In his text Jens says that "There's a tendency to think of culture solely in material terms (stone tools, etc.)". Jens then goes on to say that culture is much more than this and I agree with his inclusion of other elements in that definition and possibly more besides. Engels called his pamphlet The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man, and in it he said "labour begins with the making of tools". Even with the very limited contemporary knowledge of timescales, Engels surmised that this transitional period took place over many thousands of years. "... the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of joint activity to each individual". Engels here, and Pannekoek who followed this line of thought through the development of tools and the brain in his 1953 work, Anthropogenesis, is not talking about sixtythousand years ago, nor the descent of anatomically modern humans (AMH), nor ancient Homo Sapiens - because there was a transition within the Sapiens species here - but the earliest homo, the earliest of our species, and both relate the development of tools and production to the development of society from very early on. As the Harvard anthropologist Terrence Deacon put it more recently: "The introduction of stone tools and the ecological adaptation they indicate also mark the presence of a socio-ecological predicament that demands a symbolic solution; stone tools and symbols must both, then, be the architects of the Australopithecus-Homo transition and not its consequences. The large brain, stone tools, reduction in dentition, better opposability of thumbs and fingers and more complex bipedality found in post-australopithecine hominids are the physical echoes of a threshold already crossed" (T. Deacon, 1997, 348). And Pannekoek in Anthropogenesis: the "skill of handling tools is not congenital (but) acquired from older to younger generations... (the) development of the use of tools is only possible in a community".

Chris Knight doesn't like talking about tools deep in prehistory. Or rather, he doesn't like talking about them in any positive sense. When I raised this question with him in a meeting he acted as though his analysis was being sullied by such basic and ignorant questions. In relation to the earliest tools, one of the questions posed by Knight in his book is that "every male simply 'had' to be the owner of a hand-axe or other weapon, as much for reasons of personal and sexual security as to facilitate hunting or foraging?". The general gist of his argument here is that in early man there is no great advance from apes or chimpanzees regarding the earliest tools - which is a fair point regarding the very first percussion-like instruments lost in the mists of time. He does see the Acheulean hand-axe - the oldest now dated to 1.65 million (possibly 1.8) years ago in West Turkana, northern Kenya - as an advance and he does point to the survival of hominids over the period of this technology as "no small achievement". But, as well as seeing these tools as the coveted property of individuals, he calls them "monotonous" and "unimaginative" and strongly suggests that they were individual weapons (amongst other things); "fighting axes" for "settling scores". My position is that they were much more than this. I draw no conclusions from the persistence and widespread existence of these particular tools in relation to language and "home bases" - that's for another discussion. But these tools were not only very effective methods of production, they changed and practically developed, and also developed into things of beauty. Some razor sharp, too big for practical use, cubist designed, delicate with a central "feature", so-called "hand-axes" suggest that these did develop into fully symbolic pieces that, in my opinion, could well have been used in rituals. This would of course contradict Knight's view that "rituals and myths (of human symbolic behaviour were) signals for thwarting exploitation by males". Rather than being tools or weapons carried and coveted by individual males, the fact is that heaps of them, hundreds at a time, have been found in different parts of Africa (Melka Kunture in Ethiopia, Olorgesailie in Kenya, Isimila in Tanzania and Kalambo Falls in Zambia) and Swanscombe in England, crowded close together with no obvious sign of use. There's certainly no danger here, if there are hundreds of these tools lying around in great heaps on the top of the ground, in the open air, that anyone is worrying that these "valuable tools will be appropriated by some competitor or rival" as Blood Relations suggests with its social Darwinist theme of rivalry and competition in early man, "settling scores" and the like, from the males of the species. Against Knight's idea of the "monotony" of these implements there is a development of these tools. Early and late Acheulean tools do differ in very important respects (R.J. Mason, 1962). Later tools (up to around 600,000 years ago) are thinner and the flaking more shallow and while early tools are struck with hard (stone) hammers, later ones are struck with "soft" hammers of wood, bone, or antler (Chris Scarre, 2005), showing a major advance in technology. Also these more refined expressions of the Acheulean, where the core is prepared (in different ways by different individuals) in order to produce a predetermined size and shaped flake (especially the case with "soft" hammers), foreshadow the technological developments of the Middle Stone Age and eventually the Levallois technique (Thomas Volman, 1984), which takes us up to 250-500,000 years ago. It may be "slow" but there's a definite development and continuity here from the first Acheulean "hand-axes", and not the discontinuity implied in the book. And just as the "Levallois" technique grew out of the Acheulean, so did the latter grow out of the early Oldowan period, where, even at this early stage, percussion tools weren't just tools in themselves but were used to produce flakes and included hammerstones, unifacial choppers, bifacial choppers, polyhedrons, heavy-duty and light-duty scrapers, awls, discoids and flakes (Scarre, 2005). Though relatively crude, they were made out of various materials, quartz, chert, lava, quartzite, etc., (Isaac G. and Isaac B., 1997) across Africa, and some had been retouched, i.e., re-adapted. These developed from earlier, more fundamental forms that have been dated to between 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago where there were possibly around 8 species of hominin in Africa at the same time.

Blood Relations approvingly uses the archaeologist Lewis Binfords' views about the animal-like behaviour of early man - scavenger, beastly and so on. Chris Scarre (2005), editor of the Cambridge Archaeological Review, calls Binfords' views "impoverished". And this idea of early man as a "bonehead" is contested by many archaeologists: H.T. Bunn and E.M. Kroll, 1986, M. Dominguez-Rodrigo, 2002, Dominguez-Rodrigo, 2003, who all suggest from looking at hunting in this period or early access to animal carcasses and the ability to fight off or hold off other predators, that is an organised society not relying on the "hit and run" grabbing of meat.. As new sites are located this will become clearer. Binford (1984) takes an equally negative and restrictive view of hunting in the later Middle Stone Age. In his book he concludes that meat produced from the Klasies River Mouth, in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age (about 130,000 years ago), came from scavenging rather than hunting: But "his analysis ignored however, many remains that were probably removed from the site by carnivores, and many scholars would now see the remains as reflecting hunted meat that, like the shellfish at the site, was shared. There are other indications from Klasies River that suggest that hunting was probably practiced" (Scarre, 2005). Other criticisms of Binford's work is that carnivore gnaw marks are rare on the remains at Klasies and patterns of human-induced damage is very suggestive of hunting. At any rate, Binford's views of early (and later) man seem to chime with those of Blood Relations in that early man was little better than a beast (or worse in some cases)1. Another point to insist on against the book (which Jens seems to support in his text) is the large difference in male and female size, i.e., sexual dimorphism. But the evidence I've seen is that from 1.9 to 1.4 million years ago to now, sexual dimorphism, the size of early male against early female in the time scale specified, the Acheulean, has hardly changed. As Jens says, this "is generally indicative of a greater equality between the sexes". Stanford. edu puts the respective male and female height of Erectus at 1.8 and 1.55 - not much different from today. According to Christopher Ruff, 2002, 211-232, making the comparison in body mass in fossil hominins, reveals that general levels of dimorphism have likely remained more or less the same for most of the evolution of Homo over the last 2 million years to the present. Homo Erectus, who emerged 1.8 to 1.7 million years ago, achieved essentially - with significant anatomical differences - modern form and proportions; and evidence suggests the species also achieved "a social organisation that featured economic co-operation between male and female and perhaps between semi-permanent male and female units" (Scarre, 2005). This would be fully in line with the position of Engels and marxism on the general development of production going along with the general development of society. L. Hager (1989) suggests the reduction in sexual dimorphism in Homo Erectus came from the growth of females as an adaption for childbirth. As Jens says, reduced sexual dimorphism generally indicates "a greater equality between the sexes". But I think that he's wrong when he says that it's a "good deal less" in Sapiens than Erectus. The evidence seems to at least point to an equalisation that began with erectus and is virtually unchanged today. More finds as always will reveal more evidence.

The book creates puzzles where there are none and reinforces my view that it is a source of confusion rather than clarification. For example, the "monotonous uniformity" that it puts forward in relation to the Acheulean hand-axe just doesn't exist (see above) and to say that this tool is "replicated unimaginatively all over the world - from southern Africa to northern England, from Spain to India" is not entirely true either. Knight says that it might be expected that localised conditions would have given rise to specialised tool kits for foraging whereas, in Knight's view, the Acheulean axe was also used as a digging tool (both he and Binford can't accept that there would have been hunting in this period because that would imply society). Firstly I think that tools made for the digging aspect of foraging would have generally been made of wood, bone or antler (possibly shaped by stone tools). Digging hard ground with a stone tool would only result in torn and cut hands, and antler picks, plus a stout, sharpened stick, must have been the tools of choice for digging (the male megalocerus, the giant prehistoric deer, also known as the Irish Elk, had antlers that could measure 3.5 metres from tip to tip). Discarded, shed antlers would have been plentiful and they are a very sensuous and effective tool - much better than cutting your hands to pieces trying to dig up tubers with a lump of stone! And secondly, the Acheulean hand-axe wasn't an "axe" at all and can't be reduced to a digging instrument or weapon, but was rather the prehistoric equivalent of the Swiss Army Penknife, with all-purpose, different-sized adaptable blades struck from the core. And surely the widespread use of this tool is evidence of it being fit for purpose within a community of interests over a large part of the world. The Acheulean "hand-axe" is a very effective tool-kit in itself. It's certainly a lot more than an individually-owned and closely-guarded weapon related to 'male behaviour' as Knight suggests. Even in its very beginnings the Acheulean hand-axe wasn't a single expression but variable, and has been classified into "axe", cleaver, and bifacial, i.e., several types of tools. The other point to make is that, contrary to the book, there were regional variations away from the Acheulean as long ago as 1.7 million years ago. This regional delineation goes along the "Movious Line” (H. L. Movious, 1948) which has stood up to the test of new finds since. There's a strong non-Acheulean tradition in eastern and south-eastern Asia (and some parts of Europe around modern day Germany and Romania, Greece and Turkey and parts of the now ex-Russian republics). There are no perishable artefacts, scarce by definition, but bamboo makes edges that rival or exceed those of stone for sharpness and durability. There is also evidence in east China for entirely different types of stone tools from the Acheulean tradition, "choppers", flakes and various others going back possibly 1.3 million years ago (Jianfeng Zhu et al, 2004), some two-hundred-thousand or more years after an out of Africa move. The "Zhoukoudian" (east Asia) tool kit is quite distinct from the Acheulean and includes a whole variety of tools made from sandstone, quartz and other materials. So this idea of the "boring uniformity" of Acheulean stone tools is a red herring that was contradicted well before Blood Relations was written. What we see, and what is confirmed clearly on the basis of a plethora of evidence, in variable respects throughout the global Lower Palaeolithic (the African Early Stone Age), is the development of tools and a diversity of tools that are excellent for butchery on small and large beasts and the extraction of the most nutritious parts. That's the least we can say for sure. The animal protein extraction accomplished through the use of adapted tools must provide for the evolutionary expansion of the brain. Chemical evidence supports the idea that a significant amount of animal protein in hominin diets, accomplished through the use of tools, may have provided a critical impulse to the rapid evolutionary expansion of brain size in the hominin lineage (Scarre, 2005). I think that there was hunting here (see below) but also scavenging (a tradition which continues today even in the countryside of the UK), but amounts of food were processed way in excess of the ratio of sizes to prey in relation to chimps and baboons for example. Homo erectus, 1.8/1.7 million years ago, before moving out of Africa to Asia over 1.5 million years ago, had a small braincase compared to today but it was large enough to motivate and subsequently increase it and this fed into the variation and development of new tools. From this period we move to the evidence from Boxgrove in the UK, around 400,000 years ago, showing apparently modern attributes in sophisticated hunting and butchery techniques for large mammals as well as the organisation of society that presupposes such attributes. These are confirmed with the skilful butchery at Schoningen in Germany where wooden spears have also been found and the site dated to 350,000 to 400,000 years ago (in fact recent evidence has put back the use of hafted, stone spears back to half-a-million years ago - see below). Similar spears dated to around the same time have been found elsewhere in Germany and Clacton in the UK. Apart from these two areas, wooden tools have been found in two others; Kalambo Falls (Zambia) and Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Israel) all of them dated between 300,000 and 790,000 years ago.

I don't think that I'm courting controversy when I say that Jens is something of an admirer of Chris Knight's work. But Jens has to point out the obvious. If the first signs of symbolic culture according to Blood Relations are expressed 60,000 years ago, what about the previous 140,000 years ago of Homo Sapiens history? And, if we're going to be radical in looking at the development of humanity's history, if we are going to the root of things, what about the previous nearly two-million years of clear hominin development?

But just sticking with sapiens for the moment, who themselves went through a transition from archaic to modern forms, archaeologists Sally McBrearty and Alison Brooks are firmly against the various ideas around the 50/60,000 year-old "cultural revolutions". Even if these models are transferred back to Africa, there's a certain danger of them being "Eurocentric", i.e., that this "revolution" enabled the exit from Africa leaving the latter a backwater. I'm not saying that anyone is suggesting this idea here, but it's a danger. Much more important than this is their analysis that in such models of this or that "revolution", and there are a variety of them, there's an underestimation of the depth and breadth of the advances of the African Middle Stone Age, about a 100,000 to 200,000 years before these supposed "revolutions" occurred McBrearty and Brooks see "modern" advanced technologies already present during the period in Africa 200,000 years ago: advances in lithics, increased geographical range, specialised hunting and developing hunting strategies, fishing and shell-fishing, long-distance trade and the symbolic use of pigments (Chris Stringer, 2011, 124/5). And I think that from the bits of evidence above, these technological and cultural advances were themselves linked to previous species of homo, though obviously developed from them. I'm not proposing a simple linear, "upward" development of humanity; clearly species have come to a dead-end, died out, gone backwards or moved forward at a snail's pace only. Just in homo sapien's own development there have bright sparks of sudden, dramatic technological advances that have disappeared just as quickly: Omo Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia for example 160,000 years ago; Pinnacle Point in South Africa around the same time . But that lines of human - and that for me includes homo - progress are discernible from early on is evidential. In relation to ideas around the "60,000 year-old revolution" McBrearty has said that this "quest for the 'eureka' moment... obscures rather than illuminates events in the past".

I don't find the idea of a cultural revolution from a 60,000 year old sex-strike at all credible and the only scientific validation that Jens can give to it is the earlier expression at Blombus, around 80,000 years ago, of the use of red ochre. This evidence seems to me to contradict Knight's idea especially given the much earlier antiquity of the use of pigments and this even earlier use of them also contradicts Blood Relations. At Terra Amata in the south of France, pigments were being prepared and rounded for what could likely be body decoration for a whole range of colours, including purple (purple!) 300,000 years ago. Similar finds of the use of prepared ochre among Neanderthals around a similar time scale have been found in Becov in the Czech Republic and Ambrona in Spain. Ochre can be used for many things such as an adhesive, a tanning agent, insect repellent and it even has a medical use. But the preparations of it above suggest a symbolic value a good while prior to the appearance of Sapiens. This is the case in Terra Amata particularly where it was found in a shelter that had been cut, shaped and fitted, along with a hearth. Apart from no scientific evidence for it, the tale of Blood Relation is as good or as bad a story as any other that's made up. But for me it's a source of confusion. There's obviously a lot of interesting things in the book and Jens brings many of these out. But, along with its social Darwinist leanings, I also think that the conclusion that a "cultural revolution", a real leap forward for humanity, can come about on the basis of lies, deceit, division and the woman staying at home plotting and scheming against the absent males is a repugnant one. As Joan M. Gero says, quoted by Jens: "... exploitative women are assumed always to have wanted to trap men by one means or another, and indeed their conspiring to do so serves as the very basis for our species' development" and that for men "... only good sex, coyly metered out by calculating women, can keep them at home and interested in their offspring". Jens says in his first text that Knight's work "is precisely this effort to bring together genetic, archaeological and anthropological data in a 'theory of everything' for human evolution...". My opinion of his work is different from that.

I want to look at a number of recent archaeological and anthropological developments over the last dozen, 15 years or so in relation to the pre-Sapiens period and its cultural tendencies. And bear in mind, from an archaeological point of view, that the finest quality steel produced today, exposed to the atmosphere, will be dust in around twenty thousand years time.

- in Acheulean sites, as well as the functionally evolving, decidedly unmonotonous, artistically impressive "hand-axes", there have been the first finds of human introduced mineral pigment associated with Acheulean artefacts and animal bones at Kapthurin (Kenya) (Tryon and McBreaty, 2002) and at Duinefontein (South Africa) (Kathryn Cruze-Uribe et al. 2003). These are respectively dated by argon-argon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) as before 285,000 and 270,000 years ago. In the German lakeside site at Bilzingsleben, where there's no Acheulean tradition, a number of artefacts have been found. The site has been dated by electron spin resonance and uranium dating as sometime between 350,000 and 420,000 years ago. An elephant's tibia has been found at this site with deliberate carvings on it. Where these markings are and the form that they take do not suggest butchery and there's a "fan-like" design here. The lines are evenly spaced and replicate each other in length and it looks like they were made at a single sitting by a single tool (Scarre, 2005). There's no suggestion from the researchers, but to me this "design" of carved lines looks very similar to the carvings on the famous Blombos piece of 80,000 years ago. Just a speculative observation. But in its turn the carvings on the Blombus piece are, I think, repeated in abbreviated form in some of the ubiquitous "signs" of Upper Palaeolithic cave art (more on this below in relation to "Structualism"). At the Acheulean site of Berekhat Ram (Golan Heights) is what looks like a female figurine which has been incised with a sharp tool to produce grooves and lines. There's a deep incision which encircles the narrower, more rounded end, making out the head and neck. And two curved incisions that could delineate arms and these are readily distinguishable from natural lines (Francesco d'Errico and April Nowell, 2000). With the site dated to around 250,000 years ago, this, if it's been deliberately modified, would be the oldest known expression of representational art.

- Following on from the above regarding Neanderthals: research work led by Dolores Piperno at the archaeobiology laboratory at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington has shown traces of cooked food on the fossilised teeth of the samples of this extinct species that they studied. There were the remains of date palms, seeds and legumes, including peas and beans in teeth from three different sites from Iraq and Belgium. These are all foods associated with modern human diet and Neanderthals must have cooked these grains in order to increase their digestibility and nutritional value. The evidence is strong as the starch grains have been gelatinised and that only comes from being cooked in water. Similar tests revealed similar results with traces of cooked starch, some traced to water lilies that store carbohydrates and others from sorghum, a kind of grass. The full research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal. These samples were from about forty thousand years ago but separate research two years ago in South Africa by scientists at the University of Toronto and Hebrew University (2.4.12) have dated evidence of controlled fire for the use of cooking to one million years ago. There's a "live" discussion over the dating but the University of Boston has supported these views as well as other academic research.

Sticking with Homo Neanderthalis, Dr. Penny Spikins, an archaeologist at the University of York has published a book along with others (Spikins, Rutherford and Needham, 2010) that shows this species caring for the old, infirm and vulnerable. There's the example of the Shanidar Cave (Iraq) where a man with a withered arm, deformities on both legs and a crushed skull, probably blind in one eye, which all happened at an early age, living for 20 to 35 years old with his injuries. He must have been looked after by a group of people (and remains of medicinal plants are close by). Similarly, at Simos de los Huesos (Spain) a child of the species of Homo Heidelbergensis (an ancestor of both Sapiens. and Neanderthalis.n.) was found who suffered from lamboid single suture craniosynostosis, where parts of the skull fuse together, This child would have had a strange appearance, would have been weak and a probable reduced mental capacity. This child was looked after for at least five years of its life and possibly eight. It's very difficult to find evidence like this, but these cases show the pre-Sapiens existence of the desire to care for the sick and the weak.

- Research undertaken, in part by Jayne Wilkins of the University of Toronto with her "The Function of 500,000 Stone Points", pushes back the use of stone-tipped spears two-hundred-thousand years to half-a-million years ago (Science, 16/11/12). These spears were used by Homo Heidelbergenesis. The stone points were hafted to the wooden shafts and this is a composite technology that is a multi-step process requiring different raw materials and the skill of course to put them together. The stones were found at the Kathu Pan 1 site in the Northern Cape of South Africa towards the tail-end of the Acheulean. This suggests advanced hunting strategies and a cohesive society that has been in place for a long time. A "blogger", Robert H. Garrett, has criticised these finds and their dating in a bit of a rant. But there's no doubt that stone-tipped spears existed 300,000 years ago and I'm inclined to believe the evidence of Wilkins and the separate dating teams. Garrett the blogger also thinks that modern humans "exploded out of Africa 40 to 50 thousand years ago". There is clear evidence of wooden spears being used in hunting by Homo Heidelbergensis at Boxgrove in England and sites in Germany around 400,000 years ago and these peoples were certainly experts in stone.

- Work done by a team of archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig recently discovered bones butchered by stone tools from riverbed sediments in Dikika in the Afar region of Ethiopia. This butchery was undertaken by the ancestors of early humans and puts the date of the use of stone tools right back into the Australopithicus-human transition of 3.4 million years ago, one million earlier than previously known. The marks on the bones show the tools were used to slice and scrape meat from the carcasses and where the bones were crushed to extract the nutritional marrow inside. This find is contemporary in time and place with the pre-human ancestor known as "Lucy". Until this, the oldest evidence of stone tools was a haul of more than 2,600 stone flakes estimated to be 2.5 million years old discovered in another part of Ethiopia. These latter were shaped, probably by the first human species Homo Habilis, into sharp cutting edges whereas the Dikika stones were probably used as they were found, and then discarded. Detailed analyses of the Dikada cut marks show substantial differences with tooth or claw marks made by predators with one of them embedded with a small piece of stone (Nature, 12.8.10).

- Perhaps the most remarkable and potentially most profound analysis has been that of anthropologist Professor Henry Bunn of Wisconsin University based upon fieldwork in Tanzania. Addressing the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE), late last year, Bunn argued that our puny ancestors, Homo Habilis, two million years ago, were capable of ambushing herds of large animals after selecting individuals for the slaughter. We know that humans were omnivores and ate meat around 1.8 million years ago. Examining the animals that had been taken to the butchery site in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and "by studying the teeth in the skulls that were left, we could get a very precise indication of what type of meat these early humans were consuming. Were they bringing back creatures that were in their prime or were old or young? Then we compared our results with the kind of animals killed by lions and leopards". Bunn's analysis showed that humans preferred only adult animals in their prime, for example. Lions and leopards killed old, young and adults indiscriminately: "For the animals we looked at, we found a completely different pattern of meat preference between ancient humans and other carnivores, indicating that we were not just scavenging from lions and leopards and taking their leftovers. We were picking what we wanted and were killing it ourselves" (Bunn in The Guardian, 23.12.12). These energy-rich resources were used, along with other foodstuffs, to fuel our growing brains. Against ideas of "scavengers" and numbskull males, this research has major ramifications for the existence of society, specialised tools and the role of the male and female of the species at earlier and earlier dates.

All these finds and research are obviously open to questions, debates and criticisms but the general indication, the general tendency of the lines of research, is of much more complex and advanced archaic behaviours.

Hopping about through millennia in this rather schematic text, I want to take a brief look at the question of "structuralism" raised by Jens in his text and particularly in relation to the Upper Palaeolithic art of Europe. Jens makes a brief mention of structuralism and a couple of mentions of Claude Levi-Strauss, his work on myths in the Americas and how the name "structuralism" is given to his work. I can't comment on anything written by Christophe Darmangeat because I haven't read any of his stuff. But I do want to comment on structuralism, its basis, the much-ignored Max Raphael and prehistoric art.

I've read some stuff by Levi-Strauss and didn't find it easy to understand what he was saying. That could be due to my limitations but the anthropologist, David Lewis-Williams writes of him (2002) as being similar to Verlaine's dictum "pas de couleur, rien que la nuance" ("no colour, nothing but nuance"), and describes his America's opus on myths as "intimidating". Edmund Leach, the social anthropologist, wrote that Levi-Strauss was "difficult to understand... combin(ing) baffling complexity with overwhelming erudition" and suggested that his work was something of a confidence trick. Levi-Strauss is called a marxist in a way that a lot of people are called "marxist", that is, they are not marxist at all. After the war he was appointed the French cultural attaché to the US and returned to France in 1948. I don't think that there's any doubt that he made a contribution to the history of structuralism and while we owe a debt to his great works, it does seem that one can conclude whatever one wants from them.

Structuralism looks to be based on the works of the Italian scholar Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) who put forward the radical idea that the world is shaped by and in the shape of the mind and therefore there must be a universal language of the mind. During the period of rapid European expansion, Vico challenged the idea that the peoples met were "primitive" or had different minds from Europeans and insisted that their myths and stories of the past were "poetic" and metaphorical. He was roundly ignored of course and the idea of "primitive" minds, "primitive" art, etc., continues to this day (I briefly used the term myself during my "primitive period" - but I'm alright now). The notion of structure (with a small "s") was further developed by the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who, amazingly, didn't write a book but whose ideas are known from the notes amassed and kept by his students! Saussure dealt with language and its construction and, in line with the ideas of Vico, we can see how these eventually affected "explanations" around prehistoric art. Structualism thus examines phenomena, language, art, etc., at a given time. Levi-Strauss's structuralism is played out mainly on myths and is based on binary oppositions and mediation that make up a unifying thread, a hidden logic that runs through all human thought: up/down; male/female; culture/nature; life/death, etc., and the relations between them. For Levi-Strauss "the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (impossible if the contradiction is real)" and because myth ultimately fails "Thus the myth grows spiral-wise until the intellectual impulse that produced it is exhausted" (Levi-Strauss, 1963). I think that this is quite profound and the Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, Eugene d'Aquili, put a twist on his work and argued that myths are structured in major binary oppositions, one polarity being humankind, the other some supernatural force (David Lewis-Williams, 2002). But Vico, and in line with him, Levi-Strauss, defended the attempts of the global consciousness of the human mind against ideas of "primitivism" and the "savage mind". And Max Raphael also did so and took it further still.

Max Raphael is a long-forgotten and largely ignored structuralist who predates Levi-Strauss. Raphael was also called a "marxist". I don't know what his marxism was but he was a World War One deserter and before World War Two he was incarcerated by the French security forces and on release had to keep one step ahead of the Nazis, finally fleeing to America where he died soon after. Prior to his imprisonment in France he met with Rodin, Matisse and Picasso in Paris. Just like in the west, Raphael's work was ignored in the "socialist countries". I think that Raphael was greatly affected by the conflict of World War Two and this was a weight that bore on his analysis of prehistoric art a bit too much, in that he saw all the elements of capitalism and class struggle in Upper Palaeolithic society. However, I think that his analyses were going in the right direction and I agree with his description of the Upper Palaeolithic peoples, which he called "history-making people par excellence" (David Lewis-Williams, 2002). For Raphael, their art tells us nothing about the methods of production, tools, hunting techniques, etc., but it does tell of a social struggle through a structured code. He wrote one book, Prehistoric Cave Paintings, (1945), in which he insisted on the unity and structure of the various compositions from the caves that he had visited and studied in the Dordogne region of France. This was a revolutionary analysis against previous "specialists" who insisted that this art could only be addressed each in isolation from the other and which progressed from a crude to a higher form. It was, the experts said, the first primitive attempts to paint, it was "art for art's sake", "totemism", "hunting magic" - all of which it was not (in the main). Raphael made binary oppositions between whole "compositions" that underlay the construction of this art: bison/horses for example and saw order when others only remarked on the disorder of the art. These could be male/female contradictions, conflicts or oppositions, life against death, universal human meanings. Others took his work up and did some good stuff; Annette Laming-Emperaire (who didn't mention him) and Andre Leroi-Gourhan (who, despite good work, eventually applied his analyses schematically, applying it to one painting at a time for example, which failed miserably). But Laming-Emperaire particularly followed him in important areas, with the following taken from Lewis-Williams above:

• "questions the value of ethnographic parallels;
• argues that the difficulty of access to many subterranean images pointed to 'sacred' intentions;
• rejects any form of totemism;
• proposes that the mentality of Palaeolithic man was far more complex than is generally supposed; and
• argues that the images should be studied as planned compositions not as scatters of individual pictures painted 'one at a time according to the needs of the hunt'.

She took up his shift into symbolic meanings and argued his position that juxtapositions and superimpositions were part of deliberately planned compositions. The recurrence of themes, the predomination of certain species (they're not generally the diet, and "hunting magic" is not the issue here), the position in the caves all have to be taken into account. Raphael rejected ethnographic analogies and puts forward the idea that these paintings and engravings of beasts were not seen as animals but images with a pre-existing shared value and suggested that the images of parietal (cave wall) and portable art (carved objects) were representative of an already existing experience and vocabulary. One that McBreaty and Brooks above say was put together in Africa some time before; this was a "gradual assemblage of the modern human adaption". Expressed in this cave art there is a repertoire of certain animals and figures, an inherent meaning to these structures before the images were made; felines are an important part, as are animal "spirit-helpers" who accomplished different and difficult tasks and also "composite", altered beasts. This is not a sudden "creative explosion" but a flowering of part of a process of clarification. Portable objects and fragments of the animals, teeth, ivory, bone as well as quartz for example, possessed these supernatural powers; and these fragments, which later were pushed into cracks in and around the pictures and engravings on the cave wall, brought these spirits back to life. The entry into the "other world" of the cave and being "pulled" along by the panels of compositions is nowhere better illustrated than Lascaux where one is gradually sucked into an intense vortex of swirling beasts and designs. This is more than religious belief and ritual but a universal envelopment into the tiered cosmos and a consciousness that is fundamental to developing human society. I think that it's important to see these paintings as expressions of pre-existing ideas and this is strengthened by the fact that, in general, portable art, small carvings of animals and anthropomorphic figures, appear at least contemporary with or some time before the cave wall art - one would think that it would be the other way around. These small carved animal figures embodied the ideas of "spirituality" that existed within the peoples and was exemplified within the shamanisms. But I'm moving away from Raphael.

For him, there's no one single imposed structure to this art but an area of struggle is strongly suggested. One can only be stunned by the obvious beauty of these carvings, engravings and paintings. But these are not the expressions of idyllic contentment and the caves are the living theatres par excellence for the unfolding dramas that they depict. There are chains being rattled here, there is some sort of an unsatisfactory situation being expressed that has to be clarified to some extent by society. The comforting chains of primitive communism were a hindrance that, as Marx said, had to be broken. This cave art is quite possibly the visual expression that had developed over time of the breaking of these chains. I think that primitive communism was a struggle and not an ideal.

Raphael also studied the much underestimated geometric motifs, the "signs" or designs that, while being culturally specific in different areas of the world, contain many similarities. These geometric signs have also been interpreted mechanically in the "primitive mind" framework, which shows, as Vico also suggests, how ethnology can do as much harm as good. In the 1920's, psychologist and neurologist Heinrich Kluver, studied these precepts on subjects under laboratory conditions (Kluver, 1942). Incidentally, in studying the minds of subjects under conditions of altered states of consciousness, Kluver preceded the work of the US military and probably contributed to it. His work determined that these subjects described "motifs" or "signs", similar to those expressed in the Upper Palaeolithic caves and his findings were validated in later works: Horowitz, 1964; Richards, 1971 and Siegal, 1977 (see chapter 9 of Shamanism and the Ancient Mind , by James L. Pearson, 2002). These concepts, or "precepts", studied by Kluver et al, are common in dreams, hypnosis, from the effects of various drugs, some mental conditions, sensory deprivation, "near-death" experiences, and so on. In an effort to tie these signs to "hunting magic" the lined and pointed "signs" have been called "spears" and the occasional red ochre painted expulsions coming from the beast's heads or snouts are supposed to show a wounded or killed animal. But the majority of these animals look very alert, in the best of health in fact, strikingly vibrant or emotive, and the blood-like expulsions from around their snouts is completely reminiscent of the bleeding noses that occur in the shamanistic "trance-dance" first noted in the 1830's by French missionaries on their visit to South Africa (Daumas and Arbosset, 1846, 246/7). Similar nasal haemorrhages have also been noted in shamans dancing themselves into altered states of consciousness (with no drugs involved) among the San groups in Africa. The shaman use their blood as a spirit of potency but everyone, men, women and children, are involved in the dance around the fire and into altered states. American anthropologist Megan Biesele, who spent a lifetime with the Ju'hoansi San and speaks their language fluently, says in Lewis Williams above: "Though dreams may happen at any time, the central religious experience of the Ju'hoan life are consciously, and as a matter of course, approached through the avenue of trance. This trance dance involves everyone in society, those who enter trance and experience the power of the other world directly, and those to whom the benefits of the other world - healing and insight - are brought by the trancers". There are expressions in Upper Palaeolithic cave art of creatures being obviously speared - I've seen them myself in the caves of Cougnac and Peche-Merle in southern France. But these are strange, human-like creatures, once again suggesting expressions of shamanism and altered states of consciousness. Piercing is an element of shaman initiation as well as its expression of being "speared" to die and be re-born. This element was also taken up by Christianity.

Humans hunted. Humans also painted - so it's quite possible that "hunting magic" was something of a factor here or there, particularly with the ties that humanity has forged with animals. Even very recently the Mundari hunters of the White Nile region of Africa drew their intended prey on the ground before going on the hunt. On their return they poured the blood and hair of the kill on the image of the animal (J. L. Pearson, 2002). But this is not the diet being shown on the cave art of the Upper Palaeolithic where "The types of animal depicted respond to a logic quite different from a culinary one" (Clottes and Lewis-Williams, 1998, 78/79). Nor does it appear to be the case in North American rock art where the diet only appears in a minority of the depictions. In the shaman "trance-dance" the animal spirit is conjured up through an altered state of consciousness, where the dancers become the animal. On the cave walls of France and Spain the animals appear as living spirits of the tiered cosmos. The danger of seeing only "hunting magic" is that it could tie in with the idea that these peoples were merely adaptive, mechanical and primitive creatures1.

Back to the signs, which are much more than primitive expressions of everyday hunter-gatherer life, and which are sometimes superimposed on various beasts: they appear to connect compositions one to the other or form "panels" on their own account, as with dots, spirals and hand-prints. Raphael assigned male/female associations to them: males, lines, phallus, killing, death and feminine, sex, woman, life-giving, which he called "a tragic dualism". These signs are not just confined to the cave walls but to portable art as well where lines, dots, chevrons, etc., are carved on these figures and, again they are mechanically interpreted as being "primitive" expressions of fur or hair. This element of signs also applies to the parietal and portable therio-anthropic creatures. Raphael demonstrated, or tried to demonstrate, the relationship of one to the other of these expressions. My opinion is that these "signs" are the first development of a written language that was generally understood and it would be interesting if it was gender-based. We don't know what was being said here and maybe will never know but the whole complexity of Upper Palaeolithic art in the caves around France and Spain shows an important expression of a social movement and points to some of the contradictions that existed therein.

We talk of "validation", of "scientific validation" and it seems to me that this means different things to different people. But in the field of structuralism and related anthropology and, one must add here the question of belief systems and shamanism (which is not quite the same thing), validation doesn't come much better than the discoveries of Chauvet Cave2, made forty years after Raphael's book, with its compositions, signs, panels, etc., which though found decades after Lascaux (which Raphael studied in depth), pre-dated it by over sixteen thousand years. Chauvet confirmed and validated in spades much of his analysis. Max Raphael deserves more of our attention and Jens must be thanked for raising the issue of structuralism. Along with Lewis Binford's "impoverished" views, there's a certain amount of snobbish mockery from some quarters of palaeontology regarding the length of the Acheulean period and its slow development- over a million years. But the conflict expressed by Upper Palaeolithic cave art itself lasted around 25 millennia, from around 35 to around ten thousand years ago and into the complexities of the Neolithic. In fact this cave art, with, in part, its universal but independently expressed symbolism, persisted long after that as a global phenomenon, particularly with the rock art of the peoples of north America, Australia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Society survived, consolidated and advanced over this period and then moved forward at an accelerated pace. From a million years, hundreds of thousands of years, tens of millennia to an even faster development.

Looking back, for a section on structuralism I haven't structured this very well. There are many differences within shamanist and structuralist expressions, but I also think that there's a profound overlap.

My approach here is a bit cack-handed (again) given the first question is a couple of stages removed, but bear with me because there are important questions here of a defence of materialism as well as the mechanics of the transition from barbarian society to class society and the state. But first a slight diversion: Jens agrees with Christophe Darmangeat when he says that no text in the workers' movement has the "status of untouchable religious texts". I also agree with that but that doesn't at all preclude the defence of positions in the workers' movement. Jens goes on: "it is absolutely obvious that we cannot take 19th century texts as the last word and ignore the immense accumulation of ethnographic knowledge since then". Well, I would back Morgan's 19th century work as a whole, and in specifics in this case, against any ethnographic knowledge since then. Ethnographic observations can be very important but like the examination of sub-atomic particles, they affect the position of what's being looked at. By its very enquiry one alters the other - as it must do. Ethnographic evidence of the 19th century will tell you what the peoples observed were saying, thinking and doing in the 19th century, and ethnographic evidence of the 21st century will tell you what the peoples observed were doing, thinking and saying in the 21st century - and, in both cases, it will also tell you what the observers were thinking, doing and saying in the relative timescales. Later ethnographic "evidence" applied further back is not necessarily more accurate - in fact it's just as likely that it will be less so. Ethnographic evidence can bring important clarifications, but it has to be approached with extreme caution. Morgan turned ethnographic quantity into the greatest quality. And as Engels said, he made conclusions from his studies using terms that Marx himself might have used.

I've seen this specific criticism of Morgan's work that Jens relays from Darmangeat, a year or so ago, from an SWP member of the Radical Anthropology Group. I rather lazily moved on to something else when he describes Morgan in terms of a "capitalist speculator" (from memory, something like that). This is the specific "contradiction" of Morgan described by Darmangeat and, not having read him myself, I'll let Jens describe it: "according to Morgan the ‘punaluan’ system is supposed to represent one of the most primitive and social stages, and yet it is to be found in Hawaii, in as society which contains wealth, social inequality, an aristocratic social stratum, and which is on the point of evolving into a full-blown state and class society". My first reaction to this "contradiction" was so what? Where do you expect a ruling class to come from if not from the society that it grew up in? Of course the development towards the state came from existing society. There's nowhere else for it to come from. Let's look at the question in more detail from the point of view of the materialist Morgan.

The punaluan family (punalua, "intimate companion") is indeed extremely ancient and, with Morgan, I wouldn't like to attempt to put a date on it. It was world-wide, existing in Europe, Australia, Hawaii, Polynesia, South America and, possibly, Mongolia and China. Morgan could only hint at its beginnings: "It may be impossible to recover the event that led to its deliverance"... "it remained an experiment through an immense amount of time" until it became universal and the origins of which "belong to a remote antiquity... a very ancient condition of society" (Ancient Society OR Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilisation, Lewis Henry Morgan). It's not an invariable, monolithic system but has adaptations, variations and so on. Morgan details, over pages, the relationships of the punaluan, where peoples would address each other by their family relations rather than by name. Its greatest achievement, in laying the ground for the development of the gentes, was to be instrumental in helping to eliminate incestuous family relations, particularly between own brother and sister but also parents and their children and even first or second cousins: "the evils of which could not forever escape human observation" (LHM). As Marx put it in his Ethnographic Notes: "The larger the group recognising the marriage relations, the less the evil of close interbreeding ...". And Morgan again, "the gradual exclusion of own brothers and sisters... spreading slowly and then universal in the advancing tribes still in savagery... illustrates the principle of natural selection." There's no state here in the essence of this system, no ruling class to enforce it, its laws are organic. The change towards and into the punaluan is conflictual but radical, part of an "upward movement" as Morgan says. In punaluan relations there's a sisterhood of wives, marriage between groups of brothers and groups of sisters, which are not always taken up, while eliminating sexual relations between own brothers and sisters. Partners were held in common in the plural marriage and mother-right was strengthened. But most importantly, the punaluan laid the basis for what, in my opinion, is one of the most remarkable achievements, if not the most remarkable achievement of mankind up until then: the barbarian gentes. Morgan again: "Advancing to the civilised nations, there seems to have been an equal necessity for the ancient existence of the punaluan group among the remote ancestors of all such as possessed the gentile organisation - Greeks, Romans, German, Celts, Hebrew..." And "Such a remarkable institution of the gens would not be expected to spring into existence complete or to grow out of nothing". Just as the punaluan grew out of an even earlier form of relations, so the gentes grew out of the punaluan. And both of these forms of social organisation show an organic, collective memory and the further development of kinship ties.

The materialism of Morgan above, whatever ethnological observations have been made since, has to be defended here. And Morgan is absolutely specific on the question of the Hawaiian punaluan where he talks about the Hawaiian system containing the same elements for the germ of the gentes confined to the female branch of the custom, but: "The Hawaiians, although this group existed among them, did not rise to the conception of a gens" (my emphasis, Chapter III). So let's be clear here: the criticism of Morgan, made by Darmangeat, an SWP member of the Radical Anthropology Group and tacitly approved by Jens, is that, with Morgan's analysis, elements of the ruling class in Hawaii came from the punaluan system and this is a contradiction. But, as we see elsewhere, the superior form of the gentes, which was in turn a higher form of barbarian organisation than the punaluan, was transformed - not everywhere - into ruling elites, castes and classes. The Hawaiian punaluan did not transform into gentes, so where did the ruling class in Hawaii come from? There are only two possible explanations: either it came from the punaluan system, or it came from outer space.

In some cases elements of the punaluan persisted in the gentes that, themselves, weren't all incorporated into class society. As you would expect from an ancient and world-wide phenomenon, punaluan customs remained long into parts of civilisation in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia. Caesar notes their expression amongst some tribes of Britons, and Herodotus mentions them in the Massagetae, an Iranian nomadic confederation. Morgan is rightly wary of both witnesses here.

I don't believe that we should treat the "Old Masters" of the workers' movement with religious awe or, on the other hand, see them as "primitive" stumbling attempts to look at the development of humanity. But we should incorporate them, be very careful about the "what they didn't know at the time" type arguments and defend their materialism. I can't see any contradiction in ancient systems persisting into class society. Marx noted it in the system of the gentes persisting through the mighty Persian Empire. In civilisations all over the world ancient pre-civilised customs and forms of organisation persisted, attesting to their original scope and strength. The development into civilisation, class society and the state didn't happen through complete breaks and compartmentalised incremental steps signposted all the way. It's much more complex than that - as we can see with the gentes.

The punaluan groups contained the germs of and laid the basis for the development of the gentes, the two basic rules of which in the archaic form were:

1. Prohibition of intermarriage between brothers and sisters;
2. Descent in the female line (and descent from the same common ancestor).

The gentes "improved mental and moral qualities" (Morgan above) of humanity. Under the firmer establishment of mother-right, I would guess sometime in the period of the epipalaeolithic (sedentism), this organisation laid the basis for cultivation (agriculture proper), the development of the means of production (tools, ceramics, metallurgy, architecture, etc.), and contributed to the development of written language (barbarian art, in all its various forms from Europe to China, unsurpassed in beauty in my opinion, carried some of the "motifs" and "signs" of the Upper Palaeolithic parietal and portable art). It also laid the basis for private property, patriarchy, class society and the state and for Morgan's marxist conclusion that for society to survive, it must recreate the egalitarianism, the common households, the communistic tendencies and the democracy of the old gentes at a higher level: "It (a higher plane of society) will be the revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes".

In relation to the transformation of the gentes into class society, Marx summed up in three simple words the profound change in the Athenian gentes: "gentilis became civis". And Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus, his disturbing tale around the decomposition of imperial Rome, specifically pointed to the corruption of the mores of the old Roman gentes. Just like the "comforting chains" of primitive communism, the chains of the egalitarian gentes, had to be broken and from this came class society, written laws, government, human slavery, the "war of the rich against the poor", capitalism and the modern proletariat.

There was no one "civilisation" but many civilisations that, again, were universal but independent in time and space and culturally specific. And here there's no linear development either. Some forms of the barbarian gentes persisted a long way into civilisation, ironically even helping to save the Roman metropolis from the collapse of Roman imperialism. Different, changing forms of the gentes, with the absence of a state, were expressed throughout Europe and the Americas. I agree with Jens that one can't automatically tie in Morgan's social developments with those of production and I think that it's missing the point to try to do so. Morgan's 3 stages of Savagery, 3 stages of Barbarism and one of civilisation are all over the place, wildly inaccurate, out by over a three-quarters-of-million years in some places. That's not what is important about Morgan's book and Engels summary and additions to it in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. Both of which, whatever punctual errors they contain (and there's no error over the Hawaiian punaluan and the class of appropriators that arose from it), should be defended as materialist explanations of our past, of where we are today and the road to take.

Morgan's seven stages, however far out in time, do, as Jens says, provide a fundamental framework for the major stages of the development of society, even if they don't all tie into and agree with all other aspects of society. I don't think that discrepancies in time matter one bit. We, with our more up to date knowledge, can fill in the details that weren't known, while defending his overall analysis and materialism (the same applies to Engels). But with the relatively recent gentes and onwards, Morgan does tie in the developments in the means of production and the family systems. Obviously from here the development of the patriarchal family and civilisation, the growth of property isclosely connected to inventions, discoveries and to developments in social institutions, etc. There are a lot of silly criticisms aimed at Engels/Morgan's work particularly from the politically-correct police: they are wrong on brain sizes (archaeologists today, with all the technical equipment available to them, fight among themselves about brain sizes all the time); there's a contradiction here or there in this or that detail; they suggest "progress"; the question of the origins of human society is "unprovable"; they are anti-women, they don't appreciate 'battered women" and so on. I don't believe in the idea of determinism of fate, but it's patently clear that humanity has progressed, be it by fits and starts and setbacks and not in the "circumstances that would have been chosen". Our ancestors railed against the chains of primitive communism however comforting they were. And they broke the relatively secure chains of the gentes, , though the circumstances were far from determined or ideal. There's a whole wealth of detail, complexity and analysis that needs to be uncovered and made just about the transition from hunter-gatherers to a sedentary existence, let alone agriculture and the rise of the ruling appropriating class and the state. There's a lot that need to be clarified and deepened. But for me, Morgan and Engels will do for a good start and I embrace and defend the materialism of these "Old Masters". As far as their perspectives go we have gone from independent but universal developments of the family, civilisations and the state to a confrontation between the two major classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. While there's been a complexity in this transition from the barbarian gentes into class society, there's also been a clarification in the eventual confrontation of the two major classes. Can we revive at another level all that was positive about the antecedents of the working class - the barbarian gentes. Is it possible to revive the sexual and political egalitarianism and the warrior spirit that so marked this society; there's a lot of doubt around, a certain lack of confidence. I think that historically, when we look at the fight put up by the working class, the sacrifices and solidarity that it has expressed, to keep fighting after getting knocked down again and again, there's no question of its capacity to take on this decaying system. Even looking at some struggles going on in the last few years and going on today, we see a will and capacity to fight, sometimes in the most unfavourable circumstances, repression and worse. More and more, against the sexual division imposed by capitalism, we see that the solidarity of the sexes, that was evidenced in the gentes, needs to be revived at a higher level with the spirit of unity rather than duplicity being a way forward.

In The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State, Engels, talking about the "childhood of man", nearly hits the nail on the head, but misses it completely; he says (Chapter 1, stage 1): "Man still lived in his original habitat, in tropical or subtropical forests and was partially at least a tree-dweller, for otherwise his survival among huge beast of prey cannot be explained.". But there came a point, a definite point, where our ancestors could not climb back up into the trees, or if they could they could only do so clumsily, totally exposed to the faster, bigger, more ferocious big cats who were perfectly capable of leaping and clawing their way up a tree. These puny hominins would have been lucky to lose a leg; infants would have had no chance. The point came when we couldn't go back up the trees, so, in the face of the "huge beasts of prey" there must be another explanation for our survival. What could possibly have saved this puny, defenceless species stuck on the ground for any amount of millennia before the use of controlled fire and in the face of ferocious predators and the extremes of the elements? In my opinion the answer can only be a stronger society, a society of unprecedented solidarity and cooperation between the male and female of the species, particularly in the protection, care and raising of infants. The ape/ homo transition was a move to a completely new social organisation way above and beyond anything remotely achieved in the animal kingdom.

Engels fully appreciated this and if he overlooks it in The Origin..., he outlines it in The Part Played By Labour In The Transition From Ape To Man. Again, we don't have to dump the Old Masters here at a whim. In fact as far as the anatomical details are concerned we can fill in some elements of Engel's ape/homo transition to a fully bipedal species: apart from the great advantage of the better opposability of the fingers and thumbs , the foot with 22 bones in it had to rearrange itself. The pelvis, spine, shoulder, arms, ribcage, neck and chest also had to be modified. Even here at this early stage - especially here at this early stage - there is more than simple adaptations to environment and circumstances. These too are "history-making" humans. There's no other way to describe their survival and persistence against all the odds. Chris Knight's stone head-bangers - Homo Numbskullensis - would have rapidly bit the dust leaving behind only a few bone fragments and nothing else. The peoples of Jen's description, the females showing their own solidarity over here, and the males likewise over there, would have rapidly followed them into oblivion. There were probably many unsuitable and unsuited lines that died out. Only those that practiced cooperation, that had the basis for morality and the solidarity of the species could have possibly overcome the enormous obstacles to survival. This was, in my opinion, the hallmark of a successful transition carrying with it the conscious and unconscious instincts of the animal kingdom. As far as I can see genetics has done nothing to contradict this but seems to reinforce the idea of a fundamental cooperation.

The real missed opportunity of Engels and Marx, was not to see the revolutionary developments of the works of Alfred Russel Wallace (The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of 'Natural Selection') and Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex). Both of which explain the fundamental morality and solidarity of society and, through these means, the overturning, the reverse effect of natural selection at an early stage. But again, this is another area where we are in a position to join the dots. If Patrick Tort ( see the ICC’s review of The Darwin Effect1,) doesn't take into account the inestimable contribution of Wallace, who writes specifically of how humanity "escapes" from the influence of natural selection, then the ICC has done a great service in tying Tort's analysis of Darwin's work into the marxist framework in order to strengthen it. And within this framework, from the animal kingdom, came the development of maternal instincts and the defence of infants which could only have been effected through the solidarity of the male and female of the species. This was a "history-making" society in which controlled fire, and thus protection and the basis for further advances, would have been an outcome. Sexual selection, with the female choosing the male on the basis of the care and protection of infants - however long the association lasted, as Darwin said - would have further reinforced society. Against the view of Chris Knight and others I think that the elements of the beginnings of culture, society and morality are here from the outset.

A word on controlled fire because this innovation itself is quite obviously beyond simple adaptation and is rather the work of "history-makers". I think that this is the case for three reasons:

1. Protection and security.
2. Cooking.
3. Social.

The most accepted oldest use of controlled fire by Homo Erectus is at Bnot Ya'akove Bridge in Israel 800,000 years ago, and Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, one million years ago, where stone artefacts also show evidence of having been heated up. There is inconclusive evidence of the use of controlled fire at several East Africa sites even earlier. The protection afforded by fire against both predators and the elements can't be overestimated. This gave the hominins that used it an almost guaranteed security for the longer term. As Darwin said in Descent of Man..., "The art of making fire... is probably the greatest discovery, excepting language, ever made by man". It doesn't get much more history-making than that. And as Darwin went on to note, the discovery of the "art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous" further reinforces the major advance made at this early stage. As well as limiting the effects of harmful pathogens and toxins - many of the parasites, bacteria and viruses in tubers and raw meat would have been destroyed by fire - the time and energy to chew and digest was also reduced, as well as providing a wider diet and fuel for the growing brain. The third aspect from controlled fire is the reinforcement and development of society. Fire brings the community together by cooking for each other and visitors perhaps and possibly promoting or accelerating the use of language and communication through the easily imaginable social gatherings around the fire. The social aspect of the communal fire could fit in with the "Grandmother hypothesis" of Prof. Kristen Hawkes, though her models have been questioned by F. Kachel of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Anthropology. Also, looking at the low life expectancy of early Homo Erectus, one can wonder just how long grandmothers would have been actively involved rathr than needing looking after themselves by other members of society. However, it does seem intuitively reasonable that the grandmother could be a positive force and it doesn't take much of a leap of the imagination to take this further with wider members of the group extending care towards the infants (and towards the grandmothers) and thus building up greater empathy in both the short and longer (genetic) term. Of course, nothing in this precludes other females and males of different ages in the sharing of child care. For me this is very likely.

A point reached, a name, a being, a signpost from whence we came and where we were to go in the development of our species is Nariokotome Boy; one of the Homo Erectus species, he was found by Lake Turkana by Kamoya Kimeu, a member of the Leakey team, in Kenya in 1984. The nearly complete skeleton is about 1.6 to 1.8 million years old andhad the 8 to 13 year old male of the genus Homo:grown to his full height, he would have reached over six foot tall. There are differences with the skeletons of modern humans but the Smithsonian Institute sees him growing at a similar rate to modern humans with an adolescent growth spurt. His brain size indicates that it would have needed calories and protein to sustain it and, as an infant, he would have needed extended care. Close relatives of Nariokotome Boy rapidly spread finding their way from Africa to Dmanisi in Georgia some 1.8 million years ago2. Within the Acheulean stone tool-making tradition it would have taken this young lad some time to take in and develop the appropriate lithic technology, including knapping skills. The production of bifaces in particular implies analogical reasoning with long-term and working memory, i.e., these tools were conceptualised, a "mental template" was needed (Sophie A de Beaume, 2009). Even the preceding Oldowan tools required a number of steps for their production that's more complex than picking up a stone. There's a whole cognitive development within and from the Acheulean. This deliberate practice could only have been based on a level of conscious awareness and a society that is non-existent in the animal kingdom.

Nearly two million years on from Nariokotome Boy (and what preceded him), over a million years of really slow development, a step at a time (but a few steps a decade would take Erectus and his technology out of Africa and well into Asia and Europe); then hundreds of thousands of years of developments at many levels; Homo Sapiens, probably descended from the Homo species Heidelbergensis, left Africa between a hundred thousand and sixty thousand years ago and made a near global expansion; then tens of millennia through the Upper Palaeolithic and its visible depictions; then sedentism with mankind's remarkable achievement of the barbarian gentes into the Neolithic and the accelerated and complex movement into civilisation and class society. Many of the specifics of the Old Masters, Marx, Engels, Darwin, Wallace, Morgan, are wildly out of time and some just plain wrong. But I think we can say, in general, that all the major archaeological discoveries and all the positive anthropological research since, as well as those of genetics, have reinforced their positions and definitely their perspectives, as well as demonstrating the great antiquity of the beginnings of "culture" from the transition of ape to man.

Baboon. 1.3.13

d'Aquili, E. and Newberg, A. R. 1999. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Fortress Press.

Arbousset, Thomas and Daumas, Francois. 1836. In Constructing spiritual panoramas: order and chaos in southern African San rock art, by J. D. Lewis-Williams and D. G. Pearce. Rock Art Research Institute Volume 21, 41-61. Pietermaritzburg. December 2009.

de Beaume, Sophie A. 2009. ‘Technical Invention in the Palaeolithic’. Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution, 3-14.

Biesele, Megan. 1980. Women Like Meat: The Folklore and Foraging Ideology of the Kalahari Ju'hoani. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Binford, L. R. 1981. Bones, Ancient Man and Modern Myths. New York: Academic Press.

Binford, L. R. 1984. Faunal Remains at Klaisies River Mouth. Orlando: Academic Press. For the "Broad Spectrum Revolution" of Binford and Kent Flannery, see Wikipedia.

Bunn, H. T. & Krull, E. M. 1986. ‘Systematic butchery by Plio-Pleistocene hominids at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania’. Current Anthropology 27, 431-524.

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Baboon’s text is very wide-ranging and I cannot hope to do it justice in a brief reply. Moreover, he covers areas of which I myself am largely ignorant, and makes a number of points with which I agree, so I don’t want to run the risk of provoking a false debate.

That said, there are a number of aspects to his text which are open to criticism, and these are what I want to try to deal with here.

Baboon’s text falls roughly into three parts. In the first, he concentrates on homo erectus, and erectus’ place in the "emergence of the human": his argument is strongly critical of Chris Knight's notion of a "human revolution" some time over the last 1,000,000 years or so, adopting instead a much more gradualist approach. The second part deals with the relationship between prehistoric art, shamanism, and religious belief. It is a good deal more speculative, but this does not make it any less stimulating: speculation is itself a vital part of the scientific endeavour. The third part is the least successful in my view, and constitutes a defence not just of the method of Engels and Henry Lewis Morgan (with which I would agree), but also of their conclusions.

Baboon calls me "something of an admirer of Knight's work". He is quite right and there are two reasons for this: first, I have a great respect for the vast erudition evident in his book Blood Relations; second, and more importantly, he is trying to grapple with what to my mind is the key question of human evolution: what are the evolutionary processes driving the passage of homo from nature to culture, and how do these processes mark us today? One of the most interesting aspects of the book, in my view, is the use of myth in archaic society to try to delve into humanity's deep past. The immense importance of female menstruation and taboos related to blood and fire, and the way that Knight tries to tie this to a selfish-gene analysis of the behavioural adaptations leading to the emergence of modern man is really key to what Knight is trying to get at, and it's a shame that Baboon doesn't really deal with the questions of myth at all (in the original articles, Darmangeat's dismissal out of hand of the importance of myth as a historical source was one of the main objects of my critical assessment of his book).

In this sense, Knight's work is indeed an attempt to build a "theory of everything" and he himself is very explicit about this (you can hear the point mentioned in the podcasted interview with Knight on this website). In these days of academic over-specialisation and the general fragmentation of knowledge, this is no mean achievement.

That said, I can sympathise with Baboon's irritation at Knight's reaction to criticism. I think that he does in fact have some difficulty in integrating not just criticism but even plain questions which do not fit readily into his theoretical schema. To do Knight justice, this is probably a common, and very human failing amongst those who have spent their lives developing and defending a coherent theoretical framework (it's a critique which has been levelled more than once at the ICC, not always unjustly). The difficulty of thinking "outside the box" is by no means limited to Knight.

Baboon takes Knight to task for being a "Social Darwinist", but I think that this is both wrong and misses the point. Knight is certainly a Darwinist, and adheres to the neo-Darwinian synthesis, sometimes known as "selfish gene theory", which is today's general scientific consensus on the process of evolution, but this by no means makes him a social Darwinist. This is a vital distinction. Darwinism describes the process of evolution, driven by natural selection and the competition between genes, and therefore between individuals, to reproduce; social Darwinism is an attempt (largely and rightly discredited today), to transpose Darwinian principles into human society and thereby to justify the exploitation inherent in capitalism as a form of "the survival of the fittest". Hence Joan Gero's critique of Knight for seeing women as "manipulative" - which Baboon cites approvingly from my original article - is simply meaningless since, to be brief, it attributes intentionality to the evolutionary process, which has none. To say that, in every species, males and females compete for reproductive success, has no moral implications: it is merely a statement of fact, and in different species it leads to different behavioural types ranging from extreme female domination (the female praying mantis eats her partner) to extreme male domination (lions for example) with every possible nuance in between. Taking our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree as a starting point, Knight asks how evolution led us from the ultra-competitive male-dominated society of the apes, to human society based on cooperation and solidarity: it is precisely within this process that human consciousness emerges and that human intentionality replaces the blind movement of evolution. Moreover, the cultural phenomenon of what Knight calls the "sex strike" is by no means a matter of "manipulation" by women, since it is something in which all society participates. The fact that Gero transposes the prejudices of a 20th century feminist onto archaic humanity, and better still onto prehuman apes, merely demonstrates her own superficiality.

I think there is also a danger in Baboon's statement at the beginning of his text that the investigation of man's origins "shouldn't be an academic exercise but one that reinforces proletarian political and historical views against those of the bourgeoisie and strengthens our perspective of communism". This implies that what can only be the result of a scientific investigation should be determined by our political goals as communists. To accept such an idea runs counter to Engels' insistence on the "ruthless disinterestedness" of science, and undermines scientific endeavour as such.

Nonetheless, Baboon's objections to Knight's timescale are perfectly valid, and I confess to having my doubts as to the appropriateness of the term "revolution" for an evolutionary process which must have lasted several hundreds of thousands of years. The question of when, how and why human symbolic reasoning and consciousness emerged is enormously complex, still more because unequivocal evidence is so hard to come by. Baboon makes some convincing points about the emergence of culture in homo erectus, but is there any reason why Knight's model should not have its timescale extended by a million years or so?

The existence of apparently altruistic behaviour in animals has always been one of the great problems that selfish gene theory has had to confront. In general, it can be explained by genetic proximity: the more closely related animals are, the more likely they are to display altruism towards each other. Otherwise, the law of nature is competition, for both resources and the chance to reproduce. The question posed by the appearance of humanity is how this process of competition reversed itself so to speak, so that out of selfish-gene competition there emerged a species for which solidarity and cooperation are not just necessary for survival, but an inbuilt psychological need. Baboon in my view does not really try to answer this key question, and towards the end of his text he seems to want to solve the problem by making human evolution a conscious choice. Otherwise, how are we to construe this statement: "as far as the anatomical details are concerned we can fill in some elements of Engel's ape/homo transition to a fully bipedal species: apart from the great advantage of the better opposability of the fingers and thumbs , the foot with 22 bones in it had to rearrange itself. The pelvis, spine, shoulder, arms, ribcage, neck and chest also had to be modified. Even here at this early stage - especially here at this early stage - there is more than simple adaptations to environment and circumstances. These too are "history-making" humans. There's no other way to describe their survival and persistence against all the odds." Quite apart from the fact that adaptation driven by natural selection is anything but simple (we need only look at the bewildering diversity of its results in nature!), is Baboon really trying to suggest here that human beings "make history" by directing their own evolution from the apes?

To conclude, much as I value Baboon's text - from which I have learnt a good deal - I continue to think that Knight's approach is fundamentally valid: his model may or may not be correct, but he is asking the right questions in the right way, and that is the crucial thing.

Jens, 30/06/2013

Scientific advances and the decomposition of capitalism

The system's contradictions threaten the future of humanity

What does the present hold for the future of humanity? And is it still possible to talk of progress? What future is being prepared for our children and future generations? To answer these questions that everyone is asking today in such an anguished way, we must contrast two legacies of capitalism on which future society depends: on the one hand, the development of the productive forces which are in themselves promises for the future, notably the scientific discoveries and technological advances that the system is still capable of making; and on the other, the decomposition of the system, which threatens to destroy any progress and compromises the future of humanity itself, and which results inevitably from the contradictions of capitalism. The first decade of the 21st century shows that the phenomena resulting from the decomposition of the system, the putrefaction of a sick society[1] are growing in magnitude, opening the doors to the most irrational actions, to disasters of all kinds, generating a kind of “doomsday” atmosphere that is cynically exploited by states to create a reign of terror and thus maintain their grip on the increasingly discontented exploited.

There is a complete contrast, a permanent contradiction, between these two realities of today’s world which fully justifies the alternative posed a century ago by the revolutionary movement, notably by Rosa Luxemburg repeating the formula of Engels: either transition to socialism or a plunge into barbarism.

As for the positive potentialities that capitalism carries, this is classically, from the point of view of the labour movement, the development of productive forces, which constitutes the foundation for the building of a future human community. These forces principally consist of three elements, which are closely related and combined in the efficient transformation of nature by human labour: discoveries and scientific progress; the production of tools and increasingly sophisticated technological knowledge; and the workforce provided by the proletarians. All the knowledge accumulated in these productive forces will be usable in the construction of a new society; similarly, the workforce would be increased tenfold if the whole world population was integrated into production on the basis of human activity and creativity, instead of being increasingly rejected by capitalism. Under capitalism, the transformation, the mastery as the understanding of nature is not a goal in the service of humanity, the majority of which is excluded from the benefits of the development of these productive forces, but a blind dynamic in the service of profit. In this way, in capitalism, the majority of humanity is excluded from the benefits of the development of the productive forces.[2]

The scientific discoveries within capitalism have been numerous – not least just in the year 2012. The same real technological prowess has been paralleled in all areas, demonstrating the extent of human genius and knowledge.

Scientific advances: a hope for the future of humanity

We will illustrate our discussion with a just a few examples[3] and voluntarily leave aside many recent technological discoveries or achievements. In fact, our objective is not to be exhaustive but to illustrate how man has a growing set of opportunities concerning theoretical knowledge and technological advances, which would allow him to control nature of which he is a part, as much as his own body. The three examples of scientific discoveries that we will give touch on what is most fundamental in knowledge and which have been at the heart of the concerns of humanity since its origins:

• what is the matter that composes the universe and what is its origin;
• where does our species, the human species come from;
• how to cure disease.

A better understanding of elementary particles and the origins of the universe

Basic research, while not generally contributing to discoveries with an immediate application, is nevertheless an essential component of man’s knowledge of nature and, therefore, of his ability to penetrate its laws and properties. It is from this perspective that we must appreciate the recent demonstration of the existence of a new particle, very similar in many respects to what is called the Higgs Boson, after a relentless hunt via the experiments made at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, which mobilised 10,000 people to work on the LHC particle accelerator. The new particle has this unique property of giving elementary particles their mass, through their interaction with them. In fact, without it, all elements in the universe would weigh nothing. It also allows a more refined approach to understanding the birth and development of the universe. The existence of this new particle had been theoretically predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs (along with two Belgian physicists, Englert and Brout). Since then, the Higgs theory has been the subject of debates and developments in the scientific community that have led to the identification of the actual existence, not just theoretical, of the particle in question.

A potential ancestor of vertebrates that lived 500 million years ago

Illustrating the Darwinian and materialistic theory of evolution, two British and Canadian researchers have found evidence that, a hundred years after its discovery, one of the oldest animals that populated the planet, Pikaia gracilens was an ancestor of vertebrates. They examined fossils of the animal produced by different imaging techniques that allowed them to accurately describe its external and internal anatomy. With the help of a particular type of scanning microscope, they have carried out an elementary mapping of the chemical composition of fossils in carbon, sulphur, iron and phosphate. Referring to the chemical composition of present animals, they have then deduced the whereabouts of the various organs in Pikaia. Where is Pikaia on the tree of evolution? Taking into account other comparative factors with other related species found in other regions of the world, they conclude: “somewhere at the base of the chordate tree”, chordates being animals that possess a structure that prefigures the spine. Thus, this discovery allows the reconstruction one of the “missing links” in the chain of living species that have inhabited our planet for billions of years and which are our ancestors.

Towards a total cure for AIDS

Since the early 1980s, AIDS has become the leading epidemic scourge of the planet. Nearly 30 million people have already died, and despite the enormous resources deployed to fight it and the use of therapies, it still kills 1.8 million people a year,[4] far more than other particularly deadly infectious diseases such as malaria or measles. One of the most sinister aspects of this disease lies in the fact that a person who is the victim, even if they are not now condemned to a certain death as was the case at the beginning of the epidemic, remains infected throughout their life, which submits them, in addition to ostracism by part of the population, to extremely restrictive medications. And indeed, a major step in healing people infected with the AIDS virus (HIV) was taken this year by a team from the University of North Carolina. The drug which it tested on eight HIV positives has nothing to do with current antiretroviral treatments. By blocking HIV replication, these reduce the concentration of HIV in the body, to make it almost undetectable. But they do not eradicate it or heal the sick. Indeed, early in the infection, copies of the virus are hidden in some long-living white blood cells, thus escaping the action of the antiretrovirals. Hence, the idea of destroying once and for all these “reservoirs” of HIV through the action of a drug which would make the white blood cells in question recognisable by the immune system, which can then destroy them. The tested drug promisingly permits the detection of these “reservoirs”. It remains to ensure their destruction by the immune system, and even stimulate it for this purpose.

It should be immediately noted that current scientific discoveries and technological developments would occur in another type of society, especially in a communist society, where they would have already been surpassed. The capitalist mode of production based on profit, profitability, competition but also marked by chaos, irrationality, deterioration and alienation, and often the destruction of social relations, constitutes a serious obstacle to the development of the productive forces. Nevertheless, it remains a positive aspect of today's society that is still capable of producing such things, even if it significantly impedes their realisation. By contrast, decomposition as it stands today is specific to capitalism. The longer this continues, the more this decomposition will be an increasingly onerous burden on the future, the more it will obliterate it.

The morbid projection of capitalism threatens to engulf humanity

The reality of the everyday world is that the crisis of capitalism, which has reappeared and has been getting worse for decades, is the cause of the increasing difficulty of living; and it is because neither the bourgeoisie nor the working class have been able to open up a vision for society that social structures, social and political institutions, the ideological framework that allowed the bourgeoisie to maintain the cohesion of society, can only disintegrate further. Decomposition, in all its dimensions and current symptoms, shows all the morbid potential of this system that threatens to engulf humanity. Time does not favour the proletariat. In its fight against the bourgeoisie the proletariat is engaged in a “race against time”. The future of the human species depends on the outcome of the struggle between the two decisive classes in today’s society; on the proletariat's capacity to strike the decisive blows against its enemy before it is too late.

Behind the senseless killings lies the irrationality of capitalism that condemns us to live in a world that no longer makes sense

One of the most striking and dramatic signs of this decomposition recently has been the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (Connecticut), in the United States on December 14, 2012. As in previous tragedies, the horror of this massacre of 27 children and adults by a single person has something that chills the blood. However, this is the thirteenth event of its kind in this country just in the year 2012.

The massacre of innocent lives at school is a horrible reminder of the need for a complete revolutionary transformation of society. The spread and depth of the decomposition of capitalism can only lead to further acts as barbaric, senseless and violent. There is absolutely nothing in the capitalist system that can provide a rational explanation for such an act and still less reassure us about the future of such a society.

In the aftermath of the massacre at the Connecticut school, and as was also the case for other violent acts, all parts of the ruling class have raised questions: how is it possible that in Newtown, known as the “safest town in America,” a deranged individual found a way to unleash such horror and terror? Whatever the answers suggested, the first concern of the media is to protect the ruling class and to conceal its own murderous lifestyle. Bourgeois justice reduces the massacre to a strictly individual problem, suggesting indeed that the act of Adam Lanza, the killer, is explained by his choices, his personal desire to do evil, an inclination which is inherent in human nature. Denying all the progress made for many decades by scientific studies on human behaviour which allow us to better understand the complex interaction between the individual and society, Justice claims there is no explanation for the shooter’s action and advances as a solution the renewal of religious faith and collective prayer!

This is also how it justifies its proposal to imprison all those who display deviant behaviour, reducing their crimes to immoral acts. The nature of the violence cannot be understood if one dissociates the social and historical context in which it expresses itself precisely because it is based on relations of exploitation and oppression by the ruling class on the whole of society. Mental illnesses have long existed, but it appears that their expression has peaked in a society in a state of siege, dominated by “every man for himself,” by the disappearance of social solidarity and empathy. People think they need to protect themselves against ... what exactly? Everyone is considered a potential enemy and this is an image, a belief reinforced by the nationalism, militarism and imperialism of capitalist society.

Yet the ruling class presents itself as the guarantor of “rationality” and carefully avoids the question of its own responsibility in the propagation of antisocial behaviour. This is even more flagrant in the judgments by an American army court martial of soldiers who committed atrocious acts, as in the case of Robert Bales who slaughtered 16 Afghan civilians, including 9 children. Not a word, of course, about his consumption of alcohol, steroids and sleeping pills to calm his physical and emotional pain, or the fact that he had been sent to the one of the deadliest battlefields of Afghanistan for the fourth time!

And the United States is not the only country with such abominations: in China, for example, on the day of the massacre at Newtown, a man with a knife wounded 22 children in a school. Over the last 30 years, many similar acts have been committed. Among other countries, Germany for example, another country at the heart of capitalism, has also experienced such tragedies, like the massacre in Erfurt in 2007 and especially the shooting, which took place on March 11 2009 at the Albertville-Realschule college in Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg, which caused sixteen deaths including the perpetrator. This event shows many similarities with the drama of Newtown.

The international scope of the phenomenon shows that attributing the killings to the right to the possession of weapons is primarily media propaganda. In fact, there are more individuals who feel so overwhelmed, isolated, misunderstood, rejected, that the killings perpetrated by isolated individuals or attempted suicides among young people are growing more and more numerous; and the same fact of the development of this trend shows that faced with the difficulty they have to live, they see no perspective of change that would allow them to hope for a positive evolution in their conditions of life. Many paths can lead to such extremes: in children, the insufficient presence of parents because they are overworked and morally weakened or corroded by anxiety brought about by unemployment and insufficient income or, in adults, a feeling of hatred and accumulated frustrations faced with the feeling of the “failure” of their existence.

This causes such suffering and such disorders in some people that they hold the whole of society responsible and in particular the school, one of the key institutions through which the integration of youth in society is supposed to be accomplished, which previously normally opened up the possibility of finding a job but which now often only leads to unemployment. This institution, which has in fact become the place where many frustrations are created and as many open wounds, has also become a prime target, as a symbol of the blocked future, of personality and dreams destroyed. Blind murder in the school environment – followed by the suicide of the killers – appears as the only means to show their suffering and to affirm their existence.

Behind the campaign on posting police at school doors, the idea instilled is that of distrusting everyone, which aims to prevent or destroy any sense of solidarity within the working class. All this is the origin of Adam Lanza’s mother’s obsession with firearms and her habit of taking her children, including her son, to the shooting range. Nancy Lanza is a “survivalist”. The ideology of “survivalism” is based on “every man for himself” in a pre-and post-apocalyptic world. It promotes individual survival, making arms a means of protection in order to get hold of the few remaining resources. In anticipation of the collapse of the US economy, which for the survivalists is on the brink of happening, they store weapons, ammunition, food, and teach ways to survive in the wild. Is it so strange that Adam Lanza was invaded by a feeling of “no future”? On the other hand, this means that we can only have confidence in the state and in the repression it metes out as the guardian of the capitalist system, which is the cause of the violence and horrors that we live through. It is natural to feel horror and great emotion faced with the massacre of innocent victims. It is natural to seek explanations for completely irrational behaviour. This reflects a deep need to be reassured, to have control of one’s own destiny and to lead humanity out of an endless spiral of extreme violence. But the ruling class takes advantage of the population’s emotions and uses its need for confidence to get it to accept an ideology that only the state is capable of solving the problems of society.

In the United States, this is not only on the fundamentalist margins of the Republican camp, but in a whole series of religious ideologies, creationists and others who all exert their weight on the functioning of the bourgeoisie and on the consciences of the rest of the population.

It should be clear that it is the maintenance of a society divided into classes and the exploitation of capitalism, which are solely responsible for the development of irrational behaviour, which they are incapable of eliminating or even controlling.

Wherever you look, capitalism is automatically directed towards the pursuit of profit. The left may think that contemporary capitalism remains on a rational basis, but the present experience of contemporary society reveals a worsening decomposition, one part of this society expressed in a growing irrationality where material interests are no longer the only guide to its behaviour. The experiences of Columbine, Virginia Tech and all the other massacres perpetrated by isolated individuals show that it does not need a political motive to start randomly killing any of our fellow human beings.

The generalisation of violence: delinquency, organised crime, drug trafficking and the gangster morals of the bourgeoisie

A wave of delinquency and crime shook certain cities in Brazil during the months of October and November 2012. Greater São Paulo was particularly affected, with 260 people killed during this period, but other cities, where crime is generally much lower, were also the scene of violence.

The extent of the violence is hard to doubt, as well as its impact on the population: “The police kill as well as the criminals. It is a war that we saw every day on TV”, said the director of the NGO Conectas Direitos Humanos. This new calamity only adds to the general poverty of a large part of the population.

Among the explanations for this situation, some point to the prison system, which creates criminals instead of helping their rehabilitation. But the prison system is itself a product of society and in its image. In fact, no reform of the system, the prison system or any other, can stop the phenomenon of organised crime and police repression, and therefore of terror in all its forms. And the major problem is that it will only get worse with the global crisis of this system. This is readily observable in Brazil itself. Thirty years ago, São Paulo, which today appears as the capital of crime, was a quiet town.

In the case of Mexico, we see mafia groups and the government itself enrol elements belonging to the most impoverished sectors of the population for the war they are engaged in. Clashes between these groups, which hit the population indiscriminately, leave hundreds of victims on the list of what the government and mafias call “collateral damage.” The mafias profit from the misery caused by their activities related to the production and trade of drugs, in particular by converting the poor peasants, as was the case in Colombia in the 1990s, to drug production. In Mexico since 2006, almost 60,000 people have been killed, either by the bullets of the cartels or the official army; a majority of those killed were victims of the war between the drug cartels, but this does not diminish the responsibility of the state, whatever the government says. In fact, each mafia group emerged under the protection of a fraction of the bourgeoisie. The collusion of the mafias with the state structures allows them to “protect their investment” and their activities in general.[5]

The human disasters that cause the war of the drug traffickers are present throughout Latin America, but the violence exemplified in Brazil and Mexico is a global phenomenon that is far from alien to North America or Europe.

Large-scale industrial disasters

No region of the world is spared by these and their first victims are usually the workers. Their cause is not industrial development per se, but industrial development in the hands of capitalism in crisis, where everything must be sacrificed to the objectives of profitability faced with the global trade war.

The most typical case is the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, whose gravity is only surpassed by Chernobyl (one million “recognised” deaths between 1986 and 2004). On March 11, 2011, a massive tsunami flooded the east coast of Japan. More than 20,000 people were killed, thousands are today still missing. Countless people have lost their homes. The bourgeoisie is, in fact, directly responsible for the deadly magnitude of Fukushima. For the purposes of production, capitalism has concentrated populations and industries in an insane way. Faced with this nuclear disaster, the ruling class has once again shown its negligence. The evacuation of the population started too late and the safety zone was insufficient. The government mostly avoided a large-scale evacuation because it wanted to absolutely minimise the perception of the real risks involved.

In and around the nuclear plant, recorded radiation levels reached a fatal intensity. Shortly after the disaster, the Prime Minister launched a suicide-commando of workers, many of whom were unemployed or homeless people who had to undertake the task of reducing the level of radioactivity in the plant. More than 25 years earlier, at the time of Chernobyl, the Stalinist regime in the USSR, on the verge of collapse, found nothing else to do than to send a huge army force of recruits to fight the disaster. According to WHO, about 600,000 to 800,000 “liquidators” were sent in, and hundreds of thousands have died or fallen ill due to radiation. The government has never published reliable official figures.

In a country of high technology and overcrowding like Japan, the effects are even more dramatic for the population. The irreversible contamination of the air, land and oceans, clustering and storage of radioactive waste, the permanent sacrifice of protection and security on the altar of profitability cast a harsh light on the irrational dynamic of the system at the global level.

“Natural” disasters and their consequences

Certainly, we cannot blame capitalism for being the origin of an earthquake, cyclone or drought. On the other hand, we can blame it for the fact that all these cataclysms related to natural phenomena are transformed into huge social disasters, into massive human tragedies. Thus, capitalism has the technological means to make it capable of sending men to the moon, producing monstrous weapons capable of destroying the planet dozens of times over, but at the same time it can’t afford to protect people in countries exposed to natural disasters, which it could do by building dams, diverting rivers, building houses that can withstand earthquakes or hurricanes. This does not fit into the capitalist logic of profit, profitability and cost savings.

But the most dramatic threat hanging over humanity, which we cannot develop here, is ecological catastrophe.[6]

Ideological decomposition of capitalism

This decomposition is not limited solely to the fact that capitalism, despite all the development of science and technology, finds itself increasingly subject to the laws of nature, and unable to control the means it has put in place for its own development. It also reaches the economic foundations of the system but is reflected in all aspects of social life through an ideological decomposition of the values of the ruling class, which brings with it a collapse of all values making social life possible, particularly through a number of phenomena:

• the development of nihilistic ideologies, expressions of a society that is more and more being sucked into the void;
• the profusion of sects, the revival of religious obscurantism, even in some advanced countries, the rejection of coherent, constructed, rational thought, including in some parts of the “scientific” milieu, and which through the media takes a prominent place in stultifying advertisements, mindless shows;
• the development of racism and xenophobia, of fear and therefore of hate for the other, the neighbour;
• “every man for himself”, marginalisation, the atomisation of individuals, destruction of family relationships, exclusion of the elderly.

The decomposition of capitalism reflects the image of a world without a future, a world on the brink, which it tends to impose on society as a whole. It is the reign of violence, of the “resourceful individual,” of “every man for himself”, the exclusion that plagues the whole of society, especially its most disadvantaged, with their daily lot of despair and destruction: the unemployed who commit suicide to escape their misery, children being raped and killed, the elderly tortured and murdered for a few dollars ...

Only the proletariat can get society out of this impasse

Regarding the Copenhagen summit in late 2009,[7] it was said that it was dead, that the future had been sacrificed for the present. This system has as its only horizon profit (not always in the short term), but this is more and more restricted (as illustrated by speculation). It is going straight into the wall but it cannot do otherwise! Was the former Democratic candidate for United States president, Al Gore, sincere when, in 2005, he presented his documentary An Inconvenient Truth showing the dramatic effects of global warming on the planet? In any case, he was able to do so because he was no longer “in business” after eight years’ vice-presidency of the US. This means that these people who run the world can sometimes understand the dangers involved, but whatever their moral conscience, they continue in the same direction because they are prisoners of a system that goes towards catastrophe. There is a mechanism that exceeds human will and whose logic is stronger than the will of the most powerful politics. Today the bourgeoisie themselves have children who are concerned about the future ... The looming disasters will hit the poorest first, but the bourgeoisie will also be increasingly affected. The working class not only bears the future for itself, but for all of humanity, including the descendants of the current bourgeoisie.

After a period of prosperity when it was able to achieve a quantum leap in the productive forces and wealth of society, creating and unifying the global market, this system has since the beginning of the last century reached its own historical limits, marking its entry into its period of decadence. Balance sheet: two world wars, the crisis of 1929 and the new open crisis in the late 1960s, which does not cease to plunge the world into poverty.

Decadent capitalism is the permanent, insoluble, crisis of the system itself, which is a huge disaster for all humanity, as revealed in particular in the phenomenon of increasing impoverishment of millions of human beings reduced to indigence, to abject poverty.

By prolonging itself, the agony of capitalism gives a new quality to the extreme manifestations of decadence, giving rise to the phenomenon of the decomposition of the latter, a phenomenon visible in the last three decades.

Whereas in pre-capitalist societies the relations of production of a new society in the making could hatch within the old society in the process of collapsing (as was the case for capitalism which could develop within declining feudal society), this is no longer the case today.

The only possible alternative can be the building, on the ruins of the capitalist system, of another society – communist society – which, by ridding humanity of the blind laws of capitalism, can bring full satisfaction of human needs through a development and control of the productive forces that the laws of capitalism make impossible.

Just as it is the evolution of capitalism which is responsible for the current collapse into barbarism, this means that within it, the class that produces most of the wealth, which not only has no material interest in the perpetuation of this system but, on the contrary, is the main exploited class, alone is capable by its revolutionary struggle of drawing behind it the whole non-exploiting population, of reversing the present social order to pave the way for a truly human society: communism.

So far, the class struggles which, for forty years, have developed on all continents, have been able to prevent decadent capitalism from making its own response to the impasse of its economy: unleashing the ultimate form of its barbarism, a new world war. However, the working class is not yet able to affirm, through revolutionary struggles, its own perspective or to present to the rest of society the future it carries. It is precisely this momentary impasse, where, at present, neither the bourgeois nor the proletarian alternative can affirm themselves openly, which is the origin of this phenomenon of capitalist society rotting on its feet, which explains the particular degree now reached by the extreme barbarism of the decadence of this system. And this decomposition is set to grow further with the inexorable worsening of the economic crisis.

Against the distrust of all spread by the bourgeoisie, must be explicitly opposed the need for solidarity, which means trust between workers; against the lie of the state as “protector” must be opposed the denunciation of this organ which is the custodian of the system that causes social disintegration. Faced with the seriousness of the issues posed by this situation, the proletariat must be aware of the risk of annihilation that threatens it today The working class must take from all this decay that it suffers daily, in addition to the economic attacks against all its living conditions, an additional reason, a greater determination to develop its struggles and forge its class unity.

The current struggles of the world proletariat for its unity and class solidarity constitute the only glimmer of hope in the midst of this world in total putrefaction. They alone are able to prefigure an embryonic human community. It is the international generalisation of these struggles that will finally hatch the seeds of a new world, from which will emerge new social values.

Wim / Sílvio (February 2013)

This article is a continuation of the series on the international revolutionary wave of 1917-23 that we began in International Review no.139.1

Our aim, “in continuity with the many contributions we have already made, is an attempt to reconstruct this period using the testimonies and the stories of the protagonists themselves. We have devoted many pages to the revolutions in Russia and in Germany. Therefore, we are publishing this work on lesser-known experiences in various countries with the aim of giving a global perspective. Studying this period a little, one is astonished by the number of struggles that took place, by the magnitude of the echo from the revolution of 1917.”

Between 1914 and 1923, the world experienced the first demonstration that the capitalist system was decadent - a world war that involved the whole of Europe, had repercussions all over the world and caused about 20 million deaths. This blind slaughter was brought to end, not because the various governments willed it so but because of a revolutionary wave of the international proletariat which was joined by a huge number of exploited and repressed people throughout the world and whose spearhead was the Russian revolution of 1917.

Today we are experiencing another demonstration of capitalist decadence. This time it is taking the form of a cataclysmic worsening of the economic crisis (aggravated by an enormous environmental crisis, the multiplication of local imperialist wars and an alarming moral decline). In quite a few countries,2 we see early and still very limited attempts on the part of the proletariat and the oppressed to oppose its effects. Learning the lessons of the first revolutionary wave (1917-23), understanding the similarities with and the differences from the present situation, is indispensable. The future struggles will be much more powerful if they assimilate the lessons of this experience.

The revolutionary uprising that shook Brazil between 1917 and 1919, together with the movement in Argentina in 1919, is the most important expression in South America of the international revolutionary wave.

This uprising was the fruit of the situation in Brazil, as well as of the international situation, the war and especially of the solidarity with the Russian workers and the attempt to follow their example. It did not come out of nowhere; the objective and subjective conditions had matured in Brazil too during the previous twenty years. The aim of this article is to analyse this maturation and the unfolding of events between 1917 and 1919 in the Brazilian sub-continent. We do not pretend to be able to draw definitive conclusions and are open to debate that can elucidate questions, facts and analyses, aware as we are that there are really very few documents concerning the period. In the notes we will give references for those that we have been able to use.

1905-1917: episodic explosions of struggle in Brazil

The development of the international situation during the first ten years of the 20th century is marked by three factors:

• the long period of capitalism’s zenith draws to a close. In the words of Rosa Luxemburg, we are already “over the summit, which is on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society”;3

• the appearance of imperialism as an expression of the growing confrontation between the various capitalist powers, whose ambitions come up against a world market completely and unequally divided up between them. The only possible outcome of this, according to capitalist logic, is generalised war;

• the explosion of workers’ struggles with new forms and tendencies, which express the need to respond to this new situation; this is the period in which the mass strike appears, its most important expression being the Russian revolution of 1905.

What was Brazil’s position within this context? We cannot here develop an analysis of the formation of capitalism in this country. From the 16th century, under Portuguese domination, extensive export agriculture developed, based in the first place on the Brazilian “palo”,4 and then on sugar cane from the beginning of the 17th century. It was based on slave production and as the exploitation of the Indians soon failed, from the 17th century onwards, millions of Africans were brought in. Following Independence (1821), during the last third of the 19th century, sugar was replaced by coffee and rubber, which accelerated the development of capitalism and gave rise to the mass immigration of workers coming from Italy, Spain, Germany, etc. These provided the workforce that industry needed as it began to take off and they were also sent off to colonise this vast and largely unexplored territory.

One of the first demonstrations of the urban proletariat took place in 1798, with the famous “Conjura Bahiana”;5 it was led by the cutters in particular and the rebellion demanded the abolition of slavery and Brazilian independence, as well as making its corporate demands. Throughout the 19th century, small proletarian nuclei animated the struggle for a Republic6 and for the abolition of slavery. Of course, these demands were within the capitalist framework, tending to encourage its development and also prepare the conditions for the future proletarian revolution.

The wave of immigration at the end of the century made considerable changes to the composition of the Brazilian proletariat.7 Reacting against unbearable working conditions – 12 to 14 hour days, starvation wages, inhuman living conditions,8 disciplinary measures that included corporal punishment – strikes began to take place from 1903 onwards, the most important of which were those in Rio (1903) and de Santos (the port in São Paulo) in 1905, which spread spontaneously and turned into a general strike.

The Russian revolution of 1905 made a great impression: the First of May 1906 devoted a large number of meetings to it. In São Paulo a huge meeting was held in a theatre, in Rio there was a demonstration in a public square, in Santos there was a meeting in solidarity with the Russian revolutionaries.

At the same time revolutionary minorities, mainly immigrants, began to meet together. In 1908 these meetings gave birth to the Confederação Operaria Brasileira (COB - Brazilian Workers’ Federation), which regrouped the organisations of Rio and São Paulo and was strongly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism, taking its inspiration from the French CGT.9 The COB called for the First of May celebration, carried out an important work promoting popular culture (mainly on art, education and literature) and organised an energetic campaign against alcoholism, which was a devastating problem amongst the workers.

In 1907, the COB mobilised workers for the eight hour day. From May onwards the strikes grew in number in the São Paulo region. The mobilisation was a success: the stone cutters and joiners won a reduction in the working day. But this wave of struggles quickly receded because of the defeat of the dockers in Santos (who were demanding a 10 hour day), because the economy went into recession at the end of 1907 and due to an ever-present police repression, which literally filled the prisons with striking workers and expelled militant immigrants.

The retreat of the workers’ struggles did not bring about a retreat on the part of the most conscious minorities, who devoted themselves to debating the most important questions being discussed in Europe: the general strike, revolutionary syndicalism, the reasons behind reformism... The COB organised them and gave an internationalist orientation. It campaigned against the war between Brazil and Argentina and mobilised its members against the death sentence handed out to Ferrer Guardia by the Spanish government.10

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 actively mobilised the COB, with the anarchists to the fore. In March 1915 the Workers’ Federation of Rio de Janeiro created a People’s Agitation Commission against the war, and at the same time in São Paulo an International Commission against the war was formed. On First May 1915 anti-war demonstrations were organised in the two cities, in the midst of which the workers’ International was declared.

Brazilian anarchists tried to send delegates to a Congress against the war, to be held in Spain11 and, when the attempt failed, they organised an International Congress for Peace in Rio de Janeiro in October 1915.

Anarchists, socialists, syndicalists and militants from Argentina, Uruguay and Chile attended the Congress. A manifesto addressed to the proletariat of Europe and America was drawn up, calling for them to “bring down the bands of potentates and assassins who keep the people enslaved and suffering.” Only the proletariat could realise this appeal, because it alone “is able to act decisively against the war, because it provides the elements necessary for any conflict by forging the instruments of death and destruction and by providing the human element which serves as cannon fodder.” 12 The Congress decided to carry out systematic propaganda against nationalism, militarism and capitalism.

These efforts were stifled by the patriotic agitation that broke out in favour of Brazil’s engagement in the war. Many young people from every social class joined the army voluntarily in a general climate of national defence, which made international – or simply critical – positions very difficult as they came up against the energetic repression of voluntary groups of patriots who did not hesitate to use violence. The year 1916 was very hard for the proletariat and for internationalists, who were isolated and persecuted.

July 1917, the São Paulo Commune

This situation was not to last long however. Industry was developing particularly in the São Paulo region, thanks to the lucrative trade supplying all kinds of goods to the belligerents. But this prosperity had hardly any repercussions for the working masses. It was very clear that there were two São Paulos; that of the minority, full of luxury houses and streets boasting all kinds of ‘Belle Epoch’ inventions imported from Europe and that of the majority, consisting of insalubrious districts oozing misery.

As it was necessary to act quickly in order to get the maximum profit from the situation, the bosses brutally increased the pressure on the workers: “In Brazil, discontent grew due to the atrocious working conditions in the factories, comparable to those in Great Britain at the beginning of the industrial revolution: 14 hour days with no paid rest day, workers ate next to the machines; wages were inadequate and were not paid regularly; there was no social assistance or health care; workers’ meetings and organisations were prohibited; workers had no rights and there was no indemnity for work accidents’”.13 On top of this, a high level of inflation made itself felt, especially on basic necessities. All this was conducive to the development of indignation and discontent and was further encouraged by news of the February revolution in Russia that began to arrive from Europe. In May several strikes occurred in Rio, in particular one in the textile factory of Corcovado. On 11th May, 2,500 people managed to gather in the street, intending to march towards the factory and show their solidarity in spite of the fact that a few days earlier the chief of police had expressly banned workers’ meetings. The police tried to stop the demonstration and violent confrontations ensued.

At the beginning of July a mass strike broke out in the São Paulo region, which became known as “the São Paulo Commune”. It was a reaction against the intolerable cost of living and especially against the war. In several factories the bosses had imposed a “patriotic contribution”, a tax on wages to support Italy. This tax was rejected by the workers of the Cotonificio Crespi textile factory who demanded a 25% wage increase. The strike spread like wildfire in the industrial districts of São Paulo: Mooca, Bras, Ipiranga, Cambuci... More than 20,000 workers were on strike. A group of women produced a leaflet that they distributed among the soldiers, which said: “You should not persecute your brothers in misery. You too are part of the mass of the people. Hunger reigns in our homes and our children cry for bread. The bosses rely on the weapons they’ve given you to stifle our demands”.

At the beginning of July, a breach in the workers’ ranks seemed to have opened up: the workers of Nami Jaffet agreed to return to work with a 20% rise. But there were incidents in the following days that favoured the continuation of the strike: on 8th July a crowd of workers gathered in front of the gates of Cotonificio Crespi to help two miners who were about to be arrested by an army patrol. The police went to the aid of the latter and a fixed battle ensued. On the following day there were more confrontations, this time at the gates of the Antartica beer factory. After they had got the better of the police, the workers marched towards the Mariangela textile factory and succeeded in getting its employees to stop work. More incidents occurred over the following days as well as stoppages that swelled the strikers’ ranks.

On 11th July the news circulated that a worker had been beaten to death by the police. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back: “... news of the death of a worker killed near a textile factory in Bras was felt as a challenge to the dignity of the proletariat. It acted as a violent emotional discharge which stirred up energy. The burial of the victim gave rise to one of the most impressive popular demonstrations in São Paulo.”14 A huge mourning procession took place that gathered more than fifty thousand people. After the burial the crowd divided into two, one procession moving towards the house of the murdered worker in Bras, where a meeting was held. At the end of it the crowd looted a bakery. The news spread like wildfire and many food shops were plundered in several districts.

The other procession marched towards Praca da Se, where several speakers called for the struggle to continue. Those present decided to organise themselves into several processions marching towards the industrial districts, where they approached numerous workplaces and managed to convince the workers of Nami Jaffet to come out on strike again.

The workers’ determination and unity grew spectacularly: on the night from the 11th to 12th and throughout the following day, assemblies were held in the workers’ districts with the very determined participation of the anarchists; they decided to create workers’ leagues. On the 12th the gas plant went on strike and the trams stopped running. In spite of the military occupation, the city was in the hands of the strikers.

The strikers were in control in “the other São Paulo”; the police and army were unable to get in due to being harassed by the crowd that manned the barricades at all strategic points, where violent confrontations occurred. Transport and supplies were paralysed, the strikers organised food distribution giving priority to hospitals and workers’ families. Workers’ patrols were organised to prevent theft and looting and to warn the inhabitants of police or army incursions.

The workers’ leagues of the districts, whose delegates were elected by numerous factories in struggle and by members of the COB sections, held meetings to unify the demands. This resulted, on the 14th, in the formation of a committee for proletarian defence which put forward eleven demands, of which the main ones were the freeing of all those who had been jailed and an increase of 35% for the low waged and 25% for the rest. An influential section of the bosses understood that repression was not enough and that some concessions had to be made. A group of journalists offered to act as mediators for the government. The same day a general assembly was held with more than 50,000 participants who entered the old hippodrome of Mooca in massive processions. It decided for a return to work if the demands were accepted. On 15th and 16th numerous meetings took place between the journalists and the government, as well as with a committee made up of the main employers. The latter accepted a general increase of 20% and the governor ordered the immediate release of all prisoners. On the 16th several assemblies voted for a return to work. An enormous demonstration of 80,000 people celebrated what was felt to be a great victory. Some isolated strikes broke out here and there in July-August to force recalcitrant bosses to enforce the agreement.

The São Paulo strike immediately gave rise to solidarity in the state industry of Rio Grande do Sul and in the town of Curitiba, where there were massive demonstrations. The shock wave of solidarity was late arriving in Rio. But a furniture factory was paralysed by a strike on 18th July – when the struggle in São Paulo had already finished – and it gradually spread to other companies, so that on 23rd July there were 70,000 strikers from various sectors. In panic the bourgeoisie unleashed a violent repression; police charges against the demonstrators, arrests, closure of workers’ centres. However they were forced to make some concessions, which ended the strike on 2nd August.

Although it did not manage to spread, the São Paulo Commune had an important echo throughout Brazil. The first thing to note is that it took on all of the characteristics that Rosa Luxemburg identified in the 1905 Russian revolution as defining the new form taken by the workers’ struggle in capitalist decadence. It had not been previously prepared by any organisation but was the product of a maturation of consciousness, solidarity, indignation, combativity within the workers’ ranks. The development of the movement had created its own direct mass organisations and, without losing its economic aspect, it had quickly developed a political character, affirming that the proletariat is a class that openly confronts the state. “There is nothing to show that the July 1917 general strike was prepared, organised according to the classic schemas of union and workers’ federation delegates. It was directly produced by the despair into which the São Paulo proletariat had fallen, with starvation wages and exhausting labour. There was a permanent state of siege, workers’ associations were banned by the police, their meeting places closed and the surveillance of elements considered to be ‘agitators dangerous to the public peace’ was strict and permanent.”15

As we will see later, the Brazilian proletariat, encouraged by the triumph of the October revolution, threw itself into new struggles; however the São Paulo Commune was the high point of its participation in the international revolutionary wave of 1917-23. It did not so much rise up under the direct impulse of the October revolution, as contribute to creating the international conditions that prepared it. Between July and September 1917, not only was there the São Paulo Commune but also the August general strike in Spain, mass strikes and soldiers’ mutinies in Germany in September; all of which led Lenin to insist on the need for the proletariat to take power in Russia because “The end of September undoubtedly marked a great turning-point in the history of the Russian revolution and, to all appearances, of the world revolution as well.”16

The “appeal” of the Russian revolution

To return to the situation in Brazil, the bourgeoisie seems to have been determined to participate in the world war in spite of the social turbulence, not because it had direct economic or strategic interests but rather to count for something on the world imperialist stage, to give the impression that it was powerful and to win the respect of the other national players. It took the part of what it thought would be the winning side - that of the Entente (France and Great Britain), that had managed to get the decisive support of the United States – and took advantage of the bombing of a Brazilian ship by a German vessel to declare war on Germany.

War requires the brutalisation of the population, its transformation into a people acting irrationally. With this aim in view, patriotic committees were created in every district. The President of the Republic, Venceslau Bras, intervened personally to end a strike in a textile factory in Rio. Some unions collaborated by organising “patriotic battalions” that mobilised for the war. The church declared the war to be a “Holy Crusade” and its bishops made fiery sermons full of patriotic fervour. All workers’ organisations were declared illegal, their centres closed; they were subjected to ferocious and constant press campaigns that accused them of being “heartless foreigners”, “fanatics of German internationalism” and other niceties.

The impact of this violent nationalist campaign was limited because it quickly came up against the outbreak of the Russian revolution, which electrified numerous Brazilian workers, especially the anarchist groups which defended the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks with great enthusiasm. One of them, Astrogildo Reeira, published a collection of his writings in pamphlet form in February 1918 – A Revolucao Russa e a Imprensa – in which he defended the idea that “the Russian maximalists17 have not taken over in Russia. They are the immense majority of the Russian people, the only real and natural master of Russia. It is Kerenski and his gang who have really taken over the country abusively”. This author also defended the idea that the Russian revolution “is a libertarian revolution which opens the way to anarchism.”18

The 1917 Russian revolution had an enormous impact as an “appeal”, more at the level of the maturation of consciousness than an explosion of new struggles. The inevitable retreat after the São Paulo Commune, the realisation that gains won had been meagre even though the energy expended was great and, added to this, the pressure of patriotic ideology, which went hand in hand with the mobilisation for the war, had produced a degree of disorientation and reflection that was stimulated and accelerated by news of the Russian revolution.

The process of “subterranean maturation” – the workers appear to be passive while they are really assailed by a sea of doubts, questions and answers – gave rise to a movement of struggle. In August 1918 the strike at Cantareira (the company managing navigation between Rio and Niteroi) broke out. In July the company had given a wage increase only to those working on dry land. Feeling discriminated against, the sea-going personnel went on strike. Solidarity demonstrations took place immediately, mainly in Niteroi. On the night of 6th August, mounted police dispersed the crowd. On the 7th, soldiers of the 58th battalion of the army infantry, who had been sent to Niteroi, fraternised with the demonstrators and joined forces with them to confront the police and other army divisions. There were serious confrontations which ended in two deaths: a soldier of the 58th battalion and one civilian. Niteroi was flooded with other troops who managed to establish order. The dead were buried on the 8th, a huge crowd processed peacefully. The strike ended on the 9th.

Was the enthusiasm aroused by the Russian revolution, the development of demand struggles, the mutiny of an army battalion, a sufficient basis for initiating an insurrectionary revolutionary struggle? A group of revolutionaries in Rio answered this question affirmatively and began preparing the insurrection. Let’s examine the facts.

In November 1918, an almost total general strike took place in Rio de Janeiro, demanding an 8 hour day. The government dramatised the situation by claiming that this movement was an “attempt at insurrection”. Certainly the dynamic provided by the Russian revolution, and the joy and relief at the ending of the world war, gave an impulsion to the movement. Without doubt, in the last analysis any proletarian movement tends to unite the fight for immediate demands and for a revolutionary aspect. However the struggle in Rio did not spread to the whole country, it did not organise itself or show evidence of a revolutionary consciousness. But some groups in Rio believed that the moment had come for a revolutionary assault. Another factor raised spirits: one of the most serious sequels to the world war was a terrible epidemic of Spanish flu,19 which eventually reached Brazil. Rodriguez Aloes, the president of the Republic, succumbed to it before his investiture and had to be replaced by the vice-president.

A council claiming to organise the insurrection was formed in Rio de Janeiro, without even co-ordinating with the other large industrialised centres. The anarchists participated in it, as well as workers’ leaders from the textile industry, journalists, lawyers and a few military men. One of these, Jorge Elias Ajus, was no more than a spy who informed the authorities about the Council’s activities.

The Council held several meetings, which distributed tasks among the workers of the factories and the districts: to take over the presidential palace, to occupy the arms and ammunitions depots of the Commissariat of War, an assault on the ammunitions factory of Raelengo, an attack on the police station, occupation of the electricity plant and the telephone exchange. Twenty thousand workers were expected to carry out these actions, which were planned for the 18th.

On 17th November, Ajus made a dramatic gesture: “He stated that, as he was not on duty on the 18th, he could not participate in the movement and asked that the date of the insurrection be postponed to the 20th.”20 The organisers were shaken but, after a great deal of hesitation, they decided to stick to what they had decided. But during the last meeting, that was held on the 18th in the early afternoon, the police raided the premises and arrested most of the leaders.

On the 18th a strike broke out in the textile and metal industries but did not extend to other sectors and the leaflets circulating in the barracks calling for the soldiers to mutiny had little effect. The call to form “workers’ and soldiers’ committees” was a failure in the factories as well as in the barracks.

A large assembly was planned at Campo de San Cristobal, from where columns were to leave to occupy governmental and strategic buildings. There were no more than a thousand participants and they were rapidly surrounded by army and police troops. The other actions planned were not even engaged and the attempt to dynamite two electricity towers failed on the 19th.

The government imprisoned hundreds of workers, closed union offices and banned all demonstrations and meetings. The strike began to retreat on the 19th and the police and army went systematically to all striking factories to force the workers to return to work at bayonet point. The few attempts at resistance resulted in the death of three workers. On 25th November order reigned in the region.

1919-21 – Decline of the social unrest

In spite of this fiasco, the flame of workers’ combativity and consciousness burned still. The proletarian revolution in Hungary and the triumph of the revolutionary commune in Bavaria inspired great enthusiasm. Enormous demonstrations took place in lots of cities on 1st May. In Rio, São Paulo and Salvador da Bahia, resolutions were voted in support of the revolutionary struggle in Hungary, Bavaria and Russia.

In April 1919, the constant price increases gave rise to enormous discontent among the workers of many factories in and around São Paulo, in San Bernardo do Campo, Campinas and Santos. Some partial strikes took place here and there which formulated lists of demands but the most important occurrence was that general assemblies were held and that they decided to elect delegates to set up a co-ordination. This resulted in the constitution of a general workers’ council that organised the 1st May demonstration and drew up a series of demands; eight hour day, wage increases linked to inflation, abolition of the employment of children under 14 and of night work for women, reduction in the price of basic necessities and in rents. On 4th May the strike generalised.

The government and capitalists acted on two levels; on the one hand savage repression to prevent demonstrations or any possibility of workers getting together. They persecuted those thought to be the leaders, who were imprisoned without trial and deported to the distant reaches of Brazil. On the other hand the bosses and government showed that they were prepared to make concessions and, little by little, sowed all possible divisions; by increasing wages here, reducing the working day there, etc.

This tactic was successful. At the Santa Catalina pottery works the strike ended on 6th May on the promise of an eight hour day, the abolition of child labour and a wage increase. The Santos port workers went back to work on the 7th. On the 17th it was the turn of the national textile factory. The need to act in unison was never considered (to return to work only if the demands were granted to all), nor was the possibility of spreading the movement to Rio, although numerous strikes had broken out in the city since mid-May and they had adopted the same platform of demands. Once calm had been restored in the region of São Paulo, the strikes in the states of Rio, Bahia and the town of Recife, although massive, were eventually suffocated by the same tactic combining limited concessions and selective repression. A mass strike at Porto Allegre in September 1919 which began at the Light and Power Electricity Company with the demand for a salary increase and a reduction in working hours, won the solidarity of the bakers, the conductors, the telephone workers, etc. The bourgeoisie had recourse to provocation – bombs were placed to blow up some installations of the electricity company and the house of a strike-breaker – in order to prevent demonstrations and assemblies. On 7th September, a mass demonstration in Montevideo Square was attacked by the police and army, resulting in the death of a demonstrator. The next day numerous strikers were arrested by the police and union offices were closed down. The strike ended on 11th without any of its demands having been met.

Exhaustion, the absence of a clear revolutionary perspective and concessions granted in many sectors, brought about a general retreat. The government then intensified the repression; they unleashed a new wave of arrests and deportations, closed down the workers’ centres and facilitated disciplinary sackings. Parliament passed new repressive laws; any provocation sufficed – a bomb set off in the vicinity of known militants or in a place that they frequented – for these repressive laws to be applied. An attempt at a general strike in São Paulo in November 1919 failed miserably and the government took advantage of it to further ensnare the workers; it imprisoned all those who could be considered the leaders; they were then brutally tortured in Santos and São Paulo before being deported.

However the workers’ combativity and the general discontent had its swan song in March 1920; the strike at the Leopoldina Railways in Rio and that of Mogiana in the region of São Paulo.

The first took place on 7th March with a platform of demands to which the company responded by using public sector employees as “scabs”. The workers appealed for solidarity by going out onto the streets every day. On the 24th the first wave of strikes in support of them began: metal workers, taxi drivers, bakers, tailors, building workers... A general assembly was held which called for “all the working class to present its complaints and demands”. On the 25th the workers in the textile industry joined it. There was also a solidarity strike in the transport sector in Salvador and in towns of the Minas Gerais state.

The government responded with brutal repression and on 26th March threw more than 3,000 strikers in gaol. The latter were so full that they had to use the port warehouses to imprison the workers.

The movement began to retreat on 28th with the return to work of the workers in the textile industry. The reformist unionists acted as “mediators’’ for businesses to rehire “good workers” who had “at least five years’ experience”. The workers’ ranks were routed and on the 30th the struggle ended without having won any of its demands at all.

The second, which began on the railway line north of São Paulo, lasted from 20th March to 5th April and received the solidarity of the Workers’ Federation of São Paulo, which called for a general strike that was followed in part in the textile industry. The strikers occupied the stations and tried to explain their struggle to those travelling but the regional government was intractable. The occupied stations were attacked by troops which resulted in a number of violent confrontations, especially in Casa Branca where four workers were killed. A savage press campaign was orchestrated against the strikers together with a brutal repression which made numerous arrests and deportations not only of the workers but also of their wives and children. Men, women and children were imprisoned in barracks, where vicious corporal punishment was inflicted on them.

Some elements towards an assessment

The movements in Brazil between 1917 and 1920 were undeniably part of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 and can only be understood in the light of its lessons. The reader can consult two articles in which we have tried to make an assessment.21 Here we will restrict ourselves to putting forward a few lessons which come directly out of the experience in Brazil.

The fragmentation of the proletariat

The working class in Brazil was very fragmented. Most of the workers had immigrated recently and had very few ties with the native proletariat, who were very much bound to artisan production or were day labourers in the huge and totally isolated agricultural plantations.22 The immigrant workers were themselves divided into “language ghettos”, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc: “In São Paulo more Italian, with its various picturesque dialects, was spoken than Portuguese. The influence of the language and culture of the peninsula influenced all aspects of life in São Paulo.”23

The enormous dispersion of the industrial centres must also be considered. Rio and São Paulo never managed to synchronise their struggles. The São Paulo Commune spread to Rio only when the struggle was over. The attempt at insurrection in November 1918 remained limited to Rio without the possibility of common action being raised either with São Paulo or Santos.

To the dispersion of the proletariat must be added the weak echo that the workers’ agitation had within the peasant masses – who constituted the majority of the population – not only in far flung regions (Mato Grosso, Amazon, etc.) but also in those which endured conditions close to slavery in the coffee and cocoa plantations.24

The fragmentation of the proletariat and its isolation from the rest of the non-exploiting population gave an enormous margin of manoeuvre to the bourgeoisie which, after making some concessions, was able to unleash a brutal repression.

Illusions about capitalist development

The world war revealed the fact that capitalism, by creating the world market and so imposing its laws on every country in the world, had reached its historic limits. The Russian revolution showed that the destruction of capitalism was not only necessary but also possible.

However there were illusions about capitalism’s ability to go on developing.25 In Brazil there was an enormous area to colonise. As in other countries on the American continent, including the United States, the workers were very vulnerable to the “pioneer” mentality, to the illusion of “trying to make their fortune” and of making their way through agricultural colonisation or by discovering mineral deposits. Many immigrants saw their status as workers as a “transitory period” which would enable them to realise their dreams and turn them into wealthy colonialists. The defeat of the revolution in Germany and other countries, the growing isolation of Russia, the serious mistakes made by the Communist International on the possibility of capitalist development in the colonial or semi-colonial countries, encouraged this illusion.

The difficulty in developing an internationalist momentum

The Commune of São Paulo was a contribution of the Brazilian proletariat to the international maturation of the conditions that made the October revolution possible, at the same time as it was inspired by the latter. As in other countries, there existed the seeds of an internationalist attitude, which is the indispensable departure point for the working class revolution.

It is by placing itself on an internationalist terrain that the proletariat creates the basis for overthrowing the state in every country, but to do so it must fulfil three conditions: the unification of revolutionary minorities into a world party; the formation of workers’ councils, and their growing co-ordination on a world scale. Not all of these three conditions were present in Brazil:

1) contact with the Communist International was made very late, in 1921, when the revolutionary wave was receding and the CI was already in the process of degeneration;

2) the workers’ councils were never formed, except for some embryonic attempts by the São Paulo Commune in 1917 and during the mass strike of 1919;

3) links with the proletariat in other countries were practically non-existent.

The lack of theoretical reflection and the activism of the revolutionary minorities

The majority of the proletarian vanguard in Brazil was formed by militants of the internationalist anarchist tendency.26 To their credit they defended anti-war positions and they supported the Russian revolution and Bolshevism. They were the ones who, in 1919, on their own initiative and without having any contact with Moscow, created a Communist Party in Rio de Janeiro, which encouraged the COB to join the CI.

But they did not have an historic, theoretical and international stance: they based everything on “action” that was to bring the workers into struggle. Consequently, all their efforts were focused on the creation of unions and on calling for demonstrations and protest actions. Theoretical work to identify the aims of the struggle, the means to achieve them, the obstacles in its way and the conditions necessary for its development was completely neglected. In other words, they neglected all the elements that are indispensable for the movement to develop a clear consciousness, for it to see the direction it should take, to avoid the traps so as not to become the plaything of events and of the manoeuvres of an enemy – the bourgeoisie – that is politically the most intelligent exploiting class in history. This activism proved fatal. An important indication of this, as we have seen, was the failure of the insurrection in Rio in 1918, from which no lesson was drawn, as far as we know.

C.Mir, 24 November 2012.

The North African and Middle Eastern countries, hard-hit by the effects of the world economic crisis, were also shaken throughout 2011 by social unrest. The social events that followed the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi have still not been fully extinguished even today. Following these events, the governments and even the regimes of many Southern Mediterranean countries were compelled to change or step down.

These movements which went into history as the ‘Arab Spring’ are changing the entire political structure of North Africa and the Middle East. The global or regional bourgeoisies are trying to reestablish the political balance.

Evaluating the situation in Egypt and Syria, two countries where the social unrest and clashes aren't at an end yet, is important because there is a need for a correct analysis, especially given  the recent exacerbation of the Egyptian streets following the football provocation in the town of Port Said and the protests against the Muslim Brotherhood regime, and the increasing importance of the war in Syria with the escalating regional imperialist conflict in the background. This will necessarily mean we will have to also deal with other conflicts in this region of ever-heated  imperialist tensions, which rivals the economic crisis in the US and the EU for the spotlight of the world's attention. Thus in order to explain the meaning of what is going on in the Middle East, we will try to explain the aggressive foreign policy of Iran in the region, as well as Turkey's efforts to become a regional actor and the side it took in the Syrian war by supporting the opposition, as well as the attitudes of other countries.

We think it is necessary to be careful regarding certain points while evaluating the events. The most basic point is obviously to situate the events in world politics by looking at them from an internationalist perspective and determining more accurate and coherent positions on the basis of the class struggle. Another point is to define a general framework to show that the events taking place in the region were not revolutions, by determining the role of the working class in the events and its significance for the development of class struggle on an international level. We hope to resolve certain confusions about the events while doing this. Since the question of the revolution requires further clarification than can be attempted this article, however, we will not go into this topic in detail.

To begin with, it would be beneficial to state this: when the events erupting in Tunisia expanded to Egypt, we can say the workers took part in the events, as limited as this participation was. The ICC’s Turkish section published an article in the period the events were taking place.[1] In this article we evaluated how much and to what extent the workers took part in this movement. As we all know, the working class hasn't been able to gather these events around its own axis and develop a total struggle with its own demands.

On the other hand, en-Nahda (the Renaissance Party) led by Rashid al-Ghannushi won the National Constituent Assembly elections held on October 23rd 2011 in Tunisia. This party has roots in the same tradition as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Following the events which started in January 2011, all that really changed for the working class of Tunisia ended up being the party in government, and the exploitation of wage-labor continues for the workers. We can now see a similar process taking place in Egypt under the Morsi government..

To be able to look at the events closer and understand their background, it is necessary to analyze the positions of the more powerful imperialist states as well as the regional ones.  Countries such as Iran, Turkey and Israel can be characterized as the main regional powers; the stronger imperialist states that need to be considered, aside from the US obviously, are China and Russia, especially with regard to their relationship with Syria and the events in Egypt.

The Imperialist Tendencies of Iran and Turkey

Iran

Iran is asserting itself as a regional power in the Middle East and shapes its foreign policy accordingly. The most basic reason for this is its concern to be the strongest opponent of Israel in the region. For Israel is, without a doubt, the leading military power  of the region.  Iran builds all the relationships it develops on this basis. In order to strengthen its claims, it makes efforts to create a political, economic, and even  military unity based on Shiite identity. One of the most important developments regarding this Shiite unity is the fact that the Shiite Maliki is the Prime Minister in Iraq, and the largest power faction in post-Saddam Iraq is made up of the Shia. The others are the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Nosairi[2]-dominated Baath Party[3] which has been ruling Syria since 1963. Iran intends to use this sectarian unity led by itself against Israel as well as the US.

The Iranian economy is based on petrol and natural gas, and the state owns 80% of the economic investments. Iran owns 10% of the world’s oil  reserves, and 17% of the world’s natural gas reserves. Having such large oil reserves gives Iran the capability of maneuvering more easily compared to other developing economies of the region.

The internal contradictions inside the Iranian regime remain unresolved and no solution appears to be on the horizon. The most fundamental reason for this is the increased economic and political pressures the Iranian bourgeoisie has imposed on the working class in the pursuit of its imperialist aims. The movement taking place following the 2009 Iranian elections can well be described as the beginning of the social events making up the so-called Arab Spring. While there was an effort to portray those who took to the streets and filled Valiasr Square as the followers of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, it was the workers and unemployed youth who clashed with the bourgeoisie's forces of repression (the Revolutionary Guard) in the streets of Tehran. The events taking place following the 10th Presidential Elections might have started because of the claims that Ahmedinejad had rigged the elections, but the discontent was based on different issues and ran much deeper, and soon started developing an antagonistic, class quality. Afterwards, when Moussavi, a bourgeois reformist, made a call to stay away from the streets, his efforts weren't taken seriously by the masses and was even answered with slogans such as “Death to compromisers!”. The greatest weakness of this spontaneous movement was that it lacked class demands and that the workers participated in the movement mostly as individuals. The workers filling the streets as such didn't have the organs which would shape their class identity and enable them to express themselves politically. There was only a single strike, which was limited to a single factory[4]. This movement still has an important potential in Iran nevertheless, and can reappear in a period of instability or harsher economic conditions. The experience of the workers’ councils in 1979 in Iran when the Shah was overthrown still carries important lessons for the Iranian working class.

It is also necessary to go into Iran's relationship to world capitalism, and the role it assumes within it. We can say that Iran's closest partner is Russia. A strategic partnership, based primarily on arms and nuclear energy, exists between the two countries. Unlike China, Russia is an energy producer and would benefit, up to a point, from tension in the Middle East that caused oil prices to rise. The construction of nuclear plants in Iran brought to the minds of many the possibility of the regime making nuclear weapons rather than merely producing energy. While this has meant that Russia has had to take a certain distance from Iran on the issue of nuclear energy, Iran remains the most important arms customer and strategic partner for Russia. Iran has signed a twenty-year energy agreement with its other partner, China. The relationship between these two countries has an entirely economic basis. China buys 22% of Iranian oil.[5] Buying Iranian oil for cheaper prices compared to the world market, China supplies its economy with strategic energy products. This situation has a very significant role to play in the Chinese economy which is based on cheap production costs.

The nuclear investments, the efforts to create its own arms technology and recent military drills in the Straits of Hormuz all show that Iran wants to couple its economic strength in the region with military power. This means being ready for a regional or an international war and having a say in the Middle East thanks to its military strength. The drill in the Straits of Hormuz can be regarded as an exercise in self-assertion against the US, Israel and other Arab countries, demonstrating Iran's military might in the strategically important Straits of Hormuz through which passes 40% of the world’s oil. Despite the sanctions of the US and the EU against Iranian petroleum, Iran further roused inter-imperialist tensions by threatening to close down the Straits altogether. The oil that passes through the Straits is an alternative to Iranian and Russian petroleum, in other words a rival. Such a tactic also increases the strategic importance of the Russian oil pipelines north of the Black Sea. This race for power built on oil transfer plays a key role in developments in the Middle East.

The fact that Iran has significant oil reserves and the potential to dominate the Strait of Hormuz enables it to find partners internationally. That said, while it appears to be a state which is strengthening its influence, Iran’s internal class dynamics are giving its ruling class sleepless nights and will continue to do so.

Turkey

Turkey said nothing when these social movements first appeared in the Arab world. However, it is necessary to point out from the start that it was Turkey that managed to make most profit out of the period of instability created by the North African events.

An examination of the relationship between Turkey and Syria and the phases it went through will help us see the background of the position it is adopting today. With its policy of zero conflict in foreign policy initiated in 2005, Turkey aimed to increase its political and economic influence in the region and in this framework it tried to improve its relations with Syria, which traditionally had been poor. These two bourgeois states which had chronic problems previously took steps to resolve them during the last ten years. The issues of the past began with the question of Hatay[6], continued with the water problems of Syria due to the dams built on the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and the fact that the PKK[7] had its military camps in Syria for a long time.

The US occupation of first Afghanistan and then Iraq changed all the politics of the region. As the US  wantedTurkey to be more active in the region, a series of steps were taken to improve relations with Syria. State visits were organised, one of which occurred immediately after the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, an opponent of Syria. The Turkish bourgeoisie was to be the first to give international support to the Baath regime, which was isolated and in trouble regionally following the assassination. Evaluating the situation as an opportunity to increase its influence in the region, the Turkish bourgeoisie aided the Assad regime[8] in its days of hardship. Afterwards, relations were further improved with a series of diplomatic visits and gestures. This period was to witness the highest amount of diplomatic traffic between the two countries. Afterwards the “High Level Strategic Cooperation Council”, founded in 2009, included a series of economic, political and military joint investments and agreements. This council,  which saw the abolition of visa requirements between the two countries, joint military exercises, the application of a customs union and free trade, constituted a historic peak in the relations between Syria and Turkey. These agreements, creating the possibility of opening up into the Arab world, also gave Syria the possibility of opening up into Europe. Syria, an old enemy for Turkey, was a now a friend. This rapprochement was supposed to be based on a “Common history, common religion and common destiny”. This relationship lasted till the rebellion against Assad started. It was at this point that the Turkish bourgeoisie suddenly turned its back on Assad.

As the events in the Arab world spread to Syria, the Sunni Arab union against Assad came into being. Supporting this movement directly, Turkey left behind the happy days when the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Assad spent their family holidays together. The formation of the Syrian National Council in Istanbul and the military officers that formed the Free Syrian Army taking refuge in Turkey were both developments which clearly showed that Assad’s opponents were being openly supported by Turkey. The reason for the new policy was Turkey’s intention to maintain its position as a power with a say in the region by supporting the dissidents, who it seemed would certainly come to power, in order to maintain the level of relations achieved in the Assad era. Yet it soon turned out that with Russia and China openly defending the Syrian regime, Assad wasn't going to be removed easily. Turkey therefore changed course and started trying to increase international pressure rather than making statements directly targeting the Assad regime. In order to pave the way for a possible NATO operation, Turkey became an active participant of the Friends of Syria Conference[9] and acted together with the Arab League. All these developments demonstrate that while Turkey generally tends to pursue a foreign policy suiting an ally of the United States in the Middle East, it is capable of acting on its own from time to time and having a say in regional power politics.

Besides, we can say that by strengthening its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood[10], which makes up a large part of the opposition to Assad, as part of its plans regarding the future of Syria, Turkey also intends to strengthen its hand with the parties with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, which are certainly part of the same web.

As for the relationship between Turkey and Egypt: following Mubarak's fall from power, Turkey has made efforts to improve its relations with Egypt. We can say these relations have two aspects. The first one involves the imperialist tendencies of the Turkish bourgeoisie. The second is its effort to fill a role in the shaping of the new regime. Wanting to export its regime as well as its capital, the Turkish bourgeoisie is attempting to build ties to the Justice and Freedom Party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt through the ruling Justice and Development Party[11] in Turkey. When the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan took up an anti-Israel attitude over the “One Minute” crisis[12] and the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship which was part of a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, he gained a certain popularity in the Arab world. After these populist policies, Erdogan toured Egypt, Tunisia and Libya with seven ministers and three hundred businessmen. These visits were built on the basis of the Justice and Development Party's secular Islamic model and Tayyip Erdogan's most prominent message both in Egypt and in Tunisia was that of secular Islam, or a Muslim but secular state. And the world press following this visit served up Erdogan's model as an alternative to Saudi Wahhabism and the Iranian Shiite regime. This of course was no coincidence. Tayyip Erdogan had stressed secular Islam in his speech in Tunisia, saying “A person isn't secular, a state is”. And the US had specifically stated that a Muslim country such as Turkey had a regime which was both secular and also parliamentarian. We have evaluated this phenomenon in the past.[13] It is necessary to stress again though that Turkey is indeed trying to strengthen its hand in the Middle East and in Egypt by exporting its own regime against Saudi Wahhabism and the Iranian Shiite regime.

At the same time, Western imperialist powers want the region to gain stability as soon as possible and they want the formation of regimes fully coherent with liberal capitalism which would keep the regions markets open to them, and the most appropriate example at hand is the Turkish model.

Syria on the Road to Civil War

Commentators thought that when the social events in Tunisia spread to Egypt, it was going to be difficult for Baath-type regimes to stand against such movements. Syria was included in the countries to be hit next. Assad was expected to stand down faced with the opposition. This did not happen however. Assad attempted to suppress the demonstrations which erupted in the town of Dera and expanded to cities such as Hama and Humus, shed a river of blood and still keeps doing so. The events which begun on March 15th, 2011 are still going on and no matter how long Assad is expected to last, how and when these events will end remains uncertain.

In order to understand the events in Syria more clearly, we need a better understanding of the ethnic and religious groups in the country, since those who defend the Assad regime as well as those who oppose it define themselves by their ethnic or religious identities. 55% of the Syrian population is made up of Sunni Muslim Arabs, while the Alawi Shiite Arabs make up 15% of the population and Christian Arabs make up another 15%. 10% of the population is made up of Sunni Kurds and the remaining 5% is made up of Druze, Circassians and Yezidi. There are also over two million Palestinian and Iraqi refuges living in Syria.[14]

The greater part of the opposition to the Assad regime is made up of Sunni Arabs. As for the Kurds who are in a key position with regards to the political balance in Syria, some of them support Assad while some are part of the anti-Assad Syrian National Council. The other ethnic groups support the current regime because they fear for their future under a different regime. The Nosairi Arabs, another important stratum, is the ethnic group which has dominated the Baath regime in Syria for years.

The first initiative against the Baath regime gathered under the name of the Syrian National Council. This organization, formed in Istanbul on August 23rd 2011, contains all the opponents of the Assad regime aside from a fraction of the Kurds.[15] Following the split among the Kurds who are in the most strategic region of Syria in regard to Turkey, Iran and Southern Kurdistan, some of the Kurds have joined this council. The main body of the council is made up of Sunni Arabs, who as we said make up the largest portion of the opposition to Assad. If we remember the fact that Syria is the country where the Muslim Brotherhood is strongest after Egypt, we can say that it is they who are leading the movement at the moment. Actually, this is not the first Sunni Arab uprising against the regime. In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood rose up against Hafez el-Assad (Bashar el-Assad’s father) in a rebellion which was bloodily suppressed: between seventeen and forty thousand people were killed.[16] It is highly probable that this organization, which forms the crux of opposition to the Baath regime, will come to power following Assad’s overthrow. What makes this the strongest possibility is the fact that parties formed by the same organization in Tunisia and Egypt won the elections.

The General Secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Mohammad Riad al-Shafka, stated in an interview that they could cooperate with global and regional forces in the framework of mutual interests, explaining the opinion of his organization about what they might do following the fall of Assad. In the same interview, al-Shafka states that they can't compromise with Assad under any conditions and there is a need to overthrow the regime, demonstrating that the war will continue to become more and more violent.

The Baath regime is supported by a non-negligible degree of ethnic and religious groups compared to the opposition groups. The largest of these is the Nosairi. The Assad regime is socially made up of this sect. The entire elite stratum, military structure and bureaucracy of the regime consists of Nosairi Arabs. In this sense, the Nosairi are in a privileged position in Syria. This privilege is both political and economic. An end to the Baath regime will put the Nosairi in a difficult situation: since members of this sect have had political power for so long and have maintained it using totalitarian methods, this has created deep enmities and will result in a hunt for revenge. For this reason, they will want to prevent Assad from standing down, even if he wants to do so himself. As for the Christians, the Druze, the Circassians and the Yezidi, they supported the Baath regime out of fear of the Islamic fundamentalism of the most likely candidates to replace Assad. However this situation could change overnight.

The Kurds are in a different position, and this position is a trump card of the Assad regime in the current reality. Until last May, the Syrian Kurds were forced to live in such conditions that they did not even have official medical clinics and their political representatives were imprisoned by the Baath regime. Although they had rebelled against the regime from time to time, these movements had either been suppressed or died down. An example of this was the events in the Kurdish town of Qamislo in 2004.[17] At the same time, different imperialist powers tried to use the Kurds against the Baath regime from time to time. Following the beginning of the events, Assad changed his attitude towards the Kurds and released Kurdish political prisoners. He even declared that an autonomous Kurdish government was to be founded in the North. There are two reasons why Assad became so important for the Kurds. The first is that eleven Kurdish parties formed the Kurdish National Assembly of Syria with the support of Massoud Barzani.[18] This pushed Assad to reaching an agreement with the Kurds, but also pushed some Kurds towards integrating into the Sunni Arab opposition. In response to this, Assad gave an amnesty to the leader of the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Unity Party (PYD) [19], Salih Muslim, enabling him to organize and speak at pro-government demonstrations. In short, Assad attempted to gain an influence over the Kurds and divide the opposition, and he partially succeeded.

However, the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) decided to boycott the elections on February 26th and announced that there was nothing for the Kurds in the new constitution. It can be said that through the direct or indirect representatives of the Syrian Kurdish bourgeoisie outside Syria, the KDP and the PKK are pushing to gain ground in the Kurdish region of Syria which is in a key location. Barzani wants to dominate the Syrian Kurds through the Syrian Kurdish National Assembly. And the PKK is  determining the politics of the Syrian Kurds through its relationship with the PYD, and is at the same time gaining strategic ground both against the Turkish bourgeoisie and its own Kurdish rivals, in particular Barzani.. It seems like the Kurds who had been oppressed by the Baath regime for years and years will have a role in determining its eventual future.

It is also necessary to mention Syria-Israel relations. The first point is regarding the Golan Heights[20]. The second is regarding the military presence and the political influence of Syria in Lebanon. These two bourgeois states have been at war over these two issues for years. Yet the beginning of the events in Syria complicated the relationship between Israel and Syria, since it is now said that the Israelis are negotiating with the Baath regime they were fighting against before, out of fear of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power. Israel is extremely uncomfortable with Islamic regimes gaining power in the Middle East, and its attitude to the Assad regime has been significantly affected by this situation.

It is also necessary to look at how and to what extent the working class participated in the events in Syria. Of course, the working class did make up a significant portion of the masses in the streets. Yet the problem is that the Syrian workers did not even manage to put forward a reaction such as the one expressed by the workers in Tunisia or Egypt. Tragically, the Syrian workers expressed themselves through their ethnic or sectarian identities within the events. This puts in perspective what the events in Syria were based on. On the day the observers of the Arab League were to arrive in Syria, the opposition made a call for a general strike and later, aside from this call which was largely ignored, there actually was a one day general strike, yet again under the influence of the opposition. This was described as an act of civil disobedience: those who wanted the Assad regime gone did not have any class based demands. Other than that, pointing out that the participation of the employers and the shopkeepers in the strike was as great as that of the workers, if not more, should demonstrate clearly enough the nature of this strike. Aside from this the Syrian workers lacked any collective presence in the events whatsoever and sided either with Assad or with the opposition as individuals.

Although Bashar el-Assad declared there were to be reforms and elections, the new constitutional referendum was boycotted by the opposition, which shows that either the Baath regime will go down or the opposition will be suppressed following a bloody war. For there seems to be no room for reconciliation between the two bourgeois fractions. On the other hand, the Russian and Chinese support which Assad enjoys seems to have blocked a possible UN intervention. The fact that Russia, with its military base and arms market, and China with its energy investments, protect Syria on the international level is obviously related to the interests of these two states. Taking these relationships into consideration, we can say that Assad's departure won't be like that of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Although it was thought that with similar regimes going down one by one faced with mass demonstrations, Assad's regime would soon be torn into pieces, now it seems clear that in line with the desires of the Nosairi elite, Assad won't go down easily and the intensity of the civil war will escalate.

Egypt: A Market for Cheap Labor

Following the departure of Mubarak, it was announced that a new era had begun for Egypt. Yet Egypt, home to one of the most populous working classes of North Africa and the Middle East, remains unstable. The identity crisis of the bourgeoisie remains unresolved in Egypt and has heated up following the Port Said provocation and the more recent protests against Morsi.

The most important reason the North African events spread to Egypt was that the unemployment rate and the numbers of the population living under the poverty line were very high, as they were in Tunisia. 20% of Egypt's population lives in poverty, more than 10% of the population is unemployed according to the official figures, and more than 90% of the unemployed are young people. The official figures do not exactly reflect the truth, and the real rates are higher given wide-spread unofficial employment in countries like Egypt. The Egyptian economy already had some basic accumulation problems and has been further weakened by the deepening of the world economic crisis, so that growing unemployment and poverty rates paved the way for the downfall of Mubarak. The Egyptian bourgeoisie had tried to solve these structural problems previously with the Open Door Policy it adopted in 1974. By doing this, it took the road of closing the deficits created by its own capital with foreign investments. Yet due to political instability, it has not been able to improve matters much. Today, foreign capital investments remain as low as 6% of Egypt's GNP. By worsening unemployment and poverty, the Egyptian economy has further increased the burdens on the back of the working class and this resulted in the revolt of 2011. Nevertheless this situation didn't result in a generalized class movement.

The working class of Egypt is the most massive in the region. The existence of this mass of workers with such an important potential for struggle created an exceptional situation when they entered the movement, but the workers didn't take to the streets saying we will overthrow the bourgeoisie. This movement was limited to strikes of about fifty thousand workers and did not manage to decisively mark the Tahrir demonstrations with the seal of  the working class. Nor did they manage to escape from the axis of limited economic demands coupled with pro-democratic bourgeois demands. Of course there was no communist political intervention in the events. Obviously, even if there had been it is hard to say the result would be different; however it could have made a contribution towards the generalization of demonstrations  and strikes.

What will the economic policies of the post-Mubarak era be based on? Without a doubt the Egyptian bourgeoisie promises the working class another paradise of exploitation. As we have stated above, the Egyptian economy suffers from structural problems in the accumulation of capital. For a full integration into the world economy, only one thing is necessary: the extraction of surplus value. The process of shifting from agricultural to industrial production which begun in the Mubarak era will without a doubt continue when the new balance of forces within the bourgeoisie is established. Thanks to its cheap labor potential, the bourgeoisie will base the Egyptian economy on the intense exploitation of labour. The chances of the Egyptian economy to attract investments will increase if it offers cheap labor to the world labour market.

Another point which needs to be covered is the political competition among the bourgeois forces in Egypt. When the opponents of the Mubarak regime took over Tahrir Square, most of the bourgeois movements of today did not exist. These elements started appearing only after Mubarak's position was weakened. The greatest political structure in post-Mubarak Egypt is undoubtedly the Muslim Brotherhood. Another significant force is the radical Islamist Salafi movement with its increasing influence. It has to be said that the army still remains a major power in Egypt’s political life. In the first elections after Mubarak’s downfall, the Justice and Freedom Party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood got one third of the votes,,followed by the Salafiyyah who managed to get 25%. The Salafi are the more radical of the two Islamist organizations and a great majority of their votes came from the countryside. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, is more moderate and pragmatic politically and economically. They even formed alliances with some secular parties in the elections. This shows that a bourgeois political force ready to serve untamed capitalism in foreign policy and internally alike in every way imaginable will be determining the lives of the Egyptian workers.

Workers ambiguously and irregularly raise their heads in the tides of Egyptian politics. One such incident was the recent events in Port Said. The provocation made during a football game resulted in the deaths of seventy four people. Pitting the fans of the two teams against each other -  even letting men armed with sticks and knives into the stadium and then locking the gates -  the police wanted to take revenge on the fan group Ultras Ahlawy[21]. Many scenarios were talked about in the wake of the provocation, and all the bourgeois forces tried to make use of the situation for their own interests. Voices saying the army should give power to the civilians were raised following the events. Yet it would be naïve to miss the fact that the real motive behind the provocation was the fight for power. Although the slogan of the Ultras Ahlawy who led the clashes against what happened  -  “A crime has been committed against the revolution and the revolutionaries. This crime will neither stop nor intimidate the revolutionaries!” -  sounds very much anti-system, the demands of the movement were limited and did not meet with a full-fledged echo in other parts of the working class.[22] There were calls for a general strike against the brutal repression of the demonstration at the hands of the army and among the demands raised in this call for a strike were “the Military Council to step down and justice for the martyrs of Egypt”. This situation, also reflected in the slogans in the streets, showed that nothing had changed for the working class.

In the aftermath of the demonstrations against Morsi’s assumption of special powers, we can say that this movement seems to have ended in a similarly confused way. The initial protests against Morsi, centred in Cairo in late 2012, certainly reflected very widespread social discontent as well as deepening distrust in the solutions offered by the new Muslim Brotherhood government. But the protest movement seems to have been dominated by the secular opposition, raising the spectre of the working class being caught up in a clash between rival bourgeois factions. The situation was further complicated by reports of strikes in the textile centre of Mahalla and of a mass meeting which declared the ‘independence’ of Mahalla from the Muslim Brotherhood regime. Some reports even talked about the “Mahalla Soviet”. But here again the influence of the bourgeois democratic opposition could be seen in the singing of the national anthem at the end of the meeting, while the call for a symbolic ‘independence’ reflects a lack of perspective: workers who are fighting for their own demands need above all to generalize their struggle to workers across the rest of the country, not cut themselves off behind the walls of localism.     Nevertheless, the working class in Egypt retains a huge potential for struggle and has not suffered any major defeat at the hands of its class enemy. It is very far from having spoken its last words in the situation.

To Conclude...

Although we said at the beginning that we won't go into this question in depth, we nonetheless feel it necessary to make a few comments on the question of the revolution. The social transformation we call the revolution is not merely a change of current governments or regimes; the revolution means the entire economic structure, the means of production tied to the relations of production and the form of property completely changing in every respect; it means the working class declaring its power in the form of the workers’ councils. Yet such a transformation has not taken place following the events in North Africa. Thus, referring to these movements as revolutions means either that there is no understanding of what the struggle of the proletariat is, or it betrays an ideologically bourgeois approach to the matter.

This is not to say that these movements were without value for the proletarian struggle. The events in North Africa inspired hundreds of thousands of proletarians in all parts of the world, from Spain to the United States, from Israel to Russia and from China to France. Besides, despite all its shortcomings, the experience of the struggle has been immensely important for the working classes of Tunisia and Egypt.

One of the most significant developments of the last year has been the development of social conflicts inside Israel and Palestine. The massive street demonstrations in Israel in the summer of 2011 were provoked by social questions such as housing, as the demands of both the war economy and the economic crisis are making daily life increasingly difficult for the majority of the Israeli population. The protests explicitly identified themselves with the movements in the Arab world, raising slogans like “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu are all the same” and calling for affordable housing for both Jews and Arabs. Despite difficulties in posing the thorny questions of the war and the occupation, this movement clearly contained the embryo of internationalism[23]. And it has been echoed more recently by the demonstrations and strikes against the rising cost of living on the West Bank, where Palestinian workers, unemployed, pupils and students ruthlessly criticised the Palestinian authorities and clashed with the Palestinian police. For all their weaknesses, these movements have reaffirmed that struggling around social and class issues is the premise for the unification of the proletariat across and against national, imperialist conflicts[24].

But this is more a promise for the future: the weight of nationalism remains extremely strong and will have been reinforced among both Israeli and Palestinian populations by the recent military attacks on Gaza. So while the inspiration and the experience coming from these struggles are in themselves victories of sorts , the practical and the immediate situation for the proletariat of North Africa and the Middle East can be described as nothing less than grim.

On both sides of the conflict between the regime and the opposition in Syria are the local bourgeois powers, but also the regional and global bourgeois powers with their political relations and interests. The current reality pushes the US, EU, Israel and Turkey into one camp while Russia and China seem to be taking positions with Iran and Shiite Iraq. And while this is the general perspective, all the forces aside from Iran and Israel might change attitudes if their interests demand it. Besides, Israel's overtures towards the Syrian government show that even these states are flexible to an extent.

This picture shows that the regional and global powers are preparing for a ruthless imperialist conflict. In Syria today, proletarians are tearing each others’ guts out by their division into sects and ethnicities. There is no doubt that this is the characteristic that all wars in this region will assume. On the other hand, the formation of a regime with strong Islamic tendencies is highly possible in Egypt and this can further inflame the situation in the region and yet another shift of the conflicting bourgeois forces might happen again. Nevertheless, while all these conflicts taking place or to take place in the future represent destruction for the working class, the potential for the destruction of this parasitic system feeding on the exploitation of wage-labor remains intact. The working class needs international struggle. And this is precisely where we've tried to express ourselves and attempted to contribute to the class struggle.

Ekrem

In the first part of this article, published in the International Review n°150 [61], we considered the role of women in the emergence of culture among our species Homo sapiens, on the basis of a critique of Christophe Darmangeat’s book Le communisme primitif n’est plus ce qu’il était.[1] In this second, and final, part we propose to examine what we feel to be one of the most fundamental problems posed by primitive communist society: how did the evolution of the genus Homo produce a species whose very survival is based on mutual confidence and solidarity, and more particularly what was woman’s role in this process. In doing so, we are basing ourselves substantially on the work of the British anthropologist Chris Knight.

Women’s role in primitive society

What then, according to Christophe Darmangeat, is women’s role and situation in primitive society? We cannot here repeat the entire argument contained in his book illustrated by a solid knowledge of the ethnography and striking examples. We will limit ourselves to a summary of its conclusions.

A first observation, which might seem to be obvious but in reality is not, is that the sexual division of labour is a universal constant of human society until the appearance of capitalism. Capitalism remains a fundamentally patriarchal society, based on exploitation (which includes sexual exploitation, the sex industry being one of the most profitable in modern times). Nonetheless, by directly exploiting the labour of women workers, and by developing machinery to a point where physical strength no longer plays a significant part in the labour process, capitalism has destroyed the division between “masculine” and “feminine” roles in social labour; in doing so, it has laid the foundations for a true liberation of women in communist society.[2]

The situation of women varies enormously among the different primitive societies which anthropologists have been able to study: in some cases, women suffer from an oppression which can bear more than a passing resemblance to class oppression, while in others they benefit not only from social esteem, but, hold a real social power. Where such power exists, it is based on the possession of rights over production, amplified by society’s religious and ritual life: to take just one example, Bronislav Malinowski (in Argonauts of the Western Pacific) tells us that the women of the Trobriand Islands not only have a monopoly on the work of horticulture (of great importance in the islands’ economy), but also over certain forms of magic, including those considered to be the most dangerous.[3]

However, while the sexual division of labour can cover very different situations from one people and mode of existence to another, there is one rule which is applied almost without exception: everywhere, it is men alone who have the right to bear arms and who therefore have a monopoly of warfare. As a result, they also have a monopoly over what one might call “foreign relations”. As social inequality began to develop, first with food storage then from the Neolithic onwards with full-blown agriculture and the emergence of private property and social classes, this specific situation of men allowed them little by little to dominate the whole of social life. In this sense, Engels was doubtless right to say in Origins of the family that “The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male”.[4] Nonetheless, one needs to avoid a too schematic view here, since even the first civilisations are far from being homogeneous in this respect. A comparative study of several early civilisations[5] shows us a broad spectrum: while the situation of women in meso-American and Inca societies was an unenviable one, amongst the Yoruba in Africa for example, women not only owned property and exercised a monopoly over certain industries, they also carried out large-scale trade on their own account and could even command diplomatic and military expeditions.

The question of mythology

Up to now we have remained, with Darmangeat, in the domain of the studies of “historically known” primitive societies (in the sense that they have been described by literate societies, from the ancient world to modern anthropology). This can teach us about the situation since the invention of writing in about the 4th millenium BCE, at best. But what are we to say of the 200,000 years of anatomically modern Man’s existence that precede it? How are we to understand the crucial moment when nature gave way to culture as the main determining factor in human behaviour, and how are genetic and cultural elements combined in human society? To answer this question, a purely empirical view of known societies is clearly inadequate.

One of the striking aspects of the study of early civilisations cited above, is that however varied the image they present of women’s condition, they all have legends which refer to women as chiefs, sometimes identified with goddesses. All of them have also seen a decline in women’s situation over time. One is tempted to see a general rule here: the further we go back in time, the more social authority women possess.

This impression is confirmed if we consider more primitive societies. On every continent, we find similar or even identical myths: once, women held power but since then men have stolen it, and now it is they who rule. Everywhere, women’s power is associated with the most powerful magic of all: the magic based on women’s monthly cycle and their menstrual blood, even to the point where we often encounter male rituals where men imitate menstruation.[6]

What can we deduce from this ubiquitous reality? Can we conclude that it represents a historical reality, and that there once existed a first society where women had a leading, if not necessarily a ruling role?

For Darmangeat, the answer is unequivocal and negative: “the idea that when myths speak of the past, they necessarily speak of a real past, however deformed, is an extremely bold, not to say untenable hypothesis” (p167). Myths “tell stories, which have meaning only in relation to the present situation which they have the function of justifying. The past of which they speak is invented solely in order to fulfil this objective” (p173).

This argument poses two problems.

The first, is that Darmangeat claims to be a marxist who remains faithful to Engels’ method while updating his conclusions. Yet while Engels’ Origins of the family is based extensively on Lewis Morgan, it also attributes considerable importance to the work of the Swiss jurist Johann Bachofen, who was the first to use mythology as a basis for understanding the relations between the sexes in the distant past. According to Darmangeat, Engels “is clearly cautious in his adoption of Bachofen’s theory of matriarchy (...) although he abstains from criticising the Swiss jurist’s theory, Engels only gives it a very qualified support. There is nothing surprising here: given his own analysis of the reasons for one sex’s domination of the other, Engels could hardly accept that before the development of private property, men’s domination over women was preceded by women’s domination over men; he envisaged the prehistoric relation between the sexes much more as a certain form of equality” (pp150-151).

Engels may well have remained prudent as to Bachofen’s conclusions, but he has no hesitation as to Bachofen’s method, which uses mythological analysis to uncover historical reality: in his Preface to the 4th edition of Origins of the family (in other words, having had plenty of time to restructure his work and include any corrections he thought necessary), Engels takes up Bachofen’s analysis of the Orestes myth (in particular the version of the Greek tragedian Aescylus), and concludes with this comment: “This new but undoubtedly correct interpretation of the Oresteia is one of the best and finest passages in the whole book (...) [Bachofen] was the first to replace the vague phrases about some unknown primitive state of sexual promiscuity by proofs of the following facts: that abundant traces survive in old classical literature of a state prior to monogamy among the Greeks and Asiatics when not only did a man have sexual intercourse with several women, but a woman with several men, without offending against morality (...) Bachofen did not put these statements as clearly as this, for he was hindered by his mysticism. But he proved them; and in 1861 that was a real revolution”.

This brings us to the second issue: how are myths to be explained? Myths are part of material reality just as much as any other phenomenon: they are therefore themselves determined by that reality. Darmangeat proposes two possible determinants: either they are simply “stories” invented by men to justify their domination over women, or they are irrational: “During prehistory, and for a long time afterwards, natural or social phenomena were universally and inevitably interpreted through a magico-religious prism. This does not mean that rational thought did not exist; it means that, even when it was present, it was always combined to a certain extent with an irrational discourse: the two were not perceived as different, still less as incompatible” (p319). What more need be said? All these myths built around the mysterious powers conferred by menstrual blood and the moon, not to mention women’s original power, are merely “irrational” and so outside the field of scientific explanation. At best, Darmangeat is ready to accept that myths must satisfy the human mind’s requirement of coherence;[7] but if that is the case, then unless we accept a purely idealist explanation in the original sense of the term, we must answer another question: where does this “demand” come from? For Lévi-Strauss, the source of the remarkable unity of primitive societies’ myths throughout the Americas was to be found in the innate structure of the human mind, hence the name “structuralism” given to his work and theory;[8] Darmangeat’s “requirement of coherence” looks like a pale reflection of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism.

This leaves us without an any explanation on two crucial points: why do myths take the form they do, and how are we to explain their universality?

If they are no more than “stories” invented to justify male domination, then why invent such unlikely ones? If we take the Bible, the Book of Genesis gives us a perfectly logical explanation for male domination: God created men first! Logical that is, as long as we are prepared to accept the unlikely notion, which anyone can see contradicted year in year out, that woman came out of the body of man. Why then invent a myth which not only claims that women once held power, but which is accompanied by the demand that men continue to carry out the rites associated with this power, to the point of imagining male menstruation? This practice, attested throughout the world amongst hunter-gatherers where male domination is powerful, consists of men making their own blood flow in certain important rituals, by lacerating their members and in particular the penis, in a conscious imitation of menstrual bleeding.

Were this kind of ritual limited to one people, or one group of peoples, one might accept that this was nothing but an accidental and “irrational” invention. But when we find it spread throughout the world, on every continent, then if we are to remain true to historical materialism we must seek its social determinants.

At all events, it seems to us necessary from the materialist standpoint to take the myths and rituals which structure society seriously as sources of knowledge about it, something that Darmangeat fails to do.

The origin of women’s oppression

We can summarise Darmangeat’s thinking as follows: at the origins of women’s oppression lies the sexual division of labour, which systematically reserves to men big game hunting and the use of arms. However interesting his work, this seems to us to leave two questions unanswered.

It seems obvious enough that with the emergence of class society, based necessarily on exploitation and so on oppression, the monopoly of weapons is almost a self-sufficient explanation for male domination in it (at least in the long term; the overall process is doubtless more complex than that). Similarly, it seems a priori reasonable to suppose that the monopoly of weapons played a part in the emergence of male domination contemporaneous with the emergence of social inequalities prior to the appearance of class society properly so-called.

By contrast, and this is our first question, Darmangeat is much less clear why the sexual division of labour should reserve this role to men, since he himself tells us that “physiological reasons (...) have difficulty explaining why women were excluded from the hunt” (p314-315). Nor is it clear why the hunt, and the food which is its product, should be more prestigious than the product of gathering or of gardening, especially when the latter is the major source of social resources.

More fundamentally still, where does the first division of labour come from, and why should it be sexually based? Here we find Darmangeat losing himself in his own imagination: “We can imagine that even an embryonic specialisation allowed the human species to acquire a greater effectiveness than if its members had continued to exercise every activity without distinction (...) We can also imagine that this specialisation operated in the same direction, by strengthening social ties in general, and ties within the family group in particular”.[9] Well of course, “we can imagine”... but is this not rather what was supposed to be demonstrated?

As for the question “why the division of labour came about on the basis of sex”, for Darmangeat this “does not seem very difficult. It seems obvious enough that for the members of prehistoric society, this was the most immediately obvious difference”.[10] We can object here that while sexual differences must certainly have seemed “immediately obvious” to the first human beings, this is not a self-sufficient explanation for the emergence of a sexual division of labour. Primitive societies abound in classifications, notably those based on totems. Why should the division of labour not be based on totemism? This is obviously a mere flight of fancy – but no more so than Darmangeat’s hypothesis. More seriously, Darmangeat makes no mention of another extremely obvious difference, and one which is everywhere important in archaic societies: that of age.

When it comes down to it, Darmangeat’s book – despite its rather ostentatious title – does not enlighten us much. Women’s oppression is based on the sexual division of labour. So be it. But when we ask where this division comes from, we are “reduced to mere hypotheses, we can imagine that certain biological constraints, probably linked to pregnancy and breast-feeding, provided the physiological substrate for the sexual division of labour and the exclusion of women from the hunt” (p322).[11]

From genes to culture

At the end of his argument, Darmangeat leaves us with the following conclusion: at the origin of women’s oppression lies the sexual division of labour and despite everything, this division was itself a formidable step forward in labour productivity, even if its origins lie hidden in a far-off and inaccessible past.

Darmangeat seeks here to remain faithful to the marxist “model”. But what if the problem has been posed back to front? If we consider the behaviour of those primates that are closest to man, chimpanzees in particular, we find that it is only the males that hunt – the females are too busy feeding and looking after their young (and protecting them from the males: we should not forget that male primates often practice infanticide of other males’ children in order to gain access to the mother for their own reproductive needs). There is thus nothing specifically human about the “division of labour” between males who hunt and females who do not. The problem – what demands explanation – is not why the hunt is reserved to the male of Homo sapiens, but why it is the male sapiens, and only the male sapiens, that shares the produce of his hunt. What is striking, when we compare Homo sapiens to its primate cousins, is the range of often very strict rules and taboos, to be found from the burning deserts of Australia to the Arctic ice, which require the collective consumption of the product of the hunt. The hunter does not have the right to consume his own product, he must bring it back to camp for distribution to others. The rules that govern this distribution vary considerably from one people to another, but their existence is universal.

It is also worth pointing out that Homo sapiens’ sexual dimorphism is a good deal less than that of Homo erectus, which in the animal world is generally indicative of more equal relations between the sexes.

Everywhere, sharing food and collective meals are at the foundations of the first societies. Indeed, the shared meal has survived to modern times: even today it is impossible to imagine any great moment in life (birth, marriage, or burial) without a collective meal. When people come together in simple friendship, as often as not it is around a common meal, whether it be round the barbecue in Australia or around the restaurant table in France.

This sharing of food, which seems to come down to us from time immemorial is an aspect of human collective and social life very different from that of our far-off ancestors. We are confronted here with what the Darwinologist Patrick Tort has called the “reverse effect” of evolution, or what Chris Knight has described as a “priceless expression of the ‘selfishness’ of our genes”: the mechanisms described by Darwin and Mendel, and confirmed by modern genetics, have generated a social life where solidarity plays a central part, whereas these same mechanisms work through competition.[12]

This question of sharing seems fundamental to us, but it is only a part of a much broader scientific problem: how are we to explain the process which transformed a species whose changes in behaviour were determined by the slow rhythm of genetic evolution, into our own, whose behaviour – although of course it is still founded on our genetic heritage – changes thanks to the much more rapid evolution of culture? And how are we to explain that a mechanism based on competition has created a species which can only survive through solidarity: the mutual solidarity of women in childbirth and childrearing, the solidarity of men in the hunt, the solidarity of the hunters towards society as a whole when they contribute the product of the chase, the hale in solidarity with the old or injured no longer able to hunt or to find their own food, the solidarity of the old towards the young, in whom they inculcate not only the knowledge of nature and the world vital for survival, but the social, historical, ritual and mythical knowledge which make possible the survival of a structured society. This seems to us the fundamental problem posed by the question of “human nature”.

This passage from one world to another took place during a crucial period of several hundred thousand years, a period which we could indeed describe as “revolutionary”.[13] It is closely linked to the evolution of the human brain in size (and presumably in structure, though this is obviously much more difficult to detect in the archaeological record). The increase in brain size poses a whole series of problems for our evolving species, not the least of which is its sheer energy consumption: about 20% of an individual’s total energy intake, an enormous proportion.

Although the species undoubtedly gained from the process of encephalisation, it posed a real problem for the females. The size of the head means that birth must occur earlier, otherwise the baby could not pass through the mother’s pelvis. This in turn implies a much longer period of dependence in the infant born “prematurely” compared to other primates; the growth of the brain demands more nourishment, both structural and energetic (proteins, lipids, carbohydrates). We seem to be confronted with an insoluble enigma, or rather an enigma which nature solved only after a long period during which Homo erectus lived, and spread out of Africa, but apparently did not change very much either in behaviour or in morphology. And then comes a period of rapid evolution which sees an increase in brain size and the appearance of all the specifically human forms of behaviour: language, symbolic culture, art, the intensive use of tools and their great variety, etc.

There is another enigma to go with this one. We have noted the radical changes in the behaviour of the male Homo sapiens, but the physiological and behavioural changes in the female are no less remarkable, especially from the standpoint of reproduction.

There is a striking difference in this respect between the female Homo sapiens and other primates. Amongst the latter (and especially those that are the closest to us), the female generally signals to males in the clearest possible way her period of ovulation (and hence of greatest fecundity): genital organs highly visible, a “hot” behaviour especially towards the dominant male, a characteristic odour. Amongst humans, quite the opposite holds true: the sexual organs are hidden and do not change appearance during ovulation, while the human female is not even aware of being “on heat”.

At the other end of the ovulation cycle, the difference between Homo sapiens and other primates is equally striking: an abundant and visible menstrual flow, the contrary to chimpanzees for example. Since loss of blood implies a loss of energy, natural selection should in principle operate against abundant blood flow; it could be explained by some selected advantage – but what?

Another remarkable characteristic of human menstrual flow is its periodicity and synchronicity. Many studies have shown the ease with which groups of women synchronise their periods, and Knight reproduces a table of ovulation periods among primates which shows that only the human female has a period that perfectly matches the lunar cycle: why? Or is it just a coincidence?

One might be tempted to put all this to one side as irrelevant in explaining the appearance of language, and human specificity in general. Such a reaction, moreover, would be in perfect conformity with current ideology, which sees women’s periods as something, if not exactly taboo, at least somewhat negative: think of all those advertisements for “feminine hygiene” products which boast their ability to render the period invisible. To discover, in reading Knight’s book, the immense importance of menstrual blood and everything associated with it in primitive human society, is thus all the more startling for us as members of modern society. And the belief in the enormous power – for good and evil – of women’s periods, seems to be a universal phenomenon. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that menstrual flows “regulate” everything, up to and including the harmony of the universe.[14] Even among peoples where there is strong male domination, and where everything is done to devalue women, their periods inspire fear in men. Menstrual blood is considered “polluting” to a point which seems barely sane – and this is precisely a sign of its power. One is even tempted to conclude that men’s violence towards women is directly in proportion to the fear that women inspire in men.[15]

The universality of this belief is significant and demands explanation. We can imagine three possible ones:

• It might be the result of structures set in the human mind, as Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism suggested. Today, we would say rather that it is set in the human genetic heritage – but this seems to contradict everything that is known about genetics.
• It might be put down to the principle of “same cause, same effects”. Societies that are similar from the point of view of their relations of production and their technique produce similar myths.
• The similarity of myths might, finally, be put down to a common historical origin. If this were the case, given that the different societies where menstrual myths are expressed are widely separated geographically, the common origin must belong to a far distant past.

Knight favours the third explanation: he does indeed see the universal mythology around menstruation as something that is very old, going right back to the very origins of humanity.

The emergence of culture

How are these different questions linked together? What can be the link between women’s menstruation and collective hunting? And between the two and other emergent phenomena: language, symbolic culture, a society based on shared rules? These questions seem to us fundamental because all these “evolutions” are not isolated phenomena, but elements in a single process leading from Homo erectus to ourselves. The hyper-specialisation of modern science has the great disadvantage (largely recognised by scientists themselves) of making it very difficult to understand an entire process which cannot be encompassed by any single specialisation.

What we find most remarkable in Knight’s work is precisely this effort to bring together genetic, archaeological, paleontological and anthropological data in a “theory of everything” for human evolution, analogous to the efforts of the theoretical physicists who have given us super-string or quantum loop gravity theory.[16]

Let us therefore attempt to summarise this theory, known today as “sex strike theory”. To simplify and schematise, Knight hypothesises a modification in the behaviour, first of Homo females confronted by the difficulties of childbirth and childrearing: the females turn away from the dominant male to give their attention to secondary males in a sort of mutual help pact. The males accept to leave the females for the hunt, and to bring back the product of the chase; in return, they have an access to females, and therefore a chance to reproduce, that was denied to them by the dominant male.

This modification in the behaviour of the males – which at the outset, let us remember, is subject to the laws of evolution – is only possible under certain conditions, and two in particular: on the one hand, it is not possible for the males to find an access to females elsewhere; on the other, the males must be confident that they will not be supplanted in their absence. These are therefore collective behaviours. The females – who are the motive force in this evolutionary process – must maintain a collective refusal of sex to the males. This collective refusal is signalled visibly to the males, and other females by the menstrual flow, synchronised on a “universal” and visible event: the lunar cycle and the tides which accompany it in the semi-aquatic environment of the Rift valley where mankind first appeared.

Solidarity is born: amongst the females first of all, then also amongst the males. Collectively excluded from access to the females, they can put into practice an increasingly organised collective hunt of large game, which demands a capacity for planning and solidarity in the face of danger.

Mutual confidence is born from the collective solidarity within each sex, but also between the sexes: the females confident in male participation in childrearing, the males confident that they will not be excluded from the chance to reproduce.

This theoretical model allows us to resolve the enigma that Darmangeat leaves unanswered: why are women absolutely excluded from the hunt? According to Knight’s model, this exclusion can only be absolute, since if some females – and in particular those unencumbered by any young – were to join the hunt with the males, then the latter would have access to fertile females and would no longer be forced to share the product of the hunt with nursing females and their young. For the model to function, the females are obliged to maintain a total solidarity amongst themselves. From this starting point, it is possible to understand the taboo which maintains an absolute separation between women and the hunt, and which is the foundation for all the other taboos that revolve around menstruation and the blood of the hunt, and which forbid women from handling any cutting tool. The fact that this taboo, from being a source of women’s strength and solidarity, should in other circumstances become a source of social weakness and oppression, may seem paradoxical at first sight: in reality, it is a striking example of a dialectical reversal, one more illustration of the deeply dialectical logic of all evolutionary and historical change. [17]

The females who are most successful in imposing this new behaviour amongst themselves, and on the males, leave more descendants. The process of encephalisation can continue. The way is open toward the development of the human.

Mutual solidarity and confidence are thus born, not from a sort of beatific mysticism but on the contrary from the pitiless laws of evolution.

This mutual confidence is a precondition for the emergence of a true capacity for language, which depends on the mutual acceptance of common rules (rules as basic as the idea that a single word has the same meaning for me as it does for you, for example), and of a human society based on culture and law, no longer subjected to the slow rhythm of genetic evolution, but able to adapt much more rapidly to new environments. Logically, one of the first elements of the new culture is the transfer from the genetic into the cultural domain (if we can put it like this) of everything that made the emergence of this new social form possible: the most ancient myths and rituals thus turn around women’s menstruation (and the moon which guarantees their synchronisation), and its role in the regulation not only of the social but also the natural order.

A few difficulties, and a possible continuation

As Knight says himself, his theory is a sort of “origins myth” which remains a hypothesis. This obviously is not a problem in itself: without hypothesis and speculation, there would be no scientific advance; it is religion, not science, which tries to establish certain truths.

For ourselves, we would like to raise two objections to the narrative that Knight proposes.

The first concerns elapsed time. When Blood Relations was published in 1991, the first signs of artistic expression and therefore of the existence of a symbolic culture capable of supporting the myths and rituals which are at the heart of his hypothesis, dated back a mere 60,000 years. The first remains of modern humans dated back about 200,000 years: so what happened during the 140,000 “missing” years? And what could we envisage might be the precursor of a full-blown symbolic culture, for example among our immediate ancestors?

This does not so much put the theory into question, as pose a problem which calls for further research. Since the 1990s, excavations in South Africa (Blombos Caves, Klasies River, Kelders) seem to have pushed back the use of art and abstract symbolism to 80,000 or even 140,000 BCE;[18] as far as Homo erectus is concerned, the remains discovered at Dmanisi in Georgia in the early 2000s and dated back to about 1.8 million years, seem already to indicate a certain level of solidarity: one individual lived for several years without teeth, which suggests that others helped him to eat.[19] At the same time, their tools were still primitive and according to the specialists they did not yet practice big game hunting. This should not surprise us: Darwin in his day had already established that human characteristics such as empathy, the appreciation of beauty, and friendship, all exist in the animal realm, even if at a rudimentary level when compared to mankind.

Our second objection is more important and concerns the “motive force” pushing towards the increase in human brain size. Knight is more concerned with determining how this increase was possible, and so this question is not a central one for him: according to his interview at our congress, he has basically adopted the “increasing social complexity” theory, of human beings having to adapt to life in ever larger groups (this is the theory put forward by Robin Dunbar,[20] and also taken up by J-L Dessalles in his book Why we speak, whose arguments he presented at our previous congress). We cannot go into the details here, but this theory seems to us not without its difficulties. After all, the size of primate groups may vary from a dozen in the case of gorillas, to several hundred for Hamadryas baboons: it would therefore be necessary both to show why the hominins had social needs over and above those of baboons (this is far from being achieved), and to demonstrate that hominins lived in ever larger groups, up to the “Dunbar number” for example.[21]

On the whole, we prefer to tie the process of encephalisation and the development of language to the growing importance of “culture” (in the broadest sense) in human ability to adapt to the environment. There is often a tendency to think of culture solely in material terms (stone tools, etc.). But when we study the lives of hunter-gatherers in our own epoch, we are more than anything impressed by their profound knowledge of their natural surroundings: animal behaviour, the properties of plants, etc. Any hunting animal “knows” the behaviour of its prey, and can adapt to it up to a certain point. With human beings, however, this knowledge is not genetic but cultural, and must be transmitted from generation to generation. While mimicry may allow the transmission of a certain limited degree of “culture” (monkeys using a stick to fish for termites for example), it seems obvious that the transmission of human (or indeed proto-human) knowledge demands something more than mimicry.

One may also suggest that the more culture replaces genetics in determining our behaviour, the transmission of what we might call “spiritual” culture (myth, ritual, the knowledge of sacred places, etc.) takes on ever greater importance in maintaining group cohesion. This in turn leads us to link the development of language to another external sign, anchored in our biology: women’s “early” menopause followed by a long period where they are not reproductively active, which is another characteristic that human females do not share with their primate cousins.[22] How then could an “early” menopause have been favoured by natural selection, despite apparently limiting female reproductive potential? The most likely hypothesis seems to be that the menopausal female helps her daughter to better ensure the survival of her own grand-children, and therefore of her own genetic heritage.[23]

The problems we have just discussed concern the period covered by Blood Relations. But there is another difficulty which concerns the period of known history. It is obvious that the primitive societies of which we have knowledge (and which Darmangeat describes) are very different from Knight’s hypothetical first human societies. Just to take the example of Australia, whose aboriginal society is one of the most primitive known on the technical level, the persistence of myths and ritual practices which attribute great importance to menstruation goes side by side with complete male domination over women. If we suppose that Knight’s hypothesis is broadly correct, then how are we to explain what appears to be a veritable “male counter-revolution”? In his Chapter 13 (p449), Knight proposes a hypothesis to explain this: he suggests that it is the disappearance of the megafauna – species such as the giant Wombat – and a period of dry weather at the end of the Pleistocene, which disturbed hunting patterns and put an end to the abundance which he considers to be the material condition for primitive communism’s survival. In 1991, Knight himself wrote that this hypothesis remains to be tested in the archaeological record, and his own investigation is limited to Australia. At all events, it seems to us that this problem opens up a wide field of investigation which would allow us to envisage a real history of the longest period of humanity’s existence: from our origins to the invention of agriculture.[24]

The communist future

How can the study of human origins clarify our view of a future communist society? Darmangeat tells us that capitalism is the first human society which makes it possible to imagine an end to the sexual division of labour, and equality for women – an equality which is today set in law in a few countries, but which is nowhere an equality in fact: “while capitalism has neither improved nor worsened women’s lot as such, it is by contrast the first system which has made it possible to pose the question of their equality with men; and although it has proved unable to make this equality a reality, it has nonetheless brought together the elements which will bring it into being”.[25]

Two criticisms seem to us in order here: the first is that it ignores the immense importance of women’s integration into the world of wage labour. Despite itself, capitalism has given working-class women, for the first time in the history of class society, a real material independence from men, and hence the possibility of taking part on an equal footing with men in the struggle for the liberation of the proletariat, and so of humanity as a whole.

The second concerns the very notion of equality. This notion is stamped with the mark of the democratic ideology inherited from capitalism, and it is not the goal of a communist society which will, on the contrary, recognise the differences between individuals and – to use Marx’s expression – “inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”.[26] Now, outside the domain of science fiction, women have both an ability and a need that men will never have: to give birth.[27] This capacity has to be exercised, or human society has no future, but it is also a physical function and therefore a need for women.[28] A communist society must therefore offer every woman who desires it the possibility of giving birth with joy, in confidence that her child will be welcomed into the human community.

Here perhaps we can draw a parallel with the evolutionist vision that Knight proposes. Proto-women launched the process of evolution towards Homo sapiens and symbolic culture, because they could no longer raise their children alone: they had to oblige the males to provide material aid to childbearing and the education of the young. In doing so, they introduced into human society the principle of solidarity among women occupied by their children, among men occupied by the hunt, and between men and women sharing their joint social responsibilities.

Today, we are confronting a situation where capitalism reduces us more and more to the status of atomised individuals, and childbearing women suffer most as a result. Not only does the “rule” of capitalist society reduce the family to its smallest expression (mother, father, children), the general disintegration of social life means that more and more women find themselves bringing up even their very young children alone, and the need to find work often distances them from their own mothers, sisters, or aunts who once used to be the natural support network for any woman with small children. The “world of work” is pitiless for women with children, obliged to wean their infants after a few months at best (depending on the maternity holidays available, if any) and to leave them with a nurse, or – if they are unemployed – to find themselves cut off from social life and forced to look after their babies alone on the most limited resources.

In a sense, working class women today find themselves in a situation analogous to their distant ancestors – and only a revolution can improve their situation. Just as the “revolution” that Knight hypothesises allowed women to surround themselves with the social support first of other women, then of men, for the bearing and education of their children, so the communist revolution to come must put at its heart the support for women’s childbearing, and the collective education of children. Only a society which gives a privileged place to its children and youth can claim to offer a hope for the future: from this standpoint, capitalism stands condemned by the very fact that a growing proportion of its youth is considered “surplus to requirements”.

Jens

After a delay which has been much longer than we originally intended, we are resuming the third volume of the series on communism. Let’s recall briefly that the first volume, which has also appeared in English and French in book form, began by looking at the development of the concept of communism from pre-capitalist societies to the first utopian socialists, and then focused on the work of Marx and Engels and the efforts of their successors in the Second International to understand communism not as an abstract ideal but as a material necessity made possible by the evolution of capitalist society itself.[1] The second volume examined the period in which the marxist prediction of proletarian revolution, first formulated in the period of capitalism’s ascendancy, was concretised by the dawn of the “epoch of wars and revolutions” acknowledged by the Communist International in 1919.[2] The third volume has so far concentrated on the sustained attempt by the Italian communist left during the 1930s to draw the lessons from the defeat of the first international wave of revolutions, but above all of the Russian revolution, and the implications of these lessons for a future period of transition towards communism.[3]

As we have often stressed, the communist left was first and foremost the product of an international reaction against the degeneration of the Communist International and its parties. The left groups in Italy, Germany, Russia, Britain and elsewhere converged towards the same criticisms of the CI’s regression towards parliamentarism, trade unionism, and compromise with the parties of social democracy.  There were intense debates among the various left currents and some concrete attempts at coordination and regroupment, such as the formation of the Communist Workers’ International in 1922, essentially by groups aligned with the German communist left. But at the same time the rapid failure of this new formation provided evidence that the tide of revolution was in reflux and that the time was not right for the founding of a new world party. Furthermore, this hasty initiative led by elements within the German movement highlighted what was perhaps the most serious division in the ranks of the communist left – the separation between its two most important expressions, those in Germany and Italy. This division was never absolute: in the early days of the Communist Party of Italy, there were attempts to understand and debate with other left currents; and elsewhere we have pointed to the debate between Bordiga and Korsch later on in the 1920s.[4] However, these contacts diminished as the revolution retreated and as the two currents reacted in different ways to the new challenges they faced. The Italian left was, quite correctly, convinced of the necessity to stay in the CI as long as it had a proletarian life and to avoid premature splits or the proclamation of new and artificial parties – precisely the course followed by the majority of the German left. Moreover, the emergence of openly anti-party tendencies in the German left, notably the group around Rühle, could only fuel the conviction of Bordiga and others that this current was dominated by anarchist ideology and practices. Meanwhile the German left groups, tending towards defining the whole experience of Bolshevism and October 1917 as expressions of a belated bourgeois revolution, were less and less able to distinguish the Italian left from the mainstream of the Communist International, not least because it continued to argue that the place of communists was inside the International fighting against its opportunist course. 

Today’s “Bordigist” groups have theorised this tragic and costly parting of the ways with their insistence that they alone constitute the historic communist left and that the German KAPD and its offshoots really were nothing but a petty bourgeois anarchist deviation. Groups like the International Communist Party (Il Partito) take this as far as publishing a defence of Lenin’s Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, praising it as a warning to “future renegades”.[5] This attitude reveals a rather tragic failure to recognise that the left communists should have been fighting together as comrades against the increasingly renegade leadership of the CI.

However, this was far from being the attitude of the Italian left during its most theoretically fruitful period: the one which followed the formation, in exile from fascist Italy, of the Left Fraction at the end of the 20s and the publication of the review Bilan between 1933 and 1938.  In a “Draft resolution on international links” in Bilan n° 22, they wrote that the “internationalist communists of Holland (the Gorter tendency) and elements of the KAPD represent the first reaction to the difficulties of the Russian state, the first experience of proletarian management, in linking up with the world proletariat through a system of principles elaborated by the International”. They concluded that the exclusion of these comrades from the International “did not bring any solution to these problems”. 

This approach laid down the basic foundations of proletarian solidarity upon which debate could take place, despite the very considerable divergences between the two currents; divergences that had widened considerably by the mid-30s, as the Dutch-German left evolved towards the positions of council communism, defining not only Bolshevism but the party form itself as bourgeois in nature. There were further difficulties posed by language and a lack of knowledge about each others’ respective positions, with the result being, as we note in our book The Italian Communist Left, that relations between the two currents were largely indirect.

The main point of connection between the two currents was the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, which was in touch with the Groep van Internationale Communisten and other groups in Holland. It is perhaps significant that the main fruit of these contacts to appear in the pages of Bilan was the summary, written by Hennaut of the LCI, of the GIC’s book Grundprinzipien Kommunistischer Produktion und Verteilung – Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution[6]), and the fraternal but critical remarks about the book contained within Mitchell’s series “Problems of the Period of Transition”. To the best of our knowledge, the GIC did not respond to any of these articles, but it is still important to remind ourselves that the premises for a debate were laid down at the time the Grundprinzipien was published, not least because there have been very few subsequent attempts to take the discussion forward.[7] We should make it clear that the present article will not attempt to carry out an in-depth or detailed analysis of the Grundprinzipien. It has the more modest aim of studying the criticisms of the book published in Bilan and thus indicating some possible areas for future discussion.

The GIC examines the lessons of defeat

At the 1974 Paris conference of recently formed left communist groups, Jan Appel, the KAPD and GIC veteran who was one of the principal authors of the Grundprinzipien, explained that the text had been written as a part of the effort to understand what had gone wrong with the experience of state capitalism or “state communism as we sometimes used to call it” in the Russian revolution, and to lay down some guidelines that would make it possible to avoid similar errors in the future. Despite their differences about the nature of the Russian revolution, this was precisely what motivated the comrades of the Italian left to undertake a study of the problems of the period of transition, in spite of the fact that they understood only too well that they were passing through the depths of the counter-revolution. 

For Mitchell, as for the rest of the Italian left, the GIC were the “Dutch internationalists”, comrades who were animated by a profound commitment to overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a communist society. Both currents understood that a serious study of the problems of the transition period was far more than an intellectual exercise for its own sake. They were militants for whom the proletarian revolution was a reality which they had seen before their eyes; despite its terrible defeat they retained every confidence that it would rise again, and were convinced that it had to be armed with a clear communist programme if it was to be triumphant the next time around.

At the beginning of his summary of the Grundprinzipien, Hennaut poses precisely this question: “doesn’t it seem a waste of time to torture ourselves about the social rules the workers will have to establish once the revolution has been accomplished, at a time when the workers are in no way marching towards the final battle, but are in fact ceding the ground they have won to the triumphant reaction? What’s more, hasn’t everything on this matter already been said by the congresses of the CI? ... Certainly for those for whom the whole science of the revolution boils down to uncovering the gamut of manoeuvres that the masses have to follow, the enterprise must appear particularly pointless. But for those who consider that making precise the goals of the struggle is one of the functions of any movement of emancipation, and that the forms of this struggle, its mechanisms and the laws which regulate it can only be completely brought to light to the extent that the final goals to be attained have been made clear, in other words that the laws of the revolution come out more and more clearly as the consciousness of the working class grows – for them the theoretical effort to define exactly what the dictatorship of the proletariat will be is a task of primordial necessity” [8]

As we have mentioned, Hennaut was not a member of the GIC but of the Belgian LCI. In a sense he was well placed to act as an “intermediary” between the Dutch-German and Italian left as he had agreements and differences with both. In a previous contribution to Bilan,[9] he criticised the Italian comrades’ notion of the “dictatorship of the party” and put the emphasis on the working class exercising control over the political and economic spheres through its own general organs such as the councils. At the same time he rejected Bilan’s view of the USSR as a degenerated proletarian state and defined both the political regime and the economy in Russia as capitalist. But it should be added that he had also embarked on a process of rejecting the proletarian character of the revolution in Russia, emphasising the lack of maturity of the objective conditions, so that “the revolution was made by the proletariat, but it was not a proletarian revolution.”[10] This analysis was quite close to that of the council communists, but Hennaut also demarcated himself from the latter on a number of key points: at the very beginning of his summary, he makes it clear that he does not agree with their rejection of the party. For Hennaut, the party would be all the more necessary after the revolution in order to fight against the ideological vestiges of the old world, although he did not feel that the GIC’s weakness on this point was the main issue with the Grundprinzipien; and at the end of his summary, in Bilan n° 22, he points to the weakness of the GIC’s conception of the state and their somewhat rose-tinted view of the conditions in which a revolution takes place. However he is convinced of the importance of the GIC’s contribution and makes a very serious effort to summarise them accurately over four articles. Evidently, it was not possible within the scope of such a summary to convey all the richness – and some of the apparent contradictions – in the Grundprinzipien, but he does make a good job of outlining the book’s essential points.

Hennaut’s summary brings out the significant fact that the Grundprinzipien does not at all locate itself outside the previous traditions and experiences of the working class, but bases itself on a historical critique of erroneous conceptions that had arisen within the workers’ movement, and on practical revolutionary experiences – notably the Russian and Hungarian revolutions – which had left mainly negative lessons. The Grundprinzipien thus contains criticisms of the views of Kautsky, Varga, the anarcho-syndicalist Leichter and others, while seeking to reconnect with the work of Marx and Engels, in particular The Critique of the Gotha Programme and Anti-Dühring.  It begins from the simple insistence that the exploitation of the workers in capitalist society is completely bound up with their separation from the means of production via the capitalist social relation of wage labour. Since the period of the Second International, the workers’ movement had deviated towards the idea that the simple abolition of private property signifies the end of exploitation, and the Bolsheviks had to a large extent applied this (mis)understanding after the October revolution.

For the Grundprinzipien the nationalisation or collectivisation of the means of production can perfectly well co-exist with wage labour and the alienation of the workers from their own product. What is key, therefore, is that the workers themselves, through their own organisations rooted in the workplace, dispose not only of the physical means of production but of the entire social product. But in order to ensure that the social product remained in the hands of the producers from the beginning to the end of the labour process (decisions on what to produce and in what quantities, distribution of the product including the remuneration of the individual producer) a general economic law was needed which could be subject to rigorous accounting: the calculation of the social product on the basis of the average socially necessary labour time. Although it is precisely the socially necessary labour time which is at the basis of the “value” of products in capitalist society, this would no longer be value production, because although the individual enterprises would play a considerable role in determining their own contribution to the labour time contained in their products, the enterprises would not be then selling their products on the market (and the Grundprinzipien criticises the anarcho-syndicalists precisely for envisaging the future economy as a network of independent enterprises linked by exchange relations). In the GIC’s vision, products would be simply distributed in accord with the overall needs of society, which would be determined by a congress of councils together with a central office of statistics and a network of consumer cooperatives. The Grundprinzipien is at pains to insist that neither the congress of councils nor the office of statistics are “centralised” or “state” organs. Their task is not to command labour but to use the criterion of socially necessary labour time, largely calculated at base level, to oversee the planning and distribution of the social product on a global scale. A consistent application of these principles would ensure that in the next revolution there would be no repetition of a situation where “the machine is escaping our hands” (Lenin’s famous words on the trajectory of the Soviet state, quoted by the Grundprinzipien). In sum, the key to the victory of the revolution lies in the capacity of the workers to maintain direct control of the economy, and the most reliable tool for achieving this is the regulation of production and distribution through the accounting of labour time.

Criticisms by the Italian left

The Italian left,[11] as we have said, welcomed the contribution of the GIC but did not spare their criticisms of the text. Broadly speaking these criticisms can be placed under four headings, although they all lead onto other issues and are all tightly interdependent.

1. A national vision of the revolution.
2. An idealist view of the real conditions of the proletarian revolution.
3. Failure to understand the problem of the state and centralism, and a focus on the economy at the expense of political issues.
4. More theoretical differences regarding the economics of the transition period: the overcoming of the law of value and the content of communism; egalitarianism and the remuneration of labour.

1. A national vision of the revolution

In his series “Parti-État-Internationale”[12] Vercesi had already criticised Hennaut and the Dutch comrades for approaching the problem of the revolution in Russia from a narrowly national standpoint. He insisted that no real progress could be made towards a communist society as long as the bourgeoisie held power on a world scale – whatever advances were made in one area under proletarian “management”, they could not be definitive:

“The error which in our opinion the Dutch left communists and with them comrade Hennaut make is that they have taken a basically sterile direction, because it is basic to marxism that the foundations of a communist economy only present themselves on the world terrain and can never be realised inside the frontiers of a proletarian state. The latter can intervene in the economic domain to change the process of production, but in no way can it place this process definitively on communist foundations, because the conditions for realising such an economy only exist on the world scale… We will not move towards the realisation of the supreme goal by making the workers believe that after their victory over the bourgeoisie they could directly manage the economy in a single country. Until the victory of the world revolution the conditions for this don’t exist, and to take things in the direction which will allow the maturation of these conditions, you have to begin by recognising that it is impossible to obtain definitive results in a single country.”[13]

In his series Mitchell further elaborated this theme:

“While it is undeniable that a national proletariat can only undertake certain economic tasks after installing its own rule, the construction of socialism can only get going after the destruction of the most powerful capitalist states, even though the victory of a ‘poor’ proletariat can take on a huge significance if it is integrated into the process of development of the world revolution. In other words, the tasks of a victorious proletariat with regard to its own economy are subordinated to the necessities of the international class struggle.

“It is noteworthy that while all genuine marxists have rejected the theory of ‘socialism in one country’, most of the criticisms of the Russian revolution have focused essentially on the modalities of the construction of socialism, looking at economic and cultural criteria rather than political ones, and forgetting to go to the logical conclusions imposed by the impossibility of any kind of national socialism.”[14]

Mitchell also devoted a large part of the series to arguing against the Menshevik idea, to a large extent taken up by the council communists, that the Russian revolution could not have been truly proletarian because Russia was not ripe for socialism. Against this approach, Mitchell affirms that the conditions for the communist revolution could only be posed on a world scale and that the revolution in Russia had simply been the first step in a world wide revolution, made necessary by the fact that capitalism as a world system had entered its period of decline. Thus any understanding of what had gone wrong in Russia had to be situated in the context of the world revolution: the degeneration of the Soviet state was first and foremost not a result of the economic measures taken by the Bolsheviks but of the isolation of the revolution.  In his view, the Dutch comrades had adopted “a false judgment of the Russian revolution, and above all to severely curtail the scope of their research into the underlying causes of the reactionary evolution of the USSR. They don’t seek the explanation for the latter in the subsoil of the national and international class struggle (one of the negative characteristics of their study is that they more or less remove any consideration of political problems), but in the economic mechanism.”[15]

In short: there are limits to what inferences we can draw from the economic measures taken during the Russian revolution. Even the most perfect measures, in the absence of the extension of the world revolution, would not have preserved the proletarian character of the regime in the USSR, and the same would apply to any country, “advanced” or “backward”, which found itself isolated in a world dominated by capital. 

2. The real conditions after the proletarian revolution

We have noted that Hennaut himself pointed to the Dutch comrades’ tendency to simplify conditions in the wake of a proletarian revolution: “it might appear to many readers that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The revolution is marching ahead, it cannot fail to come and it’s enough to leave things to themselves for socialism to become a reality.”[16] Vercesi had also argued that they tended to vastly underestimate the heterogeneity in class consciousness even after the revolution – an error directly linked to the council communists’ failure to understand the need for a political organisation of the more advanced elements of the working class. Furthermore, this was also connected to the Dutch comrades’ underestimation of the difficulties posed to the workers in taking direct charge of the management of production. For his part Mitchell argues that the Dutch comrades begin from an ideal, abstract schema which already excludes the stigmata of the capitalist past as the basis for advancing towards communism.

“We have already made it clear that the Dutch internationalists, in their attempt to analyse the problems of the period of transition, are inspired much more by their desires than by historical reality. Their abstract schema, in which as people who are perfectly consistent with their principles, they exclude the law of value, the market and money, must logically entail an ‘ideal’ distribution of products as well. This is because for them ‘The proletarian revolution collectivises the means of production and thus opens the way to communist life; the dynamic laws of individual consumption must absolutely and necessarily be linked together because they are indissolubly linked to the laws of production. This link is made ‘by itself' though the passage to communist production’ (p.72 of their work).”[17]

Later on, Mitchell focuses on the obstacles facing the institution of equal remuneration of labour during the transition period (we will come back to this in a second article). In sum, for the Dutch comrades the lower stage and the higher stage of communism are completely mixed up:

“At the same time, by repudiating the dialectical analysis and leaping over the problem of centralism, they have ended up changing the meaning of words, since what they are looking at is not the transitional period, which is the only one of interest to marxists from the point of view of solving practical problems, but the higher stage of communism. It is then easy to talk about ‘a general social accounting based on an economic centre to which all the currents of economic life flow, but which has no right of directing production or deciding on the distribution of the social product’. And they add that ‘in the association of free and equal producers, the control of economic life does not emanate from personalities or offices but results from the public registration of the real course of economic life. This means that production is controlled by reproduction’. In other words, ‘economic life is controlled by itself through average social labour time’ With such formulations, the solutions to the problems of proletarian management cannot advance at all, since the burning question posed to the proletariat is not to work out the mechanisms that regulate communist society, but to find the way that leads towards it.”[18]

It’s true that there are a number of passages in the Grundprinzipien where the Dutch comrades cite Marx’s distinction between the lower and higher stages of the transition period; and they do recognise that there is a process, a movement towards integral communism in which the necessity for labour time accounting, for example, will gradually diminish in importance with regard to individual consumption:

“We have seen that one of the most characteristic features of the GSU establishments (Note: public services such as healthcare and education) lay in the fact that in their case the principle ‘to each according to his needs’ is realised. Here the measure of labour-time plays no role in distribution. With the further growth of communism towards its higher stage, the incidence of this type of economic establishment becomes more and more widespread, so that it comes to include such sectors as food supply, passenger transport, housing, etc., in short: the satisfaction of consumption in general comes to stand on this economic foundation. This development is a process - a process which, at least as far as the technical side of the task is concerned, can be completed relatively rapidly. The more society develops in this direction and the greater the extent to which products are distributed according to this principle, the less does individual labour-time continue to act as the measure determining individual consumption.”[19]

And yet at the same time, as Mitchell notes above, they talk about the “free and equal producers” deciding on this or that precisely in the lower stage, a time when true freedom and equality are being fought for by the organised proletariat, but have not yet been definitively conquered. The term “free and equal producers” can only really be applied to a society where there is no longer a working class.

An example of this tendency to simplify is their treatment of the agrarian question. According to this section of the Grundprinzipien, the “peasant question”, which was such a major burden for the Russian revolution, would pose no great problems for the revolution of the future because the development of capitalist industry has already integrated the majority of the peasantry into the proletariat. This is an example of a certain Eurocentric vision (and even in Europe this was far from being the case in the 1930s) which does not take into account the vast numbers of non-exploiting, but also non-proletarian masses existing on a world scale and which the proletarian revolution will have to integrate into truly socialised production.

3. The state, centralism, and economism

To talk about the existence of classes other than the proletariat in the transition period immediately poses the question of a semi-state organisation which would, among other things, have the task of politically representing these masses. Thus a further consequence of the Dutch comrades’ abstract schema is their avoidance of the problem of the state. Again, as we have noted, Hennaut sees that “the state occupies, in the Dutch comrades’ system, a place that is to say the least equivocal.”[20] Mitchell notes that as long as classes exist, the working class will have to put up with the scourge of a state, and that this is bound up with the problem of centralism:

“The analysis of the Dutch internationalists undoubtedly moves away from marxism because it never puts forward the fundamental reality that the proletariat is forced to put up with the ‘scourge’ of the state until classes have disappeared, that is, until the disappearance of world capitalism. But to underline such a historic necessity is to admit that state functions are still temporarily mixed up with centralisation, even though this takes place after the destruction of the capitalist apparatus of oppression and is not necessarily opposed to the development of the cultural level of the working masses and their capacity to take charge. Instead of looking for the solution to this development in the real context of historical and political conditions, the Dutch internationalists have tried to find it in a formula for appropriation which is both utopian and retrograde and which is not as clearly distinct from ‘bourgeois right’ as they imagine”.[21]

In the light of the Russian experience, the Dutch comrades were certainly justified in being wary that any central organising body could assume dictatorial powers over the workers. At the same time, the Grundprinzipien do not reject the need for some form of central coordination. They talk about a central office of statistics and an “economic congress of workers’ councils”, but these are presented as economic bodies charged with simple tasks of coordination: they appear to have no political or state functions. But by simply decreeing in advance that such central or coordinating bodies will not take on or be connected to any state functions, they actually weaken the workers’ capacity to defend themselves from a real danger that will exist throughout the transition period: the danger of the state, even a “semi-state” rigidly directed by the workers’ unitary organs, increasingly forming itself into a power autonomous from society and re-imposing direct forms of economic exploitation.

The notion of the post-revolutionary state does appear briefly in the book (in fact, in the very last chapter). But in the words of the GIC it “exists simply as the apparatus of power pure and simple of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its task is to break the resistance of the bourgeoisie... but as far as the administration of the economy is concerned, it has no role whatever to fulfil.”[22]

Mitchell does not refer to this passage but it would not contradict his misgivings about the GIC’s tendency to see the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the same thing, an identification which in his view disarms the workers in favour of the state: “The active presence of proletarian organisms is the condition for keeping the proletarian state in the service of the workers and for preventing it from turning against them. To deny the contradictory dualism of the proletarian state is to falsify the historic significance of the period of transition.

“Certain comrades consider, by contrast, that during this period there has to be an identification between the workers' organisations and the state. (cf. comrade Hennault's ‘Nature and Evolution of the Russian State’, Bilan p.1121). The Dutch internationalists go even further when they say that since ‘labour time is the measure of the distribution of the social product and the whole of distribution remains outside any ‘politics', the trade unions have no function in communism and the struggle for the amelioration of living conditions will have come to an end’ (p.115 of their work).

“Centrism also starts off from the conception that since the soviet state is a workers’ state, any demands raised by the workers become an act of hostility towards ‘their’ state, therefore justifying the total subordination of the trade unions and the factory committees to the state mechanism”.[23]

The Dutch-German left was, of course, much quicker to recognise that the trade unions had already ceased to be proletarian organs under capitalism, let alone in the period of transition to communism where the working class would have created its own unitary organs (factory committees, workers’ councils etc). But Mitchell’s basic point remains perfectly valid. By confusing the journey with the destination, by eliminating from the equation other non-proletarian classes and the whole complex social heterogeneity of the post insurrectional situation, and above all by envisaging an almost immediate abolition of the condition of the proletariat as an exploited class, the Dutch comrades, for all their antipathy to the state, leave the door open to the idea that during the transitional period the need for the working class to defend its immediate interests will have become superfluous. For the Italian left, the need to preserve the independence of trade unions and/or factory committees from the general organisation of society – in short, from the transitional state – was a fundamental lesson of the Russian revolution where the “workers’ state” ended up repressing the workers.

This evasion or simplification of the issue of the state, like the GIC’s failure to grasp the necessity for the international extension of the revolution, is part of a wider underestimation of the political dimension of the revolution. The GIC’s obsession is the search for a method of calculating, distributing and remunerating social labour so that central control can be kept to a minimum and the transitional economy can advance in a semi-automatic way towards integral communism. But for Mitchell, the existence of such laws is no substitute for the growing political maturity of the working masses, of their actual capacity to impose their own direction over social life.

“The Dutch comrades have, it’s true, proposed an immediate solution: no economic or political centralism, which can only take on an oppressive form, but the transfer of management to enterprise organisms which would coordinate production through a ‘general economic law’ (?). For them, the abolition of exploitation (and thus of classes) does not take place through a long historic process involving the ceaseless growth of participation by the masses in social administration, but in the collectivisation of the means of production, provided that this involves the right of the enterprise councils to dispose of the means of production and the social product. But apart from the fact this is a formulation which contains its own contradiction - since it boils down to opposing integral collectivisation (property of all, and of no one in particular) with a kind of restricted, dispersed collectivisation between social groups (the shareholders’ society is also a partial form of collectivisation) - it simply tends to substitute a juridical solution (the right to dispose of the enterprises) for another juridical solution, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. But as we have already seen, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is simply the initial condition for the social transformation (even though full collectivisation is not immediately realisable), and the class struggle will continue as before the revolution, but on political bases which will allow the proletariat to impose the decisive direction.”[24]

Behind this rejection of the political dimension of the class struggle we can see a fundamental difference between the two branches of the communist left in their understanding of the transition towards communism. The Dutch comrades do recognise the need for vigilance faced with the remainder of “powerful tendencies inherited from the capitalist mode of production making for the concentration of powers of control in a central authority.”[25] But this illuminating paragraph appears in the middle of an inquiry into accounting methods in the transition period, and within the book as a whole there is little sense of the immense struggle that will be needed to overcome the habits of the past as well as their material and social personification in classes, strata and individuals more or less hostile to communism. In the GIC’s outlook there seems to be little need for a political battle, a confrontation between conflicting class viewpoints, inside the organs of the working class, whether in the workplace or at a wider social level. This is also consistent with their repudiation of the need for communist political organisations, for the class party. 

We will look at some of the more theoretical problems of the economic dimension of the communist transformation in the second part of this article

CD Ward

Appendix

Extract from The Dutch and German Communist Left

From chapter 7, part 4: An “economist” vision of the revolution: the Grundprinzipien

b) The period of transition from capitalism to communism

The question of the period of transition towards communism after the seizure of power by the workers’ councils was always approached by the German, then the Dutch council communists, from a strictly economic angle. According to the GIC, the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the evolution of Soviet Russia towards state capitalism proved the failure of “politics”, in which the dictatorship of the proletariat was seen first and foremost as a political dictatorship over the whole of society and which pushed the proletariat’s economic tasks into the background. This idea was expressed with particular emphasis by Pannekoek: “The traditional view is the domination of politics over the economy... what the workers have to aim for is the domination over politics by the economy”[26]

This view was exactly the reverse of the one held by other revolutionary groups in the 30s, such as the Italian communist left, which had opened a whole theoretical discussion about the period of transition.[27]

Unlike the German and Italian communist lefts,[28] the GIC did not show much interest in the political questions of the proletarian revolution, in theoretical reflections about the state in the period of transition. The relationship between the new state of the period of transition, the revolutionary parties, and the workers’ councils was never dealt with, despite the Russian experience. Neither is there anything on the relationship between the revolutionary International and the state, or states, in countries where the proletariat has taken political power. Likewise, the complex questions of proletarian violence[29] and the civil war in a revolutionary period were never posed. For the GIC it seems that there was no problem of the existence of a state - or a semi-state - in the period of transition towards communism. The question of whether it would exist, and of what would be its nature (“proletarian” state or a “scourge” inherited by the proletariat) was never posed. These problems were more or less evaded.

The GIC’s main text[30] on the period of transition, The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution (Grundprinzipien Kommunischer Produktion und Verteilung) only dealt with the economic problems of this period.

The GIC’s starting point was that the failure of the Russian revolution and the evolution towards state capitalism could only be explained through its ignorance of, or even its denial of the necessity for, an economic transformation of society - this problem being common to the whole workers’ movement. But paradoxically, the GIC recognised the fundamental role of the Russian experience, the only one that made it possible to take marxist theory forward:

“… at least as far as industrial production was concerned… Russia has attempted to order economic life according to the principles of communism… and in this has failed completely! [...] Above all else, it has been the school of practice embodied in the Russian Revolution which we must thank for this knowledge, because it is this which has shown us in unmistakable terms exactly what the consequences are of permitting a central authority to establish itself as a social power which then proceeds to concentrate in its exclusive hands all power over the productive apparatus.”[31]

For the Dutch council communists, the dictatorship of the proletariat immediately meant “the association of free and equal producers”. The workers, organised in councils in the factories, had to take hold of the whole productive apparatus and make it work for their own needs as consumers, without resort to any central state-type body, since that could only mean perpetuating a society of inequality and exploitation. In this way it would be possible to avoid a situation where the kind of “state communism” set up during the phase of war communism in 1918-20 inevitably transforms itself into a form of state capitalism whose production needs dominate those of the workers as producers and consumers. In the new society, dominated by the councils and not by a state led by a centralised party, wage labour – the source of all inequality and all exploitation of labour power – would be abolished.

In the final analysis, for the GIC, the problems of the period of transition were very simple: the main thing was that the producers should control and distribute the social product in an egalitarian manner and by exercising authority “from the bottom upwards”. The essential problem of the period of transition as revealed by 1917 was not political – the question of the world-wide extension of the proletarian revolution – but economic. What counted was the immediate, egalitarian increase in workers’ consumption, organised by the factory councils. The only real problem of the period of transition for the GIC was the relationship between the producers and their products: “It is the proletariat itself which lays in place the foundation-stone cementing the basic relationship between producers and the product of their labour. This and this alone is the key question of the proletarian revolution.”[32]

But how was the “egalitarian” distribution of the social product to be achieved? Obviously not through simple juridical measures: nationalisation, “socialisation”, the various forms of the takeover of private property by the state. According to the GIC the solution lay in calculating the cost of production in terms of the labour time in the enterprises, in relation to the quantity of social goods created. Of course depending on the respective productivity of the different enterprises, for the same product the quantity of labour required would be unequal. To resolve this problem, it would suffice to calculate the average social labour time for each product. The quantity of labour carried out in the most productive enterprises, those who were above the social average, would be put toward a common fund. This would bring the less productive enterprises up to the general level. At the same time it would serve to introduce the technological progress necessary for the development of productivity in the enterprises of a given sector, so as to reduce average production time.

The organisation of consumption was to be based on the same principles. A general system of social accounting, based on statistical documentation and established by the producer-consumers organised in councils and co-operatives, would be used to calculate the factors of consumption. After various deductions – replacing outworn machinery, technical improvements, a social security fund for those unable to work, for natural disasters etc– there would be equal distribution of the social reserve for each consumer. Egalitarian conditions of production, assured by the calculation of average social labour time, would be matched by generally equal conditions for all individual consumers. Thanks to this system of social accounting, the law of value would be done away with: products would no longer circulate on the basis of their exchange value with money as the universal measure. Furthermore, with the edification of a “neutral” accounting and statistical centre, not detached from the councils, independent of any group of persons or of any central body, the new society would escape the danger of the formation of a parasitic bureaucracy that appropriated part of the social product.

The Fundamental Principles have the merit of underlining the importance of economic problems in the period of transition between capitalism and communism, all the more so because this had been approached very rarely in the revolutionary movement. Without a real and continuous increase in workers’ consumption, the dictatorship of the proletariat has no meaning, and the realisation of communism would be a pious wish.

But the GIC’s text suffered from a certain number of weaknesses, which did not go unnoticed by other revolutionary groups.[33]

The Fundamental Principles actually only deals with the evolved phase of communism, where the government of men had been replaced the “administration of things”, according to the principle of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” enunciated by Marx. The GIC believed that it would be immediately possible, as soon as the workers’ councils had taken power in a given country, to proceed to an evolved form of communism. It started off from an ideal situation, in which the victorious proletariat has taken over the productive apparatus of the highly developed countries and has been spared all the costs of the civil war (destruction, a large part of production going towards military needs); moreover, it assumes that there will be no peasant problem standing in the way of the socialisation of production since, according to the GIC, agricultural production was already completely industrial and socialised.[34] Finally, neither the isolation of one or several proletarian revolutions, nor the archaisms of small-scale agricultural production, constituted a major obstacle to the establishment of communism: “Neither the absence of the world revolution, nor the unsuitability of the individual agricultural enterprises in the countryside to state management can be held responsible for the failure of the Russian revolution ... at the economic level.”[35]

Thus, the GIC distanced itself from the marxist vision of the period of transition, which distinguished two phases: a lower stage, sometimes described as socialism, in which the “government of men” determined a proletarian economic policy in a society still dominated by scarcity; and a higher phase, that of communism proper, a society without classes, without the law of value, where the productive forces develop freely, on a world scale, unencumbered by national boundaries. But even for the lower stage of the period of transition, still dominated by the law of value and the existence of backward-pulling classes, marxism emphasised that the condition for any economic transformation in a socialist direction is the triumph of the world revolution. The beginning of any real economic transformation of the new society, still divided into classes, depends in the first place on the proletariat affirming itself politically in the face of other classes.

The GIC’s “economist” vision is connected to its inability to grasp the problem of the existence of a state – a “semi-state” – in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, at the beginning of the transitional stage. This semi-state constitutes a danger for the proletarian power, since it is a force for social conservation, “a force emerging from society, but rising above it and becoming more and more autonomous from it.”[36]

The GIC’s theory of the period of transition seems close to the anarchist theory, denying the existence of a state and thus of a political struggle for the domination of the new society. The basically “technical” role that the GIC gives the workers, who are charged with keeping account of the average social labour time in production, was an implicit negation of their political role.

As with the anarchists, the GIC saw the building of a communist society as a more or less natural and automatic process. Not the culmination of a long, contradictory process of class struggle for the domination of the semi-state, against all the conservative forces, but the fruit of a linear, harmonious, almost mathematical development. This view has a certain resemblance to the ideas of the 19th century utopian socialists, particularly Fourier’s Universal Harmony .[37]

The final weakness of the Grundprinzipien lies in the very question of the accounting of labour time, even in an advanced communist society which has gone beyond scarcity. Economically, this system could reintroduce the law of value, by giving the labour time needed for production an accounted value rather than a social one. Here the GIC goes against Marx, for whom the standard measure in communist society is no longer labour time but free time, leisure time.[38]

In the second place, the existence of a “neutral”, supposedly technical accounting centre does not offer a sufficient guarantee for the construction of communism. This “centre” could end up becoming an end in itself, accumulating hours of social labour to the detriment of the consumption needs and free time of the producer-consumers, and becoming increasingly autonomous from society. If the producers “at the base” became less and less concerned with controlling the “centre” and with social organisation in general, there would inevitably be a transfer of the functions that should be carried out by the organs of the producers to “technical” bodies that more and more take on a life of their own. The GIC’s denial of these potential dangers was not without its consequences. The Dutch internationalists ended up rejecting any possibility that, even under communism, there could be a struggle by the producers to improve their conditions of work and of existence: the GIC refused to envisage the possibility of a society in which the struggle “for better living conditions never finished” and where “the struggle for the distribution of products goes on.”[39] Does this not reintroduce the idea that the producer-consumers cannot struggle against themselves, including their “accounting centre”?

For the GIC, communism appears as an absolute equality between producers, which is to be realised right at the beginning of the transition period.[40] It is as though, under communism, there is no longer any natural (physical or psychological) inequality in production and consumption. But in fact communism can be defined as “real equality in a natural inequality.”[41]     

Around the world, the feeling is growing that the present order of things cannot continue as before. Following the revolts of the ‘Arab Spring’, the movements of the Indignados in Spain and then of Occupy in the United States in 2011, the summer of 2013 has seen huge crowds come out into the streets almost simultaneously in Turkey and Brazil.

Hundreds of thousands, even millions, have protested against all kinds of evils: in Turkey it was the destruction of the environment by a senseless urban “development”, the authoritarian intrusion of religion into private life and the corruption of politicians; in Brazil it was the increased cost of public transport, the diversion of wealth towards spending on prestige sports activities while health, transport, education and housing are falling apart – and again, the widespread corruption of politicians. In both cases, the initial protests were met with brutal police repression which only broadened and deepened the revolt. And in both cases, the spearhead of the movement was not the “middle class” (that is to say, in media language, anyone who still has a job), but the new generation of the working class who, although educated, have only a meagre prospect of finding a stable job and for whom living in an “emerging” economy means above all observing the development of social inequality and the repugnant wealth of a tiny elite of exploiters.

That is why, today, a ‘spectre is haunting the world’: the spectre of INDIGNATION. Just over two years after the ‘Arab Spring’ which shook and surprised the countries of North Africa, and whose effects are still being felt; two years after the movement of the Indignados in Spain and Occupy in the USA; and at exactly the same time as the movement in Turkey, the wave of demonstrations in Brazil has mobilised millions of people in over a hundred cities and shown characteristics which are unprecedented for this country.

These movements, which appear in very different and very geographically distant countries, nevertheless share common characteristics: their spontaneity, their origins in reaction against brutal state repression, their massiveness, participation mostly by young people, particularly through social networks. But the common denominator that characterizes them is a great INDIGNATION faced with the deteriorating living conditions for the world’s population, provoked by the depth of a crisis that is shaking the foundations of the capitalist system and has experienced a significant acceleration since 2007. This deterioration is expressed by the accelerated precariousness of the living standards of the working masses and a great uncertainty about the future among young people, either proletarianised or facing proletarianisation. It is not by chance that the movement in Spain took the name “Indignados”, and that in this wave of massive social movements, it was the one that went furthest in both its questioning of the capitalist system and its organisational forms through massive general assemblies.1

The revolts in Turkey and Brazil in 2013 prove that the momentum created by these movements is not exhausted. Although the media evade the fact that these rebellions arose in countries which have been in a phase of “growth” in recent years, they could not avoid showing the same “outrage” of the masses of the population against the way this system works: growing social inequality, the greed and corruption of the ruling class, the brutality of state repression, weakness of the infrastructure, environmental destruction. Above all, the system’s inability to provide a future for the younger generation.

One hundred years ago, faced with the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg solemnly reminded the working class that the choice offered by the capitalist order in decay was between socialism or barbarism. The inability of the working class to carry through the revolutions that were its response to the war of 1914-1918 resulted in a century of real capitalist barbarism. Today, the stakes are even higher, because capitalism has the means to destroy all life on earth. The revolt of the exploited and oppressed, the massive struggle to defend human dignity and a real future; that is the promise of the social revolts in Turkey and Brazil.

A particularly significant aspect of the revolt in Turkey is its proximity to the bloody war in Syria. The war in Syria also began with popular protests against the regime there, but the weakness of the proletariat in this country, and the existence of deep ethnic and religious divisions within the population, allowed the regime to respond with most brutal violence. Divisions within the bourgeoisie widened and the popular revolt – as in Libya in 2011 –turned into a ‘civil war’ that has become a proxy war between imperialist powers. Syria is now transformed into a case study of barbarism, a chilling reminder of the alternative that capitalism has in store for mankind. In countries such as Tunisia and especially Egypt, where the social movement showed the real weight of the working class, the movements were unable to withstand the pressure of the dominant ideology and the situation is in the process of degenerating into a tragedy for the population, above all for the proletarians, who are becoming victims of the gangs and clashes between religious fundamentalists, supporters of the former regime and other rival factions of the bourgeoisie who have recently turned the national situation into bloody chaos. On the other hand, Turkey and Brazil, like other social revolts, continue to show the way that is open to humanity: the way to the rejection of capitalism, to the proletarian revolution and the construction of a new society based on solidarity and human needs.

The proletarian nature of the movements

Turkey

The movement of May/June began in opposition to the cutting down of trees to destroy Gezi Park in Taksim Square in Istanbul, and grew to a size unknown in the country’s history to date. Many sectors of the population, dissatisfied with recent government policy, participated, but what precipitated the masses in the streets was state terror and this same terror caused a profound stir in a large part of the working class. The movement in Turkey is not only part of the same dynamic as the revolts in the Middle East in 2011, the most important of which (Tunisia, Egypt, Israel) have been strongly marked by the working class, but is above all a direct continuation of the Indignados movement in Spain and Occupy in the United States, where the working class represents not only the majority of the population as a whole but also of the participants in the movement. The same is true of the current revolt in Brazil, where the vast majority of those involved belong to the working class, especially the proletarian youth.

The sector that participated the most in the movement in Turkey was the one dubbed the “1990s generation.”Apoliticism was the label given to this generation, many of whom could not remember the time before the AKP government2. The members of this generation, who were said to be unconcerned with the social situation and only sought to help themselves, understood that there was no salvation on their own. They have had enough of the government telling them what to do and how to live. Students, especially high school students, participated in the demonstrations in a massive way. Young workers and unemployed youth were largely present in the movement. Workers and educated unemployed were also present.

One part of the working proletariat also participated in the movement and formed the main body of the proletarian tendency within it. The Turkish Airlines strike in Istanbul tried to join the struggle at Gezi. Particularly in the textile sector we saw voices expressed in this way. One of these protests was held in Bagcilar-Gunesli, in Istanbul, where textile workers, subjected to harsh conditions of exploitation, wanted to express their class demands at the same time as they declared their solidarity with the struggle at GeziPark. They protested with banners saying “Greetings from Bagcilar to Gezi!”and “Saturday should be a day off!”. In Istanbul, workers with banners saying “General strike, general resistance” called on others to join them during a march attracting thousands of them in Alibeykov; or again “No to work, fight!”as carried by shopping centre and office employees gathered in Taksim Square. In addition, the movement has created a will to fight among unionized workers. Undoubtedly, KESK, DISK and other union organisations that called for strikes had to do so, not only because of social networking but under pressure from their own members. Finally, the platform of the various branches of Istanbul Turk-Is3, an emanation of all the local unions of Istanbul, called on the organisation and all other unions to declare a general strike against the state terror on the Monday after the attack against Gezi Park. If these calls were made, it was because there was an outrage among the membership over what had happened.

Brazil

The social movements last June have a particular significance for the proletariat of Brazil, Latin America and the rest of the world, and to a large extent went beyond the traditional regionalism of the country. These massive movements were radically different from the ‘social movements’ controlled by the state, by the PT (Workers’ Party) and other political parties, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST); similarly, it was different from other movements which have arisen in various countries of the region in the last decade or so, like the one in Argentina at the beginning of the century , the ‘indigenous’ movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, the Zapatista movement in Mexico or Chavism in Venezuela, which were the result of confrontations between bourgeois or petty bourgeois factions, disputing control of the state and the defence of national capital. In this sense, the mobilisations of June in Brazil represent the largest spontaneous mass mobilisation in this country and in Latin America for the past 30 years. This is why it is essential to learn the lessons of these events from a class point of view.

It is undeniable that this movement surprised the Brazilian and world bourgeoisie. The struggle against the public transport price rises (which are negotiated each year between the transport chiefs and the state) was just the detonator of the movement. It crystallised all the indignation which had been brewing for some time in Brazilian society and which took shape in 2012 with the struggles in public administration and in the universities, mainly in São Paulo, also with a number of strikes against wage cuts and insecure working conditions and against health and education cuts over the last few years.

Unlike the massive social movements in various countries since 2011, the one in Brazil was engendered and unified around a concrete demand, which made it possible for there to be a spontaneous mobilisation of wide sectors of the proletariat: against the rise in public transport fares. The movement took on a massive character at the national level from the 13th June, when the demonstration in São Paulo against the fare increases called by the MPL (Movimento Passe Livre – Movement for Free Access to Transport)4, as well as by other social movements, were violently repressed by police in Sao Paulo5. For five weeks, in addition to large protests in São Paulo, various protests were held around the same demand in different cities in the country, so much so that, for example, in Porto Alegre, Goiânia and other cities, the pressure forced several local governments, whatever their political colour, to agree to revoke the higher transport prices, after hard struggles strongly repressed by the state.

The movement straight away situated itself on a proletarian terrain. In the first place, we should underline that the majority of the participants belong to the working class, mainly young workers and students, mainly coming out of proletarian families or those undergoing proletarianisation. The bourgeois press has presented the movement as an expression of the ‘middle classes’, with the clear intention of creating a division among workers. In reality, the majority of those categorised as middle class are workers who often receive lower wages than skilled workers in the country’s industrial zones. This explains the success of, and the widespread sympathy with, the movement against the transport increases, which represented a direct attack on the income of working class families. This also explains why this initial demand rapidly turned into the questioning of the state, given the dilapidation of sectors such as health, education and social assistance, and increasing protests against the colossal sums of public money invested in organising next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.6. For these events the Brazilian bourgeoisie has not hesitated to resort to the forced expulsion of people living near the stadia: at the Aldeia Maracanã in Rio in the first part of the year; in the zones chosen by construction firms in São Paulo, who have been burning down favelas in the way of their plans.

It is very significant that the movement organised demonstrations around the football stadia where Confederation Cup matches were being played, in order to get a lot of media attention and to reject the spectacle prepared by the Brazilian bourgeoisie; and also in response to the brutal repression of the demonstrations around the stadia, which resulted in a number of deaths. In a country where football is the national sport, which the bourgeoisie has obviously used as a safety valve for keeping society under control, the demonstrations of the Brazilian proletariat are an example for the world proletariat. The population of Brazil is known for its love of football, but this didn’t prevent it from rejecting austerity imposed to finance the sumptuous expenses devoted to the organisation of these sporting events, which the Brazilian bourgeoisie is using to show the world that it is capable of playing in the premier league of the world economy. The demonstrators demanded public services with a ‘FIFA type’ quality7.

An extremely significant fact was that there was a massive rejection of the political parties (especially the Workers’ Party, the PT which produced the current president Lula)) and of the unions; in São Paulo some protestors were excluded from the marches because they held up banners with slogans of political, union or student organisations supporting the power.

Other expressions of the class character of the movement were shown, even though in a minority. There were a number of assemblies held in the heat of the movement, even though they did not have the same extension or reach the level of organization of the Indignados in Spain. For example the ones in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, which were called ‘popular and egalitarian assemblies’ which proposed to create a “new spontaneous, open and egalitarian space for debate”, in which over 1000 people took part.

These assemblies, although they demonstrated the vitality of the movement and the necessity for the self-organisation of the masses to impose their demands, revealed a number of weaknesses:

• Even if several other groups and collectives took part in organising them, they were animated by the capitalist left, who mainly kept their activity to the periphery of the cities

• Their main aim was to be organs of pressure on and negotiation with the state, for particular demands for improvements in this or that community or town. They also tended to see themselves as permanent organs;

• They claimed to be independent of the state and the parties, but they were very well infiltrated by the pro-government or leftist organisations which annihilated any spontaneous expressions;

• They put forward a localist or national vision, struggling against the effects of problems rather than their causes, without questioning capitalism.

In the movement there were also explicit references to the social movements in other countries, especially Turkey, which also referred to Brazil. Despite the minority character of these expressions, they were still revealing about what was felt to be shared by the two movements. In different demonstrations, we could see banners proclaiming: “We are Greeks, Turks, Mexicans, we are homeless, we are revolutionaries” or signs bearing the slogan: “This is not Turkey, not Greece, it is Brazil that is coming out of its inertia.”

In Goiãnia, the Frente de Luta Contra o Aumento (Front for the Struggle Against the Increase), which regrouped various base organisations, underlined the need for solidarity and for debate between the different components of the movement:“WE MUST REMAIN FIRM AND UNITED! Despite disagreements, we must maintain our solidarity, our resistance, our fighting spirit, and deepen our organisation and our discussions. In the same way as in Turkey, peaceful and militant elements can co-exist and struggle together, we must follow this example.”

The great indignation which animated the Brazilian proletariat was concretised in the following reflections by the Rede Extremo Sul, a network of social movements on the outskirts of São Paulo:“For these possibilities to become a reality, we can’t allow the indignation being expressed on the streets to be diverted into nationalist, conservative and moralist objectives; we can’t allow these struggles to be captured by the state and by the elites in order to empty them of their political content. The struggle against the fare increases and the deplorable state of services is directly linked to the struggle against the state and the big economic corporations, against the exploitation and humiliation of the workers, and against this form of life where money is everything and people are nothing.”

The traps set by the ruling class

Turkey

Various bourgeois political trends have been active, trying to influence the movement from the inside to keep it within the boundaries of the existing order, to avoid it radicalising and prevent the proletarian masses who took to the streets against state terror from developing class demands around their living conditions. So, while we cannot claim that they were adopted unanimously in the movement, it was democratic demands which generally dominated. The line calling for “more democracy” that formed around an anti-AKP, or rather anti-Erdogan position, expressed nothing but a reorganization of the Turkish State apparatus on a more democratic basis. The impact of democratic demands on the movement was its greatest ideological weakness. For Erdogan himself has built all his ideological attacks against the movement around the axis of democracy and elections; government authorities combining lies and manipulations repeated ad nauseam the argument that, even in countries considered more democratic, the police use violence against illegal demonstrations – in which they were not wrong. In addition, the line aimed at obtaining democratic rights tied the hands of the masses faced with police attacks and state terror and pacified their resistance.

The most active element of this democratic tendency, which took control of the Taksim Solidarity Platform, was in the left union confederations like KSEK and DISK. The Taksim Solidarity Platform, and therefore the democratic tendency, consisting of representatives of all kinds of associations and organisations, drew its strength not from an organic link with the protesters but its bourgeois legitimacy and the resources that it could therefore mobilise. The base of the left parties, which can also be defined as the legal bourgeois left, was to a large extent cut off from the masses. In general, it was the tail of the democratic tendency. The Stalinist and Trotskyist circles. along with the bourgeois radical left, were also largely cut off from the masses. They were only really influential in the neighbourhoods where they traditionally have a certain strength. While opposing the democratic tendency when the latter tried to disperse the movement, they generally supported it. Their most widely accepted slogan among the masses was “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism.”

Brazil

The national bourgeoisie has for decades been working to make Brazil a major continental or world power. To achieve this, it’s not enough to dispose of an immense territory which covers almost half of South America, or to count on its important natural resources. It has also been necessary to maintain social order, above all control over the workers. Thus in the 1980s it established a kind of alternation between right and centre left governments, based on ‘free and democratic’ elections. All this was indispensable for strengthening Brazilian capital on the world arena.

The Brazilian bourgeoisie was thus better placed to reinforce its productive apparatus and face up to the worst of the economic crisis of the 90s, while on the political level it succeeded in creating a political force which could control the impoverished masses, but above all maintain social peace. This situation was consolidated with the accession of the PT to power in 2002, making use of the charisma and ‘working class’ image of Lula.

In this way, during the first decade of the new century, the Brazilian economy raised itself to seventh place on the world ladder, according to the World Bank. The world bourgeoisie has hailed the ‘Brazilian miracle’ carried out under Lula’s presidency, which has supposedly pulled millions of Brazilians out of poverty and allowed more millions to enter this famous ‘middle class’. In fact, this ‘great success’ has been achieved by distributing a part of the surplus value as crumbs to the most impoverished, while at the same time the situation of the mass of workers has become ever more insecure.

The crisis nevertheless remains at the root of the situation in Brazil. To try to attenuate its effects, the Brazilian bourgeoisie has launched a policy of major works, provoking a construction boom in both the public and private sectors; at the same time it has been facilitating credit and debt among families to stimulate internal consumption. The limits are already tangible in the economic indicators (a slowdown of growth), but especially in the deterioration of working class living conditions: rising rates of inflation (an annual forecast of 6.7% in 2013), increased prices of consumer goods and services (including transport), a marked development of unemployment, cuts in public spending. So, the protest movement in Brazil does not come from nowhere.

The only concrete result obtained under pressure from the masses was the suspension of the increase in public transport fares that the state managed to compensate for in other ways. At the beginning of the wave of protests, to calm things down while the government worked out a strategy to control the movement, President Dilma Rousseff declared, via one of her mouthpieces, that she considered the population’s protests as “legitimate and compatible with democracy”. Lula meanwhile criticised the “excesses” of the police. But state repression didn’t stop, and neither did the street demonstrations.

One of the most elaborate traps against the movement was the propagation of the myth of a right wing coup, a rumour spread not only by the PT and the Stalinist party, but also by the Trotskyists of the PSOL (PartidoSocialismo e Liberdade) and PSTU (Partido Socialista dos TrabalhadoresUnificados): this was a way of derailing the movement and turning it towards supporting the Rousseff government, which has been severely weakened and discredited. In reality the facts show precisely that the ferocious repression against the protests in June by the left government led by the PT was equally if not more brutal than that of the military regimes. The left and extreme left of Brazilian capital are trying to obscure this reality by identifying repression with fascism or right wing regimes. There is also the smokescreen of ‘political reform’ put forward by Rousseff, with the aim of combating corruption in the political parties and imprisoning the population on the democratic terrain by calling for a vote on the proposed reforms. In fact, the Brazilian bourgeoisie showed more intelligence and know-how that its Turkish counterpart, which mostly confined itself to repeating the cycle of provocation/repression faced with social movements.

To try to regain an influence within the movement on the street, the political parties of the left of capital and the trade unions announced, several weeks in advance, a ‘National Day of Struggle’ for the 11 July, presented as a way of protesting against the failure of the collective labour agreements. Similarly, Lula, showing his considerable anti-working class experience, called on 25 June for a meeting of the leaders of movements controlled by the PT and the Stalinist party, including youth and student organisations allied with the government, with the explicit aim neutralising the street protests.

The strengths and weaknesses of the two movements

Turkey

Just as was the case with the Indignados movement and Occupy, these mobilizations have responded to the will to break with the atomisation of economic sectors where mostly young people work in precarious conditions (delivering for kebab shops, bar staff, workers in call centres and offices ...) and where it is usually difficult to struggle. An important driver of engagement and commitment is indignation but also the sense of solidarity against police violence and state terror.

But at the same time it is often as individuals that the largest concentrations of workers participated in the demonstrations, which has been one of the most significant weaknesses of the movement. The living conditions of the proletarians, subject to the ideological pressure of the ruling class in this country, have made it difficult for the working class to perceive itself as a class and helped to reinforce the idea among the demonstrators that they were essentially a mass of individual citizens, legitimate members of the “national” community. The movement, having not recognised its own class interests, found its possibilities for maturation blocked, the proletarian tendency within it having remained in the background. This situation has contributed a good deal to the focus on democracy, the central axis of the movement against government policy. A weakness of the demonstrations throughout Turkey has been the difficulty of creating mass discussions and gaining control of the movement through forms of self-organisation. This weakness was certainly favoured by a limited experience of mass discussion, meetings, general assemblies, etc. However at the same time the movement has felt the need for discussion, and the means to organise it began to emerge, as evidenced by some isolated experiences: the creation of an open forum in Gezi Park, which did not attract much attention or last very long, but nevertheless had some impact; during the strike of June 5, employees of the university who were members of Eğitim-Sen8 suggested establishing an open forum but the KSEK leadership not only rejected the proposal but also isolated the Eğitim-Sen branch to which the university employees belong. The most crucial experience was provided by the Eskişehir demonstrators who, in a general assembly, created committees to organise and coordinate the demonstrations; finally, on 17 June, in parks in different areas of Istanbul, masses of people inspired by the Gezi Park forums put in place mass assemblies also called “forums”. In the following days, others were held in Ankara and other cities. The most discussed issues related to problems of the clashes with the police. Nevertheless, there has been a tendency among the protesters to understand the importance of involvement in the struggle of part of the working proletariat.

Although the movement in Turkey failed to establish a serious relationship with the whole of the working class, the strike calls via social networks had a certain echo that was manifested in work stoppages. In addition, proletarian tendencies were clearly revealed in the movement through elements who were conscious of the importance and strength of the class and who were against nationalism. In general, a significant portion of the protesters defended the idea that the movement must create a self-organisation that would allow it to determine its own future. Moreover, the number of people who said that unions like KSEK and DISK, supposed to be “militant”, were no different from the government, grew significantly.

Finally, another characteristic of the movement, and not least: Turkish protesters welcomed the response from the other end the world with slogans in Turkish: “We are together, Brazil + Turkey!” and “Brazil resists!”.

Brazil

The great strength of the movement was that, from the beginning, it affirmed itself as a movement against the state, not only through the central demand against the fare increases but also as a mobilisation against the abandonment of public services and the orientation of spending towards the sporting spectacles. At the same time the breadth and determination of the protest forced the bourgeoisie to take a step back and annul the fare increases in a number of cities.

The crystallisation of the movement around a concrete demand, while being a strength of the movement, also put limits on it as soon as it was unable to go any further. Obtaining the suspension of the fare increases marked a step forward, but the movement did not on the whole see itself as challenging the capitalist order, something which was much more present in the Indignados movement in Spain.

The distrust towards the bourgeoisie’s main forces of social control took the form of the rejection of the political parties and the trade unions, and this represented a weakness for the bourgeoisie on the ideological level, the exhaustion of the political strategies which have emerged since the end of the dictatorship of 1965-85 and the discrediting of the teams which have succeeded each other at the head of the state, in particular as a result of their notoriously corrupt character. However, behind this undifferentiated rejection of politics stands the danger of the apoliticism, which was an important weakness of the movement. Without political debate, there is no possibility of taking the struggle forward, since it can only grow in the soil of discussion which is aimed at understanding the roots of the problems you are fighting against, and which cannot evade a critique of the foundations of capital. It was thus no accident that one of the weaknesses of the movement was the absence of street assemblies open to all participants, where you could discuss the problems of society, the actions to carry out, the organisation of the movement, its balance sheet and its objectives. The social networks were an important means of mobilisation, a way of breaking out of isolation. But they can never replace open and living debate in the assemblies.

The poison of nationalism was not absent from the movement, as could be seen from the number of Brazilian flags displayed on the demonstrations and the raising of nationalist slogans. It was quite common to hear the national anthem in the processions. This was not the case with the Indignados in Spain. In this sense the June movement in Brazil presented the same weaknesses as the mobilisations in Greece and in the Arab countries, where the bourgeoisie succeeded in drowning the huge vitality of the movements in a national project for reforming and safeguarding the state. In this context, the focus on corruption in the last analysis also worked for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and its political parties, especially those in opposition, and gave a certain credibility to the perspective of the next elections. Nationalism is a dead-end for the proletarian struggle, a violation of international class solidarity

Despite the majority of participants in the movement being proletarians, they were involved in an atomised way. The movement didn’t manage to mobilise the workers of the industrial centres who have an important weight, especially in the São Paulo region. It wasn’t even proposed. The working class, which certainly welcomed the movement and even identified with it, because it was struggling for a demand which it saw was in its interest, did not manage to mobilise as such. This attitude is a characteristic of the period where the working class is finding it hard to affirm its class identity, aggravated in Brazil by decades of immobility resulting from the action of the political parties and the unions, mainly the PT and the CUT.

Their importance for the future

The emergence of social movements of massive size and unparalleled historical importance since 1908 in Turkey, and for 30 years in Brazil, give an example to the world proletariat of the response of a new generation of proletarians to the deepening global crisis of the capitalist system. Despite their differences, these movements are an integral part of the chain of international social movements, of which the mobilisation of the Indignadosin Spain constitutes a reference point, in response to the historic and mortal crisis of capitalism. Despite all their weaknesses, they are a source of inspiration and lessons for the world proletariat. As for their weaknesses, they must be the subject, for the proletarians themselves, of an uncompromising critique to draw their lessons so that, tomorrow, they will arm future movements by helping them avoid the ideological influence and traps of the enemy class.

These movements are nothing other than the manifestation of “the old mole” of Marx, which continues to dig away at the foundations of the capitalist order.

Wim (11 August)

1) A century ago the capitalist mode of production entered its period of historical decline, its epoch of decadence. It was the outbreak of the First World War which marked the passage from the ‘Belle Epoque’, the high point of bourgeois society, to the ‘epoch of wars and revolutions’ described by the Communist International at its first congress in 1919. Since then, capitalism has continued to sink into barbarism, most notably in the shape of a Second World War which cost 50 million lives. And if the period of ‘prosperity’ which followed this horrible butchery could sow the illusion that this system had finally been able to overcome its contradictions, the open crisis of the economy at the end of the 1960s confirmed the verdict which revolutionaries had already pronounced half a century before: the capitalist mode of production could not escape the destiny of the modes of production which had preceded it. It too, having constituted a progressive step in human history, had become an obstacle to the development of the productive forces and the progress of humanity. The time for its overthrow and its replacement by another society had arrived.

2) At the same time that it showed the historic dead end that the capitalist system now faced, this open crisis, like the one in the 1930s, once again placed society in front of the alternative between generalised imperialist war and the development of decisive proletarian struggles with the perspective of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Faced with the crisis of the 1930s, the world proletariat, which had been ideologically crushed by the bourgeoisie following the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave, had not been able to come up with its own response, leaving the bourgeoisie to impose its own: a new world war. By contrast, with the first blows of the open crisis at the end of the 1960s, the proletariat had launched very widespread struggles: May 1968 in France, the ‘Hot Autumn’ in Italy 1969, the massive strikes of the workers in Poland in 1970, and many other combats, less spectacular but no less significant as signs of fundamental change in society. The counter-revolution was over. In this new situation, the bourgeoisie did not have a free hand to head towards a new world war. There followed more than four decades marked by the world economy getting more and more bogged down and by increasingly violent attacks against the living conditions of the exploited. During these decades, the working class waged many resistance struggles. However, even though it did not suffer a decisive defeat which could have overturned the historic course, it was not able to develop its struggles and its consciousness to the point of offering society the outline of a revolutionary perspective.

‘In this situation, where society’s two decisive - and antagonistic - classes confront each other without either being able to impose its own definitive response, history nonetheless does not just come to a stop. Still less for capitalism than for preceding social forms, is a “freeze” or a “stagnation” of social life possible. As a crisis-ridden capitalism’s contradictions can only get deeper, the bourgeoisie’s inability to offer the slightest perspective for society as a whole, and the proletariat’s inability, for the moment, openly to set forward its own can only lead to a situation of generalised decomposition. Capitalism is rotting on its feet’ (International Review n°62, Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism [11]).

Thus a new phase in the decadence of capitalism opened up a quarter of a century ago, the phase where the phenomenon of decomposition has become a decisive element in the life of the whole of society.

3) The area where the decomposition of capitalist society is expressed in the most spectacular way is that of military conflicts and international relations in general. What led the ICC to elaborate its analysis of decomposition in the second half of the 1980s was the succession of murderous attacks which hit the big European cities, especially Paris – attacks that were not carried out by isolated groups but by established states. This was the beginning of a form of imperialist confrontations, later described as ‘asymmetrical warfare’, which marked a profound change in relations between states and, more generally, in the whole of society. The first historic manifestation of this new and final stage in the decadence of capitalism was the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Europe and of the eastern bloc in 1989. Straight away the ICC pointed out the significance of this event in terms of imperialist conflicts:

“The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time ‘partners’ are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war…. However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest. (International Review n°61, After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, destabilization and chaos [110]).

Since then the international situation has only confirmed this analysis:

• Gulf war in 1991

• War in ex-Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001

• Two wars in Chechnya (in 1994-95 and 1999-2000)

• War in Afghanistan from 2001, which is still going on 12 years later

• The war in Iraq in 2003, the consequences of which continue to effect this country in a dramatic way, but also the initiator of the war, the USA

• The many wars which have ravaged the African continent (Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Mali, etc)

• The numerous military operations by Israel against Lebanon or the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks from Hezbollah or Hamas

4) In fact, these different conflicts graphically illustrate how war has taken on a totally irrational character in decadent capitalism. The wars of the 19th century, however murderous they may have been, had a rationality from the standpoint of the development of capitalism. Colonial wars allowed the European states to establish empires where they could obtain raw materials or as outlets for their commodities. The American Civil War, won by the north, opened the door to the full industrial development of what would become the world’s leading power. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was a decisive element in German unity and thus in creating the political framework for the future powerhouse of Europe. By contrast, the First World War bled the countries of Europe dry, both the ‘victors’ and the ‘vanquished’, above all those which had been the most ‘warlike’ (Austria, Russia and Germany). As for the Second World War, it confirmed and amplified the decline of the European continent where it had begun, with a special mention for Germany, which in 1945 was a pile of ruins, as was the other ‘aggressor’ power, Japan. In fact, the only country which benefited from this war was the one which had entered it later on and which, because of its geographic position, meant that the war was not fought on its territory – the USA. However, the most important war waged by the US after the Second World War, the war in Vietnam, certainly showed its irrational character because it brought nothing to the American power despite a considerable cost at the economic and above all human and political levels.

5) This said, the irrational character of war has gone on to a new level in the period of decomposition. This has been clearly illustrated by the American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars also had a considerable cost, notably at the economic level. But their benefits were severely limited, if not negative. In these wars, the American power was able to display its immense military superiority, but this did not enable it to obtain the objectives it was seeking: stabilising Iraq and Afghanistan and forcing its old allies of the western bloc to close ranks around the US. Today, the phased withdrawal of American and NATO troops from Iraq and Afghanistan is leaving these countries in an unprecedented state of instability, threatening to aggravate the instability of the whole region. At the same time, the other participants in these military adventures have jumped or will jump ship in dispersed order.

6) During the last period, the chaotic nature of the imperialist tensions and conflicts has been illustrated once again with the situation in Syria and the Far East. In both cases, we are witnessing conflicts which bring with them the threat of a much wider extension and destabilisation. In the Far East we’ve seen rising tensions between the states of the region. Thus in recent months there have been tensions involving a number of countries, from the Philippines to Japan. China and Japan have been in dispute over the Senkaku/Diyao islands, Japan and South Korea over the island of Takeshima/Dokdo, while there are other tensions involving Taiwan, Vietnam and Burma. But the most spectacular conflict is obviously the one ranging North Korea against South Korea, Japan and the US. In the grip of a dramatic economic crisis, North Korea has upped the stakes on the military level, with the aim of putting pressure on the others, and especially the USA, in order to gain a certain number of economic advantages. But this adventurist policy contains two very serious elements. On the one hand, the fact that it involves, even if in an indirect manner, the Chinese giant, which remains one of North Korea’s only allies, and which is more and more pushing forward its imperialist interests wherever it can, in the Far East of course, but also in the Middle East, through its alliance with Iran (which is its main supplier of hydrocarbons), and also in Africa where a growing economic presence is aimed at preparing the ground for a future military presence when it has the means to establish it. On the other hand, the adventurist policy of the North Korean state, a state whose brutal police rule is evidence of its basic fragility, contains the risk of things getting out of hand, of an uncontrolled process creating a new focus for direct military conflicts whose consequences would be hard to predict but which we can already say would be a further tragic episode to add to the long list of expressions of military barbarism ravaging the planet today.

7) The civil war in Syria followed on from the ‘Arab spring’ which, by weakening the Assad regime, opened up a Pandora’s Box of contradictions and conflicts which the iron hand of this regime had managed to keep under control for decades. The western countries have come out in favour of Assad’s departure but they are quite incapable of coming up with an alternative, given that the opposition is totally divided and that the preponderant sector is made up of the Islamists. At the same time, Russia has given unstinting military support to the Assad regime, which has guaranteed it the capacity to maintain its war fleet in the post of Tartus. And this is not the only state supporting the regime: there are also Iran and China. Syria has thus become the stakes of a bloody conflict involving multiple imperialist rivalries between powers of the first and second order – rivalries which have exacted a heavy price from the populations of the Middle East for decades. The fact that the manifestation of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Syria has resulted not in the least gain for the exploited and oppressed masses but in a war which has left over 100,000 dead is a sinister illustration of the weakness of the working class in this country – the only force which can form a barrier to military barbarism. And this situation also applies, even if in less tragic forms, to the other Arab countries where the fall of the old dictators has resulted in the seizure of power by the most retrograde sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Islamists in Egypt or Turkey, or in utter chaos, as in Libya.

Thus, Syria offers us today a new example of the barbarism which capitalism in decomposition is unleashing on the planet, a barbarism which is taking the form of bloody military confrontations but which is also affecting zones which have avoided war but where society is sinking into growing chaos, as for example in Latin America where the drug gangs, with the complicity of sectors of the state, have imposed a reign of terror in a number of areas.

8) But it’s at the level of the destruction of the environment that the short term consequences of the collapse of capitalist society take on a totally apocalyptic quality. Although the development of capitalism has from the beginning been characterised by the extreme rapacity of its search for profit and accumulation in the name of the ‘conquest of nature’, the depredations brought about by this tendency over the last 30 years have reached levels of devastation that are unprecedented whether in previous societies or at the time of its birth ‘in blood and filth’. The concern of the revolutionary proletariat faced with the destructive essence of capitalism is as old as the threat itself. Marx and Engels already warned against the negative impact – both on nature and on human beings – of the agglomeration and confinement of people in the first industrial concentrations in Britain in the mid-19th century. In the same spirit, revolutionaries have in different epochs understood and denounced the ignoble nature of capitalist development, showing the danger that it represents not just for the working class, but for the whole of humanity and now for its very survival on the planet.

The current tendency towards the definitive and irreversible degradation of the natural world is frankly alarming, as shown by the constant terrible scenarios of global warming, pillage of the planet, deforestation, soil erosion, destruction of species, pollution of water sources, seas and air and nuclear catastrophes. The latter are an example of the latent danger of the devastation resulting from the potential that capitalism has put at the service of its mad logic, turning it into a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of humanity. And although the bourgeoisie tries to attribute the destruction of the environment to the wickedness of individuals ‘lacking an ecological conscience’ – thereby creating an atmosphere of guilt and anguish - the truth revealed by its vain and hypocritical attempts to resolve the problem is that this is not a problem of individuals or even of companies or nations, but of the very logic of devastation inscribed in a system which, in the name of accumulation, a system whose principle and goal is profit, has no scruples about undermining once and for all the material premises for metabolic exchange between life and the Earth, as long as it can gain an immediate benefit from it.

This is the inevitable result of the contradiction between the productive forces- human and natural- which capitalism has developed, compressing them to the point of explosion, and the antagonistic relations based on the division between classes and on capitalist competition.

This dramatic scenario must also stimulate the proletariat in its revolutionary efforts, because only the destruction of capitalism can enable life to flourish once again.

9) Fundamentally, this powerlessness of the ruling class in front of the destruction of the environment, even though it is more and more conscious of the threat it poses to the whole of humanity, has its roots in its inability to overcome the economic contradictions which assail the capitalist mode of production. It is the irreversible aggravation of the economic crisis which is the fundamental cause of the barbarism which is more and more spreading throughout society. For the capitalist mode of production, there is no way out. Its own laws have led it into this impasse and it can’t get out of this without abolishing its own laws, i.e. without abolishing itself. Concretely, the motor of capitalism’s development from the beginning has been the conquest of new markets outside its own sphere. The commercial crises which it went through from the early years of the 19th century, and which expressed the fact that the commodities produced by a capitalism in full development could not find enough buyers to absorb its products, were overcome by a destruction of excess capital but also and above all by the conquest of new markets, mainly in the zones which had not yet been developed from a capitalist point of view. This is why this century was the century of colonial conquests: for each developed capitalist power it was essential to constitute zones where they could obtain cheap raw materials but which also and above all could serve as outlets for its commodities. The First World War was fundamentally the result of the fact that the division of the world among the capitalist powers meant that any conquest of new zones dominated by this or that power could only mean a confrontation with other colonial powers. This did not mean however that there were no longer any extra-capitalist markets capable of absorbing the excess of commodities produced by capitalism. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote on the eve of the First World War: ‘The more ruthlessly capital sets about the destruction of non-capitalist strata, at home and in the outside world, the more it lowers the standard of living for the workers as a whole, the greater also is the change in the day-to-day history of capital. It becomes a string of political and social disasters and convulsions, and under these conditions, punctuated by periodical economic catastrophes or crises, accumulation can go on no longer. But even before this natural economic impasse of capital’s own creating is properly reached it becomes a necessity for the international working class to revolt against the rule of capital’ (Rosa Luxemburg, Accumulation of Capital, chapter 32).

The First World War was precisely the most terrible expression of this epoch of “catastrophes and convulsions” capitalism was going through “even before this natural economic impasse of capital’s own making is properly reached”. And 10 years after the imperialist slaughter, the great crisis of the 1930s was the second expression, a crisis which would lead to a second generalised imperialist massacre. But the period of ‘prosperity’ which the world went through in the second post-war period, a prosperity piloted by the mechanisms set up by the western bloc even before the end of the war (notably the Bretton Woods accords in 1944), and which were based on the systematic intervention of the state in the economy, proved that this ‘natural economic impasse’ had not yet been reached. The open crisis at the end of the 1960s demonstrated that the system was getting closer to these limits, especially with the end of the process of decolonisation which, paradoxically, had made it possible to open up new markets. From then onwards, the increasing narrowness of extra-capitalist markets has forced capitalism, more and more threatened by generalised overproduction, to resort more and more to credit, a real headlong flight since the more the debts accumulated, the less possibility there was for these debts to be repaid.

10) The rising influence of the financial sector of the economy, to the detriment of the productive sphere proper, and which today is stigmatised by politicians and journalists of all kinds as being responsible for the crisis, is in no way the result of the triumph of one kind of economic thinking over another (‘monetarists’ against ‘Keynesians’ or ‘neo-liberals’ against ‘interventionists’). It derives fundamentally from the fact that the forward flight into credit has given a growing weight to those organisms whose function is to distribute credit, the banks. In this sense, the ‘financial crisis’ is not the source of the economic crisis and the recession. On the contrary, it is overproduction which is the source of ‘financialisation’ and it is the fact that it is more and more risky to invest in production, given that the world market is more and more saturated, and this directs the flow of finance more and more towards speculation. This is why all the ‘left wing’ economic theories which call for ‘reining in international finance’ in order to get out of the crisis are empty dreams since they ‘forget’ the real causes of this hypertrophy of the financial sphere.

11) The crisis of the ‘sub-primes’ in 2007, the huge financial panic of 2008 and the recession of 2009 marked a new and very important step in capitalism’s descent into irreversible crisis. For decades, capitalism had used and abused credit to counter-act the growing tendency towards overproduction, expressed in particular by a succession of recessions which were increasingly profound and devastating, followed by ‘recoveries’ which were more and more timid. The result of this was that, leaving aside variations on growth rates from one year to the next, average growth in the world economy has continued to fall from decade to decade while at the same time unemployment has increased. The recession of 2009 has been the most important capitalism has been through since the Great Depression of the 1930s, bringing unemployment rates in many countries to levels not seen since the Second World War. It was only a massive intervention by the IMF, decided at the G20 summit of March 2009, which saved the banks from generalised bankruptcy resulting from their accumulation of ‘toxic debts’, i.e. loans which would never be repaid. In doing so, the ‘debt crisis’, as the bourgeois commentators describe it, was taken onto a higher level: it was no longer just particular individuals ( as happened in the US in the USA with the housing crisis), not just companies or banks, who were unable to reimburse their debts, or even pay the interest on their debts. It was now entire states which were confronted with the increasingly crushing weight of debt, ‘sovereign debt’, which affects their capacity to intervene in order to revive their respective national economies through budget deficits.

12) It’s in this context which we saw, in the summer of 2011, what has henceforward been known as the ‘Euro crisis’. Like the Japanese state or the American state, the debt of the European states has grown in a spectacular manner, particularly in those countries of the Eurozone whose economies are the most fragile or the most dependent on the illusory palliatives put in motion during the previous period – the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). In the countries which have their own currency, like the USA, Japan or the UK, state debt can be partly compensated by the printing of money. Thus the American FED has bought up large quantities of American state Treasury Bonds, i.e. the recognition of state debts, in order to transform them into greenbacks. But such a possibility does not exist at the individual level for countries which have abandoned their national currency in favour of the Euro. Deprived of this possibility of ‘monetising’ debt, the countries of the Eurozone have no other recourse but to borrow even more to make up for the hole in their public finances. And if the countries of northern Europe are still able to raise funds from private banks at reasonable rates, such a possibility is out of the question for the PIIGS whose loans are subjected to exorbitant rates because of their flagrant insolvability, which obliges them to call on a series of ‘salvage plans’ put into place by the European Central Bank and the IMF, accompanied by the demand for drastic reductions in their public deficits. The consequence of these reductions are dramatic attacks on the living conditions of the working class; but they still don’t give states a real capacity to limit their public deficits since the recession they provoke has the consequence of reducing the resources that can be derived from taxes. Thus the snake oil remedies used to ‘heal the sick’ threaten more and more to kill the patient. This is also one of the reasons why the European Commission decided very recently to soften its demands for the reduction of deficits in certain countries like Spain and France. We can thus note once again the impasse that capitalism faces: debt has been used as way of supplementing the insufficiency of solvent markets but it can’t grow indefinitely as could be seen from the financial crisis which began in 2007. However, all the measures which can be taken to limit debt once again confront capitalism with its crisis of overproduction, and this in an international context which is in constant deterioration and which more and more limits its margin of manoeuvre.

13) The case of the ‘emergent’ countries, notably the ‘BRICs’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China) whose rates of growth have stayed well above those of the US, Japan, or western Europe, does not contradict the insoluble nature of the contradictions of the capitalist system. In reality, the ‘success’ of these countries (the differences between which should be underlined since a country like Russia is notable mainly for the preponderance of exports of raw materials, especially hydrocarbons) has in part been the consequence of the capitalist economy’s general crisis of overproduction, which, by exacerbating competition between enterprises and obliging them to reduce drastically the cost of labour power, has led to the ‘relocation’ of major parts of the productive apparatus of the old industrial countries (automobiles, textiles and clothing, electronics, etc) to regions where workers’ wages are much lower. However, the close dependence of these emerging countries on exports towards the most developed countries will sooner or later lead to convulsions in these economies when sales to the former are affected by deepening recessions, which will not fail to develop.

14) Thus, as we said 4 years ago, ‘even though the capitalist system is not going to collapse like a pack of cards, the perspective is one of sinking deeper and deeper into a historical impasse, of plunging more and more into the convulsions that affect it today. For more than four decades, the bourgeoisie has not been able to prevent the continual aggravation of the crisis. Today it is facing a situation which is far more degraded than the one it faced in the 60s. In spite of all the experience it has gained in these decades, it can only do worse, not better’, (18th ICC Congress: Resolution on the International Situation [111]). This does not mean however that we are going back to a situation similar to that of 1929 and the 1930s. 70 years ago, the world bourgeoisie was taken completely aback faced with the collapse of its economy, and the policies it applied, with each country turning in on itself, only succeeded in exacerbating the consequences of the crisis. The evolution of the economic situation over the last four decades has proved that, even if it’s clearly incapable of preventing capitalism from sinking deeper and deeper into the crisis, the ruling class has the ability to slow down this descent and to avoid a situation of generalised panic like on ‘Black Thursday’ on October 24th 1929. There is another reason why we are not going to relive a situation similar to that of the 1930s. At this time, the shock wave of the crisis began from the world’s leading power, the USA, and then spread to the second world power, Germany. It was in these two countries that we saw the most dramatic consequences of the crisis, like the mass unemployment that hit 30% of the active population, or the endless queues outside employment offices or soup kitchens, whereas countries like Britain and France were relatively spared. Today, a somewhat comparable situation is developing in countries in the south of Europe (notably Greece), without yet reaching the same level of workers’ misery as in the US and Germany in the 1930s. At the same time, the most developed countries, in northern Europe, the USA and Japan, are still very far from such a situation. One the one hand, because their national economies are better able to resist the crisis, but also, and above all, because today the proletariat of these countries, and especially in Europe, is not ready to accept such a level of attacks on its conditions. Thus one of the major components of the evolution of the crisis escapes from a strict economic determinism and moves onto the social level, to the rapport de forces between the two major classes in society, bourgeoisie and proletariat.

15) Although the ruling class would like to present its putrid sores as if they were beauty spots, humanity is beginning to wake up from a dream which has become a nightmare, and to grasp the total historic bankruptcy of this society. But although the feeling that there is a need for a different order of things is gaining ground faced with the brutal reality of a world in decomposition, this vague consciousness does not yet mean that the proletariat has become convinced of the necessity to abolish this world, still less that it has developed the perspective of constructing a new one. Thus the unprecedented aggravation of the capitalist crisis in the context of decomposition is the framework in which the class struggle develops today, although in an uncertain manner given that this struggle is not developing in the form of open confrontations between the two classes. Here we must underline the unprecedented framework of the present struggles since they are taking place in the context of a crisis which has lasted for nearly 40 years and whose gradual effects - apart from particular convulsions - have ‘habituated’ the proletariat to seeing a slow, pernicious deterioration in its living conditions, which make it all the harder to grasp the gravity of the attacks and to make a consequent response. Even more, it’s a crisis whose rhythm makes it difficult to understand who lies behind the attacks which are made ‘natural’ by their slow, staggered nature. This is very different from the obvious and immediate convulsions in the whole of social life in a situation of war. Thus there are differences between the development of the class struggle – at the level of possible responses, of breadth, of depth, of extension and content – in a context of war which makes the need to fight dramatically urgent, as was the case during the First World War early in the 20th century, even if there was not an immediate response to the war - and a crisis evolving at a slow pace.

The starting point for today’s struggles is precisely the absence of class identity in a proletariat which, since capitalism entered into its phase of decomposition, has had serious difficulties not only in developing its historic perspective but even in recognising itself as a social class. The so-called ‘death of communism’, supposedly brought about by the fall of the eastern bloc in 1989, unleashed an ideological campaign whose aim was to deny the very existence of the proletariat, and it dealt a very heavy blow to the consciousness and militancy of the proletariat. The attacking force of this campaign has weighed on the course of the struggle ever since. But despite this, as we have been saying since 2003, the tendency towards class confrontations has been confirmed by the development of various movements in which the working class ‘demonstrated its existence’ to a bourgeoisie which had wanted it buried while it was still alive. Thus, the working class of the whole world has not stopped fighting, even if its struggles have not attained the hoped for breadth or depth given the critical situation it faces. However, thinking about the class struggle in terms of ‘what should be’, as though the present situation had just fallen from the sky, is not permissible for revolutionaries. Understanding the difficulties and the potential of the class struggle has always been a task demanding a patient, historical, materialist approach, in order to find sense in apparent chaos, to understand what is new and difficult and what is promising.

16) It’s in this context of crisis, of decomposition and the fragile subjective state of the proletariat that we can understand the weaknesses, insufficiencies and errors as well as the potential strength of the struggle, confirming us in our conviction that the communist perspective does not derive in an automatic or mechanical way from determined circumstances. Thus, during the last two years, we have seen the development of movements which we have described with the metaphor of the five streams:

1. Social movements of young people in precarious work, unemployed or still studying, which began with the struggle against the CPE in 2006, continued with the youth revolt in Greece in 2008 and culminated with the movement of the Indignados and Occupy in 2011;

2. Movements which were massive but which were well contained by the bourgeoisie preparing the ground in advance, as in France 2007, France and Britain in 2010, Greece in 2010-12, etc;

3. Movements which suffered from a weight of inter-classism, like Tunisia and Egypt in 2011;

4. Germs of massive strikes as in Egypt in 2007, Vigo (Spain) in 2006, China in 2009;

5. The development of struggles in the factories or in localised industrial sectors but which contained promising signs, such as Lindsey in 2009, Tekel in 2010, electricians in the UK in 2011.

These five streams belong to the working class despite their differences; each one in its own way expresses an effort by the proletariat to find itself again, despite the difficulties and obstacles which the bourgeoisie puts in its way. Each one contained a dynamic of research, of clarification, of preparing the social soil. At different levels they are part of the search “for the word that will lead us to socialism” (as Rosa Luxemburg put it, referring to the workers’ councils) via the general assemblies. The most advanced expressions of this tendency were the Indignados and Occupy movements - especially in Spain - because they were the ones which most clearly showed the tensions, contradictions and potential of the class struggle today. Despite the presence of strata coming from the impoverished petty bourgeoisie, the proletarian imprint of these movements manifested itself in the search for solidarity, in the assemblies, in the attempts to develop a culture of debate, in the capacity to avoid the traps of repression, in the seeds of internationalism, and in an acute sensibility towards subjective and cultural elements. And it is through this dimension of preparing the subjective terrain that these movements show all their importance for the future.

17) The bourgeoisie has in turn been showing signs of anxiety at this resurrection of its worldwide grave digger, which has been reacting against the horrors imposed on it on a daily basis to maintain the present system. Capitalism has therefore been widening its offensive by strengthening union containment, sowing democratic illusions and shooting off the fireworks of nationalism. It’s no accident that its counter-offensive focussed on these questions: the aggravation of the crisis and its effects on the living conditions of the proletariat have provoked a resistance which the unions try to control through actions which fragment the unity of the struggles and prolong the proletariat’s loss of confidence in its own strength.

Since the development of the class struggle is taking place today in the framework of an open crisis of capitalism that has been going on for nearly 40 years - which is to some degree an unprecedented situation in the experience of the workers’ movement- the bourgeoisie is trying to prevent the proletariat from becoming aware of the world wide and historic character of the crisis. Thus the idea of national solutions and the development of nationalist discourse prevent an understanding of the real character of the crisis which is indispensable for the struggle of the proletariat to take on a radical direction. Since the proletariat doesn’t recognise itself as a class, its resistance tends to start out as a general expression of indignation against what is happening throughout society. This absence of class identity and thus of a class perspective enables the bourgeoisie to develop mystifications about citizenship and struggles for a “real democracy”. And there are other sources of this loss of class identity, which trace their roots to the very structure of capitalist society and the form which the current aggravation of the crisis is taking. Decomposition, which entails a brutal worsening of the minimal conditions for human survival, is accompanied by an insidious devastation of the personal, mental and social terrain. This translates itself into a “crisis of confidence” of humanity. Furthermore the aggravation of the crisis through the spread of unemployment and precarious working has weakened the socialisation of young people and facilitated the tendency to escape into a world of abstraction and atomisation.

18) Thus, the movements of these last two years, and especially the “social movements”, are marked by many contradictions. In particular the rarity of specific demands apparently doesn’t correspond to the “classic” trajectory from the particular to the general which we expect from the class struggle. But we must also take into account the positive aspects of this general point of view, which derives from the fact that the effects of decomposition are felt at the general level, and from the universal nature of the economic attacks mounted by the ruling class. Today the road taken by the proletariat has its point of departure in the “general”, which tends to raise the question of politicisation in a much more direct way. Confronted with the obvious bankruptcy of the system and the deleterious effects of decomposition, the exploited mass revolts and cannot go forward until it understands these problems as products of the decadence of the system and the necessity to overcome it. It’s at this level that the methods of proletarian struggle that we have seen (general assemblies, open and fraternal debates, solidarity, the development of an increasingly political perspective) take on all their importance, since it is these methods which make it possible to undertake a critical reflection and arrive at the conclusion that the proletariat can not only destroy capitalism but can create a new world. A decisive moment in this process will be the entry into the struggle of the workplaces and their conjunction with the more general mobilisations, a perspective which is beginning to develop despite the difficulties we are going to encounter in the years ahead. This is the content of the perspective of the convergence of the ‘five streams’ we mentioned above into the “ocean of phenomena” which Rosa Luxemburg called the mass strike.

19) To understand this perspective of convergence, the relationship between class identity and class consciousness is of capital importance and a question arises: can consciousness develop without class identity or will the latter emerge from the development of consciousness? The development of consciousness and of a historic perspective are rightly associated with the rediscovery of class identity, but we cannot envisage this developing bit by bit in a rigid sequence: first forge your identity, then struggle, then become conscious and develop a perspective, or some other order of these elements. The working class today does not appear as an increasingly massive pole of opposition, so the development of a critical stance by a proletariat which still doesn’t know itself is more probable. The situation is complex but it is more likely that we will see a response in the form of a general questioning which is potentially positive in political terms, starting off not from a sharply distinct class identity but from movements which tend to find their own perspective through their own struggle, As we said in 2009 “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” (Resolution on the international situation, point 11, 18th ICC Congress). The formulation ‘develop its struggles to gain confidence in itself and its perspective’ is perfectly adequate since this means recognising a ‘self’ and a perspective, but the development of these elements can only derive from the struggles themselves. The proletariat does not ‘create’ its consciousness but becomes conscious of what it really is.

In this process, debate is the key to criticising the insufficiencies of partial points of view, to exposing traps, rejecting the hunt for scapegoats, understanding the nature of the crisis, etc. At this level, the tendencies towards open and fraternal debate of these last years are very promising for this process of politicisation which the class will have to take forward. Transforming the world by transforming ourselves begins to take form in the evolution of initiatives for debate and in the development of concerns based on a critique of the most powerful chains holding the proletariat. The process of politicisation and radicalisation needs debate in order to make a critique of the present order, giving a historical explanation of problems. At this level it remains valid to say that “the responsibility of revolutionary organisations and the ICC in particular is to participate fully in the reflection going on in the working class, not only intervening actively in the struggles which are already developing but also by stimulating the positions of the groups and elements who aim to join the struggle” (ICC's 17th Congress: Resolution on the international situation [112]). We must be firmly convinced that the responsibility of revolutionaries in the phase now opening up is to contribute to and catalyse the nascent development of consciousness expressing itself in the doubts and criticisms already arising in the proletariat. Developing and deepening theory has to be at the heart of our contribution, not only against the effects of decomposition but also as a way of patiently sowing the social field, as an antidote to immediatism in our activities, because without the radicalisation and deepening of theory by revolutionary minorities, theory will never seize hold of the masses.

In the previous article in this series, we looked at the way the Belgian/Italian left communists around the review Bilan in the 1930s criticised the conceptions of the Dutch council communists regarding the transition from capitalism to communism. We looked mainly at the political aspects of the transition period, in particular Bilan’s argument that the Dutch comrades underestimated the problems posed by the proletarian revolution and the inevitable recomposition of a form of state power during the transitional period. In this article we will study Bilan’s criticisms of the central focus of the Dutch communists book Grundprinzipien Kommunistischer Produktion und Veiteilung (Principles of Communist Production and Distribution, published by the Groep van Internationale Communisten, GIC): the economic programme of the proletarian revolution.

Their criticisms centre round two main areas:

• the problem of value and its elimination

• the system of remuneration in the transition period

Value and its elimination

The author of the Bilan articles, Mitchell, begins by affirming that the proletarian revolution cannot immediately introduce integral communism, but only a transitional, hybrid social form, still marked ideologically by the ‘stigmata’ of the past and by its more material incarnations: the law of value, and thus even by money and wages, even if in a modified form. In short, labour power does not immediately cease to be a commodity because the means of production has become collective property. It continues to be measured in terms of ‘value’, that mysterious quality which “while finding its source in the activity of a physical force – labour – has no material reality in itself” (Bilan 34, republished in IR 130). Regarding the difficulties posed by the whole concept of value, Mitchell quotes Marx from his Preface to Capital, where he notes that, regarding the value-form, “the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all” (and it is fair to say that this question remains a source of puzzlement and controversy even among genuine followers of Marx...).

In his own effort to get to the bottom of it all, to discover what makes a commodity ‘worth’ something on the market, Marx, in line with the classical economists, recognised the core of value is in concrete human activity, in labour carried out within a given social relationship – more precisely, in the average labour time embodied in the commodity. It is not a pure result of supply and demand, or arbitrary whims and decisions, even if these elements may cause fluctuations of price. It is thus the regulating principle behind the anarchy of the market. But Marx went beyond the classical economists in showing how it is also the basis for the particular form of exploitation in bourgeois society and of the specific character of the crisis and breakdown of capitalism, and thus of a complete loss of control by humanity over its own productive activity. These revelations led to the majority of bourgeois economists abandoning the labour theory of value even before the capitalist system entered its epoch of decline.

In 1928, the Soviet economist I I Rubin, soon to be accused of deviation from marxism and eliminated along with thousands of other communists, published a masterly analysis of Marx’s theory of value, which appeared in English in 1972 under the title Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, published by Black and Red. From the beginning of the work, he insists that Marx’s theory of value is inseparable from his critique of commodity fetishism and the “reification” of human relations in bourgeois society – the transformation of a relationship between people into a relationship between things:

“Value is a production relation among autonomous commodity producers; it assumes the form of being a property of things and is connected with the distribution of social labour. Or, looking at the same phenomenon from the other side, value is the property of the product of labour of each commodity producer which makes it exchangeable for the products of labour of any other commodity producer in a determined ratio which corresponds to a given level of productivity of labour in the different branches of production. We are dealing with a human relation which acquires the form of being a property of things and which is connected with the process of distribution of labour in production. In other words, we are dealing with reified production relations among people. The reification of labour in value is the most important conclusion of the theory of fetishism, which explains the inevitability of ‘reification’ of production relations among people in a commodity economy." (Rubin, p72, chapter 8, ‘Basic characteristics of Marx’s theory of value’).

The Dutch left were certainly aware that the question of value and its elimination was key to the transition towards communism. Their book was an attempt to elaborate a method that could guide the working class away from a society where their products rule over them, to one where the producers are in direct command of the entirety of production and consumption. Their driving concern was to replace the “reified” relations characteristic of capitalist society with the simple transparency of social relations which Marx alludes to in the first chapter of Capital when he describes the future society of associated producers.

How did the Dutch comrades envisage this being achieved? As we wrote in the previous article,

“For the Grundprinzipien the nationalisation or collectivisation of the means of production can perfectly well co-exist with wage labour and the alienation of the workers from their own product. What is key, therefore, is that the workers themselves, through their own organisations rooted in the workplace, dispose not only of the physical means of production but of the entire social product. But in order to ensure that the social product remained in the hands of the producers from the beginning to the end of the labour process (decisions on what to produce and in what quantities, distribution of the product including the remuneration of the individual producer) a general economic law was needed which could be subject to rigorous accounting: the calculation of the social product on the basis of the average socially necessary labour time”.

For Mitchell, as we have seen, the law of value inevitably persists during the transition period. This is certainly the case during the phase of civil war, where the proletarian bastion “cannot abstract itself from a world economy which continues to evolve on a capitalist basis” (Bilan 34). But he also argues that even within the “proletarian economy” (and after the victory over the bourgeoisie in the civil war) not all sectors of the economy can be immediately socialised (he had in mind the example of the huge peasant sector in Russia and throughout the peripheries of the capitalist system). There will thus be exchange between the socialised sector and these very considerable vestiges of small-scale production, and this will impose, with more or less weight, the laws of the market on the sector directly controlled by the proletariat. The law of value, instead of being abolished by decree, must instead go through a kind of historical reversion: “the law of value, instead of developing the way it did by going from simple commodity production to capitalist production must go through the reverse process of regression and extinction which leads from the ‘mixed’ economy to full communism” (Bilan 34).

Mitchell considers that the Dutch comrades are deluded in thinking that you can abolish the law of value simply through the calculation of labour time. For one thing, their idea of formulating a kind of mathematical law of accounting that will make it possible to do away with the value-form will encounter considerable difficulties. To precisely measure labour value, you need to establish the ‘socially average’ labour time embodied in commodities. But the unit of this social average can only be unskilled or simple labour, i.e. labour in itsmost elementary expression: skilled or compound labour needs to be reduced to its simplest form. And in Mitchell’s view Marx himself accepted that he did not manage to solve this problem. In sum, “the reduction of compound labour to simple labour (which is the real unit of measure) remains unexplained, and that as a result the elaboration of a scientific method for calculating labour time, which is a necessary function of this process of reduction, is impossible. Probably the conditions for the emergence of such a law will only come together when it is no longer of any use: i.e. when production can answer all needs and when, as a result, society will no longer need to calculate labour: the administration of things will only require a simple register of what has been produced. In the economic domain we can thus see an analogy with political life, when democracy will be superfluous at the moment that it has been fully realised” (Bilan 34).

Perhaps more important is Mitchell’s charge that both in their means of advancing towards the higher goals, and in their definition of the more advanced stages of the new society, the Grundprinzipien’s vision of communism actually contains a disguised form of the law of value, since it still contains its essence, the measure of labour by socially average labour time.

To support this argument, Mitchell warns that there is a danger that the Grundprinzipien’s ‘non-centralised’ network of enterprises could actually function as a society of commodity production (not dissimilar from the anarcho-syndicalist view that the Dutch comrades rightly criticise in their book):

“They note however that ‘the suppression of the market must be interpreted in the sense that while the market appears to survive under communism, its social content as regards circulation is entirely different: the circulation of products on the basis of labour time is the basis of new social relation’ (p 110). But if the market survives (even if its form and basis are different) it can only function on the basis of value. This is what the Dutch internationalists don't seem to see, ‘subjugated’, as they are, to their formulation about ‘labour time’, which in substance is nothing but value itself. Furthermore, for them it is not excluded that in ‘communism’ we will still talk about ‘value’; but they refrain from drawing out the significance of this with regards to the mechanism of the social relations that result from maintaining labour time as a unit of measurement. Instead they conclude that since the content of value will have changed, all we need to do is replace the term value with the term production time. But this obviously doesn't change the economic reality at all; it's the same thing when they say that there is no longer any exchange of products, but only the passage of products (p 53-54). Equally: ‘instead of the function of money, we will have the registering of the movement of products, social accounting on the basis of the average social labour time’ (p 55)”.

The remuneration of labour and the critique of egalitarianism

Mitchell’s criticism of the Dutch left’s advocacy of equal remuneration through the system of labour time vouchers is connected to a more general criticism, which we looked at in the first part of this article: that of an abstract vision where everything operates smoothly from the day after the insurrection. Mitchell does recognise that both the Dutch comrades and Hennaut share Marx’s distinction (developed in the Critique of the Gotha Programme) between the lower and higher stages of communism, and that for both, in the first stage, there is still a persistence of “bourgeois right”. But for Mitchell, the Dutch comrades have a one-sided interpretation of what Marx was saying in this document:

“But apart from this, the Dutch internationalists falsify the significance of Marx's words about the repartition of products. When they say that the worker receives from the process of distribution a pro rata of the quantity of labour he has given, they only discover one aspect of the dual inequality which we have underlined, and it is the one which results from the social situation of the worker (p 81); but they don't dwell on the other aspect, which expresses the fact that the workers, in the same amount of labour time, provide different quantities of simple labour (simple labour which is the common measure exerted through the play of value), thus giving rise to unequal repartition. They prefer to stick with their demand for the suppression of inequality in wages, which remains hanging in mid air because the suppression of capitalist wage labour does not immediately result in the disappearance of the differences in the remuneration of labour”. (Bilan 35, republished in IR 131).

In other words, although the Dutch comrades are in continuity with Marx who saw that the differing situations of individual workers mean that there would be a persistence of inequality (“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time....one worker is married, another is not, one has more children than another, and so on and so forth”, as Marx puts it in Critique of the Gotha Programme ), they ignore the deeper problem of the calculation of simple labour, which means that remunerating workers on the basis of hours of labour alone means that workers in the same social situation but working with different means of production will still not be equally rewarded.

Mitchell criticises Hennaut on similar grounds:

“Comrade Hennaut comes up with a similar solution to the problem of distribution in the period of transition, a solution which he also draws from a mistaken, because incomplete, interpretation of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme. In Bilan, p 747, he said: ‘the inequality which still exists in the first phase of socialism results not from an unequal remuneration being applied to various kinds of labour: the simple work of the labourer or the compound work of the engineer, with all the stages in between. No, all these types of labour are of equal worth, only their duration and intensity has to be measured; inequality results from the fact that men who have different capacities and needs are carrying out the same tasks with the same resources’. And Hennaut inverses Marx's thinking when he locates inequality in the fact that ‘the part of the social profit remains equal - an equal amount of remuneration of course - for each individual, whereas their needs and the effort made to achieve the same remuneration are different’; whereas, as we have indicated, Marx saw inequality in the fact that individuals received unequal shares because they provided unequal shares of labour and this is the basis for the application of bourgeois equal rights.” (ibid).

At the same time, underlying this rejection of ‘absolute’ egalitarianism in the earlier phases of the revolution is a deeper critique of the very notion of equality:

“the fact that in a proletarian economy the basic motive force is no longer the ceaselessly enlarged production of surplus value and of capital but the unlimited production of use values does not mean that the conditions are right for a levelling of "wages" that translates into equality in consumption. In fact, such an equality can exist neither at the beginning of the transitional period nor in the communist phase, which is based on the formula "to each according to his needs". In reality, formal equality can never exist, while communism will finally realise a real equality in natural inequality” (ibid)

Marx’s communism began with a rejection of ‘barracks’ or crude communism which flourished in the early days of the workers’ movement; and against this kind of ‘downward’ collectivism – realised to some degree by Stalinist state capitalism - it opposes an associationof free individuals where natural ‘inequality’ or diversity, will be positively cultivated.

Labour time vouchers and the wage system

The other target of Mitchell’s critique is the GIC’s view that recompensing labour on the basis of labour time – the famous system of labour time vouchers – has already overcome the essentials of the wage system. Mitchell does not seem to disagree with Marx’s advocacy of this system in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, since he quotes it in his article without criticism. He also agrees with Marx that in this method of distribution, money has lost its characteristic as “abstract wealth’ capable of appropriating any kind of wealth” (Bilan 34). But unlike the GIC, Mitchell emphasises its continuity with the wage system rather than its discontinuity, since he puts particular emphasis on the passage from Gotha where Marx says frankly that

"Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form".

In this sense, it seems, Mitchell considers that the labour time vouchers are a kind of wage. Nor does he see any superior system in the first stages of the revolution: the system of equal rationing in the Russian revolution was this was “not an economic method capable of ensuring the systematic development of the economy; it was the regime of a people under siege and concentrating all its energies on the civil war”(Bilan 35).

For Mitchell, the key to really abolishing value was not in selecting the particular forms through which labour would be rewarded in the period of transition, but in overcoming the narrow horizons of bourgeois right by creating a situation where in Marx’s words, “all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly”. Only such a society could “inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”.

Comments on a response to Mitchell’s critique

The comrades of the GIC did not reply to Mitchell’s criticisms and council communism as an organised current has more or less disappeared. But the American comrade David Adam, who has written extensively about Marx, Lenin and the transition period1, does to a certain extent identify with the tradition represented by GIC and Mattick in America. In correspondence with the author of this article, he made these comments about Mitchell and Bilan :

“With regard to Bilan's reading of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, I think it is confused. They clearly identify the first phase of communism with transition to communism and the law of value, and seem to identify the existence of ‘bourgeois right’ with the law of value. I think this creates problems, not least of which is the interpretation of the Grundprinzipien. They identify the sort of accounting that was called for by the Dutch left with the law of value, when the Grundprinzipien is clear that they are talking about a socialist society emerging after the period of proletarian dictatorship, which is in line with Marx. Mitchell also seems to think that the Dutch left were talking about a transitional phase in which the market still existed, and this is not the case. So I think this diminishes the value of the criticism of the Grundprinzipien, because I don't think they have understood Marx. And this could mean that they don't see the necessity for transformation of economic relations right from the beginning of the revolutionary process, as if the law of value can simply go through ‘profound changes in nature’ and eventually disappear. The whole idea of its disappearance is bound up with the emergence of effective social control over production, which is what the first phase of communism addresses. But Bilan seems to say that once such planning mechanisms are found they will no longer be necessary. I don't think this is true”.

There are a number of different elements here.

1. Were the Dutch comrades always clear about the distinction between the lower and higher stages? We have seen that Mitchell accepts that they did make this distinction. In the previous article, we also quoted a passage from the Grundprinzipien which clearly recognises that the measurement of individual labour becomes less important as integral communism is reached. But we have also seen that the Grundprinzipien contain a number of ambiguities. As we noted in the first part of this article, they seem to speak far too soon of a society operating as an association of free and equal producers, and they don’t always clearly state whether they are talking about a particular proletarian outpost or a world in which the entire bourgeoisie has been overthrown.

2. Perhaps the issue here is whether Marx himself envisaged the lower stage as beginning after or during the proletarian dictatorship. This would require a much longer discussion. It is certainly true that the period of transition in the full sense cannot get underway in a phase dominated by civil war and the struggle against the bourgeoisie. But in our view even after this ‘initial’ political and military victory over the old ruling class, the proletariat can only begin the positive communist transformation of society on the basis of its political domination, because it will not be the only class in society. We will return to this problem in a future article.

3. Is the measurement of production and distribution in terms of labour time necessarily a form of value, as Mitchell implies when he criticises the Dutch left for being “subjugated’, as they are, to their formulation about ‘labour time’, which in substance is nothing but value itself.” (Bilan 34, quoted above)? As ever with the question of value, this raises complex questions. Can there be value without exchange value?

It’s true that Marx was obliged, in Capital, to make a theoretical distinction between value and exchange value,

“We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form”2.

However, as Rubin points out, it is nonetheless the case that:

“...the ‘value form’ is the most general form of the commodity economy; it is characteristic of the social form which is acquired by the process of production at a determined level of historical development. Since political economy analyzes a historically transient social form of production, commodity capitalist production, the ‘form of value’ is one of the foundation stones of Marx's theory of value. As can be seen from the sentences quoted above, the ‘form of value’ is closely related to the ‘commodity form,’ i.e., to the basic characteristic of the contemporary economy, the fact that the products of labour are produced by autonomous, private producers. A working connection between producers is brought about only by means of the exchange of commodities3”.

Both aspects – value and exchange value - only have a general application in the context of the social relations of capitalist commodity society. A society which no longer functions on the basis of exchange between independent economic units is no longer regulated by the law of value, so the question goes back to the degree to which the Dutch left envisaged the survival of exchange relations in the lower stage of communism. And as we have noted, there are ambiguities in the Grunprinzipien about this too. Earlier on in this article we quoted Mitchell’s argument that the network of enterprises envisaged by the GIC appears to retain a market relationship of sorts. On the other hand, there are other passages which go in the opposite direction and there is a strong case for arguing that they express the thinking of the GIC much more accurately. For example, in chapter 2, in the section headed ‘Free Communism’, the GIC develops a critique of the French anarchist Faure which makes it clear that they are in favour of forging the economy into a single unit: “The substance of the matter is not that one would hold it against the Faurian system that it seeks to forge the entire economy into one single unit; such an act of combination is indeed the end purpose of the process of development which is brought to fruition by the combined producers and consumers. Having done this, however, the basis must then be provided to ensure that they themselves keep control of it”.

We should add that Mitchell’s argument that any form of measurement of labour time is essentially an expression of value is not supported by Marx’s approach to the question in his descriptions of communist society. In the Grundrisse, for example, Marx argues that “economy of time along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree. However, this is essentially different from a measurement of exchange values (labour or products) by labour time”.4

The real weakness of the GIK lies, we would argue, less in their occasional concessions to the idea of the market, but in their inordinate faith in the system of accounting. As they say in the sentence which follows the passage just cited: “To achieve this they must keep an exact account of the labour-hours used up, in every form of economic activity, in order that they may know exactly how much labour-time is embodied in each product. Then it is quite unnecessary for the right of decision as to how the social product is to be distributed to be handed over to any ‘central administration’; on the contrary, the producers themselves in each factory or other establishments can then determine this through their computation of labour-time expended”. No doubt the computation of the exact amount of labour time expended by the producers is extremely important, but the GIC seems to radically underestimate the degree to which maintaining control over economic and political life during the transition period is a struggle for the development of class consciousness, for the conscious construction of new social relationships, a struggle which goes far deeper than elaborating a system of accounting.

Does Bilan underestimate the need for radical social and economic change from the start? This is perhaps a more substantial criticism. For example, in Mitchell’s critique of egalitarian remuneration he argues that this would undermine the productivity of labour and implies that in order to arrive at communism a prodigious development of the productive forces is required. It’s certainly true that the attainment of communism depends on a profound development and transformation of the productive forces. But the key question here is this: on what basis will this development take place? We know that the last chapter of Mitchell’s study contains a clear rejection of ‘productivism’, the sacrificing of workers’ consumption in the interests of building up industry, and throughout its existence this was a fundamental aspect of Bilan’s critique of the so-called ‘achievements of socialism’ in the USSR. Nonetheless, since Mitchell is so insistent that the wages system, in its essentials at least, cannot be this done away with until a much later stage of the revolutionary transformation, the doubt remains that Mitchell is advocating a more worker-oriented version of ‘socialist accumulation’.

In the final issue of Bilan (no 46, December-January 1938) a reader responding to the ‘Problems of the Period of Transition’ series goes so far as to dismiss the comrades of Bilan as a new species of reformists whose revolution will merely replace one set of masters with another (see the appendix for the text of this letter and Mitchell’s response).

We obviously think that this accusation is both uncomradely and unfounded but it is given a semblance of reality by two key weaknesses in Bilan’s theoretical armoury: their difficulty in seeing the capitalist nature of the USSR even in the 1930s, and their inability to break with the notion of the dictatorship of the party. Despite all their criticisms of the Stalinist regime and their recognition that a form of exploitation did exist in the USSR, they still clung to the view that the collectivised nature of the ‘Soviet’ economy conferred on it a proletarian character, however degenerated. This seems to betray a difficulty to draw the consequences from what was already basically understood by the Italian left – i.e.that an economy founded on the wage relationship can only be capitalist, whether or not the means of production are ‘individually’ or ‘collectively’ owned. And a result of this difficulty would be a reluctance to see the struggle against the wage form as being an integral part of the social revolution. And this is just another aspect of the struggle for what David Adam calls “effective social control of production” by the workers themselves.

At the same time, the idea that the role of the party is to exercise the proletarian dictatorship (albeit while somehow avoiding an entanglement with the state5) runs counter to the need for the working class to impose its control over both production and the apparatus of political power. It’s certainly true that the workers will have to learn a vast amount to take charge of production, not just in the framework of the individual enterprise but across an entire society. The same applies to the question of political power, which in any case is not a separate sphere from the problem of reorganising economic life. It’s also true that Bilan always understood that the workers would need to learn from their own mistakes and that they could not be coerced towards socialism. Nevertheless the idea of the dictatorship of the party still retains the somewhat substitutionist idea that the workers will only be able to take full control of their destiny at some point in the future, and that in the meantime a minority of the class must hold onto power ‘on their behalf’.

Precisely because the Italian left was a proletarian current and not a variant of reformism, these weaknesses would in time be addressed and overcome, particularly by the French Fraction and by elements in the party formed in Italy in 1943. In our view, it was the French Fraction, later the Gauche Communiste de France, which took these clarifications the furthest, and it is no accident that it was able, in the years after World War Two, to engage in a fruitful debate with the tradition and organisations of the Dutch communist left. We will take this up in the next article in this series.

We don’t pretend to have resolved all the questions raised by the debate between the Italian and Dutch lefts on the period of transition. These questions – such as how the law of value will be eliminated, how labour will be remunerated, how the workers will keep control over production and distribution – remain to be clarified and indeed can only be finally resolved in the course of a revolution itself. But we do think that the contributions and discussions developed by these revolutionaries in a dark period of defeat for the working class remain an indispensable theoretical point of departure for the debates that will one day be used to guide the practical transformation of society.

CD Ward

Appendix: Echo of the study of the period of transition, Bilan 46, December-January 1938

Just as Bilan was going to press, the group received a letter from a correspondent in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. The letter and the reply from Mitchell were printed in the following issue and we reproduce both here.

We have received from a reader in Clichy a letter of critique which we publish in full followed by some brief comments from our collaborator. We hope our impatient correspondent will excuse us for not having put his letter in the previous issue, but it arrived at exactly the same moment that this issue was coming off the press.

On the period of transition

After the publication in Bilan of Hennaut’s summary of the book by the Dutch left communists on the ‘fundamentals of communist production and distribution’, some may have thought that the reformists of right and left had been definitively disarmed and they wouldn’t dare to move an inch. But that is if you don’t know them very well. In the issue which published the end of the summary, their criticisms could already be heard: the Dutch comrades, like Hennaut, don’t think like marxists...Then we had Mitchell’s critical study on ‘The problems of the period of transition’. The aim of this study was, of course, to demonstrate the anti-marxist utopianism of those who believe that the proletarian revolution will really free the workers from exploitation in all its forms. Thus we should not be astonished that all through his article Mitchell is at pains to prove, with the use of numerous quotes, that this revolution will only serve to bring a new master to the proletarians who made it – just like the revolutions of the past. We recognise the traditional standpoint of reformists of all types. What’s more Mitchell was careful to warn is in his ‘introductory expose’ that his work would deal with the following points: “ a) the historic conditions in which the proletarian revolution arises; b) the necessity for the transitional state; c) the economic and social categories which will of necessity survive in the transitional phase; d) finally, some elements regarding a proletarian management of the transitional state”.

Once these points have been enounced, it was easy to imagine what the article would be like. Mitchell is not embarrassed to affirm, a priori, the survival after the revolution of “the economic and social categories which will of necessity (!) survive in the transitional phase”. This assertion alone is enough for anyone with an alert mind to see what’s coming next. What is most astonishing in Mitchell’s article is the abundance of quotes which a revolutionary marxist could at any moment turn against what he tries to prove and justify. One doesn’t need 50 pages of Bilan to annihilate the sage arguments of the reformist Mitchell. All those who have read Marx and Engels know that, for them, the famous period of transition marks the end of the capitalist society and the birth of an entirely new society in which the exploitation of man by man will have ceased to exist; i.e. where classes will have disappeared and the state as such will have no reason to exist. Now, in the society of transition as Mitchell and all the avowed reformists understand it, the exploitation of the proletariat subsists and in the same way as it does under the capitalist regime: by means of wage labour. In this society there will be a scale of wages...just like now! This will make it possible to socialise (?) the most advanced branches of production; then, we don’t know when or how, all of industrial and agricultural production. In other words, during the transitional phase, a part of the workers will continue to be exploited by particular people, with the others already being exploited by the State-Boss. Starting from this viewpoint, the higher phase of communism would correspond to the full statification of production – to state capitalism as we see operating in Russia! The most revolting thing is that Mitchell dares to base himself on Marx and Engels to defend such a point of view. We know that Stalin also dared in his speech of June 2 1931 to base himself on Marx to justify the incredible inequality of wages reigning in the USSR, and just like Mitchell, he did so by invoking the quality of labour supplied. However Marx explained himself clearly on this subject in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Do we need to recall that for Marx the inequality which subsists in the first phase of communism does not derive, contrary to what Mitchell thinks, from inequality in the retribution of labour, but simply from the fact that the workers don’t always live in the same way”

“One worker is married”, says Marx, “another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal”. This is so clear it doesn’t need further elaboration

We know that, for Marx, “wage labour is the precondition for the existence of capital”, which means that if we want to kill capital, we have to abolish wage labour. But the reformists don’t think this way at all: for them the revolution means that all capital has to progressively be taken over by the state so that it becomes the only master. What they want is to replace private capitalism with state capitalism. But don’t talk to them about abolishing capitalist exploitation, about destroying the state machine which serves to maintain this exploitation: the proletarians must make the revolution solely in order to change their master. All those who see the revolution as a way of liberating yourself from exploitation are vulgar utopians. Revolutionary workers be warned!

Mitchell’s reply

Nothing is more difficult than replying to a critique which takes the liberty of decrying material which it has not assimilated or has assimilated very imperfectly and which believes all the more easily that it has come up with the right formulations, even though they are in fact purely illusory.

Thus our correspondent should not be astonished if we suggest to him that the discussion continues on the basis of an attentive and thorough examination of the study that has been published.

Let’s reassure our contradictor right away about our so-called “left reformism”: everything that he invokes against is to justify this charge of “reformism” is precisely what is fought in our study in the least equivocal way possible. What’s more, it’s not enough for our correspondent to reproach us for the “abundance” of our quotes: he also has to prove what he insinuates, i.e. that these quotes have a meaning that runs counter to the one we give hem. If he can’t demonstrate this, it would still be permissible, if he likes facile and simplistic answers, to contest the bases of certain conceptions, for example Marx’s remarks about the necessity to temporarily tolerate unequal remuneration of labour in the transitional period. He could then “repudiate” Marx, but not deform his thought.

On the question of the remuneration of labour, since our correspondent is of the opinion that Marx did not put things the way we say he did, he should go back over the whole part of our work where we deal with the measurement of labour (Bilan 34, p 1133 to 1138....) and the whole part where we deal with the remuneration of labour, particularly beginning at the bottom of page 1157 up to the top of the second column on page 1159, Bilan no. 35.

Furthermore, whether the comrade likes it or not, it is Marx who affirmed the transitional survival of capitalist categories like value, money and wages since the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat “is still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges” (see Critique of the Gotha Programme and p 1137 of Bilan)

Again, on the problem of the state, how can be seen as defenders of state capitalism on the basis of what we developed in the second part of our work (Bilan 31, p 1035).

If our correspondent doesn’t share our opinion on this major question, the he should at least give his own opinion and engage in a positive critique.

Mitchell.

Recently the ICC held its 20th International Congress. The congress of a communist organisation is one of the most important moments of its life and activity. It’s when the whole organisation (through delegations nominated by each of its sections) makes a balance-sheet of its activities, analyses in depth the international situation, draws out perspectives and elects a central organ, which has the task of ensuring that the decisions of the congress are applied.

Because we are convinced of the need of debate and cooperation between organisations who fight for the overthrow the capitalist system, we invited three groups - two from Korea, and OPOP from Brazil, who have already attended previous international congresses. Since the work of a communist organisation's congress is not an ‘internal’ question but is of interest to the working class as a whole we aim here to inform our readers about the essential questions discussed there.

The congress took place against the background of sharpening tensions in Asia, ongoing war in Syria, worsening economic crisis and a situation of class struggle marked by a low development of ‘classic’ workers’ struggles against the economic attacks of the bourgeoisie but also by the international upsurge of social movements, the most significant examples being the Occupy movement in the US and the ‘Indignados’ in Spain

The analysis of the world situation – a challenge that demands major theoretical effort

The resolution on the international situation adopted by the 20th Congress, which summarises the analyses which came out of the discussions, is published in this issue of the Review, and we need not return to it in detail here.

The resolution recalls the historical framework within which we understand the present situation of society – the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, whose beginning was marked by the outbreak of World War I; and the final phase of decadence, which the ICC, since the mid-80s, has defined as that of decomposition, of a society rotting on its feet. Social decomposition is illustrated very clearly by the form being taken by today’s imperialist conflicts, with the situation in Syria being a particularly tragic example, as we can see in the report on imperialist tensions adopted by the Congress and published in this issue, but also by the catastrophic degradation of the environment which the ruling class, despite all its alarmed declarations and campaigns, is quite incapable of preventing, or even slowing down.

The congress did not have a specific discussion on the imperialist conflicts since our preparatory discussions had already demonstrated a large measure of agreement on the question. However, the Congress heard a presentation by the Korean group Sanoshin on the imperialist tensions in the Far East, which we hope to publish as an annex on our website.

On the economic crisis

Incapable of overcoming the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, the bourgeoisie finds itself – as the resolution points out – caught in a deadlock: a striking confirmation of marxist analysis. All the ‘experts’, whether they support or reject ‘neo-liberalism’, regard the marxist analysis with the contempt of the ignorant; above all, they fight it, precisely because it foretells the historical failure of this mode of production and the necessity to replace it with a society where the market, profit and wage labour will have been relegated to the museum of history, a society where humanity will be free of the blind laws that today are dragging it towards barbarism, and will be able to live according to the principle “from each according to their capacities, to each according to their needs”.

As regards the present situation of the crisis of capitalism, the Congress stated clearly that the current ‘financial crisis’ is by no means the source of the contradictions plaguing the world economy, nor do its roots lie in the ‘financialisation of the economy’ and the obsession with short-term profit and speculation. “On the contrary, it is overproduction which is the source of ‘financialisation’ and it is the fact that it is more and more risky to invest in production, given that the world market is more and more saturated, which directs the flow of finance more and more towards speculation. This is why all the ‘left wing’ economic theories which call for ‘reining in international finance’ in order to get out of the crisis are empty dreams since they ‘forget’ the real causes of this hypertrophy of the financial sphere”. (Resolution on the international situation, point 10). Similarly, the Congress recognised that “The crisis of the ‘sub-primes’ in 2007, the huge financial panic of 2008 and the recession of 2009 marked a new and very important step in capitalism’s descent into irreversible crisis”. (ibid, point 11).

Having said this, the Congress noted that our organisation is far from unanimous on the economic crisis and that it will be necessary to continue the discussion around a number of questions, for example: Was the aggravation of the crisis in 2007 a qualitative break, opening a new chapter in history, pushing the economy towards an immediate and rapid collapse? What was the significance of the events of 2007? More generally what kind of development of the crisis should we expect: a sudden collapse or a slow, politically ‘managed’ decline? Which countries will sink first and which last? Does the ruling class have choices, room for manoeuvre, and what kind of mistakes are they trying to avoid? Or more generally: when analysing the economic crisis and its perspectives, can and does the ruling class ignore the expected reactions of the working class? Which criteria does the ruling class take into consideration when adopting austerity programmes in different countries? Are we in a situation where everywhere the ruling class can attack the working class in the same way as it has been doing in Greece? Can we expect a repetition of the same scale of attacks (wage cuts of up to 40% etc) in the old industrial heartlands? What difference is there between the crisis of 1929 and today's? How far has pauperisation advanced in the big industrial countries?

The organisation recalled that soon after 1989 we were able to predict the fundamental changes on the imperialist level and the class struggle which had occurred with the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the so-called ‘socialist’ countries.1 However, we did not foresee the major economic changes which have occurred since. What, for example, has been the effect on the world economy of China’s and India’s abandonment of their previous mechanisms of relative economic autarchy?

Obviously, as we did for the debate we had a few years ago in our organisation on the mechanisms which allowed for the ‘boom’ that followed the Second World War2, we will bring to our readers the main elements of the current debate once the discussion has reached a sufficient level of clarity.

On class struggle

The report on the class struggle to the Congress drew a balance sheet of the past two years (from the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy movements, the struggles in Asia etc.) and the difficulties of the class to respond to the ever increasing attacks by the capitalists in Europe and the USA. The discussions at the Congress dealt mainly with the following questions: how are we to explain the difficulties of the working class to respond ‘adequately’ to the increasing attacks? Why are we not yet moving towards a revolutionary situation in the old industrial heartlands? Which policies is the ruling class putting in place to avoid massive struggles in the old industrial centres? What are the conditions for the mass strike?

What role does the working class in East Asia, in particular China, play in the global balance of forces between the classes? What can we expect from the class? Has the centre of the world economy, of the world proletariat, moved to China? How are we to assess the changes in the composition of the working class worldwide? The debate recalled our position on the “weak link” which we developed in the 1980s, in opposition to Lenin’s idea that the chain of capitalist domination would break in its “weakest link”3, i.e. the less developed countries.

Even if the discussions didn’t reveal disagreements on the report presented (which is summarised in the section on class struggle in the resolution), we felt that the organisation has to give deeper thought to this question, in particular by discussing around the theme: “What method should we use to analyse the class struggle in the present historical period?”

On the life and activities of the organisation

Discussions on the life of the organisation, of the balance sheet and perspectives of its activities and functioning occupied a large part of the 20th Congress’ agenda, as has always been the case in previous congresses. This is an expression of the fact that questions of organisation are not merely ‘technical’ questions but are political questions in their own right and must be approached in as great a depth as possible. When we look back at the history of the three Internationals created by the working class, we can see that these questions were always resolutely taken up by their marxist wing, as illustrated, among many others, by the following examples:

• the struggle of Marx and the Central Council of the International Workingmen’s Association against Bakunin’s Alliance, especially at the Hague Congress in 1872;

• the struggle of Lenin and the Bolsheviks against the petty bourgeois and opportunist conceptions of the Mensheviks during the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 and subsequently;

• the struggle of the left fraction of the Communist Party of Italy against the degeneration of the International and to prepare the political and programmatic conditions for a new proletarian party when the historical conditions were suitable.

The historical experience of the workers’ movement has shown that specific political organisations that defend the revolutionary perspective within the working class are indispensable if the class is going to be able to overthrow capitalism and create a communist society. But proletarian political organisations cannot just be proclaimed: they must be built. While the goal is to overthrow the capitalist system, and while a communist society can only be built once the power of the bourgeoisie has been overturned and an end been put to capitalism, a revolutionary organisation must be built within capitalist society. Therefore the construction of the organisation must confront all kinds of pressures and obstacles that spring from the capitalist system and its ideology. This means that the process of construction does not take place in a vacuum. Revolutionary organisations are like a foreign body within capitalist society, which this system constantly aims to destroy. A revolutionary organisation is therefore constantly obliged to defend itself against a whole series of threats coming from capitalist society.Obviously, it must resist repression. The ruling class, whenever it has felt the necessity, has never hesitated to unleash its police and even its military forces to silence the voices of the revolutionaries. Most of the organisations in the past existed for a long-time under conditions of repression: they were “outlawed” and many militants were driven into exile. However, this repression rarely crushed them; on the contrary, it often strengthened their resolve and helped to defend themselves against democratist illusions. This was the case for example with the SPD in Germany during the anti-socialist laws which resisted the poison of ‘democracy’ and ‘parliamentarism’ much better than it did during the period when it was legal.

The revolutionary organisation also has to resist destruction from within – penetration through spies, informers, adventurers, etc., which can often cause more damage than open repression.

Finally, and above all, it has to resist the pressure of the dominant ideology, in particular democratism and ‘good old common sense’, which was roundly attacked by Marx. They have to fight against all ‘values’ and ‘principles’ of capitalist society. The history of the workers’ movement has taught us, through the opportunist gangrene that carried off the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, that the main threat to revolutionary organisations is precisely their inability to combat the penetration of the ‘values’ and habits of thought of bourgeois society.

Therefore, a revolutionary organisation cannot function in the same way as capitalist society; it must function in an associated manner.

Capitalist society works through competition, alienation, ‘comparing’ each other, establishing norms, streamlining. A communist organisation requires working together and overcoming the spirit of competition. It can only function if its members do not act like a flock of sheep, tail-ending and accepting blindly what the central organ or other comrades say. The search for truth and clarity must constantly stimulate all the activities of the organisation. Independent thinking, the capacity to reflect, to put things into question, are vital. This means we cannot hide behind a collective, but we must assume our individual responsibility by expressing our opinions and pushing forward clarification. Conformism is a big obstacle in our struggle for communism.

In capitalist society, if you do not fit into the norm, you are quickly “excluded”, made into a scapegoat, the one who is blamed for everything. A revolutionary organisation has to establish a mode of functioning where all kinds of different individuals and personalities can be integrated into one big body. It requires the art of drawing on the riches of all personalities. This means a fight against personal pride and other ideas linked to competition. It means valuing the contribution of each comrade. And at the same time this means an organisation must have a set of rules and principles which are based on ethical principles. These need to be elaborated, which is a political battle in itself. Whereas the ethics of capitalist society know no scruples, the goal of the proletarian struggle must be in harmony with the means of the struggle.

The construction and the functioning of an organisation thus entail a theoretical and moral dimension, both of which require a constant and conscious effort. Any sluggishness or wavering, any weakening of effort and vigilance on one level pave the way for a weakening on the other. These two dimensions are inseparable from each other and determine each other mutually. The less theoretical efforts an organisation undertakes, the easier and quicker a moral regression can occur; and at the same time the loss of our moral compass will inevitably weaken our theoretical capacities. Thus, at the turning point of the 19th and 20th centuries, Rosa Luxemburg showed that the opportunist trajectory of German social democracy went hand in hand with its moral and theoretical regression.

One of the most fundamental aspects of the life of a communist organisation is its internationalism, not only at the level of its principles, but also at the level of the conception it has of its own way of life, its mode of functioning.

The goal – a society without exploitation and producing for the needs of humanity – can only be achieved internationally, and it requires the unification of the proletariat across all borders. This is why internationalism has been the slogan of the proletariat since its appearance. Revolutionary organisations must be the vanguard in adopting an international point of view and fighting against a ‘localist’ perspective.

Although from the outset the proletariat has always attempted to organise internationally (the Communist League 1847-1852 was the first international organisation), the ICC is the first organisation which is internationally centralised, and where all sections defend the same positions. Our sections are integrated into international debates in our organisation, where all our members – across the continents – can draw on the experience of the entire organisation. This means we have to learn to bring together militants from all sorts of backgrounds, learn to hold debates in spite of all the different languages – all of which is a very inspiring process, where clarification and the deepening of our positions is enriched by the contributions of comrades from the whole planet.

Last but not least, it is vital for the organisation to have a clear understanding of the role it has to play in the proletarian struggle for emancipation. As the ICC has often emphasised, the function of the revolutionary organisation today is not to ‘organise the class’ or its struggles (as could be the case during the first steps of the workers’ movement in the 19th century). Its essential role, already set out in the Communist Manifesto in 1848, derives from the fact that communists “have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement”. In this sense, the permanent and essential function of the organisation is the elaboration of political positions, and in order to do this it cannot afford to be totally absorbed by its tasks of intervention in the class. It has to be able to take a step back and arrive at a general view. It must be permanently preoccupied with deepening the questions posed by the class as a whole and with placing them within a historical perspective. This means that it cannot limit itself to an analysis of the world situation. It needs to explore broader, underlying theoretical questions, rejecting superficiality and the distortions of capitalist society and ideology. This is a permanent struggle, one with a long-term view that embraces a whole series of aspects that go well beyond the questions posed to the class at this or that moment in the struggle.

Since the proletarian revolution is not just a struggle around “bread and butter” issues, as Rosa Luxemburg underlined, but the first revolution in the history of humanity where all the chains of exploitation and oppression are overthrown, this struggle necessarily implies a great cultural transformation. A revolutionary organisation does not only deal with questions of political economy and the class struggle in a narrow sense. It must develop its own vision on the most important questions facing humanity, constantly expanding its views and being open and ready to face new questions. Theoretical elaboration, the search for truth, the wish for clarification, must be our daily passion.

And at the same time we can only fulfil our role if the old generation of militants transmits the experience and lessons they have acquired to the new militants. If the old generation has no “treasure” of experience and lessons to pass on to the new generation, it has failed in its task. The construction of the organisation thus requires the art of drawing the lessons of the past in order to prepare the future.

As we can see, the task of building a revolutionary organisation is extremely complex and demands a permanent struggle. In the past, our organisation has already waged important battles for the defence of its principles. But experience has shown that these battles have been insufficient and they have to be carried on in the face of the difficulties and weaknesses that result from the origins of our organisation and the historical conditions in which it maintains its activity: “There is not one single cause for each of the different weaknesses of the organisation. The latter are the result of various factors which, while they can be linked together, must be clearly identified:

• The weight of our origins in the historic resurgence of the world proletariat at the end of the 1960s, and in particular, the effects of the break in organic continuity;

• The weight of decomposition which began to have an impact in the mid-80s;

• The pressure of the ‘invisible hand of the market’, of reification, whose imprint on society has only intensified with the prolonged survival of capitalist relations of production.

The different weaknesses which we have identified, even if they can mutually influence each other, derive in the final instance from these three factors or their combination:

• The underestimation of theoretical elaboration, and particularly on organisational questions, has its source in our very origins: the impact of the student revolt with its component of petty bourgeois academicism, with an opposing tendency which mixes up anti-academicism and a disdain for theory, and this in an ambiance of contesting authority, including that of an ‘old geezer’ like comrade MC, which affected a lot of young militants and thus the organisation. Later on this underestimation of theory was fed by the general atmosphere of the destruction of thought characteristic of the period of decomposition, and the growing impregnation of good old common sense, a manifestation in our ranks of the insidious penetration of reification;

• The loss of acquisitions is a direct consequence of the underestimation of theoretical elaboration: the acquisitions of the organisation, whether on questions of programme, analysis or organisation, can only be maintained, above all in the face of the constant pressure of bourgeois ideology, if they are permanently fed and watered by theoretical reflection: thought which doesn’t move forward, which is content with the repetition of stereotyped formulas, is not only threatened with stagnation, it can only regress. The superficiality in the assimilation of our positions, which has often been noted in the past, is the best guarantee of losing our acquisitions;

• Immediatism is one of the youthful faults of an organisation which was formed by young militants who awoke to political life at a time of spectacular revival in the class struggle, and many of whom thought that the revolution was just around the corner. The most immediatist among us did not hold fast and were in the end demoralised, abandoning the combat, but this weakness also survived among those who remained: it continued to imbue the organisation and has expressed itself on numerous occasions. It is a weakness which can be fatal because, associated with a loss of acquisitions, it inexorably leads towards opportunism, an approach which has regularly undermined the foundations of our organisation;

• Routinism, for its part, is one of the major expressions of the weight of the alienated, reified relations which dominate capitalist society and which tend to turn the organisation into a machine and the militants into robots. It is obviously reinforced by the poverty of theoretical reflection which leads us to lose sight of the reason for the organisation’s existence;

• Sclerosis results to a large extent from routinism but it is also fed by the loss of acquisitions and theoretical impoverishment, and is for this reason the other side to the coin of opportunism. Even if it does not lead to treason like the latter illness (the two can exist side by side), the paralysis which it provokes vis-à-vis the responsibilities of the organisation results in the death of the capacity of the latter to be an active factor in the development of class consciousness;

The circle spirit, as the whole history of the ICC bears out, along with the whole history of the workers’ movement, is one of the most dangerous poisons for the organisation, bringing with it not only the tendency to transform an instrument of proletarian combat into a mere ‘bunch of pals’, not only the personalisation of political questions which saps the culture of debate, but the destruction of collective work and the unity of the organisation, above all in the form of clanism. It is also responsible for the hunt for scapegoats which undermines moral health, just as it is one of the worst enemies of the culture of theory in that it destroys profound and rational thought in favour of contortions and gossip. Again, it is a frequent vehicle for opportunism, the antechamber of betrayal” (Resolution on activities adopted by the Congress, point 4).

To fight against the weaknesses and dangers facing the organisation, there is no magical formula and we have to direct our efforts in several directions. One of the points which was given particular emphasis was the necessity to combat routinism and conformism, stressing the fact that the organisation is not an anonymous, uniform body but an association of different militants, all of whom have a specific contribution to make to the common work.

“In order to work for the construction of a real international association of communist militants where each one can bring his brick to the collective building, the organisation must reject the reactionary utopia of the ‘model militant’, the ‘standard militant’, or the invulnerable and infallible super-militant... Militants are neither robots nor supermen, but human beings with different personalities, histories and socio-cultural origins. It is only through a better understanding of our human ‘nature’ and of the diversity which is specific to our species that confidence and solidarity between militants can be built and consolidated... each comrade has the capacity to make a unique contribution to the organisation. It is also their individual responsibility to do so. In particular, it is the responsibility of each comrade to express his positions in debate, in particular disagreements and questioning, without which the organisation will not be able to develop its culture of debate and theoretical elaboration” (Resolution on activities, point 9).

And so the congress insisted in particular on the need to take up the tasks of theoretical elaboration with determination and perseverance.

The first challenge for the organisation is to become aware of the dangers we are facing. We cannot overcome these dangers by resorting to last minute “fire brigade” actions. We must examine all our problems with a theoretical-historical approach and oppose all pragmatist, superficial outlooks. This means we have to develop a long-term vision and not fall into a ‘day-to-day’ and empirical approach. Theoretical study and political combat must be brought back to the centre of the organisation’s life, not only in regard to immediate intervention, but most importantly by pursuing the deeper theoretical questions about marxism itself that have been posed in the past ten years through the orientations we have given ourselves but which remain undeveloped by the organisation. This means we must give ourselves the necessary time to deepen and fight any conformism in our ranks. The organisation has to encourage critical questioning, the expression of doubts and efforts to explore things deeper.

We must not forget that “theory is not a passion of the head but the head of passion”, and that “when theory grips the masses, it becomes a material force” (Marx). The struggle for communism contains not only an economic and political dimension, but also and above all a theoretical dimension (‘intellectual’ and moral). It is by developing a ‘culture of theory’, i.e. a capacity to permanently place all the activities of the organisation in a historical and/or theoretical framework, that we can develop and deepen the culture of debate in our ranks, and better assimilate the dialectical method of marxism. Without the development of this ‘culture of theory’, the ICC will not be able to maintain its compass over the long term so that it can orient itself, adapt to unprecedented situations, evolve and enrich marxism, which is not an invariant and immutable dogma but a living theory aimed towards the future.

This ‘culture of theory’ is not a problem of militants’ level of education. It contributes to the development of a rational, rigorous and coherent thought which is indispensable to the capacity to develop an argument, to advancing the consciousness of all the militants, and to the consolidation of the marxist method in our ranks.

This work of theoretical reflection cannot ignore the contribution of the sciences (and notably of the human sciences, such as psychology and anthropology), the history of the human species and the development of its civilisation. It is for this reason that the discussion on the theme “Marxism and science” has been of the highest importance and the advances which it has made possible must remain present and be reinforced in the thinking and life of the organisation.

The invitation to scientists

This concern for the sciences is not new for the ICC. In particular, in articles on our previous congresses we talked about the invitation of scientists who made a contribution to the reflection of the whole organisation by submitting their own thoughts from their areas of research. This time, we invited the British anthropologists Camilla Power and Chris Knight, who had already attended previous congresses, and whom we thank warmly for coming to this one. These two scientists shared a presentation on the theme of violence in prehistory, in societies which were not yet divided into classes. Communists obviously have a fundamental interest in this question. Marxism has devoted much research into the role of violence. Engels in particular dedicated an important part of Anti-Dühring to the role of violence in history. Today, as we get ready to mark the centenary of the First World War, a century distinguished by the worst violence humanity has ever known, and when violence is ever-present in social life, it’s important that those who fight for a society that has rid itself of the scars of capitalist society, of wars and oppression, should ask questions about the place of violence in different societies. In particular, faced with the standpoint of bourgeois ideology for whom the violence of today corresponds to ‘human nature’, whose rule is ‘everyman for himself’ and the domination of the strong over the weak, it is necessary to look into the role of societies which were not divided into classes, as in primitive communism.

We cannot give an account here of the very rich presentations by Camilla Power and Chris Knight (which we plan to publish as a podcast on our website). But it is worth pointing out that these two scientists argued against the theory of Steven Pinker4, who claims that thanks to ‘civilisation’ and the influence of the state, violence has been receding. Camilla Power and Chris Knight showed that amongst hunter and gatherer societies there was a much lower level of violence than in subsequent social formations.

The discussion that followed the presentation by Camilla Power and Chris Knight was, as at the previous congresses, very animated. In particular it illustrated once again how the contribution of the sciences can enrich revolutionary thought, an idea which Marx and Engels defended a century and half ago.

Conclusion

The 20th Congress of the ICC, by highlighting the obstacles facing the working class in its struggle for emancipation, as well as the obstacles encountered by the organisation of revolutionaries in carrying out its specific responsibilities within this struggle, showed the difficulty and length of the road ahead of us. But this should not be a source of discouragement. As the resolution adopted by the congress puts it:

“The task which lies ahead of us is long and difficult. It will demand patience, which Lenin saw as one of the main qualities of a Bolshevik. We have to resist discouragement in the face of our difficulties. These are inevitable and we should see them not as a curse but on the contrary as an encouragement to pursue and intensify the combat. Revolutionaries, and this is one of their essential characteristics, are not people who look for comfort or the easy way out. They are fighters whose aim is to make a decisive contribution to the most immense and difficult task the human species will ever have to accomplish, but also the most exciting because it means the liberation of humanity from exploitation and alienation, and the beginning of its ‘real history’” (Point 16).

At the end of the 80's. the ICC put forward the idea of the entry of capitalism into its phase of decomposition: "In this situation, where society's two decisive - and antagonistic - classes confront each other without either being able to impose its own definitive response, history nonetheless does not just come to a stop. Still less for capitalism than for preceding modes of production, is a 'freeze' or a 'stagnation' of social life possible. As crisis-ridden capitalism's contradictions can only get deeper, the bourgeoisie's inability to offer the slightest perspective for society as a whole, and the proletariat's inability, for the moment, to openly put forward its own historic perspective, can only lead to a situation of generalised decomposition. Capitalism is rotting on its feet" (International Review 62, 1990, ‘Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism’).

The implosion of the eastern bloc has dramatically accelerated the unwinding of the different components of the social body into "each for themselves", into a plunge into chaos, and if there is an area where this is straight away confirmed it is precisely that of imperialist tensions: "The end of the 'Cold War' and the disappearance of the blocs has thus only exacerbated the unleashing of the imperialist antagonisms specific to decadent capitalism and qualitatively aggravated the bloody chaos into which the whole of society is sinking (...)" (IR 67, 1991, 9th Congress of the ICC, Resolution on the International Situation, point 6). Two characteristics of imperialist confrontations in the period of decomposition were pointed out:

a) The irrationality of conflicts, which is one of the striking characteristics of war in decomposition: "While the Gulf War is an illustration of the irrationality of the whole of decadent capitalism, it also contains an extra and significant element of irrationality which is characteristic of the opening up of the phase of decomposition. The other wars of decadence could, despite their basic irrationality, still take on apparently 'rational' goals (such as the search for 'living space' for the German economy or the defence of imperialist positions by the allies during the Second World War). This isn't at all the case with the Gulf War. The objectives of this war, on one side or the other, clearly express the total and desperate impasse that capitalism is in today" (IR 67, 1991, 9th Congress of the ICC, Report on the International Situation [extracts]).

b) The central role played by the dominant power in the extension of chaos over the whole of the planet: "The difference is that today the initiative isn't being taken by a power that wants to overturn the imperialist balance but is on the contrary the world's leading power, the one that for the moment has the best slice of the cake (...) The fact is that at the present time the maintenance of 'world order' (...) doesn't imply a 'defensive' attitude (...) of the dominant power, but is characterised by an increasingly systematic use of the military offensive, and even of operations that will destabilise whole regions in order to ensure the submission of the other powers; (and this) expresses very clearly decadent capitalism's slide into the most unrestrained militarism. This is precisely one of the elements that distinguish the phase of decomposition from previous phases of capitalist decadence..." (IR 67, 1991, 9th Congress of the ICC, Report on the International Situation [extracts]).

These characteristics feed a growing chaos which accelerated still more after the attacks of September 11 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which came out of these events. The 19th Congress aimed to evaluate the impact of these last 10 years of the "War on Terror" on the general spread of imperialist tensions, the development of "each for themselves" and the evolution of US leadership. It put forward the following four orientations in the development of imperialist confrontations:

a) The growth of each for themselves, which is particularly shown in the all-directional multiplication of imperialist ambitions, leading to the exacerbation of tensions, above all in Asia around the economic and military expansion of China. However, despite a strong economic expansion, a growing military power and a more and more marked presence in imperialist confrontations, China doesn't have the industrial and technological capacities sufficient to impose itself as the head of a bloc and thus to challenge the US on the global level.

b) The growing impasse of US policy and the slide into the barbarity of war: The crushing setback of the intervention in Iraq and in Afghanistan has weakened the world leadership of the USA. Even if the bourgeoisie under Obama, by choosing a policy of controlled retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, has reduced the impact of the catastrophic policy undertaken by Bush, it has not been able to overturn this tendency and that has led it to the flight into militarist barbarity. The execution of Bin Laden expressed an attempt of the USA to react to the setback to their leadership and underlined their absolute technical and military superiority. However, this reaction didn't call into question the basic tendency towards weakening. On the contrary, this assassination accelerated the destabilisation of Pakistan and thus the extension of the war, whereas the ideological bases for it (the "War against Terrorism") are more undermined than ever.

c) A tendency towards the explosive extension of permanent zones of instability and chaos over entire regions of the planet, from Afghanistan up to Africa, to such a point that some bourgeois analysts, such as J. Attali in France, bluntly talk about the "Somalisation" of the world.

d) The absence of any mechanical and immediate links between the aggravation of the crisis and the development of imperialist tensions, even if some phenomena can have a certain impact one on the other:

• the exploitation by some countries of their economic weight in order to dictate their will over other countries and favour their own industrial power (USA, Germany);
• the industrial and technical backwardness (China, Russia), but also budgetary difficulties (Britain, Germany) that can weigh on the development of military efforts.

These general orientations, put forward at the time of the preceding congress, have not only been confirmed during the last two years, but have been amplified in a spectacular manner over the same period: their exacerbation dramatically increases the destabilisation of the relations of force between imperialisms; it heightens the risk of war and chaos in important regions of the planet such as the Middle East and the Far East, with all the catastrophic consequences which can unfold from such events on the human, ecological and economic levels for the whole of the planet and for the working class in particular.

The forty-five year old history of the Middle East strikingly expresses the advance of decomposition and the loss of control by the leading world power:

• the 70's: although the US bloc assures itself of the global control of the Middle East and progressively reduces the influence of the Russian bloc, the coming to power of the Mullahs in Iran marks the development of decomposition.
• the 80s: The Lebanese swamp underlines the difficulties of Israel but also of the USA in keeping control over the region, the latter pushing Iraq into war with Iran;
• 1991: first Gulf War where the US Godfather mobilises a number of states behind it in the war against Saddam, chasing him out of Kuwait;
• 2003: setback of the mobilisation of Bush against Iraq and the growth of Iran which, since the 90's, is itself on the offensive as a regional power defying the USA;
• 2011: US retreat from Iraq and growing chaos in the Middle East.

Certainly the policy of progressive retreat (“step by step”) of the USA from Iraq and Afghanistan by the Obama administration has succeeded in limiting the damage for the world cop, but these wars have resulted in an incommensurable chaos throughout the region.

The accentuation of each for themselves in imperialist confrontations and the extension of chaos, which opens up the particular development of unforeseen events, is illustrated in the recent period through four more specific situations:

1. The dangers of military confrontations and the growing instability of states in the Middle East;
2. The growth of China's power and the exacerbation of tensions in the Far East;
3. The fragmentation of states and the extension of chaos to Africa;
4. The impact of the crisis on tensions between states in Europe.

1. The extension of chaos to the Middle East

1.1. A brief historical perspective.

For economic and strategic reasons (commercial routes towards Asia, oil...) the region has always been an important stake in the confrontation between powers. Since the beginning of the decadence of capitalism and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in particular, it has been at the centre of imperialist tensions:

• up until 1945: after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Sykes-Picot Accords carved up the region between Britain and France. It's the theatre of the Turkish civil war and the Greco-Turk conflict, of the emergence of Arab nationalism and Zionism, and it became one of the stakes of the Second World War (German offensives in Russia, North Africa, Libya);
• after 1945: it made up a central zone for East-West tensions (1945-89), with attempts by the Russian bloc to implant itself in the region, which then came up against the strong presence of the USA. The period is marked by the implantation of the new state of Israel, Israeli-Arab wars, the Palestinian question, the Iranian "revolution" which was the first expression of decomposition, the Iran-Iraq War;
• after 1989 and the implosion of the Russian bloc: all the contradictions which existed since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire exacerbated the development of each for themselves, the putting into question of US leadership and the extension of chaos. Iran, Iraq and Syria were denounced by the USA as rogue states. The region underwent the two US wars in Iraq, two Israeli wars in Lebanon, the growth of the power of Iran and its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon;
• since 2003 we've seen an explosion of instability: the fragmentation of the Palestinian Authority and Iraq, the "Arab Spring" which has led to the destabilisation of a number of regimes in the region (Libya, Egypt, Yemen) and a war of factions and imperialisms in Syria. The permanent massacres in Syria, the efforts by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, new Israeli bombardments of Gaza or the permanent political instability in Egypt, demand that each of these events are situated in the global dynamic of the region.

1.2. Growing danger of military confrontations between imperialisms

More than ever, war threatens in the region: preventative intervention by Israel (with or without the USA's approval) against Iran, the possibilities of intervention by different imperialisms in Syria, the war of Israel against the Palestinians (supported at present by Egypt), tensions between the Gulf monarchies and Iran. The Middle East is a terrible confirmation of our analysis of the impasse of the system and the descent into "each for themselves":

• the region has become an enormous powder keg and arms purchases have again multiplied these last years (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman);
• flocks of vultures of the first, second and third order confront each other in the region, as the conflict in Syria shows: the USA, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt with more and more armed gangs at the service of these powers or the warlords acting on their own account:
• in this context, we should point out the destabilising role of Russia in the Middle East (since it wants to maintain its last points of support in the region) and of China (which has a more offensive attitude, supporting Iran which is a crucial provider of oil). Europe is more discrete, even if a country like France is advancing its cards in Palestine, in Syria and even in Afghanistan (with the organisation of a conference in Chantilly, near Paris, in December 2012, bringing together the main Afghan factions).

It is an explosive situation which is escaping the control of the big imperialisms; and the withdrawal of western forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will further accentuate this destabilisation, even if the USA has made attempts to limit the damage:

• by restraining Israel's desires for war against Iran and Hamas in the Gaza strip;
• by attempting a rapprochement with the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, the new president of Egypt.

Globally however, throughout the "Arab Spring", America has shown its incapacity to protect the regimes favourable to it (which has led to a loss of confidence: cf. the attitude of Saudi Arabia which has taken its distance from the USA) and is becoming increasingly unpopular.

This multiplication of imperialist tensions can lead to major consequences at any moment: countries such as Israel or Iran could provoke terrible shocks and pull the entire region into turmoil, without anyone being able to prevent it, because it's under no-one's control. We are thus in an extremely dangerous and unpredictable situation for the region, but also, because of the consequences that can arise from it, for the entire planet.

1.3. The growing instability of many states across the region

Since 1991, with the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf war, the Sunni front put in place by the west to contain Iran has collapsed. The explosion of "every man for himself" in the region has been breathtaking and Iran has been the main beneficiary from the two Gulf wars, with the strengthening of Hezbollah and some Shi'ite movements; as for the Kurds, their quasi-independence has been the collateral effect of the invasion of Iraq. The tendency towards each for themselves is again sharpened in the extension of the social movements of the "Arab Spring", in particular where the proletariat is weakest and this has led to the more and more marked destabilisation of numerous states in the region:

• it's evident in the case of Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, "free Kurdistan", Syria, or the Palestinian territories which are sinking into the war of clans or open civil war;
• it's also the case in Egypt, of Bahrain, of Jordan (the Muslim Brotherhood against King Abdullah II) and even Iran for example, where social tensions and clan oppositions render the situation unpredictable.

The aggravation of tensions between adverse factions is mixed up with diverse religious tensions. Thus, outside of Sunni/Shi'ite or Christian/Muslim opposition, oppositions within the Sunni world are also increasing with the coming to power in Turkey of the moderate Islamist Erdogan or recently the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Tunisia (Ennahda) and within the Moroccan government, supported today by Qatar, which opposes the Salafist/Wahhabi movement financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), which supported Mubarak and Ben Ali respectively.

Of course these religious tendencies, some more barbaric than others, are just there to hide imperialist interests which govern the policies of diverse government cliques. More than ever today, with the war in Syria or tensions in Egypt, it's evident that no such "Muslim bloc" or "Arab bloc" exists, but different bourgeois cliques defending their own imperialist interests by exploiting the religious oppositions (Christians, Jews, Muslims and diverse tendencies within Sunni or Shi'ite religions), which also appears in countries like Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia or Qatar for the control of mosques abroad (Europe).

But, in particular, this explosion of antagonisms and religious factionalism since the end of the 80s and the collapse of "modernist", "socialist" regimes (Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq...) above all expresses the weight of decomposition, of chaos and misery, the total absence of any perspective through a descent into totally retrograde and barbaric ideologies.

In brief, the idea that the USA could re-establish a form of control over the region, through the eviction of Assad for example, is not rational. Since the first Gulf war, all attempts to restore its leadership have failed and have, on the contrary, led to the unchaining of regional appetites, in particular those of a strongly militarised Iran, rich in energy and supported by Russia and China. But this country is in competition with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey... The "ordinary" imperialist ambitions of each state, the explosion of "each for themselves", the Israel-Palestine question, religious oppositions, but also the ethnic divisions (Kurds, Turks, Arabs), all play on the layers of tensions and make the situation particularly unpredictable and dramatic for the inhabitants of the region, but potentially also for the whole of the planet: thus, a greater destabilisation around Iran, and an eventual blockage of the Straits of Hormuz, could have incalculable consequences for the world economy.

2. Exacerbation of imperialist oppositions in the Far East

2.1. A brief historical perspective

The Far East has been a crucial zone for the development of imperialist confrontations since the beginning of decadence: Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, the Chinese "revolution" of 1911 and the ferocious civil war between diverse cliques and warlords, the Japanese offensive in Korea and Manchuria (1932), Japanese invasion of China (1937), Russian-Japanese conflict (May-August 1939) unfolding into the Second World War where the Far East made up one of the central fronts of this war and subsequent conflicts:

• between 1945 and 1989, the region was at the centre of east-west tensions: the developing civil war in China (1949), the wars of Korea and Indochina (Vietnam), but also the Russo-Chinese border conflicts; the same for China-Vietnam, China-India, and India-Pakistan. The US policy of the "neutralisation" of China during the 1970's was to be an important moment in the increasing pressure by the US bloc on its Russian adversary.
• since the implosion of the Russian bloc, "each for themselves" has also developed in the Far East. What marks this region above all else is the economic and military growth in the power of China, which has aggravated regional tensions (regular incidents these last months in the China Sea with Vietnam or the Philippines and above all with Japan, the repeated tensions between the two Korea's...) and in its turn the accelerated armament of the other states of the region (India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...).

2.2 The growing power of China and the exacerbation of warlike tensions

The development of the economic and military power of China and its attempts to impose itself as a power of the first order not only in the Far East but also in the Middle East (Iran), in Africa (Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola) or even in Europe where it's looking for a strategic rapprochement with Russia, means that it is seen by the US as the most important potential danger to its hegemony. It's from this starting point that the US is essentially orienting its strategic manoeuvres against China, as was shown by the 2012 visit of Obama to Burma and Cambodia, two countries allied to China.

The economic and military rise of China inevitably pushes it to advance its national economic and strategic interests, in other words to express a growing imperialist aggressiveness and thus to become a more and more destabilising factor in the Far East.

This growth in the power of China concerns not only the USA, but also numerous countries in Asia itself, from Japan to India, Vietnam to the Philippines, who feel threatened by the Chinese ogre and thus have palpably increased the money they spend on arms. Strategically, the US has tried to promote a large alliance aiming to contain Chinese ambitions, regrouping around the pillars of Japan, India and Australia the less powerful countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore. By standing in the front rank of such an alliance and above all with the aim of issuing a warning to China, the world cop aims to restore the credibility of its leadership which is in free-fall throughout the world.

Recent events confirm that in the present period the major economic development of a country cannot be made without an important increase of imperialist tensions. The context of the appearance of this most serious rival onto the world scene, in a situation of the weakening of the position of the leading world gendarme, announces a more dangerous future of confrontations, not only in Asia but in the entire world.

This danger of confrontations is much more real as the tendencies for "each for themselves" are very much present in other countries of the Far East. Thus the hardening of Japan's position is confirmed with the return to power of the nationalist Shinzo Abe who campaigned on the theme of the restoration of national power. He wants to replace the Self-Defence Force with a real army of national defence, going head to head with China over the conflict about a group of islands in the East China Sea, and wants to re-establish the somewhat degraded links with old allies in the region, the USA and South Korea. It's the same thing with South Korea and the election of Park Geun-Hye, the candidate for the Conservative Party (and daughter of the old dictator Park Chung-hee), which could also lead to an accentuation of "each for themselves" and of the imperialist ambitions of these countries.

Further, there's a whole series of apparently secondary conflicts between Asiatic countries which can further increase destabilisation: there's the Indo-Pakistan conflict of course, the continual altercations between the two Korea's, but also the less publicised tensions between South Korea and Japan (regarding the Dokdo/Takeshima islands), between Cambodia and Vietnam or Thailand, between Burma and Thailand, between India and Burma or Bangladesh, etc., all contributing to the exacerbation of tensions throughout the region.

2.3. Tensions within the political apparatus of the Chinese bourgeoisie

The recent congress of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party has given various indications confirming that the present economic, imperialist and social situation is provoking strong tensions within the ruling class. This poses a question that's been insufficiently treated up to now: the question of the characteristics of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie in a country like China and the way in which the rapports de force have evolved within it. The inadequacy of this type of political apparatus was an important factor in the implosion of the Eastern bloc, but what about China? Rejecting any sort of "Glasnost" or "perestroika", the leading classes have successfully introduced mechanisms of the market economy while maintaining a rigid Stalinist organisation on the political level. In preceding reports, we have pointed to structural weaknesses of the political apparatus of the Chinese bourgeoisie as one of the arguments establishing why China could not become a real challenger to the USA. Also, the deterioration of the economy under the impact of the world crisis, the multiplication of social explosions and the growth of imperialist tensions will without doubt reinforce the existing tensions between factions of the Chinese bourgeoisie, as we've seen with certain surprising events, such as the removal of the "rising star" Bo Xilai and the mysterious disappearance for a fortnight of the "future president" Xi Jinping some weeks before the congress was held.

The different lines of fracture must be taken into account in order to understand the struggle between factions:

• a first line of fracture concerns the opposition between regions which have strongly benefited from economic development and others who have been somewhat neglected, thus also between economic policies. Pitched against each other are the two great networks marked by cronyism: on the one hand a circumstantial coalition between the "party of the princes", children of the upper cadres during the time of Mao and Deng, and the Shanghai clique, functionaries from the coastal provinces. Representative of the leading groups from the more industrialised coastal provinces, they advocate economic growth at any price, even if that increases the social divide. This faction is represented by the new president Xi Jinping and the macro-economic expert Wang Qishan. Up against them is the "Tuanpai" faction around the Young Communist League, within which the main figures have made their careers. As it's a question of bureaucrats having made careers in the poorer provinces of the hinterland, this faction extols a policy of the economic development of the central and western regions, which would favour a greater "social stability". They represent groups having more experience in administration and propaganda. Represented by the former president Hu Jintao, this faction will be represented in the new direction by Li Keqiang, who will probably replace Wen Jiabao as prime minister. This confrontation seems to have played a role in the clash around Bo Xilai.
• the social situation can equally generate tensions between factions within the state. Thus, certain groups, in particular in the industrial and export sectors could be sensitive to social tensions and favourable to more concessions at the political level towards the working class. They are thus opposed to the "hard" factions who favour repression in order to preserve the privileges of the cliques in power.
• imperialist policy also plays a role in the confrontations between cliques. On one side there are the factions which have adopted a more aggressive attitude, such as the coastal regional governments of Hainan, Guangxi and Guangdong, who are looking for new resources for their enterprises, pushing for control of the areas rich in hydrocarbons and marine resources. On the other hand, this aggressiveness can bring counter blows on the level of exports or foreign investments, as was shown with the question of the Japanese islands. The more and more frequent fierce nationalist thrusts in China are without doubt the product of internal confrontations. What, moreover, is the impact of nationalism on the working class, what is the capacity of the young generation not to get hoodwinked and defend its own interests? On this level the context is quite different from that of 1989 in the USSR.

These three lines of fracture are not separate of course but overlap and have played on the tensions which have marked the congress of the CCP and the nomination of the new leadership. According to observers, the latter has been marked by the victory of the "conservatives" over the "progressives" (out of the 7 members of the permanent Political Bureau, 4 are conservatives). But the more and more frequent revelations bear on behaviour, corruption, the amassing of gigantic fortunes, which goes to the highest spheres of the party (thus, the fortune of the family of the old prime minister Wen Jiabao is estimated to be $2.7 billion through a complex network of businesses, often in his mother's, wife's or daughter's name; and that of the new president, Xi Jinping, is already estimated to be at least one billion dollars). This not only shows a problem of effectively gigantic proportions but also a growing instability within the sphere of the leadership that the new conservative and older leadership seem unable to get a grip on.

3. The extension of "Somalisation": the case of Africa

The explosion of chaos and "each for themselves" has given birth to "no-go" areas and zones of instability, which haven't stopped expanding since the end of the twentieth century and which are spreading at present over the whole of the Middle East up to Pakistan. They also cover the totality of the African continent which is sinking into a terrifying barbarity. This "Somalisation" is manifested in several forms.

3.1. The tendency towards the fragmentation of states.

Written into the charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, the principle of the inviolability of frontiers seems to have broken down. From 1993, Eritrea separated from Ethiopia and since then this process has affected the whole of Africa: since the end of the 90's, the disappearance of the central power in Somalia has seen the fragmentation of countries with the appearance of pretend states, such as Somaliland and Puntland. Recently there's been the secession of South Sudan from Sudan and the bloody rebellion in Darfur, the secession of Azawad regarding Mali; and separatist tendencies are appearingin Libya (Cyrenia around Benghazi), in Casamance in Senegal and, recently, in the Mombasa region of Kenya.

Outside of the more and more numerous regions who have declared independence, from the end of the 90's we also see a multiplication of internal conflicts with a political-ethnic or ethnic-religious character: Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast are tending to re-start politico-ethnic civil wars which have exploded the state to the profit of armed clans. In Nigeria there is a Muslim rebellion in the north, the "Lord's Army" in Uganda and the Hutu and Tutsi clans who are tearing each other apart in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The transnational diffusion of tensions and conflicts in a context of weakened states mean that these areas, collapsing and incapable of assuring national order, fall back on religious or ethnic loyalties which are going to dominate. Consequently the defence of interests will be made on the basis of the militias that have appeared.

These internal fragmentations are often stirred up and exploited by interventions from the outside: thus, the western intervention in Libya has worsened internal instability and provoked the spreading of arms and armed groups throughout the Sahel. The growing presence of China on the continent and its support for the warlike policies of Sudan are an example of that and the destabilisation of the whole region. Finally, the big multinationals and the states that back them have even orchestrated local conflicts so as to get their hands on mineral wealth (in the east of the DRC, for example).

Alone, the south seems to escape from this scenario. We do see however a dilution of frontiers, here made to the profit of South Africa from the weaker countries of the region (Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, but also Namibia, Zambia, Malawi), which are being transformed into colonies of the former.

3.2. The wearing away of frontiers.

The destabilisation of states is being fed by a trans-frontier criminality, such as the traffic in arms, drugs and human beings. Consequently, these territorial limits are diluted to the profit of border zones where regulation is effected "from below". Armed insurrections, the incapacity of the authorities to maintain order, trans-national trafficking of arms and munitions, local gang leaders, foreign interference, access to natural resources, all play a part. Delinquent states are losing control of these more and more ample "grey zones", which are often administered in a criminal manner (sometimes also there is the perverse effect of the intervention of humanitarian organisations who make the protected zones "extra-territorial" in fact). Some examples:

• all the zone around the Sahara and the Sahel, from the Libyan desert to Azawad, Mauritania, Niger and Chad being the terrain of criminal movements and the radical Islamist groups;
• between Niger and Nigeria, there's a band of some 30 to 40 kilometres which is free from the supervision of Niamey and Abuja. The frontiers are evaporating;
• the east of the DRC where the control of the borders with Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania by the central state is non-existent, facilitating trans-national movements of raw materials and arms;
• through the states of Burkino Fasso, Ghana, Benin or Guinea where there's a pull of migrants towards agriculture or fishing. As to Guinea-Bissau, it's become a total "no-go" zone, a nerve centre for the entry and re-directing of drugs from South America or Afghanistan towards Europe and the USA.

3.3. The dominance of clans and warlords.

With the delinquency of national states, entire regions are falling under the control of groups and warlords along the frontiers. It's not only Somaliland and Puntland where clans and local armed bosses rule by force of arms. In the Sahel region this role is fulfilled by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine, the movement for the unity of jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and some nomad Tuareg groups. In east Congo, a group like the M23 is a private army at the service of a warlord who follows the most money.

Such groups are generally linked to traffickers with whom they exchange money and services. Thus in Nigeria, in the Niger Delta, similar groups hold firms to ransom and sabotage oil installations.

The emergence and the extension of "no-go" zones are certainly not limited to Africa alone. Thus the generalisation of organised crime, the wars between gangs in various countries of Latin America, Mexico, Venezuela, for example, even the control of entire quarters by gangs in the big western towns, witness the progression of decomposition over the whole planet. However, the level of fragmentation and chaos reaching the scale of a whole continent gives an idea of the barbarity wrought by the decomposition of the system for the whole of humanity.

4. Economic crisis and the tensions between European states

In the report for the 19th Congress of the ICC, we underlined the absence of any immediate and mechanical link between the aggravation of the economic crisis and the development of imperialist tensions. That doesn't mean that they don't have an impact on each other. This is particularly the case with the role of European states on the imperialist scene.

4.1. The impact of imperialist ambitions in the world.

The crisis of the euro and the EU has imposed the cures of budget austerity on most European states, which is also expressed at the level of military spending. Thus, contrary to the states of the Far East or Middle East, who have seen their armaments budgets explode, the budgets of the main European powers have been appreciably lowered.

This retreat in armaments provisions is accompanied by less pronounced European imperialist ambitions on the international scene (with the exception perhaps of France, which is present in Mali and is attempting a diplomatic push in Afghanistan by bringing all the Afghan factions together under its tutelage at Chantilly): there is less emphasis on autonomy on the part of the European powers and even a certain rapprochement with the USA, a partial "return to the ranks" that is without doubt contingent.

4.2. The impact on tensions between European states.

Within the EU, this goes along with a growing tension between centripetal tendencies (a need for stronger centralisation in order to face up more strongly to economic collapse) and centrifugal tendencies towards each for themselves.

The conditions for the birth of the EU were a plan to contain Germany after 1989, but what the bourgeoisie needs today is a much stronger centralisation, a budgetary union and thus a much more political union. It needs this if it is to face up to the crisis in the most effective manner possible, which also corresponds to German interests. The necessary thrust for greater centralisation thus strengthens German control over other European states inasmuch as it allows Germany to dictate the measures needed to be taken and to directly intervene in the functioning of other European states: "From now on, Europe will be talking German", as the president of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag noted in 2011.

On the other hand, the crisis and the drastic measures imposed are pushing towards a break-up of the EU and a rejection of submission to the control of another country, that's to say a push towards each for themselves. Britain has out and out refused the proposed measures of centralisation and in the southern European countries a nationalist anti-Germanism is growing. Centrifugal forces can also imply a tendency towards the fragmentation of states, the autonomy of regions such as Catalonia, northern Italy, Flanders and Scotland.

Thus, the pressure of the crisis, through a complex play of centripetal and centrifugal forces, is accentuating the break-up of the EU and is exacerbating tensions between states.

In a global manner, this report accentuates the orientations laid out in the report to the 19th Congress of the ICC and underlines the acceleration of the tendencies it identified. More than ever, the more and more absolute nature of the historic impasse of the capitalist mode of production is being made clear. Thus, the period opening up "will tend to impose the more and more clear cut connections between

• the economic crisis, revealing the historic impasse of the capitalist mode of production;
• its warlike barbarity, showing the fundamental consequences of the historic impasse: the destruction of humanity.

From today, for the working class, this link represents a point of fundamental reflection on the future that capitalism is reserving for humanity and on the necessity to find an alternative faced with this dying system”.