ of a ‘final war’ between India and Pakistan, now or in the future, is being spread by the bourgeoisie.

The present war may not spread. The current interests of the major powers may compel the Indian and Pakistani states, tearing at each other’s throats at the moment, to back off. But it can only be a temporary reprieve. The desperation of both Indian and Pakistani ruling gangs, the bitterness of their conflict, the determination of the Chinese bourgeoisie to keep Indian ambitions in check and the growing free for all and rivalry among  the world’s main powers - all this is bound to explode in yet another war in this area. Sooner rather than later.  With far higher level of death and destruction.

The bourgeoisie is incapable of stopping war. War springs from the very nature of capitalism, a system of exploitation and merciless conflict and competition between capitalists and nations. ‘Peace talks’ between bourgeois gangs are merely a subterfuge to prepare other, more deadly wars. The present war between India and Pakistan, which followed the ‘outbreak’ of peace between the two only 3 months back, is itself a striking example of the hypocrisy of the peace propaganda of the bourgeoisie.

Only a class that has no stake in these wars, the working class, can finally put an end to war. It is the working class who pays for this war. The soldiers dying at the front are sons of workers, impoverished peasants and landless labourers, many of whom bought their jobs in the army by bribing middlemen. It is workers in the factories, mines and offices who will be made to accept austerity to finance war in the name of nationalism.

As in the war in Iraq, as in the war in Kosovo, as in all imperialist wars between capitalist states today, in the war in Kashmir too workers in India and Pakistan have no sides to choose. No nations to defend.

As internationalists, communists confirm that this war, like all wars today, is an imperialist war. They reject all nationalist hysteria spread by the bourgeoisie. Internationalists call on workers to refuse to be swept along by nationalist frenzy and to start defending their own class interests. To forge an ever-widening class unity, extending across national frontiers, against the bourgeoisie of their own nations and against world capital. Only by developing their class struggle, their class unity, and their class consciousness can workers open the way for the destruction of capitalism and an end to all wars.     

4 July, 1999, Communist Internationalist
Nucleus of the ICC in India

After having turned the globe into a gigantic slaughterhouse, inflicting two world wars, nuclear terror and countless local conflicts on an agonised humanity, decadent capitalism has entered into its phase of decomposition, a new historic phase first marked by the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. In this historic phase, the direct employment of military violence by the great powers, above all by the USA, becomes a permanent phenomenon. In this phase, the strait-jacket discipline of the imperialist blocs gives way to rampant indiscipline and chaos, a generalised state of every man for himself, an uncontrollable spread of military conflicts.

At the close of the century, the historic alternative formulated by marxism during World War 1 - socialism or barbarism - is not only confirmed, but has to be made more precise: it is socialism or the destruction of humanity.

(...) Although a third world war is for the moment not on the agenda, the historic crisis of capitalism has reached such an impasse that the system can move in no other direction than towards war. Not only because the acceleration of the crisis has begun to plunge entire regions such as south-east Asia, which until recently still preserved a semblance of prosperity, into a state of destitution and instability, but above all because the great powers themselves are more and more obliged to employ violence in defence of their interests.

The nature of the conflicts: a key question today

(...)Revolutionaries will in the end only succeed in convincing the proletariat of the complete validity of the marxist position if they are capable of defending a coherent theoretical and historical vision of the evolution of modern imperialism. In particular, the capacity of marxism to explain the real causes and stakes of modern wars is one of our most powerful weapons against bourgeois ideology.

In this sense, a clear understanding of the phenomenon of the decomposition of capitalism, and the whole historic period which is marked by it, constitutes a vital instrument in the defence of revolutionary positions and analyses with regard to imperialism and the nature of wars today.

Decomposition and the collapse of the Eastern bloc

(...)The key event determining the whole character of imperialist conflicts at the turn of the century is the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

(...) The whole world was surprised by the events of 1989. The ICC did not escape from this rule but it has to be said that it very quickly succeeded in grasping the full significance of these events (its ‘Theses on the crisis in the eastern countries’, which foresaw the collapse of the Russian bloc, were written in September 1989, i.e. two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall). The capacity of our organisation to react in this way was not the result of chance. It was the result:

-  of the framework of analysis on the characteristics of the Stalinist regimes, which the ICC had developed in the 1980s, following the events in Poland (see ‘Eastern Europe, the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat’, in International Review 34, third quarter of 1983);

-  of an understanding of the historic phenomenon of the decomposition of capitalism  which it had begun to elaborate in 1988 (see ‘The decomposition of capitalism” in International Review 57, second quarter of 1989);

It was the first time in history that an imperialist bloc had disappeared outside of a world war. Such a phenomenon created a profound disarray, including in the ranks of communist organisations, where for example there were attempts to understand the economic rationale behind it. For the ICC the unprecedented nature of such an event, which had no rationality but represented a catastrophe for the old Soviet empire (and for the USSR itself, which very soon exploded as well) was a striking confirmation of the analysis of the decomposition of capitalism (see “Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism”, in International Review 62, third quarter of 1990).

(...) Until 1989, this decomposition, which had brought the world’s second superpower to its knees, had hardly effected the central countries of the Western bloc. Even now, ten years later, the local manifestations of decomposition are almost derisory compared to the capitalist periphery. However, by exploding the existing world imperialist order, the phenomenon of decomposition became the epoch of decomposition, placing the leading countries at the very heart of its contradictions - above all the greatest power of all, the USA.

US imperialism at the heart of the contradictions of decomposition

The evolution of US imperialist policy since 1989 has thus become the most dramatic expression of the present dilemma of the bourgeoisie.

During the Gulf war of 1991, the US could appear as the only counter-pole to the development of each for themselves, in that it was still capable, with whip in hand, of coercing the other powers behind it. And indeed, through its overwhelming demonstration of military superiority in Iraq, the sole remaining superpower was able to strike a decisive blow against the tendency towards the formation of a German bloc which had been opened up by with the unification of that country.

But only six months after the Gulf War, the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia already confirmed that the “New World Order” announced by Bush would be dominated not by the Americans. but by a rampant “each for himself”.

(...) By February 1998 Washington, which in the Gulf War had used the United Nations and the Security Council in order to have its leadership sanctioned by the ‘international community’, had lost control of that instrument to such an extent that it could be humiliated by Iraq and its French and Russian allies.

Of course the US was able to overcome this obstacle by tossing the  UN into the dustbin of history....The logical conclusion was the “Lone Ranger” operation “Desert Fox”, which openly flouted the advice of all the other big and small powers concerned.

Washington does not need the permission of anybody in order to strike at any  time anywhere. But in pursuing such a policy, the USA, instead of limiting “each for himself” as it did momentarily during the Gulf War, has merely put itself at the head of this same tendency. Worse still: the political signals given by Washington during the course of the Desert Fox operation have inflicted great damage to its own cause. For the first time since the end of the Vietnam war, the US bourgeoisie, in marked contrast to its British partner of the day, has proven incapable of preserving a united front towards the outside during a war situation. Not only did the impeachment process against Clinton intensify during the action; leading American politicians, immersed in a real internal conflict over foreign policy, instead of repudiating the propaganda of America’s enemies that Clinton was taking action out of personal motives (“Monicagate”) politically repeated it.

(...) The underlying conflict over foreign policy between certain fractions among the Republican and Democratic Parties has proven so destructive precisely because this “debate” represents different sides of its insoluble contradiction, which the resolution of the 12th congress of the ICC formulated as follows:

“On the one hand, if it gives up using or extending the use of its military superiority, this will only encourage the countries contesting its authority to contest even more;

On the other hand, when it does use brute force, even, and especially when this momentarily obliges its opponents to rein in their ambitions towards independence, this only pushes the latter to seize on the latest occasion to get their revenge and squirm away from Washington’s grasp”.

Paradoxically, as long as the USSR-led imperialist bloc still existed, the USA remained protected from the worst effects of decomposition on its foreign policy... Since there is no challenger in sight strong enough to form an imperialist bloc of its own against Washington, there is no common enemy and thus no reason for the other powers to accept the “protection” and discipline of America ...

The offensive character of US military strategy illustrates the increased irrationality of imperialist relations

Faced with this irresistible rise of every man for himself, the USA has had no choice but to wage a constantly offensive military policy. Not the weaker challengers of Washington, but the USA itself is obliged to regularly and increasingly intervene with armed force in defence of its position - normally the characteristic of the weaker power in a more desperate situation.

The ICC also pointed out this tendency already at its 9th Congress:

“In some ways, the present situation of the USA is similar to that of Germany before the two world wars. The latter tried to compensate for its economic disadvantages (...) by overturning the imperialist division of spoils through force of arms. This is why, in both world wars, it took on the role of ‘aggressor’ because the better placed powers had no interest in upsetting the apple-cart. (...) As long as the Eastern bloc existed (...) the USA had no a priori need to make great use of its weapons because the essential part of the protection accorded to its allies was of a defensive nature (even though at the beginning of the 80s the USA began a general offensive against the Russian bloc). With the disappearance of the Russian threat, the ‘obedience’ of the other great powers was no longer guaranteed (this is why the Western bloc fell apart). To obtain  obedience, the US has had to adopt a systematically offensive stance on the military level (..) which looks a bit like the behaviour of Germany in the past. The difference is that today the initiative isn’t being taken by a power that wants to overthrow the imperialist balance but on the contrary the world’s leading power, the one that for the moment has the best slice of the cake” (‘Report on the International Situation’, International Review no.67).

Each for himself: the dominant tendency today

Drawing a balance sheet of the past two years, the detailed analysis of concrete events confirms the framework laid down by the 12th Congress report and resolution:

1. The openly defiant nuclear armament of India and Pakistan, for instance, an example almost certain to be followed by others, greatly increasing the likelihood of the use of atomic bombs in war.

2. The increasing military aggressiveness of Germany, freed from the iron corset of the imperialist blocs, an example which will be followed by Japan, the other great power contained by the US bloc after 1945.

3. The terrifying acceleration of chaos and instability in Russia, today the most caricatural expression of decomposition and the most dangerous centre of all the tendencies towards the dissolution of the bourgeois world order.

4. The continuing resistance of Israel’s Netanyahu to the Pax Americana imposed on its allies in the Middle East, and the conversion of Africa into a slaughterhouse are other examples confirming:

 - that the dominant tendency in imperialist tensions after 1989 is chaos and each for himself,

 -  that at the heart of this dominant tendency lies the challenge to the dominance of the American super-power, and increasingly violent military actions by that power,

 -  that this dynamic can only be understood in the context of decomposition,

 - that this dominance in no way removes the tendency towards the formation of new blocks, which today as a secondary but real trend is itself one of the principle factors fanning the flames of war and the unfolding of chaos,

 - that the sharpening of the economic crisis of decadent capitalism is itself a powerful factor in the sharpening of tensions, without however establishing a mechanical link between the two, or lending these conflicts any economic or historical rationality (on the contrary) (...).

Decomposition of the bourgeoisie accentuates tensions and each for himself

With the loss of any concretely realisable project except that of “saving the furniture” in face of the economic crisis, the lack of perspective facing the bourgeoisie tends to lead it to lose sight of the interests of the state or of the national capital as a whole.

The political life of the bourgeoisie, in the weaker countries, tends to be reduced to the struggle of different fractions or even cliques for power or merely survival. This in turn becomes an enormous obstacle to the establishment of stable alliances or even of a coherent foreign policy, giving way to chaos, unpredictability and even madness in relations between states.

The dead end of the capitalist system leads to the break-up of some of those states which were established late, in the decadence of capitalism, and on an unsound basis, (such as the USSR or Yugoslavia) or with artificial frontiers such as in Africa, leading to an explosion of wars aimed at drawing frontiers anew.

To this must be added the aggravation of racial, ethnic, religious, tribal and other tensions, a very important aspect of the present world situation.

One of the most progressive tasks of ascendant capitalism was the replacement of the religious, ethnic etc. fragmentation of humanity by large, centralised national units (the American melting pot, the forging of a national unity out of Catholics and Protestants in Germany, or German, French and Italian speakers in Switzerland). But even in ascendancy the bourgeoisie was unable to overcome these divisions dating from before capitalism. While genocide and ethnic divide and rule were on the agenda wherever the system expanded into the non-capitalist areas, such conflicts survived even at the heart of capitalism (e.g. Ulster). Although the bourgeoisie pretends that the holocaust against the Jews was unique in modern history, and lyingly accuses the communist left of “excusing” this crime, decadent capitalism in general, and decomposition in particular, constitute the epoch of genocide and “ethnic cleansing” properly speaking. It is only with decomposition that all these age-old and recent conflicts, which apparently have nothing to do with the “rationality” of the capitalist economy, reach a generalised explosion - as a result of the complete lack of a bourgeois perspective. Irrationality is a characteristic feature of decomposition. Today, we not only have concretely diverging strategic interests, but also the sheer insolubility of all these countless conflicts. The culmination of  the 20th century vindicates the marxist movement which at the beginning of the century, against the Bund in Russia, showed that the only progressive solution to the Jewish question in Europe was the world revolution, or those who later showed that there could be no progressive formation of nation states in the Balkans (...).

The absence of an established and realistic division of the world after 1989 fans the flames of “each for himself”

In addition to American superiority over its rivals, there is another strategic factor, directly linked to decomposition, explaining the present pre-dominance of each for himself: the collapse of the Russian bloc without its military defeat. Until then, historically, the re-division of the world through imperialist war has been the most favourable precondition for the formation of new blocs, as shown after 1945. The legacy of this collapse without war is that:

- one third of the earth, that of the ex-Eastern bloc, has become a zone without a master, a gigantic bone of contention between the remaining powers,

- the main strategic positions of the ex-Western bloc powers in the rest of  the world after 1989 in no way represented the real imperialist balance of forces between them, but rather their former division of labour against the Russian bloc.

This situation, by leaving completely open, or generally dissatisfying,  the zones of influence of the greater and lesser powers, is an enormous encouragement for a free for all, an unorganised scramble for positions and zones of influence.

The main imperialist line up between the “satiated” and the “have not” European powers, which dominated world politics between 1900 and 1939, was the product of decades, or even of centuries of capitalist development. The line up of the Cold War was in turn the result of over a decade of the sharpest and most profound belligerent confrontations between the great powers, from the early 1930s to 1945.

By contrast, the collapse of the Yalta world order took place overnight, and without resolving any of the great questions of imperialist rivalry posed by capitalism - except one: the irreversible decline of Russia.

Decadent imperialist confrontation outside the corset of blocs:

an exception, but not a complete novelty

The only imperialist world order possible in decadence is that of imperialist blocs, of world war.

In decadent capitalism there is a natural tendency towards the imperialist bi-polarisation of the world, which can only be relegated to second place under exceptional circumstances, usually linked to the balance of class forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat. This was the case after World  War I.- until the coming to power of Hitler in Germany - as a result of the world revolutionary wave, which first obliged the bourgeoisie to end the war before it had been brought to a conclusion (i.e. the total defeat of Germany, which would have cleared the way for new blocs formed from within the victorious camp -presumably headed by Britain and the US), and then obliged it to collaborate to save its system after the war. Thus, once the proletariat had been defeated and Germany recovered from its exhaustion, World War II was fought out basically between the same camps as the first.

Obviously today, the factors counter-acting the tendency towards bi-polarity are much weightier than in the 1920s, when they were overwhelmed by bloc formation within hardly more than a decade. Today, not only overwhelming American supremacy, but also decomposition may well prevent new blocs ever being formed.

The tendency towards blocs and the rise of Germany

Decomposition is thus an enormous factor favouring “each for himself”. But  it does not eliminate the tendency towards the formation of blocs. Nor can we make the theoretical claim that decomposition as such makes the formation of blocs impossible on principle.

But we should not forget that these two bourgeois interests, the pursuit of its imperialist ambitions and the limiting of decomposition, are not always and necessarily opposed. In particular, the efforts of the German bourgeoisie to establish a first foundation for an eventual imperialist bloc in Eastern Europe, and to stabilise several of the countries in that zone against chaos, are more often complimentary than contradictory.

We also know that “each for himself” and the formation of blocs are not in absolute contradiction, that blocs are but the organised form of “each for himself” steered towards a single explosion of all the pent-up imperialist rivalries.

We know that the long term goal of the USA, to remain the world’s strongest power, is an eminently realistic project, but nevertheless in pursuit of this goal, it tangles itself in insoluble contradictions. With Germany it is the other way round: whereas its long term project of a German-led bloc may never be realised, its concrete policy in this direction proves to be extremely realistic.

The alliance with Poland, the advances on the Balkan peninsula, the reorientation of its armed forces towards military interventions abroad, are steps in the direction of a future German bloc. Small steps, it is true, but enough to worry the world’s super-power (...).

The credibility of marxism

All Communist organisations have had the common experience of how difficult it has become since 1989 to convince most workers of the validity of the marxist analysis of imperialist conflicts. There are two main reasons for this difficulty. One is the objective situation of “each for himself” and the fact that the conflict of interest of the great powers is today, as opposed to the Cold War period, still largely hidden. The other reason however is that the bourgeoisie, as part of its systematic equation of Stalinism with communism, has been able to present as “Marxist” a completely caricatural vision of war waged solely to fill the pockets of a few greedy capitalists. Since 1989, the bourgeoisie has benefited enormously from this falsification in order to sow the most incredible confusion. During the Gulf War the bourgeoisie itself propagated the monstrous, pseudo-materialist mystification of a “war over oil prices” in order to conceal the underlying conflict between the great powers.

As opposed to this, the organisations of the communist left have determinedly exposed the imperialist interests of the imperialist powers, in the tradition of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. But they have sometimes waged this struggle with insufficient weapons, in particular with a reductionist, exaggerated vision of the immediate, economic motives of modern imperialist war. This weakens the authority of the marxist argumentation. This “economistic” approach leads to falling for the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, as in the case of the CWO believing in a certain reality behind the “peace process” in Ireland.

Global character of imperialist war

The whole proletarian milieu shares the understanding that imperialist war is the product of the contradictions of capitalism, having in the last analysis an economic cause. But every war which ever took place in class society also has a strategic dimension, an important aspect with an internal dynamic of its own. Hannibal marched into the North of Italy with his elephants, not in order to open a trade route across the Alps, but as a strategic ploy in the Punic “world wars” between Carthage and Rome for the domination of the Mediterranean.

With the rise of capitalist competition it is true that the economic cause of war becomes more pronounced: hence the colonial wars of conquest and the national wars of unification of the last century. But the creation of the world  market and the division of the earth among the capitalist nations also gives war, in the epoch of imperialism, a global, and thus more political and strategic character than ever  before in history. This is already clearly the case for World War I. The cause of that war was strictly economic: the limits reached to the expansion of  the world market relative to the needs of existing accumulated capital; the entry of the system into its phase of decadence. But it was not the economic “cyclical crisis of accumulation” as such which led to imperialist war in 1914, but  the fact that all  the zones of influence were already divided up, so that the “late arrivers” could only expand at the expense of the already established powers. The economic crisis as such was much milder than it had been for example in the 1870s. In reality it was more the imperialist war which announced the coming  world  economic crisis of decadent capitalism in 1929, than the other way round.