The strikes and demonstrations of September, October and November in France, which took place following the reform of pensions, demonstrated a real fighting spirit in the ranks of the proletariat, even if they didn’t succeed in pushing back the attacks of the bourgeoisie.

This movement is taking place in the context of a renewed dynamic of our class as it gradually returns to the path of struggle internationally, following a course marked in 2009 and 2010 by the revolt of new generations of proletarians fighting poverty in Greece and by the determination of the Tekel workers in Turkey to extend their struggle against the sabotage of the unions.

Thus, students have mobilised in large numbers against the unemployment and job insecurity that capitalism has in store for them, as in Great Britain, Italy or the Netherlands. In the United States, despite being confined by the union straitjacket, several major strikes have broken out in various parts of the country since Spring 2010 in opposition to attacks: education workers in California, nurses in Philadelphia and Minneapolis-St-Louis, construction workers in Chicago, workers in the food industry in New York State, teachers in Illinois, workers at Boeing and in a Coca-Cola plant in Bellevue (Washington state), and dockers in New Jersey and Philadelphia.

At the time of going to press, in the Maghreb, and particularly in Tunisia, workers’ anger that has built up over decades spread like wildfire after 17th December when a young unemployed graduate set himself on fire in public after the fruit and vegetable stall that was his livelihood, was confiscated by the municipal police of Sidi Bouzid in the centre of Tunisia. Spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity spread throughout the country, where the population faces high unemployment and sharp increases in prices of basic foodstuffs. A fierce and brutal repression of this social movement led to dozens being killed, with police firing live ammunition at unarmed demonstrators. This only strengthened the outrage and resolve of the proletariat, firstly to demand work, bread and a little dignity and then the departure of President Ben Ali. “We are no longer afraid”, chanted the demonstrators in Tunisia. The children of proletarians took the lead and used the Internet or their mobile phones not only as weapons to broadcast and denounce the repression and to exchange information between themselves, but also to communicate with their family or friends outside the country, particularly in Europe, thus partially breaking the conspiracy of silence of all the bourgeoisies and their media. Everywhere our exploiters have tried to hide the class nature of this social movement, seeking to distort it by sometimes showing it to be like the riots that occurred in France in 2005 or as the work of vandals and looters, or sometimes presenting it as a “heroic and patriotic struggle of the Tunisian people” for “democracy” led by educated graduates and the “middle classes”.

The economic crisis and the bourgeoisie are striking blows all over the world. In Algeria, Jordan and China, similar social movements faced with sinking into poverty have been brutally repressed. This situation should push the more experienced proletarians of the central countries into seeing the impasse and bankruptcy into which the capitalist system is leading the whole of humanity, and into extending solidarity to their class brothers by developing their own struggles. And workers are indeed beginning to react gradually and are refusing to accept austerity, impoverishment and the “sacrifices” being imposed.

At present, this response clearly falls below the level of the attacks we are all being subjected to. That is undeniable. But there is a momentum under way and workers’ reflections and militancy will continue to grow. As proof we are again seeing minorities seeking to organise themselves, to actively contribute to the development of large-scale struggles and to escape the grip of the unions.

The mobilisation against pension reform in France

The social movement in France last autumn provides clear confirmation of the same dynamic as the previous movement that developed against the CPE.[1]

Millions of workers and employees from every sector routinely took to the streets of France. Alongside this, strikes broke out in various places from the beginning of September, some more radical than others, expressing a deep and growing discontent. This mobilisation is the first large-scale struggle in France since the crisis that shook the world financial system in 2007-2008. It is not only a response to pension reform itself but, in its scale and profundity, it is clearly a response to the violent attacks suffered in recent years. Behind this reform and other simultaneous or planned attacks, there is the growing refusal of all proletarians and other layers of the population to accept greater poverty, insecurity and destitution. And with the inexorable deepening of the economic crisis, these attacks are not about to stop. It is clear that this struggle foreshadows others to come, just as it follows closely on those that developed in Greece and Spain against drastic austerity measures there.

However, despite the massive response in France, the government did not give way. Instead, it was uncompromising, repeatedly affirming despite relentless pressure from the streets its firm intention to carry out this attack on pensions, quite cynically repeating the claim that this measure was “necessary” in the name of “solidarity” between the generations.

Why was this measure, which strikes at the heart of all our living and working conditions, passed at all? The whole population fully and strongly expressed its indignation and opposition to it. Why did this massive mobilisation fail to get the government to back down? It’s because the government was assured of the control of the situation by the unions, who have always accepted, along with the left parties, the principle of the “necessary reform” of pensions! We can compare this with the movement in 2006 against the CPE. This movement, which the media initially treated with the utmost contempt as a short-lived “student revolt”, eventually ended with the government forced to retreat faced with no other recourse than withdrawing the CPE.

Where is the difference? Primarily that the students had organised general assemblies (GAs) open to all without distinction of category or sector, public or private, employed or unemployed, casual workers, etc. This burst of confidence in the abilities of the working class and its power, and the profound solidarity inside the struggle, created a dynamic of extension in the movement giving it a massive scale involving all generations. Furthermore, while on the one hand wide-ranging debates and discussions took place in the general assemblies, not confined to the problems of students alone, on the other hand we saw a growing presence of workers on demonstrations alongside the college and high school students.

But it’s also because in their determination and spirit of openness, while leading sections of the working class towards open struggle, the students did not let themselves be intimidated by the manoeuvres of the unions.

Instead, while the latter, especially the CGT, tried to be at the head of the demonstrations to take control, the college and high-school students got in front of the union banners on several occasions to make clear that they did not want to be lost in the background of the movement they had launched. But above all, they affirmed their desire to keep control of the struggle themselves, along with the working class, and not let themselves be conned by the union leaderships.

In fact, one of the greatest concerns of the bourgeoisie was that the forms of organisation adopted by the students in struggle – sovereign general assemblies, electing co-ordinating committees and open to all, where the student unions often had a low profile – did not spread to employed workers if they should come out on strike. It is, moreover, no coincidence that during this movement, Thibault[2] repeatedly stated that workers could learn no lessons from the students on how to organise. So, while the latter have their general assemblies and coordinations, the workers themselves should have confidence in the unions. With no resolution in sight, and with the danger that the unions could lose control, the French government had to climb down because as the last bulwark of the bourgeoisie against the explosion of massive struggles, it was at risk of being demolished.

In the movement against pension reform, the unions, actively supported by the police and the media, sensing what lay ahead, took the measures necessary to be at the centre of things and made the appropriate preparations.

Moreover, the unions’ slogan was not “withdraw the attack on pensions” but “improve the reform”. They called for a fight for renewed negotiations between the unions and the state to make the reforms more “just”, more “humane”. Despite the apparent unity of the Intersyndicale (joint union body), we saw them exploit divisions from the start, clearly intending to reduce the “risks” of things getting out of control; at the beginning of the demonstrations the FO[3] union organised in its own corner, while the Intersyndicale, which organised the day of action on March 23, prepared to “tie up a deal” on reform following negotiations with the government, announcing two more days of action on May 26th and, above all, June 24th, the eve of the summer holidays. We know that a “day of action” at this time of year usually signals the final blow for the working class when it comes to implementing a major attack. However, the final day of action produced an unexpected turnout, with more than twice as many workers, unemployed, casual workers, etc., in the streets. And, while the first two days of action had been very downbeat, as highlighted by the press, anger and unrest were evident on the 24th June when the successful mobilisation boosted the morale of the proletariat. The idea that widespread struggle is possible gained ground. Evidently the unions also felt a change in the wind; they knew that the question of “how to struggle?” was running through people’s heads. So they decided to immediately take charge of the situation and to give a lead; there was no question for them of the workers beginning to think and act for themselves, and getting out of their control. They decided on a new day of action called for 7th September, after the summer holidays. And to be quite sure of holding back the process of reflection, they went as far as sponsoring flights over the beaches in the middle of the summer displaying publicity banners calling people to the demo on the 7th.

For their part, the left parties, which fully supported the pressing need to attack working class pensions, still came and joined in the mobilisation so they wouldn’t be completely discredited.

But another event, a news story, came out during the summer and fuelled workers’ anger: “The Woerth Case” (the politicians currently in office and the richest heiress of French capital, Ms. Bettencourt, boss of L’Oreal group, connived over tax evasion and all kinds of illegal dodges). Eric Woerth is none other than the minister in charge of pension reform. The sense of injustice was total: the working class must tighten its belt while the rich and powerful carry on with “their unseemly affairs”. So under the pressure of this open discontent and growing consciousness of the implications of this reform for our living conditions, the day of action on September 7th was announced, with the unions obliged on this occasion to espouse a belief in united action. Since then, not one union has failed to call for days of action that have brought together about three million workers on demonstrations on several occasions. Pension reform has become symbolic of the sharp deterioration in living standards.

But this unity of the “Intersyndicale” was a trap for the working class. It was intended to give the impression that the unions were committed to organising a broad offensive against the reform and were providing the means for this with repeated days of action in which they could see and hear their leaders ad-nauseum, arm in arm, churning out speeches on “sustaining” the movement and other lies. What frightened the unions most of all was the workers breaking from the union straitjacket and organising themselves. That is what Thibault, secretary general of the CGT, was trying to say when he “sent the government a message” in an interview with Le Monde on 10th September: “We can launch a blockade, with the possibility of a massive social crisis. It is possible. But it’s not us who are taking a risk”, and hegave the following example to better underline the high stakes facing the unions: “We’ve even found a small non-union firm where 40 out of 44 employees came out on strike. It’s a pointer. The more intransigent the government is, the more support for rolling strikes is going to grow.”

Clearly, when the unions aren’t there, the workers organise themselves and not only decide what they want to do but risk doing it massively. So to address this concern the big unions, particularly the CGT and SUD[4], have applied themselves with exemplary zeal: occupying the social stage and the media while with the same determination preventing any real expression of workers’ solidarity. In short, on the one hand a lot of hype, and on the other, action aimed at sterilising the movement with false choices, to create division, confusion, and better lead it to defeat.

Blockading the oil refineries is one of the most obvious examples of this. While the workers in this sector, whose fighting spirit was already very strong, were increasingly keen on showing their solidarity with the whole working class against the pension reform – workers moreover facing particularly drastic reductions in their own ranks ­- the CGT set about transforming this spirit of solidarity with a pre-emptive strike. Hence, the blockade of the refineries was never decided in real general assemblies where the workers could really express their views, but by union leaders, experts in manoeuvring who by stifling discussion adopted a sterilising action. Despite the strict confinement imposed by the unions, however, some workers in this sector did try to make contacts and links with workers in other sectors. But, being generally taken in by a strategy of “laying siege”, most of the refinery workers found themselves trapped by the union logic inside the factory, a real poison for broadening the struggle. Indeed, although the objective of the refinery workers was to strengthen the movement, to be a “strong arm” to make the government retreat, as it unfolded under union leadership the blockading of the depots was above all revealed to be a weapon of the bourgeoisie and its unions against the workers. Not only to isolate the refinery workers but also to make their strike unpopular, creating panic and raising the threat of widespread fuel shortages, the press generously spread its venom against these “hostage-takers, preventing people from going to work or going on holiday.” But the workers in this sector were also cut off physically; even though they wanted to offer their solidarity in the struggle, to create a balance of power to get the reforms withdrawn; this particular blockade has in fact been turned against them and the objective they originally set themselves.

There were many similar union actions, in certain sectors like transport, and preferably in areas with few workers, because at all costs the unions had to minimise the risk of extension and active solidarity. They had to pretend, to their audience, that they were orchestrating the most radical struggles and calling for union unity in the demonstrations, all the while sabotaging the situation.

Everywhere one could see the unions uniting in an “Intersyndicale” to better promote the semblance of unity, creating the appearance of general assemblies, without any real debate, confining topics to more corporatist issues, pretending in public to be fighting “for everyone” and “everyone together”... but with each sector organised in its own corner behind its small union boss, doing everything to prevent the creation of mass delegations that would seek solidarity with enterprises in the nearby area.

And the unions have not been alone in obstructing the possibility of such a mobilisation, because Sarkozy’s police, known for their alleged stupidity and anti-leftism, have provided the unions with indispensable support on several occasions through their provocations. Example: the events in Place Bellecour in Lyon, where the presence of a few “hooligans” (probably manipulated by the cops) was used as a pretext for a violent police crackdown against hundreds of young students, most of whom had only come to discuss with the workers at the end of a demonstration.

A movement full of potential

 However, there have been no reports in the media of the many inter-professional committees or general assemblies (“AG interpros”) formed during this period; committees and assemblies whose stated aim was and is to organise outside the unions and to develop discussions completely open to all workers. These assemblies are the place where the working class can not only recognise itself, but above all where it can get massively involved.

This is what scares the bourgeoisie the most: that contacts are forming and growing extensively inside the working class, between young and old, between those in work, and those out of work.

We must draw the lessons from the failure of this movement.

The first observation is that it was the union apparatus that made the attack on the proletariat possible and that the failure of the movement is not at all something that was inevitable. The truth is that the unions did their dirty work and all the sociologists and other specialists, as well as the government and Sarkozy in person, saluted their “sense of responsibility”. Yes, without doubt, the bourgeoisie is fortunate to have “responsible” unions capable of breaking up a movement of this scale while being able at the same time to make everyone believe that they did everything possible to assist its development. Again it’s the same union apparatus that has succeeded in stifling and marginalising real expressions of autonomous struggle of the working class and of all workers.

However, this failure still bears much fruit because all the efforts made by all the bourgeoisie’s forces have not succeeded in inflicting a crushing defeat, as was the case in 2003 with the fight against the reform of public sector pensions when the country’s education sector workers had to make a bitter retreat after several weeks on strike.

Hence, this movement has led to the appearance in several places of a growth of minorities expressing a clear understanding of the real needs of the struggle for the whole proletariat: the need to take the struggle into its own hands to extend and strengthen it, showing that a profound reflection is taking place, that the development of the struggle is only just beginning, and demonstrating a willingness to learn from what has happened and to stay mobilised for the future.

As one of the leaflets of the “AG interpro” of the Gare de l’Est in Paris dated 6 November said: “We should have supported the sectors on strike at the start, not restricting ourselves to the single demand on pensions when redundancies, job cuts, the destruction of public services and low wages were being fought. This could have helped to bring other workers into struggle and extended and unified the strike movement. Only a mass strike which is organised locally and co-ordinated nationally through strike committees, inter-professional general assemblies, struggle committees, where we decide our demands and actions ourselves and we are in control, can have a chance of winning.”

“The power of workers lies not only in shutting down an oil depot or a factory, here or there. The power of workers lies in uniting at their workplaces, across occupations, plants, companies and categories and taking decisions together”, because“the attacks are just beginning. We have lost a battle, we have not lost the war. The bourgeoisie has declared class war on us and we still have the means of fighting it” (leaflet entitled “Nobody can struggle, take decisions and succeed on our behalf”, signed by the full-time and temporary workers of the “AG interpro” of the Gare de l’Est and Ile-de-France, cited above). We must defend ourselves by extending and developing our struggles massively and thus take control into our own hands.

This was made particularly clear with:

the real “AG interpros” that emerged in the struggle, albeit as small minorities and were determined to remain mobilised in preparing future combats;

the holding or attempted holding of street assemblies or people’s assemblies at the end of demonstrations, as happened particularly in Toulouse.

This willingness to take control of the struggle by some minorities shows that the class as a whole is beginning to question the unions’ strategy, without yet daring to draw all the consequences from its doubts and questionings. In all the GAs (whether union ones or not), most debates in their various forms have centred around essential questions about “How to struggle?”, “How to help other workers?”, “How to express solidarity?”, “Which other inter-professional GAs can we meet up with?”, “How do we combat isolation and reach out to as many workers as possible to discuss how to struggle together?” ... And in fact, a few dozen workers from all sectors, the unemployed, temporary workers and pensioners have regularly turned up each day in front of the gates of the 12 paralysed refineries, to “make up the numbers” facing the CRS riot police, to bring packed lunches for the strikers, to provide moral support.

This spirit of solidarity is an important element, revealing once again the profound nature of the working class.

“Having confidence in our own forces” must be the watchword for the future.

This struggle has the appearance of a defeat; the government did not back down. But in fact it constitutes a new step forward for our class. The minorities that emerged and tried to regroup, to discuss in the “AG interpros” or the people’s street assemblies, the minorities who have tried to take control of their struggles, totally distrusting the unions, reveal the questioning that is taking place in the heads of all the workers. This reflection will continue to develop and will eventually bear fruit. It is not a case of standing by, with arms folded, waiting for the ripe fruit to fall from the tree. All those who are conscious that the only thing the future holds is growing pauperisation and the need to fight the vile attacks of capital must help prepare the future struggles. We must continue to debate, to discuss, to draw the lessons of this movement and to spread them as widely as possible. Those who have begun to build relationships of trust and fraternity in this movement, on the marches and in the GAs, must try and continue their participation (in discussion circles, struggle committees, people’s assemblies or “public platforms”) because there are still questions that need answers, such as:

What role does the “economic blockade” have in the class struggle?

What is the difference between the violence of the state and that of struggling workers?

How do we respond to repression?

How do we take control of our struggles? How do we organise them?

What is the difference between a union GA and a sovereign GA? etc.

This movement is already rich in lessons for the world proletariat. In a different way, the student mobilisations that took place in Great Britain also provide evidence of the promise of the struggles that lie ahead.

Great Britain: the younger generation returns to the struggle

On Saturday October 23rd,following the announcement of the government austerity plan to drastically cut public spending, there were many demonstrations throughout the country called by various unions. The number of people that turned out (it was quite varied, with up to 15,000 in Belfast and 25,000 in Edinburgh) revealed the depth of anger. Another expression of widespread discontent was the student rebellion against university tuition fees being increased by 300%.

Young people are already left heavily in debt with astronomical sums to pay off (as much as £80,000!) after they graduate. Not surprisingly, these new increases provoked a whole series of demonstrations from the north of the country to the south (5 mobilisations in less than a month: 10th, 24th and 30th November and 4th and 9th December). This increase has all the same been passed into law by the House of Commons on December 8th.

The centres of struggle have been widespread: in further education, in high schools and colleges, the occupations of a long list of universities, numerous meetings on campus or in the street to discuss the way forward ... students received support and solidarity from many teachers, who closed their eyes to the absence of the protesters from their classes (attendance at classes is strictly monitored) or went along to discuss with their students. The strikes, demonstrations and occupations were anything but the tame events that unions and the left-wing “officials” usually try to organise. This spiralling spirit of resistance worried the government. A clear sign of its concern was the level of police repression at the demonstrations. Most gatherings ended in violent clashes with armed police adopting a strategy of “kettling” (confining demonstrators inside police cordons), backed up with physical attacks on demonstrators, which resulted in many injured and numerous arrests, mostly in London. Meanwhile occupations took place in fifteen universities with support from teachers. On November 10th, students stormed the headquarters of the Conservative Party and on December 8th, they tried to enter the Treasury building and the High Court, and demonstrators attacked the Rolls-Royce carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla. The students and their supporters attended the demonstrations in high spirits, with their own banners and slogans, with some of them participating in a protest movement for the first time. Spontaneous walkouts, the taking of Conservative Party HQ at Millbank, the defiance or creative avoidance of police lines, the invasion of town halls and other public spaces are just some of the expressions of this openly rebellious attitude. The students were sickened and outraged by the attitude of Aaron Porter, president of the NUS (national union of students) who condemned the occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters, attributing it to the violence of a small minority. On 24th November in London, thousands of demonstrators were “kettled” by the police within minutes of setting off from Trafalgar Square, and despite some attempts to break through police lines, the forces of order detained thousands of them for hours in the cold. At one point, the mounted police rode directly at the crowd. In Manchester, at Lewisham Town Hall in south London, and elsewhere, we have seen similar scenes of brute force. The newspapers are playing their usual role as well, printing photographs of alleged “wreckers” after Millbank, running scare stories about revolutionary groups targeting the nation’s youth with their evil propaganda. All this shows the real nature of the “democracy” we live under.

The student revolt in the UK is the best answer to the idea that the working class in the UK remains passive faced with a torrent of attacks by the government on every aspect of our living standards: jobs, wages, health, unemployment, disability benefits as well as education.

A whole new generation of the exploited class does not accept the logic of sacrifice and austerity that the bourgeoisie and its unions are imposing. It’s only by taking control of its struggles, developing its solidarity and international unity that the working class, especially in the most industrialised, “democratic” countries, will be able to offer society a real future. It’s only by refusing to shoulder the burden of a bankrupt capitalism all over the world that the exploited class can put an end to the misery and terror of the exploiting class by overthrowing capitalism and building a new society based on satisfying the needs of the whole of humanity and not on profit and exploitation.

W 14/01/11

The weakest of the super-indebted national economies must be rescued before they go bankrupt and ruin their creditors; austerity plans designed to contain the debt only aggravate the risk of recession and a cascade of bankruptcies; attempts at recovery by printing money merely re-launch inflation. There is an impasse at the economic level and the bourgeoisie is incapable of proposing policies with the slightest coherence.

The “rescue” of European economies

At the very moment that Ireland negotiated its rescue plan, the International Monetary Fund admitted that Greece would not be able to fulfill the plan that they and the European Union devised in April 2010. Greece’s debt would have to be restructured, even if they didn’t use this word. According to D. Strauss Khan, the boss of the IMF, Greece must be allowed to repay its debt not in 2015 but in 2024. That is, on the 12th of Never, given the course of the present crisis in Europe. Here is a perfect symbol of the fragility of some if not most European countries undermined by debt.

Of course this concession to Greece must be accompanied by supplementary measures of austerity. After the austerity plan of April 2010 - which was financed by the non-payment of pensions for two months, the lowering of indemnities in the public sector, and price rises resulting from an increase in taxes on electricity, petrol, alcohol, tobacco, etc - there are also plans to cut public employment. 

A comparable scenario unfolded in Ireland where the workers were presented with a fourth austerity plan. In 2009 public sector wages were lowered between 5 and 15%, welfare payments were suppressed and retired workers were not replaced. The new austerity plan negotiated with the rescue plan included the lowering of the minimum wage by 11.5%, the lowering of welfare payments, the loss of 24,750 state jobs and the increase in sales tax from 21 to 23%. And, as in Greece, it is clear that a country of 4.5million people, whose GNP in 2009 was 164 billion euros, will not be able to pay back a loan of 85 billion euros. For these two countries, these violent austerity plans presage future measures that will force the working class and the major part of the population into unbearable poverty.

The incapacity of new countries (Portugal, Spain, etc) to pay their debts is shown in their attempt to avoid the consequences by adopting draconian austerity measures and preparing for worse, as in Greece and Ireland.

What are the austerity plans trying to save?

A reasonable question since the answer is not obvious. One thing is certain: their aim is not to alleviate the poverty of the millions who are the first to suffer the consequences. A clue lies in the anxiety of the political and financial authorities about the risk that more countries would in turn default on their public debt. More than a risk since nobody can see how this scenario will not come to pass.

At the origin of the bankruptcy of the Greek state is a considerable budget deficit due to an exorbitant mass of public spending (armaments in particular) that the fiscal resources of the country, weakened by the aggravation of the crisis in 2008, cannot finance. As for the Irish state, its banking system had accumulated a debt of 1,432 billion euros (on a GDP of 164 billion euros) which the worsening of the crisis had made impossible to reimburse. As a consequence, the banking system had to be largely nationalised and the debt was transferred to the state. Having paid a relatively small amount of these debts of the banking system the Irish state found itself in 2010 with a public deficit corresponding to 32% of GDP! Beyond the fantastic character of such figures, we can see that whatever the different histories of these two national economies, the result is the same. In both cases, faced with an insane level of indebtedness of the state or of private institutions, it is the state which must assume the integrity of the national capital by showing its capacity to reimburse the debt and pay the interest on it.

The inability of the Greek and Irish economies to repay their debt contains a danger that extends way beyond the borders of these two countries. And it is this aspect which explains the panic at the top levels of the world bourgeoisie. In the same way that the Irish banks were supported by credit from a series of world states, the banks of the major developed countries held the colossal debts of the Greek and Irish states. There are different opinions concerning the level of the claims of the major world banks on the Irish state. Let’s take the “average”: “According to the economic daily Les Echos de Lundi, French banks have a 21.1 billion euro exposure to Ireland, behind the German banks (46 billion), British (42.3 billion) and American (24.6billion).”[1] And concerning the exposure of the banks by the situation in Greece: “The French institutions are the most exposed with 55 billion euros in assets. The Swiss banks have invested 46 billion, the Germans 31 billion”.[2] The non-bailout of Greece and Ireland would have put the creditor banks in a very difficult situation, and thus the states on which they depend. It would have been even more the case for countries in a critical financial situation (like Spain and Portugal) that are also exposed in Greece and Ireland and for whom such a situation would have proved fatal.

That’s not all. The non-bailout of Greece and Ireland would have signified that the financial authorities of the EU and the IMF would not guarantee the finances of countries in difficulty. This would have led to a stampede of creditors away from these countries and the guaranteed bankruptcy of the weakest of them, the collapse of the euro and a financial storm that would make the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 look like a mild sea breeze. In other words, the financial authorities of the EU and the IMF came to the rescue of Greece and Ireland not to save these two states, still less the populations of these two countries, but to avoid the meltdown of the world financial system.

In reality, it is not only Greece, Ireland and a few other countries in the South of Europe whose financial situation has deteriorated. “.. the following figures show the level of total debt as a percentage of GDP [January 2010]: 470% for the UK and Japan, gold medals for total indebtedness; 360% for Spain; 320% for France, Italy and Switzerland; 300% for the US and 280% for Germany.”[3] In fact, all countries, whether inside or outside the Euro zone, are indebted beyond their ability to repay. Nevertheless the Euro zone countries have the supplementary difficulty that its states are unable to create the monetary means to “finance” their deficits. This is the exclusive preserve of the European Central Bank. Other countries like the UK and the US, equally indebted, do not have this problem since they have the authority to create their own money.

Public and private debt in 2009 excluding financial institutions (% of the GDP)[4]

The levels of indebtedness of all these states show that their commitments exceed their ability to pay to an absurd degree. Calculations have been made which show that Greece needs a budget surplus of at least 16 or 17% to stabilise its public debt. In fact these are all countries that are indebted to a point where their national production doesn’t permit the repayment of their debt. In other words the states and private institutions hold debt that can never be honoured.[5] The table above, which shows the debt of each European country (outside of financial institutions, contrary to the figures mentioned above) gives a good idea of the immensity of the debts contracted as well as the fragility of the most indebted countries.

Given that the rescue plans have no chance of success, what else is their significance?

Capitalism can survive only thanks to plans of permanent economic support

The Greek rescue plan cost 110 billion euros and Ireland’s 85 billion. These massive financial contributions from the IMF, the Euro zone and the UK (which gave 8.5billion euros when Cameron’s government was making its own austerity plan to reduce public expenses by 25% in 2015[6]) are only money issued against the wealth of the different states. In other words the money extended to the rescue plan is not based on newly created wealth but is nothing but the result of printing money, Monopoly money.

Such support to the financial sector, which finances the real economy, is in fact a support to real economic activity. Thus on the one hand draconian austerity plans are put in place, announcing still more draconian austerity plans, and on the other, threatened by the collapse of the financial system and the blockage of the world economy, plans of support are adopted whose content is very similar to what are known as “recovery plans”.

In fact the US is going furthest in this direction: Quantitative Easing nº2, creating 900 billion dollars,[7] has no other meaning than the attempt to save the American financial system whose ledgers are full of bad debts, and to support the anaemic economic growth of the US, which cannot overcome its sizeable budget deficit.

Having the advantage that the dollar is the money of world exchange the US does not suffer the same constraints as Greece, Ireland and other European countries. That’s why, as many think, a Quantitative Easing nº3 cannot be ruled out.

Thus the support of economic activity by budgetary measures is much stronger in the US than in the European countries. But that does not stop the US from trying to drastically slash its budget deficit, as illustrated by Obama’s proposal to block the wages of federal employees. In fact one finds in every country in the world such contradictions revealed in the policies adopted.

The bourgeoisie has exceeded the limits of indebtedness that capitalism can sustain

We thus have plans of austerity and plans of recovery at the same time! What is the reason for such contradictions?

As Marx showed, capitalism suffers genetically from a lack of outlets because the exploitation of labour power necessarily leads to the creation of a value greater than the outlay in wages, because the working class consumes much less than it produces. Up until the end of the 19th century, the bourgeoisie had to offset this problem by the colonisation of non-capitalist areas where it forced the population, with various means, to buy the merchandise produced by its capital. The crises and wars of the 20th century illustrate that this way of answering overproduction, inherent to capitalist exploitation, was reaching its limits. In other words, non-capitalist areas of the planet were no longer sufficient for the bourgeoisie to realise the surplus product that was needed for enlarged accumulation. The deregulation of the economy at the end of the 1960s, manifested in monetary crises and recessions, signified the quasi-absence of the extra capitalist markets as a means of absorbing the surplus capitalist production. The only solution henceforth has been the creation of an artificial market inflated by debt. It has allowed the bourgeoisie to sell to states, households and businesses without the latter having the real means to buy.

We have often shown that capitalism has used debt as a palliative to the crisis of overproduction that has ensnared it since the end of the 1960s. But we should not confuse debt with magic. Actually debt must be progressively repaid and the interest paid systematically, otherwise the creditor will not only stop lending but risk bankruptcy himself.

Now the situation of a growing number of European countries shows that they can no long pay the part of the debt demanded by their creditors. In other words these countries must reduce their debt, in particular by cutting expenses, when 40 years of crisis have shown that the increase of the latter was an absolutely necessary condition to avoid a world recession. All states, to a greater or lesser degree are faced with the same insoluble contradiction.

The financial storms shaking Europe at the moment are thus the product of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and illustrate the absolute impasse of this mode of production.

We will now deal with other characteristics of the present situation.

Developing inflation

At the very moment when most countries have austerity plans that reduce internal demand, including for basic necessities, the price of agricultural raw materials has sharply increased. More than 100% for cotton in a year;[8] more than 20% for wheat and maize between July 2009 and July 2010[9] and 16% for rice between April-June 2010 and the end of October 2010.[10] Metals and oil went in a similar direction. Of course, climatic factors have a role in the evolution of the price of food products, but the increase is so general that other causes must be at play. All countries are preoccupied by the level of inflation that is increasing in their economies. Some examples from the “emerging countries”:

-        officially inflation in China reached an annual rate of 5.1% in November 2010 (in fact every specialist agrees that the real figures for inflation in this country is between 8 and 10%);

-        in India inflation reached 8.6% in October;

-        in Russia it was 8.5% in 2010.[11]

The development of inflation is not an exotic phenomenon reserved for the emerging countries. The developed countries are more and more concerned: a 3.3% rate in November in the UK was seen as worrying by the government; 1.9% in virtuous Germany caused disquiet because it occurs alongside rapid growth.

What then, is the cause of this return of inflation?

Inflation is not always the result of vendors raising their prices because demand exceeds supply and therefore carries no risk of losing sales. Another factor entirely can cause this phenomenon. The increase in the money supply over the past three decades for example. The printing of money, that is the issuing of new money when the wealth of the national economy does not increase in the same proportion, leads inevitably to a depreciation of the money in circulation and thus to an increase in prices. Now, all the official statistics show that since 2008 there has been a strong increase in the money supply in the great economic zones of the planet.

This increase encourages the development of speculation with disastrous consequences for the working class. Given that demand is too weak as a result of the stagnation or lowering of wages, businesses cannot raise their market prices without losing sales. These same businesses or investors turn away from productive activity which is not profitable enough or too risky, and use the money created by the central banks for speculation. Concretely that means buying financial products, raw materials or currencies with the hope that that they can be resold with a substantial profit. Consumer products become tradable assets. The problem is that a good part of these products, in particular agricultural products, are also commodities consumed by vast numbers of workers, peasants, unemployed, etc. Consequently, as well as a lowering of income, a great part of the world population is hit by the rise in the price of rice, bread, clothes, etc.

Thus the crisis, which obliges the bourgeoisie to save its banks by means of the creation of money, leads the workers to suffer two attacks:

-        the lowering of their wages;

-        the increase in the price of basic commodities.

Prices of basic necessities have been rising since the beginning of the century for these reasons. From the same causes today, the same effects. In 2007 – 2008 (just before the financial crisis) great masses of the world population were forced into hunger riots. The consequences of the present price explosion have immediately led to the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria.

The level of inflation won’t stop rising. According to Cercle Finance from 7th December, the rate of 10 year T bonds[12] has increased from 2.94% to 3.17% and the rate of 30 year T bonds has increased from 4.25% to 4.425%. That clearly shows that the capitalists anticipate a loss of the value of the money they invest and thus demand a higher rate of return on it.

The tensions between national capitals

During the Depression of the 1930s, protectionism and trade war developed to such an extent that one could speak of a “regionalisation” of exchange. Each of the great industrialised countries reserved a zone for its domination which allowed it to find a minimum of outlets. Contrary to the pious intentions published by the recent G20 in Seoul, according to which the different participants declared a voluntary ban on protectionism, reality is quite different. Protectionist tendencies are clearly at work today behind the euphemism of “economic patriotism”. It would be too tedious to list all the protectionist measures adopted by different countries. Let us simply mention that the US in September 2010 was taking 245 anti-dumping measures; that Mexico from March 2009 had taken 89 measures of commercial retaliation against the US and that China recently decided to drastically limit the export of its “rare earths” needed for a lot of high technology products.

But, in the present period, it’s currency war that will be the major manifestation of trade war. We have already seen that Quantitative Easing Nº2 was a necessity for American capital. At the same time, to the extent that the creation of money can only lead to the lowering of its value, and thus the price of Made in USA products on the world market (relative to the products of other countries) QE is a particularly aggressive protectionist measure. The under-valuation of the Chinese yuan has similar objectives.

However, despite the trade war, the different countries have agreed to prevent Greece and Ireland from defaulting on their debt. The bourgeoisie is obliged to take very contradictory measures, dictated by the total impasse of its system.

What solutions can the bourgeoisie propose?

Why, in the catastrophic situation of the world economy do we find articles like those of the Tribune or Le Monde entitled “Why growth will come”[13] or “The US wants to believe in the economic recovery”?[14] Such headlines, which are only propaganda, are trying to send us to sleep, and above all make us think that the bourgeoisie’s economic and political authorities still have a certain mastery of the situation. In fact the bourgeoisie only has the choice between two policies, rather like the choice between the plague and cholera:

-        either it proceeds by creating money as it has done with Greece and Ireland, since all the funds of the EU and the IMF come from the printing of money by its various member countries. But then it heads towards a devaluation of currencies and an inflationist tendency that can only get worse;

-        or it tries a particularly draconian austerity in order to stabilise the debt. This is the German solution for the Euro zone, since the major part of the cost of support for countries in difficulty is borne by German capital. The end result of such a policy can only be the rapid fall into depression, as indicated by the fall of production that we have seen in 2010 in Greece, Ireland and in Spain following the adoption of austerity plans.

Recently published texts by a number of economists propose their solutions to the present impasse. But they are either pure propaganda to make us think that capitalism, despite everything, has a future, or an exercise in self-hypnosis. To take one example, according to Professor M Aglietta[15] the austerity plans adopted in Europe are going to cost 1% of growth in European Union which will be about 1% in 2011. His alternative solution reveals that the greatest economists have nothing realistic to offer: he was not afraid to say that a new “regulation” based on the “green economy” would be the solution. He only “forgot” one thing: such a “regulation” implies considerable expense and thus an even more gigantic creation of money than at present, when the bourgeoisie is particularly worried about the resumption of inflation.

The only true solution to the capitalist impasse will emerge from the more and more numerous, massive and conscious struggles of the working class against the economic attacks of the bourgeoisie. It will lead naturally to the overthrow of this system whose principle contradiction is that of the production for profit and accumulation and not the satisfaction of human needs.

Vitaz 2/1/11

The text that follows is, apart from a few minor changes, the economic part of the report on the situation in Britain for the 19th Congress of the ICC’s section in Britain. We thought it would be useful to publish it to the outside since it provides a number of factors and analyses which enable us to grasp how the world economic crisis is expressing itself in the world’s oldest capitalist power. 

The international context

In 2010 the bourgeoisie announced the end of the recession and predicted that the world economy would grow over the next two years led by the emerging economies. However, there are serious uncertainties about the global situation, reflected in differing projections of growth. The IMF in its World Economic Outlook Update of July 2010 predicted global growth of 4.5% this year and 4.25% next. The World Bank in its Global Economic Prospects report for summer 2010 envisaged growth of 3.3% this year and next and 3.5% in 2012 if things go well but of 3.1% this year, 2.9% next and 3.2% in 2012 if things do not go well. The concern is particularly centred on Europe where the World Bank’s higher estimate is dependent on “Assuming that measures in place prevent today’s market nervousness from slowing the normalization of bank-lending, and that a default or restructuring of European sovereign debt is avoided”.[1] The lower growth rate if this is not achieved will affect Europe particularly, with predicted growth rates of 2.1, 1.9 and 2.2 percent between 2010 and 2012.

Source: IMF World Economic Outlook Update, July 2010

The situation remains fragile with concern about high levels of debt and low levels of bank lending and the possibility of further financial shocks, such as that in May this year that saw global stock markets lose between 8 and 17% of their value. The scale of the bailout is itself one of the causes of concern: “the size of the EU/IMF rescue package (close to $1 trillion); the magnitude of the initial market reaction to the possibility of a Greek default and eventual contagion; and continued volatility, are indications of the fragility of the financial situation…a further episode of market uncertainty could entail serious consequences for growth in both high-income and developing countries.”[2] The prescription of the IMF, as one might expect, is to reduce state spending, with the inevitable result that the working class will face austerity: “high-income countries will need to cut government spending (or raise revenues) by 8.8 percent of GDP for a 20 year period in order to bring debt levels down to 60 percent of GDP by 2030.”

For all their appearance of objectivity and sober analysis, these recent reports by the IMF and World Bank suggest there is a depth of uncertainty and fear within the ruling class about its ability to overcome the crisis. The possibility of other countries following Ireland back into recession remains real. 

The evolution of the economic situation in Britain

This section draws on official data to give an overview of the course of the recession and the response from the government. However, it is important to begin by recalling that the crisis began within the financial sector, stemming from the crisis in the US housing market and encompassing the major banks and financial bodies around the globe that had become involved in lending where there was a real risk of the loans not being paid back. This was at its most extreme in the sub-prime mortgage market in the US, the contagion from which spread through the financial system because of the trading that developed based on the financial instruments derived from these loans. However, other countries, notably Britain and Ireland, had contrived to produce their own housing bubbles that contributed, together with a massive rise in unsecured personal borrowing, to create a level of debt that in Britain ultimately exceeded the country’s annual GDP. The crisis that developed flowed across into the ‘real’ economy leading to recession. The whole situation evoked a very forceful response from the British ruling class that poured unprecedented sums of money into the financial system and cut interest rates to a historic low.

Official figures show that Britain went into recession in the second quarter of 2008 and came out in the fourth quarter of 2009 with a peak to trough fall of 6.4% of GDP.[3] This figure, which was recently revised downwards, makes this recession the worst since the Second World War (the recessions of the early 1990s and 1980s saw falls of 2.5% and 5.9% respectively). Growth in the second quarter of 2010 was 1.2%, increasing significantly from the 0.4% of the fourth quarter 2009 and 0.3% of the first quarter 2010. However, it is still 4.7% below the pre-recession level as can be seen in the graph above.

The manufacturing sector has been the most affected by the recession, registering a peak to trough decline of 13.8% between the fourth quarter in 2007 and the third quarter of 2009. Since then manufacturing has expanded by 1.1% in the last quarter of 2009 and by 1.4% and 1.6% in the two quarters since.

The construction industry showed a sharp rebound in growth of 6.6% in the second quarter of 2010, contributing 0.4% to the overall growth rate for that quarter. However, this follows very substantial declines in both house building (down 37.2% between 2007 and 2009) and commercial and industrial work (down 33.9% between 2008 and 2009).

The service sector recorded a peak to trough fall of 4.6% with business and financial services falling by 7.6% “much stronger than in earlier downturns, making the largest single contribution to the fall”.[4] In the last quarter of that year it returned to growth of 0.5% but in the first quarter of 2010 this fell to 0.3%. Although the decline in this sector was less than in others, its dominant position in the economy meant that it was the largest contributor to the overall decline in GDP during this recession. The decline in the service sector was also greater in this recession than those of the early 1980s and early 1990s where the falls were 2.4% and 1% respectively. More recently, the business services and finance sector has shown stronger growth and contributed 0.4 percentage points to the overall GDP figure.

As might be expected both exports and imports declined during the recession. This was most marked in the trade in goods (although the balance actually improved slightly): “In 2009 the deficit fell by £11.2 billion to £81.9 billion. There was a record fall in exports of 9.7 per cent – from a record £252.1 billion to £227.5 billion. However, this was accompanied by a fall in imports of 10.4 per cent, the largest year-on-year fall since 1952, which had a much larger impact since total imports are significantly larger than total exports. Imports fell from a record £345.2 billion in 2008 to £309.4 billion in 2009. These large falls in both exports and imports were a result of a general contraction of global trade associated with the worldwide financial crisis which began late in 2008.”[5] The decline in services was smaller, with imports falling by 5.4% and exports by 6.9% with the balance, which remained positive, going from £55.4bn in 2008 to £49.9bn in 2009. The total trade in services in 2009 was £159.1bn in exports and £109.2bn in imports, which is significantly less than that of the trade in goods.

Between 2008/9 and 2009/10 the current account deficit doubled from 3.5% of GDP to 7.08%. The Public Sector Net Borrowing Requirement, which includes borrowing for capital spending, went from 2.35% of GDP in 2007/8, to 6.04% in 2008/9 and 10.25% in 2009/10. In 2008 it was £61.3bn and in 2009 £140.5bn. Total government net debt was calculated to be £926.9bn in July this year or 56.1% of GDP, compared to £865.5bn in 2009 and £634.4bn in 2007. In May 2009 Standard and Poor raised the possibility of downgrading Britain’s debt status from the highest triple A rating, which would have led to significant increases in borrowing costs.
 

The number of companies going bankrupt increased during the recession, rising from 12,507 in 2007 (which was one of the lower figures for the decade) to 15,535 in 2008 and 19,077 in 2009. The number of acquisitions and mergers rose during the second half of the decade to reach 869 in 2007 before falling over the next two years to 558 and 286 respectively. Figures for the first quarter of 2010 do not suggest any increase is taking place. This suggests that while there has been destruction of the capital associated with the businesses going insolvent this has not yet led to a general process of consolidation as might be expected coming out of a crisis, which itself may indicate that the real crisis remains with us.

During the crisis the pound fell sharply against a number of other currencies, losing over a quarter of its value between 2007 and the start of 2009, prompting the Bank of England to comment “The fall of more than a quarter since mid-2007 is the sharpest over a comparable period since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement in the early 1970s”[6] There has been a recovery since but the pound remains about 20% below its 2007 exchange rate.

House prices fell sharply after the bursting of the property bubble and although they began to rise again this year they remained substantially below their peak and in September fell again by 3.6%. The number of sales remains at a historic low.

The stock market suffered sharp falls from mid 2007 and, although it has recovered since then, there is still uncertainty. The concerns about the debts of Greece and other countries prior to the intervention of the EU and IMF led to a significant fall in May this year as the graph below shows.

Source: The Guardian

Inflation rose to nearly 5% in September 2008 before falling to below 2% a year later. It has since risen to over 3% during 2010, above the Bank of England's target of 2%.

Unemployment is estimated to have increased by about 900,000 during the recession, which is considerably less than in previous recessions. In July 2010 the official figures were 7.8% of the workforce totalling some 2.47 million people.

State intervention

The British government intervened robustly to limit the crisis, initiating a range of policies that were taken up by many other countries. Gordon Brown basked in this glory for a few months, famously stating that he had saved the world in a slip of the tongue during a debate in the House of Commons. There were a number of strands to the state’s intervention:

-          cuts in the Bank of England base interest rate. Between December 2007 and March 2009 the rate was progressively cut from 5.5% to 0.5%, bringing it down to the lowest rate on record and below the rate of inflation;

-          intervention to directly support the banks, leading to nationalisation or part nationalisation. This started with Northern Rock in February 2008 and was followed by Bradford and Bingley. In September the government brokered the take-over of HBOS by Lloyds TSB. In October £50bn was made available to the banks for recapitalisation. In November 2009 a further £37bn investment resulted in the de-facto nationalisation of RBS/Nat West and the partial nationalisation of Lloyds TSB/HBOS;

-          quantitative easing, also known as the asset purchase facility. In March 2009 plans to inject £75bn over three months were announced. This was gradually increased and at present the total stands at £200bn. The Bank of England explains that the purpose of quantitative easing is to put more money into the economy to keep the rate of inflation at its target of 2% and this became necessary when further reductions of the base rate were no longer possible after it had been reduced to 0.5%. This is achieved by the bank purchasing assets (mainly gilts) from private sector institutions and crediting the sellers’ account, effectively creating new money. This sounds simple, but according to the Financial Times “No one is sure whether or how quantitative easing and other unorthodox monetary policies works”[7]

-          intervention to encourage consumption. In January 2009 VAT was cut from 17.5% to 15% and in May 2009 the car scrappage scheme was introduced. The increase in the guarantee on bank deposits to £50,000 in October 2008 can be seen as part of this since its aim was to reassure consumers that their money would not just disappear in the event of a bank collapse.

The result was the containment of the immediate crisis with no further bank collapses. The price was a substantial increase in debt as noted above. Official figures give the cost of government intervention as £99.8bn in 2007, £121.5bn in 2009 and £113.2bn in July this year. These figures do not include the cost of purchasing assets such as the stakes in the banks or the expenditure on quantitative easing (which would add another £250bn or so to the total) on the grounds that these assets will only be held temporally by government before being sold back. Whether this is so remains to be seen, although Lloyds TSB has paid back some of the money it received.

The interventions have also been partly credited for the lower than expected rise in employment during the recession. This will be dealt with in more detail below.

However, the longer-term prospects seem more questionable:

-          interventions to manage inflation and theoretically encourage spending have not brought the headline rate to target, although it is suggested that the underlying trends are lower than the headline rate suggests. However, the cost of food is rising globally so may affect the rate over time, particularly as it affects those who are less well off;

-          the efforts to inject liquidity into the system, by reducing the cost of borrowing and increasing the supply of money, have not produced the increase in lending that was hoped for, leading to repeated calls from politicians for the banks to do more;

-          the impact of the VAT cut and car scrappage scheme contributed to the initial recovery at the end of 2009 but have now ended. There was a slight fall in car sales in the first quarter of 2010 but the car scrappage scheme was still in place then. Overall, there have been reductions in most areas of household consumption, growth in personal debt has begun to reduce and the rate of savings has increased. Given the central role played by debt-funded household consumption in the boom this clearly has implications for any recovery.

The consensus forecasts for GDP growth in 2010 and 2011 in Britain are 1.5% and 2.0% respectively. This is above the 0.9% and 1.7% predicted for the Euro Area but below the 1.9% and 2.5% forecast for the OECD as a whole[8] and below the forecasts for Europe from the IMF quoted at the start of this report.

However, to grasp the real significance of the crisis it is necessary to penetrate below these surface phenomena to examine aspects of the structure and functioning of the British economy.

Historical and structural issues

Changes within the composition of the British economy: from production to services

The rise of the financial sector

The nature of the service sector

Conclusion

What hope for an economic recovery?

The global context

The options for British capitalism

The impact of the crisis on the working class

Perspectives

The example of Russia 1917 inspired the workers in Hungary

In the previous article in this series,[1] we saw how the Social Democratic party, the main rampart of capitalism, carried out a despicable manoeuvre in order to deal with the developing workers' struggle. This manoeuvre aimed at making the communists appear to be responsible for a mysterious attack perpetrated against the editorial board of the Social Democratic paper Népszava. The intention was to criminalise them and so unleash a wave of repression, initially against the communists but then going on to annihilate the new-born workers' councils and destroy any revolutionary spirit in the Hungarian proletariat.

In this second article we will see how this manoeuvre failed and how the revolutionary situation continued to mature so that the Social Democratic party tried another manoeuvre, which was risky but which in the end was a success for capitalism: to ally with the Communist Party, “take power” and organise “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. This blocked the dynamic of rising struggles and the development of proletarian self-organisation and led the revolution into an impasse that resulted in its utter defeat.

March 1919: the crisis of the bourgeois republic

The truth about the attack on the newspaper soon came out. The workers felt that they had been tricked and their indignation grew even more when the torture inflicted upon the communists came to light. The credibility of the Social Democratic party was seriously damaged and this increased the popularity of the Communists. Struggles around specific demands grew in number from the end of February: the peasants seized the land without waiting for the eternal promise of “agrarian reform”,[2] more and more workers flocked to the Budapest workers' council and tumultuous discussions led to bitter criticism of the Social Democratic and union leaders. The bourgeois republic, that had created so many illusions in October 1918, was now a disappointment. The 25,000 soldiers who had been sent home from the front were shut up in their barracks and organised themselves into councils; during the first week of March, not only did the assemblies in the barracks re-elect their representatives – with a significant increase in the number of Communist delegates – they also passed motions stating that, “government orders will not be obeyed unless formerly ratified by the Budapest soldiers' council”.

On 7th March, an extraordinary session of the workers' council of Budapest adopted a resolution which, “demanded the socialisation of all the means of production and that they be placed under the direction of the councils”. Although socialisation without first destroying the bourgeois state apparatus is bound to be a limping measure, this declaration nevertheless expressed the enormous self-confidence of the councils and was a response to two urgent questions: 1) the bosses' sabotage of production, which was completely disorganised by the war effort; 2) the tragic lack of foodstuffs and of goods to satisfy basic needs.

Events took a radical turn. The metal workers' council presented the government with an ultimatum; it gave it five days to hand over power to the proletarian parties.[3] On 19th March, there took place the biggest demonstration seen up to then, which was called by the workers' council of Budapest; the unemployed demanded an allowance and a ration card, as well as the abolition of rents. On 20th, the typographers went on strike; this became generalised from the following day and made two demands: the liberation of the Communist leaders and a “workers' government”.

Although this demonstrates that there was a maturation towards a revolutionary situation, it also shows that the political level was still far below what was necessary for the proletariat to take power. In order to take power and keep it, the proletariat must be able to count on two indispensable factors: the workers' councils and the communist party. In March 1919 the workers' councils in Hungary had just taken their first steps, they had just begun to feel their power and autonomy and they were still trying to free themselves from the stifling control of Social Democracy and the unions. Their two main weaknesses were:

-        their illusions in the possibility of a “workers' government” which would unite the Social Democrats and the Communists. As we will see, this was to be the death knell of a revolutionary development of the situation;

-        they were still organised according to economic sectors: councils of metal workers, of typographers, of textile workers, etc. In Russia, from 1905 onwards, the councils were organised horizontally, regrouping the workers as a whole across divisions of sector, region, nationality, etc; in Hungary there existed both councils based on sector and also horizontal councils within towns, which meant that there was a risk of corporatism and dispersion.

In the first article in this series, we stressed that the Communist Party was still very weak and heterogeneous, that the debate had only just begun to develop within it. It was weakened by the absence of a solid international structure to guide it – the Communist International had only just celebrated its first congress. For these reasons, as we will see, it had enormous weaknesses and an absence of clarity that was to make it an easy victim of the trap that Social Democracy laid for it.

The merger with the Social Democratic party and the proclamation of the Soviet Republic

Colonel Vix, the representative of the Entente,[4] issued an ultimatum, which stipulated that there be created a demilitarised zone within Hungarian territory, to be governed directly by allied command. It was to be 200 kilometres wide, which meant that it would occupy a third of the country.

The bourgeoisie never confronts the proletariat openly. History teaches us that it tries to trap it between two fronts, the left and the right. Here we see the right opening fire with the threat of military occupation; this was to be concretised from April onwards with a full-blown invasion. For its part, the left went into action immediately afterwards with a pathetic declaration by President Karolyi: “Our homeland is in danger. The most serious moment in our history is upon us. (...) The time has come for the Hungarian working class to use its force - the only organised force in the country - and its international relations to save its homeland from anarchy and dismemberment. I therefore propose that a Social Democratic government be formed that will confront the imperialists. The stakes of this struggle are the fate of our country. In order to wage such a struggle it is indispensable that the working class recover its unity and that the agitation and disorder brought about by the extremists, cease. With this in mind, the Social Democrats must find common ground for an agreement with the Communists”.[5]

This crossfire in which the working class was caught up; the right with its military occupation, and the left with the appeal for national defence, converged on the same aim: to save capitalist domination. The military occupation – the worst affront that can be inflicted on a nation state – was really intended to crush the revolutionary tendencies of the Hungarian proletariat. In addition, it enabled the left to drive the workers towards the defence of the fatherland. This kind of trap had been used before; in Russia in October 1917, when the Russian bourgeoisie realised that it was unable to crush the proletariat, it preferred to let German troops occupy Petrograd; at the time the working class parried this manoeuvre well by embarking on the seizure of power. The right-wing Social Democrat Garami revealed the strategy that was to follow in the wake of Count Karolyi's appeal: “entrust the government to the Communists, await the total failure that will be theirs and then, and only then, when rid of these dregs of society, can we form an homogenous government”.[6] The centrist wing of the party[7] adopted the following policy: “As Hungary has essentially been sacrificed by the Entente, which has obviously decided to annihilate the revolution, it would seem that the only tools that the latter has at its disposal are Soviet Russia and the Red Army. To win the support of the latter, the Hungarian working class must essentially wield power and Hungary must become a real popular and soviet republic.” adding that “in order to ensure that the Communists do not abuse this power, it would be better to wield it with them!”[8]

The left wing of the Social Democratic party defended a proletarian position and tended to evolve towards the Communists. Garami's right-wingers and Garbai's centrists manoeuvred cleverly against them. Garami resigned from all of his responsibilities. The right wing agreed to be sacrificed in favour of the centrist wing which, “declaring its agreement with the communist programme” positioned itself to seduce the left.[9]

Following this U-turn, the new centrist leadership proposed the immediate merger with the Communist Party and nothing less than the seizure of power! A delegation of the Social Democratic Party went to meet Bela Kun in prison and made the proposal to unite the two parties, to form a “workers' party”, to exclude all  “bourgeois parties” and to form an alliance with Russia. The talks took place in the space of one day, at the end of which Bela Kun draw up a six-point statement which, among other things, underlines, “The directive committees of the Hungarian Social Democratic party and of the Hungarian Communist Party have decided in favour of the total and immediate unification of their respective organisations. The name of the new organisation is to be Unified Socialist Party of Hungary (PSUH). (...) The PSUH will immediately take power in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship is to be exercised by the councils of workers, peasants and soldiers. There will be no more National Assembly (...). A military and political alliance will be concluded with Russia as completely as is possible.”[10]

President Karolyi, who followed these negotiations closely, handed in his resignation and made a declaration addressed “to the world proletariat to obtain help and justice. I resign and hand over power to the proletariat of the Hungarian people.”[11]

During the demonstration of 22nd March, “the ex-Regent, Archduke Franz-Joseph, Philippe-Egalité himself, he too came to take his place at the side of the workers at the demonstration.”[12] The new government, formed the day before with Bela Kun and other Communist leaders, who had been recently freed, was presided over by the centrist Social Democrat Garbai.[13] It had a centrist majority with two places reserved for the left wing and two others for the Communists, one of whom was Bela Kun. So there began a very risky operation which consisted in holding the Communists hostage to Social Democratic policies and in sabotaging the newly formed workers' councils by means of the poisoned framework of the “seizure of power”. The Social Democrats left the leading role to Bela Kun who – completely caught in the trap – became the spokesman and the guarantor for a series of measures that could only destroy his credibility.[14]

“Unity” creates division within the revolutionary forces

The declaration of the “unified” party managed in the first place to halt the regroupment of the left Social Democrats with the Communists, who had been cleverly seduced by the radicalisation of the centrists. But the worst thing was that there was opened up a Pandora's box among the Communists, who split up into various tendencies. The majority, around Bela Kun, became hostage to the Social Democrats; another tendency, formed around Szamuelly, remained within the party but tried to carry out an independent policy; the majority of the anarchists split to form the Anarchist Union, which still supported the government but with an oppositional stance.[15]

The Party, that had been formed only a few months previously and had only just begun to develop its organisation and intervention, dissolved completely. Debate became impossible and its old members were in permanent opposition to one another. They did not have the support of a framework of principles or independent analysis, but were constantly dragged onwards by the evolution of events and the subtle manoeuvres of the centrist Social Democrats.

The disorientation about what was really happening in Hungary even affected Lenin, a militant with considerable experience and lucidity. In his complete works there is a transcription of the discussions with Bela Kun on 22nd and 23rd March 1919.[16] Lenin asks Bela Kun: “Please inform us what real guarantees you have that the new Hungarian government will actually be a communist, and not simply a socialist, government, i.e. one of the traitor-socialists. Have the Communists a majority in the government? When will the Congress of Soviets take place? What does the socialists’ recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat really amount to?” Lenin asks the right basic questions. However, as everything depends on personal contact and not on collective international debate, Lenin concludes: “Comrade Bela Kun's reply was quite satisfactory and dispelled all our doubts. It appears that the Left Socialists had visited Bela Kun in prison to consult him about forming a government. And it was only these Left Socialists, who sympathised with the Communists, and also people from the Centre who formed the new government, while the Right Socialists, the traitor-socialists, the irreconcilables and incorrigibles, so to speak, left the Party and not a single worker followed them.” We can see from this that Lenin was at least badly informed or else he did not evaluate the situation correctly, because the Social Democratic centre was in the majority in the government and the left Social Democrats were in the hands of their centrist “friends”.

Carried away by a debilitating optimism, Lenin concludes: “The bourgeoisie itself has handed over power to the Communists in Hungary. The bourgeoisie has shown to the whole world that when there is a serious crisis, when the nation is in danger, it is unable to govern. The only power that the people really want is the power of the councils of worker, soldier and peasant deputies.”

Once hoisted to power, the workers' councils are sabotaged

In reality this power existed only on paper. In the first place, it was the Unified Socialist Party that took power without any participation whatsoever on the part of the Budapest council or any other council in the country.[17]  Although the government formally declared itself to be “subordinate” to the Workers' Council of Budapest, in fact it was the one who issued decrees, orders and decisions of every kind, as the facts attest, and the Council had no more than a relative right of veto. The workers' councils were tied up in the straitjacket of parliamentary practice. “Proletarian affairs continued to be administered – or more precisely sabotaged – by the old bureaucracy and not by the workers' councils themselves, which therefore never managed to become active organisms.”[18]

The most brutal blow against the councils was the government's call for elections in order to form a “National Assembly of Workers' Councils”. The electoral system imposed by the government was to concentrate the elections on two dates (7th and 14th April 1919), “following the modalities of formal democracy (vote using electoral lists, with cubicles, etc)”[19]. This is a reproduction of the mechanism typical of bourgeois elections, which simply sabotages the very essence of the workers' councils. Whereas in the case of bourgeois democracy the elected organs are the result of a vote made by a sum of atomised individuals who are completely separated one from another, the Workers' Councils are based on a radically new and different concept of political action: decisions and action to be taken are thought out and discussed during debates in which a huge and organised mass participates and the latter do not just make the decisions but they themselves carry them out.

The triumph of the electoral manoeuvre was due to the clever manoeuvres of the Social Democrats, who exploited the confusions existing not only within the masses but also within the majority of its Communist militants and especially in Bela Kun's group. Years of participation in elections and in parliament – activities that were necessary for proletarian groups during the ascendant period of capitalism – had produced habits and a vision belonging to a past that had decisively ended and which impeded a clear reply to the new situation; one that necessitated a complete break with parliamentarism and electoralism.

The electoral mechanism and the demand for discipline to the “unified” party meant that, as Szanto put it, “in presenting the candidates for election to the councils, the Communists were obliged to defend the Social Democratic cause and even so, many of them were not elected”; and he adds that this enabled the Social Democrats to give vent to “a revolutionary and communist verbiage that made them seem more revolutionary than the Communists!”[20]

This policy produced lively resistance. The April elections were contested in the 8th district of Budapest and Szamuelly managed to get the official list of his own party annulled (!) and to impose elections based on debate at mass assemblies. This gave the victory to a coalition of dissidents from the PSUH and to the anarchists, regrouped around Szamuelly.

Other attempts to bring to life real workers' councils took place in mid-April. A movement of the district councils managed to hold a Conference of District Councils in Budapest, which harshly criticised the “soviet government” and put forward a series of proposals regarding provisioning, the counter-revolutionary repression, the relationship with the peasantry, the continuation of the war; and it proposed – just one month after the elections! - new elections to the councils. Held hostage to the Social Democrats, Bela Kun made an appearance at the last session of the conference in the role of duty fireman and with a speech brimming with demagogy: “We are already so far to the left that it is impossible to go further. To veer still further to the left could only be counter-revolution.”[21]

Economic re-organisation based on the unions against the councils

The attempt at revolution came up against economic chaos, scarcity and the sabotage of the bosses. Although it is true that the proletarian revolution's centre of gravity is the political power of the councils, this does not in any way mean that it can afford to neglect the control of production. Just because it is impossible to begin the revolutionary transformation of production towards communism until the revolution is victorious internationally, we should not conclude that the proletariat does not need to carry out an economic policy from the very beginning of the revolution. This has to deal with two main issues in particular: the first is to adopt all possible measures to reduce the exploitation of the workers and to guarantee them the maximum free time so that they can devote their energy to the active participation in the workers’ councils. With this in mind, under pressure from the Workers' Council of Budapest, the government took measures such as eliminating piecework and reducing the working day, with the aim of “enabling the workers to participate in the political and cultural life of the revolution.”[22]  The second issue is the struggle to guarantee supplies and prevent sabotage in order to prevent hunger and the inevitable economic chaos from sounding the death knell of the revolution. In the face of this problem, from January 1919 the workers formed factory councils and councils by sector; and, as we saw in the first article in this series, the Budapest Council adopted an audacious plan to control supplies satisfying basic needs. But the government, which should have been supporting them, carried out a systematic policy of taking production and supplies out of their hands and handing it over increasingly to the unions. Bela Kun made serious mistakes here. In May 1919, he declared: “Our industrial apparatus is based on the unions. The latter must be emancipated and transformed into powerful corporations that encompass first the majority and then all of the individuals in a given branch of industry. The unions participate in technical management and their activity tends to gradually take on the task of management as a whole. In this way they guarantee that the main economic organs of the regime and the working population pull together and that the workers get used to conducting economic life.”[23] Roland Bardy criticises this analysis: “Imprisoned in an abstract framework, Bela Kun was unable to realise that the logic of his position led to handing back to the socialists the power that had been gradually taken from them (...) For a long period the unions would be the bastion of reformist Social Democracy and would constantly come into direct competition with the soviets.”[24]

The government managed to ensure that only the unionised workers and peasants had access to the co-operatives and to the stewardship of consumption. This gave the unions an essential lever of control. Bela Kun theorised this: “the communist regime is that of an organised society. Anyone who wants to live and to be successful must belong to an organisation, so the unions should not place obstacles to membership.”[25] As Bardy points out: “Opening up the unions to everyone was the best way to destroy the proletarian majority within them and, in the long term, make it possible to 'democratically' re-establish class society” in fact, “the old bosses, investors and their powerful valets, did not actively participate in production (industry and agriculture) but rather in the administration or in the legal institutions. By enlarging this sector it was possible for the old bourgeoisie to survive as a parasitic class and to have access to the distribution of produce, without even being actively integrated into the productive process.”[26] This system favoured speculation and the black market, without ever managing to resolve the problems of famine and scarcity, which caused such suffering to the workers in the large cities.

The government encouraged the formation of large-scale agricultural exploitation directed by a system of “collectivisation”. This was a big swindle. “Commissars of production” were placed at the head of the collective farms. When they were not arrogant bureaucrats, these were...the old landowners! The latter continued to occupy their properties and insisted that the peasants continue to call them “master”.

The collective farms were supposed to spread the revolution to the countryside and guarantee supplies but they did neither. The day workers and poor peasants were profoundly disappointed by the reality of the collective farms and took an increasing distance from the regime. Their managers demanded a deal that the government was unable to guarantee: to supply agricultural products in exchange for fertiliser, tractors and machines. So they sold their produce to speculators and hoarders with the result that hunger and scarcity reached such levels that, in desperation, the Workers' Council of Budapest organised the transformation of parks and gardens into zones for agricultural production.

The evolution of the international revolutionary struggle and the situation in Hungary

The only hope for the Hungarian proletariat to break out of the trap in which it was caught lay in the development of the international proletarian struggle. There was great hope in the period from March to June 1919 in spite of the massive blow represented by the crushing of the Berlin insurrection in January.[27] In March 1919 the Communist International was formed, April saw the proclamation of the Republic of Bavarian Councils, which was tragically crushed by the Social Democratic government. Revolutionary agitation in Austria, where workers' councils were strengthened, was also aborted by the manoeuvring of a provocateur, Bettenheim, who incited the young Communist Party to a premature insurrection that was easily crushed (May 1919). In Great Britain the huge strike of the Clyde shipbuilders broke out. Workers' councils were formed and this gave rise to mutinies in the army. Strike movements took place in Holland, Norway, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy and even in the United States. But these movements were still too immature. This situation also gave a significant margin for manoeuvre to the French and British army, which remained mobilised at the end of the world war and were now charged with the dirty work of policemen to crush the revolutionary nuclei. Their intervention was concentrated on Russia (1919-20) and Hungary (from April 1919). When the first mutinies broke out in the army and in the face of campaigns against the war being waged against revolutionary Russia, these troops were rapidly replaced by colonial troops that were much more resilient when used against the proletariat.

As regards Hungary, the French command drew the lessons of the soldiers' refusal to repress the Szeged insurrection. France took a back seat and encouraged the neighbouring states to move against Hungary: Rumania and Czechoslovakia were to be the spearhead of these operations. These states combined the job of policeman with the conquest of territory at the experience of the Hungarian state.

Soviet Russia was under siege and unable to supply any military support. The attempt of the Red Army and Nestor Makhno’s guerrillas to launch a western offensive in June 1919 in order to open up a communication route with Hungary, came to nothing because of General Denikin's violent counter-attack.

But the main problem was that the proletariat's enemy was inside its own house.[28] On 30th March, the government of the “workers' dictatorship” pompously created the Red Army. It was the same old army under a new name. All the posts in the command structure remained in the hands of the old generals, who were supervised by a body of political commissars dominated by the Social Democrats and from which the Communists were excluded.

The government rejected a proposal from the Communists to dissolve the police force. The workers, however, took it upon themselves to disarm the guards; several Budapest factories passed resolutions on this point and they were immediately put into action: “So, only the Social Democrats were allowed to give permission but they did not authorise their disarmament. It was only after a long period of resistance that they agreed to sack the police and the security guards.”[29] The formation of the Red Army was then decreed, integrating into its ranks the sacked police officers!

In this way, the army and the police, the backbone of the bourgeois state, remained intact thanks to these little manoeuvres. So it is not surprising that the Red Army disintegrated so easily in the face of the April offensive launched by Rumanian and Czech troops. Several regiments even went over to the enemy.

On 30th April, when invading troops were at the gates of Budapest, the mobilisation of the workers managed to reverse the situation. The anarchists and Szamuelly's group carried out powerful agitation. The 1st May demonstration was a massive success, there were slogans demanding “the armament of the people” and Szamuelly's group called for “all power to the workers' councils”. On 2nd May there was a huge meeting demanding the voluntary mobilisation of the workers. Within a few days in Budapest alone 40,000 of them had enrolled in the Red Army.

The Red Army, reinforced by the incorporation of masses of workers and by the arrival of international brigades of French and Russian volunteers, launched a huge offensive which obtained a series of victories over the Rumanian, Serbian and particularly over the Czech troops, which suffered an enormous defeat and whose soldiers deserted en masse. In Slovakia the actions of the workers and rebel soldiers led to the formation of a workers' council which, supported by the Red Army, proclaimed the Slovak Republic of Councils (16th June). The Council concluded an alliance with the Hungarian Republic and published a Manifesto addressed to all Czech workers.

This success alerted the world bourgeoisie: “On 8th June, the Paris Peace Conference, alarmed by the success of the Red Army, issued another ultimatum to Budapest, in which it demanded that the Red Army stop advancing and invited the Hungarian government to Paris to 'discuss Hungary's borders'. There was a second ultimatum, in which the use of force was threatened if the ultimatum was not respected.”[30]

The Social Democrat Bohm, with the support of Bela Kun, began negotiations “at any cost” with the French state, which demanded that the first step be to abandon the Slovak Republic of Councils: this was accepted on 24th June. This Republic was crushed on 28th of the same month and all its known militants were hanged the day after.

At this point the Entente changed tactic. The demands of the Rumanian troops and their territorial pretensions had acted as a spur to tighten up the ranks of the Red Army, which had contributed to its May victories. A provisional Hungarian government was hastily formed around two brothers of the former president Karolyi, which was based in the zone occupied by the Rumanians, but it was then forced to withdraw reluctantly in order to give the impression of an “independent government”. At this point the right wing of Social Democracy re-appeared, giving its open support to this government.

On 24th January there was an attempted uprising in Budapest, organised by the right wing social democrats. The government negotiated with the insurgents and gave way to its demand to ban Lenin's Boys, the international brigades and the regiments controlled by the anarchists. This repression precipitated the disintegration of the Red Army: violent confrontations broke out within its ranks and desertions and mutinies became increasingly frequent.

The final defeat and brutal repression

The working population of Budapest was utterly demoralised. Many workers fled the city with their families. In the countryside the peasant revolts against the government increased. Rumania made a new push in its military offensive. From the middle of June the Social Democrats re-united and demanded that Bela Kun resign and that a new government be formed without the participation of the Communists. On 20th July, Bela Kun launched a desperate military offensive against the Rumanian troops with what was left of the Red Army, which finally surrendered on 23rd. On 31st July, Bela Kun at last resigned and a new government of Social Democrats and unions was formed, which unleashed a brutal repression against the communists, the anarchists and every militant worker who was unable to flee. Szamuelly was assassinated on 2nd August.

On 6th August this government was in its turn overthrown by a handful of army officers who did not come up against any resistance. Rumanian troops entered Budapest. The prisoners were subjected to forms of torture worthy of the Middle Ages, before being murdered. Wounded soldiers were thrown out of the hospitals and dragged onto the streets, where they were subjected to all kinds of humiliation before being killed. In the villages, the troops forced the peasants to organise trials against their neighbours who were under suspicion, and to torture and kill them. Any refusal was punished by setting fire to their houses with the occupants inside.

Whereas 129 counter-revolutionaries were executed during the 133 days that the Soviet Republic lasted, more than 5,000 people were assassinated between 15th and 31st August. There were 75,000 arrests. Mass trials began in October; 15,000 workers were tried by military tribunals, which gave out the death penalty and hard labour.

Between 1920 and 1944, the vicious dictatorship of Admiral Horty was supported by democrats in the west, in spite of his fascist sympathies, in gratitude for services rendered against the proletariat.

C.Mir 4/9/10

Part 1 [13]

We saw in the previous part of the Manifesto [18] (published in International Review n°143) how it violently opposed any united front with the social democrats. In contrast, it called for a united front of all genuine revolutionary elements, among which it included the parties of the Third International as well as the Communist Workers’ Parties (KAPD in Germany). Faced with the national question that arose in the soviet republics, dealt with in the third part of this document, it advocated making a united front with the CPs of these republics which, according to the CI, “will have the same rights as the Bolshevik Party”.

However, the most important point discussed in this penultimate part of the Manifesto is that concerning the NEP.

The position of the Manifesto on this question is the following: “The NEP is the direct result of the situation of the productive forces in our country […] What capitalism did to smaller producers and landowners in agriculture and industry in the advanced capitalist countries (in England, the United States, Germany), the proletarian power must do in Russia.” In fact, this is not very different from Lenin’s view that the NEP was a form of state capitalism. In 1918, Lenin already argued that state capitalism constituted a step forward, a step towards socialism for the backward economy of Russia. In his speech at the Congress of the Bolshevik Party in 1922 he returned to this theme, stressing the fundamental difference between state capitalism under the direction of the reactionary bourgeoisie, and state capitalism administered by the proletarian state. The Manifesto sets out a series of suggestions for the “improvement” of the NEP, including independence from foreign capital.

Where the Manifesto diverges from Lenin and the official position of the Bolshevik Party is in stressing that: “The greatest peril linked to the New Economic Policy resides in the fact that the conditions of life of a very large number of leading cadres have begun to change rapidly.” It advocates measures for the regeneration of the soviet system: “In order to prevent the process of the degeneration of the New Economic Policy into a new policy of exploitation of the proletariat, it is necessary to lead the proletariat towards the accomplishment of the great tasks which are in front of it by a consistent realisation of the principles of proletarian democracy, which will give the working class the means to defend the conquests of the October revolution against all dangers wherever they come from. The internal regime of the party and the relationship of the party with the proletariat must be radically changed in this sense.”

The national question

The achievement of the united front tactic was especially difficult because of the national and cultural variety of peoples in the USSR.

The pernicious influence of the leading group of the RCP (B) is particularly revealed on the level of the national question. To any criticism and all protests: endless proscriptions (“systematic division of the workers’ party”); nominations which sometimes have an autocratic character (unpopular people who don’t have the confidence of local party comrades); orders given to the republics (to peoples who for decades and centuries have lived under the uninterrupted yoke of the Romanovs, personifying the domination of the Great Russian Nation), giving new vigour to chauvinist tendencies within the working masses, even penetrating into the national organisations of the Communist Party.

In these Russian republics the Russian revolution was indubitably accomplished by the local proletariat with the active support of the peasants. And if such and such national communist party developed an important and necessary work, this consisted primarily of supporting local organisations of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and its local supporters. But once the revolution was accomplished, the praxis of the party, of the leading group of the RCP (B), inspired by defiance towards local demands, ignored local experiences and imposed on the national communist parties various controllers, often of different nationalities, which exasperates chauvinist tendencies and gives the impression to the working masses that these territories are submitting to a regime of occupation. The realisation of the principles of proletarian democracy, with the institution of local state organisations and the party, will eliminate the roots of differences between workers and peasants in all nationalities. To effect this “united front” in the republics which have accomplished the social revolution, to effect proletarian democracy, means the institution of a national organisation within the International with communist parties having the same rights as the RCP (B) and constituting a particular section of the International. But since all the socialist republics have certain common tasks and that the communist party on the whole develops a leading role, one must convoke - for discussion and decisions on the common problems of all the nationalities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - periodic general conferences of the party which elect, with a view to stable activity, an executive of the communist parties of the USSR. Such an organisational structure of the communist parties of the USSR can uproot, and without doubt will uproot, the distrust within the proletariat and it will moreover lend enormous importance to the agitation of the communist movement in every country.

The NEP (New Economic Policy)

The NEP is the direct result of the situation of the productive forces in our country. 

And really, suppose that our country is covered by a thick forest of factory chimneys, the land cultivated by tractors and not by ploughs, that wheat is harvested using reapers not a sickle, threshed with a threshing machine and not a sickle, winnowed by a winnowing machine, not a shovel; all these machines driven by a tractor - in these circumstances would we need a New Economic Policy? Not at all.

And imagine now that last year in Germany, France and England there was a social revolution, and that here in Russia the club and the plough have not been retired, replaced by Queen machine, but reign supreme. Just as they reign today (especially the plough), and the lack of animals requires a man to harness himself with his children, his wife following the plough. Would we then need a New Economic Policy? Yes.

And for what? For the same thing, to support a peasant family culture with its plough and, by this, to replace the plough with the tractor, and so change the material basis of a rural petty bourgeois economy in order to expand the economic base of the social revolution. 

What capitalism did to smaller producers and landowners in agriculture and industry in the advanced capitalist countries (in England, the United States, Germany), the proletarian power must do in Russia.

But how to accomplish this task? By ordering, shouting: “Hey you, petty bourgeois, disappear!”? You can make as many decrees as you like ordering a petty bourgeois element to disappear, the petty bourgeoisie still lives, like a fighting cock. And what would the pure proletarians do without it in a country like Russia? They would starve! Could we gather all the petty bourgeois elements into a collective commune? Impossible. So it will not be by decrees that we will fight the petty bourgeoisie, but by submitting it to the needs of a rational, mechanised, homogeneous economy. By the free struggle of economies based on the use of machines and new technical improvements against all other archaic modes of production that still dominate in a small artisanal economy. We cannot build communism with a plough.

But imagine that the socialist revolution took place in Germany or England. Would a New Economic Policy be possible at any time of the revolutionary process? 

It depends entirely on the importance and scale of petty bourgeois production. If its role in the life of the country is insignificant, we can dispense with the New Economic Policy and, by speeding up the legislative activity of the proletarian dictatorship, introduce new work methods. 

And where petty bourgeois production exerts a considerable influence on the economic life of the country, and the industry of the city and the countryside cannot do without it, the New Economic Policy will take place. The more large industries depend on small-scale production, the larger the scale of the NEP will be and its duration determined by the speed of the triumphant march of national socialist industry. 

In Russia, the New Economic Policy will last for a long time - not because anyone wants it to, but because one cannot do otherwise. Until our socialist industry ceases to depend on petty bourgeois production and property, there will be no question of suspending the NEP. 

The NEP and the countryside

The question of changing economic policy, of suspending the NEP, will be put on the agenda after the disappearance of petty bourgeois domination in agriculture. 

Currently, the strength and power of the socialist revolution are totally conditioned by the struggle for industrialisation, for the tractor over the plough. If the tractor tears the Russian land from the plough, socialism will win, but if the plough chases away the tractor, capitalism will win. The New Economic Policy will only disappear with the plough.

But before the sun rises, the dew can put out your eyes;[1] and for our eyes, and those of the socialist revolution, to stay healthy and safe, we must follow the right line towards the proletariat and the peasantry.

Our country is agrarian. We must not forget that the peasantry here is strongest and must be attracted to our side. We cannot abandon it to bourgeois ideology, because it would be the death of soviet Russia and paralyse the world revolution for a long time. The form of peasant organisation is a matter of life and death for the Russian and international revolution.

Russia entered the path of socialist revolution with 80% of its population still living on individual holdings. We pushed the peasant to expropriate the expropriators, to seize the land. But he did not understand this expropriation as the industrial worker understands it. His rural being determined his consciousness. Every peasant, with his individual holding, dreamed of increasing it. Landholdings did not have the same internal organisation as industrial enterprises in the cities, which is why it was necessary to "socialise the land” even though this was a regression, a decline of the productive forces, a step backwards. By expropriating more or less the expropriators, we could not think of immediately changing a mode of production with the existing productive forces, the peasant with his individual holding. We must never forget that the shape of the economy is entirely determined by the degree of development of productive forces, and our wooden plough cannot in any way be predisposed to the mode of socialist production.

There is no reason to believe that we can influence an owner by our communist propaganda and that he will then feel at home in a commune or a collective.

For three years, proletariat and bourgeoisie battled to win over the peasantry. Whoever gained ascendancy over the latter won the fight. We won because we were the strongest, most powerful. We must strengthen that power, but at the same time realise one thing: it will not be consolidated by the quality or quantity of speeches by our chatterboxes, but by the growth of the productive forces, by the triumph of the winnower over the shovel, the mower over the scythe, the combine harvester over the sickle, the tractor over the plough. In this way the socialised economy will triumph over petty bourgeois production and property.

Who can prove that the peasant is opposed to mowers, winnowers, reapers, binders and tractors? No one. No one can prove that the peasant will never adopt socialised forms of economy, but we know he will arrive on a tractor and not by yoking himself to the plough.

G.V. Plekhanov tells of a native African tribe that had it against the Europeans and considered abominable everything they did. The imitation of European manners, customs and ways of working was seen as a cardinal sin. But the same natives, who used stone axes, having seen the Europeans handle axes of steel, soon began to obtain the latter, despite chanting magic spells and hiding.

Certainly, for the peasant, all that the communists do and all that tastes of the commune is abominable. But we must force him to substitute the tractor for the plough, just like the natives substituted the steel axe for the stone. It is much easier for us to do this than for the Europeans in Africa.

If we want to develop the influence of the proletariat in the peasant milieu, we shouldn’t remind the cultivator too often that it's the working class that gave him the land, because he may well answer: “Thank you, my good man, and now, why are you here? To levy a tax in kind? This tax, you will have it, but don't say yesterday you did a lot of good things, tell us what good things you can do today. Otherwise, my colonel, fuck you!" 

All the counter-revolutionary parties, from the Mensheviks to the SRs and the monarchists included, based their pseudo-scientific theories of the inevitable coming of a bourgeois paradise on the thesis that in Russia capitalism has not yet exhausted all its potential, that there remains great potential for development and prosperity, that it will gradually embrace all agriculture by introducing industrial working methods. This is why, they concluded, if the Bolsheviks made a coup d’etat, if they took the power to build socialism without waiting for the necessary material conditions, they must either transform themselves into a true bourgeois democracy, or the forces developed inside would explode politically, overthrowing the communists resistant to economic laws and putting in place a coalition of Martov, Chernov, Miliukov, whose regime would give a free reign to the development of the country’s productive forces.

Of course, everyone knows that Russia is a country more backward than England, the United States, Germany, France etc. But everyone must understand: if the proletariat in this country was strong enough to take power, to expropriate the expropriators, remove the stubborn resistance of the oppressors supported by the bourgeoisie of the entire world, then this proletariat is certainly strong enough to supplant the anarchic capitalist mechanisation of agriculture through a consistent and planned mechanisation favourable to industry and the proletarian power, supported by the conscious aspirations of the peasants to see their work made easier.

Who says this is easy to do? No one. Especially after the immense devastation that the SRs, Mensheviks, bourgeoisie and landowners have created by triggering the civil war. It is hard to do but it will be done, even if the Mensheviks and SRs, allied with Cadets and the monarchists, will leave no stone unturned in pushing for the return of the bourgeoisie.

We need to ask this question in a practical setting. Not long ago, comrade Lenin wrote a letter to émigré American comrades thanking them for the technical assistance they had lent us in organising model sovkhozes and kolkhozes using American tractors for ploughing and harvesting. And Pravda published a report of the work of such a commune in Perm.

Like any communist, we are delighted that the proletarians of America come to our aid, where it is needed most. But our attention was involuntarily drawn to a fragment of this report saying that the tractors had been idle for a long time because: 1) gasoline had proved impure and 2) they had been obliged to import it from afar, with delays; 3) drivers in the village had taken a long time learning how to handle the tractors, 4) roads and especially bridges were not good for the tractors.

If the mechanisation of agriculture determines the fate of our revolution and is a matter of concern for the world proletariat, it should develop on a more solid foundation. Without renouncing aid of such a magnitude (that we grant our overseas comrades) or diminishing its importance, we have yet to think about the results it will enable us to obtain.

If the mechanisation of agriculture determines the fate of our revolution and is therefore not alien to the proletariat of the world, it must develop on a firmer basis. Without renouncing aid of this magnitude (which our overseas comrades have granted us) or diminishing its importance, we have yet to think about the results it will help us obtain.

First we need to draw attention to the fact that these tractors are not produced in our factories. Perhaps they don’t have to be produced in Russia, but if this assistance takes the scope, our agriculture will be linked to the industry of the United States.

Now we must ask what type of tractor, what engine is applicable to Russian conditions. 1) It must use oil as fuel and not be unreliable due to poor quality of gasoline; 2) it must be easy to use so that not only professional drivers know how to drive it and so we can easily train drivers as needed; 3) you must have strength levels: 100, 80, 60, 40, 30, 25, depending on the type of soil, to plough virgin or already cultivated land; 4) it must be a universal motor for ploughing, threshing, mowing, transportation of wheat; 5) it needs to be manufactured in Russian factories and not go in search of parts overseas; otherwise instead of an alliance of city and countryside, there will be an alliance of the countryside and foreign traders; 6) it must use a local fuel.

After the horrors of war and famine, our country promises to the machine in agriculture a triumph larger and more imminent than anywhere in the world. For now, even the simple wooden plough, the main tool of work in our countryside, is lacking, and where there are any, there are no animals to harness. Machines could do things impossible to imagine.

Our experts believe that blind imitation of the United States would be harmful to our economy; they also think that despite everything, mass production of engines essential to our agriculture is possible with our technical means. This task is even easier to solve as our steel industry is always complaining about lack of orders, with factories operating at half their capacity, and therefore at a loss; so give them orders.

Mass production of a simple universal agricultural machine, that trained mechanics could quickly drive, which would use oil and not be at the whim of poor quality gasoline, must be organised in the regions of Russia where it is easy to transport oil either by train or by boat. One could use oil motors in the south of Russia, Ukraine, central Russia, in the Volga and Kama regions; it would not work in Siberia because the transport of oil would be very expensive. The vast area of Siberia is a problem for our industry. But there are other types of fuel in Siberia, including wood; this is why steam engines could occupy an important place. If we succeed in solving the problem of wood distillation, of extracting wood spirit in Siberia, we could use wood engines. Which of the two engines will be the most cost-effective, technical specialists will decide based on practical results.

On 10 November 1920, Pravda, under the heading “Gigantic Enterprise” reported the news of the constitution of the “International Society of Aid for the Renaissance of Industry and Agriculture in the Urals”. Some very important state trusts and “International Workers’ Aid” control this society which already disposes of capital of two million gold roubles and is entering into business with the American firm “Keith” by acquiring a large number of tractors; a business evidently judged advantageous.

The participation of foreign capital is necessary, but in what domain? Here, we want to submit to everyone the following questions: if “International Workers’ Aid” can help us thanks to its relationship with the firm “Keith”, why can’t it, with any other firm, organise amongst ourselves, in Russia, the production of machines which are necessary for our agriculture? Wouldn’t it be preferable to use the two million gold roubles that the Society possesses in the production of tractors here, amongst us? Is it really necessary to give our gold to the firm “Keith” and to link to the latter the fate of our agricultural economy?

In a technical book, we read that to subject agricultural regions in occupied countries to their certain economic domination, German firms came with tractors, ploughed the land and then sold the machines to the farmers for a penny. It goes without saying that these firms thereafter asked a high price, but the tractors were sold already. This was conquest without losing a single drop of blood. 

The willingness of the Keith firm to help us and give us credit looks similar and we should be very careful. 

While it is relatively unlikely that the Keith firm can provide us with tractors adapted to Russian conditions, even poorly adapted tractors will be a guaranteed success given the deplorable conditions of our agriculture, because anything would succeed in such a situation. If the necessary production of engines adapted to Russian conditions is possible anyway, why do we need the Keith firm? Because, as far as we know, it is not definitive that we cannot organise production of the necessary machinery ourselves.

If the ideas and calculations of the Petrograd engineers are actually correct, the two million gold roubles awarded by this Society would be a much more solid investment for an economic recovery in the Urals than the Keith firm’s aid.

In any case, we must discuss this question seriously, because it has a significance that is not only economic but also political, not only for soviet Russia but also the world revolution. And we cannot solve it at a stroke. We need to know what we could do with this gold, and think: if the right people and the authorities decide it is not even worth a try and it is better to go directly overseas, so be it.

We're afraid of having “staircase wit”:[2] first we give the gold to Mr Keith, then we make our disapproval public, all the while boasting that we are not afraid to admit our mistakes.

If we mechanise agriculture in Russia, by producing the necessary machinery in our factories rather than purchasing them from the foreign Keith firm, city and countryside will be indissolubly linked by the growth of the productive forces, brought closer to one another; we will then need to consolidate this ideological reconciliation by organising “unions of a particular type” (after the RCP programme). These are the indispensable conditions for the peaceful abolition of capitalist relations, enlargement of the basis of the socialist revolution with the help of a new economic policy.[3]

Our socialist revolution will destroy petty bourgeois production and ownership not by declaring socialisation, municipalisation, nationalisation, but by a conscious and consistent struggle of modern methods of production at the expense of outdated, disadvantageous methods, by the progressive introduction of socialism. This is exactly the essence of the leap from capitalist necessity to socialist freedom.

New economic and political policy put simply

And whatever "right-thinking" people say, it is firstly the active working class and secondly the peasantry (and not the communist officials, even the best and the brightest) who are able to implement this policy.

The New Economic Policy determined by the state of productive forces of our country hides within it dangers for the proletariat. We must not only show that the revolution stands up to a practical examination on the level of the economy and that socialist economic forms are in fact better than capitalist ones, but we must also affirm our socialist position without engendering an oligarchic caste which keeps economic and political power above all due to a fear of the whole working class. To prevent the risk of the degeneration of the New Economic Policy into a new policy for exploitation of the proletariat, it is necessary to lead the proletariat to the accomplishment of the great tasks in front of it by a consistent realisation of the principles of proletarian democracy, which will give the working class the means to defend the conquests of the October revolution against all dangers wherever they come from. The internal regime of the party and the relationship of the party with the proletariat must be radically changed in this sense.

The greatest peril linked to the New Economic Policy resides in the fact that the conditions of life of a very large number of leading cadres have begun to change rapidly. When such a situation arrives at a point where the members of the administration of certain trusts, for example the Sugar Trust, receive a monthly salary of 200 gold roubles, get a free or modestly priced fine apartment, have a car for their travelling and have other possibilities for the necessities of life at low prices, whereas the workers, although communist, beyond the modest food rations accorded to them by the state receive only 4 to 5 roubles a month on average (and from this they must also pay rent and electricity), it is really quite obvious that there is now a profound difference in the mode of life of one and the other. If this state of things doesn’t change very quickly but exercises its influence ten or twenty years hence, the economic condition of the one and the other will determine their consciousness and they will collide from two opposing camps. We must understand that even if the - often renewed - leading posts are occupied by persons of very low social origins, they occupy a position which is in no way proletarian. They form a very slender social layer. Influenced by their economic condition they consider themselves the only ones appropriate for certain reserved tasks, the only ones capable of transforming the economy of the country, of satisfying the demands of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the factory councils, of workers’ delegates, with the help of the verse: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.

In reality, they consider these demands as expressions of the influence of petty-bourgeois elements, of counter-revolutionary forces. Thus, here, without any doubt, a danger threatens the conquests of the proletariat and it comes from a side where one would least expect it. For us the danger is that proletarian power degenerates into the hegemony of a powerful group deciding to take political and economic power into its own hands, naturally under the pretence of very noble intentions“in the interests of the proletariat, of the world revolution and other very high ideals”. Yes, the danger of an oligarchic degeneration really exists. 

But in countries where petty-bourgeois production has a decisive influence, where economic policy helps to accelerate and strengthen the most individualistic views of the petty-bourgeois landowner, we must exert constant pressure on the foundations of the petty bourgeois element. And who will do this? Will it be the same officials, these saviours of distressed humanity? Even if they have all the wisdom of Solomon - or Lenin - they will still not be able to do it. Only the working class is capable of this, led by the party that lives its life, suffers its sufferings, its maladies, a party that is not afraid of the active participation of the proletariat in the life of the country. 

It is harmful and counter-revolutionary to tell fables to the proletariat to lull its consciousness. But what are we told? “Stay silent, attend demonstrations when you are invited, sing the Internationale when necessary, the rest will be done without you by brave boys, almost workers like you, but who are smarter than you and know everything about communism, so stay quiet and soon you will enter the socialist kingdom”. This, we are told, is revolutionary socialism pure and simple. It is they who defend the idea that brilliant individuals, full of dynamism and armed with diverse talents, from all classes of society (and this seems to be the case) can take this grey mass (the working class) to a high and perfect kingdom, where there will be neither disease nor punishments, nor sighing, but life everlasting. This is exactly the style of the Socialist-Revolutionary “holy fathers”.

We need to replace existing practice with a new practice based on autonomous working class activity and not on intimidation by the party. 

In 1917, we needed a developed democracy and in 1918, 1919 and 1920, it was necessary to cut out all the apparatus leaders and replace them with the autocratic power of officials appointed from above who decreed all; in 1922, faced with very different tasks than before, it is beyond doubt that we need other forms of organisation and working methods. In the factories and plants (domestic) we must organise councils of workers’ deputies to serve as the main nuclei of state power; we must put into practice the point of the RCP programme that says: “The Soviet state brings together the state apparatus and the masses and an element in this is the fact that the production unit (factory, plant) becomes the main nucleus of the state instead of the district" (cf. the RCP program, policy division, item 5). It is these main nuclei of state power in the factories and plants that must be restored in councils of workers’ deputies, which will take the place of our wise comrades who are currently leading the economy and the country.

Perhaps some attentive readers will accuse us of factionalism (article 102 of the Criminal Code), of undermining the sacred foundations of proletarian power. There is nothing to say to such readers. 

But others say: “Show us a country where workers enjoy the same rights and freedoms as in Russia”. That said, they think they deserve the Order of the Red Flag for crushing a faction, without pain and bloodshed at that. To these, we can say something. Show us then, dear friends, a country where power belongs to the working class? Such a country does not exist, so the question is absurd. The problem is not to be more liberal, more democratic than an imperialist power (which would be no great merit); the problem is to solve the tasks facing the only country in the world that made the coup of October, to prevent the NEP (New Economic Policy) from becoming an “NEP” (New Exploitation of the Proletariat), so that in ten years the proletariat, fooled again, is not forced to resume its perhaps bloody struggle to overthrow the oligarchy and ensure its major conquests. The proletariat can ensure this by directly participating in solving these tasks, establishing a workers’ democracy, putting into practice one of the main points of the RCP programme that says: “bourgeois democracy restricts itself to formally declaring rights and political freedoms”, namely freedom of association, press, equality for all citizens. But in reality, administrative practice and especially the economic enslavement of the workers does not allow them to fully enjoy these rights and freedoms.

Instead of formally proclaiming them, proletarian democracy puts them into practice, above all for classes of people formerly oppressed by capitalism, i.e. the proletariat and peasantry. For this, the soviet power expropriated the premises, printing works, paper depots of the bourgeoisie, and put them at the disposal of workers and their organisations.

The task of the RCP (Bolshevik) is to enable the broad masses of working people to enjoy democratic rights and freedoms on a more and more developed material basis (cf. the RCP programme, policy division, item 3).

It would have been absurd and counter-revolutionary to claim the achievement of these programmatic theses in 1918, 1919 or 1920; but it is even more absurd and counter-revolutionary to pronounce against their realisation in 1922.

If we want to improve the position of soviet Russia in the world, or restore our industry, or expand the material basis of our socialist revolution by mechanising agriculture, or face the dangerous effects of a New Economic Policy, inevitably it comes back to the working class which alone is capable of doing everything. The less it is strong, the stronger it must organise itself

And the good boys who occupy the offices cannot resolve such grand tasks.

Unfortunately the majority of the leaders of the RCP doesn’t think in the same way. To all questions of workers’ democracy, Lenin, in a speech made to the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, responded thus: “To every union which poses, in general, the question of whether the unions should participate in production I would say: stop such chattering (applause), rather answer practically and tell me (if you occupy a responsible post, if you have the authority, if you are a militant of the communist party or a union): have you organised production well, in how many years, how many people do you have under you, a thousand, tens of thousands? Give me a list of those to whom you have confided an economic work that you have brought to a conclusion, instead of you attacking twenty things at once and not finishing any of them because of lack of time. Among us, with our soviet morals, we don’t always conclude things well, one talks of success over a number of years; we are afraid of learning in comparison with the merchant who pockets a 100% profit and more, you prefer to write a fine resolution on raw materials and are proud of the title of communist party or union representative of the proletariat. I ask your pardon. What do you call the proletariat? It is the class that works in industry. But where is this great industry? What is this proletariat then? What is your industry? Why is it paralysed? Because there are no longer any raw materials. Have you been able to procure any of them? No. You write an enactment resolution to collect them, and you are in the soup; and the people will say that that is absurd; thus you resemble the geese who, in antiquity, saved Rome”, and who, to continue the speech of Lenin (according to the moral of the well known fable of Krylov) must be guided to market with a big stick in order to be sold.

Suppose that the point of view of the former Workers’ Opposition on the role and tasks of trade unions is wrong. That this view expresses not the position of the working class in power, but that of a professional ministry. These comrades want to take back the management of the economy by snatching it from the hands of soviet officials without involving the working class in that management through proletarian democracy and the organisation of councils of workers’ deputies intended as the main nuclei of state power. They simply call for the proletarianisation of these bureaucratic nests. And they are wrong.

We cannot share Lenin’s words about proletarian democracy and the participation of the proletariat in the popular economy. The greatest discovery made by comrade Lenin is that we no longer have a proletariat. We rejoice with you, comrade Lenin! You are thus the leader of a proletariat which doesn’t even exist! You are the leader of the government of a proletarian dictatorship without a proletariat! You are the leader of the communist party but not of the proletariat!

Contrary to comrade Lenin, his colleague on the central committee and the political bureau, Kamenev, has quite another opinion. He sees the proletariat everywhere. He said: "1) The balance sheet of the conquest of October is that the organised working class as a whole has at its disposal the immense riches of all domestic industry, transport, timber, mining, let alone political power. 2) Socialised industry is the principal possession of the proletariat”,etc. etc. One can cite many other examples. Kamenevsees the proletariat in the functionaries who, since Moscow, have set themselves up through bureaucratic channels and he himself is, according to his own opinion, much more proletarian than no matter what worker. When talking about the proletariat, he doesn’t say: “THEM”, but “WE, the proletariat...” Too many proletarians of the Kamenev type participate in the management of the popular economy; that’s why he comes on like a proletarian with strange speeches about proletarian democracy and the participation of the proletariat in economic management! “Please” says Kamenev, “what are you talking about? Are we not the proletariat, a proletariat organised as a compact unity, as a class?”

Comrade Lenin considers all discussion on the participation of the proletariat in the management of the popular economy as useless chatter because there is no proletariat; Kamenev is of the same opinion, but because the proletariat “as a compact unity, as a class” already governs the country and the economy since all the bureaucrats are considered by him as proletarians. They, naturally, are in agreement and, already on some points, they particularly understand each other well because since the October revolution Kamenev has entered into a contract not to take a position against comrade Lenin and not to contradict him. They agree on the fact that the proletariat exists - naturally not only the one seen by Kamenev - but also on the fact that its low level of preparation, its material condition, its political ignorance dictates “that the geese are kept far away from the economy with a big stick”. And in reality that is what has happened.

Comrade Lenin has here applied the fable in a rather improper fashion. The geese of Krylov cried that their ancestors saved Rome (their ancestors, comrade Lenin) whereas the working class doesn’t talk of its ancestors but of itself, because it (the working class, comrade Lenin) has accomplished the social revolution and from this fact it wants to control the country and the economy itself. But comrade Lenin has taken the working class for Krylov’s geese and waving his stick, he says to it: “Leave your ancestors in peace! You, on the other hand, what have you done?” What can the proletariat respond to comrade Lenin?

You can calmly threaten us with a stick, we will however say loud and clear that the coherent and unhesitating realisation of proletarian democracy is today a necessity that the Russian proletarian class feels to its very marrow; because it is a force. Come what may, but the devil will not always be at the door of the poor worker.

(To be continued)

Part 1 [19]

Part 2 [18]

Social revolts in North Africa and the Middle East, nuclear catastrophe in Japan, war in Libya 

The last few months have been rich in historic events. Although the revolts in North Africa and the Middle East are not directly linked to the tsunami which ravaged Japan and the nuclear crisis which ensued, all these events highlight the alternative which, more than ever, is facing humanity: socialism or barbarism. While the echo of the uprisings is still ringing in numerous countries, capitalist society is proving lamentably unable to deal with nuclear power. On the other hand, the heroism of the Japanese workers who are putting their lives at risk at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is a striking contrast to the disgusting hypocrisy of the imperialist powers in Libya. 

The mobilisation of the masses brings down governments

For several months, protest movements, unprecedented in their geographic spread,[1] have been shaking a whole series of countries. The initial revolts in the Mahgreb were rapidly emulated over the next few weeks, with demonstrations in Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Sub-Saharan Africa etc. It is impossible to make a strict identity between all these movements, both in terms of their class content and of the response of the bourgeoisie, but a common factor is the economic crisis, which since 2008 has plunged whole populations into an increasingly unbearable poverty and made the corrupt and repressive regimes in the region more and more resented.

The working class has not yet presented itself in these events as an autonomous force capable of assuming the leadership of the movements, which have often taken the form of revolts by the whole non-exploiting population, from ruined peasants to middle strata on the road to proletarianisation. But, on the one hand, the influence of the working class on the consciousness expressed in these movements has been tangible, both in the slogans and the forms of organisation they have thrown up. A tendency towards self-organisation, for example, appeared in the neighbourhood protection committees set up in Egypt and Tunisia to face up to police repression and the bands of thugs cynically released from prison to sow chaos. Above all, many of these revolts openly sought to widen the movement through mass demonstrations, assemblies and attempts to coordinate and centralise decision-making. At the same time, the working class sometimes played a decisive role in the way events unfolded. It was in Egypt, where the working class is the most concentrated and experienced in the region, that workers’ strikes were the most massive. Their rapid extension and the rejection of control by the official unions played a major role in pushing the military leaders, under pressure from the USA, to get rid of Hosni Mubarak.   

Mobilisations are continuing and the wind of revolt is blowing through other countries; the bourgeoisie is having a difficult time putting a stop to it all. Above all in Egypt and Tunisia, where the “peoples’ spring” is supposed to have triumphed, there are still strikes and confrontations with the “democratic” state. All of these revolts constitute a formidable bank of experience on the road that leads to revolutionary consciousness. Nevertheless, while the wave of revolts, for the first time in a long while, has explicitly linked political issues to the economic question, the response to this question has come up against the illusions which still weigh on the working class, in particular the democratic and nationalist mirage. These weaknesses have often allowed the democratic pseudo-opposition to present itself as an alternative to the corrupt cliques in power. In fact, these “new governments” are often still so stuffed with members of the old teams that it’s a joke. In Tunisia, the population has even forced part of the government to resign when it appeared too obviously as an exact re-edition of the Ben Ali regime. In Egypt, the army, Mubarak’s historic power-base now holds all the command posts of the state and is already manoeuvring to ensure its position in the new arrangement. In Libya, the “Interim National Council” is led by...Gaddafi’s former interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes, and a gang of former high officials who, having organised repression for their master and having benefited from his pecuniary generosity, have suddenly discovered a taste for human rights and democracy.        

In Libya, imperialist war rages on the ruins of a popular revolt

On the basis of these weaknesses, the situation in Libya has evolved in a particular way, given that what at the beginning made its appearance as an uprising of the population against the Gaddafi regime has been transformed into a war between several bourgeois factions, which has now seen the intervention of the great imperialist powers, making it even more of a bloody and surreal cacophony. The displacement of the struggle onto the terrain of bourgeois interests, into a battle for control of the Libyan state by one or another of the contending factions, was made all the easier by the fact that the working class in Libya is very weak. Local industry is notably backward and is more or less reduced to the production of oil, directly piloted by the Gaddafi clique which has never succeeded in placing the national interest above its own particular interests. The working class in Libya is largely made up of foreign workers, some of whom may have been involved in the events at the beginning but ended up fleeing the massacres, not least because of the difficulty of recognising itself in a “revolution” with a nationalist accent. Libya provides a negative and tragic illustration of the necessity for the working class to occupy a central position within popular revolts; its effacement to a great extent explains the evolution of the situation.

Since 19th March, after several weeks of massacres, under the pretext of a humanitarian intervention “to save the martyred Libyan people”, a rather uneasy coalition, made up of Canada, the USA, Italy, France, Britain and others has directly engaged its military forces in support of the Interim National Council. Every day, missiles are launched and planes take off to lay a carpet of bombs in all the regions inhabited by the armed forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime. In short, it’s war. What strikes you right away is the incredible hypocrisy of the great powers, which on the one hand brandish the rather worn flag of humanitarianism and, at the same time, do nothing about the slaughter of the masses in revolt in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria etc. Where was this coalition when Gaddafi massacred 1000 prisoners in the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in 1996? In truth, this regime has been imprisoning, torturing, terrorising, executing, and making opponents disappear for the past 40 years with complete impunity. Yesterday, where was this coalition when Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt or Bouteflika in Algeria were shooting at crowds during the January and February uprisings? Behind this ignoble rhetoric, the dead continue to pile up in the morgues. And NATO is already envisaging prolonging operations for several weeks in order to ensure the triumph of peace and democracy. 

In reality, each power is intervening in Libya for its own reasons. The cacophony of the coalition, which hasn’t even been able to set up a chain of command, illustrates the degree to which these countries have joined this adventure in dispersed order with the aim of strengthening their own position in the region, like vultures picking over a corpse. From the USA’s point of view, Libya does not represent a major strategic interest because it already has powerful allies in the region, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This explains their initial confusion during the negotiations at the UN. Nonetheless the USA, with its historic support for Israel, has a disastrous image in the Arab world, one which has hardly been improved by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. On top of this the revolts have begun to give rise to governments which are more amenable to anti-American opinion; and if the US is to ensure its presence in the region, it has to polish up its image in the eyes of these new cliques. And above all the US government can’t give a free hand to Britain and France. The latter also need to improve their image, especially Britain, given its involvement in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The French government, despite its numerous gaffes, does have a certain popularity in the Arab countries, acquired under De Gaulle and reinforced by its refusal to take part in the Iraq war in 2003. An intervention against Gaddafi, who is much too uncontrollable and unpredictable for his neighbours’ taste, is bound to be appreciated by the latter and will make it possible for France to increase its influence. Behind their fine phrases and broad smiles, each bourgeois faction is intervening for its own interests and, along with Gaddafi, they are all taking up their positions in this sinister danse macabre.

In Japan as everywhere else, nature produces phenomena, capitalism produces catastrophes

Several thousand miles from Libya, in the world’s third-ranking economic power, capitalism also sows death and demonstrates that nowhere, even at the heart of the industrialised countries, is humanity protected from the irresponsibility and negligence of the bourgeoisie. Its tame media have, as ever, presented the earthquake and tsunami which ravaged Japan as a product of fate that no one could do anything about. It is of course impossible to prevent nature from unleashing its powers, but installing populations in danger zones in wooden houses has nothing to do with fate, and neither has the use of ageing nuclear power stations in the middle of this whole environment.

The bourgeoisie is directly responsible for the murderous scale of this catastrophe. For the needs of production, capitalism has concentrated populations and industries to a delirious degree. Japan is a caricature of this historical phenomenon: tens of millions of people massed together in a thin strip of land which is particularly subject to earthquakes and thus to tsunamis. Obviously, earthquake resistant structures have been erected for the rich and as office buildings: concrete would have sufficed to hold back the wave for many, but the working class has to live in wooden rabbit-hutches in the most dangerous areas. At the very least the population could have been installed further away from the coast, but Japan is an exporting country and, to maximise profit, it is better to build factories near the ports. Some factories were also swept away by the waters, adding industrial catastrophe to the nuclear disaster. In this context, a humanitarian crisis is threatening one of the centres of world capitalism and this will increase the scale of the hecatomb. With much infrastructure and equipment out of commission, tens of thousands of people have been abandoned to their lot, without food and water.  

But the bourgeoisie’s irresponsibility doesn’t end there: it has built 17 nuclear plants in the area, all of dubious safety. The situation round the Fukushima plant, which has been so severely damaged, remains uncertain, but the confused communications issued by the authorities makes us fear the worst. It already seems to be true that a nuclear disaster on the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl explosion is unfolding before the eyes of a powerless government, reduced to the equivalent of using sticking plaster and sacrificing many workers. The construction of these plants on risky coastlines doesn’t seem to be the most brilliant idea, especially when they have been in service for several decades and have had a minimum level of maintenance. It is incredible to note that the Fukushima plant has already been the victim of several hundred incidents linked to poor safety levels, which has resulted in the resignations of a number of scandalised officers.

It’s not nature that is responsible for these catastrophes; the laws of capitalism, which have become an absurdity, are responsible from start to finish, in the poorest countries and in the most powerful ones. The situation in Libya and the events in Japan clearly show that the only future the bourgeoisie can offer us is growing and permanent chaos. But the revolts in the Arab countries, for all their weaknesses, do show us a different way ahead – the struggle of the exploited against the capitalist state, the only way out of the generalised catastrophe threatening humanity.

V 27/3/11   

The current events in the Middle East and North Africa are of major historic importance, the consequences of which are difficult to discern. Nevertheless, it is important to develop a discussion about them that will enable revolutionaries to elaborate a coherent framework of analysis. The points that follow are neither that framework in itself, still less a detailed description of what has been taking place, but simply some basic reference points aimed at stimulating the debate.[1]  

2.       The historical context in which these events are unfolding are the following:

-         a profound economic crisis, the most severe in the history of capitalism, which has hit the weaker economies of the Arab world with particular force, and which is already plunging millions into abject poverty, with the prospect of even worse conditions ahead. The youth, which, in contrast to many of the “ageing” central countries, makes up a very large percentage of the total population, has been hit especially hard, with unemployment and the lack of any visible future the lot of educated and uneducated young people alike. In every case, it has been the young people who have been in the forefront of these movements;

-         the unbearably corrupt and repressive nature of all the regimes in the region. While for a long time the ruthless activity of the secret police or the armed forces has kept the population in a state of atomisation and fear, these very weapons of the state have now served to generalise the will to gather together and resist. This was very clear in Egypt, for example, when Mubarak dispatched his army of thugs and policemen in civilian clothes to terrorise the masses holding Tahrir Square: these provocations merely strengthened the latter’s resolve to defend themselves and drew thousands more into the protests. Similarly, the outrageous corruption and greed of the ruling cliques, who have amassed huge private fortunes while the vast majority struggled to survive from day to day, further fuelled the flames of rebellion once populations had begun to overcome their fears;

-         this sudden loss of fear, commented on by many of the participants, is a product not only of changes at the local and regional level, but also of a climate of growing discontent and overt class struggle at the international level. Everywhere, faced with the economic crisis, the exploited and the oppressed have been increasingly unwilling to make the sacrifices demanded of them. Here again, the role played by the new generation has been essential, and in this sense the youth rebellion in Greece two years ago, the student struggles in the UK and Italy, the fight against pension reforms in France have also had their impact in the “Arab” world, especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter when it is much harder for the bourgeoisie to maintain a consistent black-out of struggles against the status quo. 

3.       The class nature of these movements is not uniform and varies from country to country and according to different phases. On the whole, however, we can characterise them as movements of the non-exploiting classes, social revolts against the state. The working class has, in general, not been in the leadership of these rebellions but it has certainly had a significant presence and influence which can be discerned both in the methods and forms of organisation thrown up by the movement and, in certain cases, by the specific development of workers’ struggles, such as the strikes in Algeria and above all the major wave of strikes in Egypt which were a key factor in the decision to dump Mubarak (and which we have written about in these pages [28]). In the majority of these countries, the proletariat is not the only oppressed class. The peasantry, and other strata deriving from even older modes of production, although largely fragmented and ruined by decades of capitalist decline, still have a weight in the rural areas, while in the cities, where the revolts have always been centred, the working class exists alongside a large middle class which is on the road towards proletarianisation but still has its specific features, and a mass of slum dwellers who are made up partly of proletarians and partly of small traders and more lumpenised elements. Even in Egypt, which has the most concentrated and experienced working class, eyewitnesses in Tahrir Square emphasised that the protests had mobilised “all classes”, with the exception of the upper echelons of the regime. In other countries the weight of the non-proletarian strata has been much stronger than it has been in the majority of struggles in the central countries. 

4.       In trying to understand the class nature of these rebellions, we therefore have to avoid two symmetrical errors: on the one hand, a blanket identification of all the masses in movement with the proletariat (a position most characteristic of the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste), and on the other hand a rejection of anything positive in revolts which are not explicitly working class. The question posed here takes us back to previous events, such as those in Iran at the end of the 1970s, where again we saw a popular revolt in which, for a while, the working class was able to assume a leading role, though this in the end was not sufficient to prevent the recuperation of the movement by the Islamists. At a more historical level, the problem of the relationship between the working class and more general social revolts is also the problem of the state in the period of transition, which emerges from the movement of all the non-exploiting classes but in the face of which the working class needs to maintain its class autonomy.   

5.       In the Russian revolution, the soviet form was engendered by the working class but it also provided a model of organisation for all the oppressed. Without losing a sense of proportion – because we are still a long way from a revolutionary situation in which the working class is able to provide clear political leadership to the other strata – we can see that working class methods of struggle have had an impact on the social revolts in the Arab world:

-         in tendencies towards self-organisation, which appeared most clearly in the neighbourhood protection committees that emerged as a response to the Egyptian regime’s tactic of unleashing criminal gangs against the population, in the “delegate” structure of some of the massive meetings in Tahrir Square, in the whole process of collective discussion and decision making;

-         in the seizing of spaces normally controlled by the state to provide a central focus for assembling and organising on a massive scale; 

-         in a conscious assumption of the necessity for massive self-defence against the thugs and police dispatched by the regimes, but at the same time a rejection of gratuitous violence, of destruction and looting for their own sake; 

-         in deliberate efforts to overcome sectarian and other divisions which have been cynically manipulated by the regimes: divisions between Christian and Muslim, Shia and Sunni, religious and secular, men and women;

-         in the numerous attempts to fraternise with the rank and file soldiers.

It is no accident that these tendencies developed most strongly in Egypt where the working class has a long tradition of struggle and which, at a crucial stage in the movement, emerged as a distinct force, engaging in a wave of struggles which, like those in 2006-7, can be seen as “germs” of the future mass strike, containing a certain number of its most important characteristics: the spontaneous extension of strikes and demands from one sector to another, the intransigent rejection of state trade unions and certain tendencies towards self-organisation, the raising of both economic and political demands. Here we see, in outline, the capacity of the working class to come forward as the tribune of all the oppressed and exploited and offer the perspective of a new society.

6.       All these experiences are important stepping stones towards the development of a genuinely revolutionary consciousness. But the road in that direction is still a long one, and is obstructed by many and obvious illusions and ideological weaknesses:

-         illusions, above all, in democracy, which are extremely strong in countries which have been governed by a combination of military tyrants and corrupt monarchies, where the secret police is omnipresent and the arrest, torture and execution of dissidents is commonplace. These illusions provide an opening for the democratic “opposition” to come forward as an alternative team for managing the state: El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Transition Government in Tunisia, the National Council in Libya... In Egypt, illusions in the army as being “with the people” are particularly strong, although recent repressive actions by the army against demonstrators in Tahrir Square will certainly lead to reflection on the part of a minority. An important aspect of the democratic myth in Egypt is the demand for independent trade unions, which no doubt involves many of the most militant workers who have quite rightly called for the dissolution of the discredited official unions;

-         illusions in nationalism and patriotism, exhibited in the very widespread adoption of the national flag as the symbol of the “revolutions” in Egypt and Tunisia, or, as in Libya, of the old monarchist flag as an emblem of all those opposed to Gaddafi’s rule. Again, the branding of Mubarak as an agent of Zionism on a number of banners in Egypt shows that the question of Israel/Palestine remains as a potential lever for diverting class conflict towards imperialist conflict. That said, there was little interest in raising the Palestinian question, given the fact that the ruling class has so long used the sufferings of the Palestinians as a way of diverting attention from the sufferings they imposed on their own populations; and there was surely an element of internationalism in the waving of the flags of other countries as an expression of solidarity with their rebellions. The sheer extent of the revolts across the “Arab” world and beyond is a demonstration of the material reality of internationalism, but patriotic ideology is very adaptable and in these events we are seeing how it can morph into more popular and democratic forms;

-         illusions in religion, with the frequent use of public prayers and the use of the Mosque as an organising centre for rebellion. In Libya, there is evidence that more specifically Islamist groups (homegrown rather than linked to al Qaida as Gaddafi claims) played a significant role in the revolt from the beginning. This, together with the role of tribal loyalties, is a reflection of the relative weakness of the Libyan working class and the backwardness of the country and its state structures. However, given the extent to which radical Islamism of the Bin Laden variety has posed itself as the answer to the misery of the masses in the “Muslim lands”, the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, and even in Libya and the Gulf states like Yemen and Bahrain have shown that the Jihadi groups, with their practice of small terrorist cells and their noxious sectarian ideologies, have been almost entirely marginalised by the massive character of the movements and their genuine efforts to overcome sectarian divisions. 

7.       The current situation in North Africa and the Middle East is still in a state of constant flux. At the time of writing there are expectations of protests in Riyadh, even though the Saudi regime has already decreed that all demonstrations are contrary to sharia law. In Egypt and Tunisia, where the “revolution” has supposedly triumphed already, there are continuous clashes between protestors and the now “democratic” state, which is administered by more or less the same forces that ran the show before the “dictators” departed. The strike wave in Egypt, which quickly won many of its demands, seems to have abated. But neither the workers’ struggle nor the wider social movement have suffered any set-back in those countries, and there are signs of a widespread discussion and reflection going on, certainly in Egypt. However, events in Libya have taken a very different turn. What appears to have begun as a genuine revolt from below, with unarmed civilians courageously storming military barracks and torching the HQ of the so-called Peoples’ Committees, especially in the east of the country, has been rapidly transformed into a full-scale and very bloody “civil war” between bourgeois fractions, with the imperialist powers hovering like vultures over the carnage. In marxist terms, in fact, this is an instance of the transformation of an incipient civil war – in its real sense of a direct and violent confrontation between the classes – into an imperialist war. The historical example of Spain – despite considerable differences in the global balance of class forces, and in the fact that the initial revolt against Franco’s coup was unmistakably proletarian in nature – shows how the national and international bourgeoisie can indeed intervene in such situations to both pursue its factional, national and imperialist rivalries and to crush all possibility of social revolt. 

8.       The background to this turn of events in Libya is the extreme backwardness of Libyan capitalism, which has been ruled for over 40 years by the Gaddafi clique predominantly through the terror apparatus directly under his command. This structure mitigated against the development of the army as a force capable of putting the national interest above the interest of a particular leader or faction, as we saw in Tunisia and Egypt. At the same time, the country is torn by regional and tribal divisions and these have played a key role in determining support or opposition to Gaddafi. A “national” form of Islamism also seems to have been a factor in the revolt from the beginning, although the rebellion was originally more general and social rather than being merely tribal or Islamic. The principal industry in Libya is oil and the turmoil there has had a very severe effect on world oil prices. But a large part of the workforce employed in the oil industry are immigrants from Europe, the rest of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa; and although there were early reports of strikes in this sector, the massive exodus of “foreign” workers is a clear sign that they see little to identify with in a “revolution” bearing aloft the national flag. In fact there have been reports of persecution of black workers at the hands of “rebel” forces, since there were widespread rumours that some of the mercenaries hired by the regime to crush the protests were recruited in black African states, thereby casting suspicion on all black immigrants. The weakness of the working class in Libya is thus a crucial element in the negative development of the situation there.

9.       Clear evidence that the “rebellion” has become a war between bourgeois camps is provided by the very hasty desertion of the Gaddafi regime by numerous high-ranking officials, including foreign ambassadors, army and police officers and civil servants. The military commanders in particular have come to the fore in the “regularisation” of the anti-Gaddafi armed forces. But perhaps the most striking sign of this change is the decision of most of the “international community” to rally to the side of the “rebels”. The Transitional National Council, based in Benghazi, has already been recognised by France as the voice of the new Libya, and a small scale military intervention has already taken shape in the sending of “advisers” to aid the anti-Gaddafi forces. Having already intervened diplomatically to accelerate the departure of Ben Ali and Mubarak, the US, Britain and others were emboldened by the wobbling of the Gaddafi regime at the beginning: William Hague, for example, prematurely announced that Gaddafi was on his way to Venezuela. As Gaddafi’s forces started to regain the upper hand, talk grew louder of imposing a No Fly zone or using other forms of direct military intervention. At the time of writing, however, there seem to be deep divisions within the EU and NATO, with Britain and France most strongly in favour of military action and the US and Germany most reluctant. The Obama administration is not opposed to military intervention on principle, of course, but it will not relish exposing itself to the danger of being drawn into yet another intractable mess in the Arab world. It may also be the case that some parts of the world bourgeoisie are wondering whether Gaddafi’s “cure” of mass terror may be a way of discouraging further unrest throughout the region. One thing is certain however: the Libyan events, and indeed the whole development of the situation in the region, have revealed the grotesque hypocrisy of the world bourgeoisie. Having for years vilified Gaddafi’s Libya as a hotbed of international terrorism (which it was, of course), Gaddafi’s recent change of heart and decision to jettison his weapons of mass destruction in 2006 warmed the hearts of the leaders of countries like the US and Britain which were struggling to justify their stance over Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMDs. Tony Blair in particular showed indecent haste in embracing yesterday’s “mad terrorist leader”. Only a few years later, Gaddafi is again a mad terrorist leader and those who supported him have to scramble no less hastily to distance themselves from him. And this is only one version of the same story: nearly all the recent or current “Arab dictators” have enjoyed the loyal backing of the US and other powers, who have up till now shown very little interest in the “democratic aspirations” of the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. The outbreak of street protests, provoked by price rises and shortages of basic necessities and in some cases violently repressed, against the US-imposed government of Iraq, including the current rulers of Iraqi Kurdistan, further exposes the empty promises manufactured by the “democratic west”.

10.    Certain internationalist anarchists in Croatia (at least before they began to take part in the protests going on in Zagreb and elsewhere) intervened on libcom.org to argue that the events in the Arab world looked to them like a rerun of the events in eastern Europe in 1989, in which all aspirations for change were side-tracked into the terminus of “democracy”, and which brought absolutely nothing for the working class. A very legitimate concern, given the evident strength of democratic mystifications within this new movement, but missing the essential difference between the two historic moments, above all at the level of the configuration of class forces on a world scale. At the time of the collapse of the eastern bloc, the working class in the west was reaching the limits of a period of struggles which had not been able to develop at the political level; the collapse of the bloc, with its attendant campaigns about the death of communism and the end of class struggle, and the inability of the working class of the east to respond on its own class terrain, thus helped to plunge the working class internationally into a long retreat. At the same time, although the Stalinist regimes were in reality victims of the world economic crisis, this was far from obvious at the time, and there was still enough room for manoeuvre in the western economies to fuel the illusion that a bright new dawn for global capitalism was opening up. The situation today is very different. The truly global nature of the capitalist crisis has never been more apparent, making it much easier for proletarians everywhere to understand that, in essence, they are all faced with same problems: unemployment, rising prices, a lack of any future under the system. And over the past seven or eight years we have been seeing a slow but genuine revival of workers’ struggles across the world, struggles usually led by a new generation of proletarians which is less scarred by the set-backs of the 80s and 90s, and which is giving rise to a growing minority of politicised elements, again on a global scale. Given these profound differences, there is a real possibility that the events in the Arab world, far from having a negative impact on the class struggle in the central countries, will feed into its future development:

-         by reaffirming the power of massive and illegal action on the streets, its capacity to shake the composure of the rulers of the earth;

-         by destroying bourgeois propaganda about “the Arabs” as a uniform mass of unthinking fanatics and showing the capacity of the masses in these regions to discuss, reflect, and organise themselves; 

-         by further undermining the credibility of the leaders of the central countries whose venality and lack of scruple has been highlighted by their twists and turns towards the Arab world. These and other elements will initially be much more evident to the politicised minority than the majority of workers in the central countries, but in the long run they will contribute to the real unification of the class struggle across national and continental boundaries. None of this, however, lessens the responsibility of the working class in the advanced countries, who have had years of experience of the delights of “democracy” and “independent trade unionism”, whose historic political traditions are deeply if not yet widely entrenched, and who are concentrated at the heart of the world imperialist system. The capacity of the working class in North Africa and the Middle East to break with democratic illusions and provide a distinct way forward for the disinherited mass of the population is still fundamentally conditioned by the ability of workers in the central countries to provide them with a clear example of self-organised and politicised proletarian struggle.

ICC, 11th March 2011

For many generations Africa has been synonymous with catastrophes, wars and permanent massacres, famine, incurable sicknesses, corrupt governments; in brief, endless absolute misery. At best, when its history is talked about (outside of folklore or “exotic” aspects), it is to point out its “worthy” Senegalese or Maghrebi sharpshooters, the celebrated auxiliaries of the French colonial army during the two world wars and the time of the maintenance of order in the old colonies. But never are the words “working class” used and still less are questions raised concerning its struggle, quite simply because it has never really entered the heads of the masses at the world or African level.

Consequently, the main aim of this contribution is to provide some elements to attest to the very real living history of the workers’ movement in Africa through its combats against the exploiting class. Admittedly, this is the history of a working class contained within a historically underdeveloped continent.

But how and why has the history of the proletariat in Africa been concealed?

“Has Africa a history? Not so long ago, this question would have been answered in the negative. In a now famous passage written in 1965, the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper compared the history of Europe to that of Africa and basically concluded that the latter didn’t exist. The African past, he wrote, presented no interest outside ‘the tribulations of barbaric tribes in a certainly picturesque part of the globe, but without the least importance’. To be sure Trevor-Roper could be termed as a conservative, but at the same time the Hungarian Marxist, Endre Sik, more or less defended the same point of view. In 1966 he wrote: ‘Before making contact with Europeans, the majority of Africans still led a barbaric and primitive existence and a number among them hadn’t even gone beyond the most primitive stage of barbarity.[...] Is it also pointless to talk of their “history” – in the scientific meaning of the word – before the arrival of the European invaders?’

“These are particularly blunt remarks but they were shared up to a point by a majority of historians.”[1]

This is how, through their racist contempt, the thinkers of the colonial European bourgeoisie decreed the non-existence of the history of the black continent and, consequently, why the working class here had no history in the eyes of the world.

But above all, what is still striking reading these remarks, is to see the unity in the a-historical prejudices regarding Africa from these “renowned thinkers” of the two ex-imperialist blocs; the “democratic” bloc of the west and the “socialist” bloc of the east. In fact the one described as a “marxist”, Endre Sik, is nothing other than a dyed-in-the-wool stalinist whose arguments are no less fallacious than those of his rival (or colleague), the Englishman Trevor-Roper. Through their denial of the history of Africa (and of its class struggle), these gentlemen, representatives of the dominant class, express a yet more barbaric vision than that of the “barbarity of the tribulations of the African tribes”. In reality, these authors are part and parcel of the group of “scholars” who gave their “scientific benediction” to the overtly racist theses of the colonising countries. This isn’t the case with the author Henri Wesseling who criticises their words and distinguishes himself from his “historian” colleagues in these terms:

“[...] The truth is quite different. A certain number of Africans, such as the Khedive of Egypt, the Sultan of Morocco, the Zulu King Cetshwayo, the King of the Matabeles, the Almami Samori and King Makoko of the Batekes, had considerable influence over the course of things.”

Certainly by his reaction, Henri Wesseling gains some distinction in re-establishing the real history faced with well-intentioned falsification. Nevertheless,, other “scientists” who, having admitted to the reality of the history of Africa and that of the working class, persist with a very ideological vision of history and in particular of the class struggle. In fact they exclude any possibility of a proletarian revolution on the continent with arguments no less dubious than those used by the racist historians.[2]

“[...] Obstinate, the African workers are the same with proletarianisation: the fact of their permanent resistance to full wage labour [...] expresses the fragility of the imported theory of a working class bearing a historic mission. Africa is not a terrain for proletarian revolutions and the somewhat catastrophic copies of this model have all been, more or less, a violent affront to the living, social dimension of the ‘proletariat,’”

Let’s say immediately that the authors of this quote are university sociologists comprising Anglophone and Francophone researchers. Moreover, the title of their work, The working classes of black Africa, says a lot about their fundamental preoccupations. On the other hand, if it’s clear that they don’t deny the history of the African continent as do their historian colleagues, their approach comes from the same ideology which takes its point of view from “scientific proof” without it confronting real history. Already, by talking about “catastrophic copies of this model”, they (involuntarily?) confuse the proletarian revolution of 1917 in Russia with coup d’états of the stalinist type or with the “national liberation” struggles that appeared throughout the world following the second imperialist world butchery under the labels “socialist” or “progressive”. It’s these same models that violently confronted the working class which put up a resistance to them; whether in China, Cuba, in the old countries of the Soviet bloc or in the “Third World” in general and Africa in particular. But above all, these sociologists squarely turn to the counter-revolution when they warn against an “imported theory of a working class bearing a historic mission”, their logical conclusion from which is that Africa is not a terrain for proletarian revolutions. Thereby, these groups of “scholars”, in denying any possibility of revolutionary struggle on the African continent, seem to exclude the extension of any other revolution (“exported”) in Africa. Straightaway they close the door to any perspective of emerging from the capitalist barbarity of which the exploited classes and the African populations in general are victims. Finally, they shed no light on the real history of the working class.

What concerns us, with all due deference to “our” sociologists, is that the working class remains the only class bearing a historic mission faced with the bankruptcy of capitalism which worsens every day, including in Africa as the historian Iba Der Thiam[3] attests when he gives an account of workers’ struggles from the beginning of the 19th century to the start of the 1930s:

“In the union domain, the period 1790-1929 was, as we’ve seen, a decisive stage. A period of rousing and awakening, and then affirmation, it was a new occasion for the working class to demonstrate its determination and its spirit of struggle and self-sacrifice.

“From the appearance of a pre-union consciousness, up to the eve of the world economic crisis, we’ve followed all the phases, from a development of consciousness whose speed of progress compared to the long road of the French working class in the same domain, appears quite exceptional.

“The idea of the strike, that’s to say a means of struggle, a form of expression consistent with refusing to work and provisionally interrupting the normal run of economic life in order to assert one’s rights, forcing the bosses to be concerned over wage claims for example, or to accept negotiations with the strikers or their representatives, made, over some fifteen years, considerable progress, even acquiring rights of freedom, notwithstanding the dispositions of a restrictive legislation and was recognised, if not as a legal practice, then at least a legitimate one.

“[...] The bosses’ resistance, apart from some exceptions, only rarely showed an extreme intransigence. From the base of a lucid realism, the owners of the means of production did not, in general, show any reticence in advocating and seeking dialogue with the strikers, but even managed to push the Governor to speed up the procedures for mediation, and were quite ready, when their interests were seriously threatened, to make common cause with the workers, in the conflicts which opposed them to the railways for example, where it is true, the role of the state in the capital was considerable.”

Not only is this exposé sufficiently full enough to characterise a working class bearing hope, but it has a history in Africa that it shares moreover with the bourgeoisie through the historic confrontations of classes, just as happened throughout the world since the proletariat was constituted as a class under the capitalist regime.

Before pursuing the history of the African workers’ movement, we draw the attention of readers to the fact that we are going to come up against difficulties linked to the denial of the history of Africa by historians and other scholars of the old colonial powers. In fact, this was shown, for example, by the colonial administrators with their policy of systematic censure of the most important events and movements of the working class. Due to this, we are reduced to basing ourselves on rare sources of more or less famous authors whose rigour of work seems to us globally proven and convincing. On the other hand, if we largely recognise the seriousness of the researchers who provide these reference sources, we do not necessarily share some of their interpretations of historic events.

Some elements of context

Senegal was the oldest of the French colonies in Africa, France having been established there from 1659 to 1960.

A historian has located the beginning of the African workers’ movement at the end of the 18th century, hence the title of his work History of the African union movement 1790-1929.

The first professional workers (artisans, carpenters, joiners, masons, etc.) were Europeans settling in Saint-Louis Senegal (the old capital of the African colonies).

Before the Second World War, the working population of the Francophone colony of French Western Africa (FWA) was essentially based in Senegal, between Saint-Louis and Dakar which were respectively the capital of FWA and the capital of the federation which brought together FWA, French Equatorial Africa (FEA), Cameroon and Togo. Dakar was the “economic lungs” of the FWA colony, with the port, the railway and the greatest number of state workers and service employees.

At the numerical level, the working class has always been historically weak in Africa generally, evidently due to the weak economic development of the continent, which is explained in its turn through the weak investment made by the colonising countries. In 1927, the Governor of the colony estimated the number of workers to be 60,000. Certainly, some say that half the numbers of workers were excluded from this figure, not least the day-workers and other apprentices.

Since the first struggles up to the 1960s, the proletariat has always systematically confronted the French bourgeoisie which holds the means of production alongside the colonial administration. That means that the Senegalese bourgeoisie was born and evolved in the shadow of its “big French sister” (at least up to the 1960s).

Class struggle in Senegal

“The history of the African union movement has yet to be totally written [...] The fundamental reason for this failure seems to us to lie, on one hand, in the lack of research into the different segments of the African working class in a perspective which is both synchronic and diachronic; and on the other hand, in the absence of a systematic study of the different social conflicts which have been recorded, social conflicts each one of which shows the layers of information on the preoccupations of the workers, their forms of expression, the reactions of the colonial administration and the bosses, those of the political class, all the consequences that these events have had on the domestic history of the colonies at the four levels of the economic, social, political and cultural [...].”[4]

As Iba Der Thiam emphasises, several factors explain the difficulties of writing a history of the workers’ movement in Africa. Otherwise, the major obstacle which researchers have come up against is undoubtedly linked to the fact that the real holders of the information on the working class, that is the French colonial authorities, have for a long time been cautious of opening up the state archives. And for good reason: they have an interest in hiding things.

In fact, with the partial release of the colonial archives of FWA (following the fall of the Berlin Wall), we learnt that not only had the working class existed in Africa since the 19th century but, quite naturally, it had undertaken often victorious combats against its class enemy. 1855 marked the first expression of a workers’ organisation where, at Saint-Louis Senegal, a group of 140 African workers (carpenters and masons) decided to fight against the demands of their European masters who were imposing unacceptable working conditions on them. Similarly, one can read in the archives of the existence of a (clandestine) union of “Carpenters of the Haut-Fleuve” in 1885. Above all a number of important strikes and tough confrontations took place between the working class and the colonial French bourgeoisie, like the general strike accompanied by riots in 1914 at Dakar where, for 5 days, economic and social life was totally paralysed and the Federal Governor of FWA , William Ponti, recognised (in his secret notes) that “The strike was perfectly organised and was a total success”. There were also numerous other successful strikes, notably that of April 1919 and 1938 by railworkers (European and African united) but also where the state had recourse to police repression before being forced to meet the demands of the strikers. And we can add the example of the six month-long general strike (October 1947 to March 1948) by the railworkers of the whole of FWA, where the strikers were fired on by the PS (SFIO) government before ending up winning the fight.

Finally, there is also the famous world-wide “May ‘68” which spread in Africa and to Senegal, abruptly breaking the patriotic or “national consensus” which had reigned since the “independence” of the 60s. And where, through their struggles on a proletarian terrain, workers and young schoolchildren violently confronted the pro-French regime of Senghor demanding an amelioration of their conditions of life and study. After this the workers’ movement again took the road of struggle that it had known since the beginning of the 20th century but which had been blocked by the triumphant perspective of “national independence”.

These are some examples to illustrate the real existence of a combative working class that is often conscious of its own class interests, while certainly meeting immense difficulties of all sorts since its birth.

Birth of the African proletariat

We should straightaway make clear that this is a proletariat emerging under a colonial capitalist regime and that, without having accomplished its own revolution against feudalism, the African bourgeoisie also owes its existence to the presence of European colonialism on its soil.

In other words, what we are seeing is the birth of the proletariat, the motor of the development of the productive forces under the reign of capitalism triumphant over the feudal regime, the old, dominant system, the residues of which are still quite visible today in many areas of the black continent.

“During the course of the centuries preceding the arrival of the colonisers onto their continent, African societies, as all the other human societies, used labour and manpower in conditions that were peculiar to them [...]

“The economy was essentially agricultural; predominately made up of provisions and supply, because in using rudimentary techniques there was only rarely any great surplus to be made. Equally an economy based on hunting, fishing and gathering, to which we could add in some cases exchange activities of a relative breadth unfolded, because of the weakness and want of the means of communications, inside the group, the region, and more rarely the kingdom, in the markets at regular intervals.

“In such a context, the methods of production were often handed down and rarely secreted sufficiently vigorous and conflictual antagonisms in order to determine the existence of real social classes in the marxist sense of the term.

“[...] As much as possessions in pre-colonial Senegalese-Gambian societies were different from the European notion, so that of work was even more so. In fact, if in modern societies based on industrial development and wage labour, labour is negotiated as economic wealth, and as such, greatly submits to the ineluctable laws of the market where the relations between supply and demand determine the price of services, in pre-colonial negro-African societies, work appears to us not to have an autonomous function, independent of the person. It is a sort of community activity logically unfolding from the laws of collective life, an activity imposed by social regulation and economic necessities [...].

“The colonial conquest, essentially based on the spirit of power, the quest for the accumulation of profit through the exploitation of human, material and mineral resources, largely had recourse to indigenous labour and did not hesitate to call on the means put at its disposition of the exercise of state power in order to use the work of local populations, first of all free before introducing wages and thus creating the conditions and new relations as much for work as for the worker.” [5]

On the whole, the author’s account is sufficiently clear and relevant in its theoretical approach and in describing the historic context of the birth of the proletariat in Africa. Indeed, it is convincing in its argument to demonstrate that labour in pre-colonial negro-African or Senegalese-Gambian societies did not have the same meaning as in modern western societies. Similarly, in relation to wage labour, we can actually say that the notion of wage labour was without doubt introduced into Senegal by the French colonial system the day it decided to “wage” the men it exploited in order to assure its profits and spread its domination over the conquered territory. Thus it started up the first agricultural and industrial depots, mines, railways, waterways, roads, factories, print works, etc. In other words, this is how French colonial capitalism introduced new relations of production in its first African colony creating accordingly the conditions for the birth of the working class. But it was first of all under the regime of obligatory work (the monstrous “corvée system”) that the workers were exploited. That is to say at this time they were not able to negotiate the sale of their labour, as this quote shows:

“Regarding civil works, Blanchot for example required the Mayor of the corvée of the workers to be responsible for assuring the construction of the quays from January 1st 1790, then the landing-stage at Saint-Louis. The numbers needed were originally composed of ‘20 persons with food and a resident who will be responsible for mustering them, taking them to work and making sure that they stay there.’ First of all it was an obligatory requisition which no-one could escape from, once designated, under pain of sanction. Then the work was almost free. The workers were chosen, summoned, used and supervised without any condition of price, wage or any sort of discussion on the modalities of their utilisation, even of challenging the circumstances of the choice of which they’d been the object. This dependence of the worker on his employer was attested to by Order number 1 of December 18 1789 instituting the corvée assigned to the construction of the quays and the landing-stage, which set no time limit and could, consequently, last as long as necessary. Further, allusion was made to a ‘gratuity’ of two bottles of spirits and, to clearly show that there was no question of a wage attached to the remuneration or simply compensation for the work furnished, the text makes it clear that it is a simple favour due to the good will of the authorities to the exclusion of any obligation moral or otherwise and which could be denied when the work was late through negligence.”[6]

Obligatory requisition with no negotiation, on price or on conditions of work, in brief a total dependence of the employee on the employer who, mostly, offered his exploited, as “food”, a gratuity in the form of bottles of spirits. Such were the rules and conditions in which the proletariat, future wage labour, emerged under French colonial capitalism in Senegal.

Four years later, in 1794, the same Blanchot (now the commanding officer of Senegal) decided on a new “gratuity” by giving the order to furnish the requisitioned workers with “couscous and the lash”. Certainly we can see “some amelioration” of the gratuity going from two bottles of spirits to couscous, but it still wasn’t a question of “compensation” and still less a proper wage to speak of. It was necessary to wait until 1804 for remuneration as compensation for work done to officially exist. That was the year when the economy underwent a serious crisis due to the war effort then sustained by the colonial system for the conquest of the empire of Fouta (the neighbouring region of Saint-Louis). In effect, the war meant the provisional halt of river commerce, which led to shortages of products and price speculation on basic necessities, which in turn caused a rise in the cost of living, and with it, strong social tensions.

1804: the establishment of the proletariat and the first expression of class antagonisms

To deal with the deterioration of the social climate, the commanding officer of the town of Saint-Louis issued the following order:

“[...] as a consequence of the decree of the Council of the Colony on complaints regarding the high price of the workers who have successively provided their days of work at exorbitant and intolerable prices for a long time [...]. The foremen, workers, carpenters or masons must henceforth be paid a salary of one bar of iron per day or 4 francs 16 sols; the mates, three-quarters of a bar or 3 francs 12 sols, the labourers, a quarter of a bar or 1 franc 4 sols.”

“In this document, which is one of the oldest written that we possess on wage labour, we learn that the town of Saint-Louis had at this time, that’s to say in 1804, ‘workers, carpenters, caulkers and masons’ employed by private individuals, according to the norms and in circumstances which are unfortunately not indicated, aside from the growth of salaries paid to these personnel.”[7]

To avoid arbitrating conflict between employers and employees, the state decided to regulate their relations by fixing the total amount of wages according to categories and level of qualification. Let’s note moreover that this act of the colonial state was first of all directed against the employees because it responded to the grievances lodged with the Chief of the colony by the employers who complained about the “exorbitant price” of a day’s work by the workers.

In fact, to cope with the effects of the crisis, the workers had decided to raise the price of their work to preserve their reduced purchasing power resulting from the increased cost of living. And before this time, the establishment of working conditions was still a purely private affair, exclusively in the hands of socio-economic negotiators, that’s to say, without any formal state legislation.

Still, this open intervention of state authority was the first of its kind in a conflict between employers and employees. More generally, this time (1804) attests to the reality of the first open expression in the colony of an antagonism between the two principal historic social classes that confront one another under capitalism: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This date also marks the history of labour in Senegal, which was formally recognised by the establishment of wages, finally allowing the workers to sell their labour “normally” and be paid as such.

Concerning the “ethnic composition” of the (qualified) workers, they were overwhelmingly of European origin, and similarly, the employers were almost exclusively from the metropole. Among the latter figured Potin, Valantin, Pellegrin, Morel, D’Erneville, Dubois, Prevost, etc., who were the “cream of the commercial bourgeoisie” of the colony. Finally, let’s note in passing the extreme numerical weakness of the working class (some thousands) as a consequence of the low level of economic development of the country; and this a century-and-a-half after the first arrival of colonists in this zone. Furthermore, this was essentially a colonial trading post based on trade in raw materials and ebony.[8]

The manpower crisis of the colonial trading post

“The principal activity of Senegal was the slave trade and the exploitation of products such as gum, ivory, gold, yellow wax, hides drawn by the Saint-Louisian and other merchants on the river or along the west coast of Africa but as long as its economic importance remained secondary the availability of manpower was never a concern. In order to carry out the rare works of fitting out equipment or summary infrastructures, the Governor, at his own discretion, could call on extra assistance from the military or civilian sectors and, in work that didn’t need specialised workers could often, if not always, call on the workers in the most servile conditions.

“But the suppression of slavery had profoundly changed the givens of the situation. The principal economic resource of the colony was henceforth threatened with drying up. France had further lost some of its agricultural colonies with the attempted European colonisation of Cape Verde having failed and the Government of the Restoration then thought it necessary to initiate the development of agriculture in Senegal by growing a certain number of local products likely to feed French industry, turning around the commercial activities of the colony and giving work to the indigenous free labour force.”[9]

It is necessary to underline straightaway that the suppression of slavery responded first and foremost to an economic need rather than any humanitarian consideration. In fact, the colonial bourgeoisie lacked a workforce due to the fact that a large proportion of the men and women of working age were slaves in the hands of their local masters. The suppression of slavery took place in two stages.

In the first stage, a law dating from April 1818 forbade only the maritime commerce of slaves and their transportation to America, but not inside the territories which remained free for the colonial merchants. However, it was quickly realised that this was still insufficient to remedy the shortage of workers. So the Chief of the colony personally asked the head of the First Battalion to provide “men of the corvée on request who would be used for diverse purposes”. Thanks to these measures, the colonial authorities and merchants could temporarily overcome the labour shortage. For their part, the available labourers became aware of the benefits they could derive from the scarcity of labour by becoming more demanding towards the employers. And this provoked a new confrontation over the price of labour between the workers and their bosses, resulting in a new intervention by the colonial authorities who proceeded with the “regulation” of the market in favour of the merchants.

In the second stage, in February 1821, the Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, while considering a policy of active immigration by people of European origin, ordered the end of slavery in “all its forms”.

In fact, once again for the colonial authorities it was a matter of finding the necessary hands for the development of the agricultural economy:

“For the Governor, it was a question of the redemption of individuals kept in slavery in the regions close to the west African possessions; of their emancipation by a certifiable act on the condition that they worked for the contractor for a certain period of time. This would be [...] a sort of liberty apprenticeship, familiarising the native with European civilisation, giving him a taste of new industrial cultures while reducing the number of captives. One thus obtained [...] labour while keeping in with the plans of the abolitionists.” [10]

In other words, it was above all a question of “civilising” to better exploit the “emancipated” and it was in no way liberation in the name of a humanitarian vision. Moreover, as if that wasn’t enough, two years later in 1823, the colonial administration set up a “regime of time-serving”, that’s to say a sort of contract linking the employee to the employer for a long period.

“The time-servers were used for a period which could go up to 14 years in the public workshops, in the administration, the agricultural plantations (there were 300 out of 1500 used by Baron Roger), in hospitals where they worked as messengers, nurses or domestics, in local security, and in the army; in the regiment of Marine Infantry they numbered 72 in 1828, 115 four years later, 180 in 1842, while the numbers of those redeemed counted 1629 in 1835, 1768 in 1828, 2545 in 1839. At this time the village of Saint-Louis alone counted about 1600 time-servers among its inhabitants.”[11]

In this regard, let’s underline the beginning of the formal existence of long-term contracts (14 years) similar to a CDI (contract of indeterminate length) of today. We see here the permanent need for workers that corresponds to the rhythm of the economic development of the colony. Similarly, the regime of time-servers had been conceived with the aim of the accelerating agricultural colonisation and this policy is shown in the consequent start of the development of the productive forces and more generally of the local economy. But the balance-sheet was very contradictory because, if it allowed a real increase in commercial traffic (import/export), which went from 2 million francs in 1818 to 14 million in 1844, the policy of agricultural industrialisation on the other hand hit a brick wall. In fact the plan initiated by Baron Roger for the development of agriculture was abandoned by his successors (three years after it was launched) because of differing economic orientations within the state. Another factor weighing on the decision to cancel the plan for the development of agriculture was the refusal of a great number of the previous farmers, who had become paid employees, to return to the land. However, the two aspects of this policy, i.e. the redemption of slaves and the “regime of time-servers”, were maintained up to 1848, the time of the decree for their total suppression.

“Such was the situation towards the middle of the 19th century, a situation characterised by the now established wage labour, the attribute of a defenceless proletariat with almost no rights, which, if it was aware of any unity or combination, if it thus had a pre-union consciousness, had never yet dared to assert itself in a conflict with its employers who were backed up by an authoritarian government.”[12]

Thus was constituted the basis of a waged proletariat, evolving under the regime of modern capitalism, the precursor of the African working class and which, henceforth, would make its apprenticeship in the class struggle at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century.

Embryonic forms of class struggle in 1855

The emergence of the working class

According to available sources,[13] 1855 saw the appearance of the first professional organisation aiming to defend the specific interests of the proletariat. Its constitution followed a movement launched by a native carpenter (a habitant of Saint-Louis) who led 140 workers to draw up a petition against the European master craftsmen who were imposing unacceptable conditions of work. In fact:

“The first artisans who undertook the great colonial works were European or military engineers who were assisted by auxiliaries and indigenous workers. These were carpenters, joiners, masons, blacksmiths and shoemakers. These were the technically more qualified personnel benefitting, in a certain number of cases, from a more or less elementary training. They prevailed in the existing corporations of which they made up the leading elite; it was without doubt these who decided the markets, fixed the prices, allocated the tasks, chose the workers that they hired and paid a tariff largely inferior to that they claimed back from the employers.” [14]

In this clash we see that the first expression of the “class struggle” in the colony opposed two fractions of the same (working) class and not the bourgeoisie and proletariat directly; in other words, a so-called base fraction of workers (dominated), in struggle against another so-called “ruling elite” (dominant) fraction of workers. Another feature of this context is the fact that the exploiting class was derived exclusively from the colonial bourgeoisie, due to the absence of a “native bourgeoisie”. In brief, we have a working class constituting itself under a developing colonial capitalism. Therefore it is understandable why the first expression of working class struggle could not avoid being marked by a triple connotation, “corporatist”, “ethnic” and “hierarchical”. This is illustrated in the case of the leader of this group of indigenous workers, himself a master carpenter, and as such a trainer of numerous young apprentice workers under him, while at the same time working under the European master joiners who decided everything (cf. the preceding quote).

In this context, the decision of the native leader to join with the rank and file African workers (less qualified than him) in order to face up to the arrogant attitude of the western master artisans is understandable and can be interpreted as a healthy reaction in defence of proletarian interests.

Moreover, according to archive sources, this same indigenous master craftsman was later involved in the constitution in 1885 of the first African union, even though the 1884 law of Jules Ferry authorising the creation of unions had excluded their establishment in the colonies. For this reason the union of native workers had to exist and function in clandestinity, leading to a lack of information on its history, as the following passage shows:

“The K30 series of the Archives of the Republic of Senegal include an unpublished manuscript which hasn’t previously been quoted by any source and which was filed in a folder on which someone had written: union of the carpenters of the Haut-Fleuve. Unfortunately, this extremely important piece of the archives on the history of the union movement in Senegal is unaccompanied by any other document likely to throw some light or understanding on the question.”[15]

So, despite the ban on any form of proletarian expression and despite the systematic censure of the real history of the workers’ movement in the colonies, this record could show the existence of the first embryonic organisations of class struggle of a union type. Admittedly, this was a “corporatist union”, of carpenters, but in any case the capitalist state at this time forbade any sort of inter-professional association.

This is what investigations into the writings related to this theme and period allow us to understand today about the expressions of working class struggle in this period from 1855 to 1885.

Immigrant Senegalese struggles in the Belgian Congo in 1890/1892

“Let’s recall first of all that when the suppression of the regime of time-servers was enacted in 1848, this system, which was far from having completely disappeared, tried to adapt to the new situation by progressively transforming itself. But this solution in no way resolved the thorny issue of labour.

“The colonial economic milieu could thus not buy slaves that they could work into the ground and the plantations risked being abandoned because of the lack of hands, pushing the administrative leadership and the political authorities to authorise the immigration of recently liberated African workers towards regions where their services would be appreciated, on a salary and with conditions discussed in agreement with the bosses. In order to effect this request, the Governor published the decree of March 27 1852, reorganising the emigration of workers in the colonies; thus on July 3 1854, a ship named ‘Le cinq freres’ chartered to ensure the transport of 3000 workers destined for the plantations of Guyana, cast anchor at Dakar and made contacts with the aim of hiring 300 Senegalese. The conditions stated were the following: “an expatriation of six years against a gift to the value of 30 to 50 francs, a wage of 15 francs per month, lodgings, food, medical care, the pleasure of a small garden and free repatriation at the end of their stay in the Americas.’”[16]

We see here, with the case of the 300 Senegalese destined for the plantations of Guyana, that the working class really existed, to the point of constituting “a reserve of labour”, a part of which the bourgeoisie could export.

Indeed, having demonstrated their competence and efficiency, for example in undertaking (in 1885) the hard work of constructing the Dakar/Saint-Louis railway, the workers of this French colony aroused a particular interest among the colonial economic milieux, either as exploitable labour on site, or as a labour force to be exported to foreign competitors.

In this same context and in similar conditions, a great number of Senegalese workers were recruited and sent to the Belgian Congo to work in various sites and depots, notably on the Congolese railway of Matadi.

But, from their arrival, the immigrant workers came up against harsh conditions of work and existence and immediately saw that the Belgian colonial authorities had no intention of honouring their contracts. In fact, as they noted themselves in a letter of protest addressed to the Governor of Senegal, they were “badly fed, inadequately lodged, underpaid, sick and badly looked after”, they died like flies and they thought that cholera was striking them because “we are burying 4 or 5 people a day”. A petition of February 1892, addressed to the French and Belgian colonial authorities, firmly demanded their collective repatriation to Senegal, concluding: “Now none amongst us wants to stay in Matadi”.

The workers were thus victims of a particularly odious form of exploitation by colonial capitalism which imposed such barbarous conditions upon them that, during this time, the two colonial states passed the buck, or shut their eyes firmly to the fate of the immigrant workers:

“Encouraged by impunity, the Belgian authorities did nothing to ameliorate the condition of the unfortunate protesters. The distance between the Belgian Congo and Senegal, arguments over precedence which prevented the representative of the French government in the region interceding on their behalf, the complicities which benefitted the railway company of the Lower Congo at the rue Oudinot (cf. Ministry of the Colonies), the cynicism of some of the colonial milieu that found the bad luck of the poor Senegalese amusing, exposed the Senegalese workers to almost total abandonment and more or less disarmed without any means of defence, taxable and forced, they were at their mercy.”[17]

Through their combativity, by refusing to work in the conditions imposed on them and by firmly demanding their evacuation from the Congo, the immigrants from the French colony obtained some satisfaction. Also, on their return to the country, they were able to count on the support of the population and their comrade workers by thus obliging the Governor to engage in new reforms aiming to protect the workers, beginning with the establishment of new emigration rules. In fact, the drama the immigrants suffered in the Congo gave rise to debates and developments of consciousness in relation to workers’ conditions. It was in this context, between 1892 and 1912, that a whole series of measures was taken on behalf of employees, for example a weekly break, workers’ pensions, medical assistance, in short real reforms.

Furthermore, based on their “Congolese experience”, the old immigrants were particularly conspicuous during a new recruitment drive for new railway yards in Senegal by being very demanding over working conditions. In this sense, in 1907 they decided to create a professional association called the “Workers’ Association of Kayes” with the aim of better defending their working and living conditions faced with the appetites of the capitalist vultures. And the colonial authority, taking account of the balance of power at that time which was about to escape their control, agreed to legalise the railworkers’ association.

In fact, the birth of this association among the railworkers is hardly surprising when one considers that, since the opening of the network in 1885, this sector had become one of the most important industrial complexes of the colony, both in its turnover and the number of employees. Similarly, we shall see later that the railworkers are in all the battles of the working class in French Western Africa.

More generally, the period following the return of immigrants to the country (between 1892 and 1913) was marked by strong social unrest, notably in the public sector where clerks and workers of the post and telephone service protested against deteriorating working conditions and low wages. In this context, civil servants and those close to them decided to create their own associations to defend themselves by “all means at their disposal”, soon followed by commercial employees who took the opportunity to demand that the law on a weekly rest period apply to their sector. In short, there was a seething combativity among workers in both the private and public sectors, which increasingly worried the colonial authorities. Indeed, not only could these burning social problems not be settled by the end of 1913, but they reached their climax in the context of the crisis resulting from the First World War.

Lassou, March 2011 (to be continued).

In the previous article in this series [34] we saw how the soviets, having seized power in October 1917, gradually lost it to the point where it was no more than a facade, kept alive artificially to hide the triumph of the capitalist counter-revolution that had taken place in Russia. The aim of this article is to understand what caused this to happen and to draw lessons that will be indispensable for revolutionaries in the future.

The nature of the state born out of revolution

Marx and Engels, analysing the Paris Commune of 1871, drew some lessons on the question of the state that we can summarise here:

1) It is necessary to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus from top to bottom;

2) The state will re-emerge after the revolution and there are two main reasons for this:

a) the bourgeoisie has not yet been completely defeated and eradicated;

b) non-exploiting classes (petty bourgeoisie, peasantry, those on the fringes of society...) whose interests do not coincide with those of the proletariat, will still remain in the transitional society.

This article does not aim to analyse the nature of the new state;[1] however to illustrate the subject we are dealing with, we must show that while the new state is not identical to those that preceded it in history, it still retains characteristics that constitute an obstacle to the development of the revolution; which is why, as Engels had already pointed out and as Lenin had made clear in State and Revolution [35], the proletariat must on the very day of the revolution begin the process of eliminating the new state.

After taking power, the main obstacle that the soviets would run into in Russia was the newly emerged state, which “despite the appearance of its greater material power [...] was a thousand times more vulnerable to the enemy than other working class organs. Indeed, the state owes its greater physical power to objective factors which correspond perfectly with the interests of the exploiting classes but can have no association with the revolutionary role of the proletariat”[2]; “The terrible threat of a return to capitalism will come mainly in the state sector. This, all the more so as capitalism is found here in its impersonal, so to speak, ethereal form. Statification can help to conceal a long-term process opposed to socialism.”[3]

In the previous article, we described the factors that contributed to the weakening of the soviets: civil war, famine, the general chaos in the whole economy, the exhaustion and the gradual decomposition of the working class, etc. The “silent conspiracy” of the soviet state, which would also contribute in weakening the soviets, operated in three ways:

1) the growing weight of the state institutions par excellence: the army, the Cheka (political police) and the unions;

2) the “inter-classism” of the soviets and the growing bureaucratisation that it gave rise to, and

3) the gradual absorption of the Bolshevik Party into the state. We dealt with the first point in the previous article; this article will focus on the last two.

The relentless strengthening of the state

The soviet state excluded the bourgeoisie but was not exclusively the state of the proletariat. It included non-exploiting classes such as the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the various middle strata. These classes tended to defend their own narrow interests, which inevitably placed obstacles on the road to communism. This unavoidable “interclassism” was a key factor driving the new state, a process which would be denounced by the Workers’ Opposition in 1921: it meant that the “the Soviet policy had different goals and had a distorted relationship with the working class”[4] and it became the breeding ground of the state bureaucracy.

Shortly after October, former Tsarist officials began occupying positions in the soviet institutions, especially when quick decisions were needed to deal with urgent problems. Thus, for example, faced with the impossibility of organising the supply of essential goods in February 1918, the People’s Commissariat had to resort to using commissions that had been established by the former Provisional Government. The members agreed on condition that they did not have to rely on the Bolsheviks, which the latter accepted. Similarly, in reorganising the education system in 1918-19, former Tsarist officials had to be called on, and they would gradually amend the proposed school curriculum.

In addition, the best proletarian elements were gradually converted into bureaucrats remote from the masses. The imperatives of the war drew many leading workers into playing the role of political commissars, inspectors or military leaders. The most able workers took the leading role in the economic administration. The former imperial bureaucrats and those newly arriving from the proletariat formed a bureaucratic layer that identified with the state. But this organ had its own logic, and its siren song managed to seduce such experienced revolutionaries as Lenin and Trotsky.

The former officials from the bourgeois elite were imbued with this logic, and they penetrated the soviet fortress through the door that the new state opened to them: “But thousands of those who, through custom and culture, were more or less closely attached to the expropriated bourgeoisie were very soon offered the opportunity to re-enter the ‘revolutionary stronghold’ - by the back door as it were - and to resume their role as managers of the labour process in the ‘Workers’ State’.... Many were soon to be appointed (from above) to leading positions in the economy. Merging with the new political-administrative ‘elite’, of which the Party itself formed the nucleus, the more ‘enlightened’ and technologically skilled sections of the ‘expropriated class’ soon resumed dominant positions in the relations of production.”[5]. As the Soviet historian Kritsman points out, “in their administrative work the representatives of the old intelligentsia showed off-handedness and hostility towards the public.”[6]

But the main danger came from the state machine itself, with its increasing but imperceptible weight of inertia. As a consequence of this, even the most dedicated public servants tended to become detached from, and were distrusted by, the masses, adopting expedient methods, imposing unwanted measures, and carrying out duties affecting thousands of people as nothing more than administrative tasks, ruling by decrees. “The party, turning from the task of destruction to that of administration, discovers the virtues of law and order and of submission to the rightful authority of the revolutionary power.”[7]

The bureaucratic logic of the state suited the bourgeoisie perfectly; as an exploitative class, it can safely delegate power to a specialised body of professional politicians and officials. But it is fatal for the proletariat to put its trust in specialists at any time; it must learn directly from its mistakes and by taking decisions and putting them into practice itself it will begin to transform itself in the process. The logic of proletarian power is not in delegating power, but in direct involvement in exercising it.

The revolution in Russia was faced with a dilemma in April 1918: the world revolution had not advanced and the imperialist invasion threatened to crush the soviet bastion. The whole country had descended into chaos, “the administrative and economic organisation was running down at an alarming rate. The danger to the revolution came not from organised resistance, but from a breakdown of all authority. The appeal in State and Revolution to ‘smash the bourgeois state machine’ now seemed singularly out of date; that part of the revolutionary programme had succeeded beyond all expectations.”[8]

The soviet state was faced with taking some drastic decisions: to quickly get the Red Army on its feet, to organise transport, to boost production, to guarantee food supplies to the hungry cities, to organise social life. All this had to be sorted out against the total sabotage by the entrepreneurs and managers that would lead to the widespread confiscation of industries, banks, shops, etc. It presented the soviet power with an additional challenge. A heated debate unfolded inside the party and the soviets. Everyone was in favour of militarily and economic resistance up until the proletarian revolution broke out in the other countries, principally Germany. The disagreement was about how to organise resistance: was it by strengthening the state machinery or by improving the organisation and capabilities of the working masses? Lenin led those who defended the first solution while some tendencies on the left of the Bolshevik Party defended the second.

In his pamphlet The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power [36], Lenin argues that “the primary task facing the revolution [...] was the task of... rebuilding a shattered economy, of imposing labour discipline and raising productivity, of ensuring strict accounting and control over production and distribution, eliminating corruption and waste and, perhaps above all, of struggling against the ubiquitous petty-bourgeois mentality [...] He did not hesitate to make use of what he himself termed bourgeois methods, including the use of bourgeois technical specialists [...] the recourse to piece work; the adoption of the ‘Taylor system’ [...] He therefore called for 'one-man management.’”[9]

Why did Lenin favour this approach? The first reason was inexperience: soviet power was confronted in effect with huge and urgent tasks without being able to draw on any experience, and without this it was not possible to carry out any theoretical reflection on these matters. The second reason was the desperate and intolerable situation we have described. But we must also consider Lenin in turn to be a victim of the statist and bureaucratic logic, emerging bit by bit as its spokesman. This logic led him to put his trust in the old technicians, administrators and officials trained under capitalism and, moreover, in the unions who were responsible for disciplining workers, stifling independent initiatives and demonstrations by workers, imposing the capitalist division of labour and the narrow corporatist mentality that goes with it.

The oppositionists on the left denounced the idea that “The form of state control of enterprises must develop in the direction of bureaucratic centralisation, of rule by various commissars, of deprivation of independence from local Soviets and of rejection in practice of the type of ‘Commune-State’ ruled from below [...] The introduction of labour discipline in connection with the restoration of capitalist leadership in production cannot essentially increase the productivity of labour, but it will lower the class autonomy, activity and degree of organisation of the proletariat”.[10]

The Workers’ Opposition complained that: “given the disastrous state of our economy that still relies on the capitalist system (paid wages, different rates, labour categories, etc.), the elites in our party distrust the creative capacity of the workers, and are seeking salvation from the economic chaos with the heirs of the old capitalists, businessmen and technicians whose creative ability is corrupted in economic affairs by routine, habit and methods and management of the capitalist mode of production.”[11]

Far from withering away, the state power grew alarmingly: “A ‘white’ professor who reached Omsk in the autumn of 1919 from Moscow reported that‘at the head of many of the centres and glavki sit former employers and responsible officials and managers of business. The unprepared visitor to the centres who is personally acquainted with the former commercial and industrial world would be surprised to see the former owners of big leather factories sitting in Glavkozh, big manufacturers in the Central textile organisations, etc.’”[12] In March 1919, during a debate of the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin admitted: “We threw out the old bureaucrats, but they have come back, they call themselves ‘commonists’ when they can’t bear to say the word Communist, and they wear a red ribbon in their buttonholes and creep into warm places.”[13]

The growth of the soviet bureaucracy finally overpowered the soviets. There were 114,259 employees in June 1918, 529,841 one year later, and 5.82 million in December 1920! “State interest” was relentlessly enforced over the revolutionary struggle for communism, “the general concerns of the state began to override the interests of the working class.”[14]

The absorption of the Bolshevik Party into the state

The strengthening of the state led to the absorption of the Bolshevik Party. It had not a priori anticipated this conversion into a state party. According to figures from February 1918, the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks only had six administrative employees against 65 for the Council of Commissars, while the soviets of Petrograd and Moscow had more than 200. “The Bolshevik organisations were financially dependent on the help given them by the local Soviet institutions: generally speaking, such dependence was complete. It was even possible for prominent Bolsheviks, such as Preobrazhensky, to suggest that the Party should dissolve itself completely in the Soviet apparatus.” The anarchist Leonard Schapiro acknowledged that “the best of the Party cadres had been integrated in the apparatus, both central and local, of the soviets”. Many Bolsheviks felt that “local committees of the Bolshevik party were nothing more than propaganda sections of the local Soviets”[15]. The Bolsheviks even had doubts about their ability to exercise power at the head of the soviets. “In the aftermath of the October insurrection, when the Soviet government was being formed, Lenin had a momentary hesitation before accepting his post of chairman of the Soviet of People’s Commissars. His political intuition told him that this would put a brake on his capacity to act in the vanguard of the vanguard – to be on the left of the revolutionary party, as he had been so clearly between April and October 1917”[16]. Lenin feared, not without reason, that if the party and its leading members were involved in the daily running of the Soviet government, they would find themselves trapped by the system and lose sight of the global goals of the proletarian movement that cannot be linked to the daily management of state affairs.[17]

The Bolsheviks didn’t want to monopolise power and shared the first Council of People’s Commissars with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Some of the sessions of this Council were even open to delegates from the Menshevik Internationalists and the anarchists.

The government only became definitively Bolshevik in July 1918, the date of the uprising of the Socialist Revolutionaries against the creation of poor peasants committees: “On July 6, two young Chekist members of the Left Socialist Revolutionary party, and major players in the conspiracy, A. Andreyev and G. Blumkin, appeared at the German Embassy and provided official documents attesting to their status and their mission. Admitted into the office of Ambassador, Count von Mirbach, they shot him and fled. In the aftermath, a detachment of Chekists commanded by a Left Socialist Revolutionary, Popov, would make a series of surprise arrests, including those of the leaders of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky and Latsis, the chairman of the Moscow Soviet, Smidovitch, and People’s Commissar for the Post, Podbielsky. He also seized the headquarters of the Cheka and the Central Post Office Building.”[18]

As a consequence of this, the party was then invaded by all sorts of opportunists and careerists, former tsarist officials or leading Menshevik converts. Nogin, an old Bolshevik, “spoke of ‘horrifying facts about the drunkenness, debauchery, corruption, robbery and irresponsible behaviour of many party workers, so that one’s hair simply stands on end.’”[19] In March 1918, before the Party Congress, Zinoviev told the story of the militant who welcomed a new member and told him to come back the next day to collect his membership card; to this he replied “No, comrade, I need it now to get an office job.”

As Marcel Liebman noted, “If so many men who were communists in name only tried to enter the ranks of the party, it was because it was now the central power, the most influential institution in social and political life, one that united the new elite, appointed the managers and leaders and was the instrument and channel of upward social mobility and success” and he added that “the privileges of the middle and junior management raised protests in the party ranks”[20], when all this is quite normal and commonplace in a bourgeois party.

The party then attempted to fight this influx by carrying out numerous purges. But this would prove to be ineffectual because the measures did not address the root of the problem as the merger of the party with the state was being strengthened inexorably. This danger was also contained in a similar way in the identification of the party with the Russian nation. The proletarian party is indeed international and its section in one or more countries where the proletariat is in control of an isolated bastion can in no way identify with the nation, but only and exclusively with the world revolution.

The transformation of Bolshevism into a party-state was eventually theorised by the argument that the party exercises power on behalf of the class, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the party,[21] which theoretically and politically disarmed it, completing its surrender into the arms of the state. In one of its resolutions, the 8th Party Congress (March 1919) agreed that the party must “win individual political sway in the soviets and effective control over all their activities.”[22] The resolution was implemented in the following months with the formation of party cells in all the soviets to control them. Kamenev declared that “the Communist Party is the government of Russia. The country is ruled by the 600,000 party members.”[23] The icing on the cake was provided by Zinoviev at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International (1920) when he declared that “every conscious worker must realise that the dictatorship of the working class can be realised only through the dictatorship of its vanguard, that is, through the Communist Party”[24] and by Trotsky at the Tenth Party Congress (1921), who stated in a reply to the Workers’ Opposition:“They have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers’ right to elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy!” Trotsky spoke of the“revolutionary historical birthright of the Party”'. “'The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship ... regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class... The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers’ democracy…”[25]

The proletariat had lost the Bolshevik Party as its vanguard. No longer was the state made to serve the proletariat; the state used the party as its battering ram against the proletariat. This is how the Platform of Fifteen, an opposition group that emerged within the Bolshevik Party in the late 1920s, denounced it: “The bureaucratisation of the party, the degeneration of its leading elements, the merger of the party apparatus with the bureaucratic apparatus of government, the loss of influence of the proletarian part of the party, the intervention of government in the internal struggles of the party - all this shows that the central committee has already exceeded the limitations of the policy of silencing the party and started to liquidate it - and is transforming it into an auxiliary arm of the state. Carrying out this policy of liquidation will mean the end of the proletarian dictatorship in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party is the avant-garde and a vital weapon in the struggle of the working class. Without it, neither victory nor the retention of the proletarian dictatorship is possible.”[26]

The necessity for the proletariat to organise autonomously from the transitional state

How could the proletariat in Russia have overturned the balance of forces, revitalised the soviets, held back the growth of the post-revolutionary state, opening the door to its real withering away and taking forward the world wide revolutionary movement towards communism?

This question could only have been solved by the development of the world revolution. “In Russia, the problem could only be posed.”[27] “…in Europe it will be immeasurably more difficult to start, whereas it was immeasurably more easy for us to start; but it will be more difficult for us to continue the revolution than it will be over there”.[28]

In the context of the struggle for the world revolution, there were two concrete tasks in Russia: saving the party for the proletariat by tearing it away from the talons of the state, and organising itself in workers’ councils capable of regenerating the soviet structure. Here we are only dealing with the latter point.

The proletariat has to organise itself independently from the transitional state and impose its own dictatorship over it. This may seem stupid to those who stick to facile formulae and syllogisms, which say that because the proletariat is the ruling class the state has to be its most faithful organ. In State and Revolution, going back over Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, written in 1875, Lenin wrote:

“In its first phase, or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains ‘the narrow horizon of bourgeois law.’ Of course, bourgeois law in regard to the distribution of consumer goods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law.

“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!”[29]

The state in the period of transition[30] is a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”,[31] or, to put it more precisely, a state which conserves the deepest traits of a class society, a society of exploitation: in this phase, bourgeois right,[32] the law of value, the moral and spiritual influence of capitalism still exist. The transitional society still maintains many aspects of the old society, but it has gone through a profound change which is precisely what needs to be kept alive because it is the only thing that can lead to communism: the massive, conscious and organised activity of the great majority of the working class, its organisation into a politically dominant class, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The tragic experience of the Russian revolution shows that the organisation of the proletariat into the ruling class cannot take place through the transitional state (the soviet state)

“The working class itself, as a class, considered as a unity and not as a diffuse social element, with unified class needs, with unified tasks and a consistent policy formulated in a clear manner, plays a less and less important political role in the Soviet republic.”[33]

The soviets made up the Commune-State, which Engels spoke about as the political association of the popular classes. This Commune-State plays an indispensable role in the repression of the bourgeoisie in the defensive war against imperialism and in maintaining a minimum of social cohesion, but cannot carry through the struggle for communism itself. Marx had already foreseen this in his draft of The Civil War in France:“the Commune is not the social movement of the working class and therefore of a general regeneration of mankind, but the organised means of action. The Commune does not do away with the class struggles, through which the working classes strive to the abolition of all classes and therefore of all class rule ... but it affords the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way.”[34] Furthermore, Lissagaray’s History of the Paris Commune in particular “contains a good deal of criticism of the hesitations, confusions, and, in some cases, empty posturings of some of the Commune Council delegates, many of whom indeed embodied an obsolete petty bourgeois radicalism that was frequently outflanked by the more proletarian neighbourhood assemblies. At least one of the local revolutionary clubs declared the Commune to be dissolved because it was not revolutionary enough!” [35]

“…the state is in our hands: but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in the past year? No. But we refuse to admit 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...”[36]

To resolve this problem, the Bolshevik Party pushed through a series of measures. On the one hand the Soviet Constitution adopted in 1918 declared that “The All-Russian Congress of Soviets consists of representatives of local Soviets, the towns being represented by one deputy for every 25,000 inhabitants and the country areas by one deputy for every 125,000. This article formalises the dominance of the proletariat over the peasantry”[37] while, at the same time, the programme of the Bolshevik Party, adopted in 1919, stated: “every member of a Soviet must, without fail, do a certain job of state administration; secondly, these jobs must be consistently changed so that they embrace all aspects of government, all its branches; and, thirdly, literally all the working population must be drawn into independent participation in state administration.”[38]

These measures were inspired by the lessons of the Paris Commune. They were aimed at limiting the privileges and prerogatives of the state functionaries, but to be effective and efficient, only the proletariat organised autonomously in workers’ councils independent from the state[39] was in a position to carry this through.

Marxism is a living theory, which needs to deepen and rectify its conceptions on the basis of historical experience. Drawing the lessons on the Paris Commune that Marx and Engels bequeathed to them, the Bolsheviks understood that the Commune-State, which had to head towards extinction, was the expression of the soviets. But at the same time they erroneously identified it as a proletarian state,[40] believing that this process would come about by itself, from within the state.[41] The experience of the Russian revolution shows that it is impossible for the state to wither away by itself and this makes it necessary to distinguish the worker’ councils from the general Soviets, the first being the place where the proletariat organises itself and exerts its dictatorship over the transitional Commune-State represented by the general soviets.

After the seizure of power by the soviets, the proletariat will have to maintain and develop its own organisations which will act in an independent manner in the soviets: the red guards, the factory committees, the neighbourhood committees, the workers’ sections of the soviets, the general assemblies.  

The factory committees at the heart of working class organisation

We have already seen that the factory committees played a decisive role during the crisis of the soviets in July,[42] and how they prised them from the grip of the bourgeoisie, enabling them to play their role of organs of insurrection in October.[43] In May 1917, the Conference of Factory Committees in Jarkov (Ukraine) called on the soviets to “convert themselves into organs of revolution dedicated to consolidating its victories.”[44] Between 7th and 12th October, a Conference of Factory Committees in Petrograd decided to create a Central Council of Factory Committees which took the name of the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet. It immediately began coordinating all the base soviet organisations and intervened actively in the politics of the Soviet, radicalising it more and more. In his work The Soviet Trade Unions Deutscher recognised that “the Factory Committee, the organ on the spot, rather than the trade union was the most potent and deadly instrument of upheaval.”[45]

Along with other base organisations that emanated directly and organically from the working class, the factory committees expressed, much more naturally and authentically than the soviets, the thoughts, tendencies, and advances of the working class, maintaining a deep symbiosis with the class.

During the period of transition towards communism, the proletariat will in no way acquire the status of a ruling class at the economic level. This is why, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, it cannot delegate power to an institutionalised structure, to a state. Furthermore, despite its peculiarities, the Commune-State does not express the specific interests of the working class, determined by the need for the revolutionary transformation of the world, but the needs of all the non-exploiting classes. Finally, the ineluctably bureaucratic tendencies of the state mean that this organ will always be pushed towards becoming autonomous from the masses and towards imposing its rule on them. This is why the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot come from a state organ but from a force for permanent struggle, debate and mobilisation, from an organ which ensures the class autonomy of the proletariat, reflects the needs of the working masses and allows them to transform themselves through discussion and action.

We saw in the fourth article in this series how, after the seizure of power, the soviet base organisations and the workers’ organs of struggle progressively disappeared. This was a tragic episode which weakened the proletariat and accelerated a whole process of social decomposition.       

The Red Guard, which made a short-lived appearance in 1905, emerged in February at the initiative of the factory committees and under their control, succeeding in mobilising 100,000 workers. It remained active until the middle of 1918, but the civil war plunged it into a grave crisis. The enormously superior force of the imperialist armies highlighted the inability of the Red Guard to face up to them. Units in the south of Russia, under the command of Antonov Osveenko, put up a heroic resistance but were swept aside and defeated. Victims of the fear of centralisation, the units which tried to remain operational lacked the most basic equipment, such as bullets. It was above all an urban militia, with limited arms and training, without organisational experience, and could function mainly in the form of emergency units or as an auxiliary to an organised army, but it was incapable of waging a full scale war. The necessities of the moment made it imperative to set up a Red Army with the required rigid military structure.[46] The latter absorbed many units of the Red Guard which were dissolved as such. There were attempts to reconstitute the Red Guard up until 1919; certain soviets proposed that their units collaborate with the Red Army but the latter rejected these offers systematically when it didn’t dissolve the units by force.

The disappearance of the Red Guard restored to the soviet state one of the classic prerogatives of the state, the monopoly of arms, depriving the proletariat of one of its main means of defence since it no longer possessed its own military force.

The neighbourhood councils disappeared at the end of 1919. They had integrated workers from small enterprises and shops, the unemployed, the young, the retired, families who were part of the working class as a whole. They were also an essential means for disseminating proletarian thought and action among the marginal urban strata, such as the artisans, to the small peasants and so on.

The disappearance of the factory committees was a decisive blow. As we saw in the fourth article in this series, it took place rapidly and they had ceased to exist by the end of 1918. The trade unions played a decisive role in their destruction.

The conflict came out into the open at a tumultuous Pan-Russian Conference of Factory Committees on the eve of the October revolution. During the debates the idea was affirmed that ...“At the moment when the Factory Committees were formed, the trade unions actually did not yet exist. The Factory Committees filled the vacuum”. An anarchist delegate declared that “the trade unions wish to devour the Factory Committees. There is no popular discontent with the Factory Committees, but there is discontent with the trade unions. To the worker the trade union is a form of organisation imposed from without. The Factory Committee is closer to them”. One of the resolutions adopted by the conference stated that...“ ‘workers’ control - within the limits assigned to it by the Conference - was only possible under the political and economic rule of the working class’. It warned against ‘isolated’ and ‘disorganised’ activities and pointed out that ‘the seizure of factories by the workers and their operation for personal profit was incompatible with the aims of the proletariat.’” [47]

The Bolsheviks continued to defend dogmatically the idea that the trade unions are the economic organs of the proletariat, and they took their side in the conflict between them and the factory committees. At the same conference, a Bolshevik delegate argued that “the factory committees have to exercise their functions of control for the benefit of the trade unions and, what’s more, should be financially dependent on them”.[48]

On 3 November 1917, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars passed a decree on workers’ control, stipulating that the decisions of the factory committees could be “annulled by trade unions and congresses....”[49] This decision provoked animated protests by the factory committees and by members of the party. The decree was in the end modified: of the 21 delegates who formed the Council of Workers’ Control, 10 represented the trade unions and only 5 the factory committees! This imbalance not only put the latter in a position of weakness, but also imprisoned them in the logic of the management of production, making them all the more vulnerable to the trade unions.

Although theSoviet of Factory Committees remained active for several months, even trying to organise a general congress (see the fourth article in this series), the trade unions finally succeeded in dissolving the factory committees. The IInd Trade Union Congress, held between the 25th and 27th of January 1919, passed a resolution “demanding that ‘official status be granted to the administrative prerogatives of the unions’. It spoke of ‘statisation’(ogosudarstvlenie) of the trade unions, ‘as their function broadened and merged with the governmental machinery of industrial administration and control’.”[50]

With the disappearance of the factory committees, “In the 'Soviet' Russia of 1920 the industrial workers were ‘subjected again to managerial authority, labour discipline wage incentives, scientific management - to the familiar forms of capitalist industrial organisation with the same bourgeois managers, qualified only by the State's holding the title to the property.’”[51]The workers again found themselves completely atomised, lacking their own unifying organisations because the soviets were becoming assimilated with the classic electoralism of bourgeois democracy, no more than parliamentary chambers.

After the revolution, abundance does not yet exist and the working class continues to be subjected to the conditions of the realm of necessity, which includes exploitation for a whole period in which the world bourgeoisie has not yet been defeated. Even after this, as long as the integration of other social strata into associated labour has not been completed, the effort of producing the essential wealth of society will be borne mainly by the proletariat. The march towards communism will therefore contain a constant struggle to diminish exploitation to the point where it has disappeared[52] “In order to maintain its collective political rule, the working class needs to have secured at least the basic material necessities of life and in particular to have the time and energy to engage in political life”.[53]. Marx wrote that “by cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement”.[54]. If the proletariat, after seizing power, accepts a continuous augmentation of its exploitation, it will be incapable of carrying on the fight for communism.

This is what happened in revolutionary Russia. The exploitation of the working class increased to extreme limits the more the working class lost its autonomy and self-organisation. This process became irreversible when it was clear that the extension of the revolution had failed. The Workers’ Truth[55] group expressed the situation clearly: “the revolution has ended in a defeat for the working class. The bureaucracy and the NEPmen have become a new bourgeoisie which lives from the exploitation of the workers and profits from their disorganisation. With the trade unions in the hands of the bureaucracy, the workers are more disinherited than ever. After being converted into a leading party, into a party of leaders and organisers of the state organisation and economic organisation of a capitalist type, the Communist Party has irrevocably lost any links with and descent from the proletariat.”

C. Mir 28.12.10

The previous article in this series [42] showed how rapidly the hopes for an immediate revolutionary victory, kindled by the proletarian uprisings of 1917-19 had, a mere two years later, in 1921, given way to a more sober reflection among revolutionaries about the overall course of capitalism’s historical crisis. At the Third Congress of the Communist International, a key question for debate was this: the capitalist system has certainly entered an epoch of decline, but what happens if the proletariat does not immediately respond to the new period by overthrowing the system? And what is the task of communist organisations in a phase when the class struggle and the proletariat’s subjective understanding of its situation are in retreat, even when the objective historical conditions for revolution are still present?

Lenin died in January 1924 and in December of the same year Stalin tentatively raised the slogan of “socialism in one country”. By 1925/26, it had become official policy in the Russian party. The new line symbolised a decisive break with internationalism.

Bolshevisation versus “Luxemburgism”

Virtually all of the communists who came together to form the new International in 1919 were agreed that capitalism had proved to be a system in historic decline, even if they differed on the political implications of the new period and the means needed to develop the revolutionary struggle – for example, whether bourgeois parliaments should be used as a “tribune” for revolutionary propaganda, or should be boycotted in favour of action on the streets and in the workplace. Regarding the theoretical underpinnings of the new epoch, there had been little time for sustained debate. The only really coherent analysis of the “economics of decadence” had been provided by Rosa Luxemburg just before the outbreak of the world war. As we have seen,[1] her theory of capitalist breakdown provoked many criticisms from reformists and revolutionaries alike, but the criticisms were largely negative – there was little sign of an alternative framework for understanding the fundamental contradictions that had impelled capitalism to enter its epoch of decay. In any case, disagreements on this point were rightly not considered fundamental. The essential thing was to accept that the system had reached the stage where revolution had become both possible and necessary.

In 1924, however, within the Communist International, there was a revival of the controversy over Luxemburg’s economic analysis. Luxemburg’s views had always had a considerable influence in the German communist movement, both in the official KPD and the left communist KAPD. But now, given the growing pressure to more firmly tie the communist parties outside Russia to the needs of the Russian state, a process of “Bolshevisation” was launched throughout the Comintern, with the aim of chasing away unwanted divergences in theory and tactics. At a certain moment in the Bolshevisation campaign, the persistence of “Luxemburgism” in the German party was identified as being the fountainhead of a multitude of deviations – in particular, “errors” on the national and colonial question, and a spontaneist approach to the role of the party. At the most abstract “theoretical” level, this drive against Luxemburgism gave rise to Bukharin’s Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, written in 1924.

We last encountered Bukharin as a spokesman for the left of the Bolshevik party during the war – his almost prophetic analysis of state capitalism and his recognition of the need to return to Marx’s call for the revolutionary destruction of the capitalist state placed him in the real vanguard of the international movement; he was also very close to Luxemburg in his rejection of the slogan of “national self-determination”, much to Lenin’s anger. In Russia in 1918 he had been a leading member of the Left Communist group which had opposed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and, more significantly, opposed the early bureaucratisation of the Soviet state. However, once the controversy over the peace treaty had faded, Bukharin’s critical faculties were overtaken by his admiration for the methods of War Communism, which he began to theorise as a genuine form of the transition to communism.[2] The man who had criticised the leviathan state created by imperialism now saw no difficulty in the “proletarian state” becoming increasingly all-powerful during the transitional period. In the 1921 trade union debate, Bukharin sided with Trotsky in calling for the direct subordination of the trade unions to the apparatus of this state. However, with the introduction of the NEP, Bukharin shifted his position again. He repudiated the methods of extreme coercion favoured by War Communism, especially with regard to the peasantry, and now began to see the NEP, with its mixture of state ownership and individual property, and the reliance on market forces instead of direct state decree, as the “normal” model for the transition to communism. But this transitional phase – just as in the period when he had been enamoured of War Communism – was increasingly seen by Bukharin in national terms, in contrast with his views during the war, when he had stressed the globally inter-dependent nature of the world economy. In fact, Bukharin can in some ways be seen as the “originator” of the thesis of socialism in one country, which Stalin then took on and ultimately used to rid himself of Bukharin, first politically, then physically.[3]

Bukharin’s Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital was clearly intended as a theoretical justification for exposing the “weaknesses” of the KPD on the national, colonial and peasant questions – this is boldly asserted at the end of the work, although with no link in the argument between the attack on Luxemburg’s economics and their alleged political consequences. However, Bukharin’s all-out assault on Luxemburg on the theoretical question of capitalist accumulation has been taken up by some revolutionaries as though they are essentially independent from the dubious political aims of the document.

We think this is a mistake for a number of reasons. The political aim of Bukharin’s text cannot be separated either from its aggressive tone, or its theoretical content.

The tone of the text certainly indicates that its aim was to do a hatchet job on Luxemburg, to discredit her. As Rosdolsky points out: “The present-day reader may find Bukharin’s aggressive and often frivolous tone somewhat unpleasant, when one remembers that Rosa Luxemburg had fallen victim to fascist murderers only a few years previously. That his tone was dictated more by political than scientific interests provides some explanation. Bukharin saw his task as that of breaking the still very strong influence of ‘Luxemburgism’ within the German Communist Party (KPD) and any means seemed justified”.[4] You have to wade through pages of pages of sarcasms and patronising asides before, at the very end of the book, Bukharin grudgingly admits that Rosa has provided us with an excellent historical survey of the way that capitalism has dealt with the other social systems that constitute its milieu. There is no attempt whatever to begin the “polemic” by relating to the very real issues that Rosa Luxemburg was addressing in her work – the abandonment of the perspective of capitalism’s breakdown by the revisionists and the necessity to understand the tendency towards collapse inherent in the capitalist accumulation process. On the contrary, a number of Bukharin’s arguments give the impression that he is just striking out with whatever comes to hand, even if it means profoundly distorting Luxemburg’s thesis.

For example, what are we to make of the charge that Luxemburg provides us with a theory of imperialism which has it living harmoniously with the pre-capitalist world through a peaceful round of exchange of equivalents which, in Bukharin’s phrase means that “Both sides are quite content now. ‘The wolves have eaten, the sheep are unhurt’?[5] We have just mentioned that Bukharin himself admits elsewhere that a major strength of her book is the way it chronicles and denounces the way in which capitalism “integrates” the non-capitalist milieu – through plunder, exploitation, and destruction. This is the very opposite of the sheep and the wolves living in harmony. The sheep are either eaten or, through their own economic growth, they too become capitalist wolves and their competition further reduces the food supply...

Equally crude is the argument that, in Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism, only struggles for particular non-capitalist markets count as imperialist conflicts, and that “a fight for territories that have already become capitalist is not imperialism, which is utterly wrong”.[6] In reality Luxemburg’s argument that “Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains of the non-capitalist environment”[7] is aimed at describing an entire era, a general context in which imperialist conflicts take place. The return of imperialist conflict to the heart of the system, the shift towards direct military rivalry between the developed capitalist powers, is already registered in the Accumulation and is developed at considerable length in The Junius Pamphlet.

Still on the subject of imperialism, we have Bukharin’s argument that, since there are still plenty of areas of non-capitalist production left in the world, capitalism would seem to have a bright future. “It is a fact that imperialism means catastrophe, that we have entered into the period of the collapse of capitalism, no less. But it is also a fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s population belongs to the ‘third persons’...it is not the industrial and agricultural workers who form the majority of today’s world population.... Even if Rosa Luxemburg’s theory were even approximately correct, the cause of revolution would be in a very poor position”.[8]

Paul Frölich (one of the “Luxemburgists” in the KPD who remained in the party after the exclusion of the elements who were to found the KAPD) answers this very well in his biography of Luxemburg, first published in 1939:

“Various critics, and in particular Bukharin, believed that they were playing an effective trump card against Rosa Luxemburg when they pointed to the tremendous possibilities of capitalist expansion into non-capitalist areas. But the originator of the accumulation theory had already removed the sting from this argument by emphasising repeatedly that the death throes of capitalism would inevitably set in long before the inherent tendency to extend its markets had run into its objective limits. Expansionist possibilities are not a geographical conception: it is not the number of square miles which is decisive. Nor are they a demographical conception: it is not the statistical comparison of capitalist and non-capitalist populations which indicates the ripeness of the historical process. A socio-economic problem is involved, and a whole complex of contradictory interests, forces and phenomena has to be taken into account.”[9] In sum, Bukharin has patently confused geography and demography with the real capacity of the remaining non-capitalist systems to generate exchange value and thus constitute an effective market for capitalist production.  

Capitalist contradictions

If we now look at Bukharin’s treatment of the central issue in Luxemburg’s theory, the problem raised by Marx’s reproduction schemas, we find again that Bukharin’s approach is not at all unconnected to his political outlook. In a two-part critique published in 1982 (International Review n° 29 and n° 30, “To go beyond capitalism: abolish the wages system”), it is quite rightly argued that Bukharin’s criticisms of Luxemburg reveal profound divergences regarding the very content of communism.

Central to Luxemburg’s theory is the argument that Marx’s schemas of expanded reproduction in Capital Volume 2, which assume for the sake of argument a society composed exclusively of capitalists and workers, should be taken precisely as abstract schemas and not as a demonstration of the real possibility of harmonious capitalist accumulation in a closed system. In real life, capitalism has been constantly driven to expand beyond the borders of its own social relations. For Luxemburg, following Marx’s argumentation in other areas of Capital, the problem of realisation is posed to capital as a whole even if for individual workers and capitalists other workers and other capitalists can perfectly well constitute a market for all their surplus value. Bukharin accepts of course that for expanded reproduction to take place, there will be a need for a constant source of additional demand. But he insists that this additional demand is provided by the workers; perhaps not the workers who absorb the variable capital advanced by the capitalists at the beginning of the accumulation cycle, but by additional workers: “The employment of additional workers produces an additional demand, which realises precisely that part of the surplus value which is to be accumulated, to be exact, that part which must of necessity convert itself into functioning, additional variable capital”.[10] To which our article replies: “Applying Bukharin’s analysis to reality comes down to this: what should capitalists do to avoid laying off workers when their businesses can no longer find any outlets? Simple! – take on ‘extra workers’! It only needed someone to think of it. The trouble is that a capitalist who followed this advice would go rapidly bankrupt.”[11]

This argumentation is on a similar level to Otto Bauer’s response to Luxemburg, which she tears to pieces in her Anticritique: for Bauer, the simple growth in the population constitutes the new markets needed for accumulation. Capitalism would certainly be flourishing today if population growth solved the problem of realising surplus value. But, strangely enough, in the last few decades population growth has been a constant factor while the crisis of the system has also “grown” at dizzying rates. As Frölich pointed out, the problem of realising surplus value is not a question of demographics but of effective demand, demand backed by the ability to pay. And since workers’ demand can absorb no more than the original variable capital advanced by the capitalists, taking on new workers is revealed as a non-solution the moment you consider capitalism as a totality. 

There is however, another side to Bukharin’s argument, since he also argues that the capitalists themselves also constitute the additional market needed for further accumulation because they invest in the production of means of production. “The capitalists themselves buy the additional means of production, the additional workers, who receive money from the capitalists ... buy the additional means of consumption”.[12] This side of the argument is much more favoured by those who also consider, along with Bukharin, that Luxemburg had raised a problem that does not exist: producing and selling additional means of production solves the problem of accumulation. Luxemburg had already criticised the essentials of this argument in her critique of Tugan-Baranowski’s efforts to prove that capitalism faced no insuperable barriers in the accumulation process; she supported her argument by referring to Marx himself: “Besides, as we have seen (vol 2, part 3), continuous circulation takes place between constant capital and constant capital (even regardless of accelerated accumulation). It is at first independent of individual consumption because it never enters the latter. But this consumption definitely limits it nevertheless, since constant capital is never produced for its own sake, but solely because more of it is needed in spheres of production go into individual consumption.”[13]For Luxemburg, a literal interpretation of the reproduction schemas such as Tugan-Baranowski’s would result “not in capital accumulation, but growing production of the means of production with no aim at all.”[14]

Bukharin is aware that the production of producer goods is indeed not a solution to the problem, because he brings in the “extra workers” to buy up the increasing mass of commodities produced by the additional means of production. In fact he takes Tugan-Baranowski to task for not grasping that “the chain of production must always end with the production of means of consumption...which enter into the process of personal consumption”.[15] But he only puts forward this argument in order to accuse Luxemburg of mixing up Tugan-Baranowski with Marx. And in the end he answers Luxemburg, as have many others after him, by quoting Marx in a misleading manner which once again seems to imply that capitalism can be perfectly content in basing its expansion on an endless production of producer goods: “Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie.”[16]These are certainly Marx’s words but Bukharin’s reference to them is misleading: Marx’s language here is polemical rather than exact: capital indeed bases itself on accumulation for its own sake, i.e. the accumulation of wealth in its historically dominant form of value; but it cannot achieve this merely by production for its own sake. This is because it only produces commodities and a commodity realises no profit for the capitalists if it is not sold. It does not produce for its own sake, merely to fill the warehouses or throw what it produces into the sea (even if these are often the unfortunate results of its inability to find a market for its goods). 

Bukharin’s state capitalist solutions

Bukharin’s biographer Stephen Cohen, who cited the above critical comments by Bukharin on Tugan- Baranowski, notes another basic contradiction in Bukharin’s approach.

“At first glance, his inflexible approach to Tugan-Baranowski’s arguments seem curious. Bukharin himself, after all, had frequently emphasised the regulatory powers of state capitalist systems, later even theorising that under ‘pure’ state capitalism (without a free market) production could continue crisis free while consumption lagged behind”[17]

Cohen has put his finger on a key element of Bukharin’s analysis. He is referring to the following passage in Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital:

“Let us imagine three socio-economic formations: the collective-capitalist social order (state capitalism), in which the capitalist class is united in a unified trust and we are dealing with an organized, though at the same time, from the standpoint of the classes, antagonistic economy; then, the 'classical' capitalist society, which Marx analyses; and finally socialist society. Let us follow (1) the manner of the course of expanded reproduction; thus, the factors which make an ‘accumulation’ possible (we give the word ‘accumulation’ quotation marks, because the designation ‘accumulation’ by its very nature presupposes only capitalist relations); (2) how, where and when crises can arise.

“1. State capitalism. Is an accumulation possible here? Of course. The constant capital grows, because the capitalists’ consumption grows. New branches of production, corresponding to new needs, are continually arising. Even though there are certain limits to it, the workers’ consumption increases. Notwithstanding this ‘under-consumption’ of the masses, no crisis can arise, since mutual demand of all branches of production, and likewise consumer demand, that of the capitalists as well as of the workers, are given from the start. Instead of an ‘anarchy of production’ – a plan that is rational from the standpoint of Capital. If there is a ‘miscalculation’ in means of production, the surplus is stored, and a corresponding correction will be made in the following period of production. If, on the other hand, there has been a ‘miscalculation’ in means of consumption for the workers, this excess is used as ‘fodder’ by distributing it amongst the workers, or the respective portion of the product will be destroyed. Even in the case of a miscalculation in the production of luxury articles, the ‘way out’ is clear. Thus, no crisis of over-production can occur here. The capitalist’s consumption constitutes the incentive for production and the plan of production. Hence, there is no particularly fast development of production (small number of capitalists)”.[18]

Froelich, like Cohen, also highlights this passage and comments:

“[Bukharin’s] solution turned out to be an indirect confirmation of her crucial thesis...” And this solution is “astonishing. We are presented here with a ‘capitalism’, which is not economic anarchy, but a planned economy in which there is no competition, but rather a general world trust, and in which capitalists do not have to bother about the realisation of all their surplus value....”.[19]

Our article is equally scathing about the idea of throwing away the surplus product:

“Bukharin claims to solve the problem theoretically by eliminating it. The problem in capitalist crises of overproduction is the difficulty in selling what is produced. Bukharin tells us: all that needs to be done is ‘give it away free’! If capitalism were able to distribute its products for nothing, it would indeed never undergo any major crises – since its main contradiction would thus be solved. But such a capitalism can only exist in the mind of a Bukharin who has run out of arguments. The ‘free’ distribution of production, that is to say the organisation of society in such a way that men produce directly for themselves, is indeed the only way out for humanity. But this ‘solution’ is not an organised form of capitalism, but communism.”[20]

When he turns to “classical” capitalist society in the ensuing paragraphs, Bukharin accepts that crises of overproduction can take place – but they are merely the result of temporary disproportions between the branches of production (a view previously expressed by the “classical” economists and criticised by Marx, as we showed in the article “The mortal contradictions of bourgeois society” in International Review n° 139,). Bukharin then devotes a few scant lines to socialism as such, and makes the obvious point that a society which produces only to satisfy human need would have no crises of overproduction. But what seems to interest Bukharin above all is this hyper-planned capitalism where the state irons out all problems of disproportion or miscalculation. In other words, the kind of society which, in the USSR of the middle twenties, he was already describing as socialism... Admittedly, Bukharin’s science fiction state capitalism has become a world trust, a global colossus with no pre-capitalist remnants surrounding it and no conflict between national capitals. But his vision of socialism in the Soviet Union was a similar nightmarish utopia, to all intents and purposes a self-contained trust with no internal competition and only a manageable peasantry partially and temporarily outside its economic jurisdiction.

Thus, as we said earlier, the article in International Review n° 29 correctly concludes that Bukharin’s attack on Rosa Luxemburg’s economic theory reveals two fundamentally opposed visions of socialism. For Luxemburg, the fundamental contradiction in capitalist accumulation derives from the contradiction between use value and exchange value, inherent in the commodity – and above all in the commodity labour power which has the unique characteristic of being able to engender an additional value which is the source of the capitalist’s profit, but also the source of his problem of finding sufficient markets to realise his profit. Consequently, this contradiction and all the convulsions that result from it can only be overcome by abolishing wage labour and commodity production – the essential prerequisites of the communist mode of production.

Bukharin on the other hand criticises Luxemburg for having things too easy and “singling out one contradiction”, when in fact there are many: the contradiction between branches of production, between industry and agriculture; the anarchy of the market and competition.[21] All of which is true, but Bukharin’s state capitalist solution shows that for him there is one fundamental problem with capitalism: its lack of planning. If only the state can take charge of production and distribution, then we can have crisis-free accumulation.

Whatever confusions the workers’ movement prior to the Russian revolution may have had about the transition to communism, its clearest elements had always argued that communism/socialism could only be created on a world scale because each country, each capitalist nation, is inevitably dominated by the world market; and the liberation of the productive forces set in motion by the proletarian revolution could only become effective when the tyranny of global capital had been overthrown in all its major centres. In contrast to this, the Stalinist vision of socialism in one country posits accumulation in a closed system – something which had been impossible for classical capitalism and was no more possible for a totally state regulated system, even if Russia’s vast size (and huge agricultural sector...) made an autarkic phase of development a temporary possibility. But if, as Luxemburg insisted, capitalism as a world order cannot operate in the confines of a closed system, this is still less the case the individual national capitals, and Stalinist autarky in the 1930s – founded on the frenzied development of a war economy – was essentially a preparation for its inevitable military-imperialist expansion, realised in the second imperialist holocaust and the conquests which followed it.

***

Between 1924 when Bukharin wrote his book, and 1929, year of the Great Crash, capitalism underwent a phase of relative stability and in some areas – above all the USA – of spectacular growth. But this was merely the lull before the storm of the greatest economic crisis capitalism had ever experienced. In the next article in this series we will look at some of the attempts made by revolutionaries to understand the origins and implications of this crisis, and above all its significance as an expression of the decline of the capitalist mode of production.

Gerrard, May 2011.

We publish here the fourth and final part of the Manifesto (the first three parts were published in the last three issues of the International Review). This addresses two particular issues: on the one hand, the organisation of workers in councils to take power and transform society; on the other, the nature of oppositional politics in the Bolshevik Party conducted by other groups formed in reaction to its degeneration.

The Manifesto is very critical of the activity of other groups opposed to the policy of the Bolshevik Party, particularly the Workers’ Truth and another which can only be identified by the writings cited. The Manifesto denounces the false radicalism of the criticisms leveled by these groups (which it describes as “liberal”) against the Bolshevik Party, to the point where, it says, the latter could use such criticisms for its own purposes as a pretext for its policy of stifling freedom of speech for the proletariat.[1]

Finally, the article recalls the position of the Manifesto towards the Bolshevik Party, whose deficiencies threaten to transform it “into a minority of holders of power and economic resources in the country, which means to set itself up as a bureaucratic caste”: “to exert a decisive influence on the tactics of the RCP, conquering the sympathy of the proletarian masses, so as to compel the party to abandon the broad lines of its policy.”

The New Economic Policy and the management of industry

In fact the New Economic Policy has shared industry between, on one side, the state (trusts, unions, etc.) and, on the other, private capital and cooperatives. Our nationalised industry has taken on the character and appearance of private capitalist industry, in the sense that it operates on the basis of market needs.

Since the Ninth Congress of the RCP(B) the organisation of the management of the economy has been carried out without the direct participation of the working class, but with the help of purely bureaucratic appointments. The trusts are constituted following the same system adopted for the management of the economy and the merging of firms. The working class doesn’t know why such and such a director has been appointed, or on what grounds a factory belongs to this trust rather than another. Thanks to the policy of the leading group of the RCP, it takes no part in these decisions.

It goes without saying that the worker views with concern what is happening. He frequently wonders how he could have got here. He often remembers the time when the council of workers’ deputies appeared and developed in his factory. He asks the question: how can it be that our soviet, the soviet that we ourselves introduced and which neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Lenin, nor anyone else had thought of, how can it be that this soviet is dead? And worried thoughts haunt him... All workers will remember the way in which the councils of workers’ deputies were organised.

In 1905, when no-one in the country was even talking about workers’ councils and when, in books, it was only a question of parties, associations and leagues, the Russian working class created the soviets in the factories.

How were these councils organised? At the height of the revolutionary upsurge, each workshop of the factory elected a deputy to submit its demands to the administration and government. To coordinate the demands, these workshop deputies gathered together in councils and so into the council of deputies.

Where were the councils born? In the factories and in the plants. The workers of the plants and the factories, of any gender, religion, ethnicity or belief, unified themselves in an organisation, where they forged a common will. The council of workers’ deputies is therefore the organisation of the workers in all the enterprises of production.

It is in this way that the councils reappeared in 1917. They are described thus in the programme of the RCP(B): “The electoral district and the main core of the state is the unit of production (the plant, the factory) rather than the district”. Even after taking power, the councils retained the principle that their base is the place of production, and this was their hallmark with respect to any other form of state power, their advantage, because such a state organisation approximates the state apparatus of the proletarian masses.

The councils of workers’ deputies of all the plants and factories come together in general assemblies and form councils of workers’ deputies of the towns led by their executive committees (ECs). The congress of councils of provinces and regions forms the executive committees of provincial and regional councils. Finally, all the councils of factory deputies elect their representatives to the All-Russian Congress of Councils and form an All-Russian organisation of councils of workers’ deputies, their permanent organ being the All-Russian Executive Committee of Councils of Workers’ Deputies.

From the earliest days of the February Revolution, the needs of the civil war demanded the involvement in the revolutionary movement of armed force, by organising councils of soldiers’ deputies. The revolutionary needs of the moment dictated them to unite, which was done. Thus were formed the councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies.

Once the councils took power, they brought with them the peasantry represented by the councils of peasants’ deputies, and then the cossacks. Thus was organised the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (CEC), of the councils of workers’, peasants’, soldiers’ and cossacks’ deputies.

The workers’ councils appeared in 1917 as guides of the revolution, not only in substance but also formally: soldiers, peasants, Cossacks subordinated themselves to the organisational form of the proletariat.

During the seizure of power by the councils, it suddenly became clear that these councils, especially those of workers’ deputies, would be forced to occupy themselves almost entirely with a political struggle against the former slaveowners who had risen up, strongly supported by “the bourgeois factions of ambiguous socialist phraseology”. And until the end of 1920, the councils were occupied with the crushing of the resistance of the exploiters.

During this period, the councils lost their character linked to production and already, in 1920, the Ninth Congress of the RCP(B) decreed a single management of plants and factories. For Lenin, this decision was motivated by the fact that the only thing that had been done well was the Red Army with a single leadership.

And where now are the councils of workers’ deputies in the factories and plants? They no longer exist and are completely forgotten (even if we continue to talk about the power of the councils). No, there are no more and our councils today resemble many common houses or zemstvos[2] (with an inscription above the door: “It’s a lion, not a dog”).

Every worker knows that the councils of workers’ deputies organised a political struggle for the conquest of power. After taking power, they crushed the resistance of the exploiters. The civil war that the exploiters waged against the proletariat in power, with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, assumed a character so intense and bitter that it profoundly engaged the entire working class; this is why the workers were as removed from the problems of soviet power as the problems of production for which they had previously fought. They thought: we will manage production later. To reconquer production, it was first necessary to tear out the rebel exploiters. And they were right.

But in late 1920, the resistance of the exploiters was destroyed. The proletariat, covered in wounds, worn out, hungry and cold, would enjoy the fruits of its victories. It resumed production. And before it was the immense new task, namely the organisation of this production, of the country’s economy. It had to produce the maximum of material goods to show the advantage of this proletarian world.

The fate of all the conquests of the proletariat is closely related to the fact of seizing and organising production.

“Production is the goal of society and that is why those who run production have governed and still govern society.”

If the proletariat fails to put itself at the head of production and put under its influence the entire petty-bourgeois mass of peasants, artisans and corporate intellectuals, everything will be lost again. The rivers of tears and blood, the piles of corpses, the untold suffering of the proletariat in the revolution will serve only to fertilise the ground on which capitalism restores itself, where a new world of exploitation will arise, of oppression of man by his fellow, if the proletariat does not recover production, does not impose itself on the petty bourgeois element personified by the peasant and the artisan, does not change the material basis of production

The councils of workers’ deputies who had forged the will of the proletariat in the struggle for power, triumphed on the civil war front, on the political front, but their triumph was weakened even to the point that we must talk not of the improvement of the soviets, but of their reconstitution.

We must reconstitute councils in all nationalised plants and factories to solve an immense new task, to create this world of happiness for which much blood was shed.

The proletariat is weakened. The basis of its strength (large industry) is in terrible shape, but the weaker the forces of the proletariat, the more it must have unity, cohesion and organisation. The council of workers’ deputies is a form of organisation that showed its miraculous power and not only overcame the enemies and adversaries of the proletariat in Russia, but also shook the domination of the oppressors in the whole world, the socialist revolution threatening the entire society of capitalist oppression.

These new soviets, if they take the commanding heights of production and the management of factories, will not only be capable of calling on the vast masses of proletarians and semi-proletarians to solve the problems posed to them, but will also directly employ in production the whole state apparatus, not in word, but in deed. When, following that, the proletariat will have organised, for the management of firms and industries, soviets as the basic cells of state power, it will not be able to stop there: it will go on to the organisation of trusts, unions and central directing organs, including the famous supreme soviets for the popular economy, and it will give a new content to the work of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The soviets will assign as members of the All-Russian Central Committee of Soviets all those who fought on the fronts of the civil war, to the work on the economic front. Naturally all the bureaucrats, all the economists who consider themselves as the saviours of the proletariat (whom they fear above all speech and judgement), similarly the people who occupy the cushy jobs in the various organisms, will scream in protest. They will support what previously meant the ruin of production, the bankruptcy of the social revolution, because many of them know that they owe their posts not to their capacities, but to the protection of their acquaintances, to “who they know”, and in no way to the confidence of the proletariat, in whose name they govern. Of the rest, they have more fear of the proletariat than the specialists, the new leaders of enterprises, the new entrepreneurs and the Slastschows.

The All-Russian comedy with its red directors is orchestrated to push the proletariat to sanctify the bureaucratic management of the economy and praise the bureaucracy; it is a comedy as well because the strongly protected names of the directors of the trusts never appear in the press despite their ardent desire for publicity. All our attempts to unmask a provocateur who, not so long ago, received 80 roubles from the Tsarist police - the highest payment for this type of activity - and who is now found at the head of a rubber trust, have met with an insurmountable resistance. We are talking about the Tsarist provocateur Leschawa-Murat (the brother of the People’s Commissar for Domestic Commerce). This throws sufficient light on the character of the group which devised the campaign for the red directors.

The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets which is elected for a year and meets for periodic conferences constitutes the germ of the parliamentary rot. And it’s said: comrades, if you go, for example, to a meeting where comrades Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, talk for a couple of hours about the economic situation, what can one do except abstain or quickly approve the resolution proposed by the speaker? Given that the All-Russian Central Committee doesn’t deal with the economy, it listens to some exposés on the subject from time to time and then breaks up with each one going their own way. The same thing happened with the curious case of a project presented by the People’s Commissars being approved without any previous reading of it. Why read it before approving it? Certainly, one cannot be more educated than comrade Kurski (Commissar of Justice). The All-Russian Executive Committee has been transformed into a simple chamber for recording decisions. And its president? It is, with your permission, the supreme organ; but with regard to the tasks imposed on the proletariat, it is occupied with trifles. It seems to us, on the contrary, that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee should be more than any other linked to the masses, and this supreme legislative organ should decide on the most important questions of our economy.

Our Council of the Commissars of the People is, according to the opinion of its chief, comrade Lenin, a veritable bureaucratic apparatus. But he sees the roots of evil in the fact that the people who participate in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection are corrupt and he simply proposes to change the people occupying the leading posts; after that everything will be better. We have here in front of us the article of comrade Lenin appearing in Pravda, January 15, 1923: it is a good example of “political manoeuvring”. The best among leading comrades confront in reality this question as bureaucrats since they see the evil in the fact that it is Tsiouroupa (Rinz) and not Soltz (Kunz) who chairs the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection. It reminds us of the spirit of a fable: “It is not by being obliging that you become musicians”. They are corrupted under the influence of the milieu; the milieu which has made them bureaucrats. Change the milieu and these people would work well.

The Council of People’s Commissars is organised in the image of a council of ministers and citizens of any bourgeois country and has all its faults. We have to stop to repair its dubious measures or to liquidate it, keeping only the Presidium of the CEC with its various departments, as we do in the provinces, districts and communes. And transform the CEC into a permanent organ with the standing committees that would deal with various issues. But so it does not become a bureaucratic institution, we must change the content of its work and this will be possible only when its base (“the main nucleus of state power”), the councils of workers’ deputies will be restored in all plants and factories, where the trusts, unions, directors of factories will be reorganised on the basis of a proletarian democracy, by the congress of councils, of districts up to the CEC. So we no longer need the chatter about the struggle against bureaucracy and the bickering. Because we know that bureaucrats are the worst critics of bureaucracy.

By reorganising the directing organs, by introducing all the elements really alien to bureaucracy (and this goes without saying), we will actually resolve the question that concerns us in terms of the New Economic Policy. So it will be the working class which leads the economy and the country and not a group of bureaucrats who threaten to turn into an oligarchy.

As for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (the Rabkrin),[3] it is better to liquidate it than try to improve its functioning by changing its officials. Unions (through their committees) will undertake a review of all production. We (the proletarian state) need not fear proletarian control and here there is no room for any real objection, if this is not the same fear that the proletariat inspires in the bureaucrats of all kinds.

So it must finally be understood that control must be independent of that which is submitted, and to get it, the unions have to play the role of our Rabkrin or former State Control.

Thus the local union nuclei in the plants and factories would be turned into organs of control.

The provincial committees brought together in councils of government trade unions would become organs of control in the provinces and the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions would have such a function at the centre.

The councils direct, the unions control, this is the essence of the relationship between these two organisations in the proletarian state.

In private enterprises (managed through a lease or concession), trade union committees play the role of state control, ensuring compliance with labour laws, payment of commitments made by the manager, the leaseholder , etc., to the proletarian state.

A few words on two groups

Two documents that we have before us, [one] signed by a clandestine group, The central group of the Workers’ Truth, the other bearing no signature, are a striking expression of our political mistakes.

Even the innocent literary entertainments that are still allowed a liberal part of the RCP (the so-called “Democratic Centralism”), simply cannot appear in our press. Such documents, devoid of theoretical and practical foundations, of the liquidator genre like the call of the “Workers’ Truth” group, would carry no weight among the workers if they were issued legally, but otherwise they may attract the sympathies not only of the proletariat, but also of communists.

The unsigned document, produced no doubt by the liberals of the RCP, rightly notes:

1)       The bureaucratism of the council and party apparatus.

2)       The degeneration of the party membership.

3)       The split between the elites and masses, the working class, the militants of the party’s base.

4)       The material differentiation between members of the party.

5)       The existence of nepotism.

How to fight all this? We must, you see:

1)       Reflect on theoretical problems in a strictly proletarian and communist framework.

2)       Ensure, within the same framework, an ideological unity and a class education of the healthy and advanced elements of the party.

3)       Struggle within the party for a principal condition of its internal reorganisation, the abolition of the dictatorship and the putting into practice of freedom of discussion.

4)       Fight within the party in favour of such conditions of development of the councils and the party, thereby facilitating the elimination of the petty bourgeois forces and influence and further consolidating the power and influence of a communist nucleus.

These are the main ideas of these liberals.

But, say then, who of the leading group of the party would object to these proposals? No one. Better yet, it has no equal for this kind of demagoguery.

The liberals have always served the leading party group precisely playing the role of “radical” opponents and thus fooling the working class and many communists who genuinely have good reasons for discontent. And their discontent is so great that to channel it, the bureaucrats of the party and councils need to invent an opposition. But they don’t tire themselves because the liberals help them each time with bombast of their own, by responding to specific questions with general phrases.

Who, among the current personnel of the Central Committee, will protest against the most radical point? “Fighting within the party in favour of such conditions of development of the councils and the party, thereby facilitating the elimination of the petty bourgeois forces and influence and further consolidating the power and influence of a communist nucleus”.

Not only do they not protest, but they make these statements with more vigour. Look at Lenin’s last article and you will see that he said “some very radical things” (from the liberals’ point of view): with the exception of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, our state apparatus is par excellence a relic of the past which has undergone no serious changes. Then he reaches out to the liberals, promises to bring them into the CC and the expanded Central Control Commission (CCC) - and they would like nothing better. And of course, when they enter the CC, universal peace will be established everywhere. In holding forth about free discussion in the party, they forget one little detail - the proletariat. For without freedom of speech given to the proletariat, no freedom in the party will be possible. It would be strange to have freedom of opinion in the party and at the same time deprive the class whose interests this party represents. Instead of proclaiming the need for the foundations of proletarian democracy according to the party programme, they talk about freedom for the most advanced communists. And there is no doubt that the most advanced are Sapronov, Maximovski and Co and if Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Lenin consider themselves the most advanced, then they agree on the fact that they are all “the best”, will increase the membership of the CC and CCC and everything will be fine.

Our liberals are incredibly...liberal, and they require no more than freedom of association. But to do what? What do they want to tell us, explain to us? Only what you have written in two small pages? So good! But if you pretend to be an oppressed innocent, a political refugee, then you need to dupe those who are to be duped.

The conclusion of these arguments is quite “radical”, even “revolutionary”: you see, the authors wish that the Twelfth Party Congress sort out one or two (what audacity!) functionaries who have contributed most to the degeneration of the party membership, to the development of bureaucracy while hiding their intentions behind fine phrases (Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev).

It’s stylish! When in the CC Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev give way to Maximovski, Sapronov, Obolensky, everything will be fine, really fine. We repeat that you have nothing to fear, fellow liberals, at the Twelfth Congress you will enter the CC and, which will be essential for you, neither Kamenev, Zinoviev nor Stalin will stop you. Good luck!

In their words, the “Workers’ Truth” group is composed of communists.

Like all the proletarians they address, we should believe them willingly, but the problem is that these are communists of a particular type. According to them, the positive significance of the October Russian revolution is that it has opened up to Russia magnificent prospects for a rapid transformation into an advanced capitalist country. As this group argues, it is without doubt a great conquest of the October Revolution.

What does that mean? It is neither more nor less than a call to retreat, to capitalism, abandoning the socialist slogans of the October revolution. Do not consolidate the positions of socialism, of the proletariat as ruling class, but weaken them, leaving the working class only the struggle for wages.

Accordingly, the group claims that classical capitalist relations are already restored. It therefore recommends that the working class rid itself of “communist illusions” and invites it to fight the “monopoly”of the right to vote by workers, which means that they must renounce it. But, gentlemen communists, would you allow us to ask for that?

But these gentlemen are not so foolish as to say openly that they are in favour of the bourgeoisie. What confidence would the proletarians then have in them? The workers would understand immediately that this is the same old refrain of the Mensheviks, the SRs and CDs[4], which is outside the group’s views. Yet it did not let its secret out. Because it claims to be committed to the fight against “administrative arbitrariness” but “with reservations”: “As far as possible in the absence of elected legislative bodies”. The fact that the Russian workers elect their councils and EC, this is not an election, just imagine, for a real election must be conducted with the participation of the bourgeoisie and the communists of The Workers’ Truth, and not that of workers. And all this is (tell me if it is not) “communist “ and “revolutionary”! Why, dear “communists”, do you stop halfway and not explain that this should be the general, equal, direct and secret right to vote, which is characteristic of normal capitalist relations? That it would be a real bourgeois democracy? Do you want to fish in troubled waters?

Gentlemen communists, do you hope to hide your reactionary and counter-revolutionary intentions by constantly repeating the word “revolution”? Over the last six years, the Russian working class has seen enough ultra-revolutionaries to understand your intention to deceive. The only thing that could make you succeed is the absence of a proletarian democracy, the silence imposed on the working class.

We leave aside other demagogic words of this group, noting only that the thinking of this “Workers’ Truth” is borrowed from A. Bogdanov.

The party

There is no doubt that even now, the RCP(B) is the only party that represents the interests of the proletariat and of the Russian working people at its side. There is no other. The programme and statutes of the party are the ultimate expression of communist thinking. From the moment when the RCP organised the proletariat for the insurrection and the seizure of power, from this time it became a party of government and was, during the harsh civil war, the only force capable of confronting the remains of the absolutist and agrarian regime, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. During these three years of struggle, the leading organs of the party assimilated the methods of work adapted to a terrible civil war but they now extend these to a whole new phase of the social revolution and in which the proletariat puts forward quite different demands.

From this fundamental contradiction flow all the deficiencies of the party and of the working of the soviets. These deficiencies are so serious that they threaten to cancel out all the good and useful work of the RCP. But even more, they risk destroying this party as a party of the avant-garde of the international proletarian army; they threaten - because of the present relationships with the NEP - to transform the party into a minority of holders of power and economic resources in the country, which conspires to set itself up as a bureaucratic caste.

Only the proletariat itself can repair these defects of its party. It might well be weak and its living conditions might be difficult, but it still has enough forces to repair its wrecked ship (its party) and finally reach the promised land.

Today, one can no longer maintain that it’s really necessary for the internal regime of the party to continue to apply methods valid at the time of civil war. That is why, in order to defend the aims of the party, it is necessary to strive - even if reluctantly - to utilise the methods which are not those of the party.

In the present situation, it is objectively indispensable to constitute a Communist Workers’ Group, which is not organisationally linked to the RCP, but which fully recognises its programme and the statutes. Such a group is about to develop notwithstanding the obstinate opposition of the dominant party, of the soviet bureaucracy and of the unions. The task of this group will be to exert a decisive influence on the tactics of the RCP, conquering the sympathy of the proletarian masses, so as to compel the party to abandon the broad lines of its policy.

Conclusion

1. The movement of the proletariat of all countries, especially those of advanced capitalism, has reached the phase of the struggle to abolish exploitation and oppression, the class struggle for socialism.

Capitalism threatens to plunge all humanity into barbarism. The working class must fulfill its historic mission and save mankind.

2. The history of class struggle shows explicitly that, in different historical situations, the same classes have preached either civil war or civil peace. The propaganda for civil war and civil peace by the same class was either revolutionary and humane, or counter-revolutionary and strictly selfish, defending the interests of a concrete class against the interests of society, the nation, humanity.

Only the proletariat is always revolutionary and humane, whether it advocates civil war or civil peace.

3. The Russian revolution provides striking examples of how different classes were transformed from partisans of civil war in those of civil peace and vice versa.

The history of class struggle in general and the last 20 years in Russia in particular teaches us that the current ruling classes who promote civil peace will advocate civil war, ruthless and bloody, when the proletariat takes power; we can say the same of “bourgeois fractions with an ambiguous socialist phraseology”, the parties of the 2nd International and those of the 2½ International.

In all countries of advanced capitalism, the proletarian party must, with all its strength and vigour, advocate the civil war against the bourgeoisie and their accomplices - and civil peace wherever the proletariat triumphs.

4. In the current conditions, the struggle for wages and a decrease in the working day through strikes, parliament, etc., has lost its former revolutionary scope and only weakens the proletariat, diverting it from its main task, reviving illusions about the possibility of improving its conditions within capitalist society. We must support the strikers, go to parliament, not to advocate a struggle for wages, but to organise the proletarian forces for a decisive and final battle against the world of oppression.

5. The discussion of the question of a “united front” in the military sense (as we discuss all aspects in Russia) and the singular conclusion there has been on it, has failed, so far, to seriously address this problem, because [in the current context] it is quite impossible to criticise anything.

The reference to the experience of the Russian revolution is only for the ignorant and is not confirmed in any way by this same experience as it remains set down in historical documents (resolutions of congresses, conferences, etc.).

The Marxist vision and dialectic of the problems of class struggle is replaced by a dogmatic vision.

The experience of a concrete epoch with goals and tasks is automatically transported to another that has particular features of its own, which leads inevitably to the imposition, on communist parties around the world, of an opportunist tactic of the “united front”. The tactic of a “united front” with the Second International and the 2½ International completely contradicts the experience of the Russian revolution and the programme of the RCP(B). It is a tactic of agreement with the open enemies of the working class.

We must form a united front with all the revolutionary organisations of the working class who are ready (today, not one day or another) to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, against the bourgeoisie and its fractions.

6. The theses of the CC of the Communist International are a classic disguise for opportunist tactics in revolutionary phrases.

7. Neither the theses nor the discussions in the congresses of the Communist International have tackled the question of the united front in countries that have completed the socialist revolution and in which the working class exercises its dictatorship. This is due to the role that the Russian Communist Party took in the International and in the internal politics of Russia. The particularity of the question of the “united front” in such countries is that it is resolved in different ways during different phases of the revolutionary process: in the period of the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters and their accomplices, a certain solution is valid, another is needed on the contrary when the exploiters are already defeated and the proletariat has made progress in building the socialist order, yet with the help of the NEP and with weapons in hand.

8. The national question. Many arbitrary appointments, neglect of local experience, the imposition of tutors and exiles (“planned permutations”), all the behaviour of the leading group of the RCP(B) towards the national parties adhering to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, has aggravated in the masses of the many small ethnic groups, chauvinistic tendencies that penetrate the communist parties.

To get rid of these trends once and for all, we must implement the principles of proletarian democracy in the organisation of the national communist parties, each headed by its CC, adhering to the IIIrd Communist International, as well as the RCP(B) and forming an autonomous section of it. To resolve common tasks, the communist parties of the countries of the USSR must convene their periodic congress which elects a standing Executive Committee of the Communist Parties of the USSR.

9. The NEP is a direct consequence of the state of the productive forces of our country. It should be used to maintain the positions of the proletariat conquered in October.

Even in the case of a revolution in one of the advanced capitalist countries, the NEP would be a phase of socialist revolution that it is impossible to pass over. If the revolution had broken out in one of the countries of advanced capitalism, this would have had an influence on the duration and development of the NEP.

But in all countries of advanced capitalism, the need for a New Economic Policy at some stage of the proletarian revolution will depend on the degree of influence of the petty-bourgeois mode of production comapred to that of socialised industry.

10. The extinction of the N.E.P. in Russia is linked to the rapid mechanisation of the country, the victory of tractors over wooden ploughs. On these bases of development of the productive forces is instituted a new reciprocal relationship between cities and countryside. To rely on imports of foreign machinery for the needs of the agricultural economy is not right. This is politically and economically harmful insofar as it links our agricultural economy to foreign capital and weakens Russian industry.

The production of the necessary machines in Russia is possible, that will strengthen industry and bring the city and the countryside closer together in an organic way, will remove the material and ideological gap between them and will soon form the conditions that will allow us to give up the NEP.

11. The New Economic Policy contains terrible threats for the proletariat. Apart from the fact that, through it, the socialist revolution undergoes a test of its economy, besides the fact that we must demonstrate in practice the advantages of socialist forms of economic life in relation to capitalist forms - besides all this, we must stick to socialist positions without becoming an oligarchic caste that would seize all the economic and political power and be afraid of the working class more than anything else.

To prevent the New Economic Policy from turning into the “New Exploitation of the Proletariat”, the proletariat must participate directly in the resolution of the enormous tasks facing it at this time, on the basis of the principles of proletarian democracy; which will give the working class the possibility of protecting its October conquests from all dangers, wherever they come from, and of radically altering the internal regime of the party and its relations with it.

12. The implementation of the principle of proletarian democracy must correspond to the fundamental tasks of the moment.

After the resolution of political-military tasks (seizure of power and suppression of the exploiters’ resistance), the proletariat is led to solve the most difficult and important economic question: the transformation of the old capitalist relations into new socialist relations. Only after the completion of such a task can the proletariat consider itself victorious; if not everything will still have been in vain, and the blood and the dead will serve only to fertilise the land on which will continue to rise the edifice of exploitation and oppression of bourgeois rule.

In order to accomplish this task it is absolutely necessary that the proletariat really participates in the management of the economy: “Whoever finds themselves at the summit of production equally finds themselves at the summit of ‘society’ and of the ‘state’”.

It is thus necessary:

• that in all the factories and firms councils of workers’ delegates are constituted;
• that the congresses of the councils elect the leaders of the trusts, the unions and the central authorities;
• that the All-Russian Executive is transformed into an organ which manages agriculture and industry. The tasks which are imposed on the proletariat must be confronted with a view to turning proletarian democracy into reality. This must be expressed in an organ which works in an assiduous fashion and institutes within itself permanent sections and commissions ready to confront all problems. But the Council of Commissars of the People which apes some bourgeois ministry must be abolished and its work confided to the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Soviets.

It is necessary moreover that the influence of the proletariat is reinforced on other levels. The unions, which must be real proletarian class organs, must be constituted as organs of control having the right and the means for worker and peasant inspection. Factory and firm committees must perform a control function in factories and firms. Leading sections of the unions which are united in the central leading union must control the reins, with the union leaders joining up in an All-Russian central union - these must be the organs of control at the centre.

But today the unions are performing a function which doesn’t belong in a proletarian state, which is an obstacle to their influence and contrasts with the sense of their position within the international movement.

He who is afraid of such a role for the unions shows his fear of the proletariat and loses all links with it. 

13. Upon the terrain of the profound dissatisfaction of the working class, various groups are forming which propose to organise the proletariat. Two currents: the liberal platform of Democratic Centralism and that of “Workers’ Truth” show, on the one hand a lack of political clarity, on the other, an effort to connect with the working class. The working class is looking for a form of expression for its dissatisfaction. 

Both groups, which very probably have honest proletarian elements belonging to them, judging the present situation unsatisfactory, are leading towards erroneous conclusions (of a Menshevik type).

14. There persists in the party a regime which is harmful to the relationship of the party with the proletarian class and which, for the moment, doesn’t allow the raising of questions that are, in any way, embarrassing for the leading group of the RCP(B). From this comes the necessity to constitute the Workers’ Group of the RCP(B) on the basis of the programme and statutes of the RCP, so as to exercise a decisive pressure of the leading group of the party itself.

We are calling on all authentic proletarian elements (including those of “Democratic Centralism” and “Workers’ Truth”, of the “Workers’ Opposition”) and those who find themselves outside as well as inside the party, to unite on the basis of the Manifesto of the Workers’ Group of the RCP(B).

The more quickly that the necessity to self-organise is recognised, the less will be the difficulties that we have to surmount.

Forward, comrades!

The emancipation of the workers is the work of the workers themselves!

Moscow, February 1923.

The central provisional organisation bureau of the Workers’ Group of the RCP(B)

The “15M” Movement in Spain – it takes its name from the date it was created, May 15th – is highly important because of its unique characteristics. This article will recount the significant episodes and at each point draw lessons and perspectives for the future.

Providing an account of what actually happened is necessary for an understanding of the unfolding dynamic of the international class struggle towards mass working class mobilisations that will help the class regain confidence and provide it with the means of posing an alternative to this moribund society.[1]

Capitalism’s bleak future is what lies behind the 15M Movement

The word “crisis” has a dramatic connotation for millions of people who are consumed by a tide of poverty produced by worsening living conditions, going from permanent unemployment and insecure employment where planning from one day to the next is difficult, to even worse situations that can mean hunger and destitution.[2]

But what is most distressing is the absence of any future. This was denounced by the Assembly of the Imprisoned in Madrid[3] in a statement which, as we shall see, was the spark that lit the fuse to the movement: “We find ourselves looking ahead and see little hope on the horizon and no future that could allow us to live a quiet life and enjoy doing the things we want and like to do.”[4] When the OECD tells us that it will take 15 years for Spain to return to the level of employment it had in 2007 – almost a whole generation deprived of work! – when similar figures can be extrapolated for the United States or Great Britain, we can see to what extent this society has fallen into a vortex of endless poverty, unemployment and barbarism.

The movement was at first directed against the bipartite political system predominant in Spain (the two parties, the Popular Party, PP, on the right and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE, on the left, receive 86% of the votes).[5] This factor played a role, specifically in connection with the lack of any future, since in a country where the right plays on its deserved reputation of being authoritarian, arrogant and anti-working class, broad sectors of the population were concerned at how, with government attacks being carried out by its false friends – the PSOE –, its declared enemies – the PP –threatening to move back into power for a longer term, with no electoral alternative, this would amount to a general blockage of society.

This general feeling was reinforced by the unions’ involvement that began with them calling a “general strike” on September 29th, which had a demobilising affect, but ended with the signing of a social pact with the government in January 2011, which agreed to the brutal reform of pensions and closed the door to any possibility of mass mobilisations being called under the unions’ leadership.

To these factors was added a deep sense of outrage. One of the consequences of the crisis, as it was put in the assembly in Valencia, is that “the people who own a lot are fewer, but they own much more than they did, while those who own a little are numerically many more, but they own much less.” The capitalists and their political representatives have become more and more arrogant, greedy and corrupt. They have no hesitation accumulating great wealth, while poverty and desolation grow all around them. This provides stark evidence for the existence of social classes and clearly demonstrates that we are not all “equal citizens”.

Faced with this situation, some groups emerged towards the end of 2010, affirming the need to unite in the streets, to act independently of the political parties and trade unions, to organise assemblies... The old mole conjured up by Marx was giving rise to a subterranean maturation within society which would burst out into the open in the month of May! The mobilisation of “Youth with no Future” in the month of April brought together 5,000 young people in Madrid. Moreover, the success of the demonstrations of young people in Portugal – “Geração à Rasca” (a generation adrift) – which assembled more than 200,000 young people, and the very popular example of Tahrir Square in Egypt, gave an impetus to the movement.

The assemblies: a vision of the future

On May 15th, a coalition of more than 100 organisations – baptised Democracia Ya Real (DRY)[6] – called some demonstrations in major provincial towns “against the politicians”, calling for “real democracy”.

Small groups of young people (unemployed, temporary workers and students), in disagreement with the organisers who wanted the movement to act as a valve for social discontent, tried to set up camps in the main squares in Madrid, in Granada and other cities in an attempt to continue the movement. DRY disowned them and let police squads unleash a brutal repression, perpetrated particularly in the police stations. However, those who were victims organised themselves into an Assembly of the Imprisoned in Madrid and quickly produced a statement clearly denouncing the degrading treatment dished out by the police. It made a big impression and encouraged many young people to join the camps.

On Tuesday, May 17th, while DRY was trying to confine the camps to a symbolic protest role, the huge mass of people that flowed into them imposed the holding of mass meetings. On the Wednesday and Thursday, these large assemblies spread to over 73 cities. They expressed their worthwhile reflections and made some sound proposals dealing with all aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life. Nothing human was alien to this immense improvised main square!

A protester in Madrid said: “The assemblies are the best thing there is, everyone can speak, people understand each other, you can think out loud, thousands of strangers can come to an agreement. Isn’t that wonderful?” The assemblies were a different world, in contrast to the sombre atmosphere of the polling booths and far removed from involvement in electoral campaigns: “Brotherly embraces, cries of delight and of enthusiasm, songs of freedom, merry laughter, humour and joy were seen and heard in the crowd of many thousands of persons which surged through the town from morning till evening. The mood was exalted: one could almost believe that a new and better life was beginning on the earth. A most solemn and at the same time an idyllic, moving spectacle.”[7] Thousands of people were discussing passionately and listening attentively to each other in an atmosphere that was deeply respectful and surprisingly orderly. They shared the same outrage and concerns for the future but, more importantly, the desire to understand its causes; and out of this arose the effort to debate and to analyse a range of questions, the hundreds of meetings and the bookstalls... An effort with seemingly no concrete results, but which “blew everyone’s mind” and sowed the seeds of consciousness in the fields of the future.

Subjectively, the class struggle rests on two pillars: consciousness on the one hand and trust and solidarity on the other. Regarding the latter, the assemblies also contained the promise of the future: human ties, feelings of empathy flowing through the squares, widespread solidarity and unity; these were at least as important as making decisions or agreeing to demands. The furious politicians and press demanded, with the immediatism and utilitarianism characteristic of bourgeois ideology, that the movement condense its demands into a “protocol”, which DRY should try to convert into a “Ten Commandments” containing all the ridiculous and tame democratic measures like open lists, popular legislative initiatives and reform of the electoral law.

The fierce resistance of the movement to these hasty measures shows how it points the way forward for the class struggle. In Madrid, people were shouting: “We’re not going slowly, we just have a long way to go”. In an open letter to the assemblies, a group from Madrid said: “The challenge is to synthesise what we want the demonstrations to achieve. We are convinced that it is not insubstantial, as the self-interested politicians would have it or all those who want nothing to change, or rather want to change some details so that everything remains the same. It’s not by suddenly presenting a ‘Grenelle of demands’ that we will succeed in synthesising the reasons we are fighting; it’s not by creating a shopping list of demands that our revolt will express itself and strengthen itself.”[8]

The effort to understand the causes of a dramatic situation and an uncertain future, and to find the way to struggle accordingly, is what constitutes the basis of the assemblies. This gives them their deliberative character that disorientates those looking for the struggle to be focused around precise demands. The work of reflecting on ethical, cultural, artistic and literary themes (there were interventions in the form of songs and poems), created a false sense of a petty-bourgeois movement of the “indignants”. We have to separate the wheat from the chaff. The latter is certainly present in the democratic and populist shell that has often enveloped these concerns. But the above things are wheat, because the revolutionary transformation of the world depends on and provides a stimulus for massive cultural and ethical change; “by changing the world and changing our lives we transform ourselves”is the revolutionary motto that Marx and Engels formulated in The German Ideology more than a century and a half ago: “...Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration that can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary therefore not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”[9]

The mass assemblies were a first attempt to respond to a general problem in society that we highlighted more than 20 years ago: the social decomposition of capitalism. In the “Theses on decomposition” that we wrote at that time,[10] we pointed to the tendency for the decomposition of the ideology and the superstructures of capitalist society and, coupled with it, the increasing dislocation of the social relations both of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. The working class is not exempt from this because, among other things, it lives alongside the petty bourgeoisie. We give a warning in this text about the effects of this process: “1) solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look after number one’; 2) the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of relationships which form the basis for all social life; 3) the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society; 4) consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch.”

However, what the massive assemblies in Spain show – as did those that appeared during the student movement in France in 2006[11] – is that the sectors most vulnerable to the effects of decomposition – the young and the unemployed, especially because of their lack of work experience – have been present at the forefront of the assemblies and in the effort to develop consciousness on the one hand and solidarity and empathy on the other.

For all these reasons, the mass assemblies provide a first indication of what lies ahead. This may not seem very much to those waiting for the proletariat to appear like a bolt from the blue and show that it is clearly and unequivocally the revolutionary class of society. However, from a historical point of view, and taking into account the enormous difficulties that lie in its path, this is a good start, since it has begun a rigorous preparation of the subjective terrain.

Paradoxically, these characteristics have also been the Achilles heel of the “15M” movement in the first stage of its development. Not having set out with any specific objective, fatigue, a difficulty in coping with the first set of problems posed, and an absence of conditions favourable to workplace struggles, plunged the movement into a sort of vacuum that could not be sustained for very long, and which the DRY has tried to fill with its own so-called “simple” and “feasible” objectives for “democratic reform” that are utopian and reactionary.

The traps that the movement has had to face

For almost two decades, the world proletariat has been in the wilderness and not participated in any large-scale struggles, and in particular has suffered a loss of confidence in itself and a loss of its own class identity.[12] Even if this atmosphere has progressively changed since 2003, with the appearance of significant struggles in many countries and a new generation of revolutionary minorities, the stereotypical image of the working class as “unresponsive” and “inactive” continues to predominate.

The large numbers of people suddenly appearing on the social stage are hindered by the weight of the past, and by the increasing problem that the movement contains social strata in the process of proletarianisation that are more vulnerable to democratic ideology. In addition, due to the fact that the movement did not emerge from a struggle against a specific measure, it has produced a paradox, something not uncommon in history,[13] as the two major classes of society – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie –appear to have avoided open combat, giving the impression of a peaceful movement enjoying “everyone’s support.”[14]

But in reality, the confrontation between the classes was present in the early days. Didn’t the PSOE government retaliate immediately with brutal repression against a handful of young people? Wasn’t it the swift and passionate response of the Assembly of the Imprisoned in Madrid which unleashed the movement? Wasn’t it this denunciation that opened the eyes of many young people who subsequently chanted “they call it democracy, but it isn’t!”, an ambiguous slogan that was converted by a minority into “they call it a dictatorship and it is one!”?

For those who think the class struggle is a succession of “strong emotions”, the “dispassionate” approach adopted within the assemblies led them to believe that this was nothing more than an exercise in a “harmless constitutional legality”, and perhaps many participants even believed that their movement was limited to that.

However, the mass assemblies in the public squares, with the slogan “Seize the Square”, expressed a challenge to the democratic rule of order. What determines the social relations and legitimises the laws is that the exploited majority “minds its own business” and, if it wants to, “participates” in civic matters by using the voting system, and protests through the unions which atomise and individualise it even more. Uniting, building solidarity, discussing collectively, starting to act as an independent social force constitutes an overwhelming violence against bourgeois order.

The bourgeoisie has done its utmost to bring an end the assemblies. By all appearances, with its usual sickening hypocrisy, it had only praise and sympathy for the Indignants, but the facts – which are what really matter – betrayed this apparent complacency.

As the day of the election – Sunday, May 22nd – approached, the Central Electoral Commission decided to ban assemblies across the country on Saturday 21st, designated as a “day of reflection”. From the early hours of Saturday morning, a huge deployment of police surrounded the Puerta del Sol camp, but in turn it was encircled by a huge crowd which obliged the Interior Minister himself to order a withdrawal. More than 20,000 people then occupied the square in a mood of euphoria. We see here another episode of class confrontation, even if the explicit violence was restricted to only a few outbursts.

DRY proposed maintaining the camps while keeping silent to respect the “day of reflection”, so not holding the assemblies. But no one listened, and the assemblies on Saturday 21st, formally illegal, had the highest levels of support. In the assembly in Barcelona, signs, slogans repeated in chorus and placards sarcastically proclaimed in response to the Electoral Assembly: “We are reflecting!”

On Sunday 22nd, election day, instead of another attempt to end the assemblies, DRY proclaimed that “we’ve achieved our goals” and that the movement must be ended. The response was unanimous: “We are not here for the elections”. On Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th, both in the number of participants and in the richness of the debates, the assemblies reached their peak. Interventions, slogans, placards proliferated demonstrating a deep reflection: “Where is the Left? It’s behind the Right”, “The polls ca not hold back our dreams”, “600 euros per month, that’s some violence”, “If you don’t let us dream, we will prevent you from sleeping!, “No work, no home, no fear”, “They deceived our grandparents, they deceived our children, they will not deceive our grandchildren”. They also show an awareness of the perspectives: “We are the future, capitalism is the past”, “All power to the assemblies”, “There is no evolution without revolution”, “The future starts now”, “Do you still believe this is a utopia?”...

From this high point, the assemblies went into decline. Partly because of fatigue, but also from the constant bombardment from DRY about adopting its “Democratic Decalogue”. The points in the Decalogue are far from neutral, they directly attack the assemblies. The most “radical” demand, the “popular legislative initiative”,[15] in addition to entailing endless parliamentary procedures that would discourage the most ardent supporter, would above all replace open and widespread debate where everyone feels part of a collective body with some individual acts, ordinary citizenship, and protest confined to “my own four walls”.[16]

This sabotage from the inside was combined with repressive attacks from the outside; thereby demonstrating how hypocritical the bourgeoisie is when it claims that the assemblies constitute “a constitutional right of assembly.” On Friday 27th, the Catalan government – in coordination with the central government – launched an attack: the “mossos de esquadra” (regional police forces) invaded Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona and savagely cracked down, inflicting many injuries and making numerous arrests. The Barcelona Assembly – until then the most oriented towards class positions – fell into the trap of classical democratic demands: petitions to demand the resignation of the Interior Minister, opposition to the “disproportionate”[17] use of violence, calling for “democratic control of the police”. This volte-face was all the more obvious as it gave way to nationalist poison and included in its demands “the right to self-determination”.

The scenes of repression increased in the week of June 5th to 12th: Valencia, Saint-Jacques de Compostela, Salamanca ... The most brutal blow however was delivered on the 14th and 15th in Barcelona. The Catalan parliament was discussing a law known as Omnibus, which included brutal social cuts, especially in the education and health sectors (including 15,000 lay-offs in the latter). DRY, outside of any dynamic of discussion in the workers’ assemblies, called for a “peaceful demonstration” which was to surround the Parliament to “prevent the deputies passing an unjust law.” This typical, purely symbolic action, instead of waging a struggle against the law and the institutions that are behind it, appealed to the “conscience” of the deputies. For the demonstrators thus trapped, only a false choice remained: either the democratic terrain and the impotent and passive whining of the majority, or its counterpart, the “radical” violence of a minority.

The insults and jostling of a few deputies provided the opportunity for a hysterical campaign that criminalised those engaged in violence (lumping them together with those who defend class positions) and called for “defence of the democratic institutions that are at risk”. We have come full circle. DRY sports its pacifism and asks demonstrators to exercise violence against the “violent” elements,[18] and goes even further in asking openly for the “violent” elements to be delivered to the police and for the demonstrators to applaud the latter for its “good and loyal service!”

The June 19th demonstrations and the extension to the working class

From the beginning, the movement had two cores: a wide democratic core, fuelled by confusion and doubt, which was socially heterogeneous with a tendency to avoid direct confrontation. But it also had a proletarian core, expressed by the assemblies[19] and a constant tendency to “go to the working class.”

In the Barcelona assembly, workers from telecommunications, health, fire services as well as university students mobilised actively against the social attacks. They created a commission to spread the general strike, and the animated debates in this commission led to the organisation of a network of “the Indignants” of Barcelona which convened an assembly for Saturday June 11th for those workplaces involved in struggles, to be followed up with a meeting on Saturday July 3rd. On Friday June 3rd workers and unemployed demonstrated in Plaza Catalunya behind a banner with the words “Down with the union bureaucracy! General strike!” In Valencia, the assembly supported a demonstration by public transport workers and also a neighbourhood demonstration against cuts in education. In Zaragoza, public transport workers enthusiastically participated in the assembly.[20] The assemblies decided to form neighbourhood assemblies.[21]

The demonstration of June 19th saw a new surge from the proletarian core. The demonstration had been called by the assemblies of Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga against the social cuts. DRY tried to undermine it by proposing solely democratic slogans. That provoked a spontaneous reaction in Madrid to go and demonstrate at the Congress against the cuts to social spending, which saw more than 5000 people attend. Moreover a co-ordination of neighbourhood assemblies in the south of Madrid, born out of the fiasco of the September 29th strike (with a very similar orientation to that of the inter-professional general assemblies created in France in the heat of the events of autumn 2010) launched an appeal: “Let’s go to the Congress that cuts social spending without consulting us, the people and workers from the neighbourhoods of Madrid, and say: enough! [...] This initiative represents the view of a working class grass-roots assembly against those who take decisions behind workers' backs without their approval. The struggle will be long, so we encourage you to organise in neighbourhood assemblies, and at your places of work or study. “

The June 19th demonstrations were very successful, the reception was massive in more than 60 cities, but their content was even more important. It was a response to the brutal campaign against “the violent ones”. Expressing a maturation born out of the many discussions in the most active milieus,[22] the slogan heard the most, for example in Bilbao, is “Violence is not being able to make ends meet each month!” and in Valladolid: “Violence is also unemployment and evictions”.

However, it was the demonstration in Madrid in particular that provided a new focus coming from June 19th on perspectives for the future. It was convened by an organisation coming from the working class and its most active minorities.[23] The theme of this gathering was “March and unite against the crisis and against capital.” It declared: “No to wage cuts and pension cuts; against unemployment: workers' struggles; no to price rises, increase our wages, increase the taxes on those who earn the most, protect our public services, no to privatisation of health and education ... Long live working class unity.”[24]

A collective in Alicante adopted the same Manifesto. In Valencia, the Autonomous and Anti-capitalist bloc composed of various groups very active in the assemblies distributed a manifesto that read: “We want an answer to unemployment. The unemployed, those in temporary employment, along with those working in the black economy have come together in the assemblies to collectively agree to demands and to press for their implementation. We want the withdrawal of the Law on Labour Reform, which authorises the reduction of redundancy payments to 20 days. We want the withdrawal of the Law on Pensions Reform since behind this is a life of privation and poverty and we do not want to sink any further into poverty and uncertainty. We demand an end to evictions. The need for people to be housed is more important than the blind laws of commerce and the profit motive. We say NO to the cuts in health and education, NO to the redundancies being prepared by the regional governments and in the town halls following the recent elections.”[25]

The Madrid march was organised in several columns that started from seven different suburbs or neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city; these separate columns attracted crowds of people as they moved along. These mass mobilisations are part of the working class tradition as in the 1972-1976 strikes of in Spain (and also the tradition of 1968 in France) where, starting from a big concentration of workers or from a factory that acts as a “beacon”, as happened at Standard in Madrid at that time,increasing numbers of workers, residents, unemployed and young people come out and join them, and this whole mass converges on the town centre. Evidence of this tradition was present in the struggles at Vigo in 2006 and 2009.[26]

In Madrid, the Manifesto read out to the assembled crowd called for the holding of “Assemblies that will prepare a general strike” and was greeted with widespread cries of “Long live the working class”.

The need for a reflective enthusiasm

The demonstrations of June 19th gave rise to a sense of excitement; according to a demonstrator in Madrid: “The atmosphere was that of a real festival. All kinds of people and all ages: young people around 20 years old, the retired, families with children, and all kinds of other people too, walked together... and at the same time people came out onto their balconies to applaud us. I came home exhausted, but with a broad smile on my face. Not only had I the feeling of having been fighting for a just cause, but in addition, I had a really fantastic time.” Another said: “It's really important seeing all these people gathered in one place, talking politics and fighting for their rights. Don't you have the feeling that we're taking back the streets?”

After the initial explosions typical of assemblies seeking a way forward, the movement began to look at how to develop the struggle, began to see that solidarity, unity and building collective strength could be achieved.[27]The idea began to spread around that “We can stand up to Capital and the State”, and that the key to this strength would be the working class renewing its struggle.In the assemblies in the neighbourhoods of Madrid, one topic of debate has been that of calling a general strike in October to “oppose the cuts in social spending.” There was an outcry from the CCOO and UGT unions saying that such a call would be “illegal” and they alone had the authority to do it, to which many sectors answered loud and clear by saying: “only the mass assemblies can take this decision.”

But we shouldn't let ourselves get carried away, because the process through which the working class revives its struggle will not be easy. There is a heavy burden of illusions and confusions about democracy, the ideology of “citizenship” and “reforms”, reinforced by the pressure of DRY, the politicians and the media who exploit doubts and immediatism (wanting to see “quick and tangible results”). There is also a lot of fear because there are so many unanswered questions. It is particularly important today to see how difficult it is for workers to mobilise in the workplace because there is a big risk of losing their jobs and finding themselves with no income, which for many would cross the line between a poor quality but bearable life and a life in extreme poverty.

In democratic and union terms, the struggle is a sum of individual decisions. Aren't you discontented? Don't you feel downtrodden? Yes, you are! So why aren't you rebelling? It would be so simple if it was a case of the worker choosing between being “brave” or “cowardly”, alone with his conscience, as in a polling station! The class struggle does not follow this kind of idealistic and phoney schema. It is the result of a collective strength and consciousness that comes not only from the discontent that has resulted in an untenable situation, but also from the perception that it is possible to fight together and that a sufficient degree of solidarity and determination exists to carry it through.

Such a situation is the product of a subterranean process that depends on three elements: organisation in open assemblies that provides an understanding of the forces available and the steps to take to increase them; consciousness in deciding what we want and how to get it; combativity faced with the sabotage of the trade unions and all the organs of mystification.

This process is under way, but it remains unclear when and how it will succeed. A comparison can possibly help us. During the great mass strike in May 68,[28] there was a demonstration on May 13th in Paris in support of the students that was brutally repressed. The sense of power that it brought out was expressed the next day in the outbreak of a series of spontaneous strikes, like that at Renault in Cleon and then Paris. This did not happen after the big demonstrations on June 19th in Spain. Why is that?

In May 1968 the bourgeoisie was politically unprepared to confront the working class and the repression only threw oil on the fire; now it can rely in many countries on a super- sophisticated apparatus of unions and parties, and can use ideological campaigns specifically based around democracy, and which also provide for a very effective political use of selective repression. Today, the upsurge of struggle requires a much greater effort of consciousness and solidarity than was the case in the past.

In May 1968, the crisis was only just beginning; today it has clearly plunged capitalism into an impasse. The situation is so daunting that it makes going out on strike difficult even for as “simple” a reason as a wage increase. In such a serious situation strikes will break out from a feeling that “enough is enough”, but the conclusion must then follow that “the proletariat has only its chains to lose and a world to win.”

This movement has no frontiers

If the road seems longer and more painful than in May 1968, the foundations being laid are much more solid. One of these, which is critical, is the recognition of being part of an international movement. After a “trial period” with some massive movements (the student movement in France in 2006 and the revolt of the youth in Greece in 2008[29]), we have now seen a succession of movements on a broader scale over the last nine months that has opened up the possibility of paralysing the barbaric hand of capitalism: France in the autumn of 2010, Britain in November and December 2010, Egypt, Tunisia, Spain and Greece in 2011.

The consciousness that the “15M” movement is part of this international chain has begun to develop in embryo. The slogan “This movement has no frontiers” was taken up by a demonstration in Valencia. Various camps have organised demonstrations “for a European Revolution”; on June 15th there were demonstrations in support of the struggle in Greece, and they were repeated the 29th. On the 19th, there were a small number of internationalist slogans: one sign saying “A happy world union” and another in English: “World Revolution”.

For years, what is called “economic globalisation” served as a pretext for the left wing of the bourgeoisie to arouse nationalist sentiments, favouring “national sovereignty” over “stateless markets.” It proposed nothing less than workers being more nationalistic than the bourgeoisie! With the development of the crisis, but also thanks to the popularity of the Internet and social networking, young workers began to turn these campaigns back against their promoters. The idea gained ground that “faced with economic globalisation, it was necessary to respond with the international globalisation of the struggles”, that faced with worldwide poverty the only possible response is a worldwide struggle.

The “15M” has had repercussions internationally. The mobilisations in Greece over two weeks followed the same “model” of mass assemblies in the main squares; they were consciously inspired by the events in Spain.[30]

According Kaosenlared on June 19th, “this is the fourth consecutive Sunday that thousands of people of all ages have demonstrated in Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament, in response to the call of the pan-European movement of the 'Indignants', to protest against the austerity measures.”

In France, Belgium, Mexico and Portugal regular assemblies on a smaller scale have expressed solidarity with the 'Indignants' and tried to stimulate discussion. In Portugal, “About 300 people, the majority of them young, marched on Sunday afternoon in central Lisbon in response to the call of Real Democracia Ya, inspired by the Spanish 'Indignants'. The Portuguese demonstrators marched calmly behind a banner which read: ‘Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal: our struggle is international.’”[31]

The role of active minorities in preparing new struggles

The world debt crisis is demonstrating that capitalism has no way out. In Spain as in other countries, frontal attacks are raining down and there is no respite in sight, just further blows against our living conditions. The working class has to respond and this means taking off from the impetus given by the May assemblies and the demonstrations of 19th June.

To prepare this response, the working class gives rise to active minorities, comrades who seek to understand what’s going on, become politicised, animate debates, actions, meetings, assemblies, trying to convince those who still have doubts, bringing arguments to those who are looking for answers. As we saw at the beginning, these minorities contributed to the emergence of the 15M movement.

With its modest forces, the ICC has participated in the movement and tried to put forward orientations:   “In any trial of strength between the classes, there are rapid, important fluctuations, and you have to know how to orientate yourself, to use your prin­ciples and analyses as a guide without getting swept away. You have to know how to join the flow of a movement, how to make the ‘general goals’ more concrete, how to respond to the real preocc­upations of a struggle, how to be able to support and stimulate its positive tendencies.”[32] We have written numerous articles trying to understand the phases that the movement has gone through while making concrete and realisable proposals: the emergence of assemblies and their vitality, the offensive against them by DRY, the trap of repression, the turning point of the 19 June demonstrations.[33]

Since one of the necessities of the movement is debate, we opened a heading on our web page in Spanish ‘Debates del 15M’ where comrades with different analyses and positions could express themselves.

Working with other collectives and active minorities was one of our priorities. We took part in common initiatives with the Circulo Obrero de Debate in Barcelona, the Red de Solidaridad de Alicante and various assemblyist collectives in Valencia.

In the assemblies, our militants intervened on concrete points: defence of the assemblies, the need to orient the struggle towards the working class, the need for mass assemblies in workplaces and education centres, the rejection of democratic demands and the need to frame demands within the struggle against social attacks, the impossibility of reforming or democratising capitalism, the only realistic possibility being its destruction.[34] As far as possible, we also participated actively in the neighbourhood assemblies.

Following the 15M, the minority favourable to a class orientation has got bigger and become more dynamic and influential. It needs now to keep itself together, to co-ordinate itself at a national and international level. Towards the working class as a whole, it needs to put forward positions which express its deepest needs and aspirations: against the democratic lie, showing what lies behind the slogan “All power to the assemblies!”; against the demands for democratic reform, showing the need to fight against the attacks on living conditions; against illusory “reforms” of capitalism, affirming the need for a tenacious, persevering struggle which has the perspective of destroying capitalism.

The important thing is that debate and struggle develops within this milieu. A debate around the many questions posed over the last few months: reform or revolution? Democracy or assemblies? Citizens’ movement or class movement? Democratic demands or demands against the social attacks? General strike or mass strike? Trade unions or assemblies? A struggle to push forward self-organisation and the independent struggle but above all to unmask and overcome the many traps that will certainly be put in our path.

C Mir July 2011

With the dramatic events of the Paris Commune between March and June 1871 we have the first example in history of the working class taking political power into its own hands. The Commune meant the dismantling of the old bourgeois state and the formation of a power directly controlled from below: the delegates of the Commune, elected by popular assemblies in the neighbourhoods of Paris, were subject to immediate recall and were paid no more than the average worker’s wage. The Commune called for its example to be taken up throughout France, demolished the Vendôme Column as a symbol of French national chauvinism, and proclaimed that its red flag was the flag of the Universal Republic. Naturally, this crime against the natural order had to be mercilessly punished. The liberal British newspaper, The Manchester Guardian, published at the time a very critical report on the bloody revenge of the French ruling class:

 “Civil government is temporarily suspended in Paris. The city is divided into four military districts, under General’s LADMIRAULT, CISSKY, DOUAY, and VINOY. ‘All powers of the civil authorities for the maintenance of order are transferred to the military’. Summary executions continue, and military deserters, incendiaries, and members of the Commune are shot without mercy. The marquis DE GALIFLET has given some slight dissatisfaction by shooting, it is said, a number of innocent persons near the Arc de Triomphe. It will be remembered that the Marquis (who was with BAZAINE in Mexico) ordered upwards of 80 men, selected from a large convoy of prisoners, to be shot near the Arch. It is now said that some of these men were innocent. The Marquis would probably, if he were appealed to, express a polite regret that such an untoward circumstance should have occurred; and what more could a true ‘friend of order’ require?”[1]

In a mere eight days, 30,000 Communards were massacred. And those who played their part in this Calgary were not merely the Galiflets and their French superiors. The Prussian junkers, whose war with France had sparked off the uprising in Paris, patched up their differences with the French bourgeoisie to enable the latter to crush the Commune: the first clear evidence that, no matter how savage the national rivalries that pit different ruling classes against each other, they will stand shoulder to shoulder when they face a threat from the proletariat.   

The Commune was utterly defeated, but it has been a source of inestimable political lessons for the workers’ movement. Marx and Engels revised their view of the proletarian revolution as a result of it, concluding that the working class could not take control of the old bourgeois state but had to destroy it and replace it with a new form of political power. The Bolsheviks and Spartacists of the Russian and German revolutions in 1917-19 took inspiration from it and saw the workers’ councils or soviets which emerged from those revolutions as a continuation and a development of the principles of the Commune. The communist left of the 1930s and 40s, in trying to understand the reasons for the defeat of the revolution in Russia, went back to the experience of the Commune to see what light it shed on the problem of the state in the period of transition between capitalism and communism. In line with this tradition, our Current has also published a certain number of articles on the Commune. The first volume of our series Communism is not just a nice idea but a material necessity, which looks at the evolution of the communist programme in the 19th century workers’ movement, devotes a chapter to the Commune, examining how the experience of Paris 1871 has clarified the attitude that the working class must adopt towards both the bourgeois state and the post-revolutionary ‘semi-state’; towards the other non-exploiting classes in society; towards the political, social and economic measures needed to advance in the direction of a society without classes and without a state. This article can be found here [65], as well as in the book containing the whole of the first series [66], which can be bought directly from the ICC or on Amazon. We are also re-publishing in our territorial press an article originally written for the 120th anniversary of the Commune in 1991 [67]. This article denounces the latter-day efforts of the bourgeoisie to recuperate the memory of the Commune and hide its internationalist and revolutionary essence by presenting it as a chapter in the patriotic struggle for democratic freedoms.

1914 - 1928: the first real confrontations between the two classes

Between 1855 and 1914, the proletariat that emerged in the colony of French West Africa (FWA) underwent its class struggle apprenticeship by trying to come together and organise with the aim of defending itself against its capitalist exploiters. Despite its extreme numerical weakness, it demonstrated its will to struggle and a consciousness of its strength as an exploited class. We can also note that, on the eve of World War One, the development of the productive forces in the colony was sufficient to give rise to a frontal collision between the bourgeoisie and working class.

General strike and uprising, Dakar 1914

At the beginning of 1914, the discontent and anxiety of the population, which had been building up since the preceding year, didn’t immediately express itself in the form of a strike or demonstration. But by May the anger exploded and the working class unleashed an insurrectionary general strike.

This strike was first of all a response to the crass provocations of the colonial power towards the population of Dakar during the legislative elections of May, when big business[1] and the Mayor threatened to cut credits, water and electricity to all those who wanted to vote for the local candidate (a certain Blaise Diagne, of whom more below). At the same time an epidemic of plague broke out in the town and, under the pretext of preventing its spread to the residential quarters (of Europeans), Mayor Masson of Dakar (a colonist) quite simply ordered the burning down of all the dwellings (of the local population) suspected being infected.

This fanned the flames, resulting in a general strike and a riot against the criminal procedures of the colonial authorities. In order to respond, a group of youths called the “Young Senegalese” called for an economic boycott and filled the streets, putting up posters throughout Dakar with the slogan: “Let’s starve those that starve us”, taking up the slogan of the candidate and future black deputy.

Barely concealing its own disquiet, big business launched a violent campaign through the newspaper L’AOF (in its pocket) against the strikers: “Here our stevedores, carters and other workers are deprived of their wages... How are they going to eat? ...your strikes which have affected the life of the port will only make the problem much more cruel to the unfortunate than it will to those well off: they will paralyse the development of Dakar by discouraging those that want to come here from doing so.”[2]

But it didn’t work and the strike couldn’t be prevented. On the contrary, it spread, affecting all sectors, notably the port and the railway, the lungs of the colony’s economy, as well as trade and services, both private and public. The following is related in the secret memoirs of the Governor of the colony, William Ponty: “The strike (added the Governor General), by the abstention fomented from below, was perfectly organised and a complete success. It was...the first event of its kind that I had seen so unanimous in these regions.”[3]

The strike lasted 5 days (between the 20th and 25th of May) and the workers ended up by forcing the colonial authorities to put out the fire that they themselves had lit. In fact the strike was exemplary! The struggle marked a major turning point in the confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the working class of FWA. It was the first time that a strike spread beyond occupational categories and brought together workers with the population of Dakar and the region in the same combat against the dominant power.

This was clearly a struggle that abruptly changed the balance of forces in favour of the oppressed, compelling the Governor (with the approval of Paris) to cede to the claims of the striking population, expressed in these terms: “The cessation of the incineration of dwellings, the restitution of bodies, reconstruction of the buildings and dwellings destroyed using solid materials, the complete removal from the entire town of all the dwellings built in sub-standard wood or straw and their replacement by buildings in cement for low-priced habitation.”[4]

However, this same Governor said nothing about the number of victims burnt inside their dwellings or cut down under a hail of bullets from the forces of order. At best, the local authorities of the colony only raised the question of “the restitution of the bodies” and said not a word about the killings and their extent.

But, despite the censorship of the words and actions of the working class at that time, one can imagine that the workers who saw their homes burnt down and those of their families, did not remain inert and put up a fierce fight. Clearly, although few in number, the working class was without doubt a decisive element in the confrontations that made the forces of colonial capital give ground. But above all the strike had a very political character:

“Certainly it was an economic strike, but it was also political, a strike of protest, a strike of sanction, a strike of reprisals, decided upon and put into effect by all the population of Cape Verde... The strike thus had a very clear political character and the reaction of the authorities was something quite different... The administration was both surprised and disarmed. Surprised because it had never had to face up to a manifestation of this nature, disarmed because there was no presence at all of a classical union organisation with offices, rules, but a general movement taken in hand by the whole population and whose leadership was invisible.”[5]

In accord with the author above, one must conclude that it was indeed an eminently political strike expressing a high degree of proletarian consciousness. An even more remarkable phenomenon given the unfavourable context for the class struggle: one dominated from the outside by the sound of marching boots and, from the inside, by struggles for power and the settling of accounts within the bourgeoisie through the legislative elections, whose main issue, for the first time, was the election of a deputy from the black continent. This was a mortal trap that the working class turned against the dominant class by unleashing, along with the rest of the oppressed population, a victorious strike.

1917-1918: strike movements seriously concern the bourgeoisie

As we know, the period 1914 to 1916 was marked, in the world in general and Africa in particular, by a feeling of terror and dejection following the outbreak of the first global butchery. Certainly, just before the conflagration, we saw a formidable class combat in Dakar in 1914; similarly there was a tough strike in Guinea in 1916.[6] But on the whole a general state of impotence dominated the working class even though its living conditions deteriorated on every level. In fact, it wasn’t until 1917 (by chance?) that we saw new expressions of struggle in the colony:

“The accumulated effects of galloping inflation, the screwing down of wages, all types of worries, at the same time as they threw light on the tight links of dependence between the colony and the Metropole and the increasing integration of Senegal into the capitalist world system, all provoked a rupture of social equilibrium in which the consciousness of the workers and their will to struggle was clearly affirmed. From 1917, political relations were signalling that in a situation of crisis, stagnation of business, crushing taxation, the growing pauperisation of the masses, more and more workers were incapable of making ends meet and were demanding increases in wages.”[7]

Strikes broke out between December 1917 and February 1918 against the misery and degradation of the conditions of life of the working class, and this despite the installation of a state of siege throughout the colony, accompanied by an implacable censorship. Nevertheless, even with little detail on the strikes and their outcomes at this time, we can see here, through some confidential notes, the existence of real class confrontations. Thus, in regard to the strike movement of coal miners working for the Italian company Le Senegal, one can read this in a note sent from the Governor William Ponty to his minister: “…Satisfaction having been given to them immediately, work was resumed the following day...” Or again: “A small strike of two days occurred during the quarter on the sites of the firms Bouquereau and Leblanc. Most of the strikers have been replaced by Portuguese.”[8]

But without knowing what the reaction of the workers replaced by the “blacklegs” was, the Governor General indicated that: “The workers of all occupations are due to strike on the 1st of January”. Further, he informed his minister that the builders, spread out over a dozen worksites, struck on February 20th claiming an increase in wages of 6 to 8 francs per day, and that “satisfaction [of the claim] put an end to the strike”.

As we can clearly see, between 1917 and 1918, workers’ militancy was such that confrontations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat often ended up with victories for the latter, as is attested in quotes from diverse secret reports or observations from the colonial authorities. Similarly, workers’ struggles of this time couldn’t be separated from the historic context of the revolution in Russia in particular and in Europe in general:

“The concentration of wage-earners in the ports, on the railways, created the conditions for the first manifestations of the workers’ movement... Finally, the suffering of the war – the war effort, the hardships suffered by the combatants – created the need for a respite and hope for a change. The echoes of the October revolution in Russia had reached Africa; there were Senegalese troops stationed in Romania who refused to march against the Soviets: there were black marines in the naval units who mutinied in the Mediterranean; some of those who took part in the mutinies of 1917 experienced the revolutionary strides of the years at the end of the war and of the period immediately after the war in France.”[9]

So the Russian revolution of 1917 did have echoes in Africa, particularly amongst the youth, a great part of who were enlisted and sent to Europe by French imperialism as cannon fodder for the war of 1914-18. In this context, we can understand the well-founded concerns of the French bourgeoisie at that time; they were to become even more worried as the wave of struggle continued.

1919: a year of struggles and attempts to build up workers’ organisations

1919, a year of intense workers’ struggles, was also the year of the emergence of many associations of an occupational character, despite the fact that the colonial authority continued to ban any union organisation or any coalition of more than twenty workers within FWA. However, there were many workers who took the initiative to create occupational associations (“friendly societies”) that had the potential for taking up the defence of their interests. But as the prohibition was particularly aimed at native workers, it fell to their European comrades – as it happened the rail workers – to take the initiative of creating the first “occupational friendly society” in 1918; in fact the rail workers had already been the origin of the first (public) attempt in this area in 1907.

These occupational friendly societies were the first union organisations recognised in the colony: “Little by little, coming out of the narrow framework of the company, the coalition of the workers was growing, going first of all through a Union at the level of a town like Saint-Louis or Dakar, then a regroupment at the level of the colony, of all those whose occupational obligations subjected them to the same servitude. We find examples of them among teachers, postal workers, women typists, trade employees. [...] Through these means, the nascent union movement strengthened its class position. It enlarged the field of its framework and action and it disposed of a powerful striking force, which showed itself to be particularly effective faced with the boss. Thus, the spirit of solidarity between workers little by little gained flesh. Convincing indications even show that the most advanced elements were engaged in becoming conscious of the limits of corporatism and laid the basis of an inter-occupational union of workers from the same sector, covering a wider geographical space.”[10]

In fact, in this context we learn later, in a police report taken from the archives, of the existence of a federation of associations of colonial state workers of FWA.

But, becoming aware of the size of the danger from the appearance of federated workers’ groups, the Governor ordered an enquiry into the activities of the emerging unions. Subsequently, he instructed his Secretary General to break the organisations and their responsible leaders in the following terms: “1) see if it’s possible to get rid of all the natives reported; 2) look into the conditions under which they were taken on; 3) don’t let the joint note go into circulation and keep it in your drawer; I’ll personally put my memo with it.”[11]

What vocabulary, and what a cynic is this Monsieur le Governor! With total logic he carried out his dirty “mission” through massive dismissals and by hunting down any worker who might to belong to one union organisation or another. Clearly the attitude of the Governor was that of a state police chief in his most criminal works and, in this sense, he also carried out the segregation between European and “native” workers, as this archive document shows:

“That the metropolitan civil laws extend to citizens living in the colonies is understandable, since they are members of an evolved society or else natives who have been habituated for a long time to our customs and our civic life; but to extend these to races still in a state bordering on barbarity, who are almost completely foreign to our civilisation, is often an impossibility, if not a regrettable error.”[12]

We have here a Governor who is contemptuously about to carry out his policy of apartheid. In fact, not content with deciding to “liquidate” the indigenous workers, he goes one better in justifying his actions through overtly racist theories.

Despite this anti-proletarian political criminality, the working class of this time (European and African) refused to capitulate and pursued the best possible struggle for the defence of its class interests.

Railworkers’ strike in April 1919

1919 was a year of strong social agitation. Several sectors came into struggle around diverse demands, whether wages or concerning the right to set up organisations for the defence of workers’ interests. But it was the rail workers who were the first to strike this year, between April 13th and 15th, first of all sending a warning to their employer: “April 8th 1919, or hardly seven months after the end of hostilities, a movement of demands broke out in the rail services of Dakar-Saint-Louis (DSL) on the initiative of European and local workers in the form of an anonymous telegram drawn up and addressed to the Inspector General of Public Works: ‘rail workers of Dakar-Saint Louis, are unanimously agreed in presenting the following demands: raising of pay for European and indigenous personnel, regular increases and maintenance allowances, improved sick pay and allowances ... we will stop all work for one hundred and twenty hours, from this day, 12th April if there’s no favourable response on all points: signed, Rail workers of Dakar-Saint Louis.’”[13]

This is the particularly strong and combative tone with which rail workers announced their intention to strike if their demands weren’t met by the employers. Similarly, we should note the unitary character of the strike. For the first time, in a conscious fashion, European and African workers decided to draw up their list of demands together. Here we are dealing with a gesture of the internationalism which only the working class is the bearer of. This is the giant step taken by the rail workers – knowingly striving to overcome the ethnic barriers that the class enemy regularly sets up in order to divide the proletariat and lead it to defeat.

Reaction of the authorities faced with the rail workers’ demands

On receiving the telegram from the workers, the Governor General summoned the members of his administration and army chiefs to decide at once on the total requisitioning of personnel and administration of the Dakar-Saint Louis line, placing it under military authority. The decree of the Governor even states: “Troops will first of all use their rifle butts. An attack by small weapons will be met with the use of bayonets [...] It will be indispensable for troops to shoot in order to assure the security of personnel of the administration is not put in danger...” And the French authorities concluded that the laws and rules governing the army became immediately applicable.

However, neither this terrible decision for a decidedly repressive response, nor the arrogant uproar accompanying its implementation, succeeded in preventing the strike from taking place: “At 18h 30, Lachere (civil chief of the network) cabled the boss of the Federation that, ‘odd number trains not leaving today; trains four and six have left, the second stopped at Rusfique...’ and urgently insisted on advisability of giving in to the demand of the workers. Rail traffic was almost completely paralysed. It was the same thing at Dakar, Saint Louis, Rusfique. The entire network was on strike, Europeans and Africans... ; arrests were made here and there, attempts to oppose the workers on racial grounds came to nothing. Otherwise, some personnel went to the stations without working, others purely and simply defected. In the morning of April 15th, there was a total strike in Rusfique. No European or African worker was present. Consequently the order was given to close the station. The centre of the strike was found here. Never has Senegal known a movement of such breadth. For the first time a strike has been undertaken by Europeans and Africans and has succeeded so vividly, and at the level of the territory. Members of the ruling elite were going mad. Giraud, President of the Chamber of Commerce, has made contact with the rail workers and tried to conciliate. Maison Maurel and Prom warned its management in Bordeaux. Maison Vielles sent its Marseille headquarters this alarmist telegram: ‘Situation untenable, act!’ Giraud went on the offensive, going directly to the President of the Syndicate for the Defence of Senegalese Interests (i.e. the bosses) in Bordeaux, criticising the nonchalance of the authorities.”[14]

Panic gripped the leadership of the colonial administration faced with the flames of the workers’ struggle. Following pressure from the economic leadership of the colony, both on the bosses in France and on central government, the authorities in Paris had to give the green light to negotiations with the strikers. Following this, the Governor General convened a meeting with representatives of the latter (on the second day of the strike) with proposals favouring the demands of the strikers. And when the Governor expressed his wish to meet railway worker delegates made up solely of Europeans, the workers replied by refusing to agree to the plan without the presence of African workers on the same equitable footing as their white comrades. In fact, the workers on strike distrusted their interlocutors and not without reason, because after giving satisfaction to the rail workers on the main points of their demands, the authorities continued their manoeuvres and hesitations regarding some demands of the native workers. But that only increased the combativity of the railway workers, who quickly decided to go back on strike, giving rise to new pressures from the representatives of the French bourgeoisie in Dakar on the central government in Paris. This is what’s shown in the following telegrams:

“It is urgent that satisfaction is given immediately to the personnel of DSL and the decision is notified without delay otherwise we risk a new strike” (the representative of big business);

“I ask you straightaway... to give approval to arbitration by the Governor General transmitted in my cable of the 16th... very urgent before May 1st, if (as seems probable) we are going to have a new work stoppage on this date” (Director of the Railways);

“Despite my counsels, the strike will resume if the company doesn’t give satisfaction” (the Governor General).[15]

Visibly, there was general panic among the colonial authorities at all levels. In brief, in the end, the French government gave its approval to the arbitration of its Governor by validating the agreement negotiated with the strikers. Work restarted on April 16th. Once again, the working class pulled off a great victory over the forces of capital thanks notably to its class unity and above all to the development of its class consciousness.

But in addition to the satisfaction of the demands of the rail workers, this movement had positive consequences for other workers; in fact the 8-hour day was extended throughout the colony following the strike. What’s more, faced with the bosses’ resistance in accepting it and faced with the dynamic of struggle created by the rail workers, workers from other branches also went into struggle to make themselves heard.

The postal strike

After this, in order to obtain increases in wages and better conditions of work, workers of the PTT (postal service) of Saint-Louis went on strike May 1st 1919. It lasted for 12 hours and ended up with the postal services almost paralysed. Faced with the breadth of the movement, the colonial authority requisitioned the army to provide a specialised force for ensuring the continuity of public services. But this military body was far from being able to effectively play the role of blackleg. The administrative authority thus had to agree to negotiate with the postal strike committee, which was offered a wage increase of 100%. In fact: “The duplicity of the colonial authorities soon restarted the strike movement which took off with renewed vigour, braced without doubt by the enticing perspectives that it had glimpsed for a moment. It lasted up to May 12th and ended in total success.”[16]

Once again, here was a victory gained by the PTT workers thanks to their militant stance. Decidedly, the workers showed themselves more and more conscious of their strength and their class affiliation.

In fact all public services were more and more affected by the movement. Numerous occupational categories were able to benefit from the fall-out of the struggle unleashed by the workers of the PTT: after they had obtained substantial wage increases, it was the turn of workers in the public sector, farm workers, teachers, health workers, etc. But the success of the movement didn’t stop there: again the representatives of capital refused to surrender.

Threat of a new railworkers strike and the political manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie

Following the movement of the postal workers and six months after the victorious end of their movement, the indigenous rail workers decided to strike without their European comrades by addressing the authorities with new demands: “In this letter, we ask for an improvement of pay and modifications of the rules regarding indigenous personnel... We take the liberty of saying to you that we can no longer lead the life of the galley and we hope that you will avoid it by taking measures of which you alone will be responsible... and we would like, just like the fixed personnel (formed almost exclusively of Europeans), to be recompensed. Act on our regard as you would act on their regard and everything will be for the best.”[17]

The indigenous workers wanted to benefit from the material advantages that some workers had acquired following the strike of PTT workers. But above all they wanted to be treated the same as the European workers, the key being the threat of a new strike.

“The initiative of the indigenous workers of the DSL had, quite naturally, aroused the lively interest of the bosses. Given that the 13th to 15th April movement had been a crowning success because of the unity of the action, it was necessary to do everything to ensure that this new trench opening up between European and African workers would be reinforced. The best way to weaken the movement of workers would be to let them exhaust themselves in fratricidal rivalries, which would undermine any future coalition.

“The network’s administration thus worked to accentuate the disparities in order to increase the frustration of the indigenous workers’ milieu in the hope of rendering definitive the rupture that was opening up.”[18]

Consequently the colonial authorities moved cynically into action, deciding not to adjust the income of the natives in relation to those of the Europeans, but, on the contrary to noisily increase the earnings of the latter while holding back on the demands of the local rail workers. The evident aim was to deepen the gap between the two groups, setting one against the other to neutralise both.

But fortunately, sensing the trap being laid by the colonial authorities, the indigenous rail workers avoided a strike in these conditions, deciding to wait for better days. We can also note that while they gave the impression of having forgotten the importance of the class unity they had previously shown in allying with their European comrades, the indigenous rail workers were still able to decide to widen their movement to other categories of workers (public and private services, European as well as African). In any case, they were able to recognise the uneven character of class unity, to see that class consciousness develops slowly in ups and downs. Let’s also remember that the colonial power institutionalised racial and ethnic divisions from the first contacts between Europeans and Africans. This did not mean there would be no other attempts at unity between African and European workers.

The revolt of Senegalese sailors at Santos (Brazil) in 1920: strike and repression

We learn from the recollections of a French consul of the existence of a struggle undertaken by some sailors on the Vapeur Provence (enlisted in Marseille) at Santos around May 1920. This was an example of workers’ solidarity followed by fierce police repression. Here’s how this diplomat relates the event: “Undisciplined acts occurred on board the Vapeur Provence... I went to Santos and, after enquiries, I punished the main guilty parties... 4 days in prison and I led them to the town’s prison in the interest of the security of the navy... All the Senegalese stokers showing solidarity with their comrades took a threatening attitude despite my formal defence... And the Senegalese tried to release their comrades, following the police agents and making threats and insults, and the local authority finally had to proceed with their arrest.”[19]

In fact, these were worker-sailors (stokers, greasers, seamen) some of whom were registered in Dakar, others at Marseille, employed by big business to ensure the transport of goods between the three continents. The problem is that the diplomat’s notes say nothing about the cause of the revolt. It seems however that this movement had links with another that happened in 1919 when Senegalese sailors, following a struggle, were disembarked and replaced by some Europeans (according to police sources). Following that, after the strike, many of the Senegalese union members decided to quit the CGT, which had approved this decision, and join the CGTU (the latter being a split from the former).

In any case, this event seems to have seriously concerned the colonial authorities as is shown in the following account:

“The consul, fulminating more than ever, vehemently demanded that when they arrived at Dakar, the guilty were handed over to the competent tribunal, and showed his surprise and indignation in these terms: ‘The attitude of these individuals is such that it constitutes a real danger for the ships on which they will sail in the future and for the general security of the general staff and crew. They are animated by the worst spirit, have lost, or never had, the least respect for discipline and believe they have the right to give orders to the commandant’.

“They discovered, without a doubt and for the first time, the state of spirit of the Senegalese after the First World War and were evidently scandalised by the mood of contestation and their determination not to accept without reacting what they considered as an attempt on their rights and liberties. The working class was developing politically and on the trade union level.”[20]

This was a magnificent class combat by the maritime workers who, despite an unfavourable balance of forces, were able to show the enemy their determination, achieving self-respect by showing solidarity in the struggle.

1920: the re-launch of the rail workers’ action ends in victory

We’ve already seen that, following the victorious movement of workers of the PTT (in 1919), the indigenous rail workers wanted to rush into this breach by going on strike, before finally deciding to cancel their action due to the lack of favourable conditions.

Six months after this episode, they decided to re-launch their protest action in earnest. The movement of the rail workers was first of all motivated by the general degradation of living conditions due to the disastrous conditions of the Great War, which accentuated the discontent of the workers and of the population in general. The cost of living in the main towns underwent dizzying increases. Thus, the price of a kilo of millet, which in December 1919 was 0.75F, tripled in the space of four months. And a kilo of meat went from 5F to 7F, chicken 6F to 10F, etc.

A note from the Inspector General of Public Works of April 13th, in which he asked his superiors not to apply the law on the 8-hour day in the colony, was the last straw. It immediately revived the latent discontent smouldering among the rail workers since their protest movement of December 1919. The workers on the railway went into action on June 1st 1920: “It was the first strike movement undertaken at the ethnic level by the workers on the railways, which explains the rapidity and unanimity with which the business community received the event and decided to remedy it... From the first of June, they called on the States General of Colonial Trade in Senegal, addressing their concerns to the Federation Chief, and inviting him not to stand by during the deterioration in the social climate.”[21]

The indigenous rail workers thus decided to launch a new showdown with the colonial authorities in order to achieve the same demands. But this time the African rail workers seemed to have drawn the lessons of the aborted action by enlarging the social base of the movement with several delegates representing each trade, fully entrusting them to negotiate collectively with the political and economic authorities. As a matter of fact, from the second day of the strike, unease grew among the main colonial authorities. Thus alerted by the Dakar economic decision-makers, the Minister of the Colonies sent a cable to the Governor in the following terms: “It has been pointed out to me that following the strike 35,000 tonnes of uncovered grain awaiting delivery is held up in different stations of Dakar-Saint Louis”. From here, pressure mounted on the Director of the Rail Network, pushing him to respond to the demands of the wage earners. And this “station master” responded to his superiors in the following way: “We fear that if a new increase in wages, so high and so little justified, was granted, it could have a general impact on the demands of all personnel and encourage them to present us with new demands.”

Straightaway, the network’s management tried hard to break the strike by playing black against white (which had previously succeeded). Thus, on the third day of the movement, it managed to get together a train of goods and passengers, thanks to the co-operation of a European engine driver and stokers from the navy under escort from the forces of order. But when the management tried to play this card again, it couldn’t find any worker ready to play its game because this time, following strong pressure exerted on them by the indigenous strikers, the European rail workers decided to remain “neutral”. Afterwards, we find in a report of the Deputy Governor of Senegal:[22] “The workers of Dakar-Saint Louis have declared that if they have no satisfaction at the end of the month, they will leave Dakar to work on farming in the lougans[23] in the colony’s interior.”

At this point (the sixth day of the strike), the Governor of Senegal convened a meeting of all his social partners to notify them of a series of measures, elaborated by his own services, to meet the strikers’ demands; at the end of the day, the strikers got what they were asking for. Clearly the workers gained a new victory thanks to their combativity and a better organisation of the strike, and it is this that enabled them to impose a balance of force over the representatives of the bourgeoisie: “What appears certain however is that the workers’ mentality, grew stronger through these tests and more refined about the stakes involved, with more widespread forms of struggle and attempts at union co-ordination in a sort of broad class front faced with combative bosses.”[24]

But even more significant in this development of a class front was June 1st 1920, the day the rail workers started their strike: “the tugboat crews stopped work a few hours later, despite the promise they had given, noted the Deputy Governor, to await the outcome of the talks that Martin, Chief of the Maritime Inspection Service, had been responsible for leading. We have here the first deliberate attempt to co-ordinate strike movements simultaneously unleashed by... rail workers and port workers, that is, personnel of the two sectors that constituted the lungs of the colony whose concerted paralysis blocked all economic and commercial activity, in and out... The situation appeared even more worrying (for the Administration), since the bakers of Dakar had also threatened to strike on the same day, and would certainly have done so if immediate increases in their wages had not been granted.”[25]

Similarly, at the same time, other strike movements broke out at the Han/Thiaroye yards and yards on the Dakar-Rufisque route. Police sources reporting this event say nothing about the origin of the simultaneous explosion of these different movements. However, by putting together several pieces of information from this same colonial police source, we can conclude that the extension of this struggle movement was not unconnected with the Governor’s attempt to break the maritime transport strike Without saying so openly, the colonial state representative first of all called in the navy with some European civilian teams to provide transport services between Dakar and Goree[26] and this seems to have provoked solidarity action by workers in other sectors: “Did this intervention of the state on the side of the bosses arouse the solidarity of other occupational branches? Without being able to decisively confirm it we can note that the strike broke out almost simultaneously with the attempts to break the movement of the crews in public works.”[27]

In fact, we know that after five days the movement was crumbling under the double impact of state repression and rumours of the bosses’ decision to replace the strikers with blacklegs.

“The workers, feeling that the length of their action and the intervention of the military could change the balance of forces and jeopardise the successful conclusion of their action, had, on the seventh day of their strike softened their initial demands by formulating their platform based on the following... The Administration and the bosses were united in rejecting these new proposals, forcing the strikers to continue their movement in desperation or else end it on the local authorities’ conditions. They opted for the latter solution.”[28]

Clearly, the strikers had to return to work effectively on their old salary plus the “ration”, with the balance of forces squarely in the bourgeoisie’s favour and recognising the dangers of pursuing their movement in isolation. We can say here that the working class suffered a defeat but the fact of having retreated in good order meant that it wasn’t so profound, nor did it wipe out the workers’ understanding of the more numerous and important victories that it had gained.

To sum up, the period from 1914 to 1920 was strongly marked by intense class confrontations between the colonial bourgeoisie and the working class emerging in the colony of French West Africa; and this in a revolutionary context at the world level. French capital was fully conscious of this because it felt the full force of the proletarian struggle.

“The activities of the world communist movement, during the same period, underwent an uninterrupted development, marked notably by the entry onto the scene of the first expression of African marxism;[29] breaking with the utopian approach that his brothers had adopted towards colonial problems, he developed the first native explanation of this question we know, the first serious and profound critique of colonialism as a system of exploitation and domination.”[30]

Among the workers who were at the front of the strike movements in Senegal in the period from 1914 to 1920, some were close to the former “young infantrymen” demobilised or survivors from the First World War. For example, the same sources tell us of the existence at that time of a handful of Senegalese unionists, one of whom, a certain Louis Ndiaye (a young sailor of 13) was a militant of the CGT from 1905 and the representative of this organisation in the colonies between 1914 and 1930. In this respect, like many other “young infantrymen”, he was mobilised in 1914-18 into the navy where he managed to survive. Both he and another young Senegalese, Lamine Senghor, who was close to the PCF in the 1920s, were clearly influenced by the ideas of the Communist International. In this sense, and along with other figures of the 1920s, we can consider that they played a major and dynamic role in the process of politicisation and the development of class-consciousness in the ranks of the workers of the first colony of French West Africa.

Lassou (to be continued).

1. The resolution adopted by the previous ICC Congress pointed out right away how reality had categorically refuted the optimistic predictions of the leaders of the capitalist class at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, particularly after the fall of the “Evil Empire”, the imperialist bloc which called itself “socialist”. It cited the now famous declaration of George Bush Senior in March 1991 announcing the birth of a “New World Order” based on respect for “international law”, underlining how surreal this declaration now seemed when confronted with the growing chaos engulfing capitalist society. Twenty years after this prophetic speech, and especially since the beginning of the last decade, the world has never been such a picture of chaos. In the space of a few weeks we have seen a new war in Libya, joining the list of bloody conflicts which have affected the planet in this period, new massacres in the Ivory Coast, and the tragedy which has hit one of the most powerful and modern countries in the world, Japan. The earthquake which ravaged part of the country underlined once again that these are not natural catastrophes but the catastrophic consequences of natural phenomena. It showed that society already has the means to construct buildings that resist earthquakes and which would make it possible to avoid tragedies like the one in Haiti last year. It also showed how even an advanced state like Japan is incapable of planning ahead: the earthquake in itself left few victims but the ensuing tsunami killed nearly 30,000 people in a few minutes. And by provoking a new Chernobyl it brought to light not only the lack of preparedness of the ruling class, but also its role as a sorcerer’s apprentice, unable to master the forces which it has set in motion. It was not the Tepco company running the Fukushima nuclear power station that was the first or the only one responsible for this disaster. It was the capitalist system as a whole, a system based on the frenzied hunt for profit by competing national units and not on the satisfaction of the needs of humanity, which fundamentally bears responsibility for the present and future catastrophes suffered by humanity. In the final analysis, the Japanese Chernobyl is a new illustration of the ultimate bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production, a system whose survival constitutes a threat to humanity's very survival.

2. The crisis which world capitalism is currently going through is the most direct and obvious expression of the historic bankruptcy of this mode of production. Two years ago the bourgeoisie in all countries was seized by an almighty panic faced with the gravity of the economic situation. The OECD didn’t hesitate to say that “The world economy is in the midst of its deepest and most synchronised recession in our lifetimes”.[1] When we know how cautiously this venerable institution usually expresses itself, we can get an idea of how scared the ruling class has been when faced with the potential collapse of its international financial system, the brutal fall in world trade (more than 13% in 2009), the depth of the recession in the main economies, the wave of bankruptcies hitting or threatening emblematic industrial enterprises like General Motors or Chrysler. This fear on the bourgeoisie's part led it to convene a number of G20 summits such as the one in March 2009, which decided to double the reserves of the International Monetary Fund and agreed that states should make massive investments of liquidities into the economy in order to save the banking system from perdition and get production going again. The spectre of the Great Depression of the 1930s was haunting them and led the OECD to try to shoo away such demons by writing that “While some have dubbed this severe global downturn a ‘great recession’, it will remain far from turning into a repeat of the 1930s Great Depression thanks to the quality and intensity of government policies that are currently being undertaken”.[2] But as the resolution of the 18th Congress said “it is typical of the ruling class in its speeches of today to forget the speeches it made yesterday”. The OECD’s World Economic Outlook Interim Report of spring 2011 expressed a real relief at the restoration of the banking system and the economic recovery. The ruling class cannot act in any other way. It is incapable of giving a lucid, global and historic view of the difficulties encountered by capital, since such a view would lead it to discover the definitive impasse faced by its system. It is reduced to commenting on a day-to-day basis on the fluctuations of the immediate situation and thus to trying to find reasons for consoling itself. In doing so it is led to underestimate the significance of the major phenomenon of the last two years: the crisis of sovereign debt in a certain number of European states. This is so even if the media sometimes adopt an alarmist tone about it. In fact, the potential bankruptcy of a growing number of states constitutes a new stage in capitalism's plunge into insurmountable crisis. It highlights the limits of the policies through which the bourgeoisie has managed to hold back the evolution of the capitalist crisis for several decades.

3. The capitalist system has now been facing the current crisis for 40 years. May ‘68 in France, and all the proletarian struggles that followed it internationally, only took on such a breadth because they were fuelled by the world-wide deterioration of the living conditions of the working class, resulting form the first effects of the capitalist crisis, notably an increase in unemployment. This crisis went through a brutal acceleration in 1973-75 with the first big international recession of the post war period. Since then new recessions, each time deeper and more extensive, have hit the world economy, culminating in the one in 2008-9 which has revived the spectre of the 1930s. The measures adopted by the G20 of March 2009 to avoid a new Great Depression are significant expressions of the policy that the ruling class has been carrying out for several decades. They boil down to the injection of a considerable mass of credit into the economy. Such measures are not new. In fact for over 35 years they have been at the heart of the policies carried out by the ruling class aimed at escaping the major contradiction of the capitalist mode of production: its inability to find solvent markets that can absorb its production. The recession of 1973-5 was surmounted through the massive credits handed out to the third world countries, but since the beginning of the 1980s, with the debt crisis in these countries, the bourgeoisie of the most developed countries has had to give up this lung for its economy. It was then the states of the most advanced counties, and in the first place the USA, which came forward as the “locomotives” of the world economy. The neo-liberal “Reaganomics” of the beginning of the 1980s, which permitted a significant recovery of the US economy, was based on an unprecedented development of budget deficits, even though Ronald Reagan also declared that “the state is not the solution, it is the problem”. At the same time the considerable trade deficit of the USA enabled the commodities produced by other countries to find outlets there. During the 1990s the Asiatic “tigers” and “dragons” (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, etc) for a while accompanied the USA in its role as “locomotives”; their spectacular rates of growth became an important destination for the commodities of the most industrialised countries. But this “success story” was built at the price of a considerable indebtedness, which pushed these countries into major convulsions in 1997 along with the “new” and “democratic” Russia which found itself in default of payment, cruelly disappointing those who had banked on the “end of communism” to re-launch the world economy on a lasting basis. At the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century there was a new acceleration of debt, particularly through the runaway development of housing mortgages in a number of countries, notably the USA. The latter thus accentuated its role as the locomotive of the world economy, but at the price of a colossal growth in debt, especially within the US population, based on all sorts of financial products aimed at reducing the risk of being in default of payment. In reality, this proliferation of dubious loans in no way prevented them from acting as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the American and world economy. On the contrary they could only accumulate the toxic debts in the capital of the banks, which was at the root of their collapse in 2007 and of the brutal world recession of 2008-9.

4. Thus as the resolution adopted at the last congress put it “it is not the financial crisis which is at the origin of the current recession. On the contrary, the financial crisis merely illustrates the fact that the flight into debt, which made it possible to overcome overproduction, could not carry on indefinitely. Sooner or later, the ‘real economy’ would take its revenge In other words, what was at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism, overproduction, the incapacity of the markets to absorb the totality of the commodities produced, had come back onto the scene”. And the same resolution after the G20 summit of 2009 wrote that “The only ‘solution’ the bourgeoisie can come up with is... a new flight into debt. The G20 could not invent a solution to the crisis for the good reason that there is no solution”.

The crisis of sovereign debt that is spreading today, the fact that states are incapable of honouring their debts, is a spectacular illustration of this reality. The potential bankruptcy of the banking system and the onset of the recession have obliged all states to inject considerable sums into their economies, even though their revenues were in free fall because of the downturn in production. As a result of this, public deficit in most countries went through a considerable increase. For the most exposed ones such as Ireland, Greece or Portugal this meant a situation of potential bankruptcy, an inability to pay their public employees and to reimburse their debts. From then on the banks refused to grant them new loans, except at the most exorbitant rates, because they could not be at all sure they were going to be repaid. The “rescue plans” which they benefited from thanks to the European Bank and the IMF constitute new debts that were simply piled up on top of preceding ones. This is no longer a vicious circle; it is an infernal spiral. The only “effectiveness” of these plans consists of an unprecedented attack against the workers, against the public employees whose wages and jobs have been drastically reduced, but also against the whole of the working class through overt cuts in education, health and retirement pensions, and major tax increases. But all these anti-working class attacks, by massively amputating purchasing power, can only contribute further to a new recession.

5. The crisis of sovereign debts in the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) is only a small part of the earthquake threatening the world economy. It is not because they have been rated AAA in the index of confidence by the rating agencies (the same agencies which up until the eve of the debacle of the banks in 2008 gave the same banks the maximum rating) that the big industrial powers are holding out much better. In April the Standard and Poor Agency gave a negative opinion about the perspective of a Quantitative Easing no 3, i.e. a 3rd recovery plan by the US Federal State, aimed at supporting the economy. In other words the world's first power runs the risk of seeing a withdrawal in “official” confidence in its capacity to reimburse its debts; there is also a growing concern that any repayments will come in the shape of a strongly devalued dollar. In fact this confidence is already beginning to wear thin with the decision of China and Japan last autumn to buy massive quantities of gold and raw materials instead of American Treasury Bonds, which led the Federal Bank to buy between 70 and 90 percent of them. This lack of confidence is perfectly justified when we note the incredible level of debt of the American economy: in January 2010 public debt (Federal State, States, municipalities) already represented nearly 100 percent of GNP, and this only constituted a part of the country's total debt, which also includes the debts of households and non-financial enterprises. This amounts to 300 per cent of GNP. And the situation was no better in the other big countries, where on the same day total debts represented 280 percent of GNP for Germany, 320 percent for France, 470 percent for the UK and Japan. And in the last country, the public debt alone reached 200 percent of GNP. And since then in all countries the situation has only got worse with all the various recovery plans.

Thus the bankruptcy of the PIIGS is just the tip of the iceberg of the bankruptcy of world economy, which for decades has owed its survival to a desperate headlong flight into debt. States which have their own currency, such as the UK, Japan and obviously the US, have been able to hide this bankruptcy by printing money (unlike the countries of the Euro zone like Greece, Portugal or Ireland, which don’t have this possibility). But this permanent cheating by states, which have become real counterfeiters, with the US state at the head of the gang, cannot go on indefinitely, any more than the trickery in the financial system, as demonstrated by the financial crisis in 2008, which almost led to the explosion of the whole financial apparatus. One of the visible signs of this is the current acceleration of inflation on a world scale. By tipping over from the banking sphere to the level of states, the debt crisis marks the entry of the capitalist mode of production into a new phase of its acute crisis, which will considerably aggravate the violence, and extent of its convulsions. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. This system can only lead society into an ever-increasing barbarism.

6. Imperialist war constitutes the major expression of the barbarism into which decadent capitalism is dragging human society. The tragic history of the 20th century is the most obvious expression of this: faced with the historic impasse of its mode of production, faced with the exacerbation of trade rivalries between states, the ruling class is forced to rush towards military policies and conflicts. For the majority of historians, including those who do not claim to be marxists, it is clear that the Second World War was born out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Similarly the aggravation of imperialist tensions at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, between the two blocs of the day, America and Russia (invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR in 1979, crusade against the “Evil Empire” by the Reagan administration) flowed to a large extent from the return of the open crisis of the capitalist economy at the end of the 1960s. However, history has shown that this link between the aggravation of imperialist conflicts and the economic crisis of capitalism is not direct or immediate. The intensification of the Cold War ended up with the victory of the Western bloc through the implosion of the rival bloc, which in turn resulted in the break-up of the Western bloc. While it escaped from the threat of a new generalised war which could have led to the disappearance of the human species, the world has not been spared an explosion of military tensions and confrontations. The end of the rival blocs meant the end of the discipline that they were able to impose in their respective territories. Since then the planetary imperialist arena has been dominated by the efforts of the world's leading power to maintain its world leadership, above all over its former allies. The first Gulf war in 1991 already had this objective, but the history of the 1990s, particularly the war in Yugoslavia, has shown the failure of this ambition. The war against terrorism declared by the USA after the September 11 2001 attacks was a new attempt to reaffirm their leadership, but the fact that they simply got bogged down in Afghanistan and in Iraq underlined once again their inability to re-establish this leadership.

7. These failures of the USA have not discouraged Washington from pursuing the offensive policy that it has been carrying out since the beginning of the 1990s and which has made it the main factor of instability on the world scene. As the resolution from the last congress put it: “Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the warlike policies of their predecessors.... if Obama has envisaged a US withdrawal from Iraq, it is in order to reinforce its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. This was illustrated recently with the execution of Bin Laden by an American commando raid on Pakistan territory. This “heroic” operation obviously had an electoral element as we are now a year and a half away from the US elections. In particular it was aimed at countering the criticism of the Republicans, who have reproached Obama with being soft in affirming US hegemony on the military level; these criticisms had been stepped up during the intervention in Libya where the leadership of the operation was left to the Franco-British tandem. It also meant that after using Bin Laden in the role of Bad Guy for nearly ten years it was time to get rid of him in order not to appear completely impotent. In doing so the USA proved that it is the only power with the military, technological and logistical means to carry out this kind of operation, precisely at the time when France and Britain are having difficulty in carrying out their anti-Gaddafi operation. It notified the world that the US would not hesitate to violate the national “sovereignty” of an “ally”, that it intends to fix the rules of the game wherever it judges it necessary. Finally it succeeded in obliging the governments of the world to salute the value of this exploit, often with considerable reluctance.

8. Having said this, the striking coup carried out by Obama in Pakistan will in no way make it possible to stabilise the situation in the region. In Pakistan itself this slap in the face to its national pride runs the risk of sharpening old conflicts between various sectors of the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus. Similarly, the death of Bin Laden will not allow the US and other countries engaged in Afghanistan to regain control of the country and back up the authority of the Karzai government, which is completely undermined by corruption and tribalism. More generally it will in no way make it possible to hold back the tendencies towards every man for himself and the growing challenge to the authority of the world's first power, which have continued to express themselves as we have seen recently with the constitution of a series of surprising temporary alliances: rapprochement between Turkey and Iran, alliance between Iran, Brazil and Venezuela (strategic and anti-US), between India and Israel (military and aimed at breaking out of isolation), between China and Saudi Arabia (military and strategic). In particular it will not be able to discourage China from pushing forward the imperialist ambitions which its recent status as a big industrial power enables it to have. It is clear that this country, despite its demographic and economic importance, does not have, and is unlikely to have, the military or technological means to constitute itself as the new head of a bloc. However, it does have the means to further perturb American ambitions, whether in Africa, Iran, North Korea or Burma, and to throw a further stone into the pond of instability which characterises imperialist relations. The “New World Order” predicted 20 years ago by George Bush Senior, which he dreamed about being under the guidance of the US, can only more and more present itself as a world chaos, which the convulsions of the capitalist economy can only aggravate more and more.

9. Faced with this chaos affecting bourgeois society at all levels - economic, military, and also environmental, as we saw recently in Japan – only the proletariat can bring a solution, its solution: the communist revolution. The insoluble crisis of the capitalist economy, the growing convulsions it is going through, constitute the objective conditions for it. On the one hand by obliging the working class to develop its struggles against the growing attacks imposed by the exploiting class; on the other hand by enabling it to understand that these struggles take on all their significance as moments of preparation for its decisive confrontation with a capitalist mode of production condemned by history.

However, as the resolution from the last international congress put it: “The road towards revolutionary struggles and the overthrow of capitalism is a long one... For consciousness of the possibility of the communist revolution to gain a significant echo within the working class, the latter has to gain confidence in its own strength, and this takes place through the development of massive struggles.”In a much more immediate sense, the resolution made it clear that “the main form this attack is taking today, that of massive lay-offs, does not initially favour the emergence of such movements... It is in a second period, when it is less vulnerable to the bourgeoisie's blackmail, that workers will tend to turn to the idea that a united and solid struggle can push back the attacks of the ruling class, especially when the latter tries to make the whole working class pay for the huge budget deficits accumulating today with all the plans for saving the banks and stimulating the economy. This is when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers”.

10. The two years since the last congress have amply confirmed this prediction. This period has not seen wide-scale struggles against the massive lay-offs and rising unemployment being inflicted on the working class in the most developed countries. At the same time, significant struggles have begun to take place against the “necessary cuts in public spending”". This response is still very timid, notably where these austerity plans have taken the most violent forms, in countries like Greece or Spain for example, even though the working class there had recently shown evidence of a rather important level of militancy. In a way it seems that the very brutality of the attacks provoke a feeling of powerlessness in the workers' ranks, all the more because they are being carried out by “left” governments. Paradoxically, it is where the attacks seem the least violent, in France for example, where workers' combativity has been expressed in the most massive way, with the movement against the pension reforms in the autumn of 2010.

11. At the same time, the most massive movements we have seen in the recent period have not taken place in the most industrialised countries but in countries on the peripheries of capitalism, notably in a number of countries in the Arab world, particularly Tunisia and Egypt where, in the end, after trying to meet the movements with ferocious repression, the bourgeoisie was forced to get rid of the local dictators. These movements were not classic workers' struggles like the ones these countries had seen in the recent past (for example the struggles in Gafsa in Tunisia in 2008 or the massive strikes in the textile industry in Egypt in the summer of 2007, which encountered the solidarity of a number of other sectors). They often took the form of social revolts in which all different sectors of society were involved: workers from public and private sectors, the unemployed, but also small shopkeepers, artisans, the liberal professions, educated young people etc. This is why the proletariat only rarely appeared directly in a distinct way (for example in the strikes in Egypt towards the end of the revolt there); still less did it assume the role of a leading force. However, at the origin of these movements, reflected in many of the demands that were raised, we find fundamentally the same causes as those at the origin of the workers' struggles in other countries: the considerable aggravation of the crisis, the growing misery it provokes within the entire non-exploiting population. And while the proletariat did not in general appear directly as a class in these movements, its imprint was still there in countries where the working class has a significant weight, especially through the deep solidarity expressed in the revolts, their ability to avoid being drawn into acts of blind and desperate violence despite the terrible repression they had to face. In the end, if the bourgeoisie in Tunisia and Egypt finally resolved, on the good advice of the American bourgeoisie, to get rid of the old dictators, it was to a large extent because of the presence of the working class in these movements. One of the proofs of this was the outcome of the movement in Libya: not the overthrow of the old dictator Gaddafi but military confrontation between bourgeois cliques in which the exploited were enrolled as cannon fodder. In this country, a large part of the working class was made up of immigrant workers (Egyptian, Tunisian, Chinese, Sub-Saharan, Bangladeshi) whose main reaction was to flee the repression which was unleashed in a ferocious manner in the first few days.

12. The military outcome of the movement in Libya, with the entry of NATO forces into the conflict, enables the bourgeoisie to promote campaigns of mystification aimed at the workers of the advanced countries, whose spontaneous reaction was to feel solidarity with the demonstrators of Tunis and Cairo and to salute their courage and determination. In particular, the massive presence of the educated youth, who face a future of unemployment and poverty, echoed the recent movements of educated youth in a number of western European countries in the recent period: the movement against the CPE in France in the spring of 2006, revolts and strikes in Greece at the end of 2008, demonstrations and strikes by high school and university students in the UK at the end of 2010, the student movements in the USA and Italy in 2008 and 2010, etc. The bourgeois campaigns aimed at distorting the significance of the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt were obviously facilitated by the illusions which weighed heavily on the working class in these countries: nationalist, democratic and trade unionist illusions in particular, as had been the case in 1980-81 with the struggle of the Polish proletariat.

13. 30 years ago this movement enabled the ICC to put forward its critical analysis of the theory of the “weak link” developed in particular by Lenin at the time of the revolution in Russia. At this point the ICC had argued, on the basis of the positions elaborated by Marx and Engels, that it was from the central countries of capitalism, above all the old industrial countries of Europe, that the signal for the world proletarian revolution would be sent out, owing to the concentrated nature of the proletariat in these countries, and even more because of its historic experience, which will provide it with the best weapons to finally spring the most sophisticated ideological traps laid by the bourgeoisie for a very long time. Thus, one of the most fundamental steps to be taken by the world working class in the future is not only the development of massive struggles in the central countries of western Europe but also its capacity to break out of the democratic and trade union traps, above all by taking charge of its own struggles. These movements will constitute a beacon for the world working class, including the class in the main capitalist power, the USA, whose dive into growing poverty, already hitting tens of millions of workers, is going to turn the “American Dream” into a real nightmare.

14. The movement of autumn 2010 against the pension reforms in France, a country whose proletariat, since May 1968, constitutes a kind of reference point for many workers of other European countries, put into relief the fact that the working class is still far from attaining the capacity to overcome the grip of the unions and take control of its struggles, a reality expressed all the more clearly during the massive “mobilisation” organised by the British trade unions in March 2011 against the austerity plans of the Cameron government. However, the fact that within this movement against the pension reforms in France, despite the overall grip of the Intersyndicale, a number of “interprofessional assemblies” were formed in different towns, expressing the will to react against this grip, to take direct control of struggles through assemblies open to all, to overcome professional divisions, is an indication that the working class is beginning to take the road towards this essential step.

Similarly, the fact that during the recent period we have seen numerous struggles in the countries of the periphery shows that the conditions are beginning to come together for the future decisive struggles in the central countries to give the signal for the world-wide extension of class movements. 

The crisis is going to hit the world working class with increasing cruelty. But whatever the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, whatever the proletariat's hesitations faced with the immensity of the task before it, the class will be obliged to struggle in an increasingly massive and conscious manner. It's the task of revolutionaries to play a full part in these coming combats, so that the proletariat can accomplish the mission conferred on it by history: the overthrow of capitalism with all its barbarity, the edification of a communist society, the passage of humanity from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

ICC, Spring 2011.

The ICC held its 19th Congress last May. In general a congress is the most important moment in the life of revolutionary organisations, and since the latter are an integral part of the working class, they have a responsibility to draw out the main lessons of their congresses and make them accessible to a wider audience within the class. This is the aim of the present article. We should point out right away that the Congress put into practice this concern to open out beyond the confines of the organisation since, as well as delegations from ICC sections, the Congress was attended not only by sympathisers of the organisation or members of discussion circles in which our militants participate, but also delegations from other groups which the ICC is in contact and discussion with: two groups from Korea and Opop from Brazil.[1] Other groups had been invited and accepted the invitation but were unable to come because of the increasingly severe barriers the European bourgeoisie has set up with regard to non-European countries.

Following the statutes of our organisation:

“the Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC. As such it has the tasks

-         of elaborating the general analyses and orientations of the organisation, particularly with regard to the international situation;

-          of examining and drawing a balance sheet of the activities of the organisation since the preceding congress

-         of defining the perspectives for future work.”

On the basis of these elements we can draw out the lessons of the 19th Congress.

The international situation

The first point that needs to be dealt with is our analyses and discussions of the international situation. If an organisation is unable to elaborate a clear understanding of the international situation, it will not be able to intervene appropriately within it. History has taught us how catastrophic an erroneous evaluation of the international situation can be for revolutionary organisations. We can cite the most dramatic cases, such as the underestimation of the danger of war by the majority of the Second International on the very eve of the first world imperialist slaughter, even though, in the period leading up to the war, under the impetus of the left within the International, its congresses had correctly warned of the danger and called on the proletariat to mobilise against it.

Another example is the analysis put forward by Trotsky during the 1930s, when he saw the workers’ strikes in France in 1936 or the civil war in Spain as the premises for a new international revolutionary wave. This analysis led him to found the 4th International in 1938. Faced with the “conservative policies of the Communist and Socialist parties”, the new organisation was supposed to put itself at the head of “the masses of millions of men who were ceaselessly advancing along the road to revolution.” This error greatly contributed to the sections of the 4th International going over to the bourgeois camp during the Second World War: seeking at any cost to “be with the masses”, they were engulfed in the politics of the “Resistance” carried out by the Socialist and Communist parties, i.e. in support for the Allied imperialist bloc.  

More recently, we saw how certain groups coming from the communist left missed out on the generalised strike in May 1968 in France and the whole international wave of struggles that followed, seeing it as no more than a “student movement”. We can equally see the cruel fate of other groups who thought that May 68 was already the revolution and fell into despair and disappeared from the scene when it didn’t quite fulfil their hopes.

Today it is of the greatest importance for revolutionaries to develop an accurate analysis of what’s at stake in the international situation, above all because in the recent period the stakes have been getting higher than ever.

In this issue of the International Review, we are publishing the resolution adopted by the Congress and it is therefore not necessary to go over all its points here. We only want to underline the most important aspects.

The first aspect, the most fundamental one, is the decisive step taken by the crisis of capitalism with the sovereign debt crisis of certain European states such as Greece:

 “In fact, the potential bankruptcy of a growing number of states constitutes a new stage in capitalism's plunge into insurmountable crisis. It highlights the limits of the policies through which the bourgeoisie has managed to hold back the evolution of the capitalist crisis for several decades... The measures adopted by the G20 of March 2009 to avoid a new Great Depression are significant expressions of the policy which the ruling class has been carrying out for several decades. They boil down to the injection of a considerable mass of credit into the economy. Such measures are not new. In fact for over 35 years they have been at the heart of the policies carried out by the ruling class aimed at escaping the major contradiction of the capitalist mode of production: its inability to find solvent markets that can absorb its production..... . The potential bankruptcy of the banking system and the onset of the recession have obliged all states to inject considerable sums into their economies, even though their revenues were in free fall because of the downturn in production. As a result of this, public deficit in most countries went through a considerable increase. For the most exposed ones such as Ireland, Greece or Portugal this meant a situation of potential bankruptcy, an inability to pay their public employees and to reimburse their debts. From then on the banks refused to grant them new loans, except at the most exorbitant rates, because they could not be at all sure they were going to be repaid. The 'rescue plans' which they benefited from thanks to the European Bank and the IMF constitute new debts which were simply piled up on top of preceding ones. This is no longer a vicious circle; it is an infernal spiral..... The crisis of sovereign debts in the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) is only a small part of the earthquake threatening the world economy. It is not because they have been rated AAA in the index of confidence by the rating agencies... that the big industrial powers are holding out much better....the world's first power runs the risk of seeing a withdrawal in 'official' confidence in its capacity to reimburse its debts; there is also a growing concern that any repayments will come in the shape of a strongly devalued dollar... And since then in all countries the situation has only got worse with all the various recovery plans. Thus the bankruptcy of the PIIGS is just the tip of the iceberg of the bankruptcy of world economy, which for decades has owed its survival to a desperate headlong flight into debt... By tipping over from the banking sphere to the level of states, the debt crisis marks the entry of the capitalist mode of production into a new phase of its acute crisis that will considerably aggravate the violence and extent of its convulsions. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. This system can only lead society into an ever increasing barbarism.”

The period that followed the Congress has confirmed this analysis. On the one hand, the sovereign debt crisis of the European countries, which now clearly threatens not only the PIIGS but the entire Euro Zone, has increasingly dominated current events. And the so-called “success” of the 22nd July European summit on Greece won’t change much. All the previous summits were supposed to have come up with long-lasting solutions to Greece’s problems and we can see how effective they were!

And at the same time, with Obama’s difficulties in getting his budget policies accepted, the media “discovered” that the USA is also burdened with a colossal sovereign debt, whose level (130% of GNP) is up there with that of the PIIGS. This confirmation of the analyses that came out of the Congress doesn’t derive from any particular merit of our organisation. The only “merit” it can claim is being faithful to the classic analyses of the workers’ movement which, since the development of marxist theory, has always argued that the capitalist mode of production, like the ones that came before it, cannot in the long run overcome its economic contradictions. And it was in this framework of marxist analysis that the discussions at the Congress took place. Different points of view were put forward, notably on the ultimate causes of the contradictions of capitalism (which to a large extent correspond to our debate on the “Thirty Glorious Years”[2]), or on whether or not the world economy is likely to sink into hyperinflation because of the frenzied resort to printing banknotes, especially in the USA. But there was a real homogeneity in underlining the gravity of the current situation, as expressed in the resolution which was unanimously adopted.

The Congress also looked at the evolution of imperialist conflicts, as can be seen from the resolution. At this level, the two years since our last Congress have not brought any fundamentally new elements, but rather a confirmation of the fact that, despite all its military efforts, the world’s leading power has shown itself incapable of re-establishing the “leadership” it had during the Cold War, and that its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have not succeeded in establishing a “Pax Americana” across the world, on the contrary: “The ‘New World Order’ predicted 20 years ago by George Bush Senior, which  he dreamed about being under the guidance of the US, can only more and more present itself as a world chaos, which the convulsions of the capitalist economy can only aggravate more and more” (point 8 of the resolution).

It was important for the Congress to pay particular attention to the current evolution of the class struggle since, aside from the particular importance this question always has for revolutionaries, the proletariat today is facing unprecedented attacks on its living conditions. These attacks have been especially brutal in the countries under the whip of the European Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as is the case with Greece. But they are raining down in all countries, with the explosion of unemployment and above all the necessity for all governments to reduce their budget deficits.

The resolution adopted by the previous congress argued that “the main form this attack is taking today, that of massive lay-offs, does not initially favour the emergence of such movements (i.e massive struggles).... It is in a second period, when it is less vulnerable to the bourgeoisie's blackmail, that workers will tend to turn to the idea that a united and solid struggle can push back the attacks of the ruling class, especially when the latter tries to make the whole working class pay for the huge budget deficits accumulating today with all the plans for saving the banks and stimulating the economy. This is when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers.”

The 19th Congress observed that “The two years since the last congress have amply confirmed this prediction. This period has not seen wide-scale struggles against the massive lay-offs and rising unemployment being inflicted on the working class in the most developed countries.” However the Congress did note that “significant struggles have begun to take place against the ‘necessary cuts in public spending’. This response is still very timid, notably where these austerity plans have taken the most violent forms, in countries like Greece or Spain for example, even though the working class there had recently shown evidence of a rather important level of militancy. In a way it seems that the very brutality of the attacks provoke a feeling of powerlessness in the workers' ranks, all the more because they are being carried out by 'left' governments.” Since then, the working class in these countries has given proof that it is not just lying down. This is especially the case in Spain where the movement of the “indignant” has for several months acted a sort of beacon for other countries in Europe and other continents. 

This movement began at the very moment the Congress was being held and so it was obviously not possible to discuss it at that point. However, the Congress was led to examine the social movements which had been hitting the Arab countries from the beginning of the year. There was not a total homogeneity in the discussions on this subject, not least because they are something we have not seen before, but the whole Congress did rally to the analysis contained in the resolution:

“...the most massive movements we have seen in the recent period have not taken place in the most industrialised countries but in countries on the peripheries of capitalism, notably in a number of countries in the Arab world, particularly Tunisia and Egypt where, in the end, after trying to meet the movements with ferocious repression, the bourgeoisie was forced to get rid of the local dictators. These movements were not classic workers' struggles like the ones these countries had seen in the recent past (for example the struggles in Gafsa in Tunisia in 2008 or the massive strikes in the textile industry in Egypt in the summer of 2007, which encountered the solidarity of a number of other sectors). They often took the form of social revolts in which all different sectors of society were involved: workers from public and private sectors, the unemployed, but also small shopkeepers, artisans, the liberal professions, educated young people etc. This is why the proletariat only rarely appeared directly in a distinct way (for example in the strikes in Egypt towards the end of the revolt there); still less did it assume the role of a leading force. However, at the origin of these movements, reflected in many of the demands that were raised, we find fundamentally the same causes as those at the origin of the workers' struggles in other countries: the considerable aggravation of the crisis, the growing misery it provokes within the entire non-exploiting population. And while the proletariat did not in general appear directly as a class in these movements, its imprint was still there in countries where the working class has a significant weight, especially through the deep solidarity expressed in the revolts, their ability to avoid being drawn into acts of blind and desperate violence despite the terrible repression they had to face. In the end, if the bourgeoisie in Tunisia and Egypt finally resolved, on the good advice of the American bourgeoisie, to get rid of the old dictators, it was to a large extent because of the presence of the working class in these movements.”

This upsurge of the working class in the countries on the periphery of capitalism led the Congress to go back to the analysis elaborated by our organisation in the wake of the mass strikes in Poland in 1980:

“At this point the ICC had argued, on the basis of the positions elaborated by Marx and Engels, that it was from the central countries of capitalism, above all the old industrial countries of Europe, that the signal for the world proletarian revolution would be sent out, owing to the concentrated nature of the proletariat in these countries, and even more because of its historic experience, which will provide it with the best weapons to finally spring the most sophisticated ideological traps laid by the bourgeoisie for a very long time. Thus, one of the most fundamental steps to be taken by the world working class in the future is not only the development of massive struggles in the central countries of western Europe but also its capacity to break out of the democratic and trade union traps, above all by taking charge of its own struggles. These movements will constitute a beacon for the world working class, including the class in the main capitalist power, the USA, whose dive into growing poverty, already hitting tens of millions of workers, is going to turn the 'American Dream' into a real nightmare.”

This analysis is starting to be verified by the recent movement of the “indignant” in Spain. Whereas the demonstrators in Tunis or Cairo waved the national flag as the emblem of their struggle, national flags have been more or less absent in the movements in the big European cities (notably in Spain). Of course the “indignant” movement is still heavily impregnated with democratic illusions but it has the merit of highlighting the fact that every state, even the most democratic and left wing, is the ferocious enemy of the exploited.  

The intervention of the ICC in the development of the class struggle

As we saw above, the capacity of revolutionary organisations to analyse correctly the historic situation in which they find themselves, as well as knowing how to question analyses which have been found wanting in the reality of the facts, precondition the form and content of their intervention within the working class; in other words, their ability to live up to the responsibilities which the class engendered them to carry out.

The 19th Congress of the ICC, on the basis of an examination of the economic crisis, of the terrible attacks which have been imposed on the working class, and of the first responses of the class to these attacks, concluded that we are entering into a period of class conflicts much more intense and massive than in the period between 2003 and now. At this level, even more than with the evolution of the crisis which will play a big part in determining these movements, it is difficult to make any short term predictions. It would be illusory to try and fix where and when the next major class combats will break out. What is important to do, however, is to draw out the general tendency and to be extremely vigilant towards the evolution of the situation in order to be able to react rapidly and appropriately when this is required, both in taking up positions and intervening directly in the struggles. 

The 19th Congress felt that the balance sheet of the ICC’s intervention since the previous congress was definitely a positive one. Whenever it was necessary, and sometimes very rapidly, statements of position were published in numerous languages on our website and in our territorial paper press. Within the limits of our very weak forces, the press was widely distributed in the demonstrations which accompanied the social movements of the recent period, in particular during the movement against the reform of pensions in France in autumn 2010 or the mobilisations of educated youth against attacks that were aimed especially at students coming from the working class (such as the major increase in tuition fees in the UK at the end of 2010). Parallel to this, the ICC held public meetings in a lot of countries and on several continents, dealing with the emerging social movements. At the same time, whenever possible, militants of the ICC spoke up in assemblies, struggle committees, discussion circles and internet forums to support the positions and analyses of the organisation and participate in the international debate generated by these movements.

This balance sheet is in no way a public relations exercise aimed at consoling our militants or bluffing those who read this article. It can be verified, and challenged, by all those who follow the activities of organisation since by definition we are talking about public activities.

Similarly, the Congress drew a positive balance sheet of our work towards elements and groups who defend communist positions or who are heading in that direction.

The perspective of a significant development of workers’ struggles carries with it the potential for the emergence of revolutionary minorities. Even before the world proletariat began to engage in massive struggles, this could already be discerned in outline (and was already noted in the resolution adopted at the 17th Congress[3]), to a large extent because, since 2003, the working class had begun to recover from the retreat that followed the collapse of the “socialist” bloc in 1989 and the huge campaigns about the “death of communism” and the “end of the class struggle”. Since then, even if in a hesitant way, this tendency has been confirmed, leading to the establishment of contacts with elements and groups in a significant number of countries. “This phenomenon of the development of contacts involves both countries where the ICC doesn’t have a section and those where it is already present. However, the influx of contacts has been much less palpable in countries where the ICC already exists. We can say that its open obvious expressions are still reserved to a minority of ICC sections” (from the presentation to the Congress of the report on contacts).

Very often, the new contacts have appeared in countries where there is no section of the organisation, or not yet. We could see this for example at the “Pan-American” conference held in November 2010, which as well as Opop and other comrades from Brazil, was attended by comrades from Peru, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.[4] Because of the development of this milieu of contacts, “our intervention towards it has been through a major acceleration, demanding a militant and financial investment greater than the ICC has ever made in this area of its activity, making it possible to hold the richest and most numerous encounters and discussions in our history” (Report on contacts).

This report “stresses the novelty of the situation regarding contacts, in particular our collaboration with anarchists. On certain occasions we succeeded in making common cause in the struggle with elements and groups who are in the same camp as us, the camp of internationalism” (presentation of the contacts report). This cooperation with elements and groups who identify with anarchism has stimulated a number of rich discussions within our organisation, enabling us to get a better grasp of the various facets of this current and in particular to get a clearer understanding of its heterogeneous nature, since it ranges from pure leftists ready to support all sorts of bourgeois movements or ideologies, such as nationalism, to clearly proletarian elements whose internationalism is beyond reproach.

“Another novelty is our cooperation, in Paris, with elements who identify with Trotskyism...these elements were very active during the mobilisation against pension reform, aiming to facilitate the workers taking charge of their own struggles, outside the union framework, while at the same time encouraging the development of discussion within the class, just as the ICC tried to do. We therefore had every reason to associate ourselves with this effort. If their attitude is in contradiction with the classic practices of Trotskyism, so much the better” (presentation of the report).

Thus, the Congress was also able to draw a positive balance sheet of our organisation’s work towards elements defending revolutionary positions or moving towards them. This is a very important part of our intervention within the working class, part of the process that will lead to the constitution of a revolutionary party, which is indispensable to the victory of the communist revolution.[5]  

Organisational questions

Any discussion on the activities of a revolutionary organisation has to consider the assessment of its functioning. And in this area the Congress, on the basis of different report, noted the biggest weaknesses of the organisation. In our press or even in public meetings, we have already dealt publicly with the organisational difficulties the ICC has encountered in the past. This has nothing to do with exhibitionism but is a classic practice of the workers’ movement. The Congress examined these difficulties at some length, in particular the often degraded state of the organisational tissue and of collective work, which can weigh heavily on some sections. We don’t think that the ICC is today going through a crisis like the ones in 1981, 1993 or 2001. In 1981 we saw a significant part of the organisation abandon the political and organisational principles on which it had been founded, leading to some very serious convulsions and in particular the loss of half our section in Britain. In 1993 and 2001, the ICC had to face problems with clans within the organisation, resulting in a rejection of loyalty to the organisation and the departure of numbers of militants (in particular members of the Paris section in 1995 and of the central organ in 2001[6]). Among the causes of these last two crises, the ICC identified the consequences of the collapse of the “socialist” bloc which provoked a very profound retreat in the consciousness of the world proletariat; more generally, we looked at the impact of the social decomposition affecting capitalist society. The causes of the present difficulties are partly of the same order but they are not leading to the phenomena of a loss of conviction or disloyalty. All the militants of the sections where these problems have arisen are fully convinced of the validity of the ICC’s fight, and continue to show their loyalty and dedication towards the organisation. When the ICC had to face up to the most sombre period suffered by the working class since the end of the counter-revolution whose end was marked by the movement of May 1968 – a period of general retreat in militancy and consciousness which began at the start of the 1990s – these militants “stayed at their post”. Very often, these are comrades who have known each other and militated together for more than 30 years. There are thus many solid links of friendship and confidence between them. But the minor faults, the small weaknesses, the character differences which everyone has to accept in others have often led to the development of tensions or a growing difficulty to work together over a period of many years in small sections which have not been refreshed by the “new blood” of new militants, precisely because of the retreat experienced by the working class. Today this “new blood” is beginning to arrive in certain sections of the ICC, but it is clear that the new members can only be properly integrated if the organisational tissue of the ICC improves. The Congress discussed these issues with a lot of frankness, and this led some of the invited groups to speak up about their own organisational difficulties. However, there could be no miracle solution to the problems, which had already been noted at the previous congress. The activities resolution which it adopted reminds us of the approach already adopted by the organisation and calls on all the militants and sections to take this up in a more systematic way:

    “Since 2001 the ICC has embarked on an ambitious theoretical project that was designed, amongst other things, to explain and develop what communist militancy (and thus the party spirit) is. It has been a creative effort to understand at the deepest level:

-         the roots of proletarian solidarity and confidence;

-         morality and the ethical dimension of marxism;

-         democracy and democratism and its hostility to communist militancy;

-         psychology and anthropology and its connection to the communist project;

-         centralism and collective work;

-         the culture of proletarian debate;

-         marxism and science.

“In short the ICC has been engaged in an effort to restore a wider understanding of the human dimension of the communist goal and the communist organisation, to rediscover the breadth of vision of militancy that was almost lost during the counter-revolution and therefore arm itself against the reappearance of circles, clans and parasitism that thrive in an atmosphere of ignorance or denial of these wider questions of organisation and militancy” (point 10).

 “The realisation of the unitary principle of organisation – collective work - demands the development of all the human qualities connected to the theoretical effort to comprehend communist militancy in a positive way that we referred to in point 10. This means the growth of mutual respect and support, cooperative reflexes, a warm spirit of understanding and sympathy for others, sociability, and generosity” (point 15).

The discussion on “marxism and science”

One of the points stressed in the discussions and in the resolution adopted by the Congress is the need to go deeper into the theoretical aspects of the questions we face. This is why, as at the preceding congress, this one devoted an item on its agenda to a theoretical question, “marxism and science”. This discussion will, as have other theoretical issues discussed in our organisation, lead to the publication of various documents. We are not going to report here the elements raised in the discussion, which followed on from numerous discussions which had been held in the sections. What we want to say here is that the delegations to the Congress were very pleased with this debate, and that this owed a great deal to the contributions of a scientist, Chris Knight,[7] who we had invited to take part in our Congress.

This was not the first time that the ICC had invited a scientist to its congress. Two years ago, Jean-Louis Dessalles came to present his reflections on the origin of language, which gave rise to some very lively discussions.[8] We want to thank Chris Knight for accepting our invitation and we salute the quality of interventions , which were both very lively and accessible for non-specialists, which includes the majority of ICC militants. Chris Knight intervened on three occasions.[9] He spoke during the general debate and all the participants were impressed not only by the quality of his arguments but also his remarkable discipline, not only strictly respecting the time given and the framework of the debate (a discipline that is often not so well respected by members of the ICC). He then presented, in a very imaginative manner, a summary of his theory of the origins of human civilisation and language, talking about the first of the “revolutions” experienced by humanity, in which women acted as the driving force (an idea taken from Engels). This revolution was followed by several others, each time allowing society to progress. He sees the communist revolution as the culminating point in this series of revolutions and considers that, as with the previous ones, humanity has the means to succeed in making it.

Chris Knight’s third intervention was a very sympathetic greeting to the Congress.

At the end of the Congress, the delegations felt that the discussion on marxism and science, and the participation of Chris Knight within it, had been one of the most interesting and satisfactory parts of the Congress, a moment which will encourage all the sections to pursue and develop an interest in theoretical questions. 

Before concluding this article, we want to say that the participants at the 19th Congress of the ICC (delegations, groups and comrades invited), which was held almost to the day 140 years after the bloody week that put an end to the Paris Commune, honoured the memory of the fighters of this first revolutionary attempt by the proletariat.[10]

We are not drawing a triumphalist balance sheet of the 19th Congress of the ICC, not least because it had to recognise the organisational difficulties we are facing, difficulties the ICC will have to overcome if it is to continue being present at the rendezvous which history is giving to revolutionary organisations. A long and difficult struggle awaits our organisation. But this perspective should not discourage us. After all, the struggle of the working class as a whole is also long and difficult, full of pitfalls and defeats. This is a perspective that should inspire militants to carry on the struggle; a fundamental characteristic of every communist militant is to be a fighter.

ICC 31.7.2011 

There was no real recovery of world capitalism after the devastation of the First World War. Most of the economies of Europe stagnated, never really solving the problems posed by the disruption of war and revolution, by outdated plant and massive unemployment. The plight of the once powerful British economy was typified by the situation in 1926 when it resorted to direct wage cuts in a vain attempt to restore its competitive edge on the world market, provoking the 10-day General Strike in solidarity with the miners whose wages and conditions were the central target of the attack. The only real boom was in the USA, which benefited both from the sorrows of its former rivals and the accelerated development of mass production symbolised by the Detroit assembly lines churning out the Model T Ford. America’s coronation as the world’s leading economic power also made it possible to pull German capital from the floor thanks to the injection of massive loans. But all the din of the “Roaring Twenties” in the US and in pockets elsewhere could not hide the fact that this recovery was not founded on any substantial extension of the world market, in marked contrast to the massive growth in the last decades of the 19th century. The boom, already largely fuelled by speculation and bad debts, was laying the ground for the shattering crisis of overproduction which broke out in 1929, rapidly engulfed the world economy and buried it in the deepest depression it had ever known (see first article in the series, in International Review n° 132).

This was not a return to the “boom and bust” cycle of the 19th century, but an entirely new disease: the first major economic crisis of a new era in the life of capitalism. It was a confirmation of what the vast majority of revolutionaries had concluded in response to the war of 1914: the bourgeois mode of production had become obsolete, a system in decay. The Great Depression of the 1930s was interpreted by nearly all the political expressions of the working class as a further confirmation of this diagnosis, not least because as the years passed it became increasingly evident that there would be no spontaneous recovery and that the crisis was pushing the system closer and closer to a second imperialist carve-up.

But this new crisis did not give rise to a new wave of revolutionary struggles, even if there were important class movements in a number of countries. The working class had suffered a historic defeat following the strangling of revolutionary attempts in Germany, Hungary, Italy and elsewhere, and the agonising death of the revolution in Russia. With the triumph of Stalinism in the Communist parties, the surviving revolutionary currents had shrunk to small minorities struggling to clarify the reasons for this defeat and unable to exert any major influence within the working class. Nevertheless, understanding the historical trajectory of capitalism’s crisis was a crucial element in guiding these groups through this gloomy period. 

Responses from the proletarian political movement: Trotskyism and anarchism

The left opposition current around Trotsky, regrouping itself into a new Fourth International, published its programme in 1938, with the title The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the 4th International. In continuity with the Third International, it affirmed that capitalism was in irremediable decay. “The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate…All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet ‘ripened’ for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten.” This is not the place for a detailed critique of the “transitional programme” as it has come to be known. Despite its marxist starting point, it presents a view of the relationship between objective and subjective conditions which veer off into both vulgar materialism and idealism: on the one hand, it tends to present the decadence of the system as an absolute halt to the development of the productive forces; on the other, the reaching of this objective dead-end means that only the correct leadership is required to transform the crisis into revolution. The opening words of the document state that “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat”. Hence the voluntarist attempt to form a new International in a period of counter-revolution. Indeed for Trotsky, the defeat of the proletariat is precisely why the proclamation of the new International is required: “Sceptics ask: But has the moment for the creation of the Fourth International yet arrived? It is impossible, they say, to create an International ‘artificially’; it can arise only out of great events, etc etc….The Fourth International has already arisen out of great events: the greatest defeats of the proletariat in history”. In all these calculations, the actual level of class consciousness in the proletariat, its capacity to affirm itself as an independent force, is more or less placed in the margins. This approach is not unrelated to the semi-reformist and state capitalist content of many of the “transitional demands” contained in the programme, since they are viewed less as real solutions to the constriction of the productive forces than as a sophisticated means of enticing the proletariat from the pen of its present, corrupt leadership and shepherding it towards the correct one. The transitional programme is thus built on a complete disjuncture between the analysis of capitalist decay and its programmatic consequences.  

Anarchists have often disagreed with marxists about the latter’s insistence on basing the prospects of revolution on the objective conditions attained by capitalist development. In the 19th century, capitalism’s epoch of ascent, anarchists like Bakunin tended to argue that the uprising of the masses was possible at any moment, accusing the marxists of postponing the revolutionary struggle to some distant future. Consequently, in the period that followed the First World War there was little attempt by the anarchist currents to draw out the consequences of capitalism’s entrance into its decadent phase, since for many of them nothing much had changed. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of the economic crisis in the 1930s also convinced some of its best elements that capitalism had indeed reached its epoch of decline. The exiled Russian anarchist Maximoff, in My Social Credo, published in 1933, asserts that “this process of decline dates from the time just after the First World War, and it has assumed the form of increasingly acute and growing economic crises, which during recent years, have sprung up simultaneously in the countries of the victors and the vanquished. At the time of writing (1933-1934) the crisis has attacked nearly every country in a veritable world crisis of the capitalist system. Its prolonged nature and its universal scope can in no way be accounted for by the theory of periodical political crises”. He goes on to show how capitalism’s efforts to pull itself out of the crisis through protectionist measures, wage cuts and state planning are only deepening the contradictions of the system: “capitalism, which has given birth to a new social scourge, is unable to get rid of its own evil offspring without killing itself in the process. The logical development of this trend must unavoidably bring about the following dilemma: either a complete disintegration of society, or the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a new, more progressive social system. There can be no other alternative. The modern form of social organisation has run its course and is proving, in our times, an obstacle to human advance, as well as a source of social decay. This outworn system is therefore due to be relegated to the museum of social evolutionary relics”. Maximoff, it is true, sounds very much like a marxist in this text, as he does when he argues that capitalism’s inability to extend itself will prevent the crisis from resolving itself in the old way: “In the past, capitalism would have saved itself from deadly crisis by seizing colonial markets and those of the agrarian nations. Nowadays, most of the colonies are themselves competing in the world market with the metropolitan countries, while the agrarian lands are proceeding in the direction of intensive industrialisation”. Similar clarity on the characteristics of the new period can be found in the writings of the British group, the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, although here the influence of the marxists of the German/Dutch communist left was much more direct.[1]

The Italian/Belgian communist left

This was no accident: it was the communist left which was the most rigorous in analysing the historic significance of the economic depression as an expression of the decadence of capitalism and in seeking to locate the roots of the crisis in the marxist theory of accumulation. The Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Communist Left, in particular, consistently founded all of their programmatic positions on the recognition that the crisis of capitalism was historic and not merely cyclical: for example the rejection of national struggles, and of democratic demands, which clearly distinguished this current from the Trotskyists, was based not on any abstract sectarianism but on an insistence that the changed conditions of world capitalism had rendered these aspects of the proletariat’s programme obsolete. This same search for coherence prompted the comrades of the Italian and Belgian left to plunge into a profound study of the inner dynamics of the capitalist crisis. Inspired also by the recent translation into French of Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital, this study gave rise to the articles penned by Mitchell, “Crises and cycles of capitalism in agony”, published in Bilan n°s 10 and 11 in 1934 (republished in International Reviews n°s102 and 103).        

Mitchell’s articles go back to Marx to examine the nature of value and the commodity, the process of exploitation of labour, and the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system that reside in the production of surplus vale itself. For Mitchell, there was a clear continuity between Marx and Rosa Luxemburg in recognising the inability of the entirety of the surplus value to be realised by the combined consumption of workers and capitalists. Regarding Marx’s schemas of reproduction, which are at the heart of the controversy sparked by Luxemburg’s book, Mitchell has this to say:

“it seems to us that if Marx, in his schemas of enlarged reproduction, hypothesised an entirely capitalist society where the only opposition was between capitalists and proletarians, this was precisely in order to demonstrate the absurdity of a capitalist society one day achieving an equilibrium and harmonious with the needs of humanity. This would mean that the surplus value available for accumulation, thanks to the expansion of production, could be realised directly, on the one hand by the purchases of new means of production, on the other by the demand of the extra workers (and where would they be found?) and that the capitalists would have been transformed from wolves into peaceful progressives.

“Had Marx been able to continue the development of his schemas, he would have ended with this opposing conclusion: that a capitalist market which can no longer be extended by the incorporation of non-capitalist milieus – which is impossible historically – would mean an end to the process of accumulation and the end of capitalism itself. Consequently, to present these schemas (as some ‘marxists’ have done) as the image of capitalist production able to continue without imbalance, without overproduction, without crises, is consciously to falsify marxism”.[2]

But Mitchell’s text does not remain at the abstract level. It takes us through the main phases of the ascent and decline of the whole capitalist system, from the cyclical crises of the 19th century, in which he attempts to show the interaction between the problem of realisation and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the development of imperialism and monopoly, and the end of the cycle of national wars after the 1870s. While highlighting the growing role of finance capital, he criticises Bukharin’s tendency to see imperialism as a product of finance capital rather than a response of capital to its inner contradictions. He analyses the hunt for colonies and the growing competition between the major imperialist powers as the immediate factors behind the First World War, which marks the entry of the system into its crisis of senility. He then identifies some of the main features of capitalism’s mode of life in this new era: the increasing recourse to debt and fictitious capital, the massive interference of the state in economic life, typified by fascism but expressing a more general tendency, the growing divorce between money and real value symbolised by the abandoning of the gold standard. Capitalism’s short-lived recovery after the first world war is explained with reference to a number of factors: the destruction of hypertrophied capital, the demand generated by the need to reconstruct shattered economies, the unique position of the USA as the new powerhouse of the world economy – but above all to the ‘”fictitious prosperity” created by credit: this post-war growth was not based on a real expansion of the global market and was therefore very different from the recoveries of the 19th century. By the same token, the world crisis that broke out in 1929 was not like the cyclical crises of the 19th century: not simply in scale but because of its irresolvable nature, which guaranteed that there would be no automatic or spontaneous shift from bust to boom. Capitalism would henceforward survive by increasingly flouting its own laws: “If we consider the determining factors of capitalism’s general crisis, we can understand why the world crisis cannot be absorbed by the ‘natural’ action of capitalism’s economic laws, and why on the contrary these laws have been emptied out by the combined power of finance capital and the capitalist state, which have compressed all manifestations of particular capitalist interests”.[3] Thus, if the manipulations of the state permitted an increase in production, this was devoted largely to the military sector and preparations for a new war. “wherever it turns, however it tries to escape the grip of the crisis, capitalism is pushed irresistibly towards its destiny of war. Where and how the war the war will break out is impossible to determine today. What is important to say and to state clearly is that it will explode over the division of Asia and that it will be world wide”.[4]

 Without going further into the strengths, and some of the weaker points, of Mitchell’s analysis,[5] this text is a remarkable one by any standards, one of the communist left’s first attempts to provide a coherent, unified and historical analysis of the process of capitalism’s rise and descent.       

The German/Dutch communist left

In the tradition of the German-Dutch left, which had been severely decimated by counter-revolutionary repression in Germany itself, the “Luxemburgist” analysis was still adhered to by a number of groups. But there was also a major trend in another direction, in particular within the Dutch left and the US group around Paul Mattick. In 1929 Henryk Grossman published a major work on the theory of crisis: The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System. The Groep van Internationale Communisten (GIC) in Holland declared it to be “remarkable”[6], while in 1934 Paul Mattick published a summary (and development) of Grossman’s ideas in “The Permanent Crisis – Henryk Grossman’s Interpretation of Marx’s Theory of Capitalist Accumulation” in International Council Correspondence, Volume 1, n° 2. This text explicitly acknowledged Grossman’s contribution while developing his thesis on certain points. Despite Grossman’s status as a sympathiser of the KPD and other Stalinist parties, and despite his assessment of Mattick as a “sectarian” politically speaking,[7] he and Mattick maintained a correspondence for some time, largely around the issues posed by Grossman’s book.  

Grossman’s book was therefore published in advance of the outbreak of the world crisis, but it certainly inspired a number of revolutionaries to apply his thesis to the concrete reality of the Great Depression. At the heart of Grossman’s book was his insistence that the theory of capitalist breakdown is absolutely central to Marx’s Capital, even if Marx was not able to draw it to a conclusion. The revisers of marxism - Bernstein, Kautsky, Tugan Baranowski, Otto Bauer and others – had all rejected the notion of capitalist collapse and this was entirely consistent with their reformist politics. For Grossman, it was axiomatic that socialism would come about not simply because capitalism was an immoral system but because the historical evolution of capitalism itself would plunge it into insurmountable contradictions, turning into a fetter on the further growth of the productive forces: “At a certain point in its historical development capitalism fails to encourage the expansion of the productive forces any further. From this point on, the downfall of capitalism becomes economically inevitable. To provide an exact description of this process and to grasp its causes through a scientific analysis of capitalism was the real task Marx posed for himself in Capital.”[8] On the other hand, “if there is no economic reason why capitalism must necessarily fail, then socialism can replace capitalism on purely extra-economic – political or psychological or moral – grounds. But in that case we abandon the materialist basis of a scientific argument for the necessity of socialism, the deduction of this necessity from the economic movement”.[9]

Thus far Grossman agreed with Luxemburg who had led the way in reaffirming the centrality of the notion of collapse, and on this point he sided with her against the revisionists. However, Grossman considered that Luxemburg’s theory of crisis was deeply flawed, based on a misunderstanding of the method Marx had tried to develop in his use of the reproduction schema: “instead of testing Marx’s reproduction scheme within the framework of his total system and especially of his theory of accumulation, instead of asking what role it plays methodologically in the structure of his theory, instead of analysing the schema of accumulation down to its ultimate conclusion, Luxemburg was unconsciously influenced by them (the revisionist epigones). She came around to believing that Marx’s schemes really do allow for unlimited accumulation”.[10] As a result, he argued, she shifted the problem from the primary sphere of the production of surplus value to the secondary sphere of circulation. Grossman re-examined the scheme of reproduction that Otto Bauer had adapted from Marx in his critique of The Accumulation of Capital.[11] Bauer’s aim here had been to disprove Luxemburg’s contention that capitalism would be faced with an irresolvable problem in the realisation of surplus value once it had eliminated all “external” markets; for Bauer, the demographic growth of the proletariat would be sufficient to absorb all the surplus value needed to maintain accumulation. It should be emphasised (because this accusation has been made, particularly by Pannekoek, whose critique of Grossman we shall come back to) that Grossman did not make the mistake of regarding Bauer’s schema as a real description of capitalist accumulation:

“I shall show that Bauer’s scheme reflects and can reflect only the value side of the reproduction process. In this sense it cannot describe the real process of accumulation in terms of value and use value. Secondly, Bauer’s mistake lies in his supposing that the scheme is somehow an illustration of the actual processes in capitalism, and in forgetting the simplifications that go together with it. But these shortcomings do not reduce the value of Bauer’s scheme”.[12] Grossman’s intention in following up Bauer’s schema to their “mathematical” conclusion was to show that even without a problem of realisation, capitalism would inevitably run up against insuperable barriers. Taking into account the rising organic composition of capital and the resulting tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the global enlargement of capital would culminate in a point where the absolute mass of profit would be insufficient to fund further accumulation, and the system would be faced with collapse. In Grossman’s hypothetical treatment of Bauer’s schema, this point is reached after 35 years: from this point on, “any further accumulation of capital under the conditions postulated would be quite meaningless. The capitalist would be wasting effort over the management of a productive system whose fruits are entirely absorbed by the share of workers. If this state persisted it would mean a destruction of the capitalist mechanism, its economic end. For the class of entrepreneurs, accumulation would not only be meaningless, it would be objectively impossible because the over-accumulated capital would lie idle, would not be able to function, would fail to yield any profits”.[13]

This led some of Grossman’s critics to argue that he thought he could predict with absolute certainty the point when capitalism would become impossible. However, this was never his aim. Grossman was simply trying to re-appropriate Marx’s theory of collapse by explaining why Marx considered the tendency towards the fall in the rate of profit to be the central contradiction in the accumulation process. “This fall in the rate of profit at the stage of over-accumulation is different from the fall at earlier stages of the accumulation of capital. A falling rate of profit is a permanent symptom of the progress of accumulation through all of its stages, but at the initial stages of accumulation it goes together with an expanding mass of profits and expanded capitalist consumption. Beyond certain limits however the falling rate of profit is accompanied by a fall in the surplus value earmarked for capitalist consumption and soon afterwards of the portion of surplus value destined for accumulation. ’The fall in the rate of profit would then be accompanied by an absolute decrease in the mass of profit’ Marx, Capital Vol. 3,chap XV, p 252.”[14]

For Grossman the crisis came about not, as Rosa Luxemburg argued, because capitalism was faced with “too much” surplus value, but because it would end up with too little value extracted from the exploitation of the workers to make further investment in accumulation profitable for the capitalists. Overproduction crises did occur but they were fundamentally a result of the over-accumulation of constant capital: “The ensuing overproduction of commodities is a consequence of imperfect valorisation due to over-accumulation. The crisis is not caused by disproportionality between expansion of production and lack of purchasing power – that is, by a shortage of consumers. The crisis intervenes because no use is made of the purchasing power that exists. This is because it does not pay to expand production any further since the scale of production makes no difference to the amount of surplus value now obtainable. So on the one hand purchasing power remains idle. On the other, the elements of production lie unsold.”[15]

Grossman’s book is very much a return to Marx and he does not hesitate to criticise “eminent” marxists like Lenin and Bukharin for failing to analyse capitalism’s crises or its imperialist drives as expressions of its inner contradictions, for focusing instead on outward manifestations (in Lenin’s case, for example, the existence of monopolies as a “cause” of imperialism). In the Introduction to his book, Grossman explains the methodological premise underlying this criticism: “I have tried to show how the empirically ascertainable tendencies of the world economy which are regarded as defining characteristics of the latest stage of capitalism (monopolistic organisations, export of capital, the struggle to divide up the sources of raw materials, etc) are only secondary surface appearances that stem from the essence of capital accumulation as their primary basis. Through this inner connection it is possible to use a single principle, the Marxian law of value, to explain clearly all the appearances of capitalism without recourse to any ad hoc theories, and to throw light on its latest stage – imperialism. I do not labour the point that this is the only form in which the tremendous consistency of Marx’s economic system can be clearly drawn out”.

Continuing in the same vein, Grossman then defends himself in advance from the charge of “pure economism”:

“Because I deliberately confine myself to describing only the economic presuppositions of the breakdown of capitalism in this study, let me dispel any suspicion of ‘pure economism’ from the start. It is unnecessary to waste paper over the connection between economics and politics; that there is a connection is obvious. However, whilst Marxists have written extensively on the political revolution, they have neglected to deal theoretically with the economic aspect of the question and have failed to appreciate the true content of Marx's theory of breakdown. My sole concern here is to fill in this gap in the Marxist tradition”.[16]

This should be kept in mind when Grossman is charged with portraying the final crisis of the system as a simple inability of the economic machine to function any longer. However, leaving aside the impression created by many of his abstract formulations about capitalist collapse, there is a more fundamental problem about Grossman’s attempt to “throw light on (capitalism’s) latest stage – imperialism”. Unlike Mitchell, for example, he does not explicitly argue that his work is aimed at clarifying the conclusions reached by the Third International, i.e. that the First World War had ushered in the epoch of capitalist decline, the epoch of “wars and revolutions”. In some passages, for example in taking Bukharin to task for seeing (world) war as proof that the epoch of breakdown has arrived, he tends to downplay the significance of world war as an unmistakeable sign of the senility of the capitalist mode of production. It’s true that he accepts that it “might very well be the case” that the epoch of breakdown has arrived, and that his main objection to Bukharin’s argument is the suggestion that war is the “cause” of the decline and not its symptom; but Grossman also argues that “far from being a threat to capitalism, wars are a means of prolonging the existence of the capitalist system as whole. The facts show precisely that after every war capitalism has entered on a period of new upsurge.”[17]This represents a serious underestimation of the menace that capitalist war holds for the survival of humanity and does strengthen the idea that for Grossman the “final crisis” will be a purely economic one. Furthermore, although Grossman’s book contains a number of efforts to concretise his economic analysis – showing the inevitable increase in inter-imperialist competition brought about by the tendency towards breakdown – his emphasis on the inevitability of a future “final crisis” that would compel the working class to overthrow the system leaves it unclear whether the historical epoch of proletarian revolution has already arrived.

Mattick and the epoch of permanent crisis

In this sense, Matticks’ text is more explicit than Grossman’s book in locating the crisis of capitalism in the general context of historical materialism and thus against the background of the rise and fall of different modes of production. Thus the starting point in the document is the affirmation that “Capitalism as an economic system had the historical mission of developing the productive forces of society to a much greater extent than was possible under any previous system. The motive force in the development of the productive forces in capitalism is the race for profit. But for that very reason this process of development can continue only as long as it is profitable. From this point of view capital becomes a barrier to the continuous development of the productive forces as soon as that development comes into conflict with the necessity for profit”. For Mattick there is no doubt that the epoch of capitalist decline has arrived and that we are now in a phase of “permanent crisis” as the title argues – even though there can be temporary booms brought about capitalist counter-measures, such as the increase in absolute exploitation, this is a “boom in the death crisis, a gain that does not indicate development but decay”. Again, perhaps more plainly than Grossman, Mattick does not argue for an “automatic” collapse once the rate of profit has declined beyond a certain level: he shows capitalism’s reaction to its historic impasse by increasing the exploitation of the working class, to wring out the last drops of surplus value needed for accumulation, and by marching towards world war to appropriate cheaper raw materials, conquer markets and annex new sources of labour power; at the same time wars, like the economic crisis itself, are seen as “gigantic devaluations of constant capital by violent destruction of value as well as of use value forming its material base” . These twin drives towards increased exploitation and world war will in Mattick’s view provoke a reaction from the working class that will open up the perspective of proletarian revolution. Already the Great Depression is “the greatest crisis in capitalist history” but “whether it will be the last for capitalism, as well as for the workers, depends on the action of the latter”.

Mattick’s work is thus clearly in continuity with prior attempts by the Communist International and the communist left to understand the decadence of the system. And while Grossman had already looked into the limits of the counter-tendencies to the fall in the rate of profit, Mattick again made these more concrete by looking at the actual unfolding of the world capitalist crisis in the period opened up by the 1929 crash.

In our view, despite Mattick’s concretisations of Grossman’s theory, there remains an area of abstraction in this general approach. We are baffled by Grossman’s view that there is “no trace in Marx” of a problem of insufficient market outlets.[18] It is certainly not the case that the problem of realisation or “circulation” lies outside the accumulation process but is an indispensable part of it. By the same token, Grossman’s seems to dismiss the problem of overproduction as a mere by-product of the fall in the rate of profit, ignoring those passages in Marx which clearly root it in the fundamental relationship between wage labour and capital.[19] And while Luxemburg, developing on these elements, provides a coherent framework for understanding why the very triumph of capitalism as a global system should propel it into its era of decline, it is harder to grasp at what point the rising organic composition of capital reaches a level where the counter-tendencies are used up and decline sets in. Indeed, in explaining foreign trade as one of these counter-tendencies, Mattick himself sounds a little Luxemburgist when he argues that the conversion of the colonies into capitalist countries removes this vital option: “Foreign trade as a counter-tendency eliminates itself by turning capital-importing countries into capital exporting countries, by forcing their industrial development through a hot house growth. As the force of the counter-tendencies is stopped, the tendency of capitalist collapse is left in control. Then we have the permanent crisis, or the death-crisis of capitalism. The only means left for the continued existence of capitalism is then the permanent, absolute and general pauperisation of the proletariat”. In our opinion this is an indication that the problem of realisation – the necessity for the permanent extension of the global market to offset the inner contradictions of capital - cannot be removed from the equation so easily.[20]

However, the aim of this chapter is not to delve again into the arguments for or against Luxemburg’s theory, but to show that the “alternative” explanation for the crisis contained in the Grossman-Mattick theory is also entirely framed in an understanding of the decline of capitalism. This however is not the case for the principal criticism of the Grossman-Mattick thesis made within the communist left in the 1930s – Pannekoek’s “The theory of capitalist collapse”, first published in. Ratekorredspondenz in June 1934.[21]

Pannekoek’s critique of the “theory of collapse”

In the 1930s Pannekoek was working very closely with the Groep van Internationale Communisten, and his text wasno doubt written in response to the growing popularity of Grossman’s theories inside the council communist current: it mentions the fact that the theory had already been integrated into the manifesto of Mattick’s United Workers Party. The opening paragraphs of the text hint at what may have been a perfectly justified concern – to avoid the mistakes made by a number of German communists at the time of the revolutionary wave, when the idea of a “death crisis” was taken to imply that capitalism had already exhausted all options and only needed the slightest push to topple it utterly, a standpoint that was often mixed up with voluntarist and adventurist actions. However, as we have argued elsewhere,[22] the essential flaw in the argument of those who put forward the notion of the death crisis in the post-war period was not the notion of capitalist collapse – which is better understood as a process that may last for many decades than as a sudden crash apparently coming from nowhere - but the conflation of two distinct phenomena: the historic decline of capitalism as a mode of production and the conjunctural economic crisis – however profound – that the system may pass through at a given moment. In polemicising against the idea of capitalist collapse as something immediate and expressed purely on the economic level, Pannekoek fell into the trap of repudiating the notion of capitalist decline altogether - a view consistent with other positions he adhered to at the time, such as the possibility of capitalist revolutions in the colonial regions and the “bourgeois role of Bolshevism” in Russia.

Pannekoek begins by criticising Rosa Luxemburg’ theory of collapse. He repeats familiar criticisms of her theories – that they were based on a non-problem and that the mathematics of Marx’s reproduction schemas shows that there is no fundamental problem of realisation for capitalism. However, the main target of Pannekoek’s text was Grossman’s theory.

Pannekoek takes Grossman to task on two main levels: the lack of congruence between Marx’s crisis theory and Grossman’s; and the tendency to see the crisis as an automatic factor in the advent of socialism which will require little in the way of self-conscious action by the working class. A number of Pannekoek’s detailed criticisms of the use of Bauer’s tables suffer from a flawed starting point – i.e. that he accuses Grossman of taking Bauer’s tables literally. We have shown this to be false. More serious is his accusation that Grossman misunderstands and even consciously “rewrites” Marx on the relation between the fall in the rate of profit and the rise in the mass of profit. Pannekoek insists that since an increase in the mass of profit always accompanied the fall in the rate, Marx never envisioned a situation where there would be an absolute dearth of surplus value: “Marx speaks of over-accumulation precipitating a crisis, of there being too much accumulated surplus value which is not invested and which depresses profits. But Grossman’s collapse comes about through there being too little accumulated surplus value.”

These criticisms are difficult to follow: there is no contradiction between talking about overaccumulation and a dearth of surplus value: if “overaccumulation” is another way of saying that there is an excess of constant capital, this will necessarily mean that the commodities produced will contain less surplus value and thus less potential profit for the capitalists. It’s true that Marx considered that a fall in the rate of profit would be compensated by a rise in the mass of profit: this depends in particular on the possibility of selling an ever greater amount of commodities and thus takes us back to the problem of the realisation of surplus value, but we don’t intend to examine this further here.

However, the main issue here is the basic notion of capitalist collapse and not the specific theoretical explanations for it. The idea of a purely economic collapse - even if it is far from clear that Grossman and Mattick actually adhered to such a view -  would indeed reflect a very mechanical approach to historical materialism, one in which human action plays little or no role; and for Pannekoek, Marx always saw the end of capitalism as being brought about by the conscious action of the working class. This question was central to Pannekoek’s critique of theories of collapse, because he felt that all such theories tended to underestimate the necessity for the working class to arm itself in struggle, to develop the consciousness and organisation needed for the immense task of overthrowing capitalism, which would certainly not fall like a ripe fruit into its hands. Pannekoek accepts that Grossman did consider that the advent of the “final crisis” would provoke the class struggle, but he says that the saw this struggle in purely economist terms.  Whereas, for Pannekoek, “Socialism comes not because capitalism collapses economically and men, workers and others, are forced by necessity to create a new organisation, but because capitalism, as it lives and grows, becomes more and more unbearable for the workers and repeatedly pushes them to struggle until the will and strength to overthrow the domination of capitalism and establish a new organisation grows in them, and then capitalism collapses. The working class is not pushed to act because the unbearableness of capitalism is demonstrated to them from the outside, but because they feel it generated within them.”

Actually, a passage from Grossman already anticipates many of Pannekoek’s criticisms: “The idea of breakdown, necessary on objective grounds, definitely does not contradict the class struggle. Rather, the breakdown, despite its objectively given necessity, can be influenced by the living forces of the struggling classes to a large extent and leaves a certain scope for active class intervention...Only now is it possible to understand why, at a high level of capital accumulation, every serious rise in wages encounters greater and greater difficulties, why every major economic struggle necessarily becomes a question of the existence of capitalism, a question of political power.... The struggle of the working class over everyday demands is thus bound up with its struggle over the final goal. The final goal for which the working class fights is not an ideal brought into the workers’ movement ‘from outside’ by speculative means, whose realisation, independent of the struggles of the present, is reserved for the distant future. It is, on the contrary, as the law of capitalism’s breakdown presented here shows. A result of immediate everyday struggles and its realisation can be accelerated by these struggles.”[23]

But for Pannekoek, Grossman was a “bourgeois economist who has never had practical experience of the struggle of the proletariat and who is consequently not in a position to understand the essence of Marxism”. And although Grossman admittedly criticised aspects of the “old workers” movement (social democracy and “party communism”), he really had nothing in common with what the council communists called the “new workers’ movement”, which was genuinely independent from the old. Pannekoek thus insists that if for Grossman there is a political dimension to the class struggle, this essentially comes from the action of a “Bolshevik” type party. Grossman remained an advocate of the planned economy, and the transition from the more traditional and anarchic form of capital to the state-run variety could happily dispense with any intervention by a self-organised proletariat; all it required was the firm hand of a “revolutionary vanguard” at the moment of final crisis.

It is not altogether accurate to accuse Grossman of being nothing but a bourgeois economist with no practical experience of the workers’ struggle: prior to the war he had been deeply involved in the Jewish workers’ movement in Poland, and although in the wake of the revolutionary wave he remained a sympathiser of the Stalinist parties (and was in later years, shortly before his death, employed by the university of Leipzig in Stalinist East Germany) he always retained an independence of mind, so that his theories cannot be dismissed as a mere apologia for Stalinism. As we have seen, he did not hesitate to criticise Lenin; he maintained a correspondence with Mattick; and for a brief period in the early 30s he had been attracted to the Trotskyist opposition. It is certainly true that he did not spend the best part of his life, as Rosa, Mattick or Pannekoek had done, as a revolutionary communist but it is reductionist to see the whole of Grossman’s theory as a direct reflection of his politics.[24]

Pannekoek sums up the argument in “Theories of capitalist collapse” as follows:“The workers’ movement has not to expect a final catastrophe, but many catastrophes, political — like wars, and economic — like the crises which repeatedly break out, sometimes regularly, sometimes irregularly, but which on the whole, with the growing size of capitalism, become more and more devastating. So the illusions and tendencies to tranquillity of the proletariat will repeatedly collapse, and sharp and deep class struggles will break out. It appears to be a contradiction that the present crisis, deeper and more devastating than any previous one, has not shown signs of the awakening of the proletarian revolution. But the removal of old illusions is its first great task: on the other hand, the illusion of making capitalism bearable by means of reforms obtained through Social Democratic parliamentary politics and trade union action and, on the other, the illusion that capitalism can be overthrown in assault under the leadership of a revolution-bringing Communist Party. The working class itself, as a whole, must conduct the struggle, but, while the bourgeoisie is already building up its power more and more solidly, the working class has yet to make itself familiar with the new forms of struggle. Severe struggles are bound to take place. And should the present crisis abate, new crises and new struggles will arise. In these struggles the working class will develop its strength to struggle, will discover its aims, will train itself, will make itself independent and learn to take into its hands its own destiny, viz., social production itself. In this process the destruction of capitalism is achieved. The self-emancipation of the proletariat is the collapse of capitalism.”

There is much in this view that is correct, above all the necessity for the class as a whole to develop its autonomy from all the capitalist forces that pose as its saviours. Pannekoek does not however explain why the crises should become more and more devastating – he merely offers capitalism’s size as a factor.[25] But he also fails to ask the question: how many devastating catastrophes can capitalism go through before it actually destroys itself and the possibility of a new society? In other words, what’s missing here is the sense of that capitalism is a system limited historically by its own contradictions and that it was already confronting humanity with the choice between socialism and barbarism. Pannekoek was perfectly correct in his insistence that economic collapse would by no means lead automatically to socialism. But he tended to forget that a declining system that was not overthrown by the revolutionary working class could and would destroy itself and all possibilities for socialism. The very opening lines of the Communist Manifesto hold open the possibility that if the oppressed class is not able to carry through its transformation of society, the advancing contradictions of the mode of production can end up simply in the mutual ruin of the contending classes. In this sense, capitalism is indeed condemned to deteriorate to the point of its “final crisis”, and there is no guarantee that communism lies on the further shore of this debacle. This realisation, however, does not diminish the importance of the working class acting decisively to bring about its own solution to capitalism’s collapse. On the contrary, it makes the conscious struggle of the proletariat, and the activity of revolutionary minorities within it, all the more urgent and indispensable.  

Gerrard, 28/6/11.

In quick succession over the last few months we have seen a number of important events bearing witness to the gravity of the world economic situation: Greece’s inability to deal with its debts; similar threats to Italy and Spain; warnings to France of its extreme vulnerability in the event of a cessation of payment by Greece or Italy; the paralysis of the US House of Representatives over the issue of raising the debt-ceiling; the USA’s loss of its “Triple A” status – the guarantee of its ability to repay its debts; more and more persistent rumours about the danger of certain banks collapsing, with denials to the contrary fooling nobody given that the same banks have often already imposed massive job-cuts; the first confirmation of the rumours with the failure of the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia. Each time, the leaders of this world have been running after events, but each time the holes they seem to have filled in seem to open up again a few weeks or even days later. Their inability to hold back the escalation of the crisis is less the result of their incompetence and their short-term view than of the current dynamic of capitalism towards catastrophes which cannot be avoided: the bankruptcy of financial establishments, the bankruptcy of entire states, a plunge into deep global recession. 

Dramatic consequences for the working class

The austerity measures pushed through in 2010 were implacable, placing a growing part of the working class – and of the rest of the population – in a situation where their most basic needs can no longer be met. To enumerate all the austerity measures which have been introduced in the euro zone, or which are about to be introduced, would make a very long list. It is however necessary to mention a certain number of those that are becoming widespread and which are a significant indication of the lot of millions of the exploited. In Greece, while taxes on consumer goods were increased, the retirement age was raised to 67 and public sector wages were brutally reduced. In September 2011 it was decided that 30,000 public sector workers should be put on technical unemployment with a 40% reduction in wages, while pensions over €1,200 were cut by 20%; the same measure was applied to incomes over €5,000 a year.[1] In nearly all countries taxes have been raised and thousands of public sector jobs axed. This has created many problems in the operation of public services, including the most vital ones: thus, in a city like Barcelona, operating theatres, emergency services and hospital beds have been greatly reduced;[2] in Madrid, 5,000 uncontracted teachers lost their jobs[3] and this was made up for by the contracted teachers having to take on an extra two hours teaching a week.

The unemployment figures are more and more alarming: 7.9% in Britain at the end of August; 10% in the euro zone (20% in Spain) at the end of September[4] and 9.1% in the US over the same period. Throughout the summer, redundancy plans and job-cuts came one after the other: 6,500 at Cisco, 6,000 at Lockhead Martin, 10,000 at HSBC, 3,000 at the Bank of America: the list goes on. The earnings of the exploited have been falling: according to official figures, real wages were going down at an annual rate of 10% by the beginning of 2011, by over 4% in Spain, and to a lesser extent in Italy and Portugal. In the US, 45.7 million people, a 12% increase in a year,[5] only survive thanks to the weekly $30 food stamps handed out by the state.

And despite all this, the worst is yet to come.

All this demonstrates the necessity to overthrow the capitalist system before it leads humanity to ruin. The protest movements against the attacks which have been taking place in a whole number of countries since the spring of 2011, whatever their insufficiencies and weaknesses, nevertheless represent the first steps of a broader proletarian response to the crisis of capitalism (see the article “From indignation to the preparation of class battles” in this issue of the Review).

Since 2008, the bourgeoisie has not been able to block the tendency towards recession

At the beginning of 2010, it was possible to have the illusion that states had succeeded in sheltering capitalism from the continuation of the recession that began in 2008 and early 2009, taking the form of a dizzying fall in production. All the big central banks of the world had injected massive amounts of money into the economy. This was when Ben Bernanke, the director of the FED and architect of major recovery plans was nicknamed “Helicopter Ben” since he seemed to be inundating the US with dollars from a helicopter. Between 2009 and 2010, according to official figures, which we know are always overestimated, the growth rate in the US went from -2.6% to +2.9%, and from -4.1% to +1.7% in the euro zone. In the “emerging” countries, the rates of growth, which had fallen, seemed in 2010 to return to their levels before the financial crisis: 10.4% in China, 9% in India. All states and their media began singing about the recovery, when in reality production in all the developed countries never succeeded in going back to 2007 levels. In other words, rather than a recovery, it would be more accurate to talk about a pause in a downward movement of production. And this pause only lasted a few quarters:

·                     In the developed countries, rates of growth began to fall again in mid-2010. Predicted growth in the US in 2011 is 0.8%. Ben Bernanke has announced that the American recovery is more or less “marking time”. At the same time, growth in the main European countries (Germany, France, Britain) is near to zero and while the governments of southern Europe (Spain, 0.6% in 2011 after -0.1% in 2010;[6] Italy 0.7% in 2011)[7] have been repeating non-stop that their countries “are not in recession”, in reality, given the austerity plans that they are and will be going through, the perspective opening in front of them is not very different from what Greece is currently experiencing: in 2011, production there has fallen by over 5%.

·                     In the “emerging” countries the situation is far from brilliant. While they saw important growth rates in 2010, 2011 is looking much gloomier. The IMF has predicted that their growth rate for 2011 will be 8.4%,[8] but certain indices show that activity in China is about to slow down.[9] Growth in Brazil is predicted to go from 7.5% in 2020 to 3.7% in 2011.[10] Finally, capital is starting to flee Russia.[11] In brief, contrary to what we have been sold by the economists and numerous politicians for years, the emerging countries are not going to act as locomotives pulling world growth. On the contrary, they are going to be the first victims of the situation in the developed countries and will see a fall in their exports, which up till now have been the main factor behind their growth.

The IMF has just revised its predictions which had assumed a 4% growth in the world economy in 2010 and 2011: having previously noted that growth had “considerably weakened”, they have now said that we “cannot exclude” a recession in 2012.[12] In other words, the bourgeoisie is becoming aware of the degree to which economic activity is contracting. In the light of all this, the following question is posed: why have the central banks not carried on showering the world in money as they did at the end of 2008 and in 2009, thus considerably increasing the monetary mass (it was multiplied by 3 in the US and 2 in the euro zone)? The reason is that pouring “funny money” into the economy doesn’t resolve the contradictions of capitalism. It results not so much in a recovery of production, but a recovery of inflation. The latter stands at nearly 3% in the euro zone, a bit more in the US, 4.5% in the UK and between 6 and 9% in the emerging countries.

The production of paper or electronic money allows new loans to be agreed... thereby increasing global debt. The scenario is not new. This is how the world’s big economic actors have become mired in debts to the point where they can no longer pay them back. In other words, they are now insolvent, and this includes none other than the European states, America, and the entire banking system.  

The cancer of public debt

The euro zone

The states of Europe are finding it increasingly difficult to honour the interest on their debts.

The reason that the euro zone has been the first to see certain states in default of payment is that, unlike the US, Britain and Japan, they don’t control the printing of their own money and so don’t have the opportunity to pay towards their debts in fictional money. Printing euros is the responsibility of the European Central Bank (ECB) which is basically controlled by the big European states and in particular Germany. And, as everyone knows, multiplying the mass of currency by two or three times at a time when production is stagnating only leads to inflation. It’s in order to avoid this that the ECB has become more and more reluctant to finance states that need it; otherwise it risks being in default of payment itself.

This is one of the central reasons why the countries of the euro zone have for the last year and a half been living under the threat of Greece defaulting on its payments. In fact, the problem facing the euro zone has no solution since its failure to finance Greece’s debt will result in a cessation of payment by Greece and its exit from the euro zone. Greece’s creditors, which include other European states and major European banks, would then find it very hard to honour their commitments and would themselves face bankruptcy. The very existence of the euro zone is being put into question, even though its existence is essential for the exporting countries in the north of the zone, especially Germany.

For the last year and a half the issue of defaulting on payments has been focussed mainly on Greece. But countries like Spain and Italy are going to find themselves in a similar situation since they have never found a fiscal recipe for amortising part of their debt (see graph[13]). A glance at the breadth of Italy’s debt, which is very likely to default in the near future, shows that the euro zone would not be able to support these countries to ensure that they could honour their commitments. Already investors believe less and less in their capacity to repay, which is why they are only prepared to lend them money at very high rates of interest. The situation facing Spain is also very close to the one that Greece is now in.   

The positions adopted by governments and other euro zone institutions, especially the German government, express their inability to deal with the situation created by the threat of certain countries going bust. The major part of the bourgeoisie of the euro zone is aware of the fact that the problem is not knowing whether or not Greece is in default: the announcement that the banks are going to take part in salvaging 21% of Greece’s debts is already a recognition of this situation, which was confirmed at the Merkel-Sarkozy summit on 9 October which admitted that Greece would default on repaying 60% of its debt. From this point the problem posed to the bourgeoisie is to find a way of making sure that this default will lead to the minimum of convulsions in the euro zone. This is a particularly delicate exercise that has provoked hesitation and divisions within it. Thus, the political parties in Germany are very divided over the issue of how, if they are going to aid Greece financially, they will then be able to help the other states that are rapidly heading towards the same position of default as Greece. As an illustration, it is remarkable that the plan drawn up on 21st July by the authorities of the euro zone to “save” Greece, which envisages a strengthening of the capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility from 220 to 440 billion euros (with the obvious corollary of an increased contribution from the different states), was contested for weeks by an important section of the ruling parties in Germany. After a turn-around in the situation, it was finally voted for by a large majority in the Bundestag on 29th September. Similarly, up till the beginning of August, the German government were opposed to the ECB buying up the titles of Italy and Spain’s sovereign debt. Given the degradation of these countries’ economic situation, the German state finally agreed that from August 7th the ECB could buy up such obligations.[14] So much so that between August 7th and 22nd the ECB bought up 22 billion euros of these two countries’ sovereign debt![15] In fact, these contradictions, these coming and goings, show that a bourgeoisie as internationally important as the German bourgeoisie doesn’t know what policies to carry out. In general, Europe, pushed by Germany, has opted for austerity. But this doesn’t rule out a minimal financing of states and banks via the European Financial Stability Facility (which thus presupposes increasing the financial resources available to this organism) or authorising the ECB to create enough money to come to the aid of a state which can no longer pay its debts and so avoid an immediate default.

Certainly this is not just a problem for the German bourgeoisie but for the entire ruling class, because the whole bourgeoisie has been getting into debt since the 1960s to avoid overproduction, to the point where it is now very difficult not only to pay back the debts but even to pay back the interest on those debts. Hence the economies it is now trying to make via draconian austerity polices, draining incomes everywhere, and at the same time causing a reduction in demand, aggravating overproduction and accelerating the slide into depression.  

The USA

The USA was faced with the same kind of problem in the summer of 2011.

The debt ceiling, which in 2008 was fixed at $14,294bn, was reached by May 2011. It had to be raised in order for the US, like the countries in the euro zone, to be able to keep up the payments, including internal ones: the functioning of the state was at stake. Even if the unbelievable stupidity and backwardness of the Tea Party was an element aggravating the crisis, they were not at the root of the problem facing the President and Congress. The real problem was the necessity to choose between two alternatives:

·         either carry on with the policy of increasing Federal state debt, as the Democrats argued, which basically meant asking the FED to print money, with the risk of an uncontrolled fall in the value of the dollar;

·         or push through a drastic austerity programme, as the Republicans demanded, through the reduction over the next ten years of public expenditure by something between $4,000bn and $8000bn. By way of comparison, the Gross Domestic Product of the US in 2010 was $14,624bn, which gives an idea of the scale of the budget cuts, and thus the slashing of public sector jobs, implied by this plan.   

To sum up, the alternative posed this summer to the US was the following: either take the risk of opening the door to galloping inflation, or carry through an austerity programme which could only strongly restrict demand and provoke a fall or even a disappearance of profits: in the long run, a chain reaction of closures and a dramatic fall in production. From the standpoint of the national interest, both the Democrats and the Republicans are putting forward legitimate answers. Pulled hither and thither by the contradictions assailing the national economy, the US authorities have been reduced to contradictory and incoherent half measures. Congress will still be faced with the need both to make massive economic cuts and to get the economy moving.

The outcome of the conflict between Democrats and Republicans shows that, contrary to Europe, the USA has opted more for the aggravation of debt because the Federal debt ceiling was raised by 2100 billion up till 2013, with a corresponding reduction in budgetary expenses of around 2500 billion in the next ten years.  

But, as for Europe, this decision shows that the American state does not know what policies to adopt in the face of the debt crisis.

The lowering of America’s credit rating by the rating agency Standard and Poor, and the reactions that followed, are an illustration of the fact that the bourgeoisie knows quite well that it has reached a dead-end and that it can’t see a way out of it. Unlike many other decisions taken by the ratings agencies since the beginning of the sub-prime crisis, Standard and Poor’s decision this summer looked coherent: the agency is showing that there is no recipe to compensate for the increase in debt agreed by Congress and that, as a result, the USA’s capacity to reimburse its debts has lost credibility. In other words, for this institution, the compromise, which avoided a grave political crisis in the US by aggravating the country’s debt, is going to deepen the insolvency of the US state itself. The loss of confidence in the dollar by the world’s financiers, which will be an inevitable result of Standard and Poor’s judgement, will lead to a fall in its value. At the same time, while the vote on increasing the Federal debt ceiling made it possible to avoid a paralysis in the Federal administration, the different states and municipalities are already faced with exactly that problem. Since July 4, the State of Minnesota has been in default and it had to ask 22,000 state employees to stay at home.[16] A number of US cities, such as Central Falls and Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, are in the same situation, while it looks like the State of California and others will soon be in the same boat

Faced with the deepening of the crisis since 2007, the economic policies of both the US and the euro zone have meant the state taking charge of debts that were originally contracted in the private sector. These new debts can’t fail to increase the overall public debt, which has itself been growing ceaselessly for decades. States are facing a deadline on debt that they can never pay back. In the US as in the euro zone, this will mean massive lay-offs in the public sector, endless wage-cuts and ever-rising taxes.  

The threat of a grave banking crisis

In 2008-9, after the collapse of certain banks such as Bear Stearns and Northern Rock and the utter downfall of Lehman Brothers, states ran to the aid of many other banks, pumping in capital to avoid the same fate. What is the state of health of the banks today? It is once again very bad. First of all, a whole series of irrecoverable loans have not been removed from their balances. In addition, many banks themselves hold part of the debts of states that are now struggling to make their repayments. The problem for the banks is that the value of the debts they have taken on has now considerably diminished.

The recent declaration by the IMF, based on a recognition of the current difficulties of the European Banks and stipulating that they must increase their own funds by 200 billion euros, has provoked a number of sharp reactions and declarations from these institutions, claiming that everything was fine with them. And this at a moment when everything was showing the contrary:

American banks no longer want to refinance in dollars the American affiliates of the European banks and have been repatriating fund which they had previously placed in Europe;

European banks are lending less and less to each other because they are less and less sure of being repaid. They prefer to put their liquidities in the ECB, despite very high bank rates; a consequence of this growing lack of confidence is that the rate of interest on inter-bank loans has been climbing continually, even if it has not yet reached the levels of the end of 2008.[17]

The high point was reached a few weeks after the banks proclaimed their wonderful state of health, when we saw the collapse and liquidation of the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia, without any other bank being willing to come to the rescue.

We can add that the American banks are poorly placed to keep the machine going on behalf of their European consorts: because of the difficulties they are facing, the Bank of America has just cut 10% of its workforce and Goldman Sachs, the bank which has become the symbol of global speculation, has just laid off 1,000 people. And they too prefer depositing their liquidities in the FED rather than loaning to other American banks.

The health of the banks is essential for capitalism because it can’t function without a banking system that supplies it with currency. But the tendency we are seeing today is towards another “Credit Crunch”, i.e. a situation where the banks no longer want to loan as soon as there is the least risk of not being repaid. What this means in the long run is a blockage in the circulation of capital, which amounts to the blockage of the economy. From this perspective we can better understand why the problem of shoring up the banks’ own funds has become the first item on the agenda of the various international summit meetings that have taken place, even ahead of the situation in Greece, which has certainly not been resolved. At root, the problem of the banks reveals the extreme gravity of the economic situation and illustrates the inextricable difficulties facing capitalism.  

When the US lost its triple A status, the headline of the French economic daily Les Echos of 8th August read: “America downgraded, the world enters the unknown”. When the main economic media of the French bourgeoisie expresses its disorientation like this, when it shows its anxiety about the future, it merely expresses the disorientation of the entire bourgeoisie. Since 1945, western capitalism (and world capitalism after the collapse of the USSR) has been based on the fact that the strength of American capital was the final guarantor of the dollars that ensured the circulation of commodities and thus of capital around the world. But now the immense accumulation of debts contracted by the American bourgeoisie to deal with the return of the open crisis of capitalism since the end of the 1960s has ended up becoming a factor aggravating and accelerating the crisis. All those holding parts of the American debt, starting with the American state itself, are holding an asset which is worth less and less. The currency on which the debt is based can now only weaken the American state.

The base of the pyramid on which the world has been built since 1945 is breaking up. In 2007, when the financial crisis broke, the financial system was saved by the central banks, i.e. by the states. Now the states themselves are on the verge of bankruptcy and it is out of the question that the banks can come along and save them. Whichever way the capitalists turn, there’s nothing that can make a real recovery possible. Even a very feeble rate of growth would require the development of fresh debts in order to create the demand needed to absorb commodities; but even the interest on the debts already taken out is no longer repayable and this is dragging banks and states towards bankruptcy.  

As we have seen, decisions that once seemed irrevocable are being put into question in the space of a few days and certainties about the health of the economy are being disproved just as quickly. In this context, states are more and more obliged to navigate from one day to the next. It is probable, but not certain because the bourgeoisie is so disoriented by a situation it has never been in before, that to deal with immediate issues it will continue to sustain capital, whether financial, commercial or industrial, with newly-printed money, even if this gives a new impetus to the inflation that is already on the march and is going to become more and more uncontrollable. This will not stop the continuation of lay-offs, wage-cuts and tax increases; but inflation will more and more make the poverty of the great majority of the exploited even worse. The very day that Les Echoes wrote “America downgraded, the world enters the unknown”, another French economic daily, La Tribune led with “left behind”, describing the planet’s big decision-makers whose photos appeared on the front page. Yes indeed: those who once promised us marvels and mountains, and then tried to console us when it became obvious that the marvel was actually a nightmare, now admit that they have been left behind. And they have been left behind because their system, capitalism is definitively obsolete and is in the process of pulling the vast majority of the world’s population into the most terrible poverty.

Vitaz 10/10/11.

From indignation to the preparation of class struggles

In the editorial of International Review n° 146 [84] we gave an account of the struggles that had developed in Spain.[1]Since then, the contagion of its example has spread to Greece and Israel.[2]

In this article, we want to draw the lessons of these movements and look at what perspectives they hold faced with the bankruptcy of capitalism and the ferocious attacks against the proletariat and the vast majority of the world population.

In order to understand these movements we have to categorically reject the immediatist and empiricist method that dominates society today. This method analyses each event in itself, outside of any historical context and isolated in the country where it appears. This photographic method is a reflection of the ideological degeneration of the capitalist class, because “All that the latter can offer is a day-by-day resistance, with no hope of success, to the irrevocable collapse of the capitalist mode of production.”[3]

A photograph can show us a person with a big happy smile, but this can hide the fact that a few seconds before or after they were grimacing with anxiety. We cannot understand social movements in this way. We can only see them in the light of the past in which they have matured and the future to which they are pointing; it is necessary to place them in their international context and not in the narrow national confines where they appear, and, above all, we have to understand them in their dynamic; not by what they are at any given moment but by what they can become due to the tendencies, forces and perspectives they contain and which will sooner or later come to the surface.

Will the proletariat be able to respond to the crisis of capitalism?

At the beginning of the 21st century we published a series of two articles entitled “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism”,[4] in which we recalled that the communist revolution is not inevitable and that its realisation depends on the union of two factors, the objective and subjective. The objective condition is supplied by the decadence of capitalism[5] and by “the open crisis of bourgeois society, clearly proving that capitalist relations of production must be replaced by others.”[6]The subjective factor is related to the collective and conscious action of the proletariat.

The articles acknowledge that the proletariat has previously missed its appointments with history. During the first – the First World War – its attempt to respond with an international revolutionary wave in 1917-23 was defeated; in the second – the Great Depression of 1929 – it was absent as an autonomous class; in the third – the Second World War – it was not only absent but also believed that democracy and the welfare state, those myths used by the victors, were actually victories. Subsequently, with the return of the crisis at the end of the 1960s, it “did not fail to respond but it was confronted by a series of obstacles that it has had to face and which have blocked its progress towards the proletarian revolution.”[7] These obstacles led to a significant new phenomenon – the collapse of the so-called “communist” regimes in 1989 – in which not only was the proletariat not an active factor, but it was the victim of a formidable anti-communist campaign that made it retreat, not only at the level of its consciousness but also its combativity.

What we might call the “the fifth rendezvous with history” opened up from 2007. The crisis is more openly showing the almost definitive failure of the policies that capitalism has put in place to try to respond to the emergence of its insoluble economic crisis. The summer of 2011 made clear that the enormous sums injected cannot stop the haemorrhage and that capitalism is sliding towards a Great Depression far more serious than that of 1929.[8]

But initially, and despite the blows that have rained down on it, the proletariat has appeared equally absent. We foresaw such a situation at our 18th International Congress (2009): “In a historic situation where the proletariat has not suffered from a historic defeat as it had in the 1930s, massive lay-offs, which have already started, could provoke very hard combats, even explosions of violence. But these would probably, in an initial moment, be desperate and relatively isolated struggles, even if they may win real sympathy from other sectors of the working class. This is why, in the coming period, the fact that we do not see a widescale response from the working class to the attacks should not lead us to consider that it has given up the struggle for the defence of its interests. It is in a second period, when it is less vulnerable to the bourgeoisie's blackmail, that workers will tend to turn to the idea that a united and solid struggle can push back the attacks of the ruling class, especially when the latter tries to make the whole working class pay for the huge budget deficits accumulating today with all the plans for saving the banks and stimulating the economy. This is when we are more likely to see the development of broad struggles by the workers.”[9]

The current movements in Spain, Israel and Greece show that the proletariat is beginning to take up this “fifth appointment with history”, to prepare itself to be present, to give itself the means to win.[10]

In the series cited above, we said that the two pillars on which capitalism – at least in the central countries – has relied on to keep the proletariat under its control, are democracy and the so-called “welfare state”. What the three movements show is that these pillars are beginning to be questioned, albeit in a still confused way, and this questioning is being fuelled by the catastrophic evolution of the crisis.

The questioning of democracy

Anger against politicians and against democracy in general has been shown in all three movements, which have also displayed outrage at the fact that the rich and their political personnel are becoming increasing richer and more corrupt while the vast majority of the population are treated as commodities to service the scandalous profits of the exploiting minority, commodities to be thrown in the trash when the “markets are not going well”; the brutal austerity programmes have also been denounced, programmes no one talked about in the election campaigns but which have become the main occupation of those elected.

It is clear that these feelings and attitudes are not new: ranting about politicians for example has been common currency during the last thirty years. It is equally clear that these feelings can be diverted into dead ends, which is what the forces of the bourgeoisie have been insistently trying to do in the three movements: “towards a participative democracy”, towards a “democratic renewal”, etc.

But what is new and of significant importance is that, despite the intentions of those spreading these ideas, democracy, the bourgeois state and its apparatus of domination are the subject of debate in countless assemblies. You cannot compare individuals who ruminate on their disgust, in an atomized, passive and resigned way, with the same individuals who express this collectively in assemblies. Beyond the errors, confusions and dead ends which inevitably find expression and which must be combated with great patience and energy, what is most important is that these problems are being posed publicly; clear evidence of a politicisation of the masses, and also that this democracy, which has rendered capitalism such good service throughout the last century, is now being put into question.

The end of the so-called “welfare state”

After the Second World War, capitalism installed the so-called “welfare state”.[11] This has been one of the principal pillars of capitalist rule in the last 70 years. It created the illusion that capitalism could overcome its most brutal aspects: the welfare state would guarantee security against unemployment, for retirement, provide free health care, education, social housing, etc.

This “social state”, the complement to political democracy, has already suffered significant amputations over the last 25 years and is now heading for its disappearance pure and simple. In Greece, Spain and Israel (where it is above all the shortage of housing that has polarised the young), discontent over the removal of minimum social benefits has been at the centre of the movements. There have certainly been attempts by the bourgeoisie to divert this towards “reforms” of the constitution, the passing of laws that “guarantee” these benefits, etc. But the wave of growing discontent will help to challenge these dykes which are meant to control the workers.

The movement of the Indignants, the culmination of eight years of struggle

The cancer of scepticism dominates ideology today and infects the proletariat and its own revolutionary minorities. As stated above, the proletariat has missed all of the appointments that history has given it during the course of a century of capitalist decadence, and this has resulted in an agonising doubt in its own ranks about its identity and its capacities as a class, to the point where even in displays of militancy some reject the term “working class”.[12] This scepticism is made even stronger because it is fed by the decomposition of capitalism;[13] despair, the lack of concrete plans for the future foster disbelief and distrust of any perspective of collective action.

The movements in Spain, Greece and Israel – despite all the weaknesses they contain – have begun to provide an effective remedy against the cancer of scepticism, as much by their very existence and what they mean for the continuity of struggles and the conscious efforts made by the world proletariat since 2003.[14] They are not a storm that suddenly burst out of a clear blue sky but the result of a slow accumulation over the last eight years of small clouds, drizzle and timid lightning that has grown until it acquires a new quality.

Since 2003 the proletariat has begun to recover from the long reflux in its consciousness and combativity that it suffered after the events of 1989. This process follows a slow, contradictory and very tortuous rhythm, expressed by:

• a series of struggles isolated in different countries in the centre as well as on the periphery, characterised by protests “pregnant with possibilities”; searching for solidarity, attempts at self-organisation, the presence of new generations, reflection about the future;
• a development of internationalist minorities looking for revolutionary coherence, posing many questions, seeking contact with each other, discussing, drawing up perspectives...

In 2006 two movements broke out – the student movement against the Contract of Primary Employment in France and the massive workers’ strike at Vigo in Spain[15] – which, despite their distance, difference in conditions and age, showed similar features: general assemblies, extension to other workers, massive demonstrations... They were like a first warning shot that, apparently, had no follow up.[16]

A year later an embryonic mass strike exploded in Egypt starting in a large textile factory. At the beginning of 2008 many struggles broke out, isolated from each other but simultaneously in many countries, from the periphery to the centre of capitalism. Other movements also stood out, such as the proliferation of hunger revolts in 33 countries during the first quarter of 2008. In Egypt, these were supported and in part taken over by the proletariat. At the end of 2008 the revolt of young workers in Greece exploded, supported by a section of the proletariat. We also saw the seeds of an internationalist reaction at Lindsey (Great Britain) and an explosive generalized strike in southern China (in June).

After the initial retreat of the proletariat faced with the first impact of the crisis – as we pointed out above – much more determined struggles began to take place, and in 2010 France was rocked by massive protest movements against pension reform, with the appearance of inter-professional assemblies; British youth rebelled in December against the sharp rise in student fees. 2011 saw major social revolts in Egypt and Tunisia. The proletariat seemed to gain momentum for a new leap forward: the movement of the “Indignant” in Spain, then in Greece and Israel.

Does this movement belong to the working class?

These three movements cannot be understood outside the context that we have just analysed. They are like a puzzle that brings together all the pieces provided throughout the past eight years. But scepticism is very strong and many have asked: can we talk about movements of the working class if it is not present as such, and if they are not reinforced by strikes or assemblies in the workplace?

The so-called “Indignant” movement is a very valuable concept for the working class[17] but this is not revealed immediately because it does not identify itself directly with its class nature. Two factors give it the appearance of being essentially a social revolt:

The loss of class identity

The working class has gone through a long period of reflux which has inflicted significant damage on its self-confidence and the consciousness of its own identity: “With the collapse of the eastern bloc and the so-called ‘socialist' regimes, the deafening campaigns about the ‘end of communism', and even the ‘end of the class struggle' dealt a severe blow to the consciousness and combativity of the working class; the proletariat suffered a profound retreat on these two levels, a retreat which lasted for over ten years.. At the same time, it [the bourgeoisie] managed to create a strong feeling of powerlessness within the working class because it was unable to wage any massive struggles.”[18] This partly explains why the participation of the proletariat as a class has not been dominant even though it was present through the participation of individual workers (employed, unemployed, students, retired...) who attempted to clarify, to get involved according to their instincts, but who lacked the strength, cohesion and clarity there would be if the class participated collectively as a class.

It follows from this loss of identity that the programme, theory, traditions, methods of the proletariat, are not recognised as their own by the immense majority of workers. The language, forms of action, even the symbols which appear in the Indignants movement derive from other sources. This is a dangerous weakness that must be patiently combated to bring about a critical re-appropriation of the theoretical heritage, experience, traditions, that the workers’ movement has accumulated over the past two centuries.

The presence of non-proletarian social strata

Among the Indignants there is a strong presence of non-proletarian social strata, especially a middle layer that is in the throes of proletarianisation. As for Israel, our article underlined that: “Another tack is to label this as a ‘middle class’ movement. It’s true that, as with all the other movements, we are looking at a broad social revolt which can express the dissatisfaction of many different layers in society, from small businessmen to workers at the point of production, all of whom are affected by the world economic crisis, the growing gap between rich and poor, and, in a country like Israel, the aggravation of living conditions by the insatiable demands of the war economy. But ‘middle class’ has become a lazy, catch-all term meaning anyone with an education or a job, and in Israel as in North Africa, Spain or Greece, growing numbers of educated young people are being pushed into the ranks of the proletariat, working in low paid and unskilled jobs where they can find work at all.”[19]

If the movement appears vague and poorly defined, this cannot put into question its class character, especially if we view things in their dynamic, in the perspective of the future, as the comrades of the TPTG do concerning the movement in Greece: “What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general.”[20]

The presence of the proletariat is visible neither as a force leading the movement, nor through a mobilisation in the workplace. It lies in the dynamic of searching, clarification, preparation of the social terrain, of recognition of the battle that is being prepared. That is where its importance is found, despite the fact that this is only an extremely fragile small step forward.

In relation to Greece, the comrades of the TPTG say that “One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades,”[21] and on Israel, a journalist noted, in his own language, that “it was never oppression that held the social order in Israel together, as far as the Jewish society was concerned. It was indoctrination - a dominant ideology, to use a term preferred by critical theorists. And it was this cultural order that was dented in this round of protests. For the first time, a major part of the Jewish middle class - it’s too early to estimate how large is this group - recognized their problem not with other Israelis, or with the Arabs, or with a certain politician, but with the entire social order, with the entire system. In this sense, it’s a unique event in Israel’s history.”[22]

The characteristics of future struggles

With this vision we can understand the features of these struggles as the characteristics that future struggles will assume with a critical spirit and develop at higher levels:

• the entry into struggle of new generations of the proletariat, with, however, an important difference with the 1968 movements: while the young then gave zero consideration to their “defeated and embourgeoisified” elders, today we see a struggle that unites the different generations of the working class;
• mass direct action: the struggle has won the street, the squares have been occupied. The exploited have found in these a place where they are able to live, discuss and act together;
• the beginnings of politicisation: beyond the false answers that are and will be given, it is important that the great masses are beginning to be directly and actively involved in the great questions of society; this is the beginning of their politicisation as a class;
• the assemblies: they are linked to the proletarian tradition of the workers’ councils of 1905 and 1917, which spread to Germany and other countries during the world revolutionary wave of 1917-23. They reappeared in 1956 in Hungary and in 1980 in Poland. They are the weapon of unity, of the development of solidarity, of the capacity of the proletarian masses to understand and make decisions. The slogan “All power to the assemblies!”, very popular in Spain, expresses the birth of a deep reflection on the key questions of the state, dual power, etc.;
• the culture of debate:the clarity that inspires the determination and heroism of the proletarian masses cannot be decreed, nor is it the fruit of indoctrination by a minority possessed of “the truth”: it is the combined product of experience, of struggle and especially of discussion. The culture of debate has been present in these three movements: everything was up for discussion, nothing that was political, social, economic, human, escaped the critique of these immense improvised ‘town squares’. As we say in the introduction to the article by the comrades in Greece, this has an enormous importance: “a determined effort to contribute towards the emergence of what the comrades of the TPTG call a ‘proletarian public sphere’ which will make it possible for growing numbers of our class not only to work out how to resist capitalism’s attacks on our lives, but to develop the theories and actions that lead to a new way of life altogether”;[23]
• the way to confront the question of violence: “The proletarian movement has been confronted from the beginning with the extreme violence of the exploiting class, with repression when it tries to defend its interests, with imperialist war but also with the daily violence of exploitation. Unlike exploiting classes, the class that is the bearer of communism is not the bearer of violence; and even though it has to make use of it, it does not do so by identifying with it. In particular, the violence it has to use in the overthrow of capitalism, which it will have to use with great determination, is necessarily a conscious and organised violence and must always be preceded by a whole process of growth in consciousness and organisation through the various struggles against exploitation.”[24] As in the students’ movement in 2006, the bourgeoisie has tried on numerous occasions to lead the Indignants movement (especially in Spain) into the trap of violent confrontations with the police in conditions of dispersion and weakness, in order to discredit the movement and facilitate its isolation. These traps have been avoided and an active debate on the question of violence has begun to emerge.[25]

Weaknesses and confusions of the struggle

The last thing we want to do is glorify these movements. Nothing is more alien to the Marxist method than to make a certain struggle, however important and rich in lessons it is, into a definitive, finished and monolithic model that must be followed to the letter. We are perfectly aware of the weaknesses and problems of these movements.

The presence of a “democratic wing”

This strives for the realisation of a “real democracy”. It is represented by various currents, including some of the right as in Greece. It is clear that the media and politicians support this wing in order to try and get the whole movement to identify with it.

Revolutionaries must vigorously struggle against all the mystifications, false measures and false arguments of this trend. But why is there still such a strong tendency to be seduced by the siren songs of democracy after so many years of lies, traps and deceptions? We can point to three reasons. The first is the weight of non-proletarian social layers who are very open to such democratic and inter-classist mystifications. The second is the strength of confusions and democratic illusions still very present in the working class itself, especially among young people who have not yet been able to develop a political experience. Finally, the third is the weight of what we call the social and ideological decomposition of capitalism, that encourages the tendency to seek refuge in an entity that is “above classes and class conflicts” – that is to say the state, which will allegedly bring some order, justice and mediation.

But there is a deeper cause, to which it is necessary to draw attention. In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx states that “proletarian revolutions constantly retreat faced with the enormity of their own aims”. Today, events underscore the bankruptcy of capitalism, the need to destroy it and to build a new society. For a proletariat that doubts its own capacities, that has not yet recovered its identity, this creates and will continue to create for some time the tendency to cling to false hopes, to false measures for “reforms” and “democratisation”, even while doubting them. All this undoubtedly gives the bourgeoisie a margin of manoeuvre that allows it to sow division and demoralisation and, consequently, to make it even more difficult for the proletariat to recover its self-confidence and class identity.

The poison of apoliticism

This is an old weakness which has weighed on the proletariat since 1968 and has its origin in the huge disappointment and profound scepticism provoked by the Stalinist and social democratic counter-revolution, which caused a tendency to believe that all political opposition, including that which claims to be proletarian, is nothing but a vile lie, containing within it the worm of treachery and oppression. This has widely benefited the forces of the bourgeoisie which, hiding their real identity and under the fiction of intervening “as free citizens”, work within the movement to take control of the assemblies and sabotage them from within. The comrades of the TPTG show this clearly: “In the beginning there was a communal spirit in the first efforts at self-organizing the occupation of the square and officially political parties were not tolerated. However, the leftists and especially those coming from SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) got quickly involved in the Syntagma assembly and took over important positions in the groups that were formed in order to run the occupation of Syntagma square, and, more specifically, in the group for “secretarial support” and the one responsible for “communication”. These two groups are the most important ones because they organize the agenda of the assemblies as well as the flow of the discussion. It must be noted that these people do not openly declare their political allegiance and appear as ‘individuals’.”[26]

The danger of nationalism

This is very present in Greece and Israel. As the comrades of the TPTG denounced, “Nationalism (mostly in a populist form) is dominant, favoured both by the various extreme right wing cliques as well as by left parties and leftists. Even for a lot of proletarians or petty-bourgeois hit by the crisis who are not affiliated with political parties, national identity appears as a last imaginary refuge when everything else is rapidly crumbling. Behind the slogans against the ‘foreign, sell out government’ or for the ‘Salvation of the country’, ‘National sovereignty’ and a ‘New Constitution” lies a deep feeling of fear and alienation to which the ‘national community’ appears as a magical unifying solution.”[27]

This reflection by the comrades is as accurate as it is profound. The loss of identity and confidence of the proletariat in its own strength, the slow process through which the struggle in the rest of the world is going, encourages the tendency to “cling on to the national community”, as a utopian refuge faced with a hostile world full of uncertainties.

So for example, the consequences of the cuts in health and education, the real problems created by the weakening of these services, are used to confine the struggles behind nationalist barriers by demanding a “good education” (because it will make us more competitive on the world market), and a “health service for all citizens”.

The fear and difficulty of taking up class confrontations

The frightening threat of unemployment, massive casualisation, the growing fragmentation of employees – divided, in the same workplaces, into an inextricable web of subcontractors and an incredible variety of different terms of employment – have a powerfully intimidating effect and make it more difficult for workers to come together for the struggle. This situation cannot be overcome either through voluntarist calls for mobilization or by admonishing the workers for their alleged “cowardice” or “servility”.

Thus, the step towards the mass mobilization of the unemployed, casual workers, places of work and study, is made much more difficult that it might seem at first sight, causing in turn a hesitation, a doubt and a tendency to cling to “assemblies” which every day are becoming more minoritarian “and whose “unity” favours only the forces of the bourgeoisie who work within them. This gives the bourgeoisie a margin of manoeuvre to prepare its dirty tricks intended to sabotage the general assemblies. And this is precisely what the comrades of the TPTG denounced: “The manipulation of the main assembly in Syntagma square (there are several others in various neighbourhoods of Athens and cities in Greece) by “incognito” members of left parties and organizations is evident and really obstructive in a class direction of the movement. However, due to the deep legitimization crisis of the political system of representation in general they, too, have to hide their political identity and keep a balance between a general, abstract talk about “self-determination”, “direct democracy”, “collective action”, “anti-racism”, “social change” etc on the one hand and extreme nationalism, thug-like behaviour of some extreme-right wing individuals participating in groups in the square on the other hand, and all this in a not so successful way.”[28]

Looking to the future with confidence

While it is clear that “for humanity to survive, capitalism must die”,[29] the proletariat is still very far from having the capacity to execute this sentence. The movement of the Indignants has laid the foundation stone.

In the series mentioned above, we said: “one of the reasons why the revolutionaries where unable to be successful in previous revolutions was that they underestimated the forces of the ruling class, especially its political intelligence.”[30] This capacity of the bourgeoisie to use its political intelligence against the struggles is today stronger than ever! So for example, the Indignants movements in three countries were completely blacked out, except when they were given the veneer of “democratic regeneration”. Likewise, the British bourgeoisie was able to take advantage of the discontent to channel it into a nihilistic revolt that served as a pretext to strengthen repression and intimidate any response from the class.[31]The movements of the Indignant have laid a first stone, in the sense that they have taken the first steps for the proletariat to recover its self-confidence and its class identity, but this is still a long way off because it requires the development of mass struggles on a directly proletarian terrain, which will show that, faced with the bankruptcy of capitalism, the working class is capable of offering a revolutionary alternative to the non-exploiting social layers.

We do not know how this goal will be achieved and we must remain vigilant to the capabilities and initiatives of the masses, like that of 15th May in Spain. What we do know is that the international extension of the struggle will be a key factor in this direction.

The three movements have planted the seed of an internationalist consciousness: when the movement of the Indignants arose in Spain, it said its inspiration was Tahrir Square in Egypt;[32] it sought an international extension of the struggle, although this would be done in the utmost confusion. For their part, the movements in Israel and Greece explicitly stated they were following the example of the Indignants of Spain. Protesters in Israel displayed placards saying, "Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu: all the same!", which shows not only an awareness of who the enemy is but also at least an embryonic understanding that their struggle is waged with the exploited of these countries and not against them in the framework of national defence.[33] “In Jaffa, dozens of Arab and Jewish protesters carried signs in Hebrew and Arabic reading ‘Arabs and Jews want affordable housing,’ and ‘Jaffa doesn’t want bids for the rich only.’ […] there have been ongoing protests of both Jews and Arabs against evictions of the latter from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. In Tel Aviv, contacts were made with residents of refugee camps in the occupied territories, who visited the tent cities and engaged in discussions with the protesters.[34] The movements in Egypt and Tunisia, like that in Israel, change the face of the situation in a part of the world that is probably the main focus of imperialist confrontations on the planet. As our article says, “The present international wave of revolts against capitalist austerity is opening the door to another solution altogether: the solidarity of all the exploited across religious or national divisions; class struggle in all countries with the ultimate goal of a world wide revolution which will be the negation of national borders and states. A year or two ago such a perspective would have seemed completely utopian to most. Today, increasing numbers are seeing global revolution as a realistic alternative to the collapsing order of global capital.”[35]

The three movements have contributed to the crystallization of a proletarian wing: in both Greece and Spain but also in Israel,[36] a "proletarian wing" is emerging, in search of self-organization, uncompromising struggle for class positions and a fight for the destruction of capitalism. The problems but equally the potentialities and the perspectives of this large minority cannot be addressed in the context of this article. What is certain is that this is a vital weapon that the proletariat has given life to in order to prepare its future battles.

C. Mir, 23-9-2011.

1923: “The Bordeaux Agreement” or “class collaboration” pact

It was in this year that that “the Bordeaux Agreement” was signed; a “treaty of friendship” between the colonial economic interests[1] and Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy to sit in the French National Assembly. Having drawn lessons from the magnificent insurrectionary strike in Dakar in May 1914 and its repercussions in subsequent years,[2] the French bourgeoisie had to reorganise its political apparatus to deal with the inexorable rise of the young proletariat in its African colony. It was in this context that it decided to use Blaise Diagne, making him “mediator/peacemaker” in conflicts between the classes, in fact a counter-revolutionary role. Indeed, the day after his election as deputy and having been a major witness to the insurrectionary movement against the colonial power, in which he himself had been involved at the beginning, Diagne was now faced with three options to play a historic role in future events: 1) to profit from the political weakening of the colonial bourgeoisie in the aftermath of the general strike, in which it suffered a defeat, by triggering a “national liberation struggle”; 2) to fight for the communist program by raising the banner of proletarian struggle inside the colony, profiting in particular from the success of the strike; 3) to bolster his own personal political interests by allying himself with the French bourgeoisie which  at this time was holding out its hand to him.

Diagne eventually chose the last course, namely an alliance with the colonial power. In reality, the “Bordeaux Agreement” showed that the French bourgeoisie was not only afraid of working class militancy in its African colony, but was equally concerned by the international revolutionary situation.

“...Given the turn of events, the colonial government set about winning the black deputy’s support so that his powers of persuasion and his foolhardy courage could be used to serve the colonial power and its commercial interests. This way it would be able to pull the rug from under the feet of the African elite whose minds were running way with them when, at the time, the October Revolution (1917), the Pan-black movements and the threat of world communism were having a dangerously seductive affect in the colonies on the thinking of the colonised.

“[...] Such was the real meaning of the agreement signed in Bordeaux on June 12th, 1923. It marked the end of the combative and headstrong Diagnism and opened up a new era of collaboration between the colonisers and colonised, and left the deputy stripped of all his charisma that up to this point was his major political asset. A great impetus had been lost.”[3]

The first black member of the African colony remains faithful to French capital until his death

To better understand the meaning of this agreement between the colonial bourgeoisie and the young deputy, let’s retrace the path of the latter. Blaise Diagne was noticed very early on by the representatives of French capital, who saw him playing a future role in their political strategy and steered him in this direction. Indeed, Diagne had a strong influence on urban youth through the Young Senegalese Party that supported his campaign. With the support of youth, especially educated and intellectual youth, he entered the electoral arena in April 1914 and secured the single post of deputy with responsibility for the whole of French West Africa (FWA). Let’s recall that we were on the eve of massive imperialist slaughter and it was in these circumstances that the famous general strike broke out in May 1914 when, after mobilising the youth of Dakar with the prospect of mounting a formidable revolt, Diagne tried unsuccessfully to stop it, not wanting to jeopardise his interests as a young petit-bourgeois deputy.

In fact, once elected, he was responsible for ensuring the interests of big business on the one hand and enforcing the “laws of the Republic” on the other. Even before the Bordeaux Agreement was signed, Diagne had distinguished himself by successfully recruiting 72,000 “Senegalese Sharpshooters” for the global butchery of 1914-1918. It was for this reason that, in January 1918, he was appointed Commissioner of the Republic by the then French prime minister Georges Clemenceau. Given the reluctance of young people and their parents to be enrolled, he toured the African villages of FWA to persuade reluctant individuals and, by the use of propaganda and intimidation, managed to recruit tens of thousands of African young men to be sent off to their deaths.

He was also a strong advocate of that abominable “forced labour” in the French colonies, as indicated by his speech at the fourteenth session of the International Labour Office in Geneva[4].

All in all, the first black member of the African colony was never a real supporter of the workers’ cause; on the contrary, ultimately he was just a counter-revolutionary opportunist. Furthermore the working class would soon come to realise it: “...as if the Bordeaux Agreement had convinced the workers that the working class was now able to lead the march itself in the fight against economic injustice and for social and political equality, the trade union struggles were given, like a pendulum swing, an exceptional boost.”[5] Clearly, Diagne could not long keep the trust of the working class, and he remained faithful to his colonial sponsors until his death in 1934.

1925: a year of heightened militancy and solidarity faced with police repression

“The year of 1925 was shaken by three great social conflicts all of which had important consequences and all of which were indeed on the railways. First there was a strike of indigenous and European railwaymen in Dakar - Saint-Louis, from January 23rd to 27th, for economic demands; next, shortly afterwards, there was the threat of a general strike in Thies-Kayes, planned around specific demands including trade union rights; and finally, there was the workers' revolt in Bambara, on the railway construction site at Ginguinéo, a revolt where soldiers were called in to suppress it and refused to do so.”[6]

And yet the time was not particularly favourable for entering into struggle because to discourage working class militancy the colonial authorities had adopted a series of extremely repressive measures.

“During 1925, on the recommendations of the Governors General, particularly the one of FWA, some draconian measures were imposed by the Department for the Colonies specifically making revolutionary propaganda illegal.

“In Senegal, new instructions from the Federation (the two French colonies, FWA, FEA) had led to increased surveillance across the whole territory. And in each of the colonies of the group, a special service was established in conjunction with the General Security Service, to centralise in Dakar, and examine, all the evidence from the listening posts.

“[...] A new emigration regime with new arrangements for identifying natives was drawn up in the Ministry in December 1925. Every foreigner and every suspect had a file thereafter; the foreign press was under strict control, and it was commonplace for newspapers to be shut down [...] The mail was systematically violated, shipments of papersopened and often destroyed.”[7]

Once again, the colonial power trembled at the announcement of a new outbreak of working class struggle, hence its decision to establish a police state to take tight control of civil life and contain any social unrest arising in the colony, but also, and above all, to avoid contact between the workers in struggle in the colonies and their class brothers around the world; hence the draconian measures against “revolutionary propaganda”. And yet, in this context, important workers' struggles could violently erupt, despite all the repressive arsenal wielded by the colonial state.

A highly political railway strike

On January 24th 1925, European and African railway workers came out on strike together, establishing a strike committee and raising the following demands: “The employees of the Dakar - Saint-Louis railway unanimously agreed to halt the traffic on January 24th. They only took this action after much consideration and after feeling genuinely aggrieved. They had had no wage increase since 1921, despite the steady increase in the cost of living in the colony. Most of the Europeans were getting less than 1,000 francs in their monthly salary and a native got a daily wage of 5 francs. They were after higher wages to be able to live decent lives.”[8]

Indeed, the very next day, all employees in the various sectors of the railway left their machines, their workshops and offices, paralysing the railway for a short time. But this movement was above all highly political in nature in that it came right in the middle of a legislative campaign, forcing the parties and their candidates to take a clear position on the demands of the strikers. As a result, from that moment, the various politicians and commercial lobbies called on the colonial administration to get them back to work immediately by meeting the employees’ demands. And right away, on the second day of the strike, the railway workers’ demands were met in full. In fact, the members of the jubilant strike committee delayed their response until after consulting the rank and file. Similarly, the strikers insisted on having the order to return to work from their delegates in writing and sent by special train to all the stations.

“The workers had once again won an important victory in the struggle, showing great maturity and determination, along with adaptability and realism. [...] This success is all the more significant from the fact that all workers of the network, European and native, who had been at loggerheads over issues of colour and had problems working together, had wisely set aside their differences as soon as the threat of the draconian labour laws was on the horizon. [...] The governor himself could not help but notice the maturity and the unity and the timing of the strike’s organisation. The preparation, he wrote, had been very cleverly carried out. The mayor of Dakar himself, experienced and loved by the indigenous people, had not been notified of their participation. The timing of the deal was chosen so that commerce, to safeguard its own interests, supported the claims. The reasons given, with some justification, put the campaign in big trouble. In short, he concluded, everything came together for it to have its maximum effect and to give it the support of public opinion.” [9]

This is a vivid illustration of the high level of militancy and class-consciousness shown by the working class of the French colony, where European and African workers collectively took charge of organising their victorious struggle. Here we have a brilliant lesson in class solidarity consolidating gains from all previous experiences of confrontation with the bourgeoisie. And this makes even clearer the international character of the workers’ struggles at that time, despite the continual efforts of the bourgeoisie to “divide and rule”.

In February 1925, the strike of the telegraph office workers forces the authorities to back down after 24 hours

The movement of railwaymen had hardly finished when the telegraph office workers (‘câblistes’) went on strike, also raising many demands including a big wage increase and an improvement to their status. This movement came to an end after 24 hours for a good reason: “With the collaboration of the local and metropolitan powers, thanks to the successful intervention from members of the elected bodies, complete order returned within 24 hours, because satisfaction was given in a partial settlement to the câblistes, as conceded in the granting of an standby allowance to all staff.”[10]

So, buoyed by this success, the telegraph workers (European and indigenous together) put the rest of their demands on the table, threatening to go out on strike immediately. They took advantage of the strategic position they occupied as highly skilled technicians in the administrative and economic machinery who were clearly able to shut down communication networks across the territory. For their part, faced with the demands of the telegraph employees threatening a new strike, the bourgeoisie’s representatives decided to retaliate with a campaign of intimidation and accusation against the strikers: “How is it that the few functionaries who are agitating for an increase in pay can’t see they are digging their own grave?” [11]

In fact, political power and big business piled a great deal of pressure on the strikers, going as far as accusing them of trying to “deliberately destroy the economy” while also trying to undermine the their unity. With the pressure intensifying, the workers decided to resume work on the basis of demands met at the end of the previous strike.

This episode was also one of the high points in the struggle when the unity between the European and African workers was fully achieved.

Rebellion in the Thies-Kayes railway yards, December 11th 1925

A rebellion broke out on this line when a group of about a hundred workers decided to cross swords with their boss, a captain of the colonial army. A cynical and authoritarian figure, he was accustomed to being obeyed without question and inflicted physical harm on workers he deemed “lazy”.

“According to the investigation that had been carried out by the Administrator Aujas, commander of the Kaolack area, it appeared that a rebellion had broken out on December 11th because of “ill treatment” inflicted on these workers. The area commander added that, without admitting these statements entirely, captain Heurtematte acknowledged that he sometimes happened to hit a lazy and uncooperative labourer with a whip. [The incident] escalated after the captain had tied three Bambaras [an ethnic term], whom he took to be the main culprits, to stakes with ropes.”[12]

And things went wrong for the captain when he began to whip the three workers because their comrades in the yard decided to put an end to their torturer for good. He was only saved in the nick of time by the arrival on site of soldiers called to his aid. “The soldiers in question were French subjects from eastern Senegal and from Thies; having arrived there and heard what had happened, they unanimously refused the order to fire on the black workers. The poor captain said he had issued it as he feared for his life, assailed on all sides by a ferocious and menacing crowd.”[13]

This is quite remarkable because until now we were quite used to seeing the “sharpshooters” as submissive individuals, obediently accepting roles as “blacklegs” or outright “liquidators” of strikers. This gesture of fraternisation reminds us of other historical episodes where conscripts refused to use force against strikes or revolutions. The most famous example is of course the episode in the Russian Revolution where a large number of soldiers refused to fire on their revolutionary brothers, disobeying the orders from above despite the high risks involved.

The attitude of the “sharpshooters” against their captain was all the more heart-warming since the conditions of the time were dominated by a strong tendency towards the militarisation of social and economic life in the colony. Moreover, the affair took a highly political turn because the civil and military administration found itself very embarrassed by having to choose between punishing the soldiers’ insubordination and risk strengthening their solidarity with the workers, or playing the incident down. Eventually the Colonial authority chose the latter.

“But the affair strongly hit the headlines and threatened to create complications in interracial relations that were already a concern in a service like the railways, so the federal authorities, and local too, finally agreed on the need to smooth over the incident and to play it down, having already come to realise the disastrous consequences of the policy favouring racial collaboration introduced by Diagne in signing the Bordeaux Agreement which was already costing them dear.”[14]

Indeed, like its predecessors, this phase of struggle clearly exposed the limitations of the “Bordeaux Agreement” by which the deputy Blaise Diagne thought he had secured “collaboration” between the exploiters and exploited. But unfortunately for the colonial bourgeoisie, class-consciousness had been there.

The militant sailors’ strike in 1926

Like the previous year, 1926 was marked by an episode of struggle that was both very militant and very rich in terms of combativeness and class solidarity. This was all the more remarkable as the movement was launched in the same conditions of repression of social struggles, which in the previous year had seen a number of shipyards and other sectors continuously occupied by the forces of the police and gendarmerie in the name of “safeguarding” the economy.

“While the attacks on the railways continued inexorably[15] and the agitation spread to the sectors more attached to order and discipline of the ex-servicemen, the workers of the African Freight Co. of Saint-Louis launched a strike action, which would hold the record for the longest duration of all the social movements studied in this locality.

“It all started on September 29th when a telegram from the Lieutenant Governor informed the Head of the Maritime Federation that sailors of the African Freight Company in St. Louis had gone on strike for improved wages. In a real spirit of almost spontaneous solidarity, their colleagues in the Maison Peyrissac employed on the Steamship Cadenelle, then anchored in Saint- Louis, although not directly involved in the demands being pursued, also stopped work on October 1st.”[16]

Driven by frighteningly high rises in living costs, many sectors put forward wage demands with the threat of going on strike, and a large number of companies had agreed to give their employees wage increases. This was not the case for workers of the Freight Company, however, and this led them to take action with the support of their comrades on the steamship. Despite this, the bosses remained unmoved and refused any negotiations with the strikers until the fifth day of the strike, letting the action continue in the hope that it would quickly exhaust itself.

“But the movement retained the cohesion and solidarity of the first few days and on October 6th the management of the Freight Co., beset on all sides by commercial interests and secretly encouraged by the Administration to be more flexible, saw the danger in the situation and gave in suddenly. It made the following offer to the crews: ‘a monthly increase of 50 francs (regardless of category) and food for sustenance (around 41 francs per month)’. [...] But the workers involved, wanting to show active solidarity with their colleagues at Maison Peyrissac, asked for and won the same benefits to be given to them. The management at this company gave in. On October 6th, the strike ended. The movement had lasted eight full days, during which time the unity of workers stayed solid throughout. This had been an event of great importance.”[17]

Once again we are witnessing a formidable movement, providing clear insights into the vitality of the struggles of this time. In other words, the unfolding of the struggle provided the opportunity for a real expression of “active solidarity” (as Thiam says) between workers from different companies. What better example of solidarity than one crew demanding and obtaining the same benefits it had won through its strike for its comrades of another company in “gratitude” for the support received from them!

What to say too about the combativeness and cohesion that the workers of the freight company showed with their solid show of force against the might of capital!

The long and bitter strike of seamen from Saint-Louis in July-August 1928

The announcement of this strike was of great concern to the colonial authorities because it seemed to echo the demands of seamen in France who were preparing to enter the struggle at the same time as their African comrades.

At the Congress of the International Federation of Trade Unions (in the pay of Stalin) held in Paris in August 1927, an appeal was made in defence of the proletariat of the colonies, as related:

“An English delegate to the Congress of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU)) in Paris, seizing the occasion... had particularly insisted on the existence in the colonies of millions of men subjected to unbridled exploitation, proletarians in the fullest sense, who now needed to become organised and engaged in trade union type actions, pressing for their demands in particular by using the weapon of protests and strikes. Echoing this, Koyaté (an African syndicalist) said himself that ‘the right to organise has the power to resist in French Black Africa through mass strikes, in illegality’”.[18]

In France unrest had been growing since June 1928 among seamen who were demanding a wage increase and were thus expected to strike on July 14th. But on the set date, it was the native seamen of the shipping companies in Saint-Louis who went on strike en masse, with the same demands as their comrades back in the home country. The reaction of the colonial authorities was to cry “international conspiracy” and point, among others, to two native union leaders as the “ring leaders” of the movement. And to deal with it, the Administration of the colony made a common front with the employers by combining political manoeuvres and repressive measures to break the strike.

“...Then the hard bargaining began. While the sailors were prepared to see their wage claim reduced by up to 25 francs, the bosses said it was impossible to award them more than 100 francs per month. As the workers (seeking 250 francs more), considered the offer inadequate, the strike continued unabated. “[19]

The strikers of the St. Louis region found immediate support from other seamen:

“(State Archives) The head of the maritime Register tells us, in effect, that in the afternoon of the 19th, the ‘Cayor’ tugboat came from Dakar and arrived with the barge ‘Forez’. The boat had hardly anchored when the crew made common cause with the strikers with the exception of an old boatswain and another sailor. But he tells us that the next morning on July 20th, the strikers stormed aboard the ‘Cayor’ and forcibly dragged the two sailors who remained at their posts ashore. A brief demonstration outside the town hall was dispersed by police.”[20]

The strike lasted more than a month before being broken militarily by the colonial Governor who used force to remove the native crews and replaced them with troops. Exhausted by the long weeks of struggle, deprived of the necessary financial resources to support their families, in short to avoid starving, the sailors had to return to work; hence the smug satisfaction of the local representative of the colonial power who offered his own account of events: “[At the end of the strike] the seamen asked to go back onto the ships of the African Freight Co. They returned to their old conditions, and the strike resulted in the sailors losing one month's salary, whereas, if they had listened to the proposals of the Head of the Maritime Register they would have benefited with an increase in their pay from 50 to 100 francs a month.”[21]

This retreat of the strikers, realistic in the circumstances, was regarded by the bourgeoisie as a “victory” that announced the crisis of 1929, whose effects began to be felt locally. From then on, the colonial power was not slow to profit from its “victory” over the striking seamen and from the opportunity to strengthen its repressive forces.

“Confronted with this situation, the colonial Governor, aware of the political tensions already brewing from the declarations of Ameth Sow Télémaquem[22] talking about the coming revolution in Senegal, about the succession of social movements and the deteriorating financial situation and popular discontent, adopted two measures to maintain order.

“Firstly he had accelerated the process, begun in 1927, aimed at placing control of the Senegal security services in Dakar from where, he said, the surveillance of the colony would be increased. [...] The second measure was to more quickly put in place training for the gendarmerie responsible for policing Thies-Niger.”[23]

This meant: the presence of police assigned to escort duty on trains to “accompany” train crews with “intervention brigades” on all lines, measures aimed at individuals or groups who would be arrested and imprisoned if they defied police orders, while anyone stirring up “social unrest” (strikes and demonstrations) would be severely punished. Let us note that all these means of repression, increasing the militarisation of labour, were targeted principally at the two sectors that were the lungs of the colonial economy, namely the waterways and railways.

But despite all this military control, the working class did not cease to pose a threat to the colonial authorities.

“Yet when social unrest continued on sections of the railway in Thies, where strike action was threatened after the non-payment of back pay they were due, with the submission of claims for wage increases and a denunciation of the negligence of an administration that was completely disinterested in their fate, the Governor took these threats very seriously, working to establish, in 1929, a new private police force, this time composed of former military, mostly officers who, under the direction of the Commissioner of the special police, would ensure a permanent peace in the depot at Thies.”[24]

So in this period of acute social tensions related to the terrible world economic crisis, the colonial regime had no alternative but to rely more than ever on its armed forces to put an end to working class combativeness.

The Great Depression and the militarisation of labour weaken workers’ combativeness

As we saw previously, the colonial power did not wait for the arrival of the 1929 crisis to militarise the world of work, because it began to resort to the army in 1925 faced with the pugnacity of the working class. But this situation, with both the deepening global economic crisis and the militarisation of labour, must have weighed heavily on the working class of the colony because, between 1930 and 1935, there were few struggles. In fact the only important class movement that we know of was that of the workers in the port of Kaolack:

“A short and violent strike in Kaolack on May 1st 1930: between 1500 and 2000 workers from peanut farms and from the port stopped work while loading the boats. They asked for the doubling of their wages of 7.50 francs. The police intervened and a striker was slightly injured. Work resumed at 1400 hours: the workers had won a wage of 10 francs a day. “[25]

This short yet vigorous strike brought to a close the series of dazzling struggles since 1914. In other words, 15 years of class confrontations after which the proletariat of the colony of French West Africa was able to stand up to its enemy and to build its identity as an autonomous class.

For its part, in the same period, the bourgeoisie showed its real nature as a bloodthirsty class by using every means at its disposal, including the most ferocious, to attempt to put an end to working class combativeness. But in the end it still had to regularly back down faced with the onslaughts of the working class, often giving in completely to the strikers’ demands.

1936/1938: important workers' struggles under the Popular Front government

In the wake of the arrival of the Popular Front government of Leon Blum, there was a fresh explosion of working class combativeness with the outbreak of numerous strikes. Hence, there were no fewer than 42 “wildcat strikes” in Senegal between 1936 and 1938, including that of September 1938, which we will deal with below. This fact is especially significant as the unions had just been legalised, given “new rights”, by the Popular Front government, and therefore benefited from its legitimacy.

These struggles were often victorious. For example the one in 1937 when seamen of European origin on a French ship stopping over in the Ivory Coast, having become concerned by the miserable living conditions of the indigenous sailors (the Kroumen), encouraged the latter to demand better working conditions. But the native workers were evicted using military force by the colonial administrator, which straight away led to the French crew going out on strike in support of their African comrades to force the authorities to meet the demands of the strikers in full.

Here yet again is an act of workers’ solidarity that can be added to the many episodes cited above where unity and solidarity between Europeans and Africans was the source of many of the victorious struggles, despite their “racial differences”.

1938: the railway strike arouses the hatred of the whole bourgeoisie against the workers

Another highly significant movement in terms of class confrontation was the strike of the railworkers in 1938, carried out by workers on short-term contracts whose demands had been “neglected” by the unions. In the case of the day labourers or auxiliaries, the more numerous and impoverished of railwaymen, they were paid daily, worked Sundays and public holidays, covered sick days, and worked a 54 hour week without any of the entitlements of the tenured staff, all of this with no guaranteed work on the next day.

It was these railwaymen who carried out the famous strike of 1938.

“The strike movement had moreover broken out spontaneously and outside the unions. On September 27th, the auxiliary railworkers (not the tenured staff) of Dakar-Niger went on strike in Thies and Dakar to protest against the arbitrary removal of one of their comrades.

“The next day, in the depot at Thies, the strikers organised a blockade to prevent the ‘blacklegs’ coming to work. The Dakar-Niger police tried to intervene, but were quickly overwhelmed, and the management of the railway appealed to the administrator who sent in the troops: the strikers defended themselves throwing stones, the army returned fire. There were six dead and thirty wounded. The next day (29th) there was a general strike across the network. On Thursday, 30th, an agreement was signed between the workers' delegates and the whole government on the following basis:

“1) No sanctions, 2) No interference with the right of association, 3) Compensation for the victims' families, 4) An investigation into the demands.

“On October 1st, the union gave the order to return to work.”[26]

Here we see again a dramatic and heroic struggle waged by the railwaymen, outside the union’s instructions, which made the colonial power back down, and this despite its resort to a blood-letting, using the army, as indicated by the number of deaths and injuries, not to mention the dozens of workers thrown in jail. To better gauge the barbaric nature of the repression, here is the testimony of a workman painter, one of the survivors of this carnage:

“When we learned of the assignment to Gossas of Cheikh Diack, a violent unease spread among the workers’ circles, especially the auxiliaries for whom he was the spokesman. We decided to oppose it by striking the next day when our boss was back at his post. I woke up that day, a Tuesday - I will always remember - I heard gunshots. I lived near the city Ballabey. A few moments later I saw my brother Domingo rush off to the Depot. I rushed after him, aware of the danger he faced. Soon I saw him crossing the railway line and then falling down a few yards further on. When I got near him, I thought he must have been struck by an illness because there was no obvious injury; when I raised him up, he was groaning. Blood flowed from a wound near his left shoulder. He died moments later in my arms. Drunk with rage, I rushed at the soldier in front of me. He fired at me. I advanced not realising I was hurt. I think it was the anger brewing inside me that gave me the strength to reach out and snatch his gun, his belt, his cap, then I knocked him out before falling unconscious. “[27]

This story illustrates the ferocity of the Senegalese sharpshooters towards the 'native' workers, ignoring the example shown by their colleagues who refused to fire on workers during the rebellion at the workshop at Thies in 1925. The striking workers showed a tremendous fighting spirit and admirable courage in defending their own interests and their dignity as members of the exploited class.

It’s important to point out here that before going out on strike, the workers were harassed by all the forces of the bourgeoisie, parties and various leaders, employers and trade unions. All of these representatives of capitalist order hurled insults at and intimidated the workers who dared to go on strike without the “blessing” of anyone but themselves, and indeed wild and hysterical Muslim religious leaders were unleashed on the strikers, at the request of the Governor, as recalled by Nicole Bernard-Duquenet:

“He (the governor) also appealed to religious leaders and community elders; Nourou Seydou Tall, who had often acted as an emissary of the Governor-General, spoke in Thies (before the striking workers), Cheikh Amadou Moustapha Mbacke went round the network explaining that a good Muslim should not go on strike because it is a form of rebellion.”[28]

For once we can quite agree with this cynical cleric and say that a strike really is an act of rebellion not only against exploitation and oppression, but also against religious obscurantism.

As for the unions, which didn’t lead the struggle of the railwaymen, they still had to join the “bandwagon” so as not lose complete control of the movement. And here their state of mind is described by the strikers’ delegate: “We asked for an increase of 1.50 francs per day for the most recent starters with up to 5 years service, 2.50 francs for those with 5 to 10 years, and 3.50 francs over 10 years, along with a travel allowance for the conductors, escorts, mechanics etc. [...] Incredible as it may seem, such claims were favourably received by the management of the network, but by contrast were undermined by the Union of Indigenous Workers of Dakar-Niger, which represented the more senior staff. Indeed, it couldn’t resign itself to seeing us win this first round. Its leaders were eager to have exclusive rights to the negotiations with the authorities of the network. The union situation at the time led to rivalries, obscure internecine struggles and competition for loyalty to the employers, which largely explains this position. As a result I was transferred to Dakar. Those in high places were naïve to believe that this action could stifle the protest movement that had arisen amongst the ‘lowest paid’”.[29]

Again we see a clear demonstration of the betrayal of the workers' interests and the role played by the unions as “social peacemakers” on behalf of capital and the bourgeois state. Nicole Bernard-Duquenet sums it up:

“It is therefore almost certain that the secretaries of the unions have done everything to stop the threat of a strike that could cause trouble for the authorities.

“But in addition to the military and police forces, trade unions, employers and religious organisations, it was above all the press (of both right and left) that preyed like a hungry vulture on the strikers:

“The ‘Courrier colonial’ (employers’ paper): ‘In the home country we have long condemned the disastrous consequences of strikes, constantly provoked by the slogans of agitators, mostly foreigners or in the pay of foreigners, so that the colonial governments rush to combat energetically every vague impulse to transform our colonies into spheres of strike activity’;

“’L’Action francaise’ (right wing paper):’Thus, while those marxists responsible for the rioting are clearly left alone, the Minister of Colonies is considering using sanctions against the Senegalese soldiers (and not against the strikers). And all this to please the socialists and save their creature, Governor General De Coppet, who is acting in a scandalous manner.’”[30]

Here we have an insight into the attitude of the media vultures of the right. Yet the approach of the left wing press was hardly less scathing:

“Newspapers supporting the Popular Front are very bitter. The FWA blames the strike on agents provocateurs, a ‘pointless strike’ [...] The ‘Periscope Africain’ speaks of a strike ‘bordering on rebellion’ where no striker was a member of the indigenous union. The Bulletin of the Federation of civil servants condemns the use of bullets to disperse the strikers, interprets the strike as a riot, and says the auxiliaries are neither in the CGT or communists. They are not even union supporters. ‘It’s all the Fascists’ fault.’

“Le Populaire (SFIO) blames the incidents on a ‘local right-wing party violently opposed to the CGT and to fascist intrigues of certain unionists (a reference to the strikers' spokesman)’.”[31]

And to characterize all these vile anti-working class reactions, let’s listen to the conclusions of the historian Iba Der Thiam when he says this:

“As we see it, the events that occurred in Thies were seen on the left and on the right, as the extension of French internal politics, that is to say, a struggle between democrats and fascists in the absence of any concrete and plausible social motivation.

“It is this erroneous assessment, which would explain in large measure why the railway strike in Thies has never been adequately taken up by French unions, even the most advanced.

“[...] The recriminations of FWA and Periscope Africain, against the strikers, are similar in many respects to the articles of Le Populaire and L’Humanite “.[32]

In other words, the press of the right and left has a similar attitude to the strike movement of the railwaymen. We see it all in that last paragraph; we see there the unanimity of the forces of the bourgeoisie, national and colonial, against the working class in its struggle against poverty and for dignity. These heinous reactions of the left press against striking workers confirm more than anything the final enrolling of the “Communist Party” into the ranks French capital, knowing that this was already the case with the “Socialist Party” since 1914. In addition, we should recall that this anti-working class conduct was taking place in the context of the military preparations of the Second World War, during which the French left played a key role in enlisting the proletariat in the French homeland as in the African colonies.

Lassou (to be continued), November 2011.