The intensification of the US offensive aimed at maintaining its world leadership has led it to unleash a new war in Afghanistan, and to deploy troops there, on the pretext of a world struggle against terrorism. As we will show in the article that follows, this military escalation and its conclusion today in a crushing American victory, far from bringing any kind of stability to the world is, on the contrary, the precursor of new wars and new massacres. Since the article was written, the situation has worsened in the Middle East, which is the object of this brief introduction.

The victorious US offensive failed to provoke the slightest hostile reaction from the Arab countries, and has seriously weakened Yasser Arafat, who now stands accused of a benign tolerance towards Palestinian terrorism. In its wake, Israel has put the PLO leader's back to the wall and unleashed a new storm of violence in the occupied territories. Tsahal has answered the blind terror exercised against the Israeli population with an equally blind violence whose principal victim is the civilian population, children included. Ever since the Oslo accords, the US has criticised - condemned even - successive Israeli governments' policy of deliberately sabotaging the peace process. For the US, it was necessary at all costs to limit the exacerbation of tension between Israel and the Palestinians, since this was liable to crystallise a growing hostility towards Israel throughout the Arab world. Such a situation would inevitably have backfired on the US, given that they could not abandon the Israelis who are their main military ally in the region. But above all, it would have provided an opportunity for certain European countries to play their own hand by supporting this or that diplomatic solution in favour of this or that national fraction of the bourgeoisie - no matter which solution, provided it opposed that of the US. Today the situation is different: the USA has just gained an enormous ascendancy over the rest of the world, and intends to push this advantage as far as possible. By accepting entirely the Israeli offensive in the occupied territories, the US is demonstrating with brutal clarity the inability of anybody - and in particular of the European countries - to provide the slightest support for an alternative to American policy in the Middle East. That said, the present situation will be no more stable than the "Oslo peace": on the contrary, it can only lead to an increase in tension, especially through the development of a profound feeling of hatred towards Israel and the United States.

The United States has today succeeded in completely sidelining the European powers (France, Britain, Germany) on the world arena. It allowed its main rivals no role whatever in the Afghan conflict, allowing them no more than the privilege of running the side-shows inherited from the defeat of the Taliban. The Europeans had intended to position themselves in Afghanistan, as they had done in Kosovo, by means of a UN contingent. It is clear now that this contingent will only operate under American control, and will be nothing but an auxiliary to the new power that they have set up in Kabul.

Obviously, all the second and third-rate powers whose ambitions are thwarted by the success of the world's greatest power will not remain inactive. On the contrary, they will do everything they can to put spanners in the works of US policy, in particular by exploiting all the local tensions stoked up by the American presence. In fact, this reassertion of the American world order has done nothing to appease the existing tensions in the world, as we can see already from the renewal of hostilities between the two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Since the terrorist attack by an Islamic group on the parliament building in Delhi on 13th December, tensions between the two countries have risen to a pitch rarely reached before (India, for example, is evacuating civilians from the border with Pakistan to make room for minefields).

Moreover, while the smoke of battle may have obscured momentarily from view the dramatic aggravation of the economic crisis, it has done nothing to diminish its reality. Today, the recession is official in Japan, it is under way in the US and Germany, while growth has fallen dramatically in Europe at the very moment that the Euro's arrival is being fêted. The world situation is well illustrated by the sudden collapse of the Argentine economy, which has just gone bankrupt after four years of recession, with all that that means for the proletariat: unemployment, poverty, and the reappearance for the first time since the end of Spanish rule, of the spectre of famine. The situation in Argentina - a country which forty years ago took pride in belonging to the exclusive club of "developed countries" - reveals the future that capitalism holds for us.

Argentina and Afghanistan reveal clearly the threat that we are facing: economic collapse bringing unemployment, poverty and hunger in its wake (see the article in this issue), and an explosion of military slaughter, destruction and barbarity.

8th January, 2002

The United States has responded to the barbaric bloodbath of the Twin Towers with an "anti-terrorist crusade" that is creating and will create new and worse bloodbaths. The main victims are the workers, peasants, and people of Afghanistan who, since the 7th of October, have suffered a terrible rain of bombs and the unleashing of furious struggles by the local armies.

Along with the present and future slaughter of so many people, housing, industry, fields, hospitals and means of communication are being destroyed; starvation, disease and looting have struck the population. Thousands and thousands of refugees who have tried to cross the frontiers with neighbouring countries have been brutally treated by all: the military, the gangsters controlling roadblocks and the frontier guards.

This is a new hecatomb that has been inflicted on thousands and thousands of human beings. Afghanistan has suffered 23 years of war. It has suffered war under every form of capitalism: first there was the capitalism of the so-called "socialism" of the old USSR; followed by "Islamic" capitalism in its various forms - the Mujahadeen, the Taliban - and now the "most capitalist" capitalism of all, that of the world's greatest power. This infinite barbarity of the system has torn away its deceitful mask of dignity, culture, rights, progress and exposed its true face: that of a dying organism that causes ever increasing wars, destruction and hunger?.

"Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping in filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics -as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity - so its appears in all its hideous nakedness" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet: the crisis in the German Social Democracy. Merlin Press Publication, page 6. This was written against the First World War in 1915.)

Each nation for itself and chaos everywhere

The United States has made it clear that the "anti-terrorist" campaign will not be limited to Afghanistan. The Secretary of Defence has announced "10 years of war", whilst President Bush in his fireside radio chat on Saturday 24th November, declared that "We will face difficult times ahead. The fight we have begun will not be quickly or easily finished. Our enemies hide and plot in many nations. They are devious and ruthless. Yet we are confident in the justice of our cause. We will fight for as long as it takes, and we will prevail", making it clear that "the United States' army will have to be active in different areas of the world".

Why these plans for war? Are they really a defence against terrorism? In the Editorial of the last issue of the International Review we denounced this "anti-terrorist" cover. Terrorism - all the diverse forms of terrorism are alien to the proletariat1- is part of the current activity of all states and forms an increasingly important weapon of war.

Is it simply an operation to conquer the oil fields of Central Asia, as some groups of the proletarian political movement think? We cannot develop here the analysis that is contained in the "Report on Imperialist Conflicts" to our 14th Congress published in International Review n°107 where we say that: "If during the early stage of imperialism, then at the beginning of decadence, war was seen as a means to re-divide the markets, it has now become above all a way of imposing yourself as a great power, to defend your rank against the rest, to impose your authority and save the nation. Wars no longer have an economic rationality, they cost more than they can gain."

The real aim of this chain of military operations by the USA, begun in Afghanistan, is politico-strategic.2 It is a response to the growing challenge to its world leadership that has increased since the Kosovo war, and whose leading protagonists are the European powers - Germany, France - followed by all kinds of regional, local powers and even warlords such as Bin Laden.

In our previous Editorial we put forward the general premises of our analysis: the present military crisis is an expression, not only of the decadence of capitalism, which extends from the beginning of the 20th century, but as we have shown also of the terminal phase of decomposition, which clearly manifested itself in 1989 with the collapse of the old Soviet bloc. The most characteristic feature of this final phase of capitalism's decadence is the enormous disorder that is seen as much in the relations between states as in the form taken by the imperialist confrontations between them. Each nation state tries to take advantage of the situation, without accepting even a minimum of discipline. This is what we characterise as each nation for itself, which is leading to, and at the same time worsening, the general state of imperialist chaos throughout the world. A situation that we foresaw more than ten years ago at the time of the collapse of the old Soviet bloc: "The world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of "every man for himself" will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterised the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos" (International Review n°64 "Militarism and Decomposition", page 12).

Since its beginnings capitalism has contained an insoluble contradiction between the character of its production, that tends to be social and world-wide, and its mode of appropriation and organisation that is necessarily private and national. This contradiction is set in capitalism's genes, generating confrontation and destruction. This tendency was less visible in the ascendant period of capitalism since it was dominated by the dynamic towards the formation of the world market, which objectively unified the planet by subjecting territory and trade throughout the world to capitalist relations of production.3

With the decadence of capitalism, the wars between all the states, the battle of each national imperialism to escape from the growing contradictions of the capitalist regime at the cost of its rivals, have acquired a murderous virulence. The result was two world wars between two rival imperialist blocs, a paroxysm of hatred and "each against all". However, during the "Cold War" that followed (1945-1989) this universal antagonism was contained by the iron discipline imposed by the blocs, founded upon the bloc leaders' military supremacy, strategic and political blackmail and economic subordination. The disappearance of the blocs after 1989 let loose the expression of the national imperialist interests in all their chaotic and destructive fury: "the fragmentation of the old bloc structures and disciplines unleashed national rivalries on an unprecedented scale, resulting in an increasingly chaotic struggle of each against all from the world's greatest powers to the meanest local warlords. This has taken the form of a growing number of local and regional wars?The wars characteristic of the present phase of capitalist decomposition are no less imperialist wars than the wars of previous phases of decadence, but they have become more widespread, more uncontrollable, and more difficult to bring to even a temporary close" ("Resolution on the International Situation from the 14th congress of the ICC" in International Review n°106, page 8). The phase of the decomposition of capitalism has clearly shown that "The reality of decadent capitalism, despite the fact that imperialist antagonisms have given the impression that it is divided into two monolithic units, is the tendency towards the dislocation and disintegration of its components. The tendency of decadent capitalism is towards schism, chaos, from which arises the essential necessity of socialism in order to make the world one unity" (Internationalisme, Gauche Communiste de France, "Report on the International Situation", January 1945).

The biggest loser in this situation is the United States. Its national interests are identified with the maintaining of a world order built for its benefit. The United States is forced to play the world sheriff, faced as it is with the imperialist designs of its main rivals (Germany, France, Britain etc), challenged by numerous states with their own regional ambitions and even by its most loyal allies (the case of Israel is a good example, with its increasingly open sabotage of the "Pax Americana" since 1995); it has to make repeated displays of strength, banging its fist on the table, as we saw with the Gulf War or Kosovo and now in Afghanistan.

However, the present "anti-terrorist campaign" has much more ambitious aims. In the Gulf, the USA limited itself to an overwhelming demonstration of power in order to bring its old allies to heel. In Kosovo it again exhibited its immense military power, although its "allies" pulled a fast one with their "peace plans" with which each one gained its own zone of influence and frustrated the US's plans. Today the US has inflicted a crushing humiliation on its "allies", keeping them hanging about on the sidelines of its military operations, and establishing itself in stable military positions in the crucial area of Central Asia.

The US' first demanded its "allies'" "collaboration", which has meant them standing on the sidelines cheering on the advancing Rambos. France's attempt to send a contingent of soldiers under the guise of "humanitarian aid" has been blocked by the USA in Termez on the Uzbek frontier. Germany's offer of 3,900 soldiers has been "officially" scorned. Great Britain, which from the beginning appeared as an active partner in the operation, has suffered a humiliating rebuke. Blair's efforts to present himself as "commander in chief" have been answered by the immobilisation for over a week of the 6,000 British troops awaiting deployment. This marginalisation has been a bitter blow to these countries' standing on the international stage. But the second event is more important. For the first time in history, the United States has established itself in Central Asia, and it plans to stay there, not only in Afghanistan but also in the two neighbouring ex-soviet republics (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). This is an open threat to China, Russia, India and Iran. However, its scope is far more profound: it is a step towards an authentic encirclement of the European powers - a new edition of the old policy of "containment" that the US used against Russia. From the high mountains of Central Asia it will exercise strategic control over the Middle East and its oil supplies, which are crucial for the European nations' economies and military action.

Covered by the "anti-terrorist coalition" and having marginalised its European "allies" America can now pursue its military villainy in other countries. Iraq is in its sights. There is talk of intervention in Yemen and Somalia. These new bloody acts will not have as their objective the "tracking down of terrorists" but rather the strategic encircling of its European "allies".

As we said in the Editorial to the last issue of the International Review we do not know if the authors of the crime of the Twin Towers were Bin Laden and his friends, but we do know that the United states has been the main beneficiary, as the selfsame Bush pointed out directly in his fireside chat of 24th November: "the evil the terrorists intended has resulted in good they never expected. And this holiday season, Americans have much to be thankful for" (see www.whitehouse.gov [1]).

United States: the arsonist fireman

When analysing the Kosovo war, our 13th Congress, held in April 1999, underlined that: "The present war, with the new destabilisation of the European and world situation that it represents, is another illustration of the inescapable dilemma confronting the USA today. The tendency to "every man for himself" and the more and more explicit assertion of their imperialist pretensions by the ex-allies of the USA increasingly forces the later to display and use its enormous military superiority. At the same time, this policy can only lead to a still greater aggravation of the chaos that reigns already in the world situation" (International Review n°97: "Resolution on the International Situation", page 3).

The virulence of this contradiction has not diminished, but worsened over the last 10 years. The American godfather's overwhelming displays of military power have clipped its rivals' wings and pulled them into line. But the effects have been short lived. After the Gulf War Germany dared to break Yugoslavia into pieces in order to gain access to the Mediterranean via the Adriatic. America's aims in the Balkans were frustrated as soon as the bombing in Kosovo stopped. The politicians in Washington have tried every possible method to contain this situation but have failed, not because they are incompetent, but because the evolving conditions of decomposing capitalism have worked against them. Pounding the table may intimidate the other gangsters for a while, but they are soon up to their old tricks again. First of all, there are the diplomatic intrigues, the sordid manoeuvres, followed by the game of destabilising this or that country, this or that zone. Later on, there are agreements with the local warlords, finally there are the operations of "humanitarian intervention". All of this is reproduced on a regional scale by the states of the second or third division, generating between them all a bloody jumble of criss-crossing influences. This vicious cycle does nothing but create ruined societies, starvation and mountains of bodies. The great powers, who present themselves as firemen, are in reality arsonists who treacherously and under cover of darkness sprinkle petrol everywhere.

The situation has turned the United States into the principal fire-bomber. Real firemen may light fire-breaks to bring a blaze under control. America's fire-breaks only fan the flames it is trying to extinguish. The contradictions of its position in this period of the historical decomposition of capitalism leaves America no choice but to light them. This is a contradiction that reveals the profound gravity of the world situation. The United States, the first guarantor and beneficiary of the "World Order", at the same time undermines its efforts to defend itself through its devastating military operations.

In the First and Second World Wars, it was the powers that had gained least from the great imperialist share-out of the 19th century (especially Germany) which upset the existing state of affairs, thus putting "world peace" in danger. During the period of violent competition between the USSR and the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s, the weaker Russian bloc always played the destabilising role whilst the Americans could allow themselves the luxury of appearing as being "under attack" or as the "guarantor of the world order". The US then adopted a more offensive policy - though appearing to remain on the defensive - notably via an arms race which its soviet rival was unable to take up due to its own economic and political weakness, and which eventually led to the latter's collapse. However, today, as an expression of the descent of capitalism into barbarity we have the absurd situation where the United States, the principle beneficiary of the world order and its overwhelmingly dominant power, is the one who undermines it most of all.

The present "anti-terrorist" campaign will inevitably follow the same route, the only difference being that the doses of destruction and chaos that are being prepared will be qualitatively and quantitatively more serious that those resulting from previous operations.

There will be no "peace and reconstruction" in Afghanistan, only the foundations for new military convulsions. The Northern Alliance is an agglomeration of warlords and tribal fractions that have momentarily solidified against a common enemy. But the division of power, their internecine feuds and the fires that will be fuelled by the foreign godfathers (Russia, Iran, India) will lead to the kinds of violent confrontations that we have already seen after the taking of Kunduz where the "allied" troops of Dostum and Daud have already clashed. The relegation of the factions based on the Pashtun majority, or at the least the vantage points seized by the other factions at their expense, heralds the ferocity of the confrontations to come. The USA, which has no interest in occupying the whole of Afghanistan4, has deployed its troops in Kandahar to back the Pashtuns and to counter the weight of the Northern Alliance.

America needed Pakistan's support to intervene in Afghanistan, and in exchange Pakistan has been promised American support for those tribes able to counter-balance the Northern Alliance, Pakistan's traditional enemy and a barrier to its influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan needs this "zone of influence" to give it "strategic depth" in its bitter confrontation with India over Kashmir. The increased political influence of the Northern Alliance in the post-Taliban settlement is therefore a breach in Pakistan's defences against India.

India, China, Russia and Iran are furious about the installation of the Americans in Central Asia. While they have no choice but to line up behind the "anti-terrorist" front, all their efforts will be aimed at sabotaging the operations of Big Brother by any means, since they threaten their vital interests. They can do nothing else but respond with the meagre means at their disposal: intrigues, destabilising operations in crucial areas, supporting the most unruly factions.

In the Arab and Islamic countries, the American operation can only incite still further the hatred of broad sections of the population, accentuating the threats of destabilisation and pushing all the bourgeoisies of the area to increase their distance from the United States, as we have already seen in Saudi Arabia with its open shows of bad will.

In the same way, the Afghan operation has dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the "Arab cause", and is therefore a catastrophe for Arafat who has been greatly weakened. This helps Israel to push its Palestinian enemy onto the ropes with the consequence of aggravating the open war that it has been dragging out for years.

Japan has taken advantage of events to despatch a naval flotilla to foreign seas for the first time since the end of World War II,. This is for the moment no more than a symbolic gesture, but one which shows how Japanese imperialism intends to assert its own power, creating a new front of tension that adds even more fire to the world situation.

Germany, France and Great Britain, those most harmed by this present war, have to respond because the American manoeuvre poses a serious threat inasmuch as it is the beginning of a strategy of "continental encirclement" that could suffocate them. They have to counter-attack, perhaps in Africa, perhaps in the Balkans, and they have to accelerate urgently their military spending and plans for the creation of rapid deployment brigades within the framework of the famous "European Army".

In the end, not only will the United States be unable to stabilise the world situation in its favour; it is on the contrary contributing to its destabilisation.

Military instability and convulsions threaten the central countries

Since 1945 the central countries of capitalism (the United States, Western Europe) have enjoyed a long period of stability and peace within their borders. World capitalism as a whole has progressively sunk into a dynamic of wars, destruction, starvation? but the central countries have appeared as oases of peace. Now that situation is beginning to change. The Balkans Wars of the 1990s were the first warning. A devastating war brought instability to the gates of the great industrial concentrations. In this logic, the events in New York have a serious and profound significance far beyond their immediate impact. An act of war has directly struck the world's main power causing a massacre equivalent to a night of aerial bombardment.

We are not saying that war has begun or that it is about to happen in the world's great urban centres. We are a long way from such a situation for one good reason at least: the proletariat of these countries, despite all its difficulties, is not ready to fall into the moral degradation, physical suffering, real terror and the exhausting daily sacrifice that it would have to endure in a state of war. However, we cannot let this conceal the gravity of what has happened. A few months previously, analysing the underlying dynamic of the historical situation and drawing the lessons of the tendencies contained within it, our 14th Congress, in its Resolution on the International Situation stated that "the working class today thus faces the possibility that it could be engulfed by an irrational chain reaction of local and regional wars?This apocalypse is not so far from what we are experiencing today, the face of barbarism is taking material shape before our eyes. The only question remaining is whether socialism, the proletarian revolution, still remains a living alternative" (International Review n°106).

The attack on the Twin Towers has opened a period where instability, the bloody claw of terrorist actions unleashed directly as acts of war, threaten in a much more direct way the main industrialised states, which are less and less the "refuges of order and stability" that they appeared to be until now.5 It is an element of the situation that the proletariat must take account of since terrorism represents a new danger, not only physically (workers were the main victims of the attack in the Twin Towers) but above all politically since the state in the great "democratic" centres has taken advantage of the insecurity and terror generated by such actions in order to call on the population to close ranks around the "defence of national security" and offers itself as the "only guarantee" against chaos and barbarity.

The use of terrorism as a weapon in the struggle between states is not new. What is "new" is the widespread nature of the phenomenon in the last few years. The main states, and in their wake the smaller ones, have multiplied their relations with all kinds of Mafia and/or terrorists in order both to control all kinds of illegal but lucrative business, and as a way of putting pressure on rival states. The use of the IRA by the USA as a means of pressuring Great Britain or of the ETA by France to put pressure on Spain are significant examples. At the same time, all states have developed "special departments" in their armies and secret services: which prepare highly specialised troops for "guerrilla" actions, sabotage, terrorism etc.

The use of the terrorist weapon has accompanied a growing tendency in the war between states to violate the minimal laws that until now have been respected in the confrontations between them. As we say in the "Theses on the Decomposition of Capitalism" "The world situation is characterised by the increase of terrorism, the taking of hostages as a means of war between states in detriment to the 'laws' that capitalism has had in the past for 'regulating' the conflicts between fractions of the ruling class".6

The western governments' reaction to the 11th September has been the rapid reinforcement of their arsenal of state repression which unequivocally demonstrates that they have understood the danger. The United States has set the tone: introduction of identity cards, suspension of habeas corpus, secret military tribunals, "debating" whether to employ "moderate" torture in order to "avoid even worse events" and so on. With this policy it is developing weapons whose ultimate destiny will be to be used against the proletariat and revolutionaries, but what it reveals now is the growing threat of instability, chaos, underhand blows by rivals, that is unfolding in the central countries.

The cordon sanitaire against chaos, raised like a new Berlin Wall to protect the "great democracies", will become increasingly vulnerable. Bush has characterised the "anti-terrorist campaign" as "a long war, in many places on the planet, that will have visible phases and secret ones, that demands many means, some of which will be known and others not", and this demonstrates the level of convulsions and instability that is going to affect the central countries.

To gain a measure of the significance of these threats it is useful to refer to other historical periods. When Imperial Rome, in the first century AD, entered into decadence, the first stage was characterised by violent convulsions in its centre - Rome. This was the period of the "mad emperors" such as Nero, Caligula etc. The "reforms" of the emperors of the 2nd century - the period of great public works which gave rise to the most imposing monuments - pushed the convulsions to the periphery which declined into stagnation and fell increasingly prey to barbarian invasion. The 3rd century saw the return, like a boomerang, of chaos towards the centre, increasingly affecting Rome and Byzantium. The sacking of Rome was the culmination of this process. What until then had been impregnable fortress, fell like a house of cards to the barbarian hordes.

This same process is already been heralded as an unfolding tendency in present-day capitalism. Wars, starvation, ruins, which in the last decades have murdered millions of human beings in the under-developed countries, could end up becoming established with all their destructive force in the heart of capitalism, if the proletariat is not able to react in time by developing its struggle towards the world revolution. As Rosa Luxemburg declared nearly 90 years ago: "The triumph of imperialism leads to the destruction of culture, sporadically during a modern war, and forever, if the period of world wars that has just begun is allowed to take its damnable course to the last ultimate consequence. Thus we stand today, as Friedrich Engels prophesied more than a generation a ago, before the awful proposition: Either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of Socialism, that is, the conscious struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism, against its methods, against war" (The Junius Pamphlet, page 16).

The working class response

Military escalation is accelerating. The period of fundamentally local wars, outside of the main industrial centres, is coming to an end. We are not talking about a situation of generalised war, of world war, but of a period defined by large-scale wars with world-wide implications and, above all, by their more direct repercussions on the lives of the central countries.

This evolution of the historical situation must make the proletariat reflect. As we said in the Resolution of our 14th Congress, the face of barbarism is becoming more precise, its contours more clearly defined, The barbarity of the outrage of the Twin Towers has as its counterpart the military campaign that the American bourgeoisie has imposed on the whole of society. Bellicose language has spread to American politicians of all tendencies. MacCain, Bush's former rival of in the Republican Party says "Let God take pity on the terrorists because we won't", the Secretary of Defence well known for his bellicose threats and his arrogant disregard for human life said of Kunduz "I want the Taliban dead or prisoners". A soldier fired by one of generalissimo Bush's speeches declared "after hearing the President I want to go and kill the enemy".

"War is methodical, organised, gigantic murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is possible only when a state of intoxication has previously been created. This has always been the tried and proven method of those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a commensurate bestiality of thought and senses; the later must prepare and accompany the former" (Rosa Luxemburg, op. cit. page 20). The American bourgeoisie has been putting pressure on the proletariat and the American population through systematic campaigns of patriotic ardour, with carefully cultivated hysteria about the threat of Anthrax, with incredible rumours about "Arab" outrages etc in order to awaken the basest instincts and to catalyse the worst brutality. Its European brothers have been doing the same thing more discreetly, but with greater cynicism and sophistication.

We are not in the same situation that Rosa Luxemburg fought against in 1914, nor in that of 1939, when the mass of the proletariat was drawn into war. Today, the tendency of world society is towards the development of the class struggle of the proletariat and not towards generalised world war. The conditions for patriotic intoxication, for bestial hatred towards peoples designated as the enemy, for daily slavery under the military jackboot in the factory, in the office, in the street, for an acceptance of methodical and systematic murder for the "just cause" championed by the state, are not to be found today in the proletariat of the United States or any other of the central countries.

Does that mean to say that we can rest easy in our beds? Absolutely not! As we demonstrated in our report on the historic course adopted by our last Congress (see International Review n°107) in the present period, the terminal phase of capitalist decomposition, time is not on the side of the proletariat and the longer the working class' ability to gain the level of consciousness, collective strength and unity necessary for overthrowing the capitalist monster is delayed, the greater is the risk of the destruction of the foundations for communism and that the proletariat's capacity for unity, solidarity and confidence will undergo a relentless weakening.

The accumulation of events that has taken place over the last two months has revealed a sudden acceleration of the situation. They have concentrated three very important elements of the world situation:

- The acceleration of imperialist war.

- A violent and spectacular aggravation in the economic crisis with the avalanche of lay-offs, which are already much higher than in 1991-93.

- A cascade of repressive measures, in the name of "anti-terrorism", on the part of the "democratic" states.

Assimilating these events and drawing out the perspectives that they contain is not easy. While we have not been surprised, we have to confess that their virulence and rapidity has surpassed our expectations, and that we are far from seeing clearly all their implications. It is thus natural that a certain perplexity, combined with feelings of fear and disorientation, will dominate the proletariat for a certain time. This has happened before. For example, faced with the acceleration of the economic crisis with its procession of attacks, the proletariat has not immediately entered into struggle, due to an initial sense of bewilderment and surprise. Only later, when it has begun to digest events, has it begun to develop its struggles. This is what happened faced with the crises of 1974-75, 1980-82 and 1991-93.

However, the fact that the three elements (crisis, war and growing repressive apparatus) are present at the same time in so concentrated a form and in such enormous proportions, means that if the proletariat can develop its combativity and struggles in response to the central axis - the worsening of the crisis - this could be the premise for a very profound and global development of consciousness within the ranks of the proletariat.

The present wars, as they appear today, do not make it easy to develop a consciousness about their nature since the tangle of religious and ethnic fanaticism, characteristic of decomposition, as well as the proliferation of terrorist acts, are like trees that hide the forest of their real causes and the main culprits: capitalism and the great powers. Equally, the bourgeoisie is well prepared. It was not without reason that in our previous Congress we said "?in view of the degradation of the world situation the bourgeoisie is afraid that the class will discover those episodes which demonstrate that it is the class which holds the future of humanity in its hands: the revolutionary wave of 1917-23; the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in Russia, the ending of World War 1 through the revolutionary movement in Germany" ("Resolution on the International Situation" from the 13th Congress of the ICC, International Review n°97).

The Left that is in power in the majority of European countries, pushes towards war but at the same time toasts pacifism and looks for all kinds of justifications for its military excesses only too conscious of the fact that: "When and where has there been a war since so-called public opinion has played a role in government calculations, in which each and very belligerent party did not, with heavy heart, draw the sword from its sheath for the single and sole purpose of defending its Fatherland and its own righteous cause from the shameful attacks of the enemy? This legend is as inextricably a part of the game of war as powder and lead" (Rosa Luxemburg The Junius Pamphlet, page 31).

These obstacles can, however, be overcome by the proletariat since it has, in a global and historic sense, though not massively at present, the weapon of consciousness. "The bourgeois revolutions, such as those of the eighteenth century, storm quickly from success to success. They outdo each other in dramatic effects: men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds and each day's spirit is ecstatic. But they are short-lived; they soon reach their apogee, and society has to undergo a long period of regret until it has learnt to assimilate soberly the achievements of its period of storm and stress. Proletarian revolutions, however, such as those of the nineteenth century, constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task again; with merciless thoroughness they mock the inadequate, weak and wretched aspects of their first attempts; they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever; they sink back again and again before the indeterminate immensity of their own goals, until the situation is created in which any retreat is impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!" (Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", in Surveys from Exile, Vol 2 of The Pelican Marx Library, page 150)."For the ultimate triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto Marx relied solely and exclusively upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had to ensue from united action and discussion. The events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than successes, could not but demonstrate to the fighters the inadequacy hitherto of their universal panaceas and make their minds more receptive to a thorough understanding of the true conditions for the emancipation of the workers" (Engels: "Preface to the fourth 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto", Marx and Engels Selected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, London page 33).

Rosa Luxemburg said of the international proletariat "Gigantic as its problems are its mistakes. No firmly fixed plan, no orthodox ritual that holds good for all times, shows him the path that he must travel. Historical experience is his only teacher; his Via Dolorosa to freedom is not only covered with unspeakable suffering, but with countless mistakes. The goal of his journey, his final liberation, depends entirely upon the proletariat, on whether it understands to learn from its own mistakes. Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil is life and breath for the proletarian movement. The catastrophe into which the world has thrust the socialist proletariat is an unexampled misfortune for humanity. But Socialism is lost only if the international proletariat is unable to measure the depths of the catastrophe and refuses to understand the lessons that it teaches" (op cit. page 7).

The bourgeois revolutions were much more conscious acts than the social process that brought slavery to an end and led to the feudal regimes. However, they were still dominated by the overwhelming weight of objective factors. The proletarian revolution, on the other hand, is the first in history where the determinant factor is its class-consciousness. This crucial feature of the proletarian revolution, that has been energetically underlined by Marxists as we have seen, is even more powerful and more vital confronted with the present historical situation of the decomposition of capitalism.

Adalen 28-11-2001

Notes

1 See International Review issues 14 and 15 for our position on "Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence"

2 See our article "Strategy or oil profits" in this issue.

3 It is thus absurd to talk about "globalisation" today. The world market was formed at least a century ago, and capitalism's objective capacity to unify the living conditions of the great majority of humanity has long since been exhausted. Concerning the real meaning of so-called "globalisation" see our article "Behind the 'globalisation' of the economy the aggravation of the crisis of capitalism" in International Review n°86.

4 It has learned from the trap that the Russians fell in to during the 1979-89 war.

5 As we have already said in the Editorial to International Review n°107 we do not know who is responsible for the outrage of the 11th September. However, that such a monstrosity has taken place reveals the advance of chaos and instability and their direct effects in the central countries

6 Published in 1990 in International Review n°62 and republished in International Review n°107.

From the very first moments, American bourgeois propaganda has likened the horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941. This comparison is laden with considerable psychological, historical and political impact, since it was Pearl Harbor that marked American imperialism's direct entry into the Second World War. According to the current ideological campaign presented by the American bourgeoisie, especially its mass media, the parallels are simple, direct, and self-evident:

1) In both instances, the US was victimized by a treacherous surprise attack, taken completely off guard. In the first instance there was the treachery of Japanese imperialism, which cynically pretended to negotiate with Washington to avoid war but plotted and unleashed an attack without warning. In the current instance, the US was victimized by fanatical Islamic fundamentalists, who took advantage of the openness and freedom of American society to commit an atrocity of unprecedented proportions, and whose evilness places them outside the bounds of civilized society.

2) In both instances the casualties inflicted by the surprise attack were staggering, arousing popular outrage. At Pearl Harbor the death toll was 2403, mostly American military personnel. At the Twin Towers the death toll was far worse, nearly 6,000 innocent civilians.

3) In both instances, the attacks backfired on the perpetrators. Rather than terrifying or plunging the American nation into defeatism and quiet submission, Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers instead aroused the deepest patriotic fervor in the population, including the proletariat, and thereby permitted the mobilization of the population behind the state for protracted imperialist war.

4) In the end, it is the goodness of the American democratic way of life, and its military strength, that prevails over evil.

Like all bourgeois ideological myths, whatever the elements of truth that offer superficial credibility, this tale of two tragedies, sixty years apart, is laced with half-truths, lies, and self-serving distortion. But this is no surprise. The politics of the bourgeoisie as a class are based on lies, deception, manipulation, and manoeuvre. This is particularly true when it comes to the difficult task of mobilizing society for all out war in modern times. The basic elements of the bourgeoisie's ideological campaign are completely at odds with both historical and present day realities. There is considerable evidence that the bourgeoisie was not taken by surprise in either case, that the bourgeoisie cynically welcomed the massive death toll in both cases for purposes of political expediency in regard to the implementation of its imperialist war aims, and other long range political objectives.

The different characteristics of war in ascendance and decadence

Since both Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center attacks have been utilized by the bourgeoisie to rally the US population for war, it is necessary to examine briefly the political tasks encountered by the bourgeoisie in preparing for imperialist war in the epoch of capitalist decadence. In decadence, war has taken on significantly different characteristics as compared to wars during the period when capitalism was an ascending, historically progressive system. In the ascendant period, wars could take on a progressive role, in terms of making possible the further development of the productive forces. In this sense the Civil War in the US, which served to destroy the anachronistic slave system in the southern states, and unleashed the full scale industrialization of the US, or the various national wars in Europe that resulted in the creation of modern, unified nation states, which in turn provided the optimal framework for the development of the national capital in each country, could be seen as historically progressive. In general, these wars could be restricted largely to the military personnel involved in the conflict, and did not entail the wholesale destruction of the means of production, the infrastructures, or populations of the respective combatant powers.

Imperialist war in the epoch of capitalist decadence is characterised by sharply different features. Whereas national wars in ascendance could lay the basis for qualitative strides in the development of the productive forces, in decadence the capitalist system itself has already reached the zenith of its historic development, and this progressive aspect is no longer possible. Capitalism has accomplished the extension of the world market, and all the extra-capitalist markets, which facilitated the expansion of global capitalism, have been integrated into the capitalist system. For the various national capitals the only avenue for expansion now is at the expense of a rival - to seize territory or markets controlled by its adversaries. The heightening of imperialist rivalries leads to the development of imperialist alliances, setting the stage for generalised imperialist war. Far from being confined to combat between professional militaries, war in decadence requires a total mobilisation of society, which in turn gives rise to a new form of state - state capitalism - which functions to exert total control over all aspects of society, in order to rein in the class contradictions that threat to explode society, and at the same time coordinate the mobilization of society for modern all-out war.

No matter how much it has successfully prepared the population for war on the ideological level, the bourgeoisie in decadence cloaks its imperialist wars in the myth of victimization and self-defense against aggression and tyranny. The reality of modern warfare, with its massive destruction and death, with all the facets of barbarism that it unleashes on humanity, is so dire, so horrific, that even an ideologically defeated proletariat, does not march off to the slaughter lightly. The bourgeoisie relies heavily on manipulating reality to create that illusion that it is a victim of aggression, with no choice but to fight back in self defense. The necessity to defend the fatherland or the motherland, as the case may be, against aggression and external tyranny, not the real imperialist motives that drive capitalism towards war, are offered up as justification for the conflict. No one can really succeed in mobilizing a population around the slogan of "let's oppress the world under our imperialist thumb at any costs." The state control over the mass media in decadent capitalism facilitates the mass brainwashing of the population with all kinds of propaganda and lies.

The American bourgeoisie has been particularly adept at this victimization ploy throughout its history, even before the onset of capitalist decadence in the early part of the 20th century. Thus for example, "Remember the Alamo," was the slogan of the Mexican War of 1845-48. This war cry immortalized the "massacre" of 136 American rebels in San Antonio, Texas in 1836, then a part of Mexico, by the Mexican forces led by Gen. Santa Ana. Of course, the fact that the "blood thirsty" Mexicans had repeatedly offered terms of surrender, and permitted women and children to evacuate the Alamo fortress before the final battle, did not prevent the American ruling class from imbuing the Alamo defenders with an aura of martyrdom, and the incident served the bourgeoisie well in mobilizing support for a war that culminated in the American annexation of much of what today constitutes the US southwest.

Similarly, the suspicious explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 served as the pretext for the Spanish-American war in 1898, and gave rise to the slogan "Remember the Maine." More recently in 1964, an alleged attack on two US gunboats in waters off the Vietnamese coast was used as the basis for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, adopted by the American Congress in the summer of 1964, which, while not a formal declaration of war, provided the legal framework for American intervention in Vietnam. Notwithstanding the fact that the Johnson administration knew within hours that the reported "attack" on the Maddox and the Turner Joy never happened, but was the result of error by nervous young radar officers, they still pushed the combat authorization legislation through Congress to provide legal cover for a war that would drag on until the fall of Saigon to Stalinist forces in 1975.

It is true that the bourgeoisie used the attack at Pearl Harbor to rally a hesitant population to the war effort, just as the bourgeoisie today is using the 11 September atrocity to mobilize support for still another war effort. But the question remains as to whether in either instance the US was taken by "surprise," and to what degree the machiavellianism of the US bourgeoisie was involved either in provoking or allowing the attacks to occur in order to take political advantage of the ensuing popular outrage.

The machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie

All too often when the ICC denounces the machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie, our critics accuse of us of lapsing into a conspiratorial view of history. However their incomprehension in this regard is not just a misunderstanding of our analysis, but- even worse - falls prey to the ideological claptrap of bourgeois apologists in the media and academia whose job it is to denigrate those who try to ascertain the patterns and processes within bourgeois political, economic and social life as irrational conspiracy theorists. However, it is not even controversial to assert that "lies, terror, coercion, double-dealing, corruption, plots and political assassination" have been the stock in trade of exploitative ruling classes throughout history, whether in the ancient world, feudalism or modern capitalism. "The difference was that patricians and aristocrats 'practiced machi-avellianism without knowing it,' whereas the bourgeoisie is machiavellian and knows it. It turns machiavellianism into an 'eternal truth,' because that's how it lives: it takes exploitation to be eternal" ("Why the bourgeoisie is Machiavellian" International Review n°31, 1982 p. 10). In this sense lying and manipulation, a mechanism employed by all preceding exploiting ruling classes, have become central characteristics of the political mode of functioning for the modern bourgeoisie, which, utilizing the tremendous tools of social control available to it under the conditions of state capitalism, takes machi-avellianism to a qualitatively higher stage.

The emergence of state capitalism in the epoch of capitalist decadence, a state form which concentrates power in the hands of the executive branch, particularly the permanent bureaucracy, and gives the state an increasingly totalitarian control over all aspects of social and economic life, has provided the bourgeoisie with even greater mechanisms to implement its machiavellian schemes. "At the level of organizing to survive, to defend itself - here, the bourgeoisie has shown an immense capacity to develop techniques for economic and social control way beyond the dreams of the rulers of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the bourgeoisie has become 'intelligent' confronted with the historic crisis of its socio-economic systems" ("Notes on the Consciousness of the decadent bourgeoisie" International Review n°31, 4th quarter 1982, p. 14). The development of a mass media completely integrated under state control, whether through formal juridical means or more flexible informal methods, is a central element in the machiavellian scheming of the bourgeoisie. "Propaganda - the lie - is an essential weapon of the bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie is quite capable of provoking events to feed this propaganda, if need be" ("Why the bourgeoisie is Machiavellian" p. 11). American history is jammed with myriad examples, ranging from the relatively mundane everyday obfuscation to much more historically significant manipulations. An example of the former type might include the 1955 incident in which presidential press secretary James Hagerty engineered a fake event to cover up the incapacitation of President Eisenhower, who had been hospitalized in Denver, Colorado following a heart attack. Hagerty arranged for the entire Cabinet to travel 2000 miles from Washington to Denver to create the illusion that the president was well enough to preside over a cabinet meeting, even though no such meeting occurred. An example of the latter might include in 1990 manipulation of Saddam Hussein when the American ambassador to Iraq, told Saddam that the US, wouldn't intervene in the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, tricking Saddam into believing he had been give a green light from US imperialism to invade Kuwait. Instead the invasion was used by the US as the pretext for the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, as a means to reassert its status as the only remaining superpower in the wake of the Stalinist collapse, and the ensuing disintegration of the western bloc.

This is not to say all events in contemporary society are necessarily predetermined by the secret decision making of a small circle of capitalist leaders. Clearly, factional disputes do occur within the leading circles of capitalist states, and the results of such disputes are not forgone conclusions. Nor is the outcome of confrontations with the proletariat in the heat of the class struggle always under the thumb of bourgeoisie. And even with planning and manipulation, accidents of history can also occur. However, the critical point to understand is that even though as an exploiting class, the bourgeoisie is incapable of a complete, unified consciousness, accurately understanding the functioning of its system and the historical dead-end that it offers humanity, it is conscious of the deepening social and economic crisis of its system. "At the heights of the state machine it is possible for those in command to have some kind of general picture of the situation and what options are realistically open to them to confront it" ("Notes on the consciousness?" p. 14). Even with an incomplete consciousness, the bourgeoisie is more than capable of formulating strategy and tactics, and using the totalitarian control mechanisms of state capitalism to implement them. It is the responsibility of revolutionary Marxists to expose this machiavellian manoeuvering and lying. To turn a blind eye to this aspect of the ruling class offensive to control society is irresponsible and plays into the hands of our class enemies.

Machiavellianism of the American ruling class at Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor offers an excellent example of bourgeois machiavellianism at work. We have the benefit of more than half of century of historical research, and a number of military and opposition party-controlled investigations to draw on. According to the official version of reality, 7 December 1941 was "a day that will live in infamy", as President Roosevelt characterized it. It was used as a means to mobilize public opinion for war. It is still portrayed this way in the capitalist media, schoolbooks and popular culture, despite considerable historical evidence that demonstrates that the Japanese attack was consciously provoked by American policy; the attack did not come as a surprise to the American government and a conscious policy decision was made at the highest levels to permit the attack to occur and to sustain significant losses of life and naval hardware, as a pretext to secure America's entry into the Second World War. A number of books and considerable material on the Internet have been published on this history1. Here we will review some of the highlights to illustrate the operational aspects of machiavellianism.

The Pearl Harbor events unfolded as the US was moving closer and closer to intervention in World War II on the side of the Allies. The Roosevelt administration was anxious to enter the war against Germany, but despite the fact that the American working class was firmly trapped in the grips of a trade union apparatus (in which the Stalinist party played a significant role), imposed under state authority to control the class struggle in all key industries, and was imbued with the ideology of anti-fascism, the American bourgeoisie still faced strong opposition to war within the population, including not only the working class, but even large parts of the bourgeoisie itself. Public opinion polls showed 60% opposed to entering the war before Pearl Harbor, and the "America First" campaign and other isolationist groups had considerable support within the bourgeoisie. Despite demagogic political pledges to keep America out of a European war, the Roosevelt administration searched furtively for an excuse to join the fighting. The US violated its own self-declared neutrality to an increasing degree, by offering aid to the Allies, and shipping vast amounts of war material under the Lend Lease program. The administration hoped to provoke Germany into launching an attack against American forces in the North Atlantic that could serve as a pretext for American entry into the war. When German imperialism failed to fall for the bait, attention switched to Japan. The decision to impose an oil embargo against Japan and the transfer of the Pacific fleet from the West Coast of the US to a more exposed position in Hawaii served to provide motive and opportunity for Japan fire the first shots against the US, and thereby provide the pretext for direct American intervention in the imperialist war. In March 1941, a secret Navy Department report predicted that if Japan decided to attack the US, it would come at Pearl Harbor in an early morning raid launched from aircraft carriers. In June 1941 presidential advisor Harold Ickes drafted a memo to the president when Germany first attacked Russia, suggesting, "There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way". In October Ickes wrote, "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan". Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary in late November the following account of discussions with the President: "the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones do this so there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors".

The report of the Army Pearl Harbor Board (October 20, 1944,) detailed this conscious, Machiavellian decision to sacrifice lives and equipment in Pearl Harbor, concluding that during "the fateful period between November 27 and December 6, 1941? numerous pieces of information came to our State, War and Navy Departments in all of their top ranks indicating precisely the intentions of the Japanese including the probable exact hour and date of the attack" (Army Board Report, Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 39, pp. 221-30). For example:

- US intelligence sources learned on November 24th that "Japanese offensive military operations" had been set.

- On November 26, "specific evidence of the Japanese intentions to wage offensive war against Great Britain and the United States" were obtained by US intelligence.

- "A concentration of units of the Japanese fleet at an unknown port ready for offensive action" was also reported on November 26.

- On December 1, "definite information came from three independent sources that Japan was going to attack Great Britain and the United States, but would maintain peace with Russia".

- On December 3, "the culmination of this complete revelation of the Japanese intentions as to war and the attack came? with information that Japanese were destroying their codes and code machines. This was construed? as meaning immediate war".

This intelligence information was given to the highest ranking officials in the War and State Departments, and shared with the White House, where Roosevelt personally received twice-daily briefings on intercepted Japanese messages. Despite the desperate urgings of intelligence officers to send a "war warning" to military commanders in Hawaii to prepare for imminent attack, the civilian and military brass decided against doing so, and instead sent what the board termed "an innocuous" message.

This evidence of prior knowledge of the Japanese attack has been confirmed in numerous sources, including journalists' reports and memoirs of participants. For example, a United Press dispatch published in the New York Times on December 8, included the following under the subhead "Attack Was Expected: It now is possible to reveal that the United States forces here had known for a week that the attack was coming and they were not caught unprepared" (New York Times, December 8, 1941, p.13). In a 1944 interview, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, revealed that "December 7 (?) was far from the shock it proved to be to the country in general. We had expected something of the sort for a long time" (New York Times Magazine, October 8, 1944, p.41). On June 20 1944, British Cabinet Minister Sir Oliver Lyttelton told the American Chamber of Commerce, "Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was ever truly neutral even before America came into the war on a fighting basis" (Prang, Pearl Harbor: Verdict of History, pp 39-40). Winston Churchill confirmed the duplicity of the American government rulers in the Pearl Harbor attack in this passage from The Grand Alliance: "A prodigious Congressional Inquiry published its findings in 1946 in which every detail was exposed of the events leading up to the war between the United States and Japan and of the failure to send positive 'Alert' orders through the military departments to their fleets and garrisons in exposed situations. Every detail, including the decoding of secret Japanese telegrams and their actual texts, has been exposed to the world in forty volumes. The strength of the United States was sufficient to enable them to sustain this hard ordeal required by the spirit of the American Constitution. I do not intend in these pages to attempt to pronounce judgment upon this tremendous episode in American history. We know that all the great Americans round the President and in his confidence felt, as acutely as I did, the awful danger that Japan would attack British or Dutch possessions in the Far East, and it would carefully avoid the United States, and that in consequence Congress would not sanction an American declaration of war (...) The President and his trusted friends had long realized the grave risks of United States neutrality in the war against Hitler and what he stood for, and had writhed under the restraints of a Congress whose House of Representatives had a few months before passed by only a single vote the necessary renewal of compulsory military service, without which their Army would have been almost disbanded in the midst of the world convulsion. Roosevelt, Hull, Stimson, Knox, General Marshall, Admiral Stark, and, as a link between them all, Harry Hopkins, had but one mind... A Japanese attack upon the United States was a vast simplification of their problems and their duty. How can we wonder that they regarded the actual form of the attack, or even its scale, as incomparably less important than the fact that the whole American nation would be united for its own safety in a righteous cause as never before?" (Winston Churchill, "The Grand Alliance," p. 603).

Roosevelt may not have anticipated the extent of the damage and casualties that the Japanese would inflict at Pearl Harbor, but he was clearly prepared to sacrifice American ships and lives, in order to arouse the population to rage, and to war.

The Twin Towers and bourgeois machiavellianism

It is of course more difficult to assess the level of machiavellianism of the US bourgeoisie in regard to the Trade Center attack, which occurred less than three months prior to the writing of this article. We do not have the benefit of investigations after-the-fact by review boards that might reveal secret evidence on whether elements of the ruling class had some complicity in the attacks, or had advance knowledge but permitted the attacks to occur. But as ruling class history demonstrates, particularly the events at Pearl Harbor, such a possibility is far from unthinkable, and if we examine recent events, based solely on what has been reported in the media - a media incidentally that is completely enrolled in, and supportive of, the government's current political and imperialist offensive - we certainly find circumstantial support for such an hypothesis.

First, if we ask the question, who profits from the crime, there can be no doubt that the primary beneficiary of the attack on the World Trade Center has been the American ruling class. Surely this alone is enough to at least arouse suspicion. The US bourgeoisie moved swiftly and unrelentingly to take advantage of 11 September to advance crucial elements of its domestic and international agenda, including mobilizing the population behind the state for war, strengthening the repressive apparatus of the state, and re-asserting American superpower status in the face of the general tendency for each country to play its own card in the international arena:

- Immediately after the attacks, the American political apparatus and mass media were rushed into service to mobilize the population for war, in a concerted effort to use the tragedy to overcome definitively the effects of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome," which has hampered American imperialism's ability to wage war for three decades. This so-called "mass psychological disorder" has been characterized by a resistance, particularly the working class, to mobilization behind the state for long term imperialist war, was largely responsible for the US's heavy reliance on proxy wars in its conflict with Russian imperialism in the 1970s and '80s, or on short-term, limited duration military interventions, relying heavily on air strikes and missile attacks rather than ground forces, like the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. Of course this resistance was not the result of some psychological disorder, but rather a reflection of the ruling class's inability to achieve an ideological, political defeat of the proletariat, to line up the current generations of the working class behind the state for imperialist war as had been done in the preparation for World War II. The current war psychosis campaign was exemplified by, and mapped out in, an editorial in a special edition of Time magazine published immediately after the attack. The thematic headline for the issue, "Day of Infamy," invoked the Pearl Harbor comparison right from the beginning, An editorial column by Lance Morrow, titled "The Case for Rage and Retribution," outlined the details of the ensuing ideological campaign. Though written in a mass media publication as part of the propaganda effort, Morrow's essay gives clear evidence of the bourgeoisie's conscious understanding of the heightened propaganda value of the Trade Center attack, compared to previous attacks, to manipulate the population for war because of large numbers of casualties and the dramatic visual images:

"A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage.

What's needed is a unified, unifying Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury - a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two?

This was terrorism brought to near perfection as a dramatic form. Never has the evil business had such production values. Normally, the audience sees only the smoking aftermath - the blown-up embassy, the ruined barracks, the ship with a blackened hole at the waterline. This time the first plane striking the first tower acted as a shill. It alerted the media, brought cameras to the scene so that might be set up to record the vivid surreal bloom of the second strike?.

Evil possesses an instinct for theater, which is why, in an era of gaudy and gifted media, evil may vastly magnify its damage by he power of horrific images" (Time magazine, special issue, September, 2001).

- At the same time, the American bourgeois political apparatus quickly rolled out plans for strengthening the repressive apparatus of the state, and took immediate action to implement them. New "security" legislation restoring the legality of many practices that had been discredited in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and the Watergate affair, as well as a whole new arsenal of repressive measures, was drafted, debated, adopted and signed by the president in record time. We can be excused if we suspect that the legislation had been drafted earlier and was being held for the right moment to be introduced. Over 1,000 "suspects," with Arabic surnames or Muslim garb being the primary reason for suspicion, were taken into custody, many held without charges indefinitely. Funds of organizations suspected of being sympathetic to bin Laden were frozen, without any court procedure. Restrictions were placed on immigration, particularly from Islamic countries (more a response to the bourgeoisie's long standing concerns about the tide of illegal immigration into the US as people seek to flee the horrifying conditions of growing decomposition and barbarism in underdeveloped nations, than anything related to the terrorist attacks).

- The terrorist crisis became overnight both the excuse for the worsening economic recession and the justification for horrendous budget cuts in social programs, as all available funds were shifted to war and national security. The rapidity with which these measures were presented reflects the likelihood that they were not drafted at the spur of the moment, but had been prepared, discussed and planned on a contingency basis for some time.

- On the international level, the real purpose of the war is not so much to destroy terrorism, as it is to reassert and reaffirm, American imperialism's dominance as the only remaining superpower in an international arena increasingly characterized by challenges to US hegemony. The collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 quickly led to the unraveling of the western bloc, as the glue that had held it together - the confrontation with Russian imperialism and its bloc - had disappeared. Despite its apparent triumph in the cold war, American imperialism found itself confronted with a world situation in which its former great power allies, and numerous lesser powers as well, began to challenge its leadership and pursue their own imperialist ambitions. To force its erstwhile allies back into line, and acknowledge its dominance, the US has undertaken three large scale military operations in the last decade: against Iraq, against Serbia, and now Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda network. In each case, the US military display has forced American "allies," like France, Britain and Germany, to join the US-led "alliances" or face total irrelevancy in the global imperialist chess game.

Second, contrary to the officially sanctioned version of "reality" that claims an unsuspecting US was completely blind-sided by the terrorist attacks at the Trade Center and the Pentagon, based solely on reports in the bourgeois media, it is possible already to begin to piece together circumstantial evidence that does not prove but certainly opens up the possibility of machiavellian maneuvers within the American bourgeoisie to permit these attacks:

- The forces that seem to have carried out the Trade Center attack may not have currently been under American imperialism's control, but they certainly were known to the American security apparatus and indeed originated as agents of the CIA. To counter Russian imperialism's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA recruited, trained, armed, and supplied thousands of Islamic fundamentalists to wage a holy war, a jihad, against the Russians. The concept of jihad had largely been dormant in Islamic theology, until American imperialism resurrected it for its own purposes two decades ago. Islamic militants were recruited from throughout the Muslim world, including Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. This is where Osama Bin Laden first came into the picture, as an operative of American imperialism. Following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, and the collapse of the government in Kabul in 1992, American imperialism walked away from Afghanistan, shifting its focus to the Middle East and the Balkans. When they fought the Russians, these Islamic fundamentalists were hailed as freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan. When they use the same ruthlessness against American imperialism today, President Bush says they are uncivilized fanatics who have to be destroyed. In much the same way as Timothy McVeigh, the American right-wing fanatic responsible for 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, who was raised on the cold war ideology and imbued with hatred of the Russians, and recruited to the US military, the young men recruited to the CIA's jihad knew only hatred and warfare their entire adult lives. Both felt betrayed by American imperialism after the cold war had ended, and turned their violence against their former masters.

- Since 1996, the FBI had been investigating the possibility that terrorists were using American aviation schools to learn how to fly jumbo jets, so the entire modus operandi of the terrorists had been anticipated by authorities ("FBI failed to find suspects named before hijackings," Guardian, September 25, 2001).

- The apartment in Germany, where the Trade Center attacks had been planned and coordinated had been under German police surveillance for nearly three years.

- The FBI and other American intelligence agencies had received warnings of, and intercepted messages about, a planned spectacular terrorist attack, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the White House Rose Garden ceremony with Clinton, Rabin and Arafat. Both Israeli and French intelligence agencies had sent warnings to the Americans. So, American authorities certainly had advance notice about when the attack would come. Perhaps it was not clear that the target would be the World Trade Center, but the Center had already been targeted by Islamic terrorists for attack in 1993, as a symbol of American capitalism.

- In August, the FBI had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, who had aroused suspicions when he sought pilot training at a flight school in Minnesota and mentioned that he was not interesting in learning how to take off or land. In early September, French authorities had sent a warning about Moussaoui's suspected terrorist links. In November, the FBI suddenly reversed itself and denied Moussaoui's involvement in the plot. But in any case, suspicions about pilots not interested in taking off or landing, hinting at the possibility of a suicide hijacking, were revived.

- Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader of 11 September, who allegedly piloted the first plane to hit the Twin Towers was well known to authorities, but seemed to have led a charmed life, and was allowed to remain at large in the US. Despite the fact that Atta was listed for years on the State Department's terrorist watch-list because of his suspected involvement in a 1986 bus bombing in Israel, he was permitted repeatedly to enter, leave and return to the US. From January to May 2000 he was under surveillance by US agents following his suspicious purchase of large amounts of chemicals, which might be used to make explosives. In January 2001 he was held by Immigration and Nationalization agents at Miami International Airport for 57 minutes because he had previously overstayed a visa, and because he did not have a proper visa to enter the US to study at a flight school in Florida. Despite being on the State Department watch-list, despite the FBI's concern that terrorists might be attending flight schools in the US, he was permitted to enter the US, to enroll in flight school. In April 2001 Atta was stopped by police for driving without a license. When he failed to show up in court in May, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, but it was never executed. He was arrested for drunk driving on two other occasions. Atta never made any attempt to operate under an alias during his entire time in the US, traveling, living and studying at the flight school under his real name. Was the FBI grossly incompetent, or hampered by a lack of Arabic agents and translators as the FBI claims, or is there a more machiavellian explanation for the authorities constantly and consistently permitting him to remain at large - was he being "protected" or set up as a fall guy? ("Terrorists Among Us," Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sept 16, 2001)

- August 23, 2001, the CIA sent a list of 100 suspected members of Osama bin Laden's network, who were reportedly in or on their way to the US, including Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi who were on board the plane that hit the Pentagon.

- Long before the supposedly unexpected attacks of 11 September, the US had been secretly laying the groundwork for war in Afghanistan for nearly three years. Following the attacks on US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998, President Clinton had authorized the CIA to prepare for possible action against the out-of-control Bin Laden. At this level secret contacts and negotiations began with the governments of the former USSR republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to arrange for military bases, supply operations, and intelligence gathering. Not only did this prepare the way for military intervention in Afghanistan, but it also opened up significant American inroads into the Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia. In this sense, despite its claims of being taken by surprise, the US was poised to immediately pounce on the opportunity offered by the Twin Towers attack to push forward with a number of strategic and tactical measures that had been in the planning stages for a long time.

- The cornerstone of the ideological campaign immediately launched around the Twin Towers disasters has been the devastating destruction and death toll. For weeks government officials and the media have drummed into our heads that nearly 6,000 lives were lost at the Trade Center - twice the death toll at Pearl Harbor. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeated these numbers in an interview on a national television broadcast in early November.2 Yet there is every indication that these statistics, with their emotional propaganda value, are greatly inflated by the government. Independent tallies compiled by news agencies put the total at under 3,000, roughly equivalent to the loss of life at Pearl Harbor. For example, the New York Times puts the total at 2,943, Associated Press at 2,625, and USA Today at 2,680. The American Red Cross, which is distributing financial grants to families of the victims has only processed applications from 2,563 families. Government officials refused to comply with a request from the Red Cross for a copy of its still secret official list of Trade Center victims ("Numbers vary in tallies of the victims" New York Times , October 25, 2001, B1). Meanwhile, politicians and broadcast media continue to use the more propagandistically valuable, larger inflated number of 5,000-6,000 dead and missing, which is by now imbedded in popular consciousness.

- The US government has never publicly revealed its "evidence" of bin Laden's responsibility for the Trade Center. And then as the war progressed, the Bush administration announced that, if captured alive, bin Laden would be tried in a secret military tribunal, in order not to make public the sources of evidence against him. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld clearly signaled his preference that bin Laden be killed rather than captured in order to skip a trial. It is only natural to wonder why the US is in so concerned to keep its alleged "evidence" a secret.

None of this constitutes positive proof that either the Administration, or perhaps the CIA, had prior knowledge of the Twin Towers attacks and permitted them to happen, but one doesn't have to be a conspiracy buff to have his suspicions raised.

Is the Twin Towers a modern day Pearl Harbor?

Contrary to the media's insistence, the current situation cannot be equated to Pearl Harbor on the historic level. Pearl Harbor came at the end of nearly twenty years of political defeats that had vanquished the world proletariat politically, ideologically and even physically, and opened up an historic course towards imperialist war. These defeats were of momentous historic weight on the proletariat: the failure of the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary wave; the degeneration of the revolutionary regime in Russia, and the triumph of state capitalism under Stalin; the degeneration of the Communist International into a foreign policy arm of the Russian state, including a wholesale retreat from the revolutionary class positions promulgated at the height of the revolutionary wave; the integration of the Communist parties into their respective state apparatuses; the political and physical defeat of the working class at the hands of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Spain; and the triumph of the ideology of anti-fascism in the so-called "democratic" countries.

The cumulative impact of these defeats was to profoundly limit the historic possibilities for the workers movement. Revolution, which had been on the agenda in the period following 1917, was now on the historic backburner. The balance of forces had shifted definitively towards the capitalist class, which now had the upper hand in moving towards imposing its "solution" to the historic crisis of global capitalism: world war. However, the fact that the rapport de forces between the classes had shifted in its favor didn't mean that the bourgeoisie necessarily had a free hand to impose its political will. But even the course towards war didn't mean that the American bourgeoisie could automatically unleash imperialist war at given moment. The bourgeoisie still faced resistance to war within the American proletariat in 1939-41, in part reflecting the vacillating position of the Stalinist party which enjoyed considerable influence, especially in the CIO unions, due to Moscow's wavering line during the period of the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. The dominant faction of the US bourgeoisie also had to deal with recalcitrant elements within its own class, some who were sympathetic to the Axis powers, or others who maintained an isolationist perspective. As we have seen an "unprovoked" attack by Japan provided the pretext for rallying all the wavering elements behind the state and the coming war effort. In this sense, Pearl Harbor was the final nail in the political, ideological coffin.

The situation is very different today. True, the Twin Towers disaster comes after more than a decade of political disorientation and confusion sown by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Europe and the ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie about the death of communism. But these confusions have not had the same political weight as the defeats of the 1920s/30s on the consciousness of the proletariat on the historic level. Nor did they mean a change in the historic course towards class confrontations. Despite disorientation, the working class was struggling to regain its terrain, and there were abundant signs of the process of subterranean maturation of consciousness, and the emergence of searching elements and a growing milieu around existing proletarian revolutionary groups. There is no attempt here to minimize the political disorientation within the working class ever since 1989, a situation that has been aggravated by decomposition, creating a situation where the slide into barbarism did not necessarily require World War to be achieved. While the American bourgeoisie is enjoying considerable success with its ideological offensive, even if for the moment workers are caught up in the war psychosis to an alarming degree, the global balance of class forces is not determined by the situation in a single country, even one as important as the US. On the international level, the proletariat is still undefeated and the perspective is still one of class confrontation. Even in the US, this international working class capacity to continue the struggle was echoed by the two-week strike by 23,000 public sector workers in Minnesota in October. Despite being attacked for being "unpatriotic" or striking at a moment of national crisis, these workers nonetheless stood their ground and struck for improved wages and benefits. While Pearl Harbor was the final punctuation mark in the fulfillment of the process of bringing to fruition the course towards imperialist war in 1941, the Trade Center is a setback for the proletariat, especially the proletariat in the US, but within the context of a general historic situation that still favors the proletariat.

JG

Notes

1 See www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl/html [7] for a documented chronology and links to key historical documents online.

2 See for example, the interview of Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on NBC News Meet the Press on November 4, 2001.

Amid the roar of imperialist savagery in Afghanistan, tiny groups of internationalists have proclaimed their rejection of all the contending imperialisms, denounced any illusion in pacifying capitalism or support for any agencies with this objective, and called for the development of class struggle that alone can overthrow the world wide capitalist system, the mainspring of imperialist war.

These groups trace their origins from the heritage of the Italian and German left, the only internationalist currents to survive the decay of the Third International by holding high the proletariat's internationalist positions through the storm of World War II. They are part of what the ICC terms the proletarian political milieu.1

As a contribution to the strengthening of this milieu, we are examining the strengths and weaknesses of its present response to the war, as we do whenever such events test the very being of revolutionary organisations.

We will not deal here with the common approach of the different groups: the ICC's territorial press has already recognised and demonstrated the working class nature of their response.2 Nor can we hope to be comprehensive in the short space available here. We will instead discuss some significant elements of the explanation of imperialist barbarism by one of these groups - the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP).3

Looking for the material roots

It is not enough for revolutionary organisations to know that the US state and the other big imperialist powers are not as hostile to terrorism as they have been claiming these past 4 months, nor enough to know that they are not motivated by the interests of civilisation and humanity in launching a war that causes death and misery on a mass scale. They have also to explain what is the real reason for this barbarism, what are the interests of the imperialist powers, and of the US in particular, and whether there can be an end to this nightmare for the working class.

The IBRP offers the following explanation for the war in Afghanistan: the US wants to keep the dollar as world currency and thus retain its control over the oil industry:

"...the US needs the dollar to remain the currency of international trade if it is to retain its position as the world superpower. Above all then, the US is desperate to ensure that the global oil trade continues to be conducted primarily in dollars. That means having the determining say in the routing of oil and gas pipelines over and above US commercial involvement in its extraction at source. This is when straightforward commercial decisions are tempered by the over-arching interest of US capitalism as a whole, when the American state becomes politically and militarily involved for the sake of wider objectives, objectives which often come up against the interests of other states and increasingly against those of its European 'allies'. In other words this is the heart of imperialist competition in the 21st century" ("Imperialism, Oil and US National Interests", page 8, Revolutionary Perspectives n°23, the quarterly journal of the Communist Workers Organisation which is the British affiliate of the IBRP).

"For some time now European oil companies, ENI of Italy amongst them, have been engaged in numerous projects to get oil from the Caspian and Caucasus directly to refineries in Europe and it is obvious that from January 1st [when the Euro becomes legal tender in the countries of the European Union] the project for an alternative oil market could begin to take shape but the United States, faced with perhaps the most vicious crisis it has experienced this side of World War Two, is not going to let go of its own economic and financial power" (ibid., page 10).

The war then is supposedly intended to remove the potential barrier constituted by the Taliban regime and its Al Qaida supporters to routing an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to carry part of the output of the oilfields in Kazakhstan, as part of a wider strategy of the US to control the distribution of oil. The US wants the secure and diversified routing from the worlds oil supplies. Behind this imperative, according to the IBRP, is the fate of the dollar, and behind the fate of the dollar is the superpower status of the United States. The Europeans on the other hand are also interested in improving the status of their fledging currency the Euro in the oil market and thus increasingly oppose the US with their own imperialist interests for this reason.

The underlying objective of the US in the Afghanistan war is, as the IBRP say, to preserve its position as 'world superpower', by which we understand its overwhelming military, economic and political superiority over all the other countries on the planet. Its opponents want to limit or eventually usurp this position. In other words, contrary to the fairy stories presented to us by the bourgeois media that it is about the struggle between good and evil, between democracy and terror, the IBRP as revolutionaries, reveal the imperialist interests of the protagonists. Behind imperialist conflict are the conflicting interests of rival capitalist powers, accentuated by the economic crisis.

Furthermore the IBRP, are moving away from their attempt to explain the present war (and the growing accentuation of imperialist conflict) as the result of the desire for immediate economic gain. Ten years ago the IBRP said, about the upcoming Gulf War, that: "?the crisis in the Gulf is really about oil and who controls it. Without cheap oil profits will fall. Western capitalism's profits are threatened and its for this reason and no other that the US is preparing a bloodbath in the Middle East" (CWO leaflet quoted in International Review n°64).

The US victory in the Gulf War, however, saw no significant improvement in oil profits, nor did it significantly change the price of oil. The IBRP seems to have realised this, and also that ex-Yugoslavia did not provide any profitable markets for the imperialist powers who were fighting each other there, as they first thought, and it now seems to have developed a broader explanation of the situation. Such an approach can only be welcomed because the credibility of the Marxist left depends on its ability to understand imperialism on the basis of a global and historical analysis, in which immediate economic factors are not the cause of war.4

But despite taking this step forward, the IBRP nevertheless sees imperialist objectives hinging on the fate of currencies, in other words on a specific economic factor. And they give the question of oil and oil pipelines a decisive weight in the role of the dollar and its new rival the Euro. Oil, for the IBRP, is very much at 'the heart of imperialist competition in the 21st Century'.

But is the preservation of the status of the United States as world hegemon really so directly and decisively dependent on the role of the dollar, as the IBRP says?

And does the position of the dollar as world currency really depend so directly on the US control of oil? Let us examine these questions in more detail, taking the last one first.

Oil and the dollar.

While an important say in the commercial control of oil production - most of the major world oil companies for example are American owned - certainly helps the United States to maintain its economic power, and is thus a factor in the dominance of the dollar, it is not the fundamental explanation of the means by which the dollar gained and retains its role as world currency.

The dollar achieved its pre-eminence before oil became the principle fuel on the planet. In fact no currency's strength is especially founded on the control of raw materials.

Japan for example controls practically no raw materials, but the yen, despite the recent stagnation of the Japanese economy, remains a strong currency. Conversely the former USSR had huge quantities of oil under its command but this did not prevent its economic collapse, let alone enable the rouble to become a world currency5. It was not control of the coal or cotton supply that launched the pound sterling as the principal currency of the 19th century.

It is rather the preponderance of a country's economy in terms of world production and trade, and its relative political and military weight that explains why particular currencies have become the standard monetary reference for world capitalism.

The pound sterling achieved its ascendancy because Britain was the first modern capitalist country. The greater productivity of its industries enabled its products to displace those of the rest of the world in terms of price and quantity, because elsewhere capitalist production was only beginning to take hold. The whole world sold raw materials to Britain. And Britain - as the famous expression had it - was "the workshop of the world". Britain's military, particularly naval, strength, and its accumulation of colonial possessions reinforced the supremacy of the pound and the position of London as the world's financial centre.

The development of capitalism in other countries began to undermine the supremacy of British capitalism, and its competitors began to overtake it in terms of productivity. And the new conditions of capitalism revealed by the First World War sounded the death knell for sterling. The Second World War sealed its fate. In a world where rival capitalist nations have already carved up the world market and seek to expand by its re-division in their favour, the question of military competition - imperialism - tends to favour countries of a continental scale like the United States rather than the European countries whose relatively small size was more appropriate to an early phase of capitalist growth. The exhaustion of all the European powers after the First World War, including the victors like Britain, enormously increased the relative weight of US production and its share of world trade, and therefore increased international demand for dollars. And after the devastation of Europe in the Second World War, the United States, stimulated by a phenomenal growth in arms production, achieved a crushing economic supremacy on the world arena. By 1950 the USA accounted for half of total world production! The Marshall Plan of 1947 supplied the European economies with the dollars they desperately needed to reconstruct by buying American goods. Dollar supremacy was institutionalised at the world level by the Bretton Woods agreement, and the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund under the aegis of the US.

By 1968, the reconstruction period had come to an end, and the European and Japanese economies had improved their economic position relative to the US. But even the relative weakening of the US economy, although it led to the effective devaluation of the dollar, did not mean the immediate end of its prime position. Far from it. The US had many means to use the new conditions to its advantage. The decoupling of the dollar from gold by Washington in 1971, allowed the US to maintain the power of the dollar and the competitive position of American production, by exchange rate manipulation which also helped cheapen its growing foreign debt (a method that Britain had used in the 30s to preserve sterling's role even after the eclipse of its economy by that of the US). At the beginning of the 80s the raising of interest rates, and the deregulation of the movement of capital, with the consequent mushrooming of financial speculation, helped offload the effects of the crisis onto other countries. Behind these measures the military supremacy of the United States, which became unassailable after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ensures that King Dollar retains his throne.

The role of oil in the dollar's prime position is therefore relatively insignificant. Even if it is true that in the 'first oil crisis' of 1971-2, the US, through its influence over OPEC oil pricing, managed to transfer enormous funds to its own pockets from those of the European and Japanese capitalist powers via Saudi Arabia, such manipulations are hardly the main instruments of dollar supremacy.

What counts in the hegemony of the dollar is America's economic, political and military domination of the world market on which oil and other raw materials are bought and sold, and this domination is mainly decided by factors of a more general and historical nature, rather than the control of oil.

The IBRP however believe that the acceleration of the USA's military adventures in central Asia is part of a long term preventative measure to occupy the centres of oil production and the oil routes to prevent the European powers from controlling them with a view to making the Euro the dominant currency in world oil production and trade. The supposed objective is to stop the Euro, the fledgling currency of the European Union, taking the dollar's crown, and thus overtaking the US as a rival imperialist bloc.

But, if our explanation is correct, the European powers would have to do a lot more than increase their influence on the oil industry in order to displace the dollar with the Euro. Even if the European Union was a really unified political and economic entity its overall GDP per capita is about 2/3rds that of the United States. Although the EU now has a common currency, it is still fragmented into several competing national capitalist units that undermine its economic strength relative to that of the United States. The European Central Bank lacks the US Federal Reserve's unity of purpose on monetary and fiscal policy, which is why, until now at least, it has tended to follow in the wake of the latter's policies. The economy of Germany, the strongest political pole in the Euro zone, still only ranks third behind the USA and Japan, and for reasons other than a lack of control of oil and pipelines.

At the political and military level the divide is even wider. The EU contains several imperialist powers, which compete both among themselves and in relation to the US. Europe's greatest economic power remains a military pigmy compared to Britain and France, its main rivals (and it is worth pointing out that one of Europe's major military powers and larger economies - Great Britain - is not even in the Euro zone). Germany is increasing its military strength, its troops have intervened outside its borders (in Kosovo) for the first time since World War II. Nonetheless, its ability to project its military power extends no further than its immediate neighbours in Eastern Europe.

As the currency experts of the bourgeoisie point out, this military weakness and the conflicting interests within the EU pose a serious threat to the Euro: "Glyn Davies, author of 'A History of Money From Ancient Times to the Present Day', said the greatest long-term threat to monetary union in Europe would be wars or 'disputes regarding attitudes to countries that are at war'.

'It's the political aspect which will matter,' he said. 'If you have a strong political union, then it can withstand many attacks. But if there are political differences, it can weaken the monetary union considerably'" (International Herald Tribune, 29.12.01).

For this and other reasons, the Euro will find it difficult to win over the confidence of the world economy in the dollar.

From all these standpoints, the drive to protect the dollar's domination of the world economy cannot be considered a credible reason for the vast military campaign being waged in Afghanistan. As we said at our last international congress, "The USA wants to control this region because of the oil - not for purely economic reasons but above all because it wants to ensure that Europe would not be able to use this source of oil in case of war. We only have to recall that during the second world war, in 1942, Germany carried out an offensive on Baku in order to gain control of its oil supplies, which were so vital for the war effort. Today the situation is a bit different with regard to Azerbaijan and Turkey, for whom the question of oil is more one of immediate economic gain. But the real stakes of the situation are not at this level" ("Report on imperialist tensions, in International Review n°107)6.

Is US imperialist hegemony dependent on the dollar?

The second question posed by the IBRP is: does the superpower status of the US depend on the dollar's pre-eminent role? Not, we would say, in the decisive way that the IBRP suggest. As we have argued military superiority is as much a cause of the dollar's status as an effect. Obviously the economic and monetary pre-eminence of the US in the world economy is a crucial factor in its military supremacy. But military and strategic might does not flow automatically, mechanically and immediately or proportionally from economic power. There are innumerable examples to prove it. Japan and Germany are the strongest world economic powers after the United States, but are still military dwarfs compared to Britain and France who, while weaker economically, have nuclear weapons. The USSR was extremely weak economically but contested America's power at the military level for 45 years. And despite the US' relative economic weakening since 1969, its military and strategic strength relative to its nearest rivals has vastly increased.

Like every other country, the US cannot rely on the performance of its currency to automatically guarantee its imperialist position. On the contrary the US must continue to devote enormous, costly resources to its military and strategic interests in order to try to outflank its main imperialist rivals, and to reduce their pretensions to contest its leadership. The US's anti-terrorist campaign since September 11th, has scored remarkable successes in this imperialist struggle. It has forced the other major powers to support its military and strategic objectives, without allowing any of them more than a few crumbs of prestige from their support for the rapid military success of American forces in Afghanistan over the Taliban regime. At the same time it has expanded its strategic weight in central Asia. The display of its military superiority has been so devastating that its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, has evoked only the mildest criticism from its previously vociferous opponents in European capitals. The US can now more easily set about expanding its 'anti-terrorist' crusades in other countries.

Yet it would be difficult to measure whether the American offensive of the last three months has made oil supplies any more secure for the US than before, or significantly increased the dollar's crushing superiority over the Euro. The real US victory is at the military/strategic level, as it was after the Gulf War. The economic benefits will be as elusive as they were from this previous conflict.

Control of oil for economic advantage was not the decisive question that caused the US to spend billions of dollars a month on the war in Afghanistan, and to risk the stability of Pakistan, where the proposed pipeline would continue after it left Afghanistan.

The CWO, already showed in an article in 1997 "Behind the Taliban Stands US imperialism" that there was nothing intrinsic to the Taliban regime that threatened US oil interests. On the contrary the US saw the regime as a factor of stability compared with the Taliban's predecessors. Even after harbouring Osama Bin Laden, the regime presented no insuperable obstacles to an accommodation with the US and its interests.7

The role of oil in imperialist war today

The era when capitalist powers went to war for immediate or direct economic gain, was an embryonic phase in the evolution of imperialism, one that barely outlasted the 19th century. Once the major capitalist powers had divided up the world between them as colonies or spheres of influence, the possibility of direct economic benefit from war became more and more uncertain. When war became a question of military conflict with other imperialist powers wider strategic questions came to the fore, entailing industrial preparation and expense on a massive scale. War became less a question of economic gain than a question of the survival of each state at the expense of its rivals. The ruination of most of the contending capitalist powers in the two world wars this century testifies that imperialism, rather than being the "highest stage" of capitalism as Lenin thought, is an expression of its decadent period, when capitalism is increasingly forced, by the national limits of its own system, to vaporise men and machines on the battlefield rather than valorise them in the production process8.

Instead of war serving the needs of the economy, the economy has come to serve the needs of war, and raw materials haven't escaped this general rule. If the imperialist powers want to control raw materials, especially crucial ones like oil, it is not because the bourgeoisie believes, like the IBRP, that this will ensure the health of its profits or currency, but because of its military importance.

"The biggest peace-time military construction program in American History was endorsed by the House Armed Services Committee. A report to the House Foreign Affairs Committee called the strategic importance of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East 'almost equal to that of the North Atlantic treaty area itself'. Bases in the Arab states and Israel are necessary to protect sea and air routes. Protection of this region is vital, the report said, 'because in this area lie tremendous oil resources which the free world requires now for its greatly expanded rearmament effort'" (International Herald Tribune, 1951).

US imperialism has been quite candid: the control of oil is important, first and foremost, for military reasons, so that it can guarantee its flow to its own armies in times of war and cut its supply off to the hostile armies of rival countries.

The real stakes revealed by the war in Afghanistan

Although the IBRP recognises that capitalism is in its historical period of decline, this theoretical framework is missing from its understanding of imperialist war today. Capitalism's fundamental need is still the accumulation of capital, but the relations of production that once ensured its fantastic development now prevent it from finding sufficient fields for expansion. Increasingly production is geared towards the destruction, rather than the reproduction of wealth. The understanding that war, while becoming more and more necessary for the bourgeoisie, has ceased to be profitable for the capitalist system as a whole, is therefore not a denial of Marxist materialism but an expression of its ability to understand the different phases through which an economic system passes, and in particular the passage from its ascendant to its decadent phase. In the latter phase, the economic imperative continues to push the bourgeoisie, all the more in the periods of open crisis, not toward war for immediate, or particular financial gain, but toward a global and ultimately suicidal fight for military supremacy among its rival national units.

Only by drawing out the implications of capitalist decadence for present day imperialist conflict can we show to the working class the enormous dangers represented by the war in Afghanistan, and by those wars which will inevitably follow it. The IBRP on the other hand tends to give the proletariat a false, reassuring picture of a system that is, as in its youthful phase, still able to subordinate its military objectives to the needs of economic expansion.

Moreover, with its misconception of a European imperialism, united around the Euro, the IBRP gives the impression of a relatively stable evolution of world capitalism toward two new imperialist blocs. On the contrary, the contradictory and antagonistic interests of the European powers towards each other as well as to the USA points to quite a different period of capitalism's decay. It indicates a terminal phase of decomposition, where, even if Germany is trying to assert itself as an alternative pole to the US, imperialist chaos has the upper hand; where military conflict threatens to generalise in a catastrophic way.

It is quite true that the war in Afghanistan is about the maintenance and reinforcement by America of its position as the world's only superpower. But this status is not determined by specific economic factors, like the control of oil, as the IBRP puts forward. It is rather dependent on geo-strategic questions, on the ability of the US to achieve a military supremacy in key areas of the world, and to prevent its rivals from seriously contesting its positions. Areas of the world like Afghanistan which proved their strategic worth to the imperialist powers long before oil became known as 'black gold'. It was not for oil that the 19th century British Raj twice sent armies into Afghanistan, and eventually succeeded in setting up a puppet ruler there. The importance of Afghanistan is not because it is a potential vehicle of an oil pipeline, but because it is at the geographical hub of the main imperialist powers of the Middle and Far East, and of South Asia, control of which will greatly increase US power not only in this region but in relation to the major European imperialisms.

The United States achieved its dominant imperialist position essentially by emerging victorious from two world wars. Fundamentally the key to its ability to keep this position also lies at the military level.

Como

Notes

1See the ICC books The Italian Communist Left and The Dutch and German Communist Left

2See for example "Revolutionaries denounce imperialist war" in World Revolution 249, November 2001.

3 See www.ibrp.org [10]

4In Internationalist Communist Review n°10, the IBRP even recognises the importance of military strategic questions over the economic: "It then remains for the political leadership and the army to establish the political direction of each state according to a single imperative: an estimation of how to achieve military victory because this now overrides economic victory". "End of the cold war: new step towards a new imperialist line-up".

5Indeed, the rouble's role as dominant currency in the ex-COMECON countries of the Eastern bloc was wholly dependent on the USSR's military occupation of their territory.

6We should also point out that the IBRP is simply wrong on the factual level, in claiming that "The area around the Caspian Sea is the site of the world's largest known reserves of untapped oil". The proven oil reserves of the entire ex-USSR amount to some 63bn barrels; those of the five main Middle Eastern producers amount to more than ten times that figure, while Saudi Arabia alone accounts for more than 25% of the world's proven reserves. In addition, Saudi oil is by far more profitable (in the purely economic terms of which the IBRP is fond), costing only $1 a barrel to extract, and with none of the gigantic cost of building pipelines across the mountains of Afghanistan and the Caucasus.

7A recent book Ben Laden, la vérité interdite by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, (Editions Denoël, 2001) covers the unofficial diplomacy between the American government and the Taliban regime, up and till September 11th, and tends to point to the opposite conclusion to the IBRP's on the relationship between the oil interests of the US and the development of military hostilities with Afghanistan. Until the 17th July 2001 the US was trying to use diplomacy to resolve its outstanding problems with the Taliban regime, such as the extradition of Osama Bin Laden for the attack on the USS Cole and American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. And the Taliban were by no means hostile to negotiating over such questions. Indeed after Bush's inauguration as US president the Taliban had proposed a reconciliation that they hoped would lead to their diplomatic recognition. But after July 2001 the US effectively broke off relations, sending a brutally provocative message to the Taliban regime: threatening military action to get Bin Laden, and announcing that they were in discussions with the ex-king Sahir Shah to retake power in Kabul! This suggests that the war aims of the US were already decided before September 11th and that all that was needed to launch hostilities was the pretext of the terrorist outrages on that date . It also suggests that it was not the Taliban that prevented a diplomatic process that might lead to a more stable Afghanistan for US oil interests, but the US government, which had another agenda. Instead of the IBRP formula: a war in Afghanistan to stabilise the country for an oil pipeline, the evidence points to a war that has destabilised the whole region for the greater goal of American military and geo-strategic superiority.

8Capital is accumulated or 'valorised' by the extraction of surplus labour from the working class.

Not for the first time, capitalism is justifying its march towards war by invoking the idea of a 'clash between civilisations'. In 1914 workers were marched off to war to defend modern 'civilisation' against the Russian knout or German kaiserism; in 1939 it was to defend democracy against the new dark age represented by Nazism; from 1945 to 1989 it was to fight for democracy against Communism, or for the socialist countries against the imperialist ones. Today the refrain is 'the Western way of life' against 'Islamic fanaticism', or 'Islam' against the 'crusaders and Jews'.

All these slogans are rallying cries for imperialist war; in other words, for the military struggle between competing bourgeois factions in the epoch of capitalist decay. The article that follows is a contribution towards demystifying the idea that militant Islam is something outside of and even against bourgeois civilisation In it we shall attempt to demonstrate that, to the exact contrary, it can only be understood as a product, a concentrated expression, of the historical decline of this same civilisation.

A second article will look at the marxist approach to the problem of fighting religious ideology within the proletariat.

Marx: capitalism undermines religion

Marx saw religion as the "self-consciousness and self-feeling of man who has not yet found himself or has already lost himself again". Religion is thus a "reversed world-consciousness ... the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality"[1] However it is not merely false consciousness, but a (distorted and self-defeating) response to real oppression:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the sprit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people" (ibid).

In contrast to those eighteenth century philosophers who denounced religion as simply the handiwork of imposters, Marx insisted that it was necessary to expose the real, material, roots of religion in given economic relations of production. He was confident that humanity would eventually succeed in emancipating itself from all false consciousness, and reach its full potential in a classless world communism.

Indeed, Marx stressed the degree to which religion was already being undermined due to capitalist economic development. In The German Ideology, for instance, Marx states that capitalist industrialisation was successfully reducing religion to a transparent lie. To liberate itself, the proletariat needed to shed the illusions of religion and all such obstacles to its own self-realisation; but the fog of religion was being rapidly dispersed by capitalism itself. In fact, Marx thought that capitalism itself was undermining religion to such an extent that he sometimes even spoke of religion being already dead for the proletariat.

Limits of bourgeois materialism

Later marxists noticed that once capitalism ceased being a revolutionising force in society by 1871, the bourgeoisie tended to turn back to idealism and religion. In their text The ABC of Communism (an extensive elaboration of the 1919 programme of the Russian Communist Party), Bukharin and Preobrazhensky explain the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the old feudal Tsarist state. Under the Tsars, they explain, the principal content of 'education' was religion: "the maintenance of religious fanaticism, the maintenance of stupidity and ignorance, was regarded as a matter of great importance to the State" (ibid., p250). Church and state were "compelled to join forces against the labouring masses, and their alliance served to strengthen their domination over the workers" (ibid.p249). The emergence of the bourgeoisie in Russia saw this newcomer eventually pushed into headlong conflict with the feudal nobility - which included the church, because the bourgeoisie coveted the fabulous revenues extracted from the workers by the church: "The real basis of the demand was a desire for the transfer to the bourgeoisie of the revenues allotted by the State to the church" (ibid.).

Like the young bourgeoisie in Western Europe, the rising Russian bourgeoisie pursued its campaign for the complete separation of church and state with great vigour. Yet nowhere was this fight carried through to the end, and in each case - even in France, where the conflict was particularly bitter - the bourgeoisie eventually reached a compromise with the church: provided the latter now acted as a buttress of capitalism, is was permitted to join the bourgeoisie and conduct its religious activities. Bukharin and Preobrazhensky attribute this to the fact that

"everywhere the struggle being carried on by the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense... The capitalists thought it would be more advantageous to come to terms with the church, to buy its prayers on behalf of the struggle with socialism, to utilise its influence over the uncultured masses in order to keep alive in their minds the sentiment of slavish submissiveness to the exploiting State".

The bourgeoisie of Western Europe thus made their peace with the religious establishment, while privately remaining materialists of sorts, in many cases, for a time. As Bukharin and Preobrazhensky put it, the key to this contradiction "lies in the exploiters' pockets". In his 1938 text Lenin as Philosopher, the Dutch left communist Anton Pannekoek explains why the 'natural-science materialism' of the rising bourgeoisie had a very short life expectancy:

"Only so long as the bourgeoisie could believe that its society of private property, personal liberty, and free competition, through the development of industry, science and technique, could solve the life problems of all mankind - only so long could the bourgeoisie assume that all theoretical problems could be solved by science, without the need to assume supernatural and spiritual powers. As soon, however, as it became evident that capitalism could not solve the life problems of the masses, as was shown by the rise of the proletarian class struggle, the confident materialist philosophy disappeared. The world was seen again full of insoluble contradictions and uncertainties, full of sinister forces threatening civilisation. So the bourgeoisie turned to various kinds of religious creeds, and the bourgeois intellectuals and scientists submitted to the influence of mystical tendencies. Before long they were quick to discover the weakness and shortcomings of materialist philosophy, and to make speeches on the 'limitations of science' and the insoluble 'world-riddles"".[2]

While this trend was already occasionally noticeable during capital's ascendant phase, it became the rule with the dawning of capital's decadent epoch. Because it has reached the limits of its capacity to expand, capitalism in decadence has essentially been unable to create a world fully in its image: it has left whole regions backward and undeveloped. This economic and social backwardness is the basis for the grip that religion still exerts in such areas. The Bolsheviks themselves were confronted with this, noting in their 1919 programme that the fact that they felt compelled to include a section in this document specifically addressing the problem of religion was "an expression of the backwardness of Russian material and cultural conditions".

The bourgeoisie's reliance upon idealism and religion is particularly apparent in the decadent epoch when bourgeois optimism has been exposed; we can see this in the case of Nazism, which reveals a tendency towards profound irrationalism. In the final stage of capitalist decadence - capitalist decomposition - these tendencies are writ large, with even some members of the bourgeoisie (such as the billionaire Osama bin Laden) apparently believing in the obscurantist reactionary creeds they espouse. As Bukharin and Preobrazhensky note, appropriately: "if the bourgeois class begins to believe in God and the heavenly life, this merely means it has realised that its life here below is drawing to a close!"

The flowering of irrationalist movements among the masses in the most deprived regions is increasingly acute in the period of decomposition, where the lack of any future for the system becomes apparent, and social life under capitalism in the weaker peripheries tends to disintegrate. All over the world, as in the last days of previous modes of production, we have the rise of sects, apocalyptic suicide cults, and the various 'fundamentalisms'. 'Islamism' is very clearly an expression of this general tendency. But before charting its rise, we need to look back at the historical origins of Islam as a world religion.

On the historical origins of Islam

At its point of foundation in seventh century western Arabian Hejaz region, Islam, to express it very briefly, was the product of the synthesis of Judaism and Byzantine and Assyrian Christianity with ancient Persian religions and local monotheistic creeds, such as the Hanifiyya. This rich mix was adapted to the needs of a society in the midst of an immense social, economic and political turmoil. Dominated by the city of Mecca, the Hejaz was a major trading crossroads for the Middle East of this period. Arabia as a whole stood between the great Persian (Sassanid) and Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empires. The Meccan ruling class of this society encouraged visiting traders to place idols of their personal pagan gods in the Ka'ba, a local religious shrine, and to worship there whenever they visited. Wealthy Meccans made a comfortable living from this idolatry.

For about 100 years, Mecca was a prosperous society run by a tribal aristocracy and making some use of slave labour, vigorous far-reaching trade and the additional revenue from the Ka'ba. By the time Muhammad reached maturity, however, Meccan society was in a deepening state of crisis. It began to openly break up, threatening to collapse into a war without end of its constituent tribes.

Just outside Mecca and the region's second city Yathrib (today's Medina), were the fiercely independent and austere Bedouin nomadic tribes, who had initially benefited from the enrichment of the region's urban centres; they were able to borrow from rich townsfolk and increase their own standard of living. Eventually, however, they were increasingly unable to repay such loans - a situation that was to have explosive consequences. The disintegration of the tribes now really gathered pace, in both the cities and the desert oases, as the Bedouin were "sold into slavery or at any rate reduced to a dependent status... The tribal limits had been overstepped".[3] To elaborate:

"Inevitably, along with this economic and social transformation, there came intellectual and moral changes. Shrewd men were seen to prosper. The traditional virtues of the sons of the desert [the Bedouin] were no longer the sure road to success. Greed, and an eye to the main chance, were much more useful. The rich became proud and overbearing, glorying in their success as a personal thing - no longer a matter for the whole tribe. The ties of blood grew weaker, giving way to others based on common interest" (ibid.).

Furthermore: "wickedness triumphed at home. The rich and powerful oppressed the poor. The immemorial laws of tribal solidarity were broken daily. The weak and the orphan were sold into slavery. The old unwritten code of decency and morality was trampled underfoot. The people no longer even knew which gods to worship" (ibid.).

In a society where religion was the only possible means of rationalising daily existence, this last statement is highly significant - indicating that the society was in a serious social crisis. Islam refers to this period in Arabia as the jahiliyya, or era of ignorance, in which, it claims, there were no limits on debauchery, cruelty, unlimited polygamy and widespread female infanticide.

Arabia at this time was riven by the rivalries of both its own warring tribes and the feuds and ambitions of neighbouring civilisations. There were also other, more global, factors at work. It was known in Arabia that the mighty Persian and Roman empires were in serious trouble both internally and externally, and might fall; and many in Arabia "thought it heralded the end of the world" (ibid., p65). Much of the civilised world also stood on the brink of chaos.

Engels analysed the rise of Islam as "a Bedouin reaction against the settled but degenerating" townspeople, "who at that time has also become very decadent in their religion, mingling a corrupt nature-cult with Judaism and Christianity".[4] Born in Mecca in 570 AD, but partially raised in the desert by Bedouin, and profoundly influenced by the range of worldviews that Arabia - especially the Hejaz - was awash with, the thoughtful Muhammad was the ideal vector for the resolution of the crisis of social relations his city and region faced. He was the 'man of the moment', when his ministry began in 610.

All Arabia was ripe for change; its condition called out for the emergence of a pan-Arabian state, capable of overcoming tribal separatism, placing society on a new economic and therefore social and political foundation. Islam proved to be the perfect vehicle for achieving this. Muhammad told Arabians that the growing chaos of their society was the result of them turning away from God's laws (Shari'a). They must submit to these laws if they were to escape eternal damnation. The new religion denounced the cruelty and internecine squabbling of the tribes, proclaiming all Muslims not only as brothers, but also as men and women who had the obligation to unite. Islam (literally submission to God) declared that God (Allah) demanded this. Islam also outlawed debauchery (alcohol, swearing and gambling were prohibited); cruelty was prohibited (slave-owners were encouraged to free their slaves, for instance); polygamy was limited to four wives per male believer (all of whom must be treated equally in all respects - leading some to argue that in reality the practice was outlawed); men and women were given distinct social roles, but a woman was permitted to work and to chose her own husband; and murder was strictly prohibited, including infanticide. Islam also taught Arabians that it was not enough to pray and avoid sin; submission to God meant that all spheres of existence must submit to God's will - i.e., that there was an Islamic framework for everything, including the economics and politics of a society.

In the conditions of the time, it is not surprising that the new religion soon attracted masses of adherents, once the initial attempts of the Meccan ruling class to physically eliminate it had failed. It was the perfect instrument for the overthrow of Arabian and other nearby societies. This Muslim 'golden epoch' could not last forever. Muhammad's successors, the caliphs - selected to rule the Islamic world due to their supposed fidelity to Muhammad's message - were eventually replaced by increasingly corrupted dynastic rulers, whose principal claim to rulership was hereditary. This transformation was complete with the accession to the Caliphate of the 'Umayyad dynasty (680-750 AD). Nevertheless, it is clear that the rise of Islam did originally express a forward-movement in historical evolution, and it is from this that it derives its original strength and depth of vision. And even if the Islamic civilisation of the mediaeval period inevitably failed to live up to Mohammed's ideals, it still provided a framework for many dazzling advances in medicine, mathematics and other branches of human knowledge. Although the oriental despotism upon which it was founded was eventually to reach the sterile impasse to which this mode of production was condemned, at its high point it made western feudalism appear crude and obscurantist in comparison; classically, this was symbolised by the huge gulf in culture between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the days of the crusades. We might add that there is an even greater gulf between the zenith of Islamic culture and the ignorance-worshipping fundamentalism of today.[5]

The Bolsheviks and 'Muslim nationalism'

But if marxists can recognize a progressive side to Islam in its origins, how have they analysed its role in the period of the proletarian revolution, when all religions have become a reactionary obstacle to human emancipation? A brief examination of Bolshevik policy in this regard is instructive.

Less than one month after the victory of the October 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks issued a proclamation, To All the Working Muslims of Russia and the East, which declared that it was on the side of the "working Muslims ... whose mosques and prayer-houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the by the Tsars and oppressors of Russia". The Bolsheviks pledged:

Your beliefs and usages, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the Revolution and its organs, the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants.

Such a policy marked a distinct change from that of the Tsarists, who had attempted to systematically and forcibly (often violently) assimilate the Muslim population, following the conquests of Central Asia from the sixteenth century onwards. Not surprisingly, this caused the Muslim populations of these lands to cling firmly to their Islamic heritage. With a few notable exceptions, the Central Asian Muslims did not actively participate in the October revolution, which was overwhelmingly a Russian affair: "The Muslim national organisations remained onlookers, indifferent to the Bolshevik cause".[6] The prominent 'Muslim communist', Sultan Galiev, of whom more in a moment, stated some years after the revolution:

"In making the balance sheet of the October revolution and of the participation of the Tatars in the latter, we must admit that the working masses and the Tatar disinherited layers did not take any part".[7]

The Bolsheviks' attitude to the Central Asian Muslims was formed by both internal and external forces. On the one hand, the new system had to come to terms with the situation in the overwhelmingly Muslim lands of the old Tsarist empire. The Bolsheviks were convinced that these Central Asian lands were both strategically and economically essential to revolutionary Russia's survival. When some Muslim nationalists revolted against the new government in Moscow, the response of the authorities was in many cases to take the most brutal measures. A rebellion in Turkestan, for instance, resulted in the city of Kokand being razed by military units of the Tashkent Soviet. Lenin sent a special commission there in November 1919, "to restore", as Lenin put it, "correct relations between the Soviet regime and the peoples of Turkestan".[8]

One example of this approach towards the Muslim regions was the formation of Zhendotel (the Department of Working Women and Peasant Women) to work among Muslim women in Soviet Central Asia. Zhendotel focussed especially on the problem of religion in this extremely economically backward region. In its initial period, Zhendotel was noteworthy for its patient and sensitive approach to the delicate problems it attempted to deal with. Women organisers for Zhendotel even donned the paranja (an extreme form of Islamic veiling, completely covering the head and face) during discussion meetings with Muslim women.

While some 'Muslim nationalist' organisations rallied briefly to the counter-revolution during the 1918-1920 Civil War, most came to grudgingly 'accept' the Bolshevik regime as the lesser of two evils, from their point of view, after suffering the depredations of Deniken's counter-revolutionary Whites. Many of these 'Muslim nationalists' joined the Communist Party, and not a few soon occupied senior governmental posts. Yet only a small number seem to have been convinced of the validity of marxism. The famous Tatar Sultan Galiev was the Bolshevik representative on the Central Muslim Commissariat (formed in January 1918), a member of the Inner College of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities (Narkomnats), chief editor of the review Zhizn' Natsional'nostey, a professor at the University of the Peoples of the East, and led the left wing of the 'Muslim nationalists'. Yet even this leading figure among those recruited from the 'Muslim nationalists' was at best a 'national communist', as he himself testified in the Tatar newspaper Qoyash (The Sun) in 1918, explaining his adherence to the Bolshevik Party in October 1917: "I come to Bolshevism pushed by the love of my people which presses so heavily on my heart" (Sultan Galiev?, op.cit.).

On the other hand, the Bolsheviks understood that their revolution needed to be joined by those of workers in other countries, if it were to survive. The failure of the revolutions in developed Western countries (especially Germany) caused them increasingly to turn towards the possibility of a 'revolutionary nationalist' wave in the Eastern hemisphere. They recognized that this would not be proletarian, but, as the first signs of the retreat of the world revolutionary wave, and the growing isolation of the Russian revolution emerged, the Bolsheviks increasingly inclined towards the opportunist notion that it could in some way prepare the way for proletarian revolution. For the moment, though, the 'Eastern question' - 'national liberation' struggles in the Middle East and Asia - was seen as the means to pry the foot of British imperialism off the neck of Soviet Russia.

The Comintern and Pan-Islam

This is the context in which Bolsheviks led the Comintern to form its evolving attitude towards the movements of Pan-Islam. At its Second Congress in 1920, the Comintern signalled that it was beginning to bend to the tremendous pressures exerted upon it by the forces of counter-revolution both inside and outside Russia. Opportunistic concessions were made all along the line, in the vain hope of lessening the hostility of the capitalist world to Soviet society. Communists were ordered to organise in the bourgeois trade unions, to join the openly pro-imperialist Socialist and Labour parties and to support the so-called 'national liberation movements' in the underdeveloped countries. The 'Theses on the National and Colonial Question' - justifying support for 'national liberation movements' - were drafted by Lenin for the congress and adopted with only three abstentions.

Nevertheless, the Second Congress drew the line at collaborating with Islamists. Lenin's 'Theses' declared:

"It is necessary to struggle against the Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asiatic movements and similar tendencies, which are trying to combine the liberation struggle against European and American imperialism with the strengthening of the power of Turkish and Japanese imperialism and of the nobility, the large landlords [khans], the priests [mullahs], etc".[9]

Although he voted for the resolution, Sneevliet, representing the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia), asserted that a radical mass Islamist organisation existed in the Dutch East Indies. Sneevliet claimed that Sarekat Islam (Islamic Union) had 'taken on a class character', by adopting an anti-capitalist programme. These "communist hajjis" [those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca] were vital for the communist revolution, he stressed.[10] This was merely the continuation of the policy developed by the old Indonesian Social-Democratic Union (ISDV) that later formed the major portion of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), formed in May 1920. Indonesian marxists had an ambiguous relationship with radical Islam, right from the start, as the ICC has pointed out elsewhere:

"Indonesian members of the ISDV, like Samoen, were simultaneously members, and even leaders, of the Islamic movement. During the war [World War I], the ISDV recruited a considerable number of Indonesians from Sarekat Islam, which had some 20,000 members... This policy prefigured, in embryonic form, the policy adopted in China after 1921 - with the encouragement of Sneevliet and the Comintern - of a united front even to the point of a fusion of nationalist and communist organisations (The Kuomintang and the Chinese CP)...

Significantly, within the Comintern, Sneevliet represented the PKI and the 'left wing' of Sarekat Islam. This alliance with the classic indigenous Islamic bourgeoisie was to last until 1923".[11]

Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East

The first application of the 'Theses on the National and Colonial Question' was the so called Baku (Azerbaijan) Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in September 1920, more or less immediately after the conclusion of the Second Congress of the Comintern. At least one-quarter of the conference delegates were not communists, including open anti-communists, bourgeois nationalists and Pan-Islamists. Presided over by Zinoviev, it called repeatedly for a 'holy war' (Zinoviev's phrase) against foreign and domestic oppressors and for workers' and peasants' governments throughout the Middle East and Asia, as a means of weakening imperialism, especially British imperialism.

The Bolsheviks' scheme was to form an 'unbreakable alliance' with these disparate elements, with the principal aim of loosening the imperialist ring around Soviet Russia. The opportunist core of this policy was showed by Zinoviev at the opening session of the congress, when he described the conference delegates and the movements and states they represented as Russia's 'second sword', whom Russia was 'approaching as brothers, as comrades in struggle'.[12] This was the first ever 'anti-imperialist' (i.e., inter-classist) conference held in the name of communism.

The pioneer US communist, John Reed, who attended the congress, was sickened by its proceedings. Angelica Balabanova relates (in My Life as a Rebel, p. 318) that "Jack spoke bitterly of the demagogy and display which had characterised the Baku Congress and the manner in which the native population and the Far Eastern delegates had been treated".[13] An Appeal from the Communist Party of Netherlands to the Peoples of the East Represented in Baku appears in the French language edition of the Comintern's record of congress proceedings and was presumably distributed to the delegates. This asserted that 'thousands of Indonesians' had been 'united for the common struggle against the Dutch oppressors' by the Pan-Islamist Sarekat Islam, and the Appeal was certain that this Pan-Islamist organisation joined with it in greeting the congress.

At the congress, the Bolshevik Party's Radek openly evoked the image of the conquering army of the former Ottoman Muslim sultans, declaring: "We appeal, comrades [sic], to the warlike feelings which once inspired the peoples of the East when those peoples, led by their great conquerors, advanced upon Europe".[14] Within three months of the Baku Congress, which had lauded the Turkish nationalist Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), the latter had murdered the entire leadership of the Turkish Communist Party.

By its Fourth Congress in 1922, the Comintern had revised its programme even further. Introducing the 'Theses on the Eastern Question' that were unanimously adopted by the congress, the Dutch delegate van Ravesteyn declared that 'the independence of the Eastern world as a whole, the independence of Asia, the independence of the Muslim peoples ... means in itself the end of Western imperialism'. Earlier at the same congress, Malaka, the delegate from the Dutch East Indies, had repeated that communists there had worked closely with Sarekat Islam, until the two groups quarrelled in 1921. Malaka declared that the hostility to Pan-Islam expressed in the theses adopted by the Second Congress had damaged the position of communists. Adding his own support for close collaboration with Pan-Islam, the delegate from Tunis argued that, unlike the British and French CPs, who were inactive on the colonial question, at least the Pan-Islamists united all Muslims against their oppressors.[15]

The fruits of opportunism

The opportunist drift of the Bolsheviks and the Comintern on the colonial question had largely been based on the idea of finding allies against the imperialist encirclement of Soviet Russia. Leftist apologists for these policies argue that they did help the Soviet Union to survive; but, as the Italian communist left recognized by the 1930s, the price paid for this survival had been the transformation of the very function of the Soviet power; from bastion of the world revolution it had now become a player in the games of world imperialism. The alliances with the colonial bourgeoisies had helped to drag Soviet Russia into the game, and this at the expense of the exploited and the oppressed in those regions, as the fiasco of Comintern policy in China in 1925-27 illustrated so clearly.

The abandonment of Marxist rigour on the question of Islam was thus part of this general opportunist course. It has also served as a theoretical justification for the overtly counter-revolutionary attitudes of modern leftism, which has argued again and again that the likes of Khomeini and bin Laden are somehow combating imperialism (even if they perhaps combat it with the wrong methods and ideas).

It should be noted that the Bolsheviks' attempt to flatter the Muslim nationalists could also be combined with a false radicalism which sought to stamp out religion through demagogic campaigns. This was particularly characteristic of Stalinism during its 'left turn' at the end of the 20s.

During this period the patience and sensitivity of Zhendotel were thrown out the window, as frantic campaigns for divorce and against veiling were initiated. In 1927, according to one Trotskyist account:

"mass meetings were held at which thousands of frenzied participants, chanting 'Down with the paranja!' tore off their veils, which were drenched in paraffin and burned... Protected by soldiers, bands of poor women roamed the streets, tearing veils off wealthier women, hunting for hidden food and pointing out those who still clung to traditional practices which had now been declared crimes? On the following day the price for these impatient, sectarian actions was paid in blood, as hundreds of unveiled women were massacred by their kinsmen, and this reaction, fanned by Muslim clergy, who interpreted recent earthquakes as Allah's punishment for the unveilings, grew in strength. Remnants of the Basmachi rebels reorganized themselves into Tash Kuran (secret counter-revolutionary organisations) which flourished as a result of their pledge to preserve Narkh (local customs and values)".[16]

This was as far from the original methods of the October revolution as was the Baku Congress with its gibberish about Holy War. The great strength of Bolshevism in 1917 had been its commitment to fighting alien ideologies by developing the class consciousness and class organisation of the proletariat. This remains the only basis for countering the influence of religious or other reactionary ideologies.

'Islamists': from the margins to the mainstream

From the above we can see that the question of 'political Islam' is not a new one for the proletariat. Indeed, many of the 'modern' Islamist groups can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimuun), which was founded in Egypt in 1928, and has since expanded to over 70 countries. The Ikhwan's founder, Hassan al-Banna, proclaimed the need for Muslims to 'return' to the 'straight path' of orthodox Sunni Islam, as the antidote for both the corruption that had grown up since the 'Umayyad caliphs and as the path towards the 'liberation' of the Islamic world from Western domination. This struggle would make possible the establishment of an 'authentic' Islamic state, which alone could resist the West.

The Ikhwan claims to follow in the footsteps of Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (1260-1327) who opposed the attempts of Hellenised Islamic thinkers who attempted to reduce Islam and Islamic government to a function of human reason. Ibn Taymiyyah argued that an Islamic ruler had an obligation to impose God's laws on his subjects, if necessary. Ibn Taymiyyah's Islam claimed to be very pure, stripped of all modern accretions. The Ikhwan modelled itself on the puritanical Salafiyyah (purification) movements of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, who also attempted to apply ibn Taymiyyah's ideas.

In practice, however, the key to the Ikhwan's success has been its extreme tactical flexibility, being prepared to work with any institution (parliament, trade unions) or movement (Stalinists, liberals) that might advance its project of 're-Islamicising' society. Al-Banna made it clear nevertheless, that the Islamic state his movement sought would prohibit all political organisations. Sayyid Qutb, who succeeded al-Banna as leader in 1948,[17] equally denounced "socialist or capitalist 'idolatry'" - i.e., putting political goals before God's laws. He explained further:

it is necessary to break with the logic and customs of surrounding society, to construct a prototype of the future Islamic society with the "true believers", then, at the opportune moment, engage in battle with the [new] jahiliyya.

By 1948 the movement had grown tremendously, having between 300,000 to 600,000 militants in Egypt alone. Fiercely repressed by the state in late 1948/early 1949, the movement survived and rebuilt. It briefly allied itself with Nasser's Free Officers Movement, which staged a successful coup d'êtat in July 1952. Once in power, Nasser imprisoned vast numbers of the Ikhwan and outlawed the movement. Although technically still outlawed, the movement has been permitted to successfully stand for parliament and controls a number of Islamic NGOs. It has accrued much support among poor urban masses through the provision of social services not supplied by the state.

The Ikhwan's success is an ongoing reference point to more recent 'fundamentalist' groups - many of whom have split from it, claiming that it has moderated its rhetoric and actions since achieving mass support and parliamentary seats. Groups inspired by the Ikhwan exist throughout the 'Islamic world' - not just in the Middle East, but in Indonesia and the Philippines and even in other countries where Muslims do not form a majority of the population. Overwhelmingly, however, these groups resemble more the Ikhwan as it was originally (a violent terrorist outfit), rather than the comparatively 'moderate' force it has evolved into. And, in all cases, these groups are able to exist only due to the material support of one or other state which is manipulating them for their own foreign policy ends. Thus, the foundation of HAMAS (the Islamic Resistance Movement) in Gaza was funded by Israel, which hoped it would counter-balance the PLO. But both HAMAS and the Islamic Jihad organisation (which in recent years has apparently merged with al-Qa'ida) have co-operated with the PLO and other Palestinian nationalist organisations - which have themselves, in turn, been manipulated by outside powers such as Syria and the former Soviet Union. The Algerian Islamist GIA (Armed Islamic Group) has been more or less openly funded and supported by the US, in an effort to weaken French challenges to the sole remaining superpower. In Indonesia in the recent period, Islamist groups have been manipulated by military political factions to alternatively help bring to power and dethrone the country's president. And, most notorious of all, Afghanistan's Taliban was created in Pakistan by the US, which successfully pitted them against its former Islamist allies, the disparate mujahedeen fractions, who were dragging Afghanistan towards utter chaos. The United States actively supported the activities of Osama bin Laden against Russian imperialism providing a platform for the group now known as al-Qa'ida. Ironically then, Islamism is in no small part a creature of the very thing it claims to combat the most: the hated USA.

Further variants on the original model are provided by groups drawn from members of the Shi'a sect of Islam. As the most populous Shi'ite state, Iran has been the source of this variant, which includes groups in many countries, but most notably in Lebanon and Iraq. Iran itself has been described as 'fundamentalism in power', but this is misleading, for the regime came to power more by default than by the actions of an 'Islamist' group. Certainly, in the early years of the Khomeini regime, there were successful attempts to build support for the state through mass mobilisations in support of an impossible 'return' to the conditions of seventh century Arabia. However, it is important to understand that Iran's mullahs (clergy) only came to power due to the tremendous political weakness of the Iranian proletariat; Iran's oil workers, for instance, had struck for an overall total of six months in the country's pivotal oil industry to break the power of the Shah's regime. As the only 'opposition' force that was politically clear in its objectives, and able to legally function, the mullahs were able to seize control of the confused mobilisations against the Shah. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the Khomeniites could only take power after fundamentally distorting the Shi'ite doctrine that all worldly authority is to be resolutely opposed by Shi'ite believers, following the disappearance of the twelfth Shi'ite religious leader several hundred years ago.[18]

Once in power in February 1979, the mullahs used every opportunity to expand their influence in other countries, by training, arming and supporting a host of Shi'ite Islamist groups outside the country, such as the Hezballah (Party of God) militia in Lebanon, which has always been Khomeniite. It has been rewarded for this with strong material support from Iran from 1979 onwards, as well as from Syria, Iran's ally.

Afghanistan provides further variants - more than one for each of that country's major ethnic groups. Despite the commitment of all these Afghan groups to the notion of one united Islamic (in fact, 'Islamist') state, all of them have found it extremely difficult to unite for very long - especially when they succeed in eliminating common opponents. Murderous infighting, following the collapse of the pro-Russian regime in 1992, convinced US imperialism to cease supporting them, and to produce a new, more single-minded force, the Taliban, whom it hoped would provide a more stable pro-US regime. Not a single one of Afghanistan's disparate 'Islamist' fractions is innocent of mass murders and the most horrendous acts of cruelty, including rape, torture, mutilations and the massacre of children - not to mention their role in the international drug trade, which has made Afghanistan the biggest single exporter of raw opium (unprocessed heroin) in the world.

Space limitations make it impossible to survey all the various permutations that abound. As we have seen, however, the Ikhwan created the paradigm, the model of the modern 'Islamic fundamentalism'. 'Shi'ite' as well as 'Sunni' versions of these groups exist, but not one of them is opposed to capitalism and imperialism, but are totally integrated into the existing world 'civilisation'.

'Fundamentalism': Spawn of dying capitalist civilisation

Faced with the bourgeois propaganda about a 'clash of civilisations', a mortal struggle between the 'West' and 'militant Islam', which is spread as much by the 'Western' side as by the followers of bin Laden, it is very important to show that present-day Islamism is a pure product of capitalist society in its epoch of decay.

This is all the more crucial in that the nature of Islamist movements is not fully understood by the groups of the proletarian political milieu. A recent article, for instance - 'Islam and Capitalism', in the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party's journal Revolutionary Perspectives[19]- agrees that Islamism reflects the inability of capitalism to entirely eliminate pre-capitalist vestiges, and also that there was never any real 'bourgeois revolution' in the Islamic world. The article then goes on to argue:

contrary to some assumptions that Islamism is the pure reflection of the capitalist mode of production, it is not. It is the confusing expression of the co-existence of at least two modes of production.

The article also states that Islamism "evolved into an ideology capable of maintaining the capitalist order with non-capitalist ideological and cultural measures". It is asserted:

"Contrary to Christianity, Islam did not go through a long process of secularisation and enlightenment... The Moslem world remained relatively untouched in a historic sense and succeeded even in the era of capitalism to guard its old identity die to the inability and unwillingness of capitalism to eliminate the pre-capitalist structures of the society: consequently, God did not die in the Orient".

As proof of these claims, the article reports on the continued existence of what it terms the "ancient community of clergies with strong links to the Bazaar", which "managed to stay unshattered" by modernising pressures. As a result, the article argues, "the Islamic periphery has to contain two modes of production and cultures in its heart". Islamism derives its strength from this duality, which enables it to appear as an alternative to state capitalism. Despite being "the masterpiece of the capitalist order", the article adds, Islamism is this "ironically in contradiction with the same order in certain levels". This is mistaken. It is true that no mode of production exists in a pure form. Slavery has existed at various times in all forms of class society. Britain, the oldest capitalist state, is yet to finish off its aristocracy completely, to give just two examples. It is also true that capitalism's entry into the regions dominated by the Muslim religion was late and incomplete, and that there was no equivalent of a bourgeois revolution there. But whatever vestiges of the past hang on and encumber these regions, they are totally dominated by the world capitalist economy, and are part of it.

The Bazaar in the modern 'Islamic world' is not outside capitalism, any more than that living relic the Queen of England or that other leftover from feudalism, Pope John Paul II, are. Indeed, the bazaaris, the capitalist merchants of the Tehran bazaars, were a vital bulwark of the Khomeiniite push in 1978-1979 in Iran, and remain a vital capitalist fraction. The disagreements - at times expressed physically - between the bazaaris and more Western-oriented, even secularising fractions in the Iranian regime are contradictions within capitalism. Although these conflicts can have a debilitating effect on the country's capitalist economy, they are immensely beneficial politically for the bourgeoisie as a whole, since they draw Iran's proletarians off their own class terrain, and into the false game of supporting either the 'reformist' or the 'radical' fractions of Iranian capital. This is very far from the 'non-capitalist ideological and cultural measures' of the article in the IBRP journal.

Moreover, the bazaaris' relationship to direct political rule is nowhere as strong as it is in Iran, due to that country's distinctive history and even brand of Islam, so the Iranian case cannot be used to prove that Islamism is somehow 'pre-capitalist'. Rather, the common feature of all the lands of Islam is the very effective harnessing of aspects of society emanating from the pre-capitalist past to serve the needs of present day capitalists. Thus, the Saudi royals, Gamal Nasser, Indonesian political fractions and others have alternatively used and discarded thoroughly reactionary but nonetheless capitalist Islamist groups that talked of reintroducing pre-capitalist society, in order to pave their own way to power as a wealthy capitalist class. In no way, furthermore, can it be any different. Capitalist factions everywhere are never shy - especially in the era of capitalist decadence - of mobilising the most backward-looking elements for their own, very modern, purposes. German capitalism proved that with Hitler. Just like the Islamic Brotherhood, the Khomeiniites and Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler dredged up a hotch-potch of reactionary remnants of pre-capitalism, to serve the interests of his ruling class. Islamism is not different in this respect. (Indeed, Islamism borrows heavily from Nazi ideology, particularly with its wholesale adoption of the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy. Furthermore, this scraping of the racist barrel is another mark of the contrast between Islamism and the original teachings of the Koran, which preached tolerance towards other 'Peoples of the Book').

In all its forms, Islamism is in no way in contradiction with capital. It certainly reflects the economic and social backwardness of the lands of Islam, but it is completely a part of the capitalist system and, above all, of capitalism's decadence and decomposition. We can also add that, far from being in opposition to state capitalism, the idea of the Islamic state, which justifies state interference in every aspect of social life, is a perfect vehicle for totalitarian state capitalism, which is the characteristic form of capital in the decadent epoch.

So-called Islamic fundamentalism developed as an ideology of a part of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, in their struggle against the colonial powers and their collaborators. It remained a mostly minority movement until the late 1970s, since it was overshadowed by nationalist and Stalinist ideologies and movements. These movements have attained real force in countries where, in general, the working class is relatively small, young and inexperienced. The Islamists proclaim themselves "the champion of all oppressed people" (Khomeini). In Iran, for instance, the Khomeiniites succeeded in drawing the mass of destitute Tehran slum dwellers into their movement in the late 1970s, by falsely claiming to champion their interests and referring to them as mustazifeen, a religious term for the destitute and oppressed. Decadent capital's descent into the further, ever deepening misery of decomposition has only magnified the plight of such layers. The Islamists' earlier marginalisation now works in their favour, since they can now appear credible when they claim that the reason that all secular creeds (from democracy through to nationalism and marxism) have all 'failed' is that the masses ignored God's laws. The same explanation has been used by Islamists in Turkey, to 'explain' the August 1999 earthquake in that country, and was used earlier by Egyptian Islamists following an earthquake there in the 1980s.

Such an appeal often has a galvanising appeal on layers of the population most subjected to poverty and despair. To the ruined petty bourgeois, to the slum dwellers with no hope of a job, even to elements from the working class, it offers the mirage of a 'return' to the allegedly pure state founded by Muhammad, which supposedly protected the poor and prevented the rich from making too much profit. In other words, this state is presented as an 'anti-capitalist' social order. Typically, Islamist groups assert that they are neither capitalist nor socialist, but 'Islamic', and fight for an Islamic state on the model of the old Caliphate. But this whole argument makes a mockery of history: the original Muslim state existed long before the capitalist epoch. It was based on a form of class exploitation, but, like western feudalism, had not perfected the enslavement of man to profit in the way that capitalism has, nor could it have done within its historical limitation. Today, however, whenever radical Islamic groups take control of a state, they have no alternative but to become the overseers of capitalist social relations and thus to strive for the maximisation of national profit. Neither the Iranian mullahs nor the Taliban could escape from this iron law.

This perverted 'anti-capitalism' goes along with an equally perverted 'Muslim internationalism': the radical Islamic groups of the world claim to owe no allegiance to any particular nation state and call for the unity of all Muslim brothers across the world. Here again both these groups and their bourgeois opponents portray them as something unique - as an ideology and a movement that transcends national frontiers to form a fearsome new 'bloc', threatening the West in a similar way to the old 'Communist' bloc. In part, this is because they are virtually inseparable from the international criminal networks: gun-running (which now almost certainly includes the trade in 'weapons of mass destruction' - chemical and nuclear means) and the drug trade. Afghanistan in particular is a pivotal link here, as shown earlier. Within this, bin Laden's 'imperialist warlordism' might be seen by some as a new offshoot of 'globalisation' (i.e., transcending national barriers). But this is true only in so far as it expresses a certain tendency towards the disintegration of the weakest national units. The 'global' Muslim state can never exist, for it will always founder on the rock of competing Islamic bourgeoisies. This is why, in order to fight for this chimera, the 'mujahadeen' are always obliged to join in with the imperialist great game, which remains one of competing national states.

The 'holy war' proclaimed by the Islamic gangs is really a cover for the old unholy war fought by competing imperialist powers. The real interests of the exploited and the oppressed of the world lie not in a mythical Muslim brotherhood, but in the class war against exploitation and oppression in all countries; not in an impossible return to the rule of God or the Caliphs, but in the revolutionary creation of the first really human society in history.

Dawson

6/1/2002

Military operations had barely ended in Afghanistan, when another round of carnage began in the Middle East. As the bloodshed continues in the West Bank and Jerusalem, another military operation is being prepared against Iraq. Inexorably, capitalism is plunging into chaos and military barbarism. With each new bloodbath, the murderous folly of this system stands more starkly revealed.

Once again, the Middle East is engulfed in war. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose roots lie in the imperialist division of the region between Britain and France in 1916, has already been marked by four openly declared wars: in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. But since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000, violence and blind slaughter has taken on a new dimension. Under its pressure, the laboriously constructed Oslo Accords and the years of peace negotiations that followed have burst asunder. The endless spiral of military folly reveals a situation where war is no longer the result of a conflict between two rival imperialist camps, but the expression of a general social breakdown and a descent into chaos of international relations.

Since 11th September, this tendency has seen a vertiginous acceleration. Each of the protagonists is pushed into the same logic as the Al Qaida attacks on the twin towers, where the attacker is also an expression of his own death-wish. On the one hand, the proliferation of suicide bombings by fanatical kamikazes - often no more than 18 years old - whose only aim is to surround themselves with as many victims as possible. These acts of terrorist despair are remote-controlled by this or that bourgeois nationalist fraction - Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hezbollah - when they are not being deliberately manipulated by Mossad (the Israeli secret service). At the same time, the different states try to defend their own imperialist interests by launching themselves into dead-end military adventures. Israel's attitude of bellicose arrogance is copied from the United States - and Sharon uses exactly the same arguments as Bush to justify his "crusade against terrorism". The result is the occupation and blockade of West Bank towns by Israeli tanks, an Israeli army that fires on anything that moves, shoots up hospitals and ambulances, systematically ransacks and pillages civilians' houses, dynamites whole districts, destroys vital infrastructure, terrorises and starves the civilian population.

Other states - and especially the US' great power rivals - are trying to exploit the situation as much as they can in order to destabilise their imperialist competitors' efforts. The European powers' feigned indignation, their "pacifist" mask, their attempts at "mediation", do nothing but fan the flames.

This is true in particular for those fractions of the bourgeoisie which try to present the spiral of war and militarism as being purely the result of "hawks" like Sharon and Bush, who should be held in check by "international law" based on "human rights". Whatever their proclaimed intentions, the great demonstrations organised around the world for or against the policy of Sharon (and Bush) can have no other result than to push the population to "choose their camp", to feed the tension and to maintain the hatred between the different communities.

In fact, the bourgeoisie is always trying to make believe that this disaster is the fault of this or that statesman, this or that nation, this or that camp, this or that people. With immeasurable hypocrisy every bourgeoisie claims to act in the interests of "peace", for the "defence of democracy", or "civilisation". And all with the sole aim of covering and excusing its own crimes.

When opportunity offers, it judges and condemns its peers in the eyes of History, as "war criminals". After World War II, the essential function of the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war leaders (1945-49) conducted by the winning side, was to justify the monstrous crimes of the great democracies in Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. The International Tribunal in the Hague is sitting in judgement on Milosevic today, in order to legitimise the NATO bombardments of Serbia and Kosovo, and to hide the great powers' complicity in the crimes committed during the wars in ex-Yugoslavia.

Similarly, the "international community" is trying today to justify the war in Afghanistan as having "liberated" the country from the Taliban yoke: the pseudo-liberation of women, a return to "freedom" of trade and leisure (television, radio, sport?). The argument is all the more derisory, when at the same time a large part of the population is starving, while the innumerable local fractions and cliques fight over the country's remains.

The bourgeoisie's claim to serve the cause of peace is nothing but a lie.

Its activity inevitably aggravates military barbarity world wide, and this is one expression of capitalism's historic bankruptcy, of the fact that as it rots it threatens the very existence of humanity. Capitalism as a whole is responsible for the chaos of militarism, because war has become its permanent mode of existence.

The only social force that bears any future for humanity is the working class. Despite all the obstacles it confronts today, it is the only class able to put an end to the chaos and barbarity of capitalism, to create a new human society at the service of all the human species.

As capitalism does its best to push the most violent contradictions of its system and the effects of its economic crisis onto the peripheral countries, the example of Argentina shows how great are the difficulties facing the working class in rediscovering and reasserting its class identity, as its struggles are being derailed into an inter-classist dead-end (see the following article). At another level, the class is confronted with the trap of pacifism sowing the same inter-classist illusions - thanks notably to the "anti-globalisation" movement: this is nothing but another means of drawing the workers behind the defence of the bourgeoisie's national interest. The proletariat has a vital responsibility before it: that of struggling against the bourgeoisie's onslaught on its living conditions, and of integrating into the struggle an understanding of the mortal danger threatening humanity under capitalism. In the end, this must reinforce its determination to continue, develop, and unite its class struggle: "The coming century will be decisive for human history. If capitalism continues to rule the planet, then before 2100 society will be plunged into such barbarism that it will make the 20th century look like a minor headache and either reduce human-kind to the stone-age, or destroy it altogether. If humanity does have a future, then it is wholly in the hands of the world proletariat, whose worldwide revolution alone can overthrow the domination of the capitalist mode of production whose historic crisis is responsible for today's barbarity" (International Review n°104, 1st quarter 2001, "Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism").

GF, 7th April 2002

Argentina: Only the proletariat fighting on its own class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie

The events of December 2001 to February 2002 in Argentina have awoken a great interest amongst politically aware elements all over the world. They have provoked discussion and reflection in workplaces among combative workers. Some Trotskyist groups have even spoken of "the beginning of the revolution".

In the Communist Left, the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) has devoted several articles to these events and has published a Declaration according to which "In Argentina the ravages of the economic crisis have stimulated a powerful and determined proletarian movement on a class terrain and self-organisation, which expresses a class rupture".[1]

The interest aroused by the social upheavals in Argentina is understandable and totally legitimate. Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, the international situation has not seen any massive proletarian movements on the same scale as the strike in Poland in 1980, or the struggles in Argentine Cordoba in 1969. The scene of world events has been dominated by war (the Gulf War in 1991, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, the Middle East?), by the ever more devastating effects of the advancing world economic crisis (mass redundancies, unemployment, falling wages and pensions), and by the different expressions of capitalist decomposition (destruction of the environment, proliferation of "natural" and "accidental" disasters, the development of religious and social fanaticism, of criminality, etc).

This situation - whose causes we have already analysed of in detail[2] - is one reason why politicised elements are paying close attention to the events in Argentina, which seem to mark a break in this uninterrupted series "bad news": in Argentina, street protests have caused an unprecedented merry-go-round of presidents (five in fifteen days), they have take the form of "self-organised" neighbourhood assemblies and have loudly rejected "all the politicians".

Revolutionaries have a duty to follow closely such social movements, in order to take position and to intervene wherever the working class finds an expression. It is certainly true that the workers have taken part in the wave of mobilisations in Argentina, and that some isolated struggles have adopted clear class demands and confronted official trade-unionism. We express our solidarity with these combats, but the best contribution we can make as a revolutionary organisation is to analyse events as clearly as we are able. This clarity will determine the ability of revolutionary organisations to intervene adequately, by referring constantly to the historic and international framework defined by the marxist method. The worst thing that the vanguard organisations of the world proletariat could do would be to sow illusions within the working class, encouraging its weaknesses and letting it mistake its defeats for victories. Far from helping the proletariat to regain the initiative, to develop its struggles on its own class terrain, to assert itself as the only social force in total opposition to capitalism, this could only make such a recovery much more difficult.

From this perspective the question we have to ask ourselves is: what is the class nature of events in Argentina? Is it a movement where the proletariat is developing its "self-organisation" and "breaking" with capitalism as the IBRP says? Our answer has to be a resolute NO. The proletariat in Argentina has been drowned and diluted in a movement of inter-classist revolt, a movement of popular protest which has expressed not the proletariat's strength, but its weakness. The class has been unable to assert either its political autonomy or its self-organisation.

The proletariat has no need to console itself or to clutch at illusions. What it does need, is to rediscover the path of its own revolutionary perspective, to assert itself on the social stage as the sole class able to offer humanity a future, and in doing so to draw behind itself the other non-exploiting strata of society. To do so, the proletariat must look reality in the face, it cannot be afraid of reality. In order to develop its consciousness, and to raise its struggle to match what is at stake in the historical situation today, it cannot spare itself the deepest criticism of its own weaknesses and mistakes, a profound reflection on the difficulties it encounters on the way. The events in Argentina will serve the world proletariat - and the proletariat in Argentina whose combative capacities have not been exhausted, far from it - as a clear lesson: inter-classist revolts do not weaken the power of the bourgeoisie but of the proletariat itself.

The collapse of the Argentine economy is a clear manifestation of the worsening of the crisis

We will not embark here on a detailed analysis of the economic crisis in Argentina. We refer readers to our territorial press (see in particular Révolution Internationale n°s319 and 320).

Of particular significance in this situation is the brutal rise in unemployment from 7% in 1992 to 17% in October 2001 and then to 30% in the space of only 3 months (December 2001), and the appearance, for the first time since the Spanish colonial era, of hunger in a country which until recently was considered to be very near a "European level" and whose principle products are precisely meat and wheat.

Far from being a local phenomenon, caused by corruption or a desire to "live like Europeans", the Argentine crisis is a new episode in the aggravation of the capitalist economic crisis. This crisis is world-wide and affects all countries. But that does not mean it affects all of them in the same way or at the same level. "While it does not spare any country, the world crisis exerts its most devastating effects not on the most powerful, developed countries, but on the countries which arrived too late in the world economic arena and whose path towards development has been definitely barred by the old powers" ("The proletariat of Western Europe at the centre of the generalisation of the class struggle" International Review no31). Furthermore, faced with the worsening of the crisis the more powerful countries have taken measures to defend themselves from its effects, and to deflect them onto the weakest countries ("liberalisation" of world trade, "globalisation" of financial transactions, investments in the key sectors of the weakest countries by means of privatisation, the policies of the IMF etc, i.e., all that which has been called "globalisation"). This is nothing other than the application to the whole world economy, by the largest countries, of a series of state capitalist policies designed to protect themselves from the crisis and to make its worst effects fall upon the weakest (See International Review no106, "Report on the economic crisis"). The figures supplied by the World Bank (World Development Indicators 2001) are eloquent in this respect: between 1980 and 2000 private creditors received from all the countries of Latin America $192 billion more than they had lent them, whereas in 1999-2002, in only two years, this difference was no less than $86.2 billion, that is to say, nearly half the amount paid in the previous 20 years. For its part, the IMF between 1980 and 2000 granted $71.3 billion in credits to the countries of South America whilst in the same period these countries repaid it £87.7 billion!

And the situation in Argentina is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind Argentina there are other of countries, equally important for various reasons -their supply of oil, their strategic position, etc - who are potential candidates for the same economic and political collapse: Venezuela, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Saudi Arabia ?

An autonomous proletarian movement or a blind and chaotic inter-classist revolt?

As the IBRP states tersely in its Italian publication: capitalism responds to hunger with more hunger. They also make it clear that the various "economic solutions" proposed by governments, oppositions or "alternative movements" such as the Social Forum of Porto Alegre, offer no alternative. These demagogues' ingenious concoctions have been discredited one after the other by the facts of 30 years of crisis (see the report on the crisis in International Review no106 and "30 years of capitalist crisis" in International Review n°s 96 to 98). They therefore correctly conclude that "It is useless deluding oneself: at this stage of the crisis capitalism doesn't have anything else to offer beyond generalised poverty and war. Only the proletariat can halt this tragic course" (IBRP web site, op.cit.).

And yet, the IBRP evaluates the protest movements in Argentina as follows: "Spontaneously proletarians went out onto the streets, drawing with them young people, students and substantial sections of the proletarianised petty bourgeoisie who are pauperised like themselves. Together they directed their anger against capitalist sanctuaries: banks, offices, but above all the supermarkets and shops in general, which were attacked like the bakeries in medieval bread riots. The government, hoping to intimidate the rebels, couldn't find any better response than to instigate a savage repression, resulting in dozens of deaths and thousands wounded. The revolt wasn't extinguished but instead spread to the rest of the country and increasingly began to assume a class character."

We can distinguish three components in the social movements in Argentina:

• Firstly, the attacks on supermarkets essentially carried out by marginals, lumpens and also by the young unemployed. These movements have been ferociously repressed by the police, private vigilantes and the store owners themselves. In several cases they have degenerated into the robbing of houses in poor neighbourhoods or the looting of offices, warehouses,[3] etc. The main consequence of this "first component" of the social movement has been tragic confrontations between workers, as was illustrated by the bloody confrontation between piqueteros who wanted to take away food and the porters of the Central Market of Buenos Aires on the 11th January (see Révolution Internationale no320). For the ICC, these expressions of violence within the working class (an illustration of the methods specific to the lumpenised layers of the proletariat) are an expression of its weakness, not its strength. These violent confrontations between different parts of the working class are a barrier to its unity and can only serve the interests of the ruling class.

• The second component has been the "cacerolas [saucepan beaters] movement". This is essentially composed of the "middle classes", exasperated by the sequestration and devaluation of their savings in the so-called "little bank holiday" (the corralito). These layers are in a desperate situation. "In Argentina, poverty is combined with high unemployment, into which are falling the 'new poor', ex-members of the middle classes, due to a declining social mobility, the inverse of the wave of immigration into the country at the beginning of the 20th century" (from a web site containing summaries of the Argentine press). Employees of the public sector, pensioners, some sectors of the industrial proletariat, have shared with the petty-bourgeoisie the same terrible blow of the corralito: the efforts of a life's work, intended to supplement a wretched state pension, have practically gone up in smoke. However, none of these characteristics gives the cacerolas movement a proletarian character: it remains a popular inter-classist revolt dominated by nationalist and "ultra-democratic" thinking.

• The third component is formed by a series of workers struggles. There have been strikes by teachers in most of Argentina's 23 provinces; a combative movement by railway workers at a national level and the struggle of the bank workers. The struggles at the Ramos Mejias hospital in Buenos Aires, and at the Bruckmann factory in Gran Buenos Aires led to clashes with both the uniformed police and the trade unions;. During the last two years, there have been numerous mobilisations by the unemployed with those involved blocking roads throughout the country (the famous "piqueteros").

Obviously, revolutionaries cannot but salute the immense combativity displayed by the working class in Argentina. But as we have always said, the workers' combativity, however, strong, is not the only or even the main criterion that allows us to see clearly the balance of forces between the two fundamental classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The first question we need to answer is this: could the dynamic of these workers' struggles, breaking out all over the country and in many different branches of industry, rise to a massive movement capable of leaping the fire-breaks put in place by the ruling class (notably the democratic opposition and the unions)? The reality of events obliges us to answer: no. It is precisely because these workers' struggles remained scattered, and proved unable to develop into a massive unified movement of the whole working class, that the proletariat in Argentina proved incapable of putting itself at the head of a movement of social protest, and drawing the rest of the non-exploiting strata in its wake. On the contrary, because the workers' were unable to take the lead in the movement, their own struggles were drowned and polluted by the hopeless revolt of other social strata. While they may themselves be the victims of the collapse of the Argentine economy, these latter have no historic future. For marxists, the only method that allows us to see clearly in such a situation is summed up by the question: Who is leading the movement? What class has taken the initiative and imprinted its dynamic on events? Only if they can answer this question correctly can revolutionaries contribute to the proletariat's advance towards its own liberation, and therefore the liberation of humanity from the tragic course that capitalism is leading it down.

And here the IBRP makes a serious error of method. It is not the proletariat that has pulled along the students, the young and large sections of the petty-bourgeoisie: on the contrary, it is the desperate, confused and chaotic revolt of a mixture of popular layers that has drowned and diluted the working class. Even a superficial examination of the positions, demands and type of mobilisation of the neighbourhood assemblies that have proliferated in Buenos Aires and which have spread throughout the country demonstrates this with brutal clarity. What was said in the announcement of the "world cacerolazo" on 2nd/3rd February 2002 which found a widespread echo in more than 20 cities on 4 continents? Well: "Global cacerolazo. We are all Argentines - everybody into the street in New York - Porto Alegre - Barcelona - Toronto - Montreal ( add your city and your country) the thieving world bank - Alca - multinationals - away with them all! Governments and politicians are corrupt, none of them should remain, not one of them! Long live the popular assemblies! People of Argentina arise!". This "programme" for all its anger against "politicians" is the same as that defended everyday by those self-same politicians, from the extreme right to the extreme left, and even by "ultra-liberal" governments, all of which know how to "criticise" ultra-liberalism, the multinationals, corruption etc.

Moreover, this movement of "people's protest" has been strongly marked by extreme and reactionary nationalism. In all the demonstrations of the neighbourhood assemblies the same aim has been repeated ad nauseam: "create another Argentina", "rebuild our country on its own foundations". On the Internet sites of the various neighbourhood assemblies there are nationalist debates such as: "Should we pay the foreign debt?"; "Should we use the peso or the dollar?". One web site commendably proposes the "education and the becoming conscious" of the people and the opening of a debate on Rousseau's Social Contract[4] and calls for a return to the Argentine classics of the 19th century such as San Martin or Sarmiento. One would have to be blind (or prefer reassuring fairy tales to reality) not to see that this nationalism has also infected the workers' struggles: the TELAM workers lead their demonstrations with Argentine flags; in a workers' neighbourhood of Gran Buenos Aires the assembly held against the payment of a new municipal tax began and ended by singing the national anthem.

Because it was inter-classist and without perspectives, this movement could do nothing else but demand the same reactionary solutions that have led to the tragic situation in which the population is plunged. But this repetition of the old, this search for its poetry in the past, is the most eloquent testimony to the character of this impotent and futureless social revolt. As is shown with all sincerity by a participant in the assemblies "Many have said that we do not make proposals, that all we can do is to oppose. And with pride we can say that this is true, we are opposed to the established system of neo-liberalism. Like a bow drawn taut by oppression, we are arrows unleashed against the totalitarian domination of ultra-liberal thinking, Our action will be sustained by our people, inch by inch, in order to exercise the oldest people's right, popular resistance" (taken from the web site www.cacerolazo.org) [17].

In Argentina in 1969-73 the events in Cordoba, the Mendoza strike, the tide of strikes that inundated the country, were the key to social evolution. Although they were far from being insurrectionary in character, these struggles marked the reawakening of the proletariat, which conditioned all the political and social agenda of the country.

But in the Argentina of December 2001, with the worsening decomposition of capitalist society, the situation is no longer the same. The proletariat is confronted today by new difficulties, obstacles which it still has to overcome in order to assert itself and develop its class identity and autonomy. Unlike the period at the beginning of the 1970s, the social situation in Argentina today has been marked by an inter-classist movement, which has diluted the proletariat's strength and proven impotent to affect the political situation any more than ephemerally. The movement of the cacerolas has certainly achieved an exploit worthy of the Guinness Book of Records, with the overthrow of five presidents in fifteen days. But all this is shortlived. Whatever the clique in government, it is still the bourgeoisie that holds power in Argentina, as elsewhere. Now, the web sites of the popular assemblies bitterly argue about how the movement has dissipated itself as if by magic to such an extent that the astute Duhalde has managed to re-establish order without having to lessen, in the least, galloping poverty and without his economic plan leading to even the most minimal solution.

The lesson from events in Argentina

In the present historical period, which we have defined as the phase of capitalism's decomposition,[5] the proletariat runs a serious risk: that it will lose its class identity, lack confidence in itself, in its revolutionary capacity for establishing itself as an autonomous and determining social force in the evolution of society. This danger is the product of several interconnected factors:

• The blow to the proletariat's consciousness as a result of the collapse of the Eastern countries and the bourgeoisie's ability to identify this with the "collapse of communism" and "the historic failure of Marxism and the class struggle";

• The weight of the capitalist system's decomposition, that is eroding social ties and encouraging an atmosphere of competition even between sectors of the proletariat itself;

• The fear of politics and politicisation which is a consequence of the form taken by the counter-revolution (by means of Stalinism "from within" the proletarian bastion and the parties of the revolutionary proletariat's own Communist International) and the enormous historical blow delivered by the successive degeneration of two of the best creations of the proletariat's political capacity and consciousness within the space of a generation: firstly the Socialist Parties and then, barely ten years later, the Communist parties.

This danger could end up stopping it taking the initiative faced with the profound collapse of the whole of society, which the historical crisis of capitalism is leading towards. Argentina clearly shows this potential danger: the general paralysis of the economy and important convulsions in the bourgeois political apparatus, have not been used by the proletariat in order to establish itself as an autonomous social force, struggling for its own aims and drawing the other layers of society along in its wake. Submerged in an inter-classist movement, typical of the decomposition of bourgeois society, the proletariat has been dragged into a sterile and futureless revolt.

For this reason the speculation, by the Trotskyists, autonomists, anarchists, and the "anti-globalisation" movement in general, about the events in Argentina representing the "beginning of a revolution", as "a new movement", or as "a practical demonstration that another society is possible" is very dangerous.

What is more worrying is that the IBRP should have echoed these confused ramblings by contributing its own illusions about the "strength of the proletariat in Argentina".[6]

These speculations disarm the young minorities, secreted globally by the proletariat, who are searching for a revolutionary alternative faced with a world that is falling apart. Therefore, for us it is important to explain the reasons for the IBRP's belief that it has encountered gigantic "class movements" which in reality are nothing but the windmills of inter-classist revolts.

First of all, the IBRP has always rejected the concept of the historic course with which we have tried to understand the evolution of the balance of forces between the proletariat and bourgeoisie in the present historical situation opened up by the historic resurgence of the proletariat since 1968. To the IBRP all this appears as idealist "prognostics and predictions".[7] Their rejection of this historical method leads them to an immediatist and empirical vision as much in regards to military events as to the class struggle. It is worth recalling the IBRP's analysis of the Gulf War, presented as "the beginning of World War III". The same photographic method led the IBRP to present the palace revolution which brought down the Ceausescu regime in Romania almost as a "revolution": "Romania is the first country in the industrialised regions where the world economic crisis has given birth to a real an authentic popular revolution, which has resulted in the overthrow of the government (?) in Romania are gathered all the objective, and almost all the subjective conditions for transforming the insurrection into a real and authentic social revolution" ("Ceausescu is dead, but capitalism still lives", in Battaglia Comunista, January 1990).

Clearly, rejecting any kind of analysis of the historic course can only leave one at the mercy of immediate events. The absence of any method for analysing the world historic situation and the real balance of class forces leads the IBRP to the idea that we are on the verge of World War III one day, of the proletarian revolution the next. How - according to the IBRP's analytical "method" - the proletariat is supposed to pass from a situation where it is enrolled behind the flags of nationalism in preparation for a Third World War, to one where it is ready to launch a revolutionary assault, remains for us a mystery, and we are still waiting for the IBRP to give us a coherent explanation of its oscillations.

For ourselves, rather than this demoralising to-ing and fro-ing, we are convinced that only the lodestone of a global and historic vision can prevent revolutionaries being the playthings of events, and deceiving them into mistaking popular revolts for proletarian class struggle.

The IBRP endlessly ridicules our theory of the decomposition of capitalism, saying that "it is used to explain everything". Nevertheless, the concept of decomposition is very important in making precisely this distinction between revolts and the class struggle of the proletariat. Such a distinction is essential in our time. The present situation of capitalism does indeed lead to protest, tumult, clashes between classes, layers and fractions. Revolt is the blind and impotent fruit of the convulsions of a dying society. It does not help to overcome its contradictions but rather aggravates them. It is the expression of one of the outcomes of the general perspectives put forwards by the Communist Manifesto for the class struggle throughout history: "a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes". It is this second alternative, the "common ruin of the contending classes", which is the foundation for the concept of capitalism's decomposition. This is the contrary to the class struggle of the proletariat which, if it is able to find expression on its own class terrain and preserve its autonomy by advancing towards its extension and self-organisation, has the potential to become "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" (ibid). All the efforts of the most conscious elements of the proletariat and in a more general way of struggling workers must avoid confusing revolt with autonomous class struggle, must struggle to prevent the weight of general social decomposition dragging the proletariat into the dead end of blind revolt. Whilst the terrain of revolt leads to the progressive exhaustion of the capabilities of the proletariat, the terrain of the class struggle leads towards the revolutionary destruction of the capitalist state in all countries.

The proletarian perspective

However, while the events in Argentina clearly show the danger facing the proletariat if it allows itself to be dragged onto the rotten terrain of "popular" inter-classist revolt, the endgame of social evolution towards barbarism or towards revolution will not be played out there, but in the world's great working class concentrations, and especially in Western Europe.

"A social revolution is not simply the breaking of a chain, the breakdown of the old society. It is also and at the same time an action for the construction of a new society. It is not a mechanical event but a social fact indissolubly linked to the antagonism of human interests, to the aspirations and struggle of classes" (International Review no31). The mechanical and vulgar materialist visions see in the proletarian revolution only the aspect of the explosion of capitalism but are incapable of seeing the most important and decisive aspect - its revolutionary destruction by the proletarian class's conscious action, that is, what Lenin and Trotsky called the "subjective factor". These vulgar materialist visions are a barrier to an awareness of the gravity of the historical situation, marked by capitalism's entry into the ultimate phase of its decadence: its decomposition. Moreover, mechanistic and contemplative materialism is "content" with the "objectively revolutionary" aspect: the inexorable aggravation of the economic crisis, social convulsions, the rottenness of the ruling class. Vulgar materialism airily dismisses the dangers to the proletariat's consciousness and the development of its unity and self-confidence that are contained in capitalism's decomposition (as well as in its ideological use by the ruling class).[8]

But the key to the revolutionary perspective in our epoch is precisely the capacity of the proletariat to develop the "subjective" elements in its struggles (confidence, the confidence in its revolutionary future, unity and class solidarity) that will allow it progressively to counteract and eventually overcome the weight of the social and ideological decomposition of capitalism. And it is precisely in the great proletarian concentrations of Western Europe that the most favourable conditions exist for this development: "?Social revolutions did not take place where the old ruling class was weakest and its structures the least developed, but, on the contrary, where its structures had reached the highest point compared to the productive forces, and where the class bearing the new relations of production destined to replace the old was strongest (?) Marx and Engels looked for and based their perspective on the points where the proletariat was strongest, most concentrated and best placed to carry out the social transformation. Because, while the crisis hits the underdeveloped countries most brutally precisely as a result of their economic weakness and their lack of a margin for manoeuvre, we must not forget that the source of the crisis lies in overproduction and thus in the main centres of capitalist development. This is another reason why the conditions for a response to this crisis and for going beyond it reside fundamentally in the main centres" (ibid).

In fact, the IBRP's deformed vision of the class content of events in Argentina needs to be considered in conjunction with its analysis of the potential of the proletariat in the peripheral countries of capitalism, expressed in particular in its "Theses on communist tactics in the countries of the capitalist periphery", adopted by the 6th Congress of Battaglia Comunista (published in Italian in Prometeo n°13, June 1997, and in English in Internationalist Communist 16). According to these Theses, conditions in the countries of the periphery create there "a greater potential for the radicalisation of consciousness than in the great metropoles". As a result, "there remains the possibility that the circulation of the communist programme among the masses may be easier , and the 'level of attention' that revolutionary communists can attract higher, in relation to the social formations of advanced capitalism". We have already refuted this analysis in detail (see International Review n°100, "The class struggles in the countries of the capitalist periphery"), such that it is unnecessary to do so again here. What we will say though, is that the IBRP's distorted vision of the significance of the recent revolts in Argentina is an illustration not only of its inability to understand the ideas of capitalism's decomposition, or of the historic course, but of the incorrectness of these Theses.

Our analysis absolutely does not mean that we despise or under-estimate the struggles of the proletariat in Argentina, or in other zones where capitalism is weaker. It simply means that revolutionaries, as the advance guard of the proletariat, with a clear vision of the line of march of the proletarian movement taken as a whole, have the responsibility to contribute to the clearest and most exact vision of the strengths and limitations of the working class struggle, of who are its allies, and of the direction its struggle should take. To do so, revolutionaries must resist with all their strength the opportunist temptation - as a result of impatience, immediatism, or a historical lack of confidence in the proletariat - to mistake an inter-classist revolt (such as we have seen in Argentina) for a class movement.

Adalen, 10th March 2002

The previous articles in this series examined how the communist movement, during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, the darkest years of the counter-revolution, struggled to understand what had become of the first proletarian dictatorship to establish itself on the scale of an entire country – the Soviet power in Russia. Future essays will look at the lessons revolutionaries have drawn from the demise of this dictatorship and have applied to any future proletarian regime. But before proceeding in that direction, we must return to the days when the Russian revolution was still alive, in order to study a key aspect of the communist transformation that was raised, though not of course resolved, during that decisive period. We refer to the question of ‘culture’.

We do not do this without a certain hesitation, because the issue is so vast, and the term culture so liable to abuse. This is above all true in this age of fragmentation that we call the decomposition of capitalism. In previous phases of capitalism, ‘culture’ was, it’s true, generally identified with ‘high culture’, with the artistic productions of the ruling class alone, a vision which ignored or dismissed all its more ‘marginalised’ expressions (consider, for example, the classical bourgeois contempt for the cultural expressions of conquered primitive societies). Today, by contrast, we are told that we live in a ‘multicultural’ world, where all cultural expressions are equally valid, and where virtually every partial aspect of social life itself becomes a ‘culture’ (the ‘culture of violence’, the ‘culture of greed’, the ‘culture of dependency’, etc, etc). Such simplifications make it impossible to arrive at any general, unified notions of culture as products of entire epochs of human history, or of human history as a whole. A particularly pernicious misuse of this attitude to culture today can be seen in the current imperialist conflict over Afghanistan: we are repeatedly asked to consider whether this is a conflict between cultures, between civilisations - more precisely between ‘western civilisation’ and ‘Muslim civilisation’. This is without doubt a question designed to hide the real issue: that there is only one civilisation on the planet today, the decadent civilisation of world capital.

In contrast to this, faithful to the monist approach of marxism, Trotsky defines culture as follows: “Let us recall first of all that culture meant originally a ploughed field, as distinct from virgin forest and virgin soil. Culture was contrasted with nature, that is, what was acquired by man’s efforts was contrasted with what was given by nature. This antithesis fundamentally retains its value today.

“Culture is everything that has been created, built, learned, conquered by man in the course of his entire history, in distinction from what nature has given, including the natural history of man himself as a species of animal. The science that studies man as a product of animal evolution is called anthropology. But from the moment that man separated himself from the animal kingdom – and this happened approximately when he first grasped primitive tools of stone and wood and armed the organs of his body with them – from that time there began the creation and accumulation of culture, that is, all kinds of knowledge and skill in the struggle with nature and subjugation of nature” (‘Culture and Socialism’, 1926). This is a very broad definition indeed - a defence of the materialist view that the emergence of man, and thus the evolution from nature to culture, is the product of something as basic and as universal as labour.

The problem remains, however, that under this definition, politics and economics in their widest sense are themselves expressions of human culture, and we could be in danger of losing sight of what we are talking about. However, in another essay, ‘Not by politics alone’ (1923), Trotsky points out that to understand the real relationship between politics and culture, it is necessary, alongside its broadest meaning, to provide a more ‘restricted’ definition of the political sphere, as “specifying a definite part of public activity, directly concerned with the struggle for power and opposed to economic work, to the struggle for culture, etc”; by implication, we can say the same about the term culture, which in this context we shall largely apply to domains such as art, education, and the ‘problems of everyday life’ (the title of the collection of essays containing the two articles cited above). Seen from this angle, the cultural aspects of the revolution may appear secondary, or at least dependent on the political and economic spheres. And this is indeed the case: as Trotsky shows in the text we are re-publishing below, it is folly to expect a real cultural renaissance until the bourgeoisie has been defeated politically and the material foundations of a socialist society have been built. All the same, and even if we further narrow down the problem of culture to the realm of ‘art’, the latter still raises the deepest questions about the nature of the society that the revolution aims to create. It is no accident, for example, that Trotsky’s most elaborated contribution to the marxist theory of art, Literature and Revolution, concludes with an extended vision of the nature of man in an advanced communist society. For if art is the expression par excellence of human creativity, then it provides us with an irreplaceable key to understanding what human beings will be like once the chains of class exploitation have been definitively broken.

In order to orient ourselves in this huge domain, we intend to stick closely to Trotsky’s writings on the matter, which are not so well known but which certainly provide the clearest framework to date for approaching the problem.1 [21] And rather than restating what has already been said by Trotsky himself, we will republish extended extracts from two chapters of Literature and Revolution. The second of these will concentrate on his inspiring portrait of the future society. But in this Review we are publishing an extract from the chapter ‘What is proletarian culture and is it possible’, which is a particularly important component of Trotsky’s contribution to the debate on culture within the Bolshevik party and the revolutionary movement in Russia. In order to situate this contribution, it is necessary to describe the historical background to it.

The debate on ‘proletarian culture’ in revolutionary Russia

The fact that the debate on culture was by no means a secondary one can be illustrated by the fact that it prompted Lenin to draft the following resolution, to be presented by the Communist fraction at the Proletkult congress of 1920:

“1. All educational work in the Soviet Republic of workers and peasants, in the field of political education and in the field of art in particular, should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat for the successful achievement of its dictatorship, ie, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of classes, and the elimination of all forms of exploitation of man by man.

“2. Hence, the proletariat, both through its vanguard – the Communist Party – and through the many types of proletarian organisations in general, should display the utmost activity and play the leading part in all the work of public education.

“3. All the experience of modern history and, particularly, the more than half-century old revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in all countries since the appearance of the Communist Manifesto has unquestionably demonstrated that the marxist world outlook is the only true expression of the interests, the viewpoint, and the culture of the revolutionary proletariat.

“4. Marxism has won its historic significance as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat because, far from rejecting the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the contrary, assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture. Only further work on this basis and in this direction, inspired by the practical experience of the proletarian dictatorship as the final stage in the struggle against every form of exploitation, can be recognised as the development of a genuine proletarian culture.

“5. Adhering unswervingly to this stand of principle, the All-Russia Proletkult Congress rejects in the most resolute manner, as theoretically unsound and practically harmful, all attempts to invent one’s own particular brand of culture, to remain isolated in self-contained organisations, to draw a line dividing the field of work of the People’s Commissiariat of Education and the Proletkult, or to set up a Proletkult ‘autonomy’ within establishments under the People’s Commissariat of Education and so forth. On the contrary, the Congress enjoins all Proletkult organisations to fully consider themselves in duty bound to act as auxillary bodies of the network of establishments under the People’s Commissariat of Education, and to accomplish their tasks under the general guidance of the Soviet authorities (specifically, of the People’s Commissariat of Education) and of the Russian Communist Party, as part of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship (Lenin, ‘On proletarian culture’, October 8, 1920, Collected Works, vol 31, p 316-317).

The Proletarian Culture movement, Proletkult for short, had been formed in 1917 with the idea of providing a political orientation for the cultural dimension of the revolution. It is most often associated with Aleksander Bogdanov, who had been a member of the Bolshevik fraction in its earliest years, but who had come into conflict with Lenin over a number of issues, not only the formation of the Ultimatist group after 1905,2 [22] but, more famously, over Bogdanov’s championing of the ideas of Mach and Avenarius in the realm of philosophy, and more generally, his efforts to ‘complete’ marxism with various theoretical systems, such as his notion of ‘tectology’. We cannot go into Bogdanov’s thinking in any detail here; from what little we know of it (only certain works have been translated from Russian), he was, despite his flaws, capable of developing some important insights - in particular, on the question of state capitalism in the epoch of capitalist decline. For this very reason, his ideas still require a much more developed critique, and from a clearly proletarian standpoint.3 [23] In any case, Proletkult was by no means limited to Bogdanov: Bukharin and Lunacharsky, to name but two leading Bolsheviks, were also involved with the organisation and did not always share Lenin’s views on it. Bukharin, for example, who was due to present the resolution at the Proletkult Congress, objected to certain elements in Lenin’s draft resolution, which was presented in a somewhat modified form.

Proletkult flowered during the heroic phase of the revolution, where the unchaining of revolutionary energies also gave rise to a huge surge of expression and experimentation on the artistic front, much of it explicitly identifying itself with the revolution. This phenomenon, moreover, was not limited to Russia, as witness the development of movements such as dada and expressionism in the wake of the revolution in Germany, or, slightly later on, of surrealism in France and elsewhere. During the years 1917-20, Proletkult’s membership soared to around half a million, with over 30 journals and around 300 groups. For Proletkult, the struggle on the cultural front was of equal importance to the struggle on the political and economic front. It saw itself leading the cultural struggle, while the party led the political struggle and the trade unions the economic. It provided numerous studios for workers to come together and engage in experiments in painting, music, drama, poetry and other areas of art, while at the same time encouraging new forms of communal living, of education, and so on. It should be emphasised that the explosion of social and cultural experimentation in Russia during this period was far wider than Proletkult itself, and came under many names; but the importance of discussing Proletkult in particular, then and now, is that it attempted to situate these phenomena within an interpretation of marxism. The guiding idea behind it, as its name implies, was that the proletariat, if it was to emancipate itself from the yoke of bourgeois ideology, had to develop its own culture, which would be based on a radical break with the hierarchical culture of the old ruling classes. Proletarian culture would be egalitarian and collective where bourgeois culture had been elitist and individualist: thus, for example, experiments were made with conductorless orchestras or collective poems and paintings. Along with the futurist movement, with which Proletkult had a close but sometimes critical relationship, there was a strong tendency to exalt everything that was modern, urban, and machine-based, in contrast to the rural mediaevalism which had dominated Russian culture hitherto.

The debate on culture became a burning issue in the party once the civil war had been won. It was at this point that Lenin began to emphasise the importance of the cultural struggle: “We have to admit that there has been a very radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism. The radical modification is this: formerly we placed, and had to place, the main emphasis on the political struggle, on revolution, on winning political power, etc. Now the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organisational, ‘cultural’ work. I should say that the emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a world scale. If we leave that aside, however, and confine ourselves to internal economic relations, the emphasis in our work is certainly shifting to education” ‘On cooperation’, 1922, in Collected Works Vol 33, p 474).

But for Lenin, this cultural struggle had a very different meaning than it had for Proletkult, since it was connected to the shift from the civil war period to the reconstruction period of the NEP. For Lenin, the problem facing the Soviet power in Russia was not the construction of a new proletarian culture: this seemed to him perfectly utopian given the international isolation of the Russian state and the awful cultural backwardness of Russian society (illiteracy, predominance of religion and ‘Asiatic’ customs, etc). For Lenin, the Russian masses had to walk before they could run, which meant that they had yet to take the step of assimilating the essential achievements of bourgeois culture, let alone constructing a new proletarian one. This approach was parallel to his demand that the Soviet regime had to learn how to trade: in other words, it had to learn from the capitalists in order to survive in a capitalist environment. At the same time, Lenin was increasingly concerned that the growth of bureaucracy was a direct result of Russian cultural backwardness: the struggle for cultural advance was thus seen as part of the struggle against the rising bureaucracy. This was because only an educated and cultured proletariat could hope to take the management of the state into its own hands; at the same time, the new stratum of bureaucrats was largely seen as an outgrowth of Russia’s peasant conservatism and lack of modern culture.

The resolution submitted to the Proletkult congress, although written before the adoption of the NEP, seems to anticipate these concerns. Its strongest point is where it insists that marxism did not reject the cultural achievements of the past, but had in fact assimilated all that was best in them. This was a very clear repudiation of Proletkult’s ‘iconoclasm’, its tendency to reject all previous cultural developments. Although Bogdanov himself had a much more sophisticated approach to this issue, there is no doubt that the immediatist and workerist attitude was very influential in Proletkult. At its first conference, for example, the view was expressed that “all culture of the past might be called bourgeois, that within it – except for natural science and technical skills…there was nothing worthy of life, and that the proletariat would begin the work of destroying the old culture and creating the new immediately after the revolution” (cited on p 71 of Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution by Richard Stites, OUP 1989 – a very detailed survey of the numerous cultural experiments in the early years of the revolution). In Tambov in 1919, “local Proletkultists planned to burn all the books in the libraries in the belief that the shelves would be filled on the first of the new year with nothing but proletarian works” (ibid).

Against this vision of the past, Trotsky insisted in Literature and Revolution that “we marxists have always lived in tradition and we have not because of this ceased to be revolutionaries….” . The exaltation of the proletariat as it is at any given moment has never been the marxist attitude, which sees the proletariat in its historic dimension, embracing the remotest past, the present, and the future, when the proletariat will have dissolved into the human community. By an irony of language Proletkult often became a ‘cult of the proletariat’, which is radical only in appearance and can be easily recuperated by opportunism, which thrives on a restricted and immediate vision of the class. This same workerism was expressed by Proletkult’s tendency to assume that proletarian culture could only be the product of industrial workers. But as Trotsky argued in Literature and Revolution, the best artists were not necessarily workers; the social dialectic which produces the most radical works of art is more complex than the reductionist view that it has to come from individual members of the revolutionary class. The same, we might add, is true of the relationship between the social and political revolution of the proletariat and new artistic breakthroughs: there is an underlying connection, but it is neither mechanical nor national. For example: while Proletkult was trying to create a new ‘proletarian’ music in Russia, one of the most striking developments in contemporary music took place in capitalist America, with the eruption of jazz.

Lenin’s resolution also expresses his antagonism to Proletkult’s tendency to organise itself in an autonomous manner, almost as a parallel party, with congresses, a central committee, and so on. And indeed this mode of organisation does seem to be based on a real confusion between the political and the cultural sphere, a tendency to conflate the two, and, in Bogdanov’s case, even a temptation to see the cultural sphere as the most crucial.

On a more critical note, however, we should bear in mind that this was the period when Lenin was becoming hostile to any form of dissent in the party. As we noted in previous articles in this series, in 1921 ‘fractions’ were banned and left wing groups or currents within the party came under open attack, culminating in the physical repression of left communist groups in 1923. And one of the reasons for Lenin’s antagonism towards Proletkult was that it tended to be a rallying point for certain dissenting elements within or around the party. Proletkult’s emphasis on egalitarianism and the spontaneous creativity of the industrial workers intersected with the views of the Workers’ Opposition; and in 1921 a group calling itself the Collectivists circulated a text at the Proletkult congress, claiming adherence to the Workers’ Opposition and Proletkult; it also defended Bogdanov’s views on philosophy and his analysis of state capitalism, which was used to criticise the NEP. A year later, the Workers’ Truth group put forward very similar views; Bogdanov was briefly imprisoned for involvement with the latter group, although he denied supporting it in any way. (Following this episode, Bogdanov withdrew from active involvement in politics and concentrated on scientific work). Thus Lenin’s insistence that Proletkult more or less dissolve itself into the state’s ‘cultural’ institution, the People’s Commissariat for Education, has to be seen in this light.

In our view, the direct subordination of artistic movements to the transitional state is not the correct answer to confusion between the artistic and the political spheres; indeed, it tends to compound it. According to Zenovia Sochor in Revolution and Culture, Trotsky was opposed to Lenin’s efforts to liquidate Proletkult into the state, even though he agreed with many of Lenin’s criticisms of Proletkult (see p154). In Literature and Revolution, he puts forward a clearer basis for determining the communist policy towards art: “The marxist method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does not do more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means. The marxist methods are not the same as the artistic. The party leads the proletariat but not the entire process of history. There are domains in which the party leads, directly and imperatively. There are domains in which it only cooperates. There are, finally, domains in which it only orients itself. The domain of art is not one in which the party is called upon to command. It can and must protect and help it, but it can only lead it indirectly. It can and must give the additional credit of its confidence to various art groups, which are striving sincerely to approach the revolution and so help an artistic formulation of the revolution. And at any rate, the party cannot and will not take the position of a literary circle which is struggling and merely competing with other literary circles” (chapter 7, ‘Communist policy towards art’). In 1938, in response to the Nazi and Stalinist project of reducing art to a mere adjunct of state propaganda, Trotsky was even more explicit: “If, for the better development of material production, the revolution must build a socialist regime with centralised control, to develop intellectual creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty should from the first be established. No authority, no dictation, not the least trace of orders from above!” (Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art, New York, 1970, p 119)

Trotsky also went deeper than Lenin on the general problem of proletarian culture; while Lenin’s resolution leaves space for this concept, Trotsky rejected it altogether; and he did this on the basis of a searching reflection on the nature of the proletariat as the first revolutionary class in history to be a class without property, an exploited class. This understanding, a key to grasping virtually every aspect of the proletarian class struggle, is elaborated very clearly in the extract from Literature and Revolution published below. There is also a very succinct summary of his thesis on proletarian culture in the short introduction to the book: “It is fundamentally incorrect to contrast bourgeois culture and bourgeois art with proletarian culture and proletarian art. The latter will never exist, because the proletarian regime is temporary and transient. The historic significance and moral grandeur of the proletarian revolution consists in the fact that it is laying the foundations of a culture which is above classes and which will be the first culture that is truly human”.

Literature and Revolution was written in the period 1923-24 – in other words, the very period in which the struggle of the left against the rising Stalinist bureaucracy was beginning in earnest. Trotsky wrote the book on his summer holiday. In some ways, it provided a relief from the stresses and strains of the day-to-day ‘political’ combat within the party. But at another level, it was part of the struggle against Stalinism. Although the original Proletkult had gone into a sharp decline following the party controversy of 1920-1, the middle 20s saw parts of it reincarnated in the false radicalism which is one of the faces of Stalinism. Thus, in 1925, one of its offshoots, the group of Proletarian Writers, provides an explicit ‘cultural’ apology for the bureaucracy’s campaign against Trotskyism: “Trotsky denies the possibility of a class proletarian culture and art on the grounds that we are moving towards a classless society. But on that very basis, Menshevism denies the necessity of a class dictatorship, of a class state, and so on…The views of Trotsky and Voronsky cited above are ‘Trotskyism applied to questions of ideology and art’. Here the ‘left’ phraseology about classless art is interwoven with, and serves to disguise, opportunistic limitations of the cultural tasks of the proletariat”. Later in the same text, it is claimed that “This significant success of proletarian literature has been possible only on the basis of the rapid political and economic growth of the working masses of the Soviet Union” (‘Resolution of the First All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers’, published in Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia, part 2, edited by William G Rosenberg, University of Michigan, 1990). But this “political and economic growth” was now to be carried out under the banner of ‘socialism in one country’. Stalin’s monstrous ideological revision, which merged the proletarian dictatorship with socialism in order to undermine both, thus allowed certain strands of Proletkult to claim that a new proletarian culture was actually being built on the foundations of a socialist economy.

Bukharin also rejected Trotsky’s critique of proletarian culture on the grounds that he failed to understand that the transition period to the communist society could be an extremely long-drawn out process. Owing to the phenomenon of uneven development, the period of proletarian dictatorship might well last long enough for a distinctive proletarian culture to emerge. This too was the theoretical basis for abandoning the perspective of world revolution in favour of building ‘socialism’ in isolated Russia.4 [24]

The bloody and oppressive record of the Stalinist states at the economic and political level is proof enough that what was being built in these countries had nothing whatever to do with socialism. But the utter cultural vacuity of these regimes, their suppression of all real artistic creativity in favour of the most nauseating kind of totalitarian kitsch, provides further confirmation that they were never an expression of an advance towards a truly human culture, but a particularly brutal product of this senile and moribund capitalist system. The way the Stalinist apparatus in Russia from the 1930s onwards did away with all ‘avant-garde’ experimentation in art and education, together with the so-called ‘cultural revolution’ in China in the 1960s, are perhaps the most compelling examples of this. The sorry history of the Stalinist/Maoist leviathans offers no lessons whatever about the cultural issues confronting the working class in the future revolution.

CDW

The ICC recently held an Extraordinary International Conference principally devoted to questions of organisation. We will return to the work of the Conference in the next issue of this Review, and in our territorial press. This being said, given that the questions treated bore a strong similarity to those we have had to deal with in the past, we consider it worthwhile to publish extracts of an internal document[1] [31] (adopted unanimously by the ICC) which served as a basis for the combat for the defence of the organisation that we undertook in 1993-95, and which was described in the International Review n°82 on the 11th Congress of the ICC.

The activities report of the October 1993 IB[2] [32] Plenum noted the existence, or the persistence, within the ICC of organisational difficulties in a large number of sections. The report for the 10th International Congress had already amply dealt with these difficulties. It had in particular insisted on the necessity for a greater international unity of the organisation, of a more vital and rigorous centralisation of the latter. The present difficulties prove that the effort realised by this report and the debates of the 10th Congress, while indispensable were still insufficient. The malfunctioning through the last period shows the existence within the ICC of latenesses, gaps in the comprehension of questions, a loss of sight of the framework of our organisational principles. Such a situation gives us the responsibility to go still further to the root of the questions that were raised at the 10th Congress. It means in particular that the organisation, the sections and all the militants examine once more, basic questions and in particular the principles that underpin an organisation that struggles for communism (...).

A reflection of this type took place in 81-82 after the crisis that had gripped the ICC (loss of half the section in GB, haemorrhage of 40 members of the organisation). The basis of this reflection was given by the report on the "Structure and functioning of the organisation" adopted by the extraordinary conference of January 1982. In this sense this document still remains a reference for the whole of the organisation.[3] [33] The following text sees itself as a complement, an illustration and an actualisation (based on subsequent experience) of the text of 1982. In particular, it proposes to draw the attention of the organisation and the militants to the living experience not only of the ICC but also of other revolutionary organisations in history.

The importance of the problem in history

The question of the structure and functioning of the organisation has been posed at all stages of the workers' movement. Each time, the implications of such questioning have assumed the greatest importance. This is no accident. The question of organisation concentrates a whole series of essential aspects that are fundamental to the proletariat's revolutionary perspective:

• the fundamental characteristics of communist society and of the relations between the members of the latter;
• the being of the proletariat as a class which is the bearer of communism;
• the nature of class consciousness, the characteristics of its development and deepening and extension within the class;
• the role of the communist organisation in the coming to consciousness of the proletariat.

The consequences of the development of disagreements on organisational questions are often dramatic, even catastrophic for the life of political organisations of the proletariat. This is for the following reasons:

• such disagreements are, in the last resort, the revelation of the penetration within the organisation of ideological influences foreign to the proletariat, coming from the bourgeoisie or petit-bourgeoisie;
• more than disagreements on other questions they necessarily have implications for the functioning of the organisation, even affecting its unity, or existence;
• in particular they tend to take a more personalised and thus emotional form.

• the conflict between the General Council of the IWA and the ‘Alliance';
• the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in the course of and following the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in 1903.

In the first example, it is clear that the constitution within the IWA of the "International Alliance of Socialist Democracy" was a sign of petit bourgeois influence, which the workers' movement has been regularly confronted with since its beginning. It was thus no accident that the Alliance recruited principally from professions close to the artisans (the watchmakers of Jura in Switzerland for example) and in the regions where the proletariat was still weakly developed (as in Italy and particularly in Spain).

Moreover the constitution of the Alliance presented a particularly grave danger for the whole of the IWA to the extent that:

• it was an "international within the international" (Marx) existing within and without the latter, which, in itself put its unity in question;
• it was, moreover, clandestine, including for the IWA, since it proclaimed its dissolution while continuing to function;
• it opposed the organisational conceptions of the IWA in particular its centralisation (it defended federalism) while being itself ultra-centralised around a "central committee" directed with an iron hand by Bakunin and imposing on its members "the most severe discipline founded on a total abnegation and the gift of oneself by each and every one" (Bakunin).

The Alliance was a living negation of the basis on which the International was founded. If the latter had fallen into the hands of the Alliance it would have been destroyed, and so Marx and Engels were right, at the Hague Congress of 1872, to propose and obtain the transfer to New York of the General Council. They knew that this transfer would lead the IWA towards a progressive extinction (in 1876) but, to the extent that it was condemned anyway following the crushing of the Paris Commune (which had caused a profound reflux in the class), they preferred this end to a degeneration which would have discredited all the positive work that had been accomplished between 1864-72.

Finally it must be noted that the conflict between the IWA and the Alliance had taken a very personalised form between Marx and Bakunin. The latter, who had only joined the IWA in 1868 (following the setback to his attempt at cooperation with bourgeois democrats within the "League of Peace and Liberty"), accused Marx of being the "dictator" of the General Council and thus the whole of the IWA.[4] [34] This was completely false (its enough to read the proceedings of the General Council meetings and the International Congresses to be convinced of it). On the other hand Marx (rightly) denounced the intrigues of the secret chief of the Alliance, intrigues which were facilitated by the secret character of the latter and by the sectarian conceptions inherited from a past epoch of the workers' movement. It must be noted moreover that these sectarian and conspiratorial conceptions, coming from the charisma of Bakunin, favourised his personal influence on his followers and the exercise of his authority as a "guru". Finally the persecution of which he pretended to be victim was one of the means by which he sowed unease and won supporters among a certain number of ill-informed workers or those sensitive to petit bourgeois ideology.

One finds the same type of characteristics in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks that took place from the beginning around organisational questions.

As it became obvious later, the approach of the Mensheviks was determined by the penetration of Russian Social Democracy, by bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideologies (even if certain conceptions of the Bolsheviks were themselves the result of a bourgeois Jacobinist vision). In particular as Lenin noted "The bulk of the opposition has been formed by the intellectual elements of our party" which were one of the vehicles for petit-bourgeois conceptions on organisation.

In the second place, the conception of the organisation which the Mensheviks held at the 2nd Congress, and which Trotsky shared for a long time (although he was clearly separated from them, notably on the nature of the revolution in Russia and the tasks of the proletariat within it), turned its back on the necessities of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and carried within it the destruction of the organisation. On one hand, it was incapable of making a clear distinction between members of the party and sympathisers as was shown by the disagreement between Lenin and Martov, leader of the Mensheviks on point 1 of the statutes.[5] [35] On the other hand and above all it was the expression of a past period of the movement (as the Alliance had been marked by the sectarian period of the workers' movement): "Under the name of the ‘minority' heterogeneous elements are regrouped in the Party who are united by the desire, conscious or not, to maintain the relations of a circle, previous organisation forms to the party. Certain eminent militants of the most influential old circles, not having the habit of organisational restrictions that the Party must impose, are inclined to mechanically confuse the general interests of the Party and their circle interests which can coincide in the period of circles". (Lenin, One step forward, two steps back). In particular through their petit-bourgeois approach these elements "...naturally raise the standard of revolt against the indispensable restrictions of the organisation and they establish their spontaneous anarchism as a principle of struggle ... making demands in favour of ‘tolerance' etc" (ibid).

In the third place the spirit of the circle and the individualism of the Mensheviks led them to the personalisation of political questions. The most dramatic point of the congress, which created an irreparable gulf between the two groups, was that of the nomination to the different responsible positions of the party, and in particular to the Editorial Board of Iskra, which was considered as the party's real political leadership (the Central Committee being concerned essentially with organisational questions). Before the congress this editorship was composed of six members: (Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov, Axelrod, Starover (Potressov) and Vera Zassoulich). But only the first three were real editors, the latter three did practically nothing, or were content to send articles.[6] [36] In order to go beyond "the spirit of the circle" which animated the old editorship, and particularly its three least committed members, Lenin proposed to the Congress a formula permitting the nomination of a more appropriate Editorial Board without this appearing as a motion of distrust towards the three militants: the Congress elected an Editorial Board restricted to the three members who could later co-opt other militants in agreement with the central committee. Whilst this formula had been accepted initially by Martov and the other editors, the latter changed his mind at the end of the debate which had opposed him to Lenin on the question of the statutes (and which brought out the fact that these old comrades risked losing their positions): he asked (in fact Trotsky proposed a resolution in this sense) that the old Editorial Board of six members be "confirmed" by the congress. It was eventually Lenin's proposition that was carried and provoked the anger and lamentations of those who became Mensheviks (minority). Martov "in the name of the majority of the old Editorial Board" declared: "Since a committee of three has been elected, I declare in the name of my three comrades and myself that no one amongst us will join it. Personally I take it as an insult to be a candidate for this function and the simple supposition that 1 would consent to work there would be considered by me as a stain on my political reputation."

For political considerations, Martov substituted the sentimental defence of his old friends, victims of the "state of siege in the party", the defence of "slighted honour". For his part, the Menshevik Tsarev, declared: "How can the non-elected members of the editorhip behave if the congress no longer wants them to participate in the editorship?". The Bolsheviks denounced the conspiratorial way of presenting the problems.[7] [37] Later the Mensheviks refused and sabotaged the decisions of the congress, boycotting the central organs elected by the latter and launching systematic personal attacks against Lenin. For example, Trotsky called him ‘Maximillian Lenin', accusing him of wishing to "take on the role of the incorruptible" (Robespierre) and of instituting a "Republic of Virtue and Terror'" (Report of the Siberian delegation). One is struck by the resemblance between these accusations launched by the Mensheviks against Lenin and that of the Alliance against Marx and his "dictatorship", Faced with this attitude of the Mensheviks, the personalisation of political questions, the attacks which took him as the target and the subjectivity of Martov and his friends, Lenin replied: "When I consider the approach of the friends of Martov after the congress (...) 1 can only say that it is unworthy of members of the party, destroying the party ... And why? Originally because one is unhappy with the composition of the central organs, because objectively it is only this question which separates us, subjective appreciations (like offence, insult, expulsion, being put to one side, stigmatising, etc.) which are nothing but the fruit of wounded self-love and a sick imagination. This imagination and this wounded self-love lead straight to the most shameful gossip: without having taken knowledge of the activity of the new centres, nor having seen them at work, gossip is spread on their ‘deficiencies', on the ‘iron fist' of Ivan Nikiforovitch etc (...) This is the last and difficult step for Russian Social Democracy to take, from the circle spirit to the party spirit; from the petit-bourgeois mentality to the consciousness of  revolutionary duty; from gossip and the pressure of circles, considered as means of action, to discipline" ("Report on the Second Congress of the RSDLP", Works, vol.7).

Organisational problems in the history of the ICC

As with the other organisations of the proletariat (...) the ICC has been affected by organisational difficulties similar to those we have just dealt with above. Among these difficulties we can mention the following moments:

• 1974: the debate on  centralisation in the group Révolution Internationale (the future section of the ICC in France),  the formation and departure of the "Berard tendency".
• 1978: the formation of the "Sam-MM tendency" which founded the GCI in 1979.
• 1981: the crisis of the ICC, the formation and departure of the "Chenier tendency".
• 1984: appearance of the minority which, in 1985 constituted a "tendency" then left the ICC to form the EFICC (so-called "External Fraction of the ICC").
• 1987-88: difficulties in the Spanish section leading to the loss of the Northern section.
• 1988: dynamic of contestation and demobilisation in the Paris section, brought out by the 8th Congress of RI (Révolution Internationale, the ICC's section in France) due to the weight of decomposition in our ranks.

(...) From these moments of difficulty one may identify, despite their differences, a series of common characteristics which connect them to the problems encountered before in the history of the workers movement:

• the weight of petit-bourgeois ideology, particularly individualism;
• putting into question the unitary and centralised framework of the organisation;
• the importance taken by personal and subjective questions.

It would take too long to review all these difficult periods. We must be content to bring out the characteristics that have always been present in them to different degrees.

a) The weight of petit-bourgeois ideology

This weight is clear when we examine what became of the tendency of 1978: the GCI has fallen into a sort of anarcho-Bordigism, exalting terrorist actions and distrusting the struggles of the proletariat in the advanced countries while glorifying imaginary proletarian struggles in the Third World. Moreover, in the dynamic of a group of comrades who formed the EFICC, we have identified striking similarities with those that animated the Mensheviks in 1903 (see the article "External Fraction of the ICC" International Review no45) and in particular the weight of the intellectual element. Finally, in the dynamic of contestation and demobilisation which affected the Paris section in 1988, we have brought out the importance of the weight of decomposition as a factor stimulating the penetration of petit-bourgeois ideology in our ranks, particularly under the form of "democratism" (...).

b) Putting in question the unitary and centralised framework of the organisation

This is a phenomenon we have encountered in a systematic and marked way during the different organisational difficulties of the ICC:

• The starting point of the dynamic, which led to the "Berard tendency", was the decision of the section of Paris to create an organisation commission. A certain number of comrades, particularly the majority of those who had militated in the Trotskyist group "Lutte Ouvrière" saw in this embryonic central organ a "grave threat of bureaucratisation" for the organisation. Berard ceaselessly compared the OC to the Central Committee of LO (the organisation of which Berard had been a member for several years), identifying RI with this Trotskyist organisation, an argument which had a strong impact on the other comrades of his "tendency" given that all of them (except one) had come from LO.
• At the time of the crisis of 1981, a vision developed (with the contribution of the suspicious element Chenier, but not just him) which considered that each local section could have its own policy as far as intervention was concerned, which violently contested the IB and the IS (reproaching them with their position on the left in opposition and of provoking a Stalinist degeneration) and who, while defending the necessity of central organs, attributed to them the role of a mere post box. (...).
• In the whole dynamic that led to the formation of the EFICC the putting in question of centralisation came out, but under a different form, notably to the extent that 5 out of the 10 members of the "tendency" were on the IB, It was essentially by repeated acts of indiscipline vis-à-vis the latter, but also in relation to other expressions of the organisation, that it was put into question: a sort of aristocratic attitude, certain members of the tendency considered that they were "above the law". Confronted with the necessary discipline of the organisation, these militants saw a "Stalinist degeneration", adopting the arguments of the Chenier tendency that they had combated three years before.
• The difficulties encountered by the section in Spain in '87-'88 were directly linked to "the problem of centralisation"; the four new militants of the San Sebastian section entered into a contestationist dynamic with the section in Valencia which played the role of central organ. Within the "Basque" section a certain number of disagreements and political confusions existed, notably on the question of unemployed committees, confusions which revealed in good part the leftist origins of certain elements of this section. But instead of the disagreements being discussed in the organisational framework they were the occasion for the putting forward the policy of "an Englishman's (or in this case a Spaniard's) home is his castle", and the rejection on principle of all the orientations coming from Valencia. Following this dynamic the section in Spain lost half its forces (...)
• In the dynamic of contestation and demobilisation that developed in 1988 in the section in France and particularly in Paris, the putting in question of centralisation was expressed essentially against the central organ of the section. The most elaborated form of this putting in question was expressed by a member of the organisation who had developed in both texts and in behaviour an approach close to anarcho-councilism. In particular, one of the first contributions put forward a critique of the central organs and defended the idea of a rotation in the nomination of militants within these organs.

The rejection or contestation of centralisation has not been the only form of challenging the unitary character of the organisation during the different difficult moments we have mentioned. One must add a manifestation of the dynamic that could be described, as it was by Lenin in 1903, as a "circle" or even of a "clan". That is to say a  regroupment, even informal, of a certain number of comrades on the basis, not of political agreement, but on other criteria like personal affinities, discontent vis-a-vis this or that orientation of organisation or the contestation of a central organ,

In fact all of the "tendencies" which, up until now, have been formed in the ICC obey, more or less, such a dynamic. This is why they all have led to splits. It is something that we have raised each time: tendencies form themselves not on the basis of putting forward a positive alternative orientation to a position taken by the organisation, but as the collection of "discontents" who put their divergences in a common pot and try as a result to give themselves a certain coherence. On such bases, a tendency can give nothing positive to the extent that the dynamic does not consist in trying to reinforce the organisation through the greatest clarity possible, but expresses on the contrary, an approach (often unconscious) destructive of the organisation. Such tendencies were not the organic product of the life of the ICC and of the proletariat but on the contrary, express the penetration within it of foreign influences: in general petit-bourgeois ideology. Consequently, these tendencies appear like foreign bodies in the ICC; that is why they pose a danger to the organisation and why they almost inevitably led to a split.[8] [38]

In some ways the "Berard tendency" had the most homogeneity. But the latter did not have a common understanding of the questions at their origin. This "homogeneity" was essentially based on:

• the common origin (LO) of the members of the tendency who had converged spontaneously towards a similar approach and notably the rejection of centralisation;
• the charisma of Berard, who was a very brilliant individual and whose interventions dazzled less experienced elements who as a whole, didn't understand much and who adhered "blindly" to his approach;
• it is for this reason that one finds in this "tendency" very academic tendencies (...) at the same time as more activist elements, the "Communist Tendency" constituted after the split didn't survive the first issue of its publication.

Concerning the other "tendencies" in the ICC, each contained a bric-a-brac of positions:

• Sam-MM Tendency: tendency for the rate of profit to fall as explanation of the economic crisis (Sam) plus proletarian nature of the state in the period of transition (Sam), plus a Bordigist vision of the role of the organisation (MM), plus overestimation         of the struggles in the Third World (Ric).
• Chenier Tendency: rejection of the analysis of the left in opposition, plus assimilation of union organisations to organs of the class struggle, plus "Stalinist degeneration" of the ICC (plus the hidden manoeuvres of an individual perhaps in the service of the state).
• EFICC Tendency: a non-marxist vision of class consciousness (ML) plus councilist weaknesses (JA and Sander), plus disagreements about the interventions of the ICC in actions led by the unions to immobilise the working class (Rose), plus rejection of the notion of centrism and opportunism (Macintosh).

Considering the diverse character of these tendencies, one can ask what their approach was really founded on.

At root there were undoubtedly incomprehensions and confusions on general practical questions as well as on organisational questions. But all the comrades who had disagreements on these questions did not adhere to these tendencies. On the other hand, certain comrades who, from the beginning had no disagreement "discovered" it en route in order to join the formation of a tendency (...). This is why its necessary to remind ourselves, as Lenin did in 1903, of another aspect of organisational life: the importance of "personal" questions and of subjectivity.

c) The importance of "personal" questions and of subjectivity

The questions concerning attitudes, behaviour, the subjective and emotional reactions of militants and the personalisation of certain debates, do not have a "psychological" nature but are eminently political. Personality, individual history, childhood, emotional problems etc do not allow us, either in themselves or fundamentally, to explain the aberrant attitudes and behaviour that certain members of the organisation may adopt at this or that moment. Behind such behaviour one always finds, directly or indirectly individualism or sentimentalism, that is manifestations of classes foreign to the proletariat: the bourgeoisie or the petit bourgeoisie. One can say, at most, that certain personalities are more fragile than others faced with the pressure of such ideological influences.

That doesn't mean that "personal" aspects may not play an important role in the life of the organisation as one can see in numerous instances:

• Berard Tendency: It's enough to signal the fact that some days after the vote installing the Organisation Commission, to which Berard was opposed, the same Berard proposed to MC[9] [39] the following deal: "I will vote in favour of the OC if you propose me for it, otherwise I will fight". MC sent Berard packing with a flea in his ear, but did not make it public in order not to "crush" Berard publicly and to allow the debate to go to the roots. Thus the CO only represented a danger of "Bureaucratisation" because Berard was not put on it. No comment!
• Sam-MM Tendency: it was constituted by three groups (in part familial) whose "leaders" had different preoccupations but who all found themselves in contestation of the central organs. (...) Since "there isn't room for several male crocodiles in the same creak" (as the African proverb says) the three little crocodiles separated later: Sam split the first from the GCI to found the ephemeral "Fraction Communiste Internationaliste", later MM left the GCI to form "Movement Communiste".
• Chenier Tendency: Personal conflicts and personalities were involved in the division of the British section into two groups who didn't talk to each other and who, for example, ate in different restaurants during general meetings of the section. The militants from abroad who came to these meetings were monopolised by one or other clan and treated to all sorts of gossip (...). In the end, the crisis was made even worse by all the manoeuvres of Chenier who systematically added oil to the fire.[10] [40]
• EFICC Tendency: Beside political divergences (which were disparate) one of the major sources of the route of the group of comrades who founded the EFICC, and explains in particular their incredible bad faith, was the wounded pride of some (notably JA and ML), little used to being criticised (by MC in particular) and the "solidarity" that their old friends wanted to show them (...). In fact when one studies the history of the second congress of the RSDLP, and lived through the affair of the "EFICC Tendency" one can only be struck by all the similarities between the two events. But as Marx said, "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, secondly as farce".

It is not only at the time of the formation of the ‘tendencies' that personal questions have played, in different ways, a very important role. Thus, at the time of the difficulties in the Spanish section from 87-88, there developed among the comrades of San Sebastian, who had been integrated on insufficiently solid political foundations and with a large degree of subjectivity, a very strong animosity to certain comrades in Valencia. This personalised road was accentuated notably by the unhealthy and twisted spirit of one of the elements in San Sebastian and above all by the agitation of Albar, animator of the Lugo nucleus, whose behaviour was similar to that of Chenier: clandestine contact and correspondence, denigration and calumnies, use of sympathisers to "work on" the comrade of Barcelona who finally left the ICC. (...)

This examination, inevitably too rapid and superficial, of the organisational difficulties encountered by the ICC in the course of its history reveals two essential facts:

• these difficulties are not unique to it, but have existed throughout the history of the workers' movement;
• it has been confronted with these types of difficulties repeatedly and frequently.

This last element must incite the whole organisation and all the comrades to study in depth the organisational principles which were honed at the time of the extraordinary conference in 1982 in the "Report on the structure and functioning of the organisation" and in the Statutes.

The principle points of the 1982 Report and the statutes

The cornerstone of the 1982 report is the unity of the organisation. In this document, this idea is firstly treated from the angle of centralisation before treating it from the angle of the relations between militants and the organisation. The choice of this order corresponded to the problems encountered by the ICC in 1981 where the weaknesses showed themselves by a challenging of the central organs and centralisation. Today, most of the difficulties confronted by the sections are not directly linked to the question of centralisation but much more to the organisational tissue, to the place and responsibilities of militants within the organisation. And even when difficulties concerning problems of centralisation do arise, like in the French section, they go back to the preceding problem. That is why, in the assessment of different aspects of the report of 1982, it is preferable to begin with the last point (pt 12) which rightly touches on the relationships between the organisation and militants.

Relations between the organisation and the militants

a) The weight of individualism

"A fundamental precondition for a communist organisation being able to carry out its task in the class is a correct understanding of the relations that should exist between the organisation and its militants. This is a particularly difficult question to understand today, given the weight of the organic break with past fractions and of the influence of elements from the student milieu in the revolutionary organisations after 1968. This has allowed the reappearance of one of the ball-and-chains carried by the workers' movement in the 19th century - individualism". (Report of 1982, point 12)

Today, it is necessary to add the weight of decomposition to these causes for the penetration of individualism in our ranks, identified a long time ago. In particular decomposition fosters atomisation and "each for himself". It is important that the whole organisation is fully aware of this constant pressure that rotting capitalism exercises in the heads of militants, a pressure which can only increase outside an open revolutionary period. In this sense the following points, which respond to the difficulties and dangers already encountered in the organisation in the past, are even more valid today. That obviously must not discourage us but on the contrary encourage us toward a still greater vigilance toward these difficulties and dangers.

b) The "fulfilment" of militants

"The same relations which exist between a particular organ (group or party) and the class exist between the organisation and the militant. And just as the class does not exist to respond to the needs of the communist organisation, so communist organisations don't exist to resolve the problems of the individual militant. The organisation is not the product of the needs of the militant. One is a militant to the extent that one has understood and adheres to the tasks and functions of the organisation.

"Following on from this, the division of tasks and of responsibilities within the organisation is not aimed at the ‘fulfilment' of individual militants. Tasks must be divided up in a way that enables the organisation as a whole to function in the most efficient way. While the organisation must as much as possible look to the well-being of each of its militants, this is above all because it's in the interests of the organisation that all of its ‘cells' are able to carry out their part in the organisation's work. This doesn't mean ignoring the individuality and the problems of the militants it means that the point of departure, and the point of arrival, is the capacity of the organisation to carry out its tasks in the class struggle" (ibid).

It is a point that we must never forget. We are in the service of the organisation, not the other way round. In particular, the latter is not a sort of clinic to heal the ills, notably psychological, that its members may suffer. That does not mean that becoming a revolutionary does not help to put the personal difficulties which everyone has into context, if not to overcome them altogether. Quite the contrary, becoming a fighter for communism means that one gives a profound significance to one's existence, far superior to that which other aspects of life may give (professional or family success, bringing up a child, scientific or artistic creation, all satisfactions which everybody can share and which anyway are denied to the greater part of humanity). The greatest satisfaction that a human being can experience in life is to make a positive contribution to the good of his fellows, of society and humanity. What distinguishes the communist militant and gives a sense to his life is that he is a link in the chain that leads to emancipation of humanity, its accession to the "reign of liberty" a chain which continues after his own death. Thus what each militant may accomplish today is incomparably more important than what the greatest genius could do, such as the discovery of the cure for cancer or an inexhaustible source of non-polluting energy. In this sense the passion of his commitment must allow him to overcome and go beyond the difficulties that each human being encounters.

That is why, faced with the particular difficulties that members of the organisation may encounter, the attitude that must be adopted is above all political and not psychological. It is clear that psychological givens may be taken into account to confront this or that problem affecting a militant. But that must be put in an organisational framework and not the reverse. Thus when a member of the organisation frequently fails to accomplish his tasks, the organisation must respond in a fundamentally political way and in accord with its principles of functioning, even if, obviously, it must be able to recognise the specificities of the situation in which the militant in question finds himself. For example, when the organisation is confronted with a militant who is sliding toward alcoholism, its specific role is not to play at psychotherapy (a role for which it has no qualification anyway and in which it risks being a "sorcerer's apprentice") but to react on its own terrain:

• raising the problem to discuss within the organisation and with the militant concerned;
• forbidding the use of alcoholic drinks in the meetings and activities of the organisation;
• obliging each militant to arrive sober to the latter.

Experience has amply shown that this is the best way of overcoming this type of problem.

For the same reasons, militant commitment must not be seen as a routine like one can find in the workplace, even if certain tasks are not stimulating in themselves. In particular, it is necessary that the organisation divides these tasks, like all its tasks in general, in the most equitable way possible, in order that some are not burdened with work while others have practically nothing to do. It is important too that each militant banishes from his thoughts and behaviour any attitude of being a "victim" of the organisation, which treats him badly or gives him too much work. The great silence which, too often in certain sections, greets the call for volunteers to accomplish this or that task, is something shocking and demoralising particularly for young militants.[11] [41]

c) Different types of tasks and work in the central organs

"Within the organisation there are no ‘noble' tasks and no ‘secondary' or ‘less noble' tasks. Both the work of theoretical elaboration and the realisation of practical tasks, both the work in central organs and the specific work of local sections, are equally important for the organisation and should not be put in a hierarchical order (it is capitalism which establishes such hierarchies). This is why we must completely reject, as a bourgeois conception, the idea that the nomination of a militant to a central organ is some kind of ‘promotion', the granting of an ‘honour' or a privilege'. The spirit of careerism must be completely banished from the organisation as being totally opposed to the disinterested dedication which is one of the main characteristics of communist militant activity" (ibid).

This affirmation doesn't apply only to the situation in 1981 in the ICC but has a general and permanent application.[12] [42] In a way the phenomena of contestation in the ICC are often linked to a  "pyramidal" or "hierarchical" view of the organisation which is the same vision that sees accession to the responsibilities in the central organs as being a sort of "goal" for each militant (experience has shown that the anarchists are often excellent - so to speak - bureaucrats).

Moreover, you only have to see the reluctance in the organisation to relieve a militant of his responsibilities on a central organ, or the trauma that such a measure provokes when adopted, to understand that this isn't a false problem. It is clear that such trauma is a direct tribute paid to bourgeois ideology. But it is not sufficient to be fully convinced of this to be able to escape it totally. Faced with such a situation, it is important that the organisation and its militants fight everything which could encourage the penetration of such ideology:

• members of the central organs must not benefit, nor accept, any particular privilege, notably the avoidance of tasks or the discipline which is valid for all members of the organisation;
• in their behaviour, attitudes, their way of expressing themselves they should not make other comrades "feel" their membership of this or that central organ: such membership is not a medal to be arrogantly paraded, but a specific  task that must be assumed with the same sense of responsibility and modesty as all the others;
• there is no "promotion by seniority" within the central organs, a sort of "career structure" as in bourgeois firms or administrations where their employee is supposed to climb the ladder to success through the hierarchy; on the contrary, the organisation in order to prepare its future, must be concerned to confer responsibilities even on the most global level, to young militants when they have shown their capacity to assume such responsibilities, (let us recall that Lenin proposed to integrate Trotsky, aged 22, to the editorship of Iskra, against the wishes of the "old hand" Plekhanov. We know what became of the one and the other);
• if for the needs of the organisation, it is necessary or useful to replace a militant in the central organ, that must not be seen or presented as a sanction against the militant, like a sort of degradation or the loss of confidence in him; the ICC doesn't demand like the anarchists the rotation of tasks, nor does it recognise the life attachment of people to the same responsibilities like the Académie Française or the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

d) Inequalities between militants

"Although there do exist inequalities of ability between individuals and militants, and these are maintained and strengthened by class society, the role of the organisation is not, as the utopian communists thought, to pretend to abolish them. The organisation must try to ensure the maximum development of the political capacities of its militants because this is a precondition for its own strengthening, but it never poses this in terms of an individual, scholarly training, nor of an equalisation of everyone's education.

Real equality between militants consists in giving the maximum of what they can give for the life of the organisation (‘from each according to his means', a quote from St Simon which Marx adopted). The true ‘fulfilment' of a militant, as a militant, is to do all he can to help the organisation carry out the tasks for which the class has engendered it" (ibid).

The sentiments of jealousy, rivalry, competition or inferiority complexes which may appear between militants, and are linked to their inequalities, are typically the manifestation of the penetration of dominant ideology in the ranks of the communist organisation.[13] [43] Even if it is illusory to think that one can chase such sentiments out of the heads of all members of the organisation, it is important however that each militant has the permanent concern not to be dominated by such sentiments in his behaviour and to fight them in the organisation.

Contestation is often the result of such sentiments and frustrations. In effect, contestation, when it applies to the central organs or to certain comrades supposed to have "more weight" than others (such as, precisely, the members of these organs) is typically the approach of militants or parts of the organisation which have "complexes" in relation to others. That is why it often takes the form of criticism for the sake of it (and not for what is said or done) towards whatever may represent ‘authority' (classic behaviour of an adolescent who revolts against the father). Like individualism, contestation is in exact symmetry with the other expression of individualism which is authoritarianism, the "taste for power".[14] [44] It should be noted that contestation can also take silent forms, which are no less dangerous than the others, on the contrary, since they are more difficult to see. It may equally express itself by looking to take the place of whatever (militant or central organ) is contested: in substituting oneself one hopes to put an end to the object of their complexes.

Another aspect to understand in a period where new comrades are arriving is the expression of the hostility of some of the old militants fearing the new ones will "put them in the shade". Particularly if the latter show important political capacities. It is not a false problem: it is clear that one of the major reasons for Plekhanov's hostility towards Trotsky becoming one of the editors of Iskra was fear that his own prestige would be affected by the arrival of this extremely brilliant individual.[15] [45] What was valid at the beginning of the century is still more so today. If the organisation (and its militants) are not capable of getting rid of, or at least neutralising these types of attitudes it will not be capable of preparing its future in the revolutionary combat.

Finally, concerning the question of "individual education" evoked in the report of 1982, it is equally important to be precise that the entrance into a central organ cannot be considered in any way as the means of "training" militants. The place where militants form themselves is their activity within the "base cells of the organisation" (statutes), the local section. It is fundamentally in this framework that they acquire and perfect, with the concern of making a better contribution to the life of the organisation, their capacities as militants (theoretical capacities, organisational or practical questions, sense of responsibility, etc). If the local sections are not capable of playing this role, it means that their functioning, their activities and discussions are not up to the level they should be. While it is necessary that the organisation regularly train new militants for the carrying out of the specific tasks of the central organs or of specialised commissions (for example, in order to be capable of facing up to the neutralisation of these central organs as a result of repression) it is never to satisfy any "need of formation" for the militants concerned but so as to allow the organisation as a whole to face up to its responsibilities.

e) Relations between militants

"The relations between militants, while they necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society, (...) cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries; and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organisation of the class which is the bearer of communism" (ICC Platform).

This means in particular that the attitude of militants to each other must be marked by fraternity and not by hostility. In particular:

• the application of a political and organisational not a psychological approach towards a militant who experiences difficulties, must not be understood as the functioning of an impersonal or administrative machine; the organisation and the militants must know how to show, in such circumstances, their solidarity, while knowing that fraternity does not mean indulgence;
• the development of sentiments of hostility of one militant to the other to the point that he considers him as an enemy shows the loss of sight of the organisation's raison d'être, the struggle for communism; it is the sign that it is necessary to re-appropriate the basic foundation of militant commitment.

Outside of this extreme case, which has no place in the organisation, it is clear that dislikes can never disappear totally within the latter. In the latter case the functioning of the organisation must not foster, but on the contrary attenuate or neutralise, such dislikes. In particular the necessary frankness, which must exist between comrades in struggle, is not synonymous with rudeness or lack of respect. Moreover, insults must be absolutely proscribed in relations between militants.

That said, the organisation must not see itself as a "group of friends" or as a collection of such groups.[16] [46]

In fact, one of the grave dangers which permanently threatens the organisation, which put its unity in question and risks destroying it, is the constitution, even if it is not deliberate or conscious, of "clans". In a clan dynamic, common approaches do not share a real political agreement but rather links of friendship, loyalty, the convergence of specific personal interests or, shared frustrations. Often such a dynamic, to the extent that it is not founded on a real political convergence, is accompanied by the existence of "gurus", "leaders of the gang",[17] [47] who guarantee the unity of the clan, and who may draw their power from a particular charisma, can even stifle the political capacities and the judgement of other militants as a result of the fact they are presented or present themselves, as "victims" of such or such policy of the organisation. When such a dynamic appears, the members or sympathisers of the clan can no longer decide for themselves, in their behaviour or the decisions that they take, as a result of a conscious and rational choice based on the general interests of the organisation, but as a result of the interests of  the clan which tends to oppose itself to those of  rest of organisation.[18] [48]

In particular, all interventions which take a position that challenges a member of the clan (about what has been said or done) are seen as the "settling of personal scores" with him or the whole of the clan. Moreover, in such a dynamic, the clan often tends to present a monolithic front (it prefers to wash its dirty linen in the family) accompanied by a blind discipline, rallying without discussion to the orientations of the "gang leader".

It is a fact that certain members of the organisation may acquire, as a result of their experience, of their political capacities or of the correctness, verified by practice, of their judgments, a greater authority than that of other militants. The confidence that other militants accord them spontaneously, even if they are not immediately sure of sharing their point of view, is a normal thing in the life of the organisation. It can even happen that the central organ, or even some militants, ask that they be accorded a temporary confidence when they cannot immediately produce all the elements to firmly establish their conviction, or when the conditions for a clear debate don't yet exist in the organisation. What is by contrast abnormal is to be definitively in agreement with such a position because comrade X put it forward. Even the greatest names of the workers' movement made mistakes. In this sense the adhesion to a position can only base itself on a real agreement for which the indispensable conditions are the quality and depth of the debates. That is also the best guarantee of the solidity and of the durability of a position within the organisation which cannot be put in question just because comrade X has changed his mind. The militants should not "believe" once and for all and without discussion what is said to them even by a central organ. Their critical thought must be constantly at work (which doesn't mean that they must constantly criticise). This also confers on the central organs, as well as the militants who have the most "weight", the responsibility of not using at every turn and indiscriminately the "arguments of authority". On the contrary, they must fight any tendency to "tail-endism", to superficial agreements, without conviction and without reflection.

A clan dynamic may be accompanied by an approach which is not necessarily deliberate, of "infiltration", that is the designation of key positions in the organisation (like the central organs for example but not only) to members of the clan or to persons that they can win over. It is a current practice and often systematised within bourgeois parties and which a communist organisation, for its part, must firmly reject. It must be particularly vigilant on this subject. In particular, while in the nomination of the central organs "it is necessary to take account (...) of the capacity [of candidates] to work in a collective manner" (Statutes), it is important also to be careful in the choice of militants who will work in such organs, in order to ensure the least possible conditions for the appearance of a clan dynamic due to the affinities or personal links that may exist between the militants concerned. That is why the organisation must especially avoid, as far as possible, nominating two members of a couple to the same commission. A lack of vigilance in this domain could have particularly injurious consequences, as such for the political capacities of the militants or the organ as a whole. At best, the organ in question, whatever the quality of its work, may be resented by the rest of the organisation as a mere "gang of friends", which would result in a significant loss of authority. At worst, this organ may end up behaving like a particular clan, with all the dangers that this implies, or even being totally paralysed by the conflicts between clans within it. In either case it is the existence of the organisation itself that could be affected.

Finally, a clan dynamic constitutes the ground upon which practices closer to those of the bourgeois electoral game could develop rather than those of communist militantism:

• campaigns of seduction of those they wish to win to the clan or to solicit their votes or support for such or such nomination to specific responsibilities.[19] [49]
• campaigns of denigration against those who may offend the clan, or who occupy "posts" coveted by members of the latter, or who may simply be an obstacle to its objectives

Warnings about the danger of behaviour foreign to communist militantism within revolutionary organisations, should not be considered as tilting at windmills. In fact, throughout its existence, the workers' movement has been frequently confronted with this type of behaviour, bearing witness to the pressure of the dominant ideology in its ranks. The ICC itself has clearly not escaped this. To think that it would be henceforth immunised against such scourges is not political clear-sightedness but religious faith. On the contrary, the growing weight of decomposition, to the extent that the latter reinforces atomisation (and thus the search for a cocoon) irrationality, emotional approaches, demoralisation can only increase the threat posed by such behaviour. And that must make us still more vigilant against the danger that this represents.

That doesn't mean that a permanent distrust between the comrades should develop. On the contrary: the best antidote against distrust is precisely the vigilance toward situations that best feed distrust. This vigilance must be exercised against all behaviour and any attitude that could lead to such dangers. In particular the practice of informal discussions between comrades, notably on questions touching the life of the organisation, if they are inevitable to a certain extent, must be limited as much as possible and in any case done in a responsible way. While the formal framework of the organisation, beginning with the local sections, is the most suitable for responsible proceedings and discussion as well as really conscious and political reflection, the "informal" framework is the one that leaves the most room to irresponsible attitudes, marked moreover by subjectivity. In particular, it is important to shut the door on any campaign of denigration of a member of the organisation (as of a central organ obviously). Vigilance against such behaviour must be exercised against oneself as much as against others. In this domain, as in many others, the most experienced militants, and particularly members of the central organs, must behave in an exemplary way, always considering the impact of what they say. And what they say is still more important and serious when we consider new comrades:

• who, not knowing the victims of denigration well, may easily take what is said literally;
• who risk being moulded by this type of behaviour or be sickened and demoralised by the image that it gives of the organisation.

To conclude this part on the relations between the organisation and the militants, it is necessary to emphasise and remember that the organisation is not the sum of its militants. In the historic struggle for communism, the collective being of the proletariat gives rise to, as part of itself, another collective being, the revolutionary organisation. Communist militants are those who dedicate their lives to make it live and progress, and defend this collective and unitary being that their class has entrusted them with. All other conceptions, notably that of the organisation as a sum of militants, are influenced by bourgeois ideology and constitute a mortal danger to the existence of the organisation.

It is only from this collective and unitary vision of the organisation that one can understand the question of centralisation.

The centralisation of the organisation

This question was at the centre of the activities report presented to the 10th International Congress. Moreover, the difficulties, which most sections are confronted with, don't directly concern the question of centralisation. Finally, when one clearly understands the question of the relations between the organisation and its militants, it is much easier to understand that of centralisation. That's why this part of the text will be less developed than the preceding part and will be composed largely of extracts from fundamental texts to which will be added comments made necessary by the incomprehension which have developed recently.

a) Unity of the organisation and centralisation

‘'Centralism is not an optional or abstract principle for the structure of the organisation. It is the concretisation of its unitary character. It expresses the fact that it is one and the same organisation which takes positions and acts within the class" (The 1982 Report, point 3). "In the various relations between the parts of the organisation and the whole, its always the whole which takes precedence (...) We must absolutely reject the conception according to which this or that part of the organisation can adopt, in front of the organisation or of the working class, the positions or attitudes which it thinks correct instead of those of the organisation which it thinks incorrect (...) if the organisation is going in the wrong direction, the responsibility of the members who consider that they defend the correct position is not to save themselves in their own little corner, but to wage a struggle within the organisation in order to help put it back in the right direction" (Ibid,. point 3).

"In a revolutionary organisation the whole is not the sum of the parts. The latter are delegated by the whole organisation to carry out a particular activity (territorial publications, local interventions), and are thus responsible in front of the whole for the mandate they have been given." (Ibid., point 4).

These brief reminders from the report of 1982 show clearly that insistence on the question of the unity of the organisation is the principal axis of the document. The different parts of the organisation can only be conceived as parts of a whole, as delegations and instruments of this whole. Is it necessary to repeat once more that this conception must be permanently present in all parts of the organisation?

Only on the basis of this insistence on the unity of the organisation does the report introduce the question of the congress (which is not relevant here) and the central organs.

"The central organ is a part of the organisation and as such responsible to it, when it meets at its Congress. However it's a part whose specificity is that it expresses and represents the whole, and because of this the positions and decisions of the central organ always take precedence over those of other parts of the organisation taken separately." (point 5),

" ... the central organ is an instrument of the organisation, not the other way round. It is not the summit of a pyramid as in the hierarchical and military view of revolutionary organisation. The organisation is not formed by a central organ plus militants, but is a tight, unified network in which all its component parts overlap and work together. The central organ should rather be seen as the nucleus of the cell which co-ordinates the metabolism of a living organic entity." (ibid).

This last image is fundamental in the comprehension of centralisation. It alone, in particular, allows a full comprehension of why in a unitary organisation there can be several central organs having different levels of responsibility. If one considers the organisation as a pyramid, where the central organ is the summit, we would be confronted by an impossible geometric figure: a pyramid having a summit and composed by pyramids each having their own summit. In practice, such organisation would be as aberrant as this geometric figure and couldn't function. It is the administrations and enterprises of the bourgeoisie which have a pyramidal architecture: for the latter to function, the different responsibilities are necessarily distributed from top to bottom. This is not the case for the ICC which has central organs elected at different territorial levels. Such a mode of functioning precisely corresponds to the fact that the ICC is a living entity (like that of a cell in an organism) in which different organisational moments are the expression of a unitary totality.

In such a conception, which is expressed in a detailed way in the statutes, there shouldn't be conflict, or opposition between different structures of the organisation. Disagreements may obviously arise anywhere in the organisation, but that is part of its normal life. However, if disagreements end up in conflicts this means that somewhere this conception of the organisation has been lost, and in particular a pyramidal vision has been introduced which can only lead to opposition between different "summits". In such a dynamic, which leads to the appearance of several "centres", and therefore to an opposition between them, it is the unity of the organisation which is put in question, and thus its very existence. (...)

If the questions of organisation and of functioning are of the highest importance, they are also the most difficult to understand.[20] [50] Much more than other questions, their comprehension is linked to the subjectivity of militants and they can constitute an important channel for the penetration of ideologies foreign to the proletariat. As such they are questions which, par excellence, are never definitively acquired. It is therefore important that they are the object of sustained vigilance on the part of the organisation and all its militants. (...)

14th October, 1993

[1] [51] A brief note should be made on the translation of this text. An organisation spread across 13 countries and 4 continents undertakes an enormous task of translation, both for its press and its internal bulletins. Given the pressures of time, internal documents often suffer in terms of their readability or strict adherence to grammatical rules. While we have done our best to render this text legible and intelligible, we ask our readers' indulgence for any violence we may have done to the language of Shakespeare in reproducing this text.

[2] [52] Like the 2nd International and the Communist International, the ICC has an international central organ composed of militants from the different territorial section, the International Bureau (IB). This meets in regular plenary sessions (IB plenum) and between these meetings, there is a permanent commission, the International Secretariat(IS), that assures the continuity of its work

[3] [53] "Even less than other fundamental texts of the ICC, those of the extraordinary conference are not to be buried in the bottom of a drawer or tinder a pile of papers. They must he a constant reference for the life of the organisation." (Activities Resolution of the 5th Congress of the ICC)

[4] [54] It didn't prevent him either from referring to the hated characteristics of Jews and Germans: "Its a collection ( ... ) of all the absurd and dirty tales that the most perverse wickedness of German and Russian Jews, his friends, his agents, his disciples [of Marx] (...) have propagated against us, but above all against me ( ... ) You remember the article of the German Jew (NI Hess in the Reveil), reproduced and developed  by Borkheim and other German Jews of the Volkstaat?" (Reply of Bakunin to the circular of the General Council of March 1872 on the "Alleged splits in the International"). It must equally be noted that Bakunin, who the anarchists present as a kind of irreproachable and fearless hero had shown a good dose of hypocrisy and duplicity. Thus at the moment when he began to intrigue against the general council and against Marx, he wrote to the latter: "I will now do the same as you have for the past twenty years (...) My fatherland is now the International, of which you are one of the principle founders. You can see then, my friend, that 1 am your disciple and proud to be so". (22.12.1868)

[5] [55] Formulation defended by Lenin: "A member of the party is someone who agrees with its programme and support., the party materially as well as working personally in one of its organisations". Formulation proposed by Martov (and adopted by the Congress thanks to the vote of the Bund): " a member of the party is someone who agrees with its programme and supports the party both materially and in working under the control and direction of one of its organisations."

[6] [56] It is significant that these 3 militants, including Plekhanov who joined the Mensheviks some months after the Congress, were social chauvinists during the war, and opposed to the 1917 revolution. Only Martov adopted an internationalist position but he took a position against the power of the Soviets

[7] [57] Here is the response of the Bolshevik Roussov (cited and saluted by Lenin in One step forward, two steps back): "In the mouth of revolutionaries one hears peculiar things which are in sharp disagreement with the notion of party work, of the ethic of the party (...) in placing ourselves within this point of view which is foreign to the party, petit-bourgeois, we find ourselves at each election with the question whether Petrov has been replaced by Ivanov ( ... ) Where will that lead us comrades? If we are together here its not to make agreeable speeches to each other, or exchange pleasantries but to create a party, we cannot accept this point of view. We have to elect delegates and it is not a question here of a lack of confidence in those who are un-elected; the only question is to know it is in the interest of the cause and if the person elected is fit for the designated post." In the same pamphlet Lenin recalled the stakes of this debate: "The struggle of the petit-bourgeois spirit against the party spirit, of the worst ‘personal considerations' against political function, wretched speeches against the elementary notions of revolutionary duty, here is the struggle around point 6 and 3 at the thirtieth session of our congress". (Lenin's emphasis)

[8] [58] On several occasions, certain comrades in disagreement with the orientations of the ICC on organisational matters have affirmed that this systematically "tragic" destiny of the tendencies we have known reveals a weakness of our organisation, and notably an erroneous policy of the central organs. On this question it is appropriate to point out the following elements:

- the appearance of a tendency (we are talking of a real tendency based on "clearly expressed positive and coherent positions and not on a collection of points of opposition and recriminations" - as the statutes say) is not in itself a "positive" phenomenon: such a phenomenon is at best "the manifestation of an immaturity of the organisation" as the statutes also say;

- the only positive character of a tendency is to permit the most clear and coherent elaboration of an alternative orientation to that of the majority of the organisation when it appears, in the course of the debates in the latter, when such an orientation is emerging: that is why, in general, tendencies are constituted at the approach of congresses in order to present, on one or several points on the agenda, texts and amendments defending a different orientation to that which appears in the documents submitted to the congress by the central organ;

- in this sense, a tendency is all the more necessary when the orientation given by the central organ is erroneous or insufficient. However , until now, while the central organs of the ICC (and notably the IS) may make mistakes, the latter have been, in general, limited and/or corrected by the central organs themselves rapidly enough.

- the latter, which is true of the past, must not be understood as the expression of a sort of infallibility of these central organs for the future: on the contrary it is the responsibility of the whole organisation and of all the militants to maintain a permanent vigilance with regard to the orientations, positions and activities of these central organs.

- Consequently, one cannot say that it is a proof of the specific weakness of the central organs if the organisation hasn't known, until now, a real tendency

- However, this fact reveals in effect the existence in the whole of the organisation of a certain number of incomprehensions and weaknesses, and notably a certain superficiality in the agreement given to the orientations elaborated by the ICC at its congresses and territorial meetings: it is a problem which has often been raised by the central organs in their activity reports, but it is not in their capacity to resolve them by themselves; its the whole of the organisation and all the militants who must do it.

[9] [59] MC was a comrade who had militated since the revolutionary wave that followed the First World War. He was excluded from the French Communist Party at the end of the 20s as a Left oppositionist and militated in different organisations of the Communist Left, notably the Italian Fraction from1938. He was the principle founder of the French Communist Left, the political ancestor of the ICC. He died in December 1990 (see the articles on this subject that we published in International Review n°65 and n°66)

[10] [60] "It wasn't Chenier who founded the tendency and the crisis, but the latent crisis in the ICC permitted Chenier to catalyse and manipulate it for motivations which, if they could not be fully seen, were more a question of pathological ambition than politics. The commission can reply neither in one sense nor the other to the question if his actions obeyed orders from the outside - as several witnesses have suggested - but it can affirm that he was a deeply suspicious and hypocritical element, perfectly capable of serving any cause looking to destroy from the inside the whole organisation in which be was able to infiltrate." (Report of the Inquiry Commission). For the comrades who don't know this period of the life of the ICC, one can give several illustrations of the behaviour and personality of Chenier:

- in secret correspondence and in the wings, he worked on the feelings of comrades and pushed them to "go into action" in the meetings of the organisation while he himself was particularly  moderate and conciliatory in these same meetings;

- with the members of the organisation he was always very fraternal, charming even, because he wished to enrol them in his tendency, because lie tried to dissipate any mistrust on the part of those who, in the wings, he had made the worst calumnies;

- he used women as an instrument of his manoeuvres: he pushed his companion K into the arms of JM a founder member of WR and who had a large influence amongst the comrades of the section; playing on the heart strings, he sent orders to K to carry out his manoeuvres ; moreover, he seduced Jo, ex-companion of JM, who came to join him in Lille and who he put to work (notably in translating into English his public or secret documents and as an agent amongst her friends in GB) and who he threw into the street when he no longer needed her, in other words when his attempted putsch in the British section was thwarted.

This is the sort of person the ICC had the weakness to let into its ranks by lack of vigilance. It should be noted that this element became a member of the French section's Executive Commission, and it is not absurd to think that, if he had not been unmasked rapidly enough, he would even have become a member of the International Bureau.

[11] [61] In a text written in 1980, comrade MC already raised this question: "I won't waste my time on this type of recrimination because I find it indecent. When one knows a little of the lives of revolutionary militants, not only in exceptional moments, like war or revolution, but in ‘normal'  life, when one thinks for example of the lives of the militants of the Italian Fraction in the 30s, all immigrants a good part of whom were deported, illegal, unskilled workers, unemployed and with unstable work and housing, with children (without any family support) who, often, went hungry, these militants continued their activity in these conditions 20, 30, 40 years...one can only find the complaints and recriminations of certain ‘critiques' purely and simply indecent. In place of jeremiads, we must be aware that the group and the militants live today in exceptionally favourable conditions. Until now we haven't known repression, nor illegality, nor unemployment, nor major material difficulties. That's why today, even more than in other conditions. the militant has not to make demands of a personal character, but to always offer the most he can give, without waiting for an invitation". (MC "Revolutionary organisation and the Militant" 1980)

[12] [62] "It is nonsensical to see the nomination of comrades to commissions as a ‘promotion` and to consider it as an honour and a privilege. To he nominated to a commission is a supplementary responsibility and many comrades would like to he liberated from it. In so far as that is not possible, it is important that they carry it out as conscientiously as possible. It is very important not to replace this real question of accomplishing well the tasks which have been conferred on them with another, false, typically leftist question: the quest for honorary positions" (MC 1980).

[13] [63] "The proletarian vision is otherwise. Because it is a historic and the last class of history, its vision tends to be global and in the latter the diverse phenomena are only aspects, moments of a whole. That's why the proletarian militant is not conditioned by: ‘what position do 1 occupy', nor motivated by any individual ambition. Whether it is writing, theoretical questions, or typewriting, printing a leaflet, demonstrating in the street, or selling the paper that other comrades have written, it's always the same militant, because the action he participates in is always political and whatever the particular activity, it comes from a political choice and expresses his sharing of this unity, to the political body: the political group". (MC 1980)

[14] [64] "1t is not only the fact of the division between theoretical work and practical work, between theory and practice, between the leadership which decides and the base which carries out, which is the manifestation of the division of society into antagonistic classes, but equally the intellectual obsession which is preoccupied with this fact, expressing the inability to go beyond this level, situating still on the same level simply turning the coin over, but conserving it nonetheless." (ibid)

[15] [65] It was the proof that Pleckhanov was being won by bourgeois ideology (he who had written the excellent book on the ,role of the individual in history): in the final analysis the difference of attitude between Lenin and PIeckhanov on this question prefigured, in a certain way, the attitude they would have faced with the revolution of the proletariat

[16] [66] "In the second half of the 60s, small circles of friends, were constituted by elements for the  most part very young with no political experience, living in the student milieu. On the individual level their existence seemed purely accidental. On the objective level - the only one where a real explanation can be found - these circles corresponded to the end of the post-war reconstruction, and the first signs that capitalism was returning to the open phase of its permanent crisis, giving rise to a resurgence of class struggle. Despite what the individuals composing these circles might have thought, imagining that their group was based on friendship, the attempt to realise their daily life together, these circles only survived to the extent that they were politicised, became political groups, and accomplished and assumed their destiny. The circles who didn't become conscious of this were swallowed up and decomposed in the leftist or modernist swamp or disappeared into nature. Such is our own history. And it is not without difficulties that we have survived this process of transformation from a circle of friends into a political group, where unity based on affection, personal sympathy, the same life style, gave way to a political cohesion and a solidarity on a conviction that one is engaged in the same historical combat: the proletarian revolution (...) One must not confuse the political organisation that we are with the cherished communities of the student movement, where the only raison d'être is the illusion of some discontented individuals that together they can overcome the constraints that decadent society imposes and mutually realise their personal life." (MC 1980).

[17] [67] We have some difficulty in translating the original French expression "chef de bande", which may mean either a gangster boss or the leading figure in a group of friends. The expression "gang leader" should here be taken in the latter sense (translator's note).

[18] [68] "...in a bourgeois organisation, the existence of divergences is based on the defence of this or that orientation to manage capitalism, or more simply on the defence of this or that sector of the dominant class or this or that clique, orientations or interests which sustain themselves in a durable way and which must he conciliated by an ‘equal sharing' of posts between the representatives. In a communist organisation, by contrast, the divergences don't express the defence of material or personal interests or particular pressure groups, but are the translation of a living and dynamic process of clarification of problems which pose themselves to the class and destined, as such, to be re absorbed with the deepening of the discussion and in the light of experience". (Report of 1982, point 6).

[19] [69] "On this question, it is important that the practice of invitations to meals or personal gatherings has a sense of responsibility. Comrades getting together around a good meal may be a good occasion to reinforce the links between members of the organisation and develop sentiments of fraternity between them, overcoming the atomisation which today's society engenders (notably amongst the more isolated comrades). However it is necessary to be sure that this practice is not turned into ‘clan politics':

- by selective invitations with the objective of winning the friendship and confidence of those who could join the clan or ‘influential group';

- by discussions which aggravate the cleavages within the organisation, undermining the confidence between militants and groups of militants".

[20] [70] A revolutionary of the stature of Trotsky had, on numerous occasions, shown that he didn't understand these questions well. Enough said!

Every ruling class creates its own culture, and consequently, its own art. History has known the slave-owning cultures of the East and of classic antiquity, the feudal culture of medieval Europe and the bourgeois culture which now rules the world. It would follow from this that the proletariat has also to create its own culture and its own art.

The question, however, is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Societies in which slave owners were the ruling class, existed for many, many centuries. The same is true of feudalism. Bourgeois culture, if one were to count only from the time of its open and turbulent manifestation, that is, from the period of the Renaissance, has existed five centuries, but it did not reach its greatest flowering until the nineteenth century, or, more correctly, the second half of it. History shows that the formation of a new culture which centres around a ruling class demands considerable time and reaches completion only at the period preceding the political decadence of that class.

Will the proletariat have enough time to create a “proletarian” culture? In contrast to the regime of the slave owners and of the feudal lords and of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat regards its dictatorship as a brief period of transition. When we wish to denounce the all-too-optimistic views about the transition to socialism, we point out that the period of the social revolution, on a world scale, will last not months and not years, but decades - decades, but not centuries, and certainly not thousands of years. Can the proletariat in this time create a new culture? It is legitimate to doubt this, because the years of social revolution will be years of fierce class struggles in which destruction will occupy more room than new construction. At any rate the energy of the proletariat itself will be spent mainly in conquering power, in retaining and strengthening it and in applying it to the most urgent needs of existence and of further struggle. The proletariat, however, will reach its highest tension and the fullest manifestation of its class character during this revolutionary period and it will be within such narrow limits that the possibility of planned, cultural reconstruction will be confined.

On the other hand, as the new regime will be more and more protected from political and military surprises and as the conditions for cultural creation will become more favourable, the proletariat will be more and more dissolved into a socialist community and will free itself from its class characteristics and thus cease to be a proletariat. In other words, there can be no question of the creation of a new culture, that is, of construction on a large historic scale during the period of dictatorship. The cultural reconstruction, which will begin when the need of the iron clutch of a dictatorship unparalleled in history will have disappeared, will not have a class character. This seems to lead to the conclusion that there is no proletarian culture and that there never will be any and in fact there is no reason to regret this. The proletariat acquires power for the purpose of doing away forever with class culture and to make way for human culture. We frequently seem to forget this.
The formless talk about proletarian culture, in antithesis to bourgeois culture, feeds on the extremely uncritical identification of the historic destinies of the proletariat with those of the bourgeoisie. A shallow and purely liberal method of making analogies of historic forms has nothing in common with Marxism. There is no real analogy between the historic development of the bourgeoisie and of the working class.

The development of bourgeois culture began several centuries before the bourgeoisie took into its own hands the power of the state by means of a series of revolutions. Even when the bourgeoisie was a third estate, almost deprived of its rights, it played a great and continually growing part in all the fields of culture. This is especially clear in the case of architecture. The Gothic churches were not built suddenly, under the impulse of a religious inspiration. The construction of Cologne cathedral, its architecture and its sculpture, sum up the architectural experience of mankind from the time of the cave and combine the elements of this experience in a new style which expresses the culture of its own epoch which is, in the final analysis, the social structure and technique of this epoch. The old pre-bourgeoisie of the guilds was the factual builder of the Gothic. When it grew and waxed strong, that is, when it became richer, the bourgeoisie passed through the Gothic stage consciously and actively and created its own architectural style, not for the church, however, but for its own palaces.

With its basis on the Gothic, it turned to antiquity, especially to Roman architecture and the Moorish, and applied all these to the conditions and needs of the new city community, thus creating the Renaissance (Italy at the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century). Specialists may count the elements which the Renaissance owes to antiquity and those it owes to the Gothic and may argue as to which side is the stronger. But the Renaissance only begins when the new social class, already culturally satiated, feels itself strong enough to come out from under the yoke of the Gothic arch, to look at Gothic art and on all that preceded it as material for its own disposal, and to use the technique of the past for its own artistic aims. This refers also to all the other arts, but with this difference, that because of their greater flexibility, that is, of their lesser dependence upon utilitarian aims and materials, the ‘free’ arts do not reveal the dialectics of successive styles with such firm logic as does architecture.

From the time of the Renaissance and of the Reformation, which created more favourable intellectual and political conditions for the bourgeoisie in feudal society, to the time of the revolution which transferred power to the bourgeoisie (in France), there passed three or four centuries of growth in the material and intellectual force of the bourgeoisie. The Great French Revolution and the wars which grew out of it temporarily lowered the material level of culture. But later the capitalist regime became established as the ‘natural’ and the ‘eternal.’ Thus the fundamental processes of the growth of bourgeois culture and of its crystallisation into style were determined by the characteristics of the bourgeoisie as a possessing and exploiting class. The bourgeoisie not only developed materially within feudal society, entwining itself in various ways with the latter and attracting wealth into its own hands, but it weaned the intelligentsia to its side and created its cultural foundation (schools, universities, academies, newspapers, magazines) long before it openly took possession of the state. It is sufficient to remember that the German bourgeoisie, with its incomparable technology, philosophy, science and art, allowed the power of the state to lie in the hands of a feudal bureaucratic class as late as 1918 and decided, or, more correctly, was forced to take power into its own hands only when the material foundations of German culture began to fall to pieces.

But one may answer: it took thousands of years to create the slave-owning art and only hundreds of years for the bourgeois art. Why, then, could not proletarian art be created in tens of years? The technical bases of life are not at all the same at present and therefore the tempo is also different. This objection, which at first sight seems convincing, in reality misses the crux of the question. Undoubtedly, in the development of the new society, the time will come when economics, cultural life and art will receive the greatest impulse forward. At the present time we can only create fancies about their tempo. In a society which will have thrown off the pinching and stultifying worry about one’s daily bread, in which community restaurants will prepare good, wholesome and tasteful food for all to choose, in which communal laundries will wash clean everyone’s good linen, in which children, all the children, will be well-fed and strong and gay, and in which they will absorb the fundamental elements of science and art as they absorb albumen and air and the warmth of the sun, in a society in which electricity and the radio will not be the crafts they are today, but will come from inexhaustible sources of superpower at the call of a central button, in which there will be no ‘useless mouths’, in which the liberated egotism of man’s mighty force will be directed wholly towards the understanding, the transformation and the betterment of the universe-in such a society the dynamic development of culture will be incomparable with anything that went on in the past. But all this will come only after a climb, prolonged and difficult, which is still ahead of us. And we are speaking only about the period of the climb.

But is not the present moment dynamic? It is in the highest degree. But its dynamics is centred in politics. The war and the revolution were dynamic, but very much at the expense of technology and culture. It is true that the war has produced a long series of technical inventions. But the poverty which it has produced has put off the practical application of these inventions for a long time and with this their possibility of revolutionising life. This refers to radio, to aviation, and to many mechanical discoveries.
On the other hand, the revolution lays out the ground for a new society. But it does so with the methods of the old society, with the class struggle, with violence, destruction and annihilation. If the proletarian revolution had not come, mankind would have been strangled by its own contradictions. The revolution saved society and culture, but by means of the most cruel surgery. All the active forces are concentrated in politics and in the revolutionary struggle, everything else is shoved back into the background and everything which is a hindrance is cruelly trampled underfoot. In this process, of course there is an ebb and flow; military communism gives place to the NEP, which, in its turn, passes through various stages.

But in its essence, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not an organisation for the production of the culture of a new society, but a revolutionary and military system struggling for it. One must not forget this. We think that the historian of the future will place the culminating point of the old society on the second of August, 1914, when the maddened power of bourgeois culture let loose upon the world the blood and fire of an imperialistic war. The beginning of the new history of mankind will be dated from November 7, 1917. The fundamental stages of the development of mankind we think will be established somewhat as follows: prehistoric ‘history’ of primitive man; ancient history, whose rise was based on slavery; the Middle Ages, based on serfdom; capitalism, with free wage exploitation; and finally, socialist society, with, let us hope, its painless transition to a stateless commune. At any rate, the twenty, thirty, or fifty years of proletarian world revolution will go down in history as the most difficult climb from one system to another, but in no case as an independent epoch of proletarian culture.
At present, in these years of respite, some illusions may arise in our Soviet Republic as regards this. We have put the cultural questions on the order of the day. By projecting our present-day problems into the distant future, one can think oneself through a long series of years into proletarian culture. But no matter how important and vitally necessary our culture-building may be, it is entirely dominated by the approach of European and world revolution. We are, as before, merely soldiers in a campaign. We are bivouacking for a day. Our shirt has to be washed, our hair has to be cut and combed, and, most important of all, the rifle has to be cleaned and oiled. Our entire present-day economic and cultural work is nothing more than a bringing of ourselves into order between two battles and two campaigns. The principal battles are ahead and may be not so far off. Our epoch is not yet an epoch of new culture, but only the entrance to it. We must, first of all, take possession, politically, of the most important elements of the old culture, to such an extent, at least, as to be able to pave the way for a new culture.

This becomes especially clear when one considers the problem as one should, in its international character. The proletariat was, and remains, a non-possessing class. This alone restricted it very much from acquiring those elements of bourgeois culture which have entered into the inventory of mankind forever. In a certain sense, one may truly say that the proletariat also, at least the European proletariat, had its epoch of reformation. This occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century, when, without making an attempt on the power of the state directly, it conquered for itself under the bourgeois system more favourable legal conditions for development.

But, in the first place, for this period of ‘reformation’ (parliamentarism and social reforms), which coincides mainly with the period of the Second International, history allowed the working class approximately as many decades as it allowed the bourgeoisie centuries. In the second place, the proletariat, during this preparatory period, did not at all become a richer class and did not concentrate in its hands material power. On the contrary, from a social and cultural point of view, it became more and more unfortunate. The bourgeoisie came into power fully armed with the culture of its time. The proletariat, on the other hand, comes into power fully armed only with the acute need of mastering culture. The problem of a proletariat which has conquered power consists, first of all, in taking into its own hands the apparatus of culture - the industries, schools, publications, press, theatres, etc. - which did not serve it before, and thus to open up the path of culture for itself.
Our task in Russia is complicated by the poverty of our entire cultural tradition and by the material destruction wrought by the events of the last decade. After the conquest of power and after almost six years of struggle for its retention and consolidation, our proletariat is forced to turn all its energies towards the creation of the most elementary conditions of material existence and of contact with the ABC of culture - ABC in the true and literal sense of the word. It is not for nothing that we have put to ourselves the task of having universal literacy in Russia by the tenth anniversary of the Soviet regime.

Someone may object that I take the concept of proletarian culture in too broad a sense. That if there may not be a fully and entirely developed proletarian culture, yet the working class may succeed in putting its stamp upon culture before it is dissolved into a communist society. Such an objection must be registered first of all as a serious retreat from the position that there will be a proletarian culture. It is not to be questioned but that the proletariat, during the time of its dictatorship, will put its stamp upon culture. However, this is a far cry from a proletarian culture in the sense of a developed and completely harmonious system of knowledge and of art in all material and spiritual fields of work. For tens of millions of people for the first time in history to master reading and writing and arithmetic is in itself a new cultural fact of great importance. The essence of the new culture will be not an aristocratic one for a privileged minority, but a mass culture, a universal and popular one. Quantity will pass into quality; with the growth of the quantity of culture will come a rise in its level and a change in its character. But this process will develop only through a series of historic stages. In the degree to which it is successful, it will weaken the class character of the proletariat and in this way it will wipe out the basis of a proletarian culture.

But how about the upper strata of the working class? About its intellectual vanguard? Can one not say that in these circles, narrow though they are, a development of proletarian culture is already taking place today? Have we not the Socialist Academy? Red professors? Some are guilty of putting the question in this very abstract way. The idea seems to be that it is possible to create a proletarian culture by laboratory methods.
In fact, the texture of culture is woven at the points where the relationships and interactions of the intelligentsia of a class and of the class itself meet. The bourgeois culture - the technical, political, philosophical and artistic, was developed by the interaction of the bourgeoisie and its inventors, leaders, thinkers and poets. The reader created the writer and the writer created the reader. This is true in an immeasurably greater degree of the proletariat, because its economics and politics and culture can be built only on the basis of the creative activity of the masses.

The main task of the proletarian intelligentsia in the immediate future is not the abstract formation of a new culture regardless of the absence of a basis for it, but a definite culture-bearing, that is, a systematic, planned and, of course, critical imparting to the backward masses of the essential elements of the culture which already exists. It is impossible to create a class culture behind the backs of a class. And to build culture in cooperation with the working class and in close contact with its general historic rise, one has to build socialism, even though in the rough. In this process, the class characteristics of society will not become stronger, but, on the contrary, will begin to dissolve and to disappear in direct ratio to the success of the revolution. The liberating significance of the dictatorship of the proletariat consists in the fact that it is temporary - for a brief period only -that it is a means of clearing the road and of laying the foundations of a society without classes and of a culture based upon solidarity.

In order to explain the idea of a period of culture-bearing in the development of the working class more concretely, let us consider the historic succession not of classes, but of generations. Their continuity is expressed in the fact that each one of them, given a developing and not a decadent society, adds its treasure to the past accumulations of culture. But before it can do so, each new generation must pass through a stage of apprenticeship. It appropriates existing culture and transforms it in its own way, making it more or less different from that of the older generation. But this appropriation is not, as yet, a new creation, that is, it is not a creation of new cultural values, but only a premise for them. To a certain degree, that which has been said may also be applied to the destinies of the working masses which are rising towards epoch-making creative work. One has only to add that before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat.

Let us also not forget that the upper layer of the bourgeois third estate passed its cultural apprenticeship under the roof of feudal society; that while still within the womb of feudal society it surpassed the old ruling estates culturally and became the instigator of culture before it came into power. It is different with the proletariat in general and with the Russian proletariat in particular. The proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. The working class strives to transform the state apparatus into a powerful pump for quenching the cultural thirst of the masses. This is a task of immeasurable historic importance. But, if one is not to use words lightly, it is not as yet a creation of a special proletarian culture. ‘Proletarian culture,’ “proletarian art,” etc., in three cases out of ten are used uncritically to designate the culture and the art of the coming communist society, in two cases out of ten to designate the fact that special groups of the proletariat are acquiring separate elements of pre-proletarian culture, and finally, in five cases out of ten, it represents a jumble of concepts and words out of which one can make neither head nor tail.

Here is a recent example, one of 6 hundred, where a slovenly, uncritical and dangerous use of the term ‘proletarian culture is made. “The economic basis and its corresponding system of superstructures,” writes Sizoy, “form the cultural characteristics of an epoch (feudal, bourgeois or proletarian).” Thus the epoch of proletarian culture is placed here on the same plane as that of the bourgeois. But that which is here called the proletarian epoch is only a brief transition from one social-cultural system to another, from capitalism to socialism. The establishment of the bourgeois regime was also preceded by a transitional epoch. But the bourgeois revolution tried, successfully, to perpetuate the domination of the bourgeoisie, while the proletarian revolution has for its aim the liquidation of the proletariat as a class in as brief a period as possible. The length of this period depends entirely upon the success of the revolution. Is it not amazing that one can forget this and place the proletarian cultural epoch on the same plane with that of feudal and bourgeois culture?

But if this is so, does it follow that we have no proletarian science? Are we not to say that the materialistic conception of history and the Marxist criticism of political economy represent invaluable scientific elements of a proletarian culture?

Of course, the materialistic conception of history and the labour theory of value have an immeasurable significance for the arming of the proletariat as a class and for science in general. There is more true science in the Communist Manifesto alone than in all the libraries of historical and historico-philosophical compilations, speculations and falsifications of the professors. But can one say that Marxism represents a product of proletarian culture? And can one say that we are already making use of Marxism, not in political battles only, but in broad scientific tasks as well?

Marx and Engels came out of the ranks of the petty bourgeois democracy and, of course, were brought up on its culture and not on the culture of the proletariat. If there had been no working class, with its strikes, struggles, sufferings and revolts, there would, of course, have been no scientific communism, because there would have been no historical necessity for it. But its theory was formed entirely on the basis of bourgeois culture, both scientific and political, though it declared a fight to the finish upon that culture. Under the pressure of capitalistic contradictions, the universalising thought of the bourgeois democracy, of its boldest, most honest, and most far-sighted representatives, rises to the heights of a marvellous renunciation, armed with all the critical weapons of bourgeois science. Such is the origin of Marxism.

The proletariat found its weapon in Marxism not at once, and not fully even to this day. Today this weapon serves political aims almost primarily and exclusively. The broad realistic application and the methodological development of dialectical materialism are still entirely in the future. Only in a socialist society will Marxism cease to be a one-sided weapon of political struggle and become a means of scientific creation, a most important element and instrument of spiritual culture.

All science, in greater or lesser degree, unquestionably reflects the tendencies of the ruling class. The more closely science attaches itself to the practical tasks of conquering nature (physics, chemistry, natural science in general), the greater is its non-class and human contribution. The more deeply science is connected with the social mechanism of exploitation (political economy), or the more abstractly it generalises the entire experience of mankind (psychology, not in its experimental, physiological sense but in its so-called philosophic sense), the more does it obey the class egotism of the bourgeoisie and the less significant is its contribution to the general sum of human knowledge. In the domain of the experimental sciences, there exist different degrees of scientific integrity and objectivity, depending upon the scope of the generalisations made. As a general rule, the bourgeois tendencies have found a much freer place for themselves in the higher spheres of methodological philosophy, of Weltanschauung. It is therefore necessary to clear the structure of science from the bottom to the top, or, more correctly, from the top to the bottom, because one has to begin from the upper stories.

But it would be naive to think that the proletariat must revamp critically all science inherited from the bourgeoisie before applying it to socialist reconstruction. This is just the same as saying with the utopian moralists: before building a new society, the proletariat must rise to the heights of communist ethics. As a matter of fact, the proletarian will reconstruct ethics as well as science radically, but he will do so after he will have constructed a new society, even though in the rough.

But are we not travelling in a vicious circle? How is one to build a new society with the aid of the old science, and the old morals? Here we must bring in a little dialectics, that very dialectics which we now put so uneconomically into lyric poetry and into our office bookkeeping and into our cabbage soup and into our porridge. In order to begin work, the proletarian vanguard needs certain points of departure, certain scientific methods which liberate the mind from the ideological yoke of the bourgeoisie; it is mastering these, in part has already mastered them. It has tested its fundamental method in many battles, under various conditions. But this is a long way from proletarian science. A revolutionary class cannot stop its struggle because the party has not yet decided whether it should or should not accept the hypothesis of electrons and ions, the psychoanalytical theory of Freud, the new mathematical discoveries of relativity, etc. True, after it has conquered power, the proletariat will find a much greater opportunity for mastering science and for revising it. This is more easily said than done.

The proletariat cannot postpone socialist reconstruction until the time when its new scientists, many of whom are still running about in short trousers, will test and clean all the instruments and all the channels of knowledge. The proletariat rejects what is clearly unnecessary, false and reactionary, and in the various fields of its reconstruction makes use of the methods and conclusions of present-day science, taking them necessarily with the percentage of reactionary class-alloy which is contained in them. The practical result will justify itself generally and on the whole, because such a use when controlled by a socialist goal will gradually manage and select the methods and conclusions of the theory. And by that time there will have grown up scientists who are educated under the new conditions. At any rate, the proletariat will have to carry its socialist reconstruction to quite a high degree, that is, provide for real material security and for the satisfaction of society culturally before it will be able to carry out a general purification of science from top to bottom. I do not mean to say by this anything against the Marxist work of criticism, which many in small circles and in seminars are trying to carry through in various fields. This work is necessary and fruitful. It should be extended and deepened in every way. But one has to maintain the marxian sense of the measure of things to count up the specific gravity of such experiments and efforts today in relation to the general scale of our historic work.

Does the foregoing exclude the possibility that even in the period of revolutionary dictatorship, there might appear eminent scientists, inventors, dramatists and poets out of the ranks of the proletariat? Not in the least. But it would be extremely light-minded to give the name of proletarian culture even to the most valuable achievements of individual representatives of the working class. One cannot turn the concept of culture into the small change of individual daily living and determine the success of a class culture by the proletarian passports of individual inventors or poets. Culture is the organic sum of knowledge and capacity which characterises the entire society, or at least its ruling class. It embraces and penetrates all fields of human work and unifies them into a system. Individual achievements rise above this level and elevate it gradually.

Does such an organic interrelation exist between our present-day proletarian poetry and the cultural work of the working class in its entirety? It is quite evident that it does not. Individual workers or groups of workers are developing contacts with the art which was created by the bourgeois intelligentsia and are making use of its technique, for the time being, in quite an eclectic manner. But is it for the purpose of giving expression to their own internal proletarian world? The fact is that it is far from being so. The work of the proletarian poets lacks an organic quality, which is produced only by a profound interaction between art and the development of culture in general. We have the literary works of talented and gifted proletarians, but that is not proletarian literature. However, they may prove to be some of its springs.

It is possible that in the work of the present generation many germs and roots and springs will be revealed to which some future descendant will trace the various sectors of the culture of the future, just as our present-day historians of art trace the theatre of Ibsen to the church mystery, or impressionism and cubism to the paintings of the monks. In the economy of art, as in the economy of nature, nothing is lost, and everything is connected in the whole. But factually, concretely, vitally, the present-day work of the poets who have sprung from the proletariat is not developing at all in accordance with the plan which is behind the process of preparing the conditions of the future socialist culture, that is, the process of elevating the masses.
 

Introduction

The following articles were originally published in 1936 in issues 31 and 32 of Bilan, the organ of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. The Fraction was obliged to outline the marxist position on the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine following the Arab general strike against Jewish immigration, which had degenerated into a series of bloody pogroms. Although a number of the specificities of the situation have since changed, what is striking about these articles is how profoundly applicable they are to the situation in the same region today. In particular, they demonstrate with a great deal of precision how the ‘national’ movements of both Jews and Arabs, though engendered by a real experience of oppression and persecution, had become inextricably entangled with the clash of rival imperialisms; and by the same token, how both were being used to obscure the shared class interests of Jewish and Arab proletarians, driving them into mutual slaughter for the interests of their exploiters. The articles thus demonstrate that:

• the Zionist movement only became a realistic project once it had received the backing of British imperialism, which was seeking to create what it called “a little loyal Ulster” in the Middle East, a zone of increasing strategic importance since the development of the oil industry;

• Britain, while backing the Zionist project, was also playing a dual game. It had to reckon with a huge Arab/Muslim component in its colonial empire; and it had made cynical use of Arab national aspirations during the First World War, when its main concern had been to finish off the crumbling Ottoman empire. It had therefore made all kinds of promises to the Arab population of Palestine and the rest of the region. This classic policy of ‘divide and rule’ had a double aim: to balance out the conflicting national and imperialist aspirations in the areas under its domination, while at the same time keeping the exploited masses of the region from recognising their common material interests;

• The Arab ‘liberation movement’, though opposed to British support for Zionism, was thus by no means anti-imperialist – any more than were those elements within Zionism who were already turning to military action against the British. Both nationalist movements operated entirely inside the overall imperialist game. If a nationalist faction turned against its former imperialist backers, it could only seek support from another. By the time of the Israeli war of Independence in 1948, virtually the whole Zionist movement had become openly anti-British, but in doing so had already become a tool of the newly triumphant American imperialism, which was willing to use any instrument at hand to thrust aside the old colonial empires. Similarly, Bilan shows that when Arab nationalism entered into open conflict with the British, this merely opened the door to the ambitions of Italian (and also German) imperialism; and from our vantage point, we can see that the Palestinian bourgeoisie would later turn to the Russian bloc, and then France and other European powers, in its conflicts with the USA.

The principal changes that have come about since these articles were written, of course, is that Zionism succeeded in establishing its state, which fundamentally shifted the balance of forces in the region; and the leading imperialist power in the region is no longer Britain but the US. But even here the essence remains the same: the establishment of the state of Israel, which resulted in the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians, only brought to its culminating point the tendency towards the expropriation of the Palestinian peasants which, as Bilan had noted was inherent in the Zionist project; and the USA, is itself compelled to maintain a contradictory balance between its support for the Zionist state on the one hand, and the necessity to keep as much as possible of the ‘Arab world’ under its influence on the other. Meanwhile the USA’s rivals continue to make whatever they can of the USA’s difficulties in keeping all these balls in the air at the same time.

Most relevant of all is Bilan’s clear denunciation of the way that both Arab and Jewish chauvinism was used to keep the workers at each others’ throats; in spite, indeed because of this, the Italian Fraction refused to make any compromise in its defence of authentic internationalism: “For real revolutionaries, naturally, there is no ‘Palestinian question’, but only the struggle of all the exploited of the Near east, Arabs and Jews included, which is part of the more general struggle of the all the exploited of the entire world for the communist revolution”. It thus totally rejected the Stalinist policy of supporting Arab nationalism as an alleged means of combating imperialism. The policies of the Stalinist parties of the day are now carried on by the Trotskyists and other leftists, who make themselves the mouthpieces of the ‘Palestinian Resistance’. These positions are as counter-revolutionary today as they were in 1936.

Today, when the masses of both sides are more than ever being whipped up into frenzy of mutual hatred, as the toll of massacre rises way beyond the levels reached in the 1930s, intransigent internationalism remains the only antidote to the nationalist poison.

ICC

Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine (part 1)

The aggravation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, the accentuation of the anti-British orientation of the Arab world, which during the world war was a pawn of British imperialism, has induced us to consider the Jewish problem and that of the pan-Arab nationalist movement. Here we will try to treat the first of these two problems.

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the dispersion of the Jewish people, the different countries where they came from, when they weren't expelled from their territories (less for the religious reasons invoked by the Catholic authorities than for economic reasons, notably the confiscation of their goods and the annulment of their credit), in regulating their conditions of life after the Papal Bull in the mid-16th century, which was the rule in every country, obliged them to live confined in closed quarters and obliged them to wear the infamous insignia.

Expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1394, they emigrated to Germany, Italy and Poland; expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1498, they took refuge in Holland, Italy and above all in the Ottoman Empire which then occupied north Africa and the greater part of south east Europe; there they formed, and even form today, this community talking a Jewish-Spanish dialect, whereas those emigrants in Poland, Russia, Hungary, etc., talk the Jewish-German dialect (Yiddish). The Hebrew language, which during this epoch remains the language of the Rabbis, was drawn out from the domain of dead languages to become the language of the Jews in Palestine with the present nationalist Jewish movement.

While the Jews of the west, the least numerous, and partially those of the United States, acquired an economic and political influence through their weight on the money markets and their intellectual weight through the number of them found in the liberal professions, the great masses were concentrated in eastern Europe and already, at the end of the 18th century, grouped 80 percent of the European Jews. Through the first departure from Poland and the annexation of Bessarabia (area around Ukraine - trans.), they came under the domination of the Czars who, at the beginning of the 19th century, had the two layers of Jews on their territories. From the beginning, the Russian government adopted a repressive policy dating from Catherine II and this found its cruellest expression under Alexander III who envisaged the solution to the Jewish problem in the following way: a third must be converted, a third must emigrate and a third must be exterminated. They were confined to a certain number of districts of the north-west provinces (White Russia), of the south-east (Ukraine and Bessarabia) and in Poland. They could not live outside of the towns and above all they could not live in the industrial areas (mining and metal working regions). But it's above all amongst the Jews who made a way for themselves in the penetration of capitalism in the 19th century and that determined a differentiation of the classes.

It was the pressure of Russian governmental terrorism which gave the first impulsion to Palestinian colonisation. However the first Jews had already returned to Palestine following expulsion from Spain at the end of the 15th century and the first agricultural colony was constituted close to Jaffa in 1870. But the first serious immigration only began after 1880, when police persecution and the first pogroms led to emmigration towards America and Palestine.

This first "Alya" (Jewish immigration) of 1882, the so-called "Biluimes", was mostly composed of Russian students who could be considered as the pioneers of Jewish colonisation in Palestine. The second "Alya" happened in 1904-05 as a repercussion of the crushing of the first revolution in Russia. The number of Jews established in Palestine which was some 12,000 in 1850, rose to 35,000 in 1882 and to 90,000 in 1914.

These were all Jews from Russia and Romania, intellectuals and proletarians, because the Jewish capitalists of the west, like the Rothschild's and the Hirsch's, limited themselves to a financial support which gave them a benevolent reputation as philanthropists, without it being necessary for them to give up their precious persons.

Among the "Biluimes" of 1882, the socialists were still few in number and that because in the controversy of the time it was a question of going towards Palestine or America and they were for the latter. In the first Jewish emigration to the United States, the socialists were thus very numerous and so this constitutes a good time for organisations, journals and even attempts at communist colonisation.

The second time that the question of seeing where Jewish immigration was leading was posed, as we have said, after the defeat of the first Russian revolution and following the aggravation of the pogroms characterised by those of Kitchinew (Chisinau, Moldavia - trans.).

The Zionism which attempted to assure the Jewish people a place in Palestine and which had just set up a National Fund for acquiring territory, was, at the time of the 7th Zionist Congress in Basle, divided between the traditionalist current which remained faithful to the constitution of the Jewish state in Palestine and the territorialists who were for colonisation elsewhere and, concretely, in Uganda which was offered by the British.

Alone a minority of socialist Jews, the Poales Zionists of Ber Borochov, remained faithful to the traditionalists, all the other Jewish socialist parties at the time, as the Zionist Socialists (S.S.) and the Serpistes - a sort of reproduction in the Jewish milieu of the Russian Social-Revolutionaries - declared themselves for territorialism. The oldest and the most powerful Jewish organisation of the time, the Bund, was, as we know, quite negative on the subject of the national question, at least in this period.

A decisive moment for the movement for national renaissance was opened with the world war of 1914. After the occupation of Palestine by British troops, to which the Jewish Legion of Jabotinsky rallied, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was promulgated which promised the constitution of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

This promise was given its assent at the San Remo Conference of 1920 which put Palestine under British mandate.

The Balfour declaration led to a third "Alya" but it was above all the fourth, the most numerous, which coincided with the remit of the Palestinian mandate to Britain. This "Alya" already involved quite numerous layers of petty-bourgeois. We know that the latest immigration in Palestine which followed the rise of Hitler to power and which is certainly the most important already contained a strong percentage of capitalists.

If the first census made in 1922 in Palestine had regard to the ravages of the world war, only registering 84,000 Jews, 11% of the total population, that of 1931 already registered 175,000 of them. In 1934, the statistics give 307,000 out of a total population of one million, one hundred and seventy one thousand. Presently the figure given is of 400,000 Jews.

Eighty per cent of the Jews are established in the towns whose development is illustrated by the rapid appearance of the mushrooming town of Tel-Aviv; the development of Jewish industry is also rather rapid: in 1928 one could count 3,505 firms of which 782 had more than 4 workers, that's to say a total of 18,000 workers with a capital invested of 3.5 million pounds sterling.

The Jews established in the countryside represented only 20% faced with the Arabs who formed 65% of the agricultural population. But the Fellahs worked their land with primitive means, while the Jews in their colonies and plantations worked according to the intensive methods of capitalism with Arab labourers on very low wages.

The figures we have given already explain one side of the present conflict. For 20 centuries the Jews had abandoned Palestine and other populations were installed on the banks of the Jordan. Although the declarations of Balfour and the decisions of the League of Nations pretended to give respect to the rights of the occupants of Palestine, in reality the growth of Jewish immigration meant driving the Arabs out of their lands even if they were bought at a low price by the Jewish National Fund.

It is not through humanity towards "a persecuted people without a country" that Great Britain choose a pro-Jewish policy. It is the interests of high British finance where Jews have a predominant influence which determined this policy. On the other hand, from the beginning of Jewish colonisation one notices a contrast between Jewish and Arab proletarians. At the beginning the Jewish colonists had employed Jewish workers because they exploited their national fervour in order to defend themselves against Arab incursions. Afterwards, with the consolidation of the situation, the industrial and Jewish landed proprietors preferred Arab, to the more demanding Jewish labour.

Jewish workers, by setting up their unions, much more than the class struggle, took up in competition against the low Arab wages. That explains the chauvinist character of the Jewish workers' movement which is exploited by Jewish nationalism and British imperialism.

There are also naturally reasons of a political nature which are at the base of the present conflict. British imperialism, despite the hostility of the two races, wanted to make the two different states cohabit under the same roof and even create a bi-parliamentarism which envisaged a distinct parliament for Jews and Arabs.

In the Jewish camp, aside from the procrastinating directive of Weissman there are the revisionists of Jabotinsky who in fighting official Zionism, accused Great Britain of absenteeism, if not failing in its commitment, and who wanted to open Jewish immigration up to Trans-Jordan, Syria and the Sinai Peninsula.

The first conflicts which appeared in August 1929 and which unfolded around the Wailing Wall, provoked, according to the official statistics, the death of two hundred Arabs and a hundred and thirty Jews, figures certainly lower than reality, because if in the modern installations the Jews succeeded in repulsing the attacks, in Hebron, Safit and in some suburbs of Jerusalem, the Arabs went on to carry out some real pogroms.

These events marked a halt to the pro-Jewish British policy because the colonial British empire comprised many Muslims, India included, which was sufficient reason for it to be prudent.

Following this attitude of the British government towards the Jewish national homeland, the majority of the Jewish parties: the orthodox Zionists, the general Zionists and the revisionists went into opposition while the staunchest support for British policy managed at this time by the Labour Party, was represented by the Jewish Labour movement which was the political expression of the General Confederation of Labour, organising almost the totality of the Jewish workers in Palestine.

There was recently expressed. on the surface only, a common movement of Jewish and Arab struggle against the mandatory power. But the fire smouldered under the ashes and the explosion was composed on the the events of May last.

***

The Italian fascist press has been up in arms against the accusation of the "sanctionnist" press, that fascist agents had fomented the struggles in Palestine, an accusation already made regarding recent events in Egypt. Nobody can deny that fascism has a great interest in fanning the flames. Italian imperialism has never hidden its designs towards the Near-East, that's to say its desire to substitute itself for the mandatory powers in Palestine and Syria. Moreover, in the Mediterranean it possesses a powerful naval and military base represented by Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese (12 islands of the Aegean). British imperialism on the other hand, if it finds itself advantaged by the conflict between Arabs and Jews, because according to the old Roman formula divide et impera, it must divide in order to rule, it must however take account of Jewish financial power and the threat of the nationalist Arab movement.

This latter movement of which we will talk more another time, is a consequence of the world war which led to an industrialisation in India, Palestine and Syria and which strengthened the indigenous bourgeoisie which posed its candidature for government, that's to say for the exploitation of the indigenous masses.

The Arabs accuse Britain of wanting to make Palestine the Jewish national homeland, which would mean stealing the land from the indigenous population. They have again sent emissaries to Egypt, Syria and Morocco in order to lead an agitation in the Muslim world in favour of the Palestinian Arabs, so as to try to intensify the movement with a view of a national pan-Islamic union. They are encouraged by recent events in Syria where the mandatory power, France, has been obliged to capitulate in front of a general strike, and also by events in Egypt where agitation and the constitution of a single national front has obliged London to treat the government of Cairo as an equal. We don't know if the general strike of the Arabs in Palestine will obtain a similar success. We will examine this movement at the same time as the Arab problem in the next article.

Gatto MAMMONE

The Arab-Jewish Conflict in Palestine (Part 2)

As we saw in the first part of this article, when, after 2,000 years of "exile", the "Biluimes" acquired a sandy plain of territory to the south of Jaffa, they found other tribes, the Arabs, who took the place of those in Palestine. These latter were only some hundreds of thousands, either Arab Fellahs (peasants) or Bedouins (nomads); the peasants worked the soil with very primitive means, a soil belonging for the most part to the ground landlords (Effendi). British imperialism, as we know, in pushing these latifundists and the Arab bourgeoisie to join a struggle on its side during the world war, had promised them the constitution of an Arab national state. The Arab revolt was, in fact, of a decisive importance in the collapse of the Turko-German front in the Near-East, because it reduced to nothing the appeal from the Ottoman Calif to Holy War and held at bay numerous Turkish troops in Syria, without mentioning the destruction of the Turkish armies in Mesopotamia.

But if British imperialism had led this Arab revolt against Turkey, thanks to the promise to create an Arab state composed of all the provinces of the old Ottoman Empire (including Palestine), it didn't hesitate in the defence of its own interests to solicit, as a counter-point, the support of the Jewish Zionists by telling them that Palestine would be in their remit as much from the point of view of administration as for colonisation.

At the same time, it gained the support of French imperialism for it to cede the mandate over Syria, thus detaching this region, which formed with Palestine, an indissoluble historic and economic historical unity.

***

The letter that Lord Balfour addressed to Rothschild, president of the Zionist Federation of England on November 2 1917, communicated to him that the British government would look favourably on the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people and that he would use all his efforts for the realisation of this objective. Lord Balfour added that: "nothing would be done which could either harm the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish collectives existing in Palestine, or the rights and the political statute that the Jews enjoy in other countries".

Despite the ambiguous terms of this declaration, which allowed a new people to install themselves on their soil, the whole of the Arab population remained neutral at the beginning and even favourable to the setting up of a national Jewish homeland. The Arab proprietors, in fear that an agrarian law would be instituted, showed themselves willing to sell land. The Zionist leaders, solely absorbed with the preoccupation of the political order, did not profit from these offers and went as far as approving the defence of the Allenby government over the sale of land.

Soon, the Zionist bourgeoisie manifested tendencies to totally occupy (from the territorial and political point of view) Palestine by depossessing the native population and pushing it towards the desert. This tendency is shown today among the "revisionist" Zionists, that's to say in the pro-fascist current of the nationalist Jewish movement.

The area of arable land of Palestine is about 12 million metric "dounams" (one dounam = one tenth of a hectare) of which 5 to 6 million are currently under cultivation.

Here's how the area of land cultivated by the Jews in Palestine since 1899 has been established:

1899: 22 colonies, 5,000 inhabitants, 300,000 dounams.

1914: 43 colonies, 12,000 inhabitants, 400,000 dounams.

1922: 73 colonies, 15,000 inhabitants, 600,000 dounams.

1934: 160 colonies, 70,000 inhabitants, 1,200,000 dounams.

In order to judge the real value of this progression and the influence which comes from it, we mustn't forget that even today Arab cultivation of the land is of a primitive fashion, while the Jewish colonies employ the most modern cultivation methods.

Jewish capital invested in the agricultural enterprises are estimated at more than 100 million gold dollars, of which 65% is in the plantations. Although the Jews only possess 14% of the cultivated land, the value of products reaches a quarter of the total production.

For the orange plantations, the Jews manage 55% of the total crop.

***

It's in April 1920, in Jerusalem, and in May 1921, in Jaffa, that, under the form of pogroms, the first symptoms of Arab reaction occurs. Sir Herbert Samuel, High-Commissionaire in Palestine up to 1925, tried to appease the Arabs by stopping Jewish immigration, while promising to the Arabs a representative government and to assign to them the best land in the domain of the state.

After the great wave of colonisation of 1925, which reached its maximum with 33,000 immigrants, the situation worsened and ended up giving rise to the movements of 1929. It is at this time that the Bedouin tribes joined up with the Arab populations of Palestine, called for by Muslim agitators.

Following these events, the parliamentary commission of inquiry sent to Palestine and which is known as the Shaw Commission, concluded that the events were due to Jewish workers' immigration and the "scarcity" of land and it proposed to the government to buy land in order to compensate the Fellah removed from his land.

Afterwards, in May 1930, the British government accepted in their entirety, the conclusions of the Shaw Commission and again suspended Jewish workers' immigration to Palestine, the Jewish workers' movement - that the Shaw Commission had even refused to listen to - responded with a 24 hour protest strike, while the Poale-Zionists, in every country, as well as the large Jewish unions in America, protested against this measure through numerous demonstrations.

In October 1930, a new declaration concerning British policy in Palestine appeared and was known under the name of the "White Book".

It was equally unfavourable to Zionists arguments. But, faced with the ever-growing protests of the Jews, the Labour Government responded in February 1931, with a letter from MacDonald, which reaffirmed the right to work, to Jewish immigration and colonisation and authorised Jewish employers to hire Jewish labour when it preferred the latter rather than the Arabs - without taking into account the eventual increase of unemployment among the Arabs.

The Palestinian workers' movement hastened to put its trust in the British Labour government, whereas all the other Zionist parties remained in distrustful opposition.

We have demonstrated, in the preceding article, the reasons for the chauvinist character of the Palestinian workers' movement.

The Histadrut - the main Palestinian union - only included Jews (80% of Jewish workers are organised). It is only the necessity to raise the standard of life of the Arab masses, in order to protect the high wages of Jewish labour, which has lately determined its attempts at Arab organisation. But the embryonic unions grouped in "The Alliance" remain organically separate from Histadrut, the exception being the lorry drivers' union which includes the representatives of both races.

***

The general strike of Arabs in Palestine is now going into its fourth month. The guerrilla war continues, despite the recent decree which imposes the death penalty on anyone responsible for an attack; each day sees ambushes and raids against trains and cars, without counting the destruction and arson of Jewish property.

These events have already cost the mandatory power close to half-a-million pounds sterling, through the maintenance of the armed forces and through the reduction of budgetary duties, a consequence of the passive resistance and the economic boycott of the Arab masses. Recently, in the Commons, the Minister of the Colonies has given figures on the victims: 400 Muslims, 200 Jews and 100 police. Up to now, 1,800 Arabs and Jews have been judged and 1,200, of which 300 are Jews, condemned. According to the Minister, a hundred Arab nationalists have been deported to concentration camps.

Four communist leaders (2 Jews and 2 Armenians) are detained and 60 communists are under surveillance by the police. These are the official figures.

It is evident that the policy of British imperialism in Palestine naturally draws its inspiration from a colonial policy proper to any imperialism. This consists of basing itself on certain layers of the colonial population (by opposing races or different religious persuasions against each other, or again by arousing jealousies between chiefs or clans), which allows the imperialism to solidly establish its super-oppression over the colonial masses themselves without distinction between races or religions.

But if this manoeuvre was able to succeed in Morocco and in central Africa, in Palestine and in Syria the Arab nationalist movement presents a very compact resistance. It relies on the more or less independent countries which surround it: Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Irak, the Arab States and, moreover, is linked to the whole of the Muslim world which accounts for 300 million individuals.

Despite some contrasts between the the different Muslim states and despite the Anglophile policies of certain among them, the great danger for imperialism would be the constitution of an eastern bloc capable of imposing itself - this would be possible if the strengthening of a nationalist sentiment of the the indigenous bourgeoisie could prevent the awakening of the class revolt of the colonial exploited who would have had enough of their exploiters as much as European imperialism - and which would find a rallying point around Turkey which has again just affirmed its rights over the Dardanelles and which could again take up its pan-Islamic policy.

But, Palestine is of capital importance for British imperialism. If the Zionists thought they could obtain a "Jewish" Palestine, in reality they would only ever get a "British" Palestine. The Palestinian transit routes link Europe to India. They could replace the maritime route from Suez whose security has just been weakened by the establishment of Italian imperialism in Ethiopia. Nor should we forget that the pipe-line from Mosul ends up at the Palestinian port of Haifa.

Finally, British policy will always have to take account of the 100,000,000 Muslims of the British empire. Up to now, British imperialism has succeeded in Palestine in containing the threat represented by the Arab national independence movement. It opposes Zionism to the latter which, in pushing for the Jewish masses to emigrate to Palestine, dislocates the class movement of their country of origin where they would have found their place and, finally, it makes sure of a solid support for British policy in the Near-East.

The expropriation of land at derisory prices has plunged the Arab proletarians into the blackest misery and pushes them into the arms of the Arab nationalists, the big landowners and the nascent bourgeoisie. The latter evidently profited from this in order to direct the discontent of the Fellahs and proletarians against the Jewish workers in the same way that the Zionist capitalists have directed the discontent of the Jewish workers against the Arabs. From this contrast between exploited Jews and Arabs, British imperialism and the leading classes of the Jews and Arabs can only come out stronger.

Official communism helps the Arabs in their struggle against a Zionism which is qualified as an instrument of British imperialism.

Already, in 1929, the nationalist Jewish press published a "blacklist" from the police in which communists agitators figured alongside the Grand Mufti and some Arab nationalist chiefs. At present, numerous communist militants have been arrested.

Having launched the slogan for the "Arabisation" of the party - the latter, as the C.P. of Syria and even of Egypt, has been founded by a group of intellectual Jews which was fought as "opportunist" - the centrist have today launched the slogan "Arabia for the Arabs" which is only a copy of the slogan "Federation of all the Arab peoples", a nationalist Arab slogan, that's to say of the big planters (Effendi) and of the intellectuals who have the support of the Muslim clergy, controlled by the Arab Congress and channelling, in the name of their interests, the reactions of the exploited Arabs.

For real revolutionaries, naturally, there is no "Palestinian" question, but solely the struggle of all the exploited of the Near-East, Arabs and Jews included, which is part of a more general struggle of all the exploited of the entire world for the communist revolution.

Gatto MAMMONE

At the beginning of this year, the ICC decided to transform the 15th Congress of its section in France into an Extraordinary International Conference. The decision was motivated by the open outbreak of an organisational crisis immediately following its 14th International Congress in April 2001. This crisis has led to the departure from our organisation of several militants, who have recently regrouped in what they call the "Internal Fraction of the ICC". As we shall see, the Conference took note of the fact that these militants had deliberately set themselves outside the organisation, even if today they proclaim to whoever is prepared to listen that they have been "excluded".

While most of the Conference was focused on organisational issues, it also discussed the analysis of the international situation, and adopted the resolution which is published in this issue of the International Review.

The aim of this article is to give an account of the conference's most important work, the nature of its discussions, and its decisions on organisational issues, since this was its main purpose. It will also set out our analysis of the self-styled "internal fraction" of the ICC, which presents itself today as the real continuity of the ICC's organisational gains, but which in reality is nothing other than a new parasitic grouping, such as the ICC and other organisations of the proletarian political milieu have had to confront in the past. But before we deal with these questions, it is necessary to consider another, which has been the object of much misunderstanding in today's proletarian political milieu: the importance of questions of functioning for communist organisations.

We say this because we have often heard or read the comment that "the ICC is obsessed with organisational questions", or that "it's articles on the question are of no interest, it's just their own internal affairs". This kind of judgement is understandable enough on the part of non-militants, even when they sympathise with Left Communist positions. When one is not a member of a proletarian political organisation, it is clearly difficult to measure fully the problems that such an organisation can encounter in its functioning. That said, it is much more surprising to meet with this kind of comment on the part of members of organised political groups. This is one of the expressions of the weakness of the present proletarian political milieu, resulting from the organic and political break between today's organisations and those of the past workers' movement, as a result of the counter-revolution which crushed the class from the end of the 1920s until the end of the 1960s.

For this reason, and before we deal with the questions which concerned the conference, we will begin with a brief reminder of some organisational lessons of the past workers' movement, on the basis in particular of two of the most well-known amongst them: the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), or 1st International (in which Marx and Engels were militants), and the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), whence emerged the Bolshevik Party that in 1917 took the lead of the only victorious proletarian revolution, before it degenerated as a result of its international isolation. We will look more particularly at these organisations' two congresses where organisational issues took centre stage: the IWA's 1872 Hague Congress, and the 1903 Congress of the RSDLP which gave rise to the formation of the Bolshevik and Menshevik fractions, which were to play directly opposing roles in the revolution of 1917.

The IWA was founded in September 1864 in London, on the initiative of a number of French and English workers. It adopted a centralised structure straight away, with a central Council, which after the 1866 Geneva Congress was known as the General Council. Marx was to play a leading role within the Council, since it fell to him to write a large number of its basic texts, such as the IWA's founding address, its statutes, and the address on the Paris Commune (The Civil War in France, May 1871). The IWA (or "The International", as the workers called it) quickly became a "power" in the advanced countries (above all in Western Europe). Up till the 1871 Paris Commune, it regrouped a growing number of workers and was a leading factor in the development of the proletariat's two essential weapons: its organisation and its consciousness. This is why, indeed, the International was subjected to increasingly bitter attacks by the bourgeoisie: slander in the press, infiltration by informers, persecution of its members, etc. But the IWA ran the greatest danger from the attacks of some of its own members against the International's very mode of organisation.

Already, when the IWA was founded, the provisional rules were translated by the Parisian sections, strongly influenced by Proudhon's federalist conceptions, in a way that considerably weakened the International's centralised character. But the most dangerous attacks were to come later, with the entry into its ranks of the "Alliance de la démocratie socialiste" founded by Bakunin. This latter was to find fertile ground within important sections of the International, due to its own weaknesses, which were in turn the result of the weaknesses of the proletariat at the time, characteristic of its previous stage of development.

This weakness was especially marked in the most backward sectors of the European proletariat, where it had only just emerged from the peasant and artisan classes. Bakunin, who entered the International in 1868 after the collapse of the "League for Peace and Liberty", used these weaknesses to try to subject the International to his anarchist conceptions, and to bring it under his control. The tool for this operation was to be the "Alliance de la démocratie socialiste", which he had founded as a minority in the League for Peace and Liberty.

The latter was an organisation of bourgeois republicans, founded on the initiative notably of Garibaldi and Victor Hugo, one of whose main objectives was to compete with the IWA for the support of the working class. Bakunin was a member of the League's leadership, which he claimed gave it a "revolutionary impetus", and urged it to propose a merger with the IWA, refused by the latter at its Brussels congress in 1868. Following the failure of the League for Peace and Liberty, Bakunin decided to enter the IWA, not just as a militant but as part of the leadership.

"To be recognised as leader of the International, he had to present himself as the leader of another army, whose absolute devotion to his person was to be assured by a secret organisation. After openly implanting his society in the International, he intended to spread its ramifications into every section, and so to take over an absolute authority. With this aim, he founded the (public) Alliance for Socialist Democracy in Geneva (?) But this public Alliance hid another, which in its turn was directed by the still more secret Alliance of the international brotherhood, the Centurion Guards of the dictator Bakunin".1

The Alliance was thus both a public and a secret society, which in fact intended to form an International within the International. Its secret structure and the collusion this allowed amongst its members was supposed to ensure its "influence" over as many of the IWA's sections as possible, especially those where anarchist conceptions encountered the greatest echo. In itself, the existence of several different trends of thought within the IWA did not pose any problem. By contrast, the activity of the Alliance, aimed at replacing the official structure of the International, was a serious factor of disorganisation, and endangered the latter's very existence. The Alliance first tried to take control of the International at the Basle Congress in September 1869 by trying to have a motion adopted in favour of the abolition of the right of inheritance, against the motion proposed by the General Council. With this aim in view, its members, in particular Bakunin and James Guillaume, warmly supported an administrative resolution strengthening the powers of the General Council. Failing in this, however, the Alliance (which itself had adopted secret statutes based on an extreme centralisation) began a campaign against the "dictatorship" of the General Council, which it aimed to reduce to the role of a "statistical and correspondence bureau" to use the Alliancists terms, or to a mere "letter-box" as Marx answered them. Against the principle of centralisation as an expression of the proletariat's international unity, the Alliance preached "federalism", the complete "autonomy of the sections", and the non-obligatory nature of Congress decisions. In fact, the alliance wanted to do whatever it liked in the sections that had come under its control. The way would be open to the complete disorganisation of the IWA.

This was the danger faced by the Hague Congress in 1872. This congress was essentially devoted to organisational questions. As we wrote in the International Review n°87 "after the fall of the Paris Commune, the absolute priority for the workers' movement became to shake off the weight of its own sectarian past, to overcome the influence of petty bourgeois socialism. It is this political framework which explains the fact that the central question dealt with at the Hague Congress was not the Paris Commune itself, but the defence of the statutes of the International against the plots of Bakunin and his supporters" ("The Hague Congress of 1872: The struggle against political parasitism").

After confirming the decisions of the London Conference, which had been held one year previously, in particular those concerning the necessity for the working class to create its own political party and on the strengthening of the authority of the General Council, the Congress debated the question of the Alliance on the basis of a report by an enquiry commission, and finally decided on the exclusion of Bakunin and James Guillaume, the leader of the Jura Federation of the IWA, which was completely under the control of the Alliance. It is worth highlighting certain aspects of the attitude of members of the Alliance at or on the eve of the Congress:

- several sections controlled by the Alliance (in particularly the Jura Federation, and certain sections in Spain and the United States) refused to pay their dues to the General Council, and their delegates only paid their debt (of their back dues) under the threat of seeing their mandate invalidated;

- the delegates from sections controlled by the Alliance undertook a veritable blackmail of the Congress, demanding that it violate its own rules by taking account solely of votes based on imperative mandates, and threatening to withdraw if the Congress did not meet their demands;2

- the refusal by certain members of the Alliance to co-operate with the Commission of Enquiry established by the Congress, or even to recognise it, accusing it of being a "Holy Inquisition".3

This Congress was the IWA's high point (it was the only Congress that Marx attended, which gives an idea of how important he considered it), but also its swan song because of the crushing defeat of the Paris Commune and the demoralisation that this provoked within the proletariat. Marx and Engels were aware of this reality. This is why, along with the measures aimed at keeping the IWA out of the hands of the Alliance, they also proposed that the General Council be moved to New York, far from the conflicts that were dividing the International. This was also a means for allowing the International to die a natural death (confirmed by the 1876 Philadelphia Conference), without its prestige being hijacked by the Bakuninist intriguers.

The latter, and the anarchists have perpetuated this legend, claimed that Marx and the General Council excluded Bakunin and Guillaume because of their different vision of the question of the state (when they did not explain the conflict between Marx and Bakunin by questions of personality). In short, Marx was supposed to have wanted to settle a disagreement on general theoretical questions with administrative measures. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Hague Congress took no measures against the members of the Spanish delegation, who shared Bakunin's ideas and had belonged to the Alliance, but who declared that they no longer did so. Similarly, the "anti-authoritarian" IWA formed after the Hague Congress from the Federations which refused to accept its decisions was not made up solely of anarchists, since it also included the German Lassalleans, who were great defenders of "state socialism" to use Marx's words. In fact, the real struggle within the IWA was between those who stood for the unity of the workers' movement (and therefore the binding nature of Congress decisions), and those who demanded the right to do whatever they pleased, each isolated from the others, treating the Congresses as mere assemblies, where everyone could exchange "points of view" without taking any decisions. With this informal mode of organisation, it would fall to the Alliance to carry out, in secret, a real centralisation of the Federations, as indeed Bakunin's correspondence explicitly stated. Putting these "anti-authoritarian" conceptions to work in the International would have been the best way to deliver it up to the intrigues, and the hidden and uncontrolled power of the Alliance, in other words the adventurers who led it.

The 2nd Congress of the RSDLP was the occasion for a similar confrontation between the defenders of a proletarian conception of the revolutionary organisation, and the petty-bourgeois conception.

There are similarities between the situation in the West European workers' movement at the time of the IWA, and the movement in Russia at the turn of the century. In both cases, the workers' movement was still in its youth, the separation in time being due to Russia's late industrial development. The IWA's purpose was to regroup in a united organisation, the different workers' societies that the proletariat's development had created. Similarly, the aim of the RSDLP's 2nd Congress was to unite the different committees, groups and circles of the social democracy which had developed in Russia and in exile. Following the disappearance of the Central Committee, which had been formed by the RSDLP's 1st Congress in 1897, there had been almost no formal links between these different formations. The 2nd Congress thus saw, as with the IWA, a confrontation between a conception of the organisation representing the movement's past, that of the "Mensheviks" ("minorityites") and a conception expressing the requirements of the new situation, that of the "Bolsheviks" ("majorityites").

The Mensheviks' approach, as it became clear later (very quickly in the revolution of 1905, and still more of course during the revolution of 1917, when the Mensheviks stood alongside the bourgeoisie), was determined by the penetration of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, in particular of the anarchist variety, within the Russian social-democracy. In particular, as Lenin noted, "Most of the opposition [ie the Mensheviks] was made up of our Party's intellectual elements", who thus became the bearers of petty-bourgeois conceptions of the organisational question. These elements, as a result, "naturally raise the standard of revolt against the indispensable restrictions of the organisation, and they establish their spontaneous anarchism as a principle of struggle (...) making demands in favour of 'tolerance' etc" (Lenin, op cit). And indeed, there are many similarities between the behaviour of the Mensheviks and that of the anarchists in the IWA (Lenin speaks on several occasions of the Mensheviks "aristocratic anarchism").

Like the anarchists after the Hague Congress, the Mensheviks refused to recognise and apply the decisions of the 2nd RSDLP Congress, declaring that "the Congress is not divine" and that "its decisions are not sacred". In particular, just as the Bakuninists went to war against the principle of centralisation and the "dictatorship of the General Council" after failing to take control of it, one reason that the Mensheviks began to reject centralisation after the Congress was the fact that several of them had been removed from the central organs elected by the Congress. There are even likenesses in the way the Mensheviks campaigned against Lenin's "personal dictatorship" and "iron fist", which echo Bakunin's accusations of Marx's "dictatorship" over the General Council.

"When I consider the approach of the friends of Martov after the Congress (...) I can only say that this is an insane attempt, unworthy of Party members, to tear the Party apart (...) And why? Solely because one is discontented at the makeup of the central organs, because objectively this is the only question which separated us, since the subjective appreciations (such as offence, insults, expulsions, pushing aside, casting slurs, etc) were nothing but the fruit of wounded pride and a sick imagination. This sick imagination and wounded pride led straight to the most shameful gossiping: without waiting to find out about the activity of the new centres, nor having seen them in action, some go about spreading gossip about their "inadequacy", or about the "iron glove" of Ivan Ivanovitch, or the "fist" of Ivan Nikiforovitch, etc (...) Russian social-democracy still has a difficult step to take, from the circle spirit to the party spirit; from a petty-bourgeois mentality to a consciousness of its revolutionary duty; gossip and the pressure of circles considered as a means of action, against discipline" (Lenin, Report on the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP).

It is worth noting that the weapon of blackmail used in their day by Guillaume and the Alliance was also part of the Mensheviks' arsenal. Martov, the Mensheviks' leading figure, refused to take part in the editorial committee of the party's publication Iskra, to which he had been elected by the Congress, on the grounds that his friends Axelrod, Potressov and Zassoulich had not been appointed to it.

Given the examples of the IWA and the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, we can see the importance of questions linked to the mode of organisation of revolutionary formations. In fact, these were the questions that were to produce the first decisive decantation between the proletarian current on the one hand, and the bourgeois and petty bourgeois currents on the other. This importance is no accident. It springs precisely from the fact that one of the main channels for the infiltration of ideologies foreign to the proletariat - bourgeois or petty-bourgeois - is precisely that of their functioning.

Marxists have thus always paid the greatest attention to the organisational question. Within the IWA, Marx and Engels themselves took the lead in the fight to defend proletarian principles. And it was no accident that they played a decisive role in the decision by the Hague Congress to devote most of its labours to organisational questions, at a time when the working class had just been confronted with two of the most important events of the period, which received much less attention: the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune. This choice has led most bourgeois historians to consider this Congress as being the least important of the IWA's history, whereas it was in reality the most important since it made it possible for the 2nd International to make new advances in the development of the workers' movement.

Within the 2nd International, Lenin was also seen as "obsessed" with the organisational question. The quarrels that agitated Russian Social Democracy were incomprehensible within the other socialist parties, and Lenin was seen as a "sectarian" who dreamed of nothing but splits. In fact, it was Lenin who drew the deepest inspiration from Marx and Engels' struggle against the Alliance. The validity of his combat was to be brilliantly demonstrated in 1917, by his party's ability to take the lead in the revolution.

The ICC, for its part, has followed the tradition of Marx and Lenin in paying the greatest attention to organisational questions. In January 1982, the ICC devoted an Extraordinary Conference to the question following the crisis of 1981.4 Finally, between late 1993 and 1996, our organisation undertook a fundamental battle to strengthen its organisational tissue, against the "circle spirit" and for the "party spirit" as Lenin defined them in 1903. Our International Review n°82 gives an account of the ICC's 11th Congress, which was essentially devoted to the organisational questions that we confronted at the time.5 We followed this with a series of articles on organisational questions devoted to the struggles within the IWA (International Review n°85-88), and two articles entitled "Have we become Leninists?" (International Review n°96-97) on the fight by Lenin and the Bolsheviks on the organisational issue. Finally, in our previous issue, we published substantial extracts from an internal document on the question of functioning within the ICC, which served as an orientation text for the struggle of 1993-96.

A transparent attitude vis-à-vis the difficulties encountered by our organisation has nothing to do with any 'exhibitionism' on our part. The experience of communist organisations is an integral part of the experience of the working class. This is why Lenin devoted an entire book, One step forward, two steps back to the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP. By giving an account of its organisational life, the ICC is thus doing nothing other than assuming its responsibility in the face of the working class.

Obviously, when a revolutionary organisation publicises its problems and internal discussions, this is a choice dish for all the adversaries waiting to denigrate it. This is also, and even especially, the case for the ICC. As we wrote in International Review n°82, "we won't find any jubilation in the bourgeois press over the difficulties that our organisation is going through today: the ICC is still too small, both in its size and in its influence amongst the working masses, for the bourgeoisie to have any interest in talking about it and trying to discredit it. It is preferable for the bourgeoisie to erect a wall of silence around the positions and even the existence of revolutionary organisations. This is why the work of denigrating them, and sabotaging their intervention, is undertaken by a whole series of groups and parasitic elements whose function is to drive away individuals who are coming towards class positions, to disgust them with any participation in the difficult task of developing a proletarian political milieu (?) Within the parasitic movement, we find fully-fledged groups like the 'Groupe Communiste Internationaliste' (GCI) and its splits (such as 'Contre le Courant'), the defunct 'Communist Bulletin Group" (CBG) or the ex-"External Fraction of the ICC", which were all formed from splits from the ICC. But parasitism is not limited to such groups. It is also spread by unorganised elements, who may meet from time to time in ephemeral discussion groups whose main concern is to circulate all kinds of gossip about our organisation.6 These elements are often ex-militants who have given in to the pressure of petty-bourgeois ideology and have proven unable to maintain their commitment within the organisation, or who have been frustrated that the organisation failed to give them the recognition they thought they deserved, or again who could not stand being the object of criticism (?) Obviously, these elements are absolutely incapable of building anything whatever. By contrast, they are often very effective, with their petty agitation and their concierge's chatter, at discrediting and destroying what the organisation is trying to build" ("11th Congress of the ICC").

However, it is not the wriggling of the parasites that will prevent the ICC from setting before the whole proletarian milieu the lessons of its own experience. In the preface to One step forward, two steps back, in 1904, Lenin wrote: "They [our adversaries] exult and grimace at the sight of our discussions; obviously, they will try, to serve their own purposes, to brandish my pamphlet devoted to the defects and weaknesses in our Party. The Russian social-democrats are sufficiently tempered in battle not to be troubled by such pinpricks, and to continue in spite of everything with their task of self-criticism, mercilessly unveiling their own weaknesses, which will be overcome necessarily and without fail by the growth of the workers' movement. Let our adversaries try to give us an image of the situation in their own 'parties' which comes close to that presented by the minutes of our 2nd Congress!".

We intend to adopt the same approach in giving an account of the problems of functioning which have affected our organisation lately, and which were at the centre of the work of the Conference.

The origins of the ICC's recent organisational difficulties

The ICC's 11th Congress adopted a resolution on its activities which drew the main lessons from the crisis our organisation underwent in 1993, and from the struggle for its recovery. We published large extracts in International Review n°82, and we reproduce some of them here since they throw a light on our recent difficulties.

"The framework of analysis the ICC adopted for laying bare the origins of its weaknesses was in continuity with the historic struggle waged by marxism against the influence of petty bourgeois ideology that weighed on the organisation of the proletariat (...) In particular, it was vital for the organisation to have as its central concern, as it was for the Bolsheviks after 1903, the struggle against the circle spirit and for the party spirit (...) It is in this sense that becoming aware of the weight of the circle spirit in our origins was an integral part of a general analysis elaborated long before, the one which saw the basis of our weaknesses in the break in the organic continuity with previous communist organisations, the result of the counter-revolution which descended on the working class at the end of the 20s. However, this realisation allowed us to go further than we had done before and to go to the deeper roots of our difficulties. In particular, it allowed us to understand the phenomenon - already noted in the past but not sufficiently elucidated - of the formation of clans in the organisation: these clans were in reality the result of the decomposition of the circle spirit which kept going long after the period in which circles had been an unavoidable step in the reconstruction of the communist vanguard" (11th Congress Resolution on activities, point 4).

On the question of clans, our article on the 11th Congress made this point: "This analysis was based on previous experiences of the workers' movement (for example, the attitude of the former editors of Iskra grouped around Martov who, unhappy with the decisions of the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, had formed the Menshevik fraction), but also on precedents in the history of the ICC. We can't go into detail here but what we can say is that the 'tendencies' which have appeared in the ICC corresponded much more to such a clan dynamic than to real tendencies based on an alternative positive orientation. The principal motor of these 'tendencies' was not the divergences their members may have had with the orientations of the organisation. Instead they were based on an agglomeration of elements frustrated and discontented with the central organs, of those 'loyal' to individuals who saw themselves as being 'persecuted' or insufficiently recognised".

The article emphasised that the whole ICC (including the militants most directly involved in it) recognised that it was faced with a clan which occupied a particularly important position in the organisation and which, while it was not simply an organic product of the ICC's weaknesses, had "concentrated and crystallised a great number of the deleterious characteristics which affected the organisation and whose common denominator was anarchism..." (Activities resolution, point 5).

The resolution continued "The ICC's understanding of the phenomenon of the clans and their particularly destructive role has allowed it to put its finger on a large amount of the bad functioning which affected most of the territorial sections" (idem, point 5).

It drew up a balance sheet of our organisation's struggle: "... the Congress notes the overall success of the combat engaged by the ICC in the autumn of 1993 (...) the - sometimes spectacular - redressment of some of the sections with the greatest organisational difficulties in 1993 (...), the deepening that has come from a number of sections in the ICC (...), all these facts confirm the full validity of the combat both in its theoretical bases and its concrete application".

However, the resolution also warned against any kind of triumphalism: "This does not mean that the combat we have conducted to date should come to an end. (...) The ICC will have to continue this combat through a permanent vigilance, the determination to identify every weakness and to confront it without delay. (...) In reality, the history of the workers' movement, including that of the ICC, teaches us, and the debate has fully confirmed this, that the struggle for the defence of the organisation is a permanent one, and without respite. In particular, the ICC must remember that the Bolsheviks' struggle for the party spirit, and against the circle spirit continued for many years. It will be the same for our organisation, which will have to watch for and eliminate any demoralisation, any feeling of impotence as a result of the length of the combat." (ibid, point 13).

And precisely, the ICC's recent Conference pointed out that one of the major causes of our organisational problems during the last decade was a relaxation in our vigilance faced with a reappearance of the difficulties and weaknesses which had affected the organisation in the past. In reality, the greater part of the organisation had lost sight of the warning which concluded the resolution of the 11th Congress. It consequently had the greatest difficulty in identifying the reappearance of clannism within the Paris section and within the International Secretariat (IS)7, in other words the two parts of the organisation which had been the most affected by this disease in 1993.

The development of the crisis at the heart of the ICC and the formation of the "internal fraction"

The slide into clannism got under way in March 2000, when the IS adopted a document on questions of functioning which was criticised by a small number of comrades. While they recognised the entire validity of most of the ideas in the text, notably on the need for a greater confidence among the different parts of the organisation, they considered that it made certain concessions to a democratist vision, and tended to call into question our conceptions of centralisation. To summarise, they considered that the document led to an idea that "more confidence means less centralisation". It has never been a problem for the ICC that some parts of the organisation should criticise a text adopted by the central organ. On the contrary, the ICC and its central organ have always insisted that every disagreement or doubt should be expressed openly within the organisation in order to reach the greatest possible clarity. The attitude of the central organ towards disagreements has always been to answer them as seriously as possible. But in the spring of 2000, the majority of the IS adopted a quite different attitude from what had been its habit in the past. For this majority, the fact that a tiny minority of comrades criticised a text of the IS could only spring from a spirit of opposition for opposition's sake, or from the fact that one of them was affected by family problems while another was suffering from depression. One argument used by the IS members was to say that the text had been written by a particular militant, and would have had a different reception had it been the work of a different author. The response to the arguments of the comrades in disagreement was therefore not to put forward counter-arguments, but to denigrate the comrades or even to try to avoid publishing their texts on the grounds that they would "spread crap in the organisation", or that comrades who had been affected by the pressure brought to bear on them would not be able to stand the pressure of responses by other ICC militants to these texts. In short, the IS developed a completely hypocritical policy of stifling debate in the name of "solidarity".

This political attitude, totally foreign to the ICC's methods up till then, suddenly underwent a further degeneration when a member of the IS in turn began to support some of the criticisms made of the document adopted by the commission in March 2000. Relatively immune from denigration till then, this militant himself now became the target of a campaign aimed at discrediting him: if he adopted this or that position, it was because he was being "manipulated by someone close to him". At the same time, the attitude of the IS was to reduce the discussions on the question as far as possible to a banality, declaring that it was not "the debate of the century". And when more developed and critical contributions began to appear, the majority of the IS tried to push the whole of the ICC's central organ into declaring the debate closed. The International Bureau refused to follow the IS. It also decided, against the will of the latter's majority, to create a Delegation for Information, mostly made up of comrades who were not members of the IS, and charged with examining the problems of functioning which were developing in and around the commission.

These decisions prompted a new "radicalisation" among the majority of the IS' members. They addressed to the Delegation for Information all kinds of accusations against the comrades in disagreement, pointing out all kinds of particularly serious "organisational failings" on their part, "alerting" the Delegation to the "dubious" or "unworthy" behaviour of one of these militants. In short, those members of the IS who had considered the creation of the Delegation to be a waste of time now informed it of a cunning and destructive attack on the organisation, which should have made them the first to call for the formation of just such a Delegation in order to conduct an enquiry into these militants. One member of the IS - Jonas - not only refused to appear before the Delegation, but refused outright to recognise it.8 At the same time, he began - behind the scenes - to spread the idea that one of the militants in disagreement was a state agent manipulating those around her with the aim of "destroying the ICC". Other IS members tried different ways of putting pressure on the Delegation, and in early May 2001 several of them tried to intimidate the Delegation into renouncing its communication to the Congress of a "preliminary communication" laying down a framework for understanding the problems that were affecting the IS and the Paris section.9 On the very morning of the Congress, just before it began, the majority of the IS tried a final manoeuvre: they demanded that the International Bureau meet in order to adopt a resolution disavowing the work of the Delegation for Information. The DI had already been convinced of the existence of a clannish dynamic within the IS far more by the attitude of the majority of the latter's members than by the testimony of the comrades who had criticised the IS' policy. Similarly, the majority of the IB was convinced of the existence of the same dynamic fundamentally by the attitude of the IS members at this last meeting before the Congress. At the time, however, the IB counted on these militants' ability to come to their senses, as had already been the case of an important number of militants who had been caught in a clannish dynamic in 1993. This is why the IB proposed that all the militants belonging to the old IS should be re-elected to the central organ. At the same time, it proposed that the old Delegation for Information should be strengthened to include other comrades and become an Information Commission. Finally, it proposed to the Congress that it should not yet communicate the DI's preliminary conclusions, and asked the Congress to accord its confidence to the new Information Commission. The Congress ratified unanimously these proposals.

Two days after the Congress, a member of the old IS violated the Congress' decisions by revealing in the Paris section the information which the IB, with the Congress' approval, had decided to withhold until it could be communicated in full and in an appropriate framework. His aim was to set the Paris section against the rest of the ICC and against the International Bureau. The other members of the old IS majority supported him, and refused to condemn this outright violation of the organisation's statutes.

Inasmuch as the Congress is the organisation's sovereign body, the deliberate violation of its decisions (like the Mensheviks in 1903) is a particularly serious fault. At the time, however, the militant was not sanctioned beyond a verbal condemnation of his action: the organisation continued to count on the capacity of the clan's members to get a grip on themselves. In reality, this violation of the statutes was only the first in a long line of infractions by members of the old IS or those they persuaded to follow in their open war against the organisation. We have not the space to detail all these infractions here; we will limit ourselves to some characteristic examples, for which the members of the present "internal fraction" are responsible to varying degrees:

- the use and publication of the proceedings of the central organs without the latter's consent;

- campaigns of slander against members of the Information Commission, accused of being "liars" and "Torquemadas" (after a leader of the Spanish Inquisition, which is reminiscent of Alerini's denunciation of the Hague Congress Enquiry Commission as a "Holy Inquisition");

- systematic and slanderous campaigns behind the scenes against a member of the organisation, accused without a shadow of proof of "indignity", being an adventurer, or even a state agent (this latter accusation being explicitly put about by Jonas and another member of the present "fraction", but also suggested by other militants close to him), manipulating others in order to destroy the ICC;

- secret correspondence by members of the ICC's central organ with militants in other countries in order to spread slanders against those they now described as the "liquidationist faction", and to turn them against the International Bureau (in other words the same policy that Bakunin used to recruit for his "Alliance");

- holding secret meetings (five during August and September 2001), whose aim was not to work out political analyses but to hatch a plot against the ICC. When the militants involved in these meetings announced the formation of a "Working Collective", they declared amongst other things that "we are not holding secret meetings".

It was only by accident, and as a result of the clumsiness of one of this brotherhood's members, that the proceedings of one of these secret meetings came into the organisation's hands.

Shortly afterwards, a plenary session of the International Bureau adopted unanimously (in other words, including the votes of two members of the present "internal fraction") a resolution whose main passages we quote here:

"1. Having read () the proceedings of the meeting of 20/08 between the seven comrades forming the so-called 'working collective', and after examining its content where are expressed:

- an openly declared awareness that they are acting outside the statutes and have no preoccupation other than how to hide the fact from the rest of the organisation;

- the rest of the organisation considered as 'the others', 'them', in other words enemies who have to be 'destabilised' in the words of one of the participants;

- the intention of hiding their real thoughts and activity from the rest of the organisation;

- the establishment of a group discipline at the same time as they advocated violating the discipline of the organisation;

- the elaboration of a strategy to deceive the organisation and to impose their own policies;

the IB condemns this behaviour, which is in flagrant violation of our organisational principles and reveals an utter disloyalty towards the rest of the organisation (?)

2. The activity of the members of the 'collective' constitutes an extremely serious organisational fault and deserves the severest sanctions. However, inasmuch as the participants at this meeting have decided to disband the 'collective', the IB decides to forego the sanction, with the intention that the militants who have committed the fault should not merely disband the 'collective' but:

- should undertake a thorough critique of their behaviour;

- should undertake a reflection in depth on the reasons that led them to behave as enemies of the organisation.

In this sense, this resolution of the IB should not be interpreted as an under-estimation of the seriousness of the fault committed, but as an encouragement to the participants in the secret meeting of 20/08 to realise this seriousness".

Confronted with the destructive nature of their behaviour, the members of the "collective" took a step back. Two of those who had taken part in the secret meetings really did apply what the resolution asked: they undertook a sincere critique of their approach and are today loyal militants of the ICC. Two others, despite having voted in favour of the resolution, preferred to resign rather than undertake the required critique. As for the others, they all too quickly dumped their good intentions, only a few weeks later forming the "internal fraction of the ICC" and adopting the "Declaration" of the "working collective" which they had rejected a short time before.

No sooner was this self-styled "fraction" formed, than its members distinguished themselves by undertaking an escalation of attacks against the organisation and its militants, combining an utter vacuity of political argument, the most outrageous lies, the most disgusting slanders, and a systematic violation of our rules of functioning which obviously forced the ICC to sanction them.10 A resolution adopted on 18th November 2001 by the central organ of the section in France declared: "The militants of the 'fraction' say that they want to convince the rest of the organisation of the validity of their 'analyses'. Their behaviour, and their enormous lies, prove that this is just one more lie (?) With their present behaviour, they are certainly unlikely to convince anybody at all (?) In particular, the Executive Commission denounces the 'tactic' which consists of systematically violating the ICC's statutes, in order to be able - when the organisation is forced to take measures to defend itself - to shout about 'Stalinist degeneration' and so justify the formation of a self-styled 'fraction'".

One of "fraction's" endlessly repeated lies is that the ICC has sanctioned them in order to avoid debating the fundamental questions. The truth is that their arguments have been refuted repeatedly, often in depth, by numerous contributions from individual militants and sections of the ICC, whereas their own texts systematically avoid replying either to these contributions, or even to the official reports and orientation texts proposed by the central organs. This is in fact one of the "fraction's" favourite methods: attributing their own turpitude to the rest of the organisation, and more especially to those they describe as the "liquidationist faction". For example, in one of their first "founding texts", a "counter-report" on the ICC's activities for the September 2001 IB Plenum, they accuse the ICC's central organs of adopting "an orientation that breaks with that of the organisation hitherto (?) from the end of the combat of 1993-96 to the 14th Congress which has just been held". And to demonstrate just how much he agrees with the orientations of the 14th Congress, a few weeks later the author of this document? rejects en bloc the activities resolution adopted by the Congress, and which he himself had voted. In the same vein, the "counter-report" haughtily declares that "we refer to the combat which has always existed (?) for the rigorous, rather than the 'rigid' respect for the statutes. Without a firm respect for the statutes and their defence, there is no more organisation". And yet this document serves as a platform for secret meetings whose participants agree amongst themselves that they are outside the statutes, and only weeks later begin to write pages and pages of pretentious pseudo-theory with the sole aim of justifying the systematic violation of the statutes.

We could go on with more examples of the same kind, but the article would fill the entire Review. We will however cite one more, significant, example: the "fraction's" pretension to be the real defender of the continuity of our struggle for the defence of the organisation during 1993-96. This does not prevent the "counter-report" from declaring that "The lessons of 1993 are not limited to clannism. Indeed this is not their principal element". Better still, the "Declaration" of the formation of the "working collective" asks: "Clans and clannism: notions to be found in the history of sects and free-masonry, but not (?) in the workers' movement of the past? Why? Can the alpha and omega of organisational questions be reduced to the 'danger of clannism'?". In fact, the members of the "fraction" aim to put over the idea that the notion of the "clan" does not belong to the workers' movement (which is false, since Rosa Luxemburg already used the term to describe the coterie of the German social-democratic leadership). This is indeed a radical method for refuting the ICC's analysis that these militants' behaviour is the evidence of a clan dynamic: "the notion of the clan is invalid". And all that in the name of the struggle of 1993-96, whose most important documents we have cited at length and which all insist on the fundamental role of clannism in the weaknesses of the ICC!

The formation of a parasitic group

Like the Alliance within the IWA, the "fraction" became a parasitic organism within the ICC. And just like the Alliance, which declared open and public war on the IWA once it had failed to take control of it, the clan of the old majority in the IS and its friends has decided to attack our organisation publicly as soon as it realised that it had lost all control over it, and that its behaviour, far from rallying the hesitant had on the contrary allowed these comrades to understand what was really at stake in the struggle for our organisation. The decisive moment in this qualitative step in the "fraction's" war against the ICC was the plenary session of the International Bureau at the beginning of 2002. After serious discussion, this meeting adopted a certain number of important decisions:

a) the transformation of the French section's congress, planned for March 2002, into an international extraordinary conference of the whole ICC;

b) the suspension of the members of the "fraction" for a whole series of violations of the statutes (including the refusal to pay their dues in full); the organisation left them until the conference to reflect, and to commit themselves to respecting the statutes failing which the conference could only conclude that they had placed themselves deliberately and of their own accord outside the organisation;

c) a decision in principle to exclude Jonas, following a detailed report by the Information Commission which highlighted his behaviour, worthy of that of an agent provocateur, the definitive decision to be taken only once Jonas had been made aware of the accusation against him and had had an opportunity to present his defence.11

It is worth noting that the two members of the "fraction" who took part in the plenary session abstained on the first decision. This is a thoroughly paradoxical attitude on the part of militants who constantly declared that the militants of the ICC as a whole were being deceived and manipulated by the "liquidationist faction" and the "decisional organs". No sooner was the opportunity given to the whole organisation to discuss and decide collectively on our problems, than our valiant fractionists put up an obstruction. This is an attitude totally opposed to that of the left fractions in the workers' movement, who always demanded that congresses be held to handle problems in the organisation, something that the right systematically avoided.

As for the other two decisions, the International Bureau pointed out that the militants concerned could appeal against them to the conference, and proposed that Jonas should submit his case to a jury of honour formed by militants of the proletarian political milieu if he considered himself unjustly accused by the ICC. Their response was a new escalation. Jonas refused either to meet the organisation to present his defence, or to appeal to the Conference, or to ask to be heard by a jury of honour: so crushing is the evidence that it is clear for all the militants of the ICC, and for Jonas himself, that he has no honour to defend. At the same time, Jonas announced his entire confidence in the "fraction". The "fraction" itself began to spread slanders against the ICC in public, first by writing to the other groups of the Communist Left, then by sending several texts to our subscribers, thus revealing that the member of the "fraction" who had been responsible for the file of subscribers until the summer of 2001 had stolen the file even before the formation of the "collective", let alone the "fraction". In the documents sent to our subscribers, we can read in particular that the central organs of the ICC have conducted against Jonas and the "fraction" "ignoble campaigns to hide and try to discredit the political positions, which they are unable to answer seriously". The rest is of the same ilk. The "fraction's" documents distributed outside the ICC testify to the "fraction's" total solidarity with Jonas and call him to work with them. The "fraction" thus reveals itself for what it has been right from the beginning, when Jonas remained in the shadows: a camarilla of the friends of Citizen Jonas.

Despite their open and public war on the ICC by the Jonas camarilla, our organisation's central organ sent several letters to each Parisian member of the "fraction", inviting them to present their defence to the conference. The "fraction" at first pretended to accept, but at the last minute carried out its final and most wretched action against our organisation. It refused to appear before the conference unless the organisation recognised the "fraction" in writing and withdrew all the sanctions adopted in conformity with our statutes (including the exclusion of Jonas). To appeal against the sanctions adopted by the organisation, these militants simply demanded that we start by withdrawing the sanctions. This is obviously the simplest solution - they would no longer have anything to appeal against! Confronted with this situation, all the delegations of the ICC, although they were ready to listen to the arguments of these militants (indeed, on the evening before the conference the delegations had already formed an appeals commission composed of members from several territorial delegations with a view to allowing the Parisian members of the "fraction" to present their arguments), had no alternative but to recognise that these elements had put themselves outside the organisation. Faced with their refusal to defend themselves before the conference and to present their arguments to the appeals commission, the ICC noted their desertion and could thus no longer consider them as members of the organisation.12

The conference also condemned unanimously the criminal methods used by the Jonas camarilla, consisting of the "kidnapping" (with their agreement?) of two delegates of the Mexican section as soon as they arrived at the airport. These members of the "fraction" were delegated by their section to defend their positions at the conference, and their airfares had already been paid by the ICC. They were met by two Parisian members of the "fraction", who took them away and refused to allow them to attend the conference. When we protested, and demanded that the "fraction" should repay the price of the airfares should the Mexican delegates fail to attend the conference, a Parisian member of the "fraction" replied with incredible cynicism: "That's your problem"! All the militants of the ICC have expressed their profound indignation by adopting a resolution denouncing the embezzlement of the ICC's funds and the refusal to repay the money spent by the organisation, revelatory of the criminal methods used by the Jonas camarilla. These methods are on a par with those of the Chénier tendency (which stole equipment from the organisation in 1981), and finally convinced the last comrades who hesitated to recognise the parasitic and anti-proletarian nature of this self-styled "fraction". The "fraction" has since replied to the ICC, refusing to return the political material and the money belonging to our organisation. The Jonas camarilla has today become, not only a parasitic group whose nature the ICC has already analysed in its "Theses on parasitism" published in the International Review n°94,13 but a criminal gang, which not only practices slander and blackmail to destroy our organisation, but steals as well.

The transformation of longstanding militants of our organisation, most of whom had important responsibilities in the central organs, into a criminal gang, immediately raises the question: how is such a thing possible? The influence of Jonas has obviously played a part in constantly pushing the members of the "fraction" to "radicalise" their attacks on the ICC in the name of "rejecting centrism". That said, this explanation is far from adequate in explaining such a degeneration, and the Conference laid the basis for going further in our understanding.

The conference's political framework for understanding our difficulties

On the one hand, the conference recognised that the fact that longstanding militants of a proletarian organisation betray the struggle they have engaged in for decades, is not a new phenomenon in the workers' movement: militants of the first order such as Plekhanov (the founding father of marxism in Russia) or Kautsky (the marxist reference of the German social-democracy, the "pope" of the 2nd International) ended their militant lives in the ranks of the ruling class (the first supported the war in 1914, the second condemned the Russian revolution of 1917).

Moreover, the conference set the question of clannism within the wider question of opportunism:

"The circle spirit and clannism, these key questions posed by the orientation text of 1993, are but particular expressions of a more general phenomenon: opportunism in organisational questions. It is evident that this tendency, which in the case of relatively small groups such as the Russian Party in 1903 or the ICC has been closely linked to circle and clannish forms of affinitarianism, did not express itself in the same way for instance within the mass parties of the declining Second or Third Internationals.

"Nonetheless, the different expressions of this same phenomenon necessarily share certain principle characteristics. Among these, one of the most notable is the incapacity of opportunism to engage in a proletarian debate. In particular, it is unable to maintain organisational discipline as soon as it finds itself defending minority positions.

"There are two principle expressions of this incapacity. In situations in which opportunism is on the ascent within proletarian organisations, opportunism tends to downplay the divergences, either claiming them to be 'misunderstandings', as Bernsteinian revisionism did, or else systematically adopting the political positions of one's opponents, as in the early days of the Stalinist current.

"Where opportunism is on the defensive, as in 1903 in Russia or in the history of the ICC, it reacts hysterically to being in the minority, declaring war on the statutes and presenting itself as the victim of repression in order to avoid the debate. The two main characteristics of opportunism in such a situation are, as Lenin pointed out, the sabotage of the work of the organisation, and the staging of scenes and scandals.

"Opportunism is inherently incapable of the serene approach of theoretical clarification and patient persuasion which characterised the internationalist minorities during World War I, Lenin's attitude in 1917, or that of the Italian Fraction in the 30s and the French Fraction thereafter. (...)

"The present clan is a caricature of this approach. As long as it felt itself in control, it tried to play down the divergences emerging in RI, while concentrating on discrediting those who voiced disagreements. As soon as the debate began to develop a theoretical dimension, the attempt was made to prematurely close it. As soon as the clan felt itself in a minority,14 and even before the debate could develop, questions (...) were inflated into programmatic divergences justifying the systematic rejection of the statutes" (Conference Resolution on activities, point 10).

The conference also considered the ideological weight of capitalism's decomposition on the working class:

"One of the principle characteristics of the phase of decomposition is that the stalemate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat imposes on society a painful and protracted agony. As a result, the process of the development of the class struggle, of the maturation of consciousness, and of the construction of the organisation becomes much slower, more torturous and contradictory. The consequence of this is a tendency towards the gradual erosion of political clarity, militant conviction and organisational loyalty, the principle counter weights to the political and personal weaknesses of each militant (?)

"Because the victims of such a dynamic have begun to share in the lack of any perspective which today is the lot of decomposing bourgeois society, they are condemned to manifest, more than any other clan in the past, an irrational immediatism, a feverish impatience, an absence of reflection, and the radical loss of theoretical capacities - in fact all the main aspects of decomposition" (idem, point 6).

The conference also pointed out that one of the underlying causes both for the IS' and the whole organisation's initial incorrect positions on the question of functioning, and the anti-organisational turn taken by the members of the "fraction" and the time that the ICC as a whole took to identify this turn, is the result of the weight of democratism in our ranks. It consequently decided to open a discussion on the question of democratism, on the basis of an orientation text to be drawn up by the ICC's central organ.

Finally, the conference insisted on the importance of the struggle under way in the organisation:

"The combat of revolutionaries is a constant battle on two fronts: for the defence and construction of the organisation, and the intervention towards the class as a whole. All the aspects of this work mutually depend on each other (?)

"At the centre of the present combat is the defence of the capacity of the generation of revolutionaries which emerged after 1968 to pass on the mastery of the marxist method, the revolutionary passion and devotion, and the experience of decades of class struggle and organisational combat to a new generation. It is thus essentially the same combat being waged within the ICC and towards the outside, towards the searching elements secreted by the proletariat, in the preparation of the future class party" (idem, point 20).

ICC

NOTES

1 The Alliance for Socialist Democracy and the International Workingmen's Association, a report on the Alliance drawn up by Marx, Engels, Lafargue and other militants, on a mandate from the IWA's Hague Congress.

2 The reactions to these threats are significant: "Ranvier protests at the threat to leave the hall on the part of Splingard, Guillaume and others, who thereby only prove that it is THEY and not us who have taken position IN ADVANCE on the questions under discussion". "Morago [a member of the Alliance] speaks of the tyranny of the Council, but is it not Morago himself who wants to impose the tyranny of his mandate on the Congress?" (intervention by Lafargue).

3 "Alerini thinks that the Commission only has a moral conviction, and no material proof; he belonged to the Alliance, and is proud of it (?) you are the Holy Inquisition; we demand a public enquiry with conclusive and tangible proof".

4 See the articles, "Crisis in the revolutionary movement", "Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation", and the "Presentation of the ICC's 5th Congress", in International Review n°28, 33, and 35 respectively.

5 "The 11th Congress of the ICC: the struggle for the defence and construction of the organisation".

6 This is the case with the "Cercle de Paris", formed at the end of the 1990s by ex-militants of the ICC close to Simon (an adventurist element excluded from the ICC in 1995), which has published a pamphlet entitled "Que ne pas faire?" ("What is not to be done?"), consisting of a slew of slanders against our organisation, depicted as a Stalinist sect.

7 In other words, the permanent commission of the ICC's central organ, the International Bureau, which is made up of militants from all the territorial sections.

8 In other words, he adopted the same attitude as James Guillaume before the IWA's Hague Congress.

9 This attitude of intimidating an Information Commission is not new either: Utin, who had testified to the Hague Congress' Enquiry Commission on Bakunin's behaviour, was physically attacked by one of Bakunin's supporters.

10 In a circular to all the sections in November 2001, the International Bureau listed these violations of our statutes. Here is a short extract from the list:

- "leaking information on internal questions (...)

- refusal by three members of the central organs to take part in meetings where their attendance is required by the statutes (...);

- mailing a bulletin to comrades' home addresses, in total violation of our centralised rules of functioning and in violation of our statutes;

- refusal to pay their dues at the normal rate decided by the ICC [the members of the "fraction" had decided unilaterally to pay only 30% of their dues];

- refusal to make known to the central organs the content of a supposed 'History of the IS', which has circulated among certain militants and which contains absolutely intolerable attacks against the organisation and some of its militants;

- blackmail by threatening to publish, outside the organisation, internal documents of the organisation and notably of its central organs".

11 See the "Communiqué to our readers" published in World Revolution n°252

12 Just as the Bakuninists denounced the decision of the Hague Congress as a trick to prevent them from putting forward their positions, the Jonas camarilla denounced the ICC's taking note of their desertion as an exclusion in disguise aimed at silencing their disagreements.

13 For example, the "fraction" is now trying to set the groups of the proletarian milieu against each other, and to accentuate their divisions. In the same way, in its Bulletin n°11 it has launched a campaign of seduction and flattery towards elements of the parasitic milieu, like those of the "Cercle de Paris" which the "fraction's" members were not backward in condemning in the past. Once again, they adopt the same attitude of the thoroughly "anti-authoritarian" Bakuninists who allied themselves, after the Hague Congress with the "statist" Lassalleans.

14 Jonas expressed his view of the crisis as follows: "Now that we're no longer in the driver's seat, the ICC is screwed".

Introduction: Capitalism has no future to offer

Since the events of 11th September, the war in Afghanistan, and the renewed massacres in the Middle East, two more alarming events have come to the forefront of the world situation: the threat of war between India and Pakistan, who have been fighting for control of Kashmir ever since their creation and who now are armed with nuclear weapons, and the electoral success of far-right parties in Western Europe, which has provided the bourgeoisie with the opportunity to resurrect the fascist bogey and build up enormous campaigns in favour of "democracy".

On the face of it, these two widely separated and geo-politically totally distinct events have nothing in common. To understand their shared root causes, we must avoid taking a fragmented, photographic view of the world and analysing each event separately, in itself. Only marxism's global, historical and dialectical approach is capable of drawing together these two different expressions of capitalism's mechanisms to give them unity and coherence, integrating both into a common framework.

The threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan on the one hand, and the rise of the far right on the other, are both part of the same reality. They are both expressions of the impasse that the capitalist mode of production has reached. They demonstrate that capitalism has no future to offer humanity, and, in different forms, they illustrate the present phase of capitalism's decomposition: a social rot that menaces society's very existence. This decomposition is the result of a historic process where neither of society's antagonistic classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - has been able to impose its own response to capitalism's insoluble crisis. The bourgeoisie has been unable to drag humanity into a third world war because the proletariat of the central countries has not been prepared to sacrifice its own interests on the altar of the national interest. But neither has the proletariat been capable of asserting its own revolutionary perspective, and imposing itself as the only social force able to offer an alternative to the dead end of the capitalist economy. While they have been able to prevent the outbreak of World War III, the workers' struggles have thus failed to halt the bloody madness of capitalism. Witness the murderous chaos spreading day by day through the system's periphery, which has accelerated ever since the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The endless escalation of war in the Middle East, and now the menace of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, reveal clearly the apocalyptic future that capitalism offers us.

The proletariat in the great "democratic" countries has, moreover, suffered the full weight of the most spectacular expression of capitalism's decomposition: the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The bourgeoisie's campaigns on the so-called "failure of communism" have deeply affected the proletariat's class identity, its confidence in itself and in its own revolutionary perspective. Their weight has been the main obstacle to the proletariat's struggle, and to its asserting itself as the only force capable of offering humanity a future. In the absence of massive workers' struggles in the Western countries, able to offer a perspective for society, the rot of capitalism has found expression in the development of the most reactionary ideologies, which have encouraged the rise of the far right. Whereas in the 1930s, the rise of fascism and Nazism was part of capitalism's march towards world war, today the far right parties' programmes are completely aberrant, including from the standpoint of the ruling class.

Given the gravity of the present situation, it is up to revolutionaries to contribute to the proletariat's awareness of the responsibilities it bears. Only the development of the class struggle in the most industrialised countries can open a revolutionary perspective of the overthrow of capitalism. Only the world proletarian revolution can put an end forever to the blind frenzy of military barbarism, to xenophobia and to racial hatred.

The threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan

Since May, the threat of nuclear war has loomed over India and Pakistan. After the attack on the Indian Parliament (13th December 2001), relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply. The attack in Jammu, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (May 2002), attributed to Islamic terrorists, was the immediate cause of the recent confrontations in Kashmir.

This conflict between the two countries, which has so far remained limited to what the media call "artillery duels" at the expense of a terrified civilian population, is not the first, and in particular not the first over Kashmir where previous fighting has already claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. However, the threat of nuclear conflict has never before been so serious. In an inferior position - Pakistan has 700,000 troops to India's 1.2 million, 25 nuclear missiles with a lesser range than India's 60 - "Pakistan has already made it clear that, in the face of a superior enemy, it would be prepared to initiate a nuclear confrontation" (The Guardian 23/5/02). On its side, India is deliberately pushing for a military confrontation with Pakistan. Pakistan aims to destabilise the situation in Kashmir in order to draw the latter into its camp thanks to the guerrilla actions of its infiltrated groups, while India has every interest in putting a stop to this process by direct confrontation.

The possibility of a catastrophe which would cause millions of deaths has indeed alarmed the ruling classes of the developed countries, especially the Americans and the British.1 After the failure of the conference of Central Asian countries in Kazakhstan, called this time by Putin at the behest of the White House, the US has had to throw its full weight into the balance to lower the tension, with the despatch of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Karachi and Bush's personal intervention towards the Indian and Pakistani leaders. But as the Western leaders themselves recognise, if the danger of war has been averted for the moment, none of the issues have been resolved.

India and Pakistan: an insoluble rivalry

When, in 1947, the British Raj in India was split to create the independent states of India and Pakistan2 (along with Sri Lanka and Myanmar, formerly Burma), the British bourgeoisie and its American ally knew very well that they were creating a congenital rivalry. Following the old principle of "divide and rule", the aim of this artificial separation was to weaken, on both eastern and western borders, the huge new state of India, whose leader Nehru had already declared its "neutrality" with regard to the great powers in the hope of transforming the country into a regional super-power. In the immediate post-war period, as the contours of the Eastern and Western blocs were already hardening, a ferociously anti-Russian Britain, and a US already intent on imposing its hegemony world wide, saw a real danger that India would go over to the Soviet camp.

During the "democratic" formation of the Indian "nation" under the leadership of its new Pandit Nehru, India annexed outright three regions which had been expected to fall under Pakistani control, one of them being the state of Jammu and Kashmir, thus sowing the first seeds of a permanent discord over territorial claims. The entire history of the two countries has thus been marked by repeated military confrontations, with India generally on the offensive as New Delhi tried to gain control of what it considered to be its "natural frontiers". This was as true of the 1965 war in Kashmir, and of the 1971 war with Pakistan (which transformed East Pakistan into the separate state of Bangladesh), as it is true of the conflict today.

But the interest of the Indian bourgeoisie does not lie solely in the desire for expansion inherent in any imperialism. It lies in the Indian state's need to be recognised as a regional power to be reckoned with, not just in the eyes of the "international community" of the great powers, but also vis-à-vis its main rival, China. Behind India's aggressive stance towards Pakistan lies its endemic rivalry with China for dominance in South-East Asia.

In 1962, Beijing's victory in the Sino-Indian war revealed to the Indian bourgeoisie both that China was its principal enemy, and its own military weakness. Ever since, India has tried to ensure its revenge against China. The 1971 war in East Pakistan was already a part of the imperialist rivalry between the two countries, and it is obvious that a conflict today between India and Pakistan, which would leave Pakistan exhausted if not wiped from the map altogether, could only be at the expense of China, which has always done its utmost to support Islamabad. It is no accident that when the USSR made nuclear weapons available to India as a guarantee of the "co-operation pact" between the two countries, it was China, with America's blessing, which did the same for Pakistan.

The hypocrisy of the Great Powers

There is no doubt that the Great Powers, with the US at their head, are indeed extremely alarmed at the possibility of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, though not for any humanitarian reasons, far from it. They are concerned above all to prevent the development of a new escalation in the "every man for himself" which has dominated the planet since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the disappearance of its Western rival. During the Cold War that followed World War II, inter-state rivalries were controlled by the discipline imposed by the two blocs. Even a country like India, which tried to go it alone and benefit from Eastern military power and Western technology, did not have its hands free to impose its domination over South-East Asia. Today, states give free rein to their ambitions. Even in 1990, barely one year after the collapse of the Russian bloc, American pressure was necessary to defuse the threat of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan.

An indication of the intensity of the antagonism between these two second-rate powers can be found in the difficulty that the US is having in imposing its authority. Only a few months after the US made a massive display of force in Afghanistan to compel other nation-states to line up behind it, two of its allies in this war are at each other's throats. Disaster is threatened in yet another region where the US thought it could impose its order through military means.

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has launched massive military operations to show the world that it will not accept any challenge to its leadership. After the 1991 Gulf War, instead of the New World Order came the explosion of the Balkans, accompanied by all the horror of war and appalling poverty. In 1999 after the US' show of force against Serbia the European imperialist powers became increasingly open in their opposition to US policies such as Bush's all-out acceleration of "Son of Star Wars". It was in response to this challenge that the US laid waste to Afghanistan, using the convenient justification of 11th September.

Whether it be Great Powers like Germany, France or Britain, or regional powers such as Russia, China, India or Pakistan, all are being pushed to tear each other apart in ever more destructive struggles. The present conflict between India and Pakistan, like that in Afghanistan, is a flagrant demonstration.

In this situation of general chaos and "every man for himself", provoked first and foremost by the growing tensions between the Great Powers themselves, the latter's hypocrisy has been striking. Expressing the alarm of the "civilised" ruling classes at the prospect of nuclear war, their media point the finger of blame at the irresponsibility of the Pakistani president Musharaf and the Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee, considering that neither "appeared to be taking into account the sheer scale of the disaster that would follow if nuclear weapons were used, and that they seemed incapable of visualising the disaster that would overwhelm their countries as a result" (The Times, 1/6/2).

This is really the pot calling the kettle black! What of the "responsibility" of the Great Powers? They are indeed responsible: responsible for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II; responsible for the mind-boggling proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War; responsible for this accumulation under the pretext that "dissuasion" and the "balance of terror" (sic!) were the best guarantee for world peace. And it is still the developed countries which hold the most enormous stocks of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons!

The struggle against terrorism: a pretext and a lie

For most of the media, this situation is the fruit of "religious fundamentalism". For the Indian ruling class, those responsible for the terrorist attacks in Kashmir and against the Indian parliament are the Islamic fundamentalists supported by Pakistan. On the other side, the Pakistani ruling class denounces the nationalist excesses of India's ruling Hindu fundamentalist BJP, and especially its repression of the Kashmiri "freedom fighters".

The BJP in India uses terrorist attacks in Kashmir and the rest of India as justification for its military threats against Pakistan. Meanwhile the BJP has been implicated in the inter-communal massacres in the state of Gujarat where hundreds of Hindu fundamentalists were incinerated in a train by Islamic militants and in reply thousands of Muslims were slaughtered. Meanwhile the Pakistani bourgeoisie has not only been trying to destabilise India through its backing for the Kashmiri struggle against Indian rule, they also claim that India is backing terrorist groups in Pakistan.

By constantly stirring up the most virulent nationalism, the exploiters in each camp are drawing large fractions of the population into support for their imperialist ambitions. The use of such nationalisms in conjunction with religious prejudice and racial stereotyping is not new or confined to the peripheries of capitalism. The bourgeoisies of the main capitalist countries have developed this into a fine art. In the First World War both sides portrayed the other as "evil" and a "threat to civilisation". In the 1930s both the Nazis and Stalinists used anti-semitism and nationalism to mobilise their populations. The "civilised" Allies did everything to whip up anti-German and anti-Japanese hysteria, which culminated in the cynical use of the Holocaust to justify the bombardment and massacre of an "inhuman" enemy. During the Cold War similar hatreds were cultivated by both blocs to portray the enemy as power-hungry maniacs. And since 1989 the "humanitarian" leaders of the great powers have manipulated and stirred up the growth of the ethnic cleansing, religious and racial hatred that has penetrated so many areas of the planet in a cycle of wars and massacres.

A serious threat to the working class and to all humanity

It is because the working class poses a threat that capitalism needs to use all the lies in its armoury to hide the real nature of its imperialist wars, and to turn the workers away from the path of their own class struggle. At the local level in South-East Asia, the working class has not proved itself sufficiently combative to stop a war. Internationally, the working class finds itself impotent in the face of a capitalism that is tearing itself apart, threatening us with massive death and destruction over a whole region of the planet.

Nonetheless, the only historic force capable of stopping the destructive juggernaut of decomposing capitalism remains the international proletariat, above all in the heartlands of capitalism. Through the development of its struggles to defend its own interests it could show the workers on the sub-continent that there is a class alternative to nationalism, religious and ethnic hatred. This places a huge responsibility on the working class of the metropolitan heartlands. It has to see that while it must defend its interests as a class, it also has the future of humanity in its hands.

Confronted with the madness of decadent capitalism, the international proletariat must return to its old slogan: "Workers of all countries, unite!" Capitalism can only lead us to war, barbarism, and the complete destruction of humanity. The struggle of the working class is the key to the only possible alternative: world wide communist revolution.

ZG (18/06/2002)

1 It should nonetheless be noted that the US and British bourgeoisies exaggerated the real danger of nuclear war between India and Pakistan the better to justify their pressure on both nations by passing themselves off as the most "pacifist" countries, and to freeze out rivals, such as France, in the settlement of the conflict.

2 Pakistan was originally made up of West and East Pakistan, the two parts of the same country being separated by several thousand miles of Indian territory: in other words, a state that was non-viable right from the start.

The resolution on the international situation from the 14th congress, adopted in May 2001, focussed on the question of the historic course in the phase of capitalist decomposition. It correctly highlighted the acceleration both of the economic crisis and of the slide into war and barbarism across the planet, and examined both the problems and the potentialities of a proletarian response. The following resolution, proposed to the ICC's extraordinary conference of Easter 2002, is intended to supplement that report in the light of the events of 11th September and the ensuing "war against terrorism", which have largely confirmed the general analyses of the 2001 Congress.

1. Revolutionary Marxists can agree with US president Bush when he described the September 11 attacks as "an act of war". But they would add: an act of capitalist war, a moment in the permanent imperialist struggle that characterises the epoch of capitalist decadence. In its deliberate slaughter of thousands of civilians - the majority of them proletarians - the destruction of the Twin Towers was yet another barbaric crime against humanity to add to the long list that includes Guernica, London, Dresden and Hiroshima. The fact that the probable perpetrator of the crime was a terrorist group connected to a poverty-stricken state does not alter its imperialist character, because in this epoch all states - and petty warlords and proto-states - are imperialist.

But the criminal nature of September 11 resides not only in the act itself but in its cynical manipulation by the US state - a manipulation which clearly bears comparison with the conspiracy around Pearl Harbour, when Washington consciously allowed the Japanese attack to take place in order to have a pretext for entering the world war and mobilising the population behind it. The precise degree to which the US 'secret state' actively enabled the September 11 attacks to happen remains to be verified, although there is already a mass of elements pointing towards a ruthless Machiavellian intrigue. But what is beyond doubt is how the USA has taken advantage of the crime, using the real shock and outrage it provoked to mobilise support for an imperialist offensive of unprecedented reach.

2. Under the banner of anti-terrorism, American imperialism has spread the shadow of war across the entire planet. The USA's "war against terrorism" has devastated Afghanistan and threats to extend the war to Iraq are now becoming more and more explicit. But the long arm of the US is already reaching out towards other regions of the globe, whether or not they fall within Bush's 'Axis of Evil' (Iran, Iraq, North Korea). US troops have been dispatched to the Philippines to help the military combat 'Islamic insurgency', while less spectacular operations have already been launched in Yemen and Somalia. The new US defence budget is planned to rise by 14% this year and by 2007 will be 11% higher than the average cold war levels. These figures indicate the huge imbalance of global military spending: the USA now accounts for 40% of the world total; the current budget is well in excess of the combined annual defence budget of Britain, France, and 12 other NATO countries. In a recent Pentagon 'leak', the US has made it plain that it is quite prepared to use this terrifying arsenal - including its nuclear component - against a host of rivals. At the same time the war in Afghanistan has fired up tensions between India and Pakistan and in Israel/Palestine the carnage grows daily, with the US - again in the name of anti-terrorism - apparently backing Sharon's avowed aim of getting rid of Arafat, the Palestinian Authority and the possibility of any negotiated settlement.

In the immediate aftermath of 11 September, there was much talk about the possibility of a third world war. This term was much bandied about in the media and was generally conflated with the idea of a "clash of civilisations", a conflict between the modern "West" and fanatical Islam (mirrored in bin Laden's call for a Muslim jihad against the "Crusaders and Jews"). There were even echoes of this idea in certain sections of the proletarian political milieu, for example when the PCI (il Partito) wrote, in its leaflet responding to 11 September, "If the first imperialist war was propagandised according to the irredentist demagogy of national defence; if the second was anti-fascist and democratic; the third, all the more imperialist, is mystified into a crusade between opposed religions, against quixotic as well as unbelievable and doubtful figures of bearded Saladins".

Other sections of the proletarian milieu, such as the IBRP, more able to recognise that behind the US campaign against Islam lies the inter-imperialist conflict between the US and its principal great power rivals, in particular those in Europe, are nevertheless ill-placed to answer the media hype about world war three because they lack an understanding of the historical specificities of the period opened up by the disintegration of the two great imperialist blocs at the end of the 80s. In particular, they tend to assume that the formation of the imperialist blocs that would fight out a third world war is already well under way today.

Despite capital's contradictions, world war is not imminent

3. To understand what is new about this period, and thus to grasp the real perspectives facing humanity today, it is necessary to remind ourselves of what a world war actually means. World war is the expression of the decadence, the obsolescence of the capitalist mode of production. It is the product of the historic dead-end that the system reached when it established itself as a global economy at the beginning of the 20th century. Its material roots thus lie in an insoluble crisis as an economic system, although there is not a mechanical link between immediate economic indicators and the unleashing of such wars. On this basis, the experience of two open world wars, and the long preparations for the third world war between the American and Russian blocs, have demonstrated that world war means a direct conflict for control of the planet between military blocs made up of the leading imperialist powers. As a war between the most powerful capitalist states, it also requires the active mobilisation and support of the workers of those states; and this in turn can only be achieved once these main proletarian battalions have been taken on and defeated by the ruling class. A survey of the world situation shows that the necessary conditions for a third world war are absent for the foreseeable future.

4. This is not the case at the level of the world economic crisis. The wall blocking the advance of the capitalist economy is far higher and thicker today than it was in the 1930s. In the 1930s, the bourgeoisie was able to respond to the abrupt plunge into depression with the new instruments of state capitalism; today it is these very instruments which, while continuing to manage the crisis and prevent a total paralysis, are also profoundly aggravating the contradictions which ravage the system. In the 1930s, even if the remaining pre-capitalist markets could no longer allow for the 'peaceful' expansion of the system, there still remained large areas ripe for capitalist development (in Russia, Africa, Asia, etc). Finally, during that phase of capitalism's decline, world war, despite its terrible toll on millions of human beings and centuries of human labour, could still bring an apparent benefit (even though this was never the aim of the war on the part of the combatants): a long period of reconstruction which, in connection with the state capitalist policy of deficit spending, seemed to give the system a new lease of life. A third world war would mean quite simply the destruction of humanity.

What is striking about the course of the economic crisis since the end of the reconstruction period is that it has witnessed each "solution", each "miracle cure" for the capitalist economy being exposed as no more than quack medicines in an increasingly reduced lapse of time. The initial response of the bourgeoisie to the re-emergence of the crisis in the late 60s was to apply more of the same Keynesian policies, which had stood it in good stead during the reconstruction period. The "monetarist" reaction of the 1980s, presented as a "return to reality" (epitomised by Thatcher's dictum that a country, like a household, cannot spend more than it earns) completely failed to reduce the role of debt or state spending in the economy (speculation-fuelled consumer boom in the UK, Reagan's "Star Wars" programme in the US). The fictitious boom of the 80s based on debt and speculation, and accompanied by the dismantling of whole sectors of the productive, industrial economy, was brought to an abrupt halt with the crash of 1987. The crisis which followed this crash was in turn succeeded by a phase of "growth" fed by the debt that characterised the 90s. When the diseased nature of this growth was indicated by the collapse of the South East Asian economies towards the end of that decade, we were then treated to a panoply of new panaceas, most especially the "technological revolution" and the "new economy". The effects of these wonder-drugs were shortest lived of all: no sooner had the propaganda of the "internet-driven economy" been launched than it was exposed as a vast speculative fraud. Today the "ten glorious years" of US growth are officially over; the US has admitted it is in recession as have other powerhouses like Germany; and the state of the Japanese economy is causing increasing concern throughout the world's bourgeoisie, who even talk of Japan going the way of the USSR. In the peripheral regions, the catastrophic dive of the Argentine economy is itself only the tip of the iceberg: a whole queue of other countries are in precisely the same situation.

It is true that, in contrast to the 1930s, the onset of the crisis has not resulted in an immediate policy of "every man for himself" at the economic level, with each country sealing itself off behind protectionist battlements. This reaction undoubtedly accelerated the race towards war at that time. Even the break-up of the blocs, through which capitalism had also regulated its economic affairs in the 1945-89 period, had an impact essentially at the military/imperialist level. At the economic level, the old bloc structures were adapted to the new situation, and the overall policy has been to prevent any large scale collapse of the central economies (and to allow a "controlled" collapse of the most ailing peripheral ones) through massive recourse to loans administered by institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. So-called "globalisation" to some extent represents the consensus of the most powerful economies to limit competition among themselves in order to keep themselves afloat and continue despoiling the rest of the world. Indeed the bourgeoisie frequently claims that it has learned its lesson from the 1930s and will never again allow a trade war to degenerate directly into a world war between the major powers; and there is a kernel of truth in this claim, insofar as the strategy of international "management" of the economy has been maintained in spite of all the national-imperialist rivalries between the great powers.

Nevertheless, the determination of the bourgeoisie to hold back the most destructive tendencies in the world economy (simultaneous depression and hyper-inflation, unrestrained competition between national units) is increasingly coming up against the contradictions inherent in this very process. This is most clearly the case with the central policy of debt, which is more and more threatening to blow up in capitalism's face. Despite all the optimistic humming about the next recovery, the horizon is shrinking and the future for the world economy becomes more uncertain every day. This can only serve to sharpen imperialist rivalries. The extremely aggressive stance now being adopted by the US is certainly linked to its economic difficulties. A US with an ailing economy will be compelled to rely more and more on its military strength to maintain its domination of the world's markets. At the same time, the formation of a "Euro-zone" contains the premises of a much keener trade war in the future, as the other major economies are compelled to respond to US commercial aggressiveness. The bourgeoisie's "global" management of the economic crisis is thus extremely fragile and will be increasingly undermined by both economic and military-strategic rivalries.

The absence of military blocs

5. At the level of the economic crisis alone, capitalism could have gone to war during the 1980s. During the period of the cold war, when the military blocs for such a conflict were certainly in place, the principal obstacle to world war was the undefeated nature of the working class. Today this factor remains, despite all the difficulties the working class has undergone in the period since 1989 - the phase we characterise as the decomposition of capitalism. But before re-examining this point, we have to consider a second historic factor which now stands in the way of a third world war: the absence of military blocs.

In the past, the defeat of one bloc in war has led rapidly to the formation of new blocs: the German bloc which fought the first world war had begun to re-form in earnest in the 1930s, while the Russian bloc formed itself immediately after the second world war. Following the collapse of the Russian bloc (through economic crisis rather than war directly), the inherent tendency of decadent capitalism to divide the world into competing blocs did reassert itself, with a newly re-united Germany arising as the only possible contender for leadership of a new bloc capable of challenging the hegemony of the USA. This challenge was marked in particular by German interference in the break-up of Yugoslavia, which precipitated almost a decade of warfare in the Balkans. However, the tendency towards the formation of a new bloc has been consistently held in check by other tendencies:

- the tendency towards each nation following its own "independent" imperialist policy since the break-up of the cold war bloc system. This factor has of course affirmed itself principally in the urge of the major powers of the former western bloc to free themselves from American domination; but it has also acted against the possibility of a new bloc cohering against the US. Thus, while it is true that the only candidate for such a bloc would be a German-dominated Europe, it is a mistake to argue that the present European Union or "Euroland" already constitutes such a bloc. The European Union is first and foremost an economic institution, even if it does have pretensions to playing a weightier political and military role; an imperialist bloc is primarily a military alliance. Above all, the European "Union" is very far from being united at this level. The two key players in any future Europe-based imperialist bloc, France and Germany, are constantly at loggerheads for deep-seated historical reasons; and the same goes for Britain, whose "independent" orientation is founded mainly on its efforts to play off Germany against France, France against Germany, the US against Europe, and Europe against the US. The strength of the tendency of "every man for himself" has been confirmed in recent years by the increasing willingness of third and fourth rate powers to play their own game, often in defiance of US policy (Israel in the Middle East, India and Pakistan in Asia, etc). Further confirmation of this trend is provided by the rise of "imperialist war-lords" like bin Laden, who are seeking to play a global rather than a merely local role even when they don't control a particular nation state;

- the overwhelming military superiority of the US, which has been increasingly obvious over the past decade, and which the USA has sought to reinforce through the major interventions it has carried out in this period: the Gulf, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan. Furthermore, through each of these actions, the US has increasingly discarded the pretence that it was acting as part of an "international community": thus, if the Gulf war was fought "legally" through the UN, the Kosovo war was fought "illegally" through NATO, and the Afghan campaign has been carried out under the banner of "unilateralism". The recent US defence budget has only underlined the fact that the Europeans are, in the words of NATO secretary general Lord Robertson "military pygmies", giving rise to numerous articles in the European press along the lines of "Is the US too powerful for its own good?" and explicit fears that the "transatlantic alliance" is now a thing of the past. Thus, while the "war against terrorism" was a response to growing tensions between the US and its major rivals (tensions which had expressed themselves in the row over Kyoto and "Son of Star Wars", for example), and is already further exacerbating these tensions, the results of American action has been to further underline how far away the Europeans are from being able to mount an effective challenge to US world "leadership". Indeed, the imbalance is so great that, in the words of our orientation text "Militarism and Decomposition", written in 1991, "the reconstitution of imperialist blocs is not only impossible for a number of years to come, but may very well never take place again: either the revolution, or the destruction of humanity will come first" (IR 64). A decade later the formation of a real anti-US bloc still faces the same formidable obstacles;

- the formation of imperialist blocs also requires an ideological justification, above all for the purposes of getting the working class on board. Such an ideology is lacking today. "Islam" has proved to be a powerful force for mobilising the exploited in certain parts of the world, but it has no significant impact on the workers of the capitalist heartlands; by the same token "anti-Islam" is hardly a sufficient basis for mobilising American workers to fight their European counter-parts. The problem for America and its main rivals is that they share the same "democratic" ideology, as well as the closely-connected ideology that they are in fact allies rather than rivals. It's true that a powerful current of anti-Americanism is being stirred up the European ruling class, but it is in no way comparable to the themes of anti-fascism or anti-Communism which have served to enlist support for imperialist war in the past. And behind these ideological difficulties for the ruling class resides the more profound problem: the working class is not defeated, and is unwilling to march tamely behind the war-standards of its class enemy.

The course towards class confrontations remains

6. The huge displays of patriotism in the US following the September 11 attacks made it necessary to re-examine this central plank of our understanding of the world situation. The atmosphere of intense chauvinism in the US has swept across all social classes and has been adroitly used by the ruling class not only to launch its "war against terrorism" in the short-term but also to carry out a longer term policy of putting an end to the so-called "Vietnam syndrome", ie, the reluctance of the US working class to sacrifice itself directly for the USA's imperialist adventures. There is no doubt that American capitalism has made important ideological inroads in this respect, as well as using the events to reinforce its whole apparatus of surveillance and repression (an achievement also echoed in Europe). Nevertheless, they do not represent a world-historic defeat for the working class, for the following reasons:

• the balance of forces between the classes can only be determined at the international level, and above all, by examining the state of play between bourgeoisie and proletariat in the European heartlands where the fate of the world revolution has been and will be decided. At this level, while September 11 gave the European bourgeoisie the opportunity to launch its own version of the anti-terrorist campaign, there has been no outpouring of patriotism comparable to what took place in the US. On the contrary, the USA's war in Afghanistan gave rise to considerable disquiet within the population of Europe, a fact partly reflected in the scale of the "anti-war" movement on this continent. This movement was certainly launched by the bourgeoisie, in part as an expression of its own reluctance to go along with the US war campaign, but also as a way of preventing any class opposition to capitalist war;
• even within the US, we can see that the patriotic tide is not all-engulfing. Within weeks of the attacks there were strikes among a number of different sectors of the American working class, even when the latter were denounced as being "unpatriotic" for defending their class interests.

   

  Thus, the various factors identified as confirmations of the historic course towards class confrontations in the resolution on the international situation from the 14th ICC congress still stand:

• the slow development of class militancy, particularly in the central concentrations of the proletariat. This has been confirmed most recently by the railway strikes in Britain and the more widespread, if dispersed, strike movements in France
• the subterranean maturation of consciousness, expressed in the development of politicised minorities in numerous countries. This process continued and even developed during the Afghanistan war (eg, groups defending class positions against the war arising from the swamp in Britain, Germany, etc)
• the "negative" weight of the proletariat with regard to the drive to war. This is expressed in particular by the way the ruling class presents its major military operations. In the Gulf, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, the actual function of these wars is systematically hidden from the proletariat - not only at the level of the stated aims of the war (here, capitalism always hides its motives behind fine phrases) but even at the level of who the enemy really is. At the same time, the bourgeoisie is still very cautious about mobilising large numbers of the proletariat for these wars. Although the US bourgeoisie certainly scored some significant ideological successes at this level, even they were very concerned to minimise of US casualties in Afghanistan; in Europe, no attempt whatever was made to depart from the practise of sending professional troops only for the war.

War in capitalism's decomposition

7. For all these reasons, a third world war is not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. But this is no source of consolation. The September 11 events conveyed a strong sense of an impending apocalypse; and it remains the case that we are approaching the "end of the world" one way or another, if we mean by "world" the world of capitalism, a doomed system exhausting all possibilities of reform. The perspective announced by Marxism since the 19th century remains socialism or barbarism; but the concrete form which this threat of barbarism is taking is different from the one revolutionaries have grown used to during the 20th century, that is, the destruction of civilisation through a single world imperialist war. The entry of capitalism into the final phase of its decline, the phase of decomposition, is conditioned by the inability of the ruling class to "solve" its historic crisis in another world war; but it brings with it a new and more insidious danger, that of a more gradual slide into chaos and self-destruction. In such a scenario, imperialist war, or rather a spiral of imperialist wars, would still be the leading horseman of the apocalypse, but it would be riding alongside famine, disease, planet-wide ecological disaster and the unravelling of all social bonds. And unlike imperialist world war, for such a scenario to reach its conclusion, it would not be necessary for capital to take on and defeat the central battalions of the working class; we are already facing the danger that the working class could be overwhelmed by the whole process of decomposition in a more piecemeal fashion, little by little losing the capacity to act as a self-conscious force opposed to capital and the nightmare it is inflicting upon humanity.

8. The "war on terrorism" is thus very much a war of capitalist decomposition. While the economic contradictions of the system push inexorably towards a confrontation between the major centres of world capital, the path towards such a confrontation is blocked, and inevitably takes on another form, as in the Gulf , Kosovo and Afghanistan - that of wars in which the underlying conflict between the great powers is "diverted" into military actions against a much weaker capitalist power. In all three cases, the leading protagonist is the USA, the world's most powerful state, which, in contrast to the process which led to the two world wars of the 20th century, is compelled to go onto the offensive, precisely in order to prevent the emergence of a rival strong enough to oppose it openly.

9. At the same time, the "war against terrorism" is much more than a re-run of the previous US interventions in the Gulf and the Balkans. It represents a qualitative acceleration of decomposition and barbarism:

• it no longer presents itself as a short-lived campaign with clear aims in a particular region, but as an open-ended, almost permanent conflict which has the entire globe as its theatre of operations;
• it has much more global and grandiose strategic aims, which include a decisive US presence in central Asia aimed at ensuring its control not only of this region but of the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, and thus blocking off any possibility of European (especially German) expansion into this region. This amounts, in effect, to a strategy of encircling Europe. This explains why, in contrast to 1991, the US can now assume the task of toppling Saddam, since it no longer needs him as a local gendarme given its intention to impose its presence directly. It is within this context that US ambitions to control the oil and other energy supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia must be situated; this is not, as the leftists argue, a policy of short-term gain carried out on behalf of the oil companies by the US government, but a strategic policy aimed at ensuring undisputed control of essential energy routes in the event of future imperialist conflicts. At the same time, the insistence that North Korea is part of the "axis of evil" constitutes a warning that the US reserves the right to mount a major operation in the Far East as well - a challenge to both Chinese and Japanese ambitions in the region.

10. But if the "war against terrorism" reveals the urge of the USA to create a disciplined world order that is entirely, and perpetually, in line with its military and economic interests, it cannot avoid the destiny of all the other wars of this period: to be yet another factor in the aggravation of global chaos, this time on a much more advanced level than the previous wars.

• in Afghanistan itself, the US victory has done nothing to stabilise the country internally. Fighting has already broken out between the innumerable factions who have taken control since the collapse of the Taliban; US bombing raids have already been used to "mediate" in these disputes, while other powers have not hesitated to pour oil on the fire, most noticeably Iran, which directly controls some of the dissident factions;
• the "success" of the USA's campaign against Islamic terrorism has also led to a re-formulation of its policy towards the Arab countries; it feels much less inclined to placate them. Its support for Israel's ultra-aggressive attitude towards the Palestinian Authority has helped to finally bury the Oslo "peace process", taking military confrontations onto a new level. At the same time, disagreements over the presence of US troops on Saudi soil has led to sharp words with its once-docile client
• the defeat of the Taliban has placed Pakistan in a very difficult situation and the Indian bourgeoisie has tried to take full advantage of this. The heightening of war tensions between these two nuclear powers has the gravest implications for the future of this region, especially considering that Russia and China are also directly involved in its labyrinth of rivalries and alliances.

11. All these situations contain the potential of spiralling out of control, forcing the US to intervene again and again to impose its authority, but each time multiplying the forces which are ready to strike out on their own and contest this authority. This is no less true when it comes to the USA's main imperialist rivals. The "war against terrorism", after the initial charade of "standing shoulder to shoulder with the US", has already resulted in a visible aggravation of tensions between the US and its European allies. Concerns over the vast scale of the new US defence budget have been combined with open criticisms of Bush's "axis of evil" speech. Germany, France and even Britain have expressed their reluctance to get caught up in the USA's plans for an attack on Iraq, and have been particularly incensed by the inclusion of Iran in this "axis", since both Germany and Britain have used the Afghan crisis to increase their influence in Tehran. They cannot fail to recognise that while the US is angry with Iran for its efforts to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan, it is also using Iran as a stick with which to beat its European rivals. The next phase of the "war against terrorism", which seems likely to involve a major assault on Iraq, will widen these differences even more. We can see in all this a new manifestation of the tendency towards the formation of imperialist blocs centred around America and Europe. For the reasons given above, the counter-tendencies are in the ascendant, but this will not make for a more peaceful world. Frustrated by their military inferiority and by the social and political factors which make it impossible to confront the USA directly, the other great powers will redouble their efforts to contest US authority through the means available to them: proxy wars, diplomatic intrigues and so on. The American ideal of a world united under the Stars and Stripes is as impossible of realisation as Hitler's dream of a thousand year Reich.

12. In the period ahead, the working class, and above all the working class of the main capitalist countries, will be faced by an acceleration of the world situation at all levels. In particular, it will show in practise the profound connection between the economic crisis and the growth of military barbarism. The intensification of the crisis and of attacks on working class living standards do not merely coincide with the development of war and imperialist tensions. They mutually reinforce each other: the deadly impasse facing the world economy increases the pressure towards military solutions; the dizzying ascent of arms budgets calls for new sacrifices on the part of the working class; the devastation caused by war, unrelieved by any real "reconstructions" cause further dislocations in the economic machinery. At the same time, the necessity to justify these attacks will result in new ideological onslaughts against the consciousness of the working class. Thus in their struggle to defend their living standards, workers will have no choice but to understand the inner link between crisis and war, to recognise the historic and political implications of their combat.

The danger of decomposition for capitalism

13. Revolutionaries can have confidence that the historic course towards class confrontations remains open, that they have a vital role to play in the future politicisation of the class struggle. But they are not there to console their class. The greatest danger facing the proletariat in the period ahead is the erosion of its class identity, as a result of the ebb in class consciousness that followed the collapse of 1989, and through the pernicious advance of decomposition at all levels. If this process continues unchecked, the working class will be unable to have a decisive influence on the social and political upheavals which are being inexorably prepared by the deepening of the world economic crisis and the slide into militarism. Recent events in Argentina give us a clear picture of this danger: faced with a serious paralysis not only of the economy but also of the ruling class political apparatus, the working class was unable to pose itself as an autonomous force. Instead its embryonic movements (strikes, unemployed committees, etc) were drowned in an inter-classist "protest" which can offer no perspective and which provides the bourgeoisie with every possibility of manipulating the situation in its favour. It is particularly important for revolutionaries to be clear about this because the leftist chants about the development of a revolutionary situation in Argentina have seen similar developments in parts of the proletarian milieu and even the ICC itself, expressing a slide towards immediatism and opportunism. Our position on Argentina is not the result of any "indifference" towards the struggles of the proletariat in the peripheral regions. We have always insisted on the capacity of the proletariat in these areas, when it acts on its own terrain, to provide a leadership to all the oppressed. For example, the massive workers' struggles of 1969 in Cordoba offered a clear perspective to the other exploited strata in Argentina, and was an exemplary struggle for the world working class. On the contrary, the recent events, which some have mistaken for an advanced proletarian insurrectionary movement, have shown a few embryonic proletarian expressions completely unable to provide an anchor and a leadership to a revolt which has been quickly brought under the control of bourgeois forces. The Argentinean proletariat still has a huge role to play in the development of class struggles in Latin America; but its recent experience should not be confused with its future potential, which more than ever will be determined by the development of the workers' struggles on their own class terrain in the capitalist heartlands.

The responsibility of revolutionaries

14. Society as a whole is affected by capitalism's decomposition, and the bourgeoisie first and foremost. The proletariat is not spared these effects, and its class consciousness, its confidence in the future, its class solidarity are constantly under attack by the ideology and social practice engendered by this decomposition: nihilism, escapism into irrational and mystical ideologies, atomisation and the dissolution of human solidarity in favour of the false collective of gangs or clans. The revolutionary minority itself is not immune from the negative effects of decomposition, in particular through the resurgence of political parasitism, which though not specific to the period of decomposition is nonetheless powerfully stimulated by it. The difficulty that the rest of the proletarian political milieu experiences in becoming aware of the problem, but also the ICC's own lack of vigilance towards it, are serious weaknesses.1 To this must be added a tendency to fragmentation and closed-mindedness on the part of other groups in the milieu, justified by new sectarian theories, which are themselves marked by this period. If sufficient consciousness and political will do not appear within the milieu to combat these weaknesses, then the potential represented by a whole new generation of searching elements around the world runs the risk of being undermined. The formation of the future party depends on the proletarian milieu's ability to rise to its responsibilities.

Far from being a diversion from real political questions, the ICC's understanding of the phenomenon of capitalism's decomposition is the key for grasping the political difficulties confronting the working class and its revolutionary minorities. It has always been a specific task of revolutionary organisations to undertake a constant theoretical effort to clarify, both for themselves and for the whole working class, the questions posed by the needs of the class struggle. The necessity is still more imperious today if the working class - the only social force which, through its consciousness, its self-confidence, and its solidarity has the means to resist decomposition - is to live up to its historic responsibility for the overthrow of capitalism.

1st April, 2002

1 See the article in this issue on the ICC's Extraordinary Conference

The first article in this series looked at the resurgence of Islam as an ideology mobilising massive numbers. It was seen how Islam has been adapted to the needs of decomposing capital in the underdeveloped countries, with forms of so called “political Islam” (“fundamentalism”) which have little in common with the creed of the founder Muhammad, but which have the ability to pose as the champion of all the oppressed. It was also shown how, unlike Marx, who thought that the fog of religion was being rapidly dispersed by capitalism itself, later marxists recognised that capitalism in its decadent phase has seen a resurgence of religion, which expresses the increasingly patent bankruptcy of bourgeois society. In the underdeveloped countries, especially, this has taken the form of a turn towards militant “fundamentalist” movements. In the developed countries, the picture is more complex; religious observance in the established denominations has more or less steadily declined over the past fifty or so years, while “New Age” and other alternative religious cults have been growing, side-by-side with a complete turn away from religion and belief in God by some sectors of the population on the one hand, and a resurgence in “fundamentalist” creeds on the other.

These trends are noticeable among persons with a background in all the great religions, except perhaps among Buddhists, although it is noticeable that people who have immigrated from Third World countries often tend to cling more tightly to their religions, not only as a form of solace, but also as a symbol of their “lost” heritage - as a way of maintaining their cultural identity in a cruel and hostile environment.

It is also noticeable that trends are not completely uniform throughout the developed countries, in spite of the clear trend towards secularism in these states. Reportedly, "only 5% of Americans say they have no religion" (Dominique Vidal, 'A Secular Society', Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2001); despite the inroads of secularism; it would unthinkable, for instance, for a US President not to intone “God bless America” at the end of every major address to the nation. In France, on the other hand, where secularism has been at the centre of the bourgeoisie's raison d'être since 1789, "half the population no longer belongs to a church, synagogue or mosque" (Vidal, Ibid), despite an upsurge of “fundamentalism” among some North African immigrants.

Despite a move away from established religion, therefore, religious observance continues. The end of capital's ascendant era and the advent of its decadent phase, particularly its final phase of generalised decomposition, has not only prolonged the life of religious irrationalism, but in many ways generated variations which are arguably more dangerous for humanity.

This article is an initial attempt to examine the marxist approach to the problem of fighting religious ideology in general within the proletariat, under present conditions. It will be seen that there is much that we can learn on this matter from the past history of the workers' movement.

Fighting religion

As we have shown in Part One, Marx saw that religion is simultaneously a dangerous, diversionary mystification of reality (the “opium of the people”) and the “sigh of the oppressed” - that is, a stifled cry against oppression. Lenin added to this the advice for communists to tread carefully with anti-religious propaganda - while not for one moment hiding our atheistic materialism. Lenin's general approach to this delicate question still remains a beacon of communist thinking and a guide to revolutionary practice. This is not because Lenin drew up this framework, basing himself exclusively on quotations from Marx and Engels (for that would be to degrade marxist science into a religion!), but because Lenin's framework on the question sensibly and scientifically addresses all the principal problems. An examination of Lenin's thinking on this question is therefore useful at this point in the discussion. We can then return to the present day situation and consider what the attitude of marxists to this should be.

Interestingly, Lenin's first comment upon religion, which exists in English translation, is a passionate defence of religious freedom. A 1903 Article addressed to Russia's rural poor states that marxists "demand that everybody shall have full and unrestricted right to profess any religion he wants". Lenin denounced the laws in Russia and in Ottoman Turkey ("the disgraceful police persecution of religion"), discriminating in favour of particular religions (Orthodox Christianity and Islam respectively), as particularly "shameful". All these laws are as unjust, as arbitrary and disgraceful as can be. Everyone must be perfectly free, not only to profess whatever religion they please, but also to spread or change their religion.

Lenin's ideas on many aspects of revolutionary politics changed over time, but not as far as this question is concerned. This becomes apparent if Lenin's first major statement on this question - a 1905 article ‘Socialism and Religion’ - is compared to his later writings on this issue.

‘Socialism and Religion’ set the essential framework for the Bolsheviks' attitude towards religion. The article summarised in a popular style conclusions already reached by Marx and Engels on religion - that religion is "a sort of spiritual booze", as Lenin put it, which "exhorts working people to suffer exploitation in the hope of heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven”.

The proletariat, Lenin confidently predicted, would fuse its struggle with modern science, break through "the fog of religion" and successfully "fight in the present for a better life on earth".

Lenin argued for religion to be a private affair, as far as the proletarian dictatorship was concerned. He said that communists demand that the state be absolutely independent of any religious affiliations and should materially contribute to no religious organisation's expenses. At the same time, discrimination must be outlawed against any religion and all citizens "must be free to profess any religion" or, for that matter, "no religion whatever".

As far as the marxist party was concerned, however, religion was never a private affair: “Our Party is an association of class conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth (...) And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat”.

Lenin added, however, that religion could not be overcome simply through empty, abstract propaganda.

“It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion ... is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No amount of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven”.

Communists, wrote Lenin, were adamantly opposed to any "stirring up of secondary differences" over religious questions, which could be utilised by reactionaries to split the proletariat. The true source of "religious humbugging", after all, was economic slavery. The same themes were restated at greater length during 1909, in an essay entitled ‘The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion’:

“The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism ... - a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion... Religion is the opium of the people - this dictate by Marx is the cornerstone of the whole marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class”.

At the same time, Engels frequently condemned the efforts of people who desired to be "more left" or "more revolutionary" than the Social Democrats, to introduce into the programme of the workers' political organisation an explicit proclamation of atheism, in the sense of declaring war on religion. Engels condemned the Blanquists' war on religion, says Lenin, as "the best way to revive interest in religion and to prevent it from really dying out":

“Engels blamed the Blanquists for being unable to understand that only the class struggle of the working masses could, by comprehensively drawing the widest strata of the proletariat into conscious and revolutionary social practice, really free the oppressed masses from the yoke of religion, whereas to proclaim that war on religion was a political task of the workers' party was just anarchistic phrase-mongering” (Lenin, 1909, Ibid).

The same warning was made in Engels' Anti-Dühring, and with relation to Bismarck’s war on religion:

“By this struggle Bismarck only stimulated the militant clericalism of the Catholics and only injured the work of real culture, because he gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers' party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion... Engels ... deliberately underlined, that Social Democrats [all marxists called themselves Social Democrats at this time] regard religion as a private matter in relation to the state, but not in relation to themselves, not in relation to Marxism, and not in relation to the workers' party” (Lenin, 1909, Ibid).

The attitude towards religion: principled flexibility

This flexible but principled attitude towards religion by Marx, Engels and Lenin has been attacked by "anarchist phrasemongers" (Lenin's expression) who failed to grasp that the marxist attitude on this question is quite consistent. Lenin explains:

“It would be a profound mistake to think that the seeming 'moderation' of Marxism in regard to religion is due to supposed 'tactical' considerations, the desire 'not to scare away' anybody, and so forth. On the contrary, in this question too the political line of marxism is inseparably bound up with its philosophical principles.

“Marxism is materialism. ... We must combat religion - that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of marxism. But marxism is not a materialism that has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion” (Lenin, 1909, Ibid).

According to "the bourgeois progressist, the radical and the bourgeois atheist", says Lenin, religion maintains its hold due to "the ignorance of the people".

“The marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters. It does not explain the roots of religion profoundly enough; it explains them, not in a materialist but in an idealist way. In modern capitalist countries these roots are mainly social. The deepest root of religion today is the socially downtrodden condition of the working masses and their apparently complete helplessness in face of the blind forces of capitalism, which every day and every hour inflicts upon ordinary working people the most horrible suffering and the most savage torment, a thousand times more severe than those inflicted by extraordinary events, such as wars, earthquakes, etc.

“'Fear made the gods'. Fear of the blind force of capital - blind because it cannot be foreseen by the masses of the people - a force which at every step in the life of the proletarian and small proprietor threatens to inflict, and does inflict 'sudden', 'unexpected', 'accidental' ruin, destruction, pauperism, prostitution, death from starvation - such is the root of modern religion which the materialist must bear in mind first and foremost, if he does not want to remain an infant-school materialist. No educational book can eradicate religion from the minds of masses who are crushed by capitalist hard labour, and who are at the mercy of the blind destructive forces of capitalism, until those masses themselves learn to fight this root of religion, fight the rule of capital in all its forms, in a united, organised, planned and conscious way.

“Does this mean that educational books against religion are harmful or unnecessary? No, nothing of the kind. It means that Social Democracy's atheist propaganda must be subordinated to its basic task - the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters” (Lenin, 1909, Ibid).

Lenin insisted that this can only be understood in practice dialectically. Otherwise atheist propaganda can even be harmful in certain circumstances. (He gives the example of a labour strike led by a Catholic trade union. In this instance, the marxist must "place the success of the strike above everything", vigorously opposing any division of workers "into atheists and Christians", since it is the "progress of the class struggle" which "will convert Christian workers to Social Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda"):

“A marxist must be a materialist, i.e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i.e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on in practice and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could. A marxist must be able to view the concrete situation as a whole, he must always be able to find the boundary between anarchism and opportunism (this boundary is relative and changeable, but it exists).

“And he must not submit either to the abstract, verbal, but in reality empty 'revolutionism' of the anarchist, or to the philistinism and opportunism of the petty bourgeois or liberal intellectual, who boggles at the struggle against religion, forgets that this is his duty, reconciles himself to belief in God, and is guided not by the interests of the class struggle but by the petty and mean consideration of offending nobody, repelling nobody and scaring nobody - by the sage rule: 'live and let live', etc., etc” (Lenin, 1909, Ibid).

Lenin continually warned against the dangers of petty bourgeois impatience in combating religious prejudices. Thus, in a speech to the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women, in November 1918, he noted the young Soviet republic's astonishing success in pushing back women's oppression in the more urbanised areas, but added a warning:

“For the first time in history, our law has removed everything that denied women's rights. But the important thing is not the law. In the cities and industrial areas this law on complete freedom of marriage is doing all right, but in the countryside, it all too frequently remains a dead letter. There the religious marriage still predominates. This is due to the influence of the priests, an evil that is harder to combat than the old legislation.

“We must be extremely careful in fighting religious prejudices; some people cause a lot of harm in this struggle by offending religious feelings. We must use propaganda and education. By lending too sharp an edge to the struggle we may only arouse popular resentment; such methods of struggle tend to perpetuate the division of the people along religious lines, whereas our strength lies in unity. The deepest source of religious prejudice is poverty and ignorance; and that is the evil we have to combat” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 180-81).

In drafting the Russian Communist Party's Programme the following year, Lenin repeated the traditional call for the complete separation of church and state and continued to warn against "hurting the religious sentiments of believers, for this only serves to increase religious fanaticism".

Then, two years later at a meeting of non-Bolshevik delegates to the Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, when Kalinin (later to be given control of education under Stalin) remarked that Lenin might issue an order to "burn all the prayer books", Lenin hastened to clarify the situation, stressing that he "never suggested such a thing and never could. You know that according to our Constitution, the fundamental law of our Republic, freedom of conscience in respect of religion is fully guaranteed to every person”.

Earlier in 1921, Lenin wrote to Molotov (another future leading Stalinist apparatchik), criticising slogans such as "expose the falsehood of religion" in a circular regarding May Day. "This is not right. It is tactless", wrote Lenin, underlining again the need "absolutely to avoid the affront to religion". In fact, Lenin felt so strongly about this issue that he demanded an additional circular, correcting the previous one. If the Secretariat could not agree with this, then he proposed to take up the matter in the Politburo. (The Central Committee subsequently published a letter in Pravda on 21 April 1921, urging that in celebrating Mayday "nothing should be done or said to offend the religious feelings of the mass of the population".)

Lenin's views on socialism and religion are quite clear cut. The views of Marx, Engels and Lenin on combating the fog of religion can now be briefly summarised. Religion is understood first and foremost as a form of oppression in class society - a means of bamboozling the masses into accepting their oppression. It exists and flourishes in specific material conditions - what Lenin referred to as "economic slavery". The emergence of capitalist decadence means, more than ever, that the proletariat and other oppressed suffer from "fear of the blind force of capital", as capitalism's economic catastrophes thrust the working masses repeatedly and abruptly into "pauperism, prostitution, death from starvation".

The forms of religion vary enormously. But all religion, while unquestionably a diversion from real human liberation, functions as a diversion precisely because it is a comfort in conditions of adversity. It appears to provide hope for a better life (albeit after death, or after some purely supernatural transformation of the material world). And this hope of liberation ('salvation') in the hereafter or the apocalyptic future even enables the illusion to develop that suffering here and now is not in vain, since suffering will be generously rewarded in Paradise, provided the believer submits to God. In the callous, cold, inhuman world of the permanent and deepening crisis of capitalist decadence, religion also provides the oppressed with a means of apparent partial release from their bondage; religion affirms that each person is indeed precious in the eyes of his or her divine creator.

To overcome religion: unity in the class struggle

For anarchists, "narrow bourgeois uplifters" and impatient middle class radicals, the hold of religion on the masses is due to the latter's ignorance. Marxists, in contrast, understand that the material roots of religion are very deep and real in modern capitalism (indeed, they extend far deeper than capitalism itself, to the very origins of class society and even to the origins of humanity itself). Religion cannot therefore be overcome merely (or even primarily) by propaganda. Communists must make anti-religious propaganda, but this must always be subordinate to practical proletarian unity in the class struggle: the anti-religious preaching "must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating its social roots of religion". This is the only materialist strategy of uprooting religion. Attempts to solve the problem by declaring a political 'war upon religion', engaging in tactless affronts to religion, or by supporting measures aimed at restricting religious observance ignore religion's real, material, roots. Such behaviour is folly, from a proletarian viewpoint, since it exacerbates religious divisions within the proletariat and pushes working people into the arms of religious fanatics.

Communists' opposition to religion does not mean that they support measures by any state against religious belief and observance, or against particular religious sects.

Communists remain ideological and political opponents of religion: there is no question of religion being a private matter in the ranks of the revolutionary organization itself, which is made up of class conscious militants who have broken with all forms of religion. This said, in their battle against popular religious prejudices, the communists must be not only materialists - believing and acting on the fundamental standpoint that it is humans who make their own history and can thus liberate themselves through their own conscious activity - but also dialectical materialists. That is, marxists must proceed on the basis of the situation as a whole, being acutely aware of all the crucial interactions between the respective political component parts. This implies linking anti-religious propaganda in a concrete way to the actually existing class struggle, instead of waging an abstract, purely ideological battle against religion. Only with the victory of the proletarian class movement can the social roots of religious prejudice in class exploitation begin to be severed. Religion cannot be “abolished” - the working masses must outgrow it, on the basis of their own experiences. Communists will therefore avoid any measures (such as reviling religious practices) which inflame religious feelings for no good purpose. The state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, established by the dictatorship of the proletariat, must therefore foreswear all religious discrimination, as well as any material affiliation or tie with religion.

In order to show clearly which class interests religion serves today, revolutionary organisations must integrate into their propaganda the evolution of religion’s role within society. The original creeds and practises of the great religions have been transformed into caricatures, due to the religious establishment's adaptation to and absorption by class society Rosa Luxemburg framed an appeal to religious-minded workers with this in mind, accusing the churches: “Today it is you, in your lies and your teachings, who are pagans, and it is we who bring to the poor, to the exploited the tidings of fraternity and equality. It is we who are marching to the conquest of the world as he did formerly who proclaimed that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Rosa Luxemburg, Socialism and The Churches).

Clearly, there is much that remains useful in our movement's revolutionary heritage. Marx and Engels wrote as militants at the height of capitalism's ascendant era, while Lenin was a revolutionary pioneer of communist praxis at the dawn of capitalism's decadence. Today we are in the highest and final phase of capitalist decadence - capitalist decomposition, when the proletariat will either rediscover its own revolutionary political heritage or humanity as a whole will literally be condemned to extinction. Obviously, this means that it is simply not good enough to repeat the relevant texts of the marxist classics; it is imperative that we also identify what is new in the present era, and what this means in practice for the proletariat and its political organisations.

The struggle against religion in the decadence and decomposition of capitalism

The first point to clarify in this regard is actually something that emerged at the dawn of decadence in about 1914, but has not been stressed sufficiently by revolutionaries; its clarification is therefore something left over from the dawn of decadence. This concerns the Second International’s and the French revolution’s slogan of the complete separation between church and state. This slogan - quite appropriate and necessary at the time it was initially framed - is an unrealised bourgeois democratic demand of capitalism in its ascendant phase. It should be understood clearly that only the proletariat and its party can truly achieve this, due to the countless ties between the religious establishment and capitalism. This was already universally true by the end of the nineteenth century; it is even more evident in the era of state capitalism ushered in by capitalist decadence. It is therefore both pointless and a dangerous illusion to believe that it is possible to campaign for the demand that the capitalist state separate from the religious establishment, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks tended to do.

The second point, as mentioned in the introduction to the present article and in the preceding part, is that, since entering its phase of decomposition, capitalism is now both more irrational and barbarous than at any previous point (see ‘Decomposition: the Final Phase of Capitalist Decadence’, in International Review N°107). Decomposition is the consequence of the situation in which capitalism, having long outlived its usefulness to humanity as a whole, confronts a proletariat, the only force that can overthrow this system and replace it with another society, that is still heavily marked by long decades of counter-revolution and lacking in confidence in itself as a class. The mass workers' movements of 1968-1989 represented a serious weakening of the effects of the capitalist counter-revolution, but in the last decade or so, the period we characterise as that of capitalist decomposition, the working class has suffered a number of powerful blows against its sense of class identity, in particular through all the bourgeois campaigns about the “death of communism” and the “end of the class struggle”, and through the insidious, creeping effects of social decomposition in general.

In its final, vicious and highly irrational phase, capitalism will stop at nothing to attempt to prevent proletarians from becoming self-confident and politically conscious. Furthermore, revolutionary political organisations are not immune from the influence of decadent capitalism's irrationality. A section of the Bolsheviks were gripped by a paroxysm of 'God-building' in the wake of the defeat of the 1905 revolution and the triumph of the Stolypin reaction. More recently, a section of the Bordigists, the group publishing the paper il partito has begun dabbling in mysticism (see "Marxism and Mysticism", in International Review No. 94, and the May 1997 issue of Programme Communiste). And the ICC was compelled, in the mid-1990s, to combat a sudden enthusiasm among certain militants for mysticism and occultism.

The heightened dangers posed by capitalism's decomposition should not be underestimated. Humanity as a whole is by nature a social animal. Decomposition is a sort of social acid, eating away at the bonds of natural solidarity between humans in society, sowing distrust and paranoia in its place. To put it another way: decomposition generates a spontaneous tendency in society to regroup in cliques, clans and gangs. “Fundamentalism” of any sort, cults of all varieties, the growth of inane “New Age” groups and practices, the resurgence of criminal youth gangs, are all warped attempts to “replace” missing social solidarity, in an increasingly harsh world. Because they are not based on the latent vitality of the era's sole revolutionary class, but on individualist replications of exploitative relations, all these attempts are by their very nature doomed to produce only more alienation and distress and, in fact, to further exacerbate the effects of decomposition.

This further underlines the fact that the fight against the revival of religion, against all the forms of irrationalism which are flourishing today, is inseparable from the necessity for the working class to revive the struggle for its own real interests, because it is this struggle alone which can counter the corroding effects of a disintegrating social order. The proletariat, in the struggle to defend its material interests, has no choice but to create the premises for a genuine human community; its authentic solidarity in struggle is the antidote to the false solidarity offered by the culture of gangs and fundamentalism. By the same token, the struggle to awaken the class consciousness of the proletariat – a struggle whose avant-garde is the communist minority- is the antidote to the increasingly debased and inhuman mythologies secreted by a society in putrefaction; and in turn it indicates the path towards a future where man will have at last become fully aware of himself and his place in nature, and thus will have left all the gods behind him.

Dawson

In a previous article (InternationalReview n°108), we described the emergence of the leftfractions that fought the degeneration of the old workers'parties, in particular the German SPD that supported the wareffort of its national capital in 1914, and the Russian CP and theThird International as they were being transformed intoinstruments of the Russian state with the progressive defeat ofthe October Revolution. In this process, the task of the fractionswas to struggle to re-conquer the organisation for the fundamentalpositions of the proletarian programme, against their abandonmentby the opportunist right and the complete betrayal by theleadership controlling the majority of the organisation. Topreserve the organisation as an instrument of the class struggleand to save as many militants as possible, one of the leftfractions' main concerns was to remain in the party as long aspossible. However, the process of political degeneration wasinevitably accompanied by a profound modification in the partiesthemselves, and in the relationships between the militants and theorganisation as a whole. Inevitably, this situation posed for thefractions the problem of breaking party discipline in order tofulfil their task of preparing the new party of the proletariat.

In fact, within the workers' movement theleft has always defended the rigorous respect of theorganisation's rules and discipline. Breaking party discipline wasnot something to be taken lightly, but on the contrary demanded agreat sense of responsibility, a profound evaluation of the stakesand the future perspectives for both the proletariat and itsorganisation.

The purpose of thisarticle is to examine how the question of discipline was posed inthe history of the working class' organisations, and in particularhow it was treated by the left fractions in two great workers'parties: the 2ndand 3rdInternationals. We will see how the left fractions struggledwithin these parties to defend the revolutionary line againsttheir degeneration. Finally, we will see how the question wasposed in the left fractions of which we, and most of the otherorganisations of the proletarian political milieu, are the heirs.To do so, we must first examine more generally how the question ofdiscipline is posed within class society, and more particularlyhow it is posed for the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Discipline and consciousness

The idea that every human activity needs tobe organised according to rules is banal enough, whether at thelevel of a small collective or of society as a whole. Thedifference between communism and all the previous class societiesthat have preceded it, is not that communism will be lessorganised - on the contrary, for the first time the humancommunity will be organised on a planetary scale - but that socialorganisation will no longer be imposed on an exploited class tothe profit of an exploiting class. "The government ofmen", as Marx said, "will be replaced by theadministration of things". However, as long as we live inclass society, "the government of men" is notsomething neutral. Under capitalism, discipline in the factory orthe office is imposed by the ruling class on the exploited class,and guaranteed in the last instance by the state through labourlaw backed up by armed force. The bourgeoisie would like us tobelieve that the state and its discipline stands above society,independent of classes - that everyone is equal before thediscipline of the law. Marxism attacks this mystification head-on,showing that no element of social organisation or behaviour can beconsidered independently of its social role and status withinclass society. As Lenin wrote, to use "abstract conceptsof 'democracy' and 'dictatorship', without specifying what classis in question (...) is a downright mockery of the basic theory ofsocialism (...) For in no civilised capitalist country is there'democracy in the abstract', there is only bourgeois democracy".1In the same way, it makes no sense to talk of "discipline"as such: we must identify the class nature of the discipline underconsideration. In capitalist society, freedom as such (whichappears as the opposite to discipline) is an illusion, since onthe one hand humanity lives under the reign of necessity and istherefore not free in its choices, and on the other because humanconsciousness is inevitably mystified by the false consciousnessof the ruling ideology. Freedom does not mean doing what onelikes, but reaching the most complete understanding possible ofwhat it is necessary to do. As Engels said in Anti-Dühring,"Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but thecapacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.Therefore the freer a man's judgement is in relation to a definitequestion, the greater is the necessity with which the content ofthis judgement will be determined; while the uncertainty, foundedon ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among manydifferent and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely bythis that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very objectit should itself control".2The aim of marxist theory - historical and dialectical materialism- is precisely to make it possible for the proletariat to acquirethis "knowledge of the subject" of bourgeoissociety. Only thus will the revolutionary class be able to breakthe enemy class' discipline - its dictatorship - over society, andin doing so lay the foundations for the creation of the first freehuman society: free because for the first time, the whole ofhumanity will possess a conscious mastery both of the naturalworld and of its own social organisation.

Marxism has alwaysfought the influence of petty-bourgeois revolt infiltrating theworkers' movement, and the idea specific to anarchism that it isenough to oppose bourgeois discipline with "non-discipline",a so-called "proletarian indiscipline" so to speak.3The worker experiences bourgeois discipline as something foreignto him and to his interests, a discipline imposed from above inorder to enforce the power and interests of the ruling class.Unlike the petty-bourgeois, however, who can do nothing butrevolt, the working class is capable of understanding thediscipline imposed by capitalism as having a dual nature: on theone hand, an oppressive side, the expression of the class rule ofthe bourgeoisie which appropriates privately the fruits of theproletariat's labour; on the other hand, a potentiallyrevolutionary side, as a requirement of a collective process oflabour imposed by capital on the proletariat, itself a fundamentalprecondition for the planetary socialisation of production. It isprecisely this idea that Lenin expressed in One step forward,two steps back, dealing with the question in the only waypossible for a marxist: by treating "discipline" not asan abstract category in itself, but as an organisational vectordetermined by its class belonging: "the factory, whichseems only a bogey to some, represents that highest form ofcapitalist co-operation which has united and disciplined theproletariat, taught it to organise, and placed it at the head ofall the other sections of the toiling and exploited population.And Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained bycapitalism, has been and is teaching unstable intellectuals todistinguish between the factory as a means of exploitation(discipline based on fear of starvation) and the factory as ameans of organisation (discipline based on collective work unitedby the conditions of a technically highly developed form ofproduction). The discipline and organisation, which come so hardto the bourgeois intellectual, are very easily acquired by theproletariat just because of this factory "schooling".Mortal fear of this school and utter failure to understand itsimportance as an organising factor are characteristic of the waysof thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life".Obviously, Lenin does not mean here to idealise the disciplineimposed on workers by the bourgeoisie,4but to show how the conditions of its existence have determinedthe attitude of the working class to the question of discipline,as indeed to other aspects of its self-activity. The conditions ofhis existence demonstrate to the worker that he is part of acollective productive process, and that he cannot defend hisinterests against the ruling class other than through collectiveaction. The great difference between the discipline of thebourgeoisie and of the proletariat is this: whereas the former isa discipline imposed by an exploiting class with all the power ofits state apparatus in order to maintain its own domination, thelatter is fundamentally the self-discipline of an exploitedclass in order to oppose a collective resistance to exploitationand eventually to overthrow it altogether. The proletariat thuscalls on a conscious, voluntary discipline, inspired by anunderstanding of the goals of its struggle. Where bourgeoisdiscipline is blind and oppressive, the discipline that theproletariat imposes on itself is liberating and conscious. In thissense, this discipline can never be substituted for an awarenessthroughout the proletariat of the goals of its movement and themeans to reach them.

What is true for the class as a whole is alsotrue for its revolutionary organisations. However, there aredifferences. Whereas the working class' collective discipline, itsunity of action, and its centralisation are the direct expressionsof its collective and organised nature, its being as arevolutionary class, discipline within revolutionary organisationsis founded on each member's commitment to respect theorganisation's rules, and the most developed consciousness of whatthese rules express. No revolutionary organisation can usediscipline to replace this proletarian consciousness.Revolutionary organisations cannot substitute discipline for thewidest debate within the organisation, any more than the workingclass as a whole can advance in its struggle against thebourgeoisie without developing an ever deeper and broaderconsciousness of the demands of the struggle and the path tofollow.

It was in this sensethat the GCF (Gauche Communiste de France) denounced thediscipline imposed by the Internationalist Communist Party on itsown militants, without debate, in order to force through itspolicy of participation in the Italian elections in 1946:"Socialism (...) is only possible as a conscious act ofthe working class (...) You cannot bring socialism with atruncheon. Not because the truncheon is an immoral means (...) butbecause the truncheon does not contain the element ofconsciousness (...) The only basis for concerted communist actionand organisation is the consciousness of the militants on whichthey are based. The greater and the clearer is this consciousness,the stronger the organisation and the more concerted and effectiveits action

"Lenin morethan once violently denounced the recourse to 'freely consenteddiscipline' as a truncheon of the bureaucracy. If he used the termdiscipline, he understood it - and he explained this many times -in the sense of the will to organised action, based on therevolutionary conviction of each militant ".5

It is no accident thatthis article looks back to Lenin, and to the Lenin of One stepforward, two steps back. The organisation that published thisarticle in 1947 was the same that had reacted with the greatestfirmness against those within its own ranks who had put in danger"the will to organised action" (see below).

Within the communist organisation,proletarian discipline is thus inseparable from discussion, thepitiless criticism of capitalist society, but also of its ownmistakes and those of the working class as a whole.

We will now considerhow the left fought to defend party discipline in the 2ndand 3rdInternationals.

Revisionism against party discipline inthe SPD

In the two decades that preceded World War I,the German SPD, the flower of the Second International, was thescene of an increasingly bitter struggle between the left and therevisionist, opportunist right. The latter was epitomisedtheoretically by the "revisionist" theories of EduardBernstein, and appeared in two distinct but allied forms: on theone hand a tendency of the parliamentary fractions to takeinitiatives independently of the party as a whole; on the otherthe refusal by the leaders of the trades unions to be bound by thedecisions of the party. In Social Reform or Revolution(first published in 1899), Rosa Luxemburg pointed to thedevelopment of the practical opportunism that laid the groundworkfor Bernstein's opportunist theory: "If we take intoconsideration sporadic manifestations, such as the question ofsubsidies for steamships, the opportunist currents in our movementhave existed for a long time. But it is only since the beginningof the 1890s with the suppression of the anti-socialist laws andthe re-conquest of the terrain of legality, that we have had anexplicit, unitary, opportunist current. Vollmar's 'statesocialism', the vote on the Bavarian budget, the 'agrariansocialism' of South Germany, Heine's policy of compensation,Schippel's stand on tariffs and militarism, are the high points inthe development of the opportunist practice".6Without entering into the detail of all these examples, it issignificant that Vollmar's "state socialism" includedthe vote by the Bavarian SPD of the budgets proposed by theBavarian Land (parliament), explicitly against the decisionof the majority of the party. Against the refusal of theopportunist right to respect the decisions of the majority and ofthe party congress, the left demanded the strengthening of partycentralisation and particularly of the Parteivorstand (thecentral executive), and the subordination of the parliamentaryfractions to the party as a whole. It was doubtless theexperience of this struggle that Luxemburg had in mind in replyingto Lenin on Organisational questions of Russian SocialDemocracy7in 1904: "In [the German] case, a more rigorousapplication of the idea of centralism in the constitution and astricter application of party discipline can no doubt be a usefulsafeguard against the opportunist current (?) Such a revision ofthe constitution of the German party has now become a necessity.But in this case too, the party constitution should not be seen asa kind of self-sufficient weapon against opportunism but merely asan external means through which the decisive influence of thepresent revolutionary-proletarian majority of the party can beexercised. When such a majority is lacking, the most rigorouswritten constitution cannot act in its place".

Clearly, the left stoodfor the most intransigent defence of party centralisation anddiscipline, and for the defence of the statutes.8Indeed, just as Rosa Luxemburg expresses her determination here,at the end of the 19thcentury, to defend the German party through rigorous discipline,so she constantly fought for the respect of the decisions of thecongresses of the 2ndInternational by all its constituent parties.9

1914: a coup d'Etat within theparty itself

Throughout the period that preceded the war,the left fought for a discipline faithful to revolutionaryprinciples. We can readily imagine, therefore, the terribledilemma that confronted Karl Liebknecht and the otherparliamentary deputies of the left on 4thAugust 1914, when the majority of the SPD's parliamentary fractionannounced that it would vote the war credits demanded by theKaiser's government: either break with proletarianinternationalism by voting the war credits, or vote as a minorityagainst the war and so break party discipline. What Liebknecht andhis comrades failed to understand at this critical moment, wasthat once the Social Democracy had betrayed its most basicprinciples by abandoning proletarian internationalism andsupporting the war effort of the ruling class, and had broken withthe decisions of its own congresses and of the International, itwas the Social-Democratic leadership which in reality had brokenparty discipline. The left could no longer pose the question inthe same way. By allying itself with the bourgeois state theparliamentary fraction of the SPD had carried out a veritable coupd'Etat within the party, and had seized for itself anauthority to which it had no right, but which it imposed thanks tothe armed power of the capitalist state. For Rosa Luxemburg,"Discipline towards the party as a whole, in other wordstowards its programme, takes precedence over any corps discipline,and alone can justify the latter, just as it defines the latter'snatural limit". It was the leadership, not the left,which from the outset of the war perpetrated endless violations ofparty discipline with the support of the state, "violationsof discipline which consist in specific organs of the Partybetraying on their own initiative the will of the whole, in otherwords the programme, instead of serving it".10And to make sure that the mass of militants remained unable tocontest the decision of the leadership, on the 5thAugust (ie the day after the vote for war credits), the partycongress was put off for the duration of the war. With goodreason, as the development of an opposition within the SPD was toshow.11

In the years thatfollowed, the left of the SPD, which remained faithful toproletarian internationalism, confronted a veritable bourgeoisdiscipline within the party itself. Inevitably, the activity ofthe Spartakus Group broke the party discipline as it was nowinterpreted and applied by the SPD leadership in alliance with thestate.12 Thequestion now was not how to maintain the discipline and unity ofthe proletarian organisation, but how to avoid giving theleadership disciplinary pretexts for expelling them from the partyand isolating from the militants whose resistance to the war wasbeginning to emerge, inevitably taking the expression of aresistance to the coup d'Etat of the leadership.

An example of thedifficulty the left experienced in thus determining its action isthe disagreement that appeared within the left over the payment ofdues to the SPD centre by the local sections. This was indeed adifficult question: money - the dues of its militants - is indeed"the sinew of war" for a working class organisation.However, by 1916 it was obvious that the SPD leadership was ineffect embezzling the funds of the organisation to fight, not theclass war of the working class, but the imperialist war of thebourgeoisie. Under these conditions, Spartakus called on the localmilitants to "stop paying your dues to the partyleadership, because it uses your hard-earned money for supportinga policy, for publishing texts which want to turn you into thepatient cannon-fodder of imperialism, all of which aims atprolonging the massacre".13

For a new International, aninternational discipline

From the outset of the left's struggleagainst the betrayal of 1914, the question was posed of thecreation of a new International. For some revolutionaries, such asOtto Rühle,14the utter betrayal of the SPD and its ferocious use of amechanical discipline imposed in collaboration with the state,were the definitive proof that all political parties wereinevitably condemned to become bureaucratic monsters and betraythe working class, no matter what their programme. This was notthe conclusion of the vast majority of the left, who were to leadthe fight for the construction of a new International and thevictory of the proletarian revolution begun in Petrograd inOctober 1917. For Rosa Luxemburg, as Paul Frölich explains"the workers' movement had to break with the elementswhich had gone over to imperialism; it was necessary to create anew workers' International, an International of a higher kind thanthe old one, 'with a unified understanding of theproletariat's interests and tasks, a coherent tactic, and acapacity for intervention in both peace and war'. The greatestimportance was attached to international discipline: 'TheInternational is the centre of gravity of the proletariat's classorganisation. In time of peace, the International decides thetactics to be adopted by the national sections on militarism,colonial policy, (...) etc, and the entire tactic to be adopted incase of war. The obligation to apply the decisions of theInternational takes precedence over every other obligation of theorganisation. (...) The fatherland of the workers, to whicheverything else must be subordinated, is the socialistInternational'".15

When, in June 1920, thedelegates assembled in Moscow for the Second Congress of theCommunist International, civil war was still raging in Russia andrevolutionaries world wide were locked in combat both with thebourgeoisie and with the social-traitors: the old parties whichhad betrayed the working class by supporting the war. They werealso confronted with the wavering of the "centrist"parties, which still hesitated to break off all their links withtheir old socialist methods, or indeed in the case of manyleaders, with their old friends who had stayed in the rottingSocial Democracy. Nor were the centrists prepared to breakradically with their old legalistic tactics. In such a situation,the communists and especially the left wing were determined thatthe new International should not repeat the mistakes of the old inthe matter of discipline. There would be no more autonomy of theparticularities of the national parties, which had served as amask for chauvinism in the old International,16no more toleration of the petty-bourgeois careerist whose interestlay in his personal parliamentary career. The CommunistInternational was to be a fighting organisation, the leadership ofthe proletariat in its decisive worldwide struggle for power andthe overthrow of capitalism. This determination is reflected inthe 21 Conditions for adherence to the International, adopted bythe Congress. Let us cite point 12 as an example: "Theparties belonging to the Communist International must be built onthe principle of democratic centralisation. In the present epochof bitter civil war, the communist party will not be able tofulfil its role unless it is organised in the most centralisedmanner, unless an iron discipline close to military discipline isaccepted and unless the central organ is accorded the widestpowers, exercises an undisputed authority, and benefits from theunanimous confidence of the militants".

The 21 conditions werestrengthened by the organisation's statutes, which clearlyestablished that the International should be a world wide andcentralised party. According to point 9 of the statutes: "TheExecutive Committee [the central organ of the International]of the Communist International has the right to demand thatgroups or individuals who have infringed proletarian disciplineshould be excluded from the affiliated parties; it can demand theexclusion of parties which have violated the decisions of theWorld Congress".

That this determinationwas fully shared by the left is demonstrated by the fact that the21stcondition was proposed by Amadeo Bordiga, leader of the left inthe Italian Socialist Party: "Members of the party whoreject the conditions and theses adopted by the CommunistInternational must be excluded from the party. The same is true ofdelegates to the Extraordinary Congress".

The degeneration of the party and theloss of proletarian discipline

With the ebb of the revolutionary wave of1917, came the tragic degeneration of the Communist International.The Russian working class was bled white by civil war, theKronstadt revolt had been crushed, the revolution defeated in allthe central countries of Europe (Germany, Italy, Hungary, France,Britain), and the International itself was dominated by a Russianstate already under the rule of Stalin and the GPU. The year 1925was to be the year of "bolshevisation": the reduction ofthe International to the status of a tool in the hands of Russianstate capitalism. As the counter-revolution advanced in theInternational, proletarian discipline gave way to the truncheon ofbourgeois discipline.

Inevitably, such adegeneration encountered a bitter opposition from the leftcommunists both inside Russia (the Miasnikov group, Trotsky andthe Left Opposition, the Democratic Centralism group), and withinthe International itself, especially from the left of the ItalianCP around Bordiga. Once again, as it had been during the war of1914, the left was confronted with a party discipline, which - inRussia at least - was enforced by Stalin's GPU, the prison, andthe concentration camp. But the International was not the Russianstate, and the Italian left was determined to fight to wrest theInternational from the hands of the right, and to preserve it forthe working class. What it was not prepared to do, was to conductthe struggle by throwing overboard the very principles it hadfought for at the effective founding of the International at its2ndCongress. In particular, Bordiga and the left were not prepared toabandon the discipline of a centralised party to theiradversaries. In March-April of 1925, the left wing of the Italianparty made a first attempt to work as an organised grouping byforming a "Committee of Entente": "When theCongress was announced, a Committee of Entente was formedspontaneously in order to avoid disorganised reactions byindividuals or groups, which would have led to a splintering, andto channel the action of all the comrades of the Left along acommon and responsible line, within the strict limits ofdiscipline, the respect of their rights being guaranteed to all inthe Party's constitution. The leadership [ie, of theInternational] seized on this fact and used it in its plan ofagitation to present the comrades of the Left as fractionists andsplitters, forbidding them to defend themselves and winning votesagainst them in the federal committees by pressure exercised fromabove" (Lyon Theses, 1926).17

The International'spresidium demanded the dissolution of the Entente Committee, andthe left bowed to this decision under protest: "Accused offractionism and splittism, we will sacrifice our opinions to theunity of the Party, by carrying out an order which we considerunjust and ruinous for the Party. We will thus demonstrate thatthe Italian left is perhaps the only current which considersdiscipline as something serious which cannot be bargained away. Wereaffirm our previous positions and our acts. We deny that theCommittee of Entente was a manoeuvre aimed at splitting the Partyand creating a fraction within it, and we protest again at thecampaign conducted on this basis, without even giving us the rightto defend ourselves, and by scandalously deceiving the Party.Nonetheless, since the Presidium thinks that the dissolution ofthe Committee of Entente will eliminate fractionism, and althoughwe are of a contrary opinion, we will obey. But we leave to theExecutive Committee the entire responsibility for the evolution ofthe situation within the Party, and for the reactions caused bythe way in which the leadership has administered its internallife".

When Karl Korsch,recently expelled from the KPD18,wrote to Bordiga in 1926 to propose joint action between theItalian left and the German Kommunistische Politik group, Bordigarefused. Two of the reasons he gave are worth citing here. On theone hand, he did not consider that the theoretical basis for sucha stand had yet been established: "In general, I thinkthat what must be a priority today is, more than organisation andmanoeuvring, a work of elaborating a political ideology of theinternational left, based on the eloquent experiences that theComintern has been through. As this point is far from beingattained, any international initiative seems difficult".On the other, the unity and international centralisation of theInternational was not something to be abandoned lightly: "Weshould not be in favour of splitting parties and theInternational. We should allow the experience of artificial andmechanical discipline to reach its conclusion by respecting thisdiscipline in all its procedural absurdities as long as this ispossible, without ever renouncing our political and ideologicalcritique and without ever solidarising with the dominantorientation".19

The struggle of the Italian Left, firstagainst the degeneration of the International, then to draw outthe lessons of its degeneration and of the defeat of the Russianrevolution, was critical in the creation of today's proletarianpolitical milieu. All the major proletarian currents that existtoday, including the ICC, are the direct descendants of thatstruggle, and for us there is no doubt that their defence ofproletarian discipline within the International was one of thestruggle's critical elements. The proletarian discipline of theInternational was essential in delimiting it from thesocial-traitors, in defining what behaviour was and was notacceptable within the organisations of the working class. But asBordiga clearly implies, proletarian discipline is completelyforeign to the discipline imposed on exploited classes by thecapitalist state.

The question of discipline in the LeftFraction

Once it could no longer work within theInternational, after being excluded by the Stalinist leadership,the Italian Left Fraction adopted its own organisational form(around the publication Bilan), by drawing the lessons fromits struggles for and within the International.

First amongst these wasthe insistence on discussion "without taboos", as Bilanput it, in order to understand all the lessons of the immenseexperience that had been the revolutionary wave after October1917. But the left fractions were also confronted by internalcrises, when "the will to organised action, based on therevolutionary conviction of each militant" proved wantingamongst a minority within the organisation. What is to be donewhen the very framework which makes this organised action possibleis undermined by the organisation's own militants? The first ofthese crises that we will examine here occurred in 1936, when alarge minority of the Bilan group rejected the majorityposition that the war in Spain was being fought, not on theterrain of the proletarian revolution but on the terrain of theimperialist war. The minority demanded the right to take up armsin defence of the Spanish "revolution", and despite aveto by Bilan's Executive Commission (EC) 26 members of theminority left for Barcelona where they established a new section.This new section in Barcelona refused to pay its dues, integratednew members on the basis of participation on the military front inSpain, and demanded the recognition of both the Barcelona sectionand the newly integrated militants as a pre-condition for itscontinued activity within the organisation.20

The Italian Lefttreated the question of discipline in its own ranks in accord withits conception of the organisation, and of its relationship to itsmilitants. Thus the EC "decided that the discussion shouldnot be carried on in a hurried manner so that the organisation canbenefit from the contribution of the comrades who are unable atthe moment to intervene actively in the debate, and also becausethe further evolution of the situation in Spain will allow for amore complete clarification of the fundamental differences whichhave emerged".21Given the extent of the disagreements, the EC knew that a splitwas inevitable and considered that priority should be given toprogrammatic clarification. To make this possible, it was ready topass over some of the minority's violations of the statutes, so asnot to give it a pretext for leaving the organisation and avoidingthe fundamental political questions. It even went as far as toaccept the minority's not paying its dues. When the minority ofthe fraction set up a "Co-ordinating Committee" (CC) tonegotiate with the majority and demanded the immediate recognitionof the Barcelona section (even announcing that it considered therefusal to recognise the section as equivalent to the exclusion ofthe minority), the EC initially refused to do so: "TheExecutive Commission based its decision on an elementary criterionand a principle the organisation was founded upon when it decidednot to recognise the Barcelona group. The decision was taken onthe basis of considerations which were not even discussed by theCo-ordinating Committee and which were published in our previouscommuniqué. It was decided that no member of the minoritywas to be expelled and thus the decision of the Co-ordinatingCommittee in considering the whole minority expelled if theBarcelona group was not recognised, is quite incomprehensible".Given the minority's threat to split otherwise, the EC decided torecognise the Barcelona section; however, it refused to recognisethe newly integrated militants of the section, on the grounds thatthey had joined on a completely unclear basis and had not evenagreed to the fraction's basic founding documents. Throughout,"The EC (...) based itself on the same principle: thatsplits must take place over questions of principle and not overquestions particular to a tendency and still less overorganisational questions". This determination to maintainthe political debate was to no effect. The minority refused toattend the congress of the fraction, organised in order to discussthe contending positions, refused to make its own politicaldocuments known to the EC, and made contact with the anti-fascistgroup "Giustizia e Liberta". Consequently, "Inthese circumstances, the Executive Commission is of the opinionthat the evolution of the minority is clear proof that it can nolonger be considered as a tendency of the organisation but as areflection of the Popular Front within the Fraction. Consequentlythere can be no problem of a political split in the organisation.

"Consideringmoreover that the minority is flirting with obviouscounter-revolutionary enemies of the Fraction (?) while at thesame time declaring any discussion with the Fraction to beuseless, the EC has decided to expel for political unworthinessall the comrades who are in solidarity with the CC's letter of25/11/1936, and it will allow fifteen days for the comrades of theminority to come to a collective decision".

In defence of organisational discipline

The Italian Left underwent another crisis atthe beginning of World War II, when the Fraction dissolved on thebasis of a theory defended by Vercesi, that the proletariatdisappeared as a class during wartime. However, during the warsome of its members regrouped around the Marseilles nucleus. Inparallel, a French Fraction of the Communist Left (FFGC) wasformed. In 1945, a new crisis broke out. In Italy, a new PartitoComunista Internazionalista had just been created by those membersof the Italian Left who had spent the war in Mussolini's gaols.The Italian Fraction decided to dissolve, and to rejoin the ranksof the party on an individual basis. The FFGC severely criticisedthis decision, on the grounds that the basis for the formation ofthe new party in Italy was unclear, and that the Fraction'sdissolution turned its back on all the work accomplished duringthe war by the Italian Fraction in exile. Marco, member of boththe Italian Fraction and the FFGC, refused the liquidation of theFraction. Part of the FFGC, however, adopted the position of themajority in the Italian Fraction, but instead of defending thispolitical position within the organisation, these militantspreferred to conduct a campaign of slander inside and outside theorganisation, directed essentially against Marco. Unsuccessful inpersuading these comrades to return to the framework oforganisational discipline, the FFGC adopted a resolutionsanctioning them (17/06/1945):22"The General Assembly reasserts its position of principle,namely that splits and exclusions cannot be a means for resolvinga political debate, as long as disagreements are on the grounds ofthe programmatic foundation of our principles. On the contrary,organisational measures in a political debate can only obscure theproblem, preventing the complete maturation of tendencies, whichalone will allow the movement to come to a conclusion and tostrengthen the fraction's political heritage through politicalstruggle. But it does not follow from this position of principlethat political elaboration can be conducted under no matter whatconditions. Political elaboration is only possible if elementaryorganisational rules are respected, and in a fraternal andcollective work in the interests of the class and of theorganisation (...)

"Refusing toexplain themselves either in front of all the comrades, orpublicly in our organ Internationalisme, these elementshave published a communiqué signed 'a group of militantsfrom P', in which they indulge in insulting attacks and slanders(...)

"These two elements have thus openlyand publicly broken their last ties to the fraction of the FrenchCommunist Left (...)

"The activityof Al and F has revealed both the incompatibility of theirpresence within the organisation, and a political break which putsthem outside the organisation (...) Taking note of these facts,the organisation sanctions them by suspending comrades Al and Ffor one year (...) the assembly demands that they returnimmediately the organisation's material in their care".

What the Fraction is emphasising here is notjust that the organisation has the right to expect that itsmembers' behaviour be in accord with its principles, but even morefundamentally that the development of debate, and therefore ofconsciousness, is not possible without the respect of rules commonto all.

The organisation's statutes inaccord with the being of the proletariat

In an article published in 1999,23,we developed our vision of the statutes' role in the life of arevolutionary organisation: "we have always been faithfulto Lenin's method and the lessons he has left on organisationalmatters. The political struggle to establish precise rulesregulating organisational relationships, in other words Statutes,is fundamental. The struggle to have them respected is equally so,of course. Without this, grand declarations on the Party remainmere empty words (...) Lenin's contribution is particularlyconcerned with internal debate, the duty - not merely the right -to express any disagreement within an organisational framework andto the organisation as a whole; and once debates are settled anddecisions taken by the Congress (which is the sovereign body, theorganisation's general assembly in effect), then the subordinationof both parts and individual militants to the whole. Contrary tothe widespread idea that Lenin was a dictator who sought only tostifle debate and political life within the organisation, inreality he consistently opposed the Menshevik vision of theCongress as 'a recorder, a controller, but not a creator'24(...) The revolutionary organisation's statutes are not merelyexceptional measures, safety barriers. They are the concretisationof the organisational principles proper to the proletariat'spolitical vanguards. They are the products of these principles, atone and the same time a weapon in the fight against organisationalopportunism, and the foundation on which the revolutionaryorganisation must be built. They are the expression of its unity,its centralisation, its political and organisational life, and itsclass character. They are the rule and the spirit which must guidethe militants from day to day in their relations with theorganisation and other militants, in the tasks entrusted to them,in their rights and duties, and in their daily personal life,which can be in contradiction neither with their militant activitynor with communist principles".

The especially stronginsistence in our statutes on the framework which should not justallow, but encourage the widest possible debate within theorganisation, comes in large part from the experience of the leftfractions who fought against the degeneration of the old workers'parties. However, there is one aspect in which our organisationhas lagged behind those of our predecessors: the treatment ofserious accusations directed against a militant, and especiallythe most serious of all, that of collaborating with the repressiveapparatus of the state. The organisations of the past knew frombitter and repeated experience that the bourgeois state was expertin the infiltration of agents provocateurs, and that therole of the provocateur was not merely to spy onrevolutionaries and to deliver them into the hands of therepressive state apparatus, but to sow the seeds ofself-destructive mistrust and suspicion among the revolutionariesthemselves. They also knew that such mistrust was not necessarilythe work of a provocateur, but that it could also be thefruit of the jealousies, frustrations, and resentments which arepart and parcel of life in capitalist society, and from whichrevolutionaries are not immune. Consequently, as we have shown inarticles published in our territorial press,25this question was a key element in the statutes of previousproletarian political organisations: not just the fact ofprovocation, but the accusation of provocation levelled at anymilitant, was treated with the utmost seriousness.26

oOo

The proletariat opposes the blind forces ofthe capitalist economy and the repressive power of the bourgeoisstate with the conscious and organised force of a worldrevolutionary class. The proletariat opposes the leaden disciplineimposed by capitalist society with a voluntary and consciousdiscipline, which is a vital element in its unity and its abilityto organise.

When they commit themselves to a communistorganisation, militants accept the discipline that springs fromthe recognition of what is necessary for the cause of theproletarian revolution and the liberation of humanity from themillennial yoke of class exploitation. But their commitment torespect common rules of action does not mean that communistsabandon their critical spirit towards their class or theirorganisation. On the contrary, this critical spirit for whichevery militant is responsible, is vital to the organisation's veryexistence, since without it the organisation can only become anempty shell whose revolutionary words are nothing but the mask foran opportunist practice. This is why it was the left, inparticular, which fought to the end within the degeneratingCommunist International against the use of administrativediscipline to settle political disagreements.

This struggle was not conducted in the nameof "freedom of thought", the "right to criticise"or other such anarchist and bourgeois illusions. As we have seenin the course of this article, in general it was not the left, butthe opportunist tendencies, expressions of the organisation'spenetration by bourgeois or petty bourgeois ideas, who were thefirst to break organisational discipline. In general, themilitants of the left like Lenin, Luxemburg, or Bordiga, were themost determined to respect the decisions of the organisation, ofits congresses and central organs, and to struggle for itsprinciples whether in the form of programmatic positions or rulesof functioning and behaviour.

As we have shownthrough the examples of the left fractions in the German SPD andthe Communist International, the degeneration of an organisationputs the left's militants before a terrible choice: whether or notto break organisational discipline in order to remain faithful tothe "discipline towards the party as a whole, in otherwords towards its programme", in Luxemburg's words. Theworking class has the right to expect that its left fractionsundertake such a choice with the greatest seriousness. Breakingorganisational discipline is not something to be taken lightly,for this self-discipline is at the heart of the organisation'sunity, and of the mutual confidence which must unite comrades intheir struggle for communism.

Jens 

NOTES

1."Theses on bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship",March 1919, reprinted in International Review n°100.

2.Fundamentally, Lenin is doing nothing other here than reformulating the famous words of the Communist Manifesto: "The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable".

3.The glorification of individual sabotage is an example.

4.In essence, Lenin here is simply elaborating on thefamous words of the Communist Manifesto: "Theessential conditions for the existence and for the sway of thebourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; thecondition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour restsexclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance ofindustry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replacesthe isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by therevolutionary combination, due to association. The development ofModern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the veryfoundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriatesproducts. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, areits own grave-diggers".

5Internationalisme n°25, August 1947, reprinted inInternational Review n°34

6In Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg, MonthlyReview Press, p128.

7Ibid, p304.

8We will not, in this article, deal with the conflict at the 1903Congress which led to the formation of the Bolshevik and Mensheviktendencies in the RSDLP (Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party),which has been already been described in the InternationalReview. In this case too, it is clear that the it was theopportunist wing - the Mensheviks - who flouted party disciplinethe day after the Congress by transgressing the decisions adoptedby the congress itself (see Lenin, One step forward, two stepsback).

9.That said, she is clearly right to insist that the organisation'sstatutes remain no more than words on a scrap of paper, if theyare not defended by the conscious involvement of the party's ownmilitants.

10.Quoted in Rosa Luxemburg by Paul Frölich. Frölich'stestimony is first-hand, since he was one of Luxemburg's studentsin the party school and a leader of the Bremen left radical in theSPD.

11.Throughout the war, the Spartakists constantly demanded theholding of a new congress so that the dissensions could be widelydebated. The party leadership always refused. The same was true ofthe Mensheviks. After the Mensheviks' "coup d'Etat"immediately following the 1903 congress (thanks to Plekhanov'sturn-around), by which they took control of Iskra, theBolsheviks insistently demanded the holding of a new congress,which the Mensheviks refused.

12.This discipline was enforced by the imprisonment of militants ortheir despatch to death on the front line.

13.Nonetheless, at least one leader of the left wing, Leo Jogisches,was against this decision on the grounds that it would give theleadership an excuse to expel the left, and thus to isolate themfrom the rest of the militants: "Such a split in thesecircumstances would not mean the expulsion from the party of themajority and of Scheidemann's men, as we wish, but wouldnecessarily lead to the dispersal of the party's best comradesinto small circles and condemn them to complete impotence. Weconsider this tactic damaging and even destructive".

14.Like Liebknecht, Otto Rühle was an SPD deputy; whenLiebknecht voted against the second government demand for warcredits in December 1914, Rühle joined him.

15.Frölich, op.cit. The quotations are from Luxemburg's "Guidingprinciples for the tasks of the international Social Democracy",originally published with the Junius Pamphlet.

16.An example of the "particularism" confronted by theInternational was the refusal of the French Communist Party, inthe name of "national specificities" to apply the rulesof the International by refusing to admit freemasons. Once again,in its first years when it was still a living organisation of theproletariat, the most flagrant examples of indiscipline in theCommunist International came from the opportunists.

17.Quoted in Défense de la continuité du programmecommuniste, published by the Parti Communiste International,p144.

18.The German Communist Party

19.These quotes both taken from the ICC's book on The ItalianCommunist Left, 1926-45, p27.

20.This was clearly a manoeuvre by the minority, since the hastyintegration of new members would have converted the minority intoa majority of the fraction.

21.This and the quotes that follow are from Bilan n°34-36,reprinted in International Review n°7.

22Published in the FFGC's Bulletin Extérieur, June1945.

23See International Review n°97, "Have we becomeLeninists?".

24.Quoted from Trotsky, Report of the Siberian Delegation.

25.See World Revolution n°252 and 253

26.We can cite as an example point 9 in the statutes of the League ofthe Just (the predecessor of the Communist League): "Thereis open behaviour amongst all the brothers. If anybody wants tocomplain about people or questions belonging to the League, thenhe must do so openly in the [section] meeting. Slandererswill be excluded".

We are publishing below substantial extracts from the first part of an orientation text proposed for discussion in the ICC during the summer of 2001, and adopted by our organisation's Extraordinary Conference at the end of March 2002. This text refers to the ICC's recent organisational difficulties, of which we have given an account in our article "The struggle for the defence of organisational principle" in International Review n°110, as well as in our territorial press. Since we do not have the space here to return to these previous articles, we encourage our readers to refer to them for a better understanding of the questions dealt with. However, this text has been further annotated[1] in order to help the reader; we have also reformulated certain passages which, while comprehensible for militants of the ICC involved in our internal debate, were likely to be less so for readers outside the organisation.

"Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere" ("Do not laugh, cry or curse, but understand"). Spinoza: Ethics.

The current debates in the ICC on the questions of solidarity and confidence began in 1999 and 2000 in response to a series of weaknesses regarding these central questions within our organisation. Behind concrete failures to manifest solidarity with comrades in difficulty, a deeper-lying weakness was identified of developing a permanent attitude of daily solidarity between our militants. Behind the repetition of manifestations of immediatism in the analysis of and intervention in the class struggle (in particular the refusal to recognise the full extent of the set back after 1989), and a marked tendency to console ourselves with "immediate proofs" allegedly confirming the historic course, we brought to light a fundamental lack of confidence in the proletariat and in our own framework of analysis. Behind the damage to our organisational tissue, which began to be concretised in the ICC's section in France in particular, we were able to recognise a lack of confidence between different parts and members of the organisation and in our own mode of functioning.

Indeed, it was the fact of being confronted with different manifestations of a lack of confidence in our basic positions, in our historical analysis, in our organisational principles, and between comrades and central organs, which obliged us to go beyond each particular case and pose these questions in a more general, fundamental and thus theoretical and historical manner.

More specifically, the reappearance of clanism[2] at the very heart of the organisation necessitates the deepening of our understanding of these questions. As the activities resolution of the 14th ICC Congress says:

"The struggle of the 90s was necessarily one against the circle spirit and clans. But as we already said at the time, the clans were a wrong answer to a real problem: that of the weakness of proletarian confidence and solidarity within our organisation. This is why the abolition of the existing clans did not automatically resolve the problem of the creation of a party spirit and real fraternity within our ranks, which can only be the result of a profoundly conscious effort. Although we insisted at the time that the struggle against the circle spirit is permanent, the idea remained that, as was the case at the time of the First or the Second International, this problem would mainly be linked to a phase of immaturity which could be overcome and left behind. In reality, the danger of the circle spirit and clanism today is much more permanent and insidious than at the time of the struggle of Marx against Bakuninism or of Lenin against Menschevism. In fact there is a parallel between the present difficulties of the class as a whole to regain its class identity and to recover the elementary class reflexes of solidarity with other workers, and those of the revolutionary organisation to maintain a party spirit in daily functioning. In this sense, by posing the questions of confidence and solidarity as central issues of the period, the organisation has begun to continue the struggle of 1993, adding to it a 'positive' dimension, and thus going deeper in arming itself against the intrusion of petty bourgeois organisational slidings".

In this sense, the present debate directly concerns the defence and even the survival of the organisation. But precisely for this reason, it is essential to fully develop all the theoretical and historical implications of these questions. Thus, in relation to the organisational problems with which we are confronted today, there are two fundamental angles of attack. The uncovering of the organisational weaknesses and incomprehensions permitting the resurgence of clanism, and the concrete analysis of the unfolding of this dynamic, is the task of the report which the Information Commission will present.[3] The task of the present Orientation Text, on the contrary, is essentially to give a theoretical framework enabling a deeper historical comprehension and resolution of these problems.

In fact, it is essential to understand that the combat for the party spirit necessarily has a theoretical dimension. It is precisely the poverty of the debate on confidence and solidarity to date that has been a major factor in permitting the development of clanism. The very fact that such an orientation text has been written, not at the beginning, but over a year after this debate was opened, testifies to the difficulties that the organisation has had in coming to grips with these questions. But the best proof of these weaknesses is the fact that the debate on confidence and solidarity has been accompanied by an unprecedented deterioration of the links of confidence and solidarity between comrades!

In fact we are faced here with fundamental questions of Marxism, at the very basis of our understanding of the nature of the proletarian revolution, which are an integral part of the platform and statutes of the ICC. In this sense, the poverty of the present debate reminds us that the theoretical atrophy and sclerosis of a revolutionary organisation is an ever present danger.

The central thesis of this orientation text is that the difficulty in developing a deeply rooted confidence and solidarity within the ICC has been a fundamental problem throughout the history of our organisation. This weakness in turn is the result of essential characteristics of the historical period opened up in 1968. It is a weakness, not only of the ICC, but of the whole generation of the proletariat concerned. Thus, as the 14th Congress resolution said:

"It is a debate which must mobilise the most profound reflection of the whole ICC, since it has the potential to deepen our understanding not only of the construction of an organisation with a truly proletarian life, but also of the historic period in which we live".

In this sense, the issues at stake go far beyond the organisational question as such. In particular, the issue of confidence touches all the aspects of the life of the proletariat and of the work of revolutionaries - just as the loss of confidence in the class can manifest itself equally in the abandonment of programmatic and theoretical acquisitions.

1. The effects of the counter-revolution on the self-confidence and the tradition of solidarity of the contemporary generations of the proletariat.

a) In the history of the Marxist movement we do not find a single fundamental text written about either confidence or solidarity. On the other hand these questions are at the very heart of many of the most basic contributions of Marxism, from the German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto to Social Reform or Revolution? and State and Revolution. The absence of a specific discussion about these questions in the workers movement of the past is not a sign of their relative unimportance. Quite the contrary. These questions were so fundamental and self evident that they were never posed in themselves, but always in reply to other problems raised.

If today we are obliged to devote a specific debate and a theoretical study to these questions, it is because they have lost their "self evidence".

This is the result of the counter- revolution that began in the 1920s and the break in organic continuity it caused among proletarian political organisations. For this reason, concerning the accumulation of self-confidence and living solidarity within the workers movement, it is necessary to distinguish two distinct phases in the history of the proletariat. During the first phase, extending from the beginnings of its self affirmation as an autonomous class until the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the working class was able, despite the series of often bloody defeats it suffered, to more or less continuously develop its self confidence and its political and social unity. The most important manifestations of this capacity were, in addition to the workers struggle itself, the development of a socialist vision, of a theoretical capacity, and of a political revolutionary organisation. This process of accumulation, the work of decades and of generations, was interrupted and even reversed by the counter-revolution. Only tiny revolutionary minorities were able to maintain their confidence in the proletariat in the decades that followed. The historic resurgence of the working class in 1968, by ending the counter-revolution, began to once again reverse this tendency. However, the new expressions of self confidence and class solidarity by this new and undefeated proletarian generation remained for the most part rooted in the immediate struggles. They were not yet based to the same extent as before the counter-revolution on a socialist vision and political formation, on a class theory, and on the passing on of accumulated experience and understanding from one generation to the next. In other words: the historic self confidence of the proletariat, and its traditions of active unity and collective combat belong to the aspects of its combat which have suffered most from the break in organic continuity. Equally, they are among the most difficult aspects to re-establish, since they depend more than many others on a living political and social continuity. This in turn gives rise to a particular vulnerability of the new generations of the class and its revolutionary minorities.

First and foremost it was the Stalinist counter-revolution that contributed to undermining the confidence of the proletariat in its own historic mission, in Marxist theory and in its revolutionary minorities. As a result, the proletariat after 1968 tends more than past undefeated generations of the class to suffer the weight of immediatism and the absence of a long-term vision. By robbing it of a large part of its past, the counter-revolution and the present day bourgeoisie deprives the proletariat of a clear vision of its future, without which the class cannot find a more profound confidence in its own force.

What distinguishes the proletariat from any other class in history is the fact that, from its very first appearance as an independent social force, it brought forward its own project of a future society based on the common ownership of the means of production. As the first class in history whose exploitation is based on the radical separation of the producers from the means of production, and on the replacement of individual by socialised labour, its liberation struggle is characterised by the fact that the struggle against the effects of exploitation (common to all exploited classes) has always been linked to the development of a vision of the overcoming of exploitation. The first collectively producing class in history, the proletariat, is called on to re-found society on a consciously collective basis. Since it is unable, as a propertyless class, to gain any power within the existing society, the historic significance of its class struggle against exploitation is to reveal to itself, and thus to society at large, the secret of its own existence as the gravedigger of exploitation and capitalist anarchy.

For this reason, the working class is the first class whose confidence in its own historic role is inseparable from its own solution to the crisis of capitalist society.

This unique position of the proletariat, as the only class in history which is at one and the same time exploited and revolutionary, has two important consequences:

-      its confidence in itself is above all a confidence in the future, and is thus to a significant degree based on a theoretical approach;

-      it develops in its daily struggle a principle corresponding to the historic task it has to fulfil - the principle of class solidarity, the expression of its unity.

In this sense, the dialectic of the proletarian revolution is essentially that of the relationship between goal and movement, between the struggle against exploitation and the struggle for communism. The natural immaturity of the first "infantile" steps of the class on the stage of history is characterised by a parallelism between the development of workers struggles and of the theory of communism. The interconnection between these two poles was initially not yet really understood by the participants themselves. This was reflected in the often blind and instinctive character of workers struggles on the one hand, and the utopianism of the socialist project on the other.

It was the historical maturation of the proletariat which made it possible to bring these two elements together, concretised by the revolutions of 1848-49, and above all by the birth of Marxism, the scientific comprehension of the historic movement and goal of the class.

Two decades later the Paris Commune, the product of this maturation, revealed the essence of the confidence of the proletariat in its role: the aspiration to take over the leadership of society in order to transform it in accordance with its own political vision.

What is the source of this astonishing self-confidence of a downtrodden and dispossessed class which concentrates all the misery of humanity within its ranks, and which appeared already in 1870? Like the struggle of all exploited classes, that of the proletariat has a spontaneous aspect. The proletariat is forced to react against the constraints and attacks imposed on it by the ruling class. But as opposed to the struggle of all the other exploited classes, that of the proletariat has above all a conscious character. The advances of its struggle are fundamentally the product of its own process of political maturation. The proletariat of Paris was a politically educated class that had gone through different schools of socialism, from Blanquism to Proudhonism. It was this political training during the preceding decades which to a large extent explains the capacity of the class thus to challenge the ruling order (just as it also explains the shortcomings of this movement). At the same time, 1870 was also the result of the development of a conscious tradition of international solidarity that characterised all the major workers struggles of the 1860s in western Europe.

In other words, the Commune was the product of a subterranean maturation characterised in particular by a more profound confidence in the historical mission of the class and by a more developed practice of class solidarity. A maturation, the culmination point of which was the First International.

With capitalism's entry into its period of decadence, the central role of confidence and solidarity is accentuated, since the proletarian revolution appears on the agenda of history. On the one hand, the spontaneous character of workers combat is more developed with the impossibility of the organisational preparation of struggles via mass parties and trade unions.[4] On the other hand, the political preparation of these struggles through a strengthening of class confidence and solidarity become even more important. The most advanced sectors of the Russian proletariat, which in 1905 was the first to discover the weapons of the mass strike and the workers councils, went through the school of Marxism in a series of phases: that of the struggle against terrorism, the formation of political circles, the first strikes and political demonstrations, the struggle for the formation of the class party and the first experiences of mass agitation. Rosa Luxemburg, who was the first to understand the role of spontaneity in the epoch of the mass strike, insisted that without this school of socialism, the events of 1905 would never have been possible. A

But it was the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and above all the October Revolution which revealed the clearest the nature of the questions of confidence and solidarity. The quintessence of the historical crisis was contained in the question of the insurrection. For the first time in the whole history of humanity, a social class was in a position to deliberately and consciously alter the direction of world events. The Bolsheviks came back to Engels conception of the "art of insurrection". Lenin declared that the revolution is a science. Trotsky speaks of the "algebra of the revolution". Through studying the development of social reality, through the construction of a class party able to stand the tests of history, through the patient and vigilant preparation for the moment when the objective and subjective conditions for the revolution are united, and through the revolutionary daring necessary to profit from the occasion, the proletariat and its vanguard begin, in a triumph of consciousness and organisation, to overcome the alienation which condemns society to be the helpless victim of blind forces. At the same time, the conscious decision to seize power in Russia, and thus to assume all the hardships of such an act in the interests of the world revolution, is the highest expression of class solidarity. That is a new quality in the ascent of humanity, the beginning of the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. And that is the essence of the self-confidence of the proletariat and of solidarity within its ranks.

b) One of the oldest maxims of military strategy is the necessity to undermine the self-confidence and the unity of the opposing army. Similarly, the bourgeoisie has always understood the need to combat these qualities within the proletariat. In particular, with the rise of the workers movement in the second half of the 19th century, the need to combat the idea of workers solidarity became increasingly central to the world view of the capitalist class, as is testified by the rise of the ideology of Social Darwinism, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the elitist "socialism" of Fabianism etc. However, until the entry of its system into decadence, the bourgeoisie was unable to find the means to reverse the advance of these principles within the working class. In particular, the ferocious repression which it imposed on the proletariat of Paris in 1848 and 1870, and on the workers movement in Germany under the Anti-Socialist Laws, while leading to momentary setbacks in the progress of socialism, did not succeed in damaging either the historic confidence of the working class or its traditions of solidarity.

The events of World War I revealed that it is the betrayal of proletarian principles by parts of the working class itself, above all by parts of the political organisations of the class, which destroys these principles "from within". The liquidation of these principles within Social Democracy already began at the beginning of the 20th century with the "Revisionism" debate. The destructive, pernicious character of this debate was not only revealed by the penetration of bourgeois positions, progressively abandoning Marxism, but above all by the hypocrisy it introduced into the life of the organisation. Although formally the position of the left was adopted, in reality the main result of this debate was to completely isolate the left - above all within the German party. The unofficial campaigns of denigration against Rosa Luxemburg, who had played a leading role in the struggle against revisionism, portrayed in the corridors of party congresses as an alien and even bloodthirsty element, prepared the terrain for her assassination in 1919.

In fact, the basic principle of the counter-revolution, which began in the 1920s, was the demolition of the very idea of confidence and solidarity. The despicable principle of the "scapegoat", a barbarity from the Middle Ages, reappears at the heart of industrial capitalism in the witch hunt of Social Democracy against the Spartakists, and of fascism against the Jews, the "evil minorities" which supposedly alone prevented the return to peaceful harmony in post war Europe. But it is above all Stalinism, spearhead of the bourgeois offensive replacing the principles of confidence and solidarity with those of suspicion and denunciation within the young Communist Parties, which discredited the goal of communism and the means to its achievement.

Nonetheless, the annihilation of these principles was not achieved overnight. Even during World War II, tens of thousands of workers' families still had enough daily solidarity to risk their lives by hiding those persecuted by the state. And the strike of the Dutch proletariat against the deportation of the Jews is still there to remind us that the solidarity of the working class is the only real solidarity with the whole of humanity. But this was the last strike movement of the 20th century over which the Left Communists have a significant influence.[5]

As we know, this counter-revolution was overcome in 1968 by a new and undefeated generation of workers, which once more had the confidence to take the extension of its struggle and its class solidarity in its own hands, to pose once again the question of the revolution and to secrete new revolutionary minorities. However, traumatised by the betrayal of all the main workers' organisations of the past, this new generation adopted an attitude of scepticism towards politics, towards its own past, its class theory and its historical mission. This did not protect it from the sabotage of capital's political left forces, but it prevents it from renewing the roots of its self-confidence and consciously reviving its great tradition of solidarity. As for the revolutionary minorities, they are also profoundly affected. In fact, for the first time a situation arises in which revolutionary positions gain an increasing echo in the class, whereas the organisations that defend them are not recognised, even by the most combative workers, as belonging to the class.

Despite the impertinence and "cock-suredness" of this new post-1968 generation, which initially succeeded in taking the ruling class by surprise, its scepticism towards politics covered a profound lack of self confidence. Never before has there been such a contrast between this capacity to engage in massive, largely self-organised struggles on the one hand, and the absence of this elementary self-assurance which characterised the proletariat between the 1840s and 1917/18. And this lack of self-assurance profoundly marks the Left Communist organisations too. Not only the new organisations like the ICC or the CWO, but even a group like the Bordigist PCInt, which had survived the counter-revolution, only to explode at the beginning of the 80s due to its impatience to get itself recognised by the class as a whole. As we know, both Bordigism and Councilism theorised, during the counter revolution, this loss of self confidence by establishing a separation between revolutionaries and the class as a whole, calling on one part of the class to be suspicious of the other.[6] Moreover both the Bordigist idea of "invariance", and the opposite councilist one of a "new workers movement" were theoretically false responses to the counter-revolution at this level. But the ICC, which rejected all such theorisations, was nonetheless itself not exempted from the damage to proletarian self-confidence and the narrowing of its base. And as we already pointed out in the mid 1980s, the blows to the confidence of the class in its political vanguard through the defeats inflicted by the left of capital is a principle reason why Councilism is a greater danger than substitutionism now and in the future.

Thus we can see, in this historic period, an inter-connection between a whole series of elements: the lack of confidence of the class in itself, of the workers in revolutionaries and vice versa, of political organisations in themselves, in their historic role, in the Marxist theory and the organisational principles inherited from the past, and of the whole class in the long term historical nature of its mission.

In reality, this political weakness inherited from the counter-revolution is one of the main factors in the entry of capitalism into the phase of decomposition. Cut off from its historical experience, its theoretical weapons and the vision of its historical role, the proletariat lacks the confidence necessary to go further in the development of a revolutionary perspective. With decomposition, this lack of confidence and perspective becomes the lot of society as a whole, imprisoning humanity in the present.[7] It is no coincidence, therefore, that the historical period of decomposition is inaugurated by the collapse of the main vestige of the counter-revolution, that of the Stalinist regimes. As a result of this renewed discrediting of its class goal and its main political arms, the proletarian movement is once again confronted with an historically unprecedented situation: an undefeated generation of workers loses to an important degree its class identity. In order to emerge from this crisis, it will have to relearn class solidarity, redevelop an historical perspective, rediscover in the fire of class struggle the possibility and necessity for the different parts of the class to have confidence in each other. The proletariat has not been defeated. It has forgotten, but not lost the lessons of its combats. What it has above all lost is its self-confidence.

This is why the questions of confidence and solidarity are among the principle keys to the whole historical impasse. They are central to the whole future of humanity, to the strengthening of the workers struggle in the coming years, to the construction of the Marxist organisation, and to the concrete reappearance of a communist perspective within the class struggle.

2. The Effects of the Weaknesses in Confidence and Solidarity on the ICC.

a) As the Orientation Text of 1993 shows,[8] all the crises, the tendencies and the splits in the history of the ICC had their roots in the organisational question. Even where important political divergences existed, there was neither agreement on these questions between the members of the "tendencies", nor did these divergences in general justify a split, and certainly not the kind of irresponsible and premature ones which became the general rule within our organisation.

As the ‘93 Orientation Text points out, all of these crises thus had their origins in the circle spirit and in particular in clanism. From this we can conclude that throughout the history of the ICC, clanism has always been the main manifestation of a loss of confidence in the proletariat and the main cause of the putting in question of the unity of the organisation. Moreover, as their future evolution outside the ICC often confirmed, the clans were the main bearers of the germ of programmatic and theoretical degeneration within our ranks.[9]

This fact, brought to light eight years ago, is nonetheless so astonishing, that it merits an historical reflection. The 14th ICC congress already began this reflection, showing that in the past workers movement the predominant weight of the circle spirit and clanism was mainly restricted to the beginnings of the workers movement, whereas the ICC has been tormented by this problem throughout its existence. The truth is that the ICC is the only organisation in the history of the proletariat within which the penetration of alien ideology has so regularly and predominantly manifested itself via organisational problems.

This unprecedented problem must be understood within the historical context of the past three decades. The ICC strives to be the heir of the highest synthesis of the heritage of the workers movement, and of the Communist Left in particular (...).

But history shows that the ICC assimilated its programmatic heritage much more easily than its organisational one. This was mainly due to the break in organic continuity caused by the counter-revolution. Firstly because it is easier to assimilate political positions via the study of past texts than to grasp organisational issues, which are much more a living tradition depending more heavily for their transmission on the link between the generations. Secondly because, as we have already said, the blow to the self-confidence of the class struck by the counter-revolution mainly affected its confidence in its historical mission, and thus in its political organisations. So whereas the validity of our programmatic positions were often spectacularly confirmed by reality (and since 1989 this validity is even confirmed by growing parts of the political swamp), our organisational construction did not meet with the same resounding success. By 1989, the end of the post war period, the ICC had not achieved any decisive steps forward in numerical growth, in the distribution of our press, in the impact of our intervention on the class struggle, or in the degree of recognition of the organisation by the class as a whole. It was indeed a paradoxical historical situation. On the one hand, the end of the counter revolution and the opening of the new historic course favoured the development of our positions: the new undefeated generation was more or less openly suspicious of the left of capital, bourgeois elections, sacrifice for the nation etc. But on the other hand, our communist militantism was perhaps less generally respected than in the days of Bilan. This historical situation led to deep-seated doubts about the organisation's historical role. These doubts sometimes surfaced at the general political level through the development of openly councilist, modernist or anarchist conceptions - more or less open capitulations to the dominant ambience. But above all they expressed themselves in a more shame-faced manner, at the organisational level.

To this we must add that in the history of the fight of the ICC for the party spirit, although there are similarities with the organisations of the past - the inheritance of our principles of functioning from our predecessors, and their anchoring through a series of organisational struggles - there is also an important difference. The ICC is the first organisation that forges the party spirit, not under conditions of illegality, but in an atmosphere soaked in democratic illusions. Concerning this question, the bourgeoisie has learnt from history: the best weapon of organisational liquidation is not repression, but the cultivation of an atmosphere of suspicion. What is true for the class as a whole goes for revolutionaries also: it is the betrayal of principles from within which destroys proletarian confidence.

As a result, the ICC never was able to develop the kind of living solidarity, which in the past was always forged in clandestinity, and which is one of the main components of the party spirit. In addition, democratism is the ideal soil for the cultivation of clanism, since it is the living antithesis of the proletarian principle that each gives to the best of his abilities for the common cause, and favours instead individualism, informalism and the forgetting of principles. We should not forget that the parties of the Second International were to a large extent destroyed by democratism, and that even the triumph of Stalinism was democratically legitimated, as the Italian Left pointed out (...).

b) It is evident that the weight of all of these negative factors is multiplied by the opening of the period of decomposition. We will not repeat what the ICC has already said on the subject. What is important here is that, as a result of the fact that decomposition tends to corrode the social, cultural, political and ideological bases of human community, in particular through the undermining of confidence and solidarity, there is a spontaneous tendency throughout present day society to regroup in clans, cliques and gangs. These groupings, where they are not based on commercial or other material interests, often have a purely irrational character, based on personal loyalties within the group and an often senseless hatred of real or imagined enemies. In reality this phenomenon is partly a relapse into atavistic and, in the present context, completely perverted forms of confidence and solidarity, reflecting the loss of confidence in the existing social structures, and an attempt to reassure oneself in face of growing anarchy within society. It goes without saying that these groupings, far from representing an answer to the barbarism of decomposition, are themselves its expression. It is significant that today even the two main classes are affected. Indeed, for the moment only the strongest sectors of the bourgeoisie seem to be more or less able to resist its development. As for the proletariat, the degree to which it is touched by this phenomenon in its everyday life is above all the expression of the damage to its class identity and the resulting need to reappropriate its own class solidarity.

As the 14th ICC Congress said: because of decomposition, the struggle against clanism is not behind but ahead of us.

c) Clanism has thus been the principle expression of a loss of confidence in the proletariat in the history of the ICC. But the form it takes is open suspicion, not towards the organisation, but towards part of it. In reality however, the meaning of its existence is the putting in question of the unity of the organisation and its principles of functioning. This is why clanism, although it may begin with a correct concern, and a more or less intact confidence, necessarily develops a suspicion towards all who are not on its side, leading to open paranoia. In general those who have fallen victim of this dynamic are completely unaware of this reality. This does not mean that a clan does not possess a certain consciousness of what it is doing. But it is a false consciousness serving the purpose of deceiving oneself and others.

The ‘93 Orientation Text already explains the cause of this vulnerability, which in the past affected such militants as Martov, Plekhanov or Trotsky, as being the particular weight of subjectivism in organisational questions. (...).

In the workers' movement, the origin of clanism has almost always been the difficulty of different personalities to work together. In other words, it represents a defeat in the face of the very first step in the construction of any community. This is why clanic attitudes often appear at moments of influx of new members, or of formalisation and development of organisational structures. In the First International it was the inability of the newcomer Bakunin to "find his place" which crystallised the already existing resentments against Marx. In 1903, on the contrary, it was the concern about the status of the "old guard" which provoked what went into history as Menschevism. This of course did not prevent a founding member like Lenin from championing the party spirit, or one of the newcomers who provoked the most resentment - Trotsky - from taking sides with those who had been afraid of him.[10]

(...)

Precisely because it overcomes individualism, the party spirit is capable of respecting the personality, and the individuality, of each of its members. The art of the construction of the organisation consists not least in taking account of all these different personalities so as to harmonise them to the maximum and allow each to give his or her best for the collectivity. Clanism on the contrary crystallises precisely around a suspicion towards personalities and their different weights. This is why it is so difficult to identify a clan dynamic at the beginning. Even if many comrades sense the problem, the reality of clanism is so sordid and ridiculous that it takes courage to declare that "the Emperor has no clothes".B How embarrassing!

As Plekhanov once remarked, in the relationship between consciousness and emotions the latter play the conservative role. But this does not mean that Marxism shares the disdain of bourgeois rationalism for their role. There are emotions which serve and others which damage the cause of the proletariat. And it is certain that its historic mission cannot succeed without a gigantic development of revolutionary passions, an unswerving will to victory, an unheard of solidarity, selflessness and heroism, without which the ordeal of the struggle for power and of civil war can never be withstood. And without a conscious cultivation of the social and individual traits of true humanity a new society cannot be founded. These qualities are not preconditions. They must be forged in struggle, as Marx said.

3. The role of confidence and solidarity in the ascent of humanity.

(...) As opposed to the attitude of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, for whom the point of departure of its radicalism was the rejection of the past, the proletariat has always consciously based its revolutionary outlook on all the acquisitions of humanity which precede it. Fundamentally, the proletariat is capable of developing such an historical vision because its revolution defends no particular interests opposed to those of humanity as a whole. Therefore, the approach of Marxism has always been, regarding all the theoretical questions posed by its mission, to take as its point of departure the best acquisitions which have been handed down to it. For us, not only the consciousness of the proletariat, but also that of humanity as a whole, is something that is accumulated and handed down through history. This was the approach of Marx and Engels concerning German classical philosophy, English political economy or French utopian socialism.

Similarly, we must understand here that proletarian confidence and solidarity are specific concretisations of the general evolution of these qualities in human history. On both of these issues, the task of the working class is to go beyond what has already been achieved. But in order to do so the class must base itself on these achievements.

The questions posed here are of fundamental historical importance. Without a minimum of basic solidarity, human society becomes impossible. And without at least a rudimentary mutual confidence, no social progress is possible. In history, the breakdown of these principles has always led to unbridled barbarism.

a) Solidarity is a practical activity of mutual support between human beings in the struggle for existence. It is a concrete expression of the social nature of humanity. As opposed to impulses such as charity or self-sacrifice, which presuppose the existence of a conflict of interests, the material basis of solidarity is a community of interests. This is why solidarity is not a utopian ideal, but a material force, as old as humanity itself. But this principle, representing the most effective, while collective means of defending ones own "sordid" material interests, can give rise to the most selfless acts, including the sacrifice of ones own life. This fact, which bourgeois utilitarianism has never been able to explain, results from the simple reality that wherever there are common interests, the parts are submitted to the common good. Solidarity is thus the overcoming, not of "egoism", but of individualism and particularism in the interests of the whole. This is why solidarity is always an active force, characterised by initiative, not by the attitude of waiting for the solidarity of others. Where the bourgeois principle of calculation of advantage and disadvantage reigns, no solidarity is possible.

Although in the history of humanity solidarity between the members of society was originally above all an instinctive reflex, the more complex and conflictual human society becomes, the higher the level of consciousness necessary for its development. In this sense, the class solidarity of the proletariat is the highest form of human solidarity to date.

Nevertheless, the flourishing of solidarity depends not only on consciousness in general, but also on the cultivation of social emotions. In order to develop, solidarity requires a cultural and organisational framework favouring its expression. Given such a framework within a social grouping, it is possible to develop habits, traditions and "unwritten rules" of solidarity which can be passed on from one generation to the next. In this sense, solidarity has not only an immediate but also an historical impact.

But not withstanding such traditions, solidarity always has a voluntary character. This is why the idea of the state as the embodiment of solidarity, cultivated in particular by Social Democracy and Stalinism, is one of the greatest lies in history. Solidarity can never be imposed against ones will. It is only possible if both those expressing solidarity and those receiving it share the conviction of its necessity. Solidarity is the cement which holds a social group together, which transforms a group of individuals into a single united force.

b) Like solidarity, confidence is an expression of the social character of humanity. As such, it also presupposes a community of interests. It can only exist in relation to other human beings, to shared goals and activities. From this flows its two main aspects: mutual confidence of the participants and, confidence in the shared goal. The principle bases of social confidence are thus always a maximum of clarity and of unity.

However, the essential difference between human labour and animal activity, between the work of the architect and the construction of a beehive as Marx put it, is the premeditation of this work on the basis of a plan.[11] This is why confidence is always linked to the future, to something that in the present only exists in the form of an idea or theory. At the same time it is why mutual confidence is always concrete, based on the capacities of a community to fulfil a given task.

Thus, as opposed to solidarity, which is an activity which only exists in the present, confidence is an attitude directed above all towards the future. This is what gives it its peculiar enigmatic character, difficult to define or identify, difficult to develop and to maintain. There is hardly another area of human life concerning which there is so much deception and self-deception. In fact, confidence is based on experience: learning through "trial and error" to set realistic goals and to develop the appropriate means. But because its task is to make possible the birth of what does not yet exist, it never loses this "theoretical" aspect. None of the great achievements of humanity would ever have been possible without this capacity to persevere in a realistic but difficult task in the absence of immediate success. It is the expansion of the radius of consciousness that allows for a growth in confidence, whereas the sway of the blind and unconscious forces in nature, society and the individual tend to destroy this confidence. It is not so much the existence of dangers that undermines human confidence, but rather the inability to understand them. But since life is constantly exposed to new dangers, confidence is a particularly fragile quality, taking years to develop, but prone to being destroyed overnight.

Like solidarity, confidence can neither be decreed nor imposed, but requires an adequate structure and atmosphere for its development. What make solidarity and confidence such difficult questions is the fact that they are affairs not only of the mind but also of the heart. It is necessary to "feel confident". The absence of confidence implies in turn the reign of fear, uncertainty, hesitations, the paralysis of the conscious collective forces.

c) Whereas bourgeois ideology today feels comforted by the alleged "death of communism" in its conviction that it is the elimination of the weak in the competitive struggle for survival which alone assures the perfection of society, in reality these conscious and collective forces are the basis of the ascent of mankind. Humanity's predecessors belonged to those highly developed animal species whose social instincts gave them decisive advantages in the struggle for survival. These species already carry the rudimentary hallmarks of collective strength: the weak are protected, and the strength of individual members becomes the strength of the whole. These aspects were crucial in the emergence of the human species, whose offspring remain helpless for longer than any other. With the development of human society and the forces of production, this dependence of the individual on society has never ceased to grow. The social (Darwin calls them "altruistic") instincts, which already exist in the animal world, increasingly take on a conscious character. Selflessness, bravery, loyalty, devotion to the community, discipline and honesty are glorified in the early cultural expressions of society, the first expressions of a truly human solidarity.

But man is above all the only species that makes use of self-made tools. It is this mode of acquiring means of subsistence which directs the activity of mankind towards the future.

"With the animal, action follows immediately after impression. It seeks its prey or food and immediately it jumps, grasps, eats, or does that which is necessary for grasping, and this is inherited as an instinct.... Between man's impression and acts, however, there comes into his head a long chain of thoughts and considerations. Whence comes this difference? It is not hard to see that it is closely associated with the use of tools. In the same manner that thought arises between mans impressions and acts, the tool comes in between man and that which he seeks to attain. Furthermore, since the tool stands between man and outside objects, thought must arise between the impression and the performance". He takes a tool, "therefore his mind must also make the same circuit, not follow the first impressions".C

Learning "not to follow the first impression" is a good description of the leap from the animal world to mankind, from the reign of instinct to that of consciousness, from the immediatist prison of the present to activity directed towards the future. Each important development in early human society is accompanied by an enforcement of this aspect. Thus, with the appearance of settled agricultural societies, the old are no longer killed but cherished as those capable of passing on experience.

In so-called primitive communism, this embryonic confidence in the power of consciousness to master the forces of nature was extremely fragile, whereas the force of solidarity within each group was powerful. But until the appearance of classes, private property and the state, these two forces, as unequal as they were, enforced each other mutually.

Class society tears apart this unity, accelerating the struggle for the mastery of nature, but replacing social solidarity with the class struggle within one and the same society. It would be wrong to believe that this general social principle was replaced by class solidarity. In the history of class society, the proletariat is the only class capable of a real solidarity. Whereas the ruling classes have always been exploiters, for whom solidarity is never more than the opportunity of the moment, the necessarily reactionary character of the exploited classes of the past meant that their solidarity necessarily had a furtive, utopian character, as with the "community of goods" of early Christianity and the sects of the middle ages. The main expression of social solidarity within class society before the rise of capitalism is that flowing from the leftovers of the natural economy, including the rights and duties which still tied the opposed classes to each other. All of this was finally destroyed by commodity production and its generalisation under capitalism.

"If in present day society the social instincts have still retained any force, then only thanks to the fact that generalised commodity production is still a very young phenomenon, hardly a hundred years old, and that to the extent that the primeval democratic communism disappears, and (....) thus ceases to be a source of social instincts, a new and much stronger source springs up, the class struggle of ascendant, exploited popular classes".D

With the development of the productive forces, the confidence of society in its capacity to dominate the forces of nature grew at an accelerating rate. Capitalism made by far the main contribution in this direction, culminating in the 19th century, the century of progress and optimism. But at the same time, by pitting man against man in the competitive struggle, and sharpening the class struggle to an unheard of degree, it undermined to an unprecedented extent another pillar of social self confidence, that of social unity. Moreover, to the extent that it began to liberate humanity from the blind forces of nature, it submitted it to the rule of new blind forces within society itself: those unleashed by commodity production, whose laws operate outside of the control or even the understanding - "behind the back" - of society. This leads in turn to the 20th century, the most tragic in history, which plunged a large part of humanity into unspeakable despair.

In its struggle for communism, the working class bases itself not only on the development of the productive forces achieved by capitalism, but also bases part of its confidence in the future on the scientific achievements and the theoretical insights brought forward by humanity beforehand. Equally, the heritage of the class in the fight for an effective solidarity integrates the whole experience of humanity to date in forging social links, unity of purpose, ties of friendship, attitudes of respect and attention for our fellow combatants etc.

[To be continued]

ICC, 15/06/2001

Notes from the original text

A Rosa Luxemburg: The Revolution in Russia

B Hans-Christian Anderson: The Emperors Clothes. It must be admitted that Anderson's stories are sometimes more realistic than the fairy tales which clanism is pleased to serve us.

C Pannekoek: Marxism and Darwinism.

D Kautsky: Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History.

[1] The notes belonging to the original text are numbered A,B,C and are to be found at the end of the article. Those added for publication are at the bottom of the page.

[2] For the ICC's analysis of the transformation of the circle spirit into clanism, on the clans that have existed in our organisation, and on our struggle from 1993 onwards against these weaknesses, see our text on "The question of organisational functioning in the ICC" and our article "The struggle for the defence of organisational principle" in International Review n°109 and 110 respectively.

[3] The Information Commission was set up by the ICC's 14th Congress. See our article in International Review n°110.

[4] On this subject, see the article on "The proletariat's struggle in the decadence of capitalism" in International Review n°23, where we highlight the reasons why, contrary to the 19th century, the struggles of the 20th century could not be based on a previous organisation of the class.

[5] In February 1941, the German occupying forces announced anti-Semitic measures which provoked a massive reaction from the Dutch workers. A strike broke out in Amsterdam on 25th February, rapidly spreading to other towns, particular The Hague, Rotterdam, Groningen, Utrecht, Hilversum, Haarlem. The strike even spread to Belgium before being savagely broken by the authorities and the SS. See our book on The Dutch-German Left.

[6] The councilist conception of the party developed by the Dutch communist left, and the Bordigist conception, an avatar of the Italian left, seem at first sight to be diametrically opposed: the latter considers that the role of the communist party is to seize power and to exercise a dictatorship on behalf of the class, including if necessary against the class, while the former considers that any party, including a communist party, is a danger for the class inevitably destined to usurp its power to the detriment of the revolution's interests. In reality, these two conceptions have in common the separation, or even opposition, that they see between the class and the party, expressing a profound lack of confidence in the former. For the Bordigists, the class as a whole is incapable of exercising the dictatorship, which is why the party has to take on the task. Despite appearances, councilism's confidence in the class is no greater, since it considers it inevitable that the party will inevitably strip the class of its power should it ever be allowed to come into existence.

[7] For our analysis of decomposition, see in particular "Decomposition, the final phase of capitalism's decadence", in International Review n°62.

[8] Published in International Review n°109 under the title "The question of organisational functioning in the ICC".

[9] This is because "In a clan dynamic, common approaches do not share a real political agreement but rather links of friendship, loyalty, the convergence of specific personal interests or, shared frustrations (...)When such a dynamic appears, the members or sympathisers of the clan can no longer decide for themselves, in their behaviour or the decisions that they take, as a result of a conscious and rational choice based on the general interests of the organisation, but as a result of the interests of  the clan which tends to oppose itself to those of  rest of organisation" ("The question of organisational functioning in the ICC", International Review n°109). Once militants adopt such an approach, they tend to turn their backs on a rigorous, marxist, way of thinking, and thus become the conduit for a tendency to theoretical and programmatic degeneration. To give only one example, the clannish regroupment which appeared in the ICC in 1984, an which was to form the "External Fraction of the ICC", ended up by completely overturning our platform, whose best defender it had claimed to be, and by rejecting the notion of capitalism's decadence which is part of the heritage of both the Communist International and the Communist Left.

[10] When Trotsky arrived in Western Europe in the autumn of 1902, after escaping from Siberia, he was already preceded by his reputation as a talented writer (one of the pseudonyms given him was "Pero" - "the pen"). He soon became one of the foremost contributors to Iskra, published by Lenin and Plekhanov. In March 1903, Lenin wrote to Plekhanov proposing to co-opt Trotsky to Iskra's editorial committee. Plekhanov refused, fearing that the young militant's talent (Trotsky was only 23) would put his own prestige in the shade. This was one of the first expressions of the drift by the man who first introduced marxism to Russia, first to support for the Mensheviks, and finally into the service of the bourgeoisie as a social-chauvinist.

[11] "A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose" (Marx, Capital, Book 1, Part 3, Chapter 7. See www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm [88])

The publication of the ICC's pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism is testimony to the re-emergence of revolutionary elements in a country where a once-great proletarian political tradition was buried under the terrible weight of the Stalinist counter-revolution. The ICC is well aware that without this rebirth, the translation of our pamphlet into Russian would not have been possible; we offer it therefore as a contribution to the clarification of communist positions in the debates now going on both within the Russian milieu itself, and between this milieu and the international expressions of authentic communism.

The introduction to the previous editions of this pamphlet already contains a history of the concept of decadence within the marxist movement, showing that from Marx to the Communist International and the left fractions that reacted to the latter's degeneration and demise, this notion was not based on a purely moral or cultural critique of capitalist society, as in the vulgar interpretation of "decadence" as a term of disapproval for various forms of art, fashion, or social mores. On the contrary, the marxist notion of decadence flows ineluctably from the very premises of historical materialism, and provides the granite foundation for demonstrating not only that capitalism has been in historical decline as a mode of production since the early part of the 20th century, but also that this period has also placed the proletarian revolution on the agenda of history. In this preface to the Russian edition we want to concentrate on the enormous contribution that the practical experience of the Russian working class, and the theoretical endeavours of its revolutionary minorities, has made to the concept of capitalist decadence.

We aim to be brief here, and therefore will present this contribution in the form of a chronology. Other documents - to be written perhaps by Russian comrades themselves - can explore this issue in greater depth. But this format will also be useful for highlighting the most important steps of the process through which the Russian section of the workers' movement added to the sum of understanding of the world proletariat as a whole.

1903: The split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party is not merely about how to organise a workers' party under the repressive conditions of Tsarism. In a sense, despite its backwardness, Russia, with its highly concentrated proletariat and its inability to encompass the worker's movement within a legal and democratic framework, anticipates the totalitarian conditions that will face the world working class in the approaching epoch of proletarian revolution, where the working class will no longer be granted the room to maintain permanent mass organisations. Thus when Lenin rejects the Menshevik conception of a 'broad' workers' party and insists on the need for a disciplined party of revolutionary militants committed to a clear programme, he is anticipating the form of party organisation required for an epoch in which the direct struggle for revolution has superseded the fight for reforms within the bourgeois order.

1905: "The present Russian revolution stands at a point of the historical path which is already over the summit, which is on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, The political Party and the Trade Unions). With its mass strikes and its discovery of the soviet form of organisation, the proletariat of Russia announces the approach of the new epoch, in which the old trade unionist methods will have become obsolete. While it is Rosa Luxemburg who most incisively demonstrates the dynamics of the mass strike, the left wing of Russian social democracy also begins to draw out the principal lessons of the 1905 events: Lenin - as opposed to the 'super-Leninists', whose first response to the soviets was to call on them to dissolve into the party - outlines the dialectical relationship between the organisation of the revolutionary minority, the party, and the soviet as a general organ of the whole class capable of forming the basis of a revolutionary dictatorship. Trotsky is even more aware of the importance of the soviet as a form of organisation suited for the mass strike and the struggle for proletarian power. And in his theory of permanent revolution, he inches towards the conclusion that historical evolution has already by-passed the possibility of a bourgeois revolution in backward countries like Russia: henceforward, any real revolution will have to be led by the working class, adopt socialist goals, and extend onto the international arena.

1914-16: Of all the proletarian currents opposed to the world imperialist war, it is the Bolsheviks around Lenin who are the most lucid. Rejecting the arguments of the social chauvinists who use the letter of Marx to kill the spirit, Lenin shows that there is nothing national, democratic, or progressive about this slaughter, and raises the slogan "turn the imperialist war into a civil war". The war, in sum, has opened up a new epoch in which the proletarian revolution is no longer a distant prospect, but has been placed directly onto the agenda of history. In his Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he describes imperialist capitalism as a system in decay. At the same time, Bukharin's book Imperialism and World Economy demonstrates that capitalism's plunge into militarism is the result of the creation of a world economy, which has laid down the objective requisites of a higher mode of production but now stands as a blood-soaked obstacle to its realisation. This thesis parallels Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the historical limitations of the capitalist system, The Accumulation of Capital, which is a fundamental reference point for this pamphlet. Bukharin, like Luxemburg, also recognises that in a world order carved up by the imperialist giants, struggles for 'national liberation' have lost all meaning. Finally, Bukharin's work shows a grasp of the form that this new capitalist world economy will take: a deadly struggle between huge 'state capitalist trusts'. It is an anticipation that the statified form that capital has adopted during the war will be its classic method of organisation throughout its era of decay.

1917: the Russian proletariat again proves the unity of theory and practise by rebelling against the imperialist war, overthrowing Czarism, organising in soviets and moving towards the revolutionary seizure of power. Faced with the Bolshevik 'old guard' who cling to outdated formulae inherited from a previous period, Lenin writes the April Theses, in which he states that the goal of the proletariat in Russia is not some hybrid 'democratic revolution' but the proletarian insurrection as the first step towards the worldwide socialist revolution. Again, the October revolution is the practical verification of the marxist method embodied in the April Theses, which had been decried as ' anarchist' by 'orthodox marxists' who failed to see that a new period had opened up.

1919: the formation in Moscow of the Communist International as a key instrument for the worldwide extension of the proletarian revolution. The platform of the CI is founded on the recognition that "a new epoch is born. The epoch of capitalism's decay, its internal disintegration, the epoch of the proletarian communist revolution" and that consequently the old minimum programme of reforms is out of date, as well as the social democratic methods used to achieve them. From now on the notion of the decadence of capitalism has become a fundamental plank of the communist programme.

1920-27: the failure of the revolution to spread leads to the bureaucratisation of the Russian state and of the Bolshevik party which has mistakenly fused with it. A process of internal counter-revolution has opened up, culminating in the triumph of Stalinism before the end of the decade. But the degeneration of the Bolshevik party, and the CI which it dominates, is resisted by the communist left in countries such as Germany, Italy, and Russia itself. The left denounces the tendency to revert back to old social democratic practises like parliamentarism, or to seek alliances with the former socialist parties which have already passed over to the bourgeois camp. In Russia, for example, Miasnikov's Workers' Group, formed in 1923, is particularly clear in its repudiation of the CI's tactic of the United Front, while simultaneously castigating the proletariat's loss of political control over the 'soviet' state. As Stalin's faction consolidates its victory, the Russian left communists are among the first to realise that Stalinism represents the bourgeois counter-revolution, and that capitalist social relations can persist even in a fully statified economy.

1928-45: The Stalinist terror exterminates or exiles a whole generation of revolutionaries. The political voice of the Russian working class is silenced for decades, and the work of drawing the lessons of this defeat, and of analysing the nature and characteristics of the Stalinist regime, is taken up by the left communists in Europe and America. It is no easy task, and scores have to be settled with many erroneous theories, such as Trotsky's notion of the 'degenerated workers' state', before the essentials are fully grasped: that the Stalinist regime of integral state capitalism, with its totalitarian political apparatus and its economy geared to war, is above all a product of capitalist decadence, since capitalism in this epoch is a system that lives by war, and that relies on the state to prevent its simmering economic and social contradictions from reaching an explosive outcome. Against all the illusions that Stalinist state capitalism represents a way of overcoming these contradictions, or even a progressive development for capital, the communist left points out the terrible social costs of Stalinist industrialisation in the 1930s, showing that it is laying the basis for new and even more destructive imperialist conflicts. The USSR's ravenous participation in the second world carve-up confirms the left's argument that the Stalinist regime has its own imperialist appetites, and thus its refusal of any concessions to the Trotskyist call for the "defence of the USSR against imperialist attack".

1945-89: The Soviet Union becomes the leader of one of the two imperialist blocs whose rivalries dominate the international situation for four decades. But as we show in our theses on the economic and political crisis in the eastern bloc, included as an appendix to this pamphlet, the Stalinist bloc is far less economically developed than its western rival, is weighed down by a vast military sector, and is too rigid in its political and economic structures to adapt to the demands of the world capitalist market. In the late sixties the economic crisis of world capitalism, which had been masked by the period of post-war reconstruction, once again resurfaces, raining continuous blows on the USSR and its satellites. Unable to carry through any economic or political 'reforms' without putting its whole edifice into question, unable to mobilise for war because it cannot rely on the loyalty of its own proletariat (a fact vividly demonstrated by the mass strike in Poland in 1980), the entire Stalinist building implodes under the weight of its contradictions. But contrary to all the lying propaganda about the collapse of Communism, this is the collapse of a particularly weak segment of the capitalist world economy, which as a whole has no way out of its historic crisis.

1989- : the collapse of the Russian bloc leads to the rapid disappearance of the western bloc, which has no 'common enemy' to hold it together. This enormous shift in the world situation marks the entry of decadent capitalism into a new and final phase - the phase of decomposition, whose principal features are elaborated in the theses which are also appended to the present work. Suffice it to say here that the situation of Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union reveals all the features of this new phase: at the international level, the replacement of the old bipolar imperialist rivalries with a chaotic struggle of each against all, in which Russia continues to defend its imperialist ambitions, albeit less 'exalted' ones than before; internally, in a tendency towards the further break up of the territorial integrity of Russia though nationalist rebellions and murderous wars like the current one in Chechnya; economically, through a total lack of financial stability together with soaring inflation and unemployment; socially through an accelerating decay of the infrastructure, spiralling pollution, growing levels of mental illness and drug addiction, and the proliferation of criminal gangs at every level, including the highest rungs of the state.

This process of inner disintegration is such that many in Russia already grow nostalgic for the 'good old days' of Stalinism. But there can be no going back: capitalism in all countries is a system in mortal crisis, which is starkly posing mankind with the choice between a plunge into barbarism or the communist world revolution. The reappearance of revolutionary elements in Russia today is clear evidence that the second alternative has not been buried by the relentless advance of the first.

We have tried to show in this preface that the concept of capitalist decadence is by no means 'foreign' to the authentic workers' movement in Russia; like the notion of communism itself, it is now the task of the new generation of revolutionaries in Russia to rescue the theory from its Stalinist kidnappers and thus to help return it to the working class in Russia and the rest of the world.

International Communist Current, February 2001

Response to the Marxist Labour Party on the 'Anatomy of October'

First of all, we want to salute the seriousness of this text, the efforts of the Marxist Labour Party to translate it and circulate it internationally, and the invitation to other proletarian organisations to comment on it. The nature of the October revolution, and of the Stalinist regime which arose out of its defeat, has always been a crucial issue for revolutionaries; and it is a problem which can only be approached by using the Marxist method. As the title of the text suggests, this is an attempt to uncover the "Marxist anatomy" of the October revolution, and it does so by referring to and seeking to elaborate some of the classics of Marxism (Engels, Lenin, etc). As we shall see, there are a number of points in the text with which we agree, and others which, although we do not agree with them, raise important points of debate. Nevertheless, we feel that the text does not succeed in its fundamental aim - to define the essential nature of the October revolution; and it is for this reason that we will focus mainly on our most important disagreements with the text.

It appears that the text is the product of a debate currently going on within the MLP. We do not know very much about the different points of view expressed within the debate, except that in the accompanying English translation of the preface to the MLP journal Marxist, there is talk of a division between 'Leninist' and 'non-Leninist' views of the Russian revolution - the text we are commenting on being a product of the latter current.

In the past the ICC has carried out a good deal of polemics with the 'councilist' view of the Russian revolution - the notion that it was essentially a belated bourgeois revolution and that the Bolsheviks were at best an expression of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia, not the proletariat (see in particular our pamphlet 1917, start of the world revolution). The MLP text certainly bears a close resemblance to this point of view in a number of respects, in particular when it talks about the Russian revolution as a "dual revolution" - largely proletarian in the cities, but essentially dominated by the weight of the petty bourgeois peasantry, giving the formula that the October revolution "was not a socialist revolution. It was the apogee of the bourgeois-democratic pressure - the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, with a short term transition to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat". The language here is taken from the Bolshevik programme prior to Lenin's April theses; but the overall analysis of a "dual revolution" is strikingly similar to the thesis of the KAPD in the early 20s, which talked about a double revolution, proletarian in the cities, peasant/capitalist in the countryside, with the later increasingly dominating the former. Later on, the remnants of the German-Dutch left were to increasingly favour the notion of a purely bourgeois revolution in Russia; the idea of a dual revolution lived on largely through the contributions of the 'Bordigist' current.

At the same time, the MLP's approach bears little resemblance to councilism when it comes to their view of the Bolshevik party. While councilism concludes from the Russian experience that the party is by definition a bourgeois form, the MLP, as its name suggests, advocates it quite explicitly. The first point of its "basic statutes" argues that "The MLP is a party of the working class?the party sees its task in enlightenment and organisation of the workers for them to seize political and economic power, with the purpose of construction of a classless self-governed society". Neither does the MLP set itself as the retrospective judge of the Bolsheviks, ejecting them from the workers' movement because they were the victims of a defeated revolution: "What has been said is not at all an indictment of the Bolsheviks. They did what they had to do, under conditions of a backward peasant country - conditions which were aggravated by the defeat of the social revolution in the west".

This said, it seems to us that there is a crucial flaw at the heart of this text, reflecting councilist and even Menshevik theoretical weaknesses, and based on a failure to see the October revolution in its global, historical framework. Certainly there are plenty of references to the international dimension of October, particularly to the failure of the revolution in Europe as the key reason why the Soviet republic could only go towards the development of Russian capitalism. But it seems to us that, as with councilism and Menshevism, the basic analytical starting point is Russia, not the entire capitalist globe; and this is why the text makes a radically false comparison between 20th century Russia and 19th century France: "As history has shown, the completion of the entire cycle of bourgeois-democratic transformation in Russia took approximately as long as in France. There it was 1789-1871, and with us 1905-1991". By the same token Menshevism argued that Russia was still in the phase of the bourgeois revolution in 1905-1917; Trotsky's notion of the permanent revolution was already a considerable theoretical advance on this view, since it definitely began from the international context of the coming Russian revolution, while the old Bolshevik slogan of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" was essentially a half-way house between these two positions, and one that we think Lenin effectively abandoned in the April theses of 1917 (see the article on the 1905 mass strikes in International Review 90; the relevant section has been appended to this text). For us, the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions are both the product of an historical and international evolution. Thus it's true that the era of bourgeois revolutions carried on in France through a good part of the 19th century; but this was because globally speaking capitalism was still in its expansive, ascendant phase. The epoch of the world proletarian revolution began in the early part of the 20th century because capitalism as a global system had entered its epoch of decline. And, as the comrades of Bilan insisted against both Stalinism and Trotskyism in the 1930s, the only possible point of departure for analysing the revolution in Russia is that of the international maturation of the social and economic contradictions of the capitalist system, and not the 'maturity' of each country taken separately. We quote at length from the first article in the important series on 'Problems of the period of transition', published in Bilan no 28, in 1936.

"At the beginning of this study we underlined the fact that although capitalism has powerfully developed the productive capacity of society, it has not succeeded in developing the conditions for an immediate passage to socialism. As Marx indicated, only the material conditions for resolving this problem exist "or are at least in the process of formation".

These restrictions apply even more strongly to each national unit in the world economy. All of them are historically ripe for socialism, but none of them are ripe in the sense of possessing all the material conditions needed for the building of an integral socialism. This is true whatever level of development they may have reached.

No nation on its own contains all the elements for a socialist society. The idea of national socialism is in diametrical opposition to the international nature of the imperialist economy, to the universal division of labour, and the global antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

It is a pure abstraction to see socialist society as a sum of complete socialist economies. The world-wide distribution of the productive forces (which is not an artificial product) makes it impossible both for the 'advanced' countries and for the 'backward' countries to complete the transition to socialism within their own borders. . The specific weight of each of the countries in the world economy is measured by the degree to which they are reciprocally dependent, not by how independent they might be. England, which is one of the most advanced sectors of capitalism, a country in which capitalism exists in an almost pure form, could not operate in isolation. Facts today show that, even when only partially cut off form the world market, the productive forces begin to break down. This is the case with the cotton and coal industries in England. In the U.S.A, the automobile industry can only go into decline if it is limited to the home market, no matter how vast the latter is. An isolated proletarian Germany would soon see its industrial apparatus breaking down, even if it initiated a huge expansion of consumption.

It is thus an abstraction to pose the question of countries being 'ripe' or 'unripe' for socialism, because on these terms you would have to say that neither the advanced countries nor the backward countries were mature enough.

The problem has to be posed in the light of the historical maturation of social antagonisms, which in turn results from the sharpening conflicts between the productive forces and the relations of production. To limit the question to the material factors at hand would be to take up the position of the theoreticians of the IInd International, of Kautsky and the German Socialists, who considered that because Russia was a backward economy dominated by a technically weak agrarian sector, it was not ripe for a proletarian revolution, but only for a bourgeois revolution. In this their conception was the same as that of the Russian Mensheviks. Otto Bauer declared that the proletarian state inevitably had to degenerate because of Russia's backwardness.

In the Russian Revolution Rosa Luxemburg remarked that, according to the conception of the social democrats, the Russian revolution ought to have stopped after the fall of the Tsarism.

'According to this view, if the revolution has gone beyond that point and has set its task the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is simply a mistake of the radical wing of the Russian labour movement, the Bolsheviks. And all difficulties which the revolution has met with in its further course, and all disorders it has suffered, are pictured as purely a result of this fateful error.'

The question as to whether Russia was or was not ripe for the proletarian revolution can't be answered by looking at the material conditions of its economy, but at the balance of class forces, which had been dramatically transformed by the international situation. The essential condition was the existence of a concentrated proletariat -despite the fact that it was a tiny minority in relation to the huge mass of peasant producers - whose consciousness expressed itself through a class party powerfully armed with revolutionary ideology and experience. We agree with Rosa Luxemburg that:

"The Russian proletariat has to be seen as the vanguard of the world proletariat, a vanguard whose movement is the expression of the development of social antagonisms on a world scale. What is happening in St Petersburg is the result of developments in Germany, England, and France. It is these development which will decide the outcome of the Russian revolution, which can only achieve its goal if it is the prologue to the revolution of the European proletariat."

...We repeat that the fundamental condition for the life of the proletarian revolution is its ability to link up on a world scale, and this consideration must determine the internal and external policies of the proletarian state. This is because, although the revolution has to begin on a national scale, it cannot remain indefinitely at that level, however large and wealthy that nation might be. Unless it links up with other national revolutions and becomes a world revolution it will be asphyxiated and will degenerate. This is why we consider it an error to base one's arguments on the national conditions of one country".

For Bilan - unlike for Trotsky for example, or indeed the councilist current - the epoch of bourgeois revolutions was over because capitalism, taken not country by country, but as an integral whole, had become 'ripe' for the proletarian revolution. The consequence of the MLP's approach, however is that the Stalinist era in the USSR ceases to be, along with such manifestations Nazism in Germany, a classical expression of the bourgeois counter-revolution and of capitalism's universal decay. Of course, the MLP is perfectly clear that the Stalinist regime in Russia (like all the others across the world) was in no sense a workers' state, but a form of state capitalism (1); nevertheless, if you see it as an expression of the bourgeois revolution it inevitably becomes a factor of historical progress, laying the ground for the industrialisation of Russia and thus for the eventual triumph of the proletariat. And even though in their "basic statutes" the MLP correctly point out that the bureaucratised Russian soviet state "destroyed the Bolsheviks as the political party which had arisen in 1903", the 'Anatomy' text gives the impression of a real continuity between Bolshevism and Stalinism. "Although even their most immediate goal - a socialist society free of commodity relations - was not accessible, the Bolsheviks achieved, in the end, a great deal. For 70 years Russia (USSR) experienced a significant leap in productive power". But, again applying the method used by the Italian left in the 30s, the criterion for judging whether Stalinism was playing a progressive role laid not in calculating the figures for economic growth under the five year plans, but in analysing its role as a profoundly counter-revolutionary factor on a world scale; on this level, it was evident that Stalinism was a reactionary phenomenon par excellence. At the same time, the Italian left - even while not fully grasping the capitalist nature of the Stalinist state - was perfectly well aware that the "formidable economic development of the USSR" was inseparable from the cultivation of a war economy in view of the approaching imperialist carve-up, and that this "development" - which was taking place in all the major capitalist countries at the time - was in turn the clearest expressions that capitalism as a whole was an obsolete mode of production on a world scale.

The problem of the Soviet state

In locating the capitalist development of USSR in conditions particular to Russia, the MLP, like the councilists, tend to deprive later generations of revolutionaries from drawing the vitally important lessons of the Russian experience. If what the Bolsheviks did in Russia was determined above all by the unavoidable necessity for Russia to develop along capitalist lines, to pass through a kind of belated bourgeois revolution, there is little point in criticising the errors made by the Bolsheviks with regard to the Soviet state, the mass organs of the working class, the economy and so on, since the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat was simply a result of objective circumstances beyond anyone's control. This is very different from the approach of the Italian left, which devoted a whole series of studies to learning what the Russian experience can teach us about the policies needed by any future proletarian power. The pity of it is that in an area considered absolutely crucial by the Italian left - the problem of the transitional state - the MLP have some important insights. They note, in particular, the importance of the fact that the specific organs of the proletariat were merged into the general apparatus of the Soviet state: "The case was like this: On the 13th January 1918, the 3rd Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies merged with the 3rd Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, Towards March the merger extended to the localities. In this way the proletariat, whose political dominion should have guaranteed the socialist transformation, and under pressure of the Bolsheviks, shared power with the peasantry". They also point out that the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies already had a very strong peasant influence because of the social composition of the army. Furthermore, "an even more important circumstance was the fact that instead of strengthening the system of authentic workers' organisations - the factory committees - the Bolsheviks on the contrary contributed to its dissolution" by compelling them to merge into the state-controlled trade unions.

These were indeed important developments; but for us the lesson to be drawn from them is that, while in any revolutionary situation, there will be a necessity for the mass of non-exploiting strata to be organised in the transitional state, the working class can by no means submerge its own authentic organs - the workers' councils, factory committees, etc - into these general territorial bodies. In other words, the proletariat must maintain its autonomy towards the transitional state, controlling it but not identifying with it. And we must emphasise that this is not a problem specific to a country like Russia as it was in 1917, but concerns the entire world working class, which to this day does not constitute a majority of humanity. But instead of developing our understanding of how proletarian self-organisation was weakened by being subordinated to the transitional state, the MLP gets us lost in its rather ponderous theorisations about the passage from "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in 1919, and finally the subordination of the latter to a purely capitalist regime after 1921" - an experience that is presumably to be unique in history and thus carrying no lessons for the future practise of the proletarian movement.

Let us be clear: we have never argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia could have been saved by organisational guarantees, still less that it could have gone on to create a socialist society in Russia. Given the isolation of the Russian revolution, its degeneration and defeat was indeed inevitable. But this does not obviate the need to learn as much from its successes and failures as we can, because we have no other comparable experience in the history of the working class.

This leads us on to another question: the absence of communist economic measures taken by the Bolsheviks. As we understand the MLP's thesis, the revolution did not establish a "socialist dictatorship" but a purely political "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat"; and the text, although a little ambiguous about the nature of the measures taken under the heading of war communism, points out that, in essence, there was no abolition of commodity relations after the October revolution. But the implication here is that had the proletariat established a really socialist dictatorship, with no trace of power-sharing, through soviets of factory committees, then it would have been possible to introduce really socialist economic measures. But here again the comrades seem to forget not only the international dimension of the revolution, but also the very nature of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution can only commence as a political revolution, irrespective of the level of capitalist development in the country where it begins; this is because, as an exploited, propertyless class, the working class only has the lever of political power (which in turn expresses its consciousness and self-organisation) to introduce the social measures needed to move towards a communist order. Within a particular country, the proletarian revolution will certainly be compelled to take urgent economic measures to ensure its own survival. But it would a fatal illusion to think that capitalist relations can really be done away with in the confines of a single national economy. As the long quote from Bilan has already demonstrated, capitalism, as global relationship, can only be dismantled by the international dictatorship of the proletariat. Until the latter has been achieved through a more or less long phase of civil war, the proletariat cannot really begin to develop a communist social form. In this sense, the fundamental tragedy of the Russian revolution does not lie in any "restoration" of capitalist relations, since the latter never disappeared in the first place; it lies in the process whereby the working class took political power and then lost it; above all, it lies in the fact that this loss of power was disguised by a process of internal degeneration in which many of the old names were retained, while the essential content was utterly changed.

We will conclude by saying that the wider tragedy of the 20th century - the horrors of fascism and Stalinism, the whole devastating succession of wars and massacres - resides in the defeat of the world proletarian revolutionary wave of 1917-23 - the defeat of the hope offered by the October revolution. Humanity has paid a terrible price for that defeat, and continues to pay it today in a 21st century where the slide into barbarism is perhaps more evident than it has ever been before. The world-wide communist transformation of society was a material possibility in 1917, which is why we think the Bolsheviks were absolutely justified in calling for the Russian proletariat to take its first step.

CDW

(1) We will leave aside here the MLP's rather confusing use of the term "state socialism" to describe the Stalinist system, since it appears to all intents and purposes that this is just another term for state capitalism.

We are publishing here the introduction to the Russian edition of the ICC's pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism, which has recently appeared thanks to the efforts of comrades in the newly emerging proletarian milieu in Russia. Our introduction focuses on the specific contribution of the workers' movement in Russia to our understanding of capitalism's decline. This is particularly apt because we have found that the concept or definition of capitalist decadence has been a major issue in our discussions with the various groups and individuals who make up the Russian milieu.

As we have explained in a number of texts, we consider that the notion that all hitherto existing forms of class society have been through epochs of ascent and decay is absolutely fundamental to the materialist conception of history. As Marx put it in his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, at a given stage of its development, a mode of production enters an epoch of social revolution when its social-economic relations turn from forms of development into fetters on further progress. And we adhere to the conclusion of the Communist International, and the German and Italian Left fractions, that for capitalism the epoch of its "inner disintegration", of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions, was inaugurated by the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 and fully confirmed by the great international revolutionary wave which arose in opposition to the imperialist war.

It's true that not all the historical currents of the communist left have continued this tradition. Both the Bordigist and councilist offspring of the Italian and German-Dutch lefts respectively have put the concept of decadence into question, both in their own ways arguing that capitalism could still undergo a youthful development in the former colonial regions, or that since the crises of capitalism remain cyclical in nature, there is perhaps a difference in quantity, but not in quality, between the upheavals these crises brought about in the period prior to 1914, and the catastrophes provoked in the ensuing period. We will find that such views appear to have a considerable influence on the new groups in Russia. Nevertheless, we would argue that these positions represent a regression in clarity, and that the groups who most faithfully continue the programmatic advances of the communist left have based their positions on the recognition that capitalism is a system in decay.

The intimate connection between historical materialism and the theory of decadence is also implicitly recognised in the ideological offensive against marxism which capitalism has been mounting since the collapse of the eastern bloc at the end of the 1980s. This offensive has been conducted largely through the campaign about "globalisation". According to this (admittedly vague and ambiguous) idea, capitalism only became a truly global system with the advent of the Reaganite "free trade" policies of the 80s, with the rapid increase in global communication brought about by the triumph of the microchip, and above all with the collapse of the eastern bloc which supposedly removed the last "non-capitalist" regions from the planet's economic topography. Those who adhere to this idea may praise or condemn the effects of globalisation, but at its heart is the belief that capitalism has entered a new epoch, a new kind of ascendancy, which belies the old fashioned marxist theory of capitalism as a system in decline. It is an outlook particularly antagonistic to that tradition within the communist left which draws its analyses from the theories of Luxemburg and Bukharin, who at the time of the first world war were arguing that capitalism was entering its period of decline precisely because it had become a global system, a veritable world economy. It is in equally stark contrast to the ICC's analysis of the period opened up by the collapse of the eastern bloc, which we have characterised not as a new phase of capitalist ascent but as the final and most dangerous phase of its decline -the phase of decomposition, in which the alternative between socialism and barbarism is more and more becoming a daily reality.

Alongside this more general ideological assault, conducted by a host of ideologues from right wing 'neo-liberals' to the more radical-sounding gurus of the "anti-globalisation" protests, the theory of decadence has been under attack from a myriad of groups who claim to be advocates of communism, but who either inhabit the murky swamp between the left wing of capital and the proletarian milieu, or belong to the area of political parasitism. We already noted this phenomenon in the late 80s, prompting us to publish a series of articles under the heading 'Understanding the decadence of capitalism'. Here we responded in particular to the innovations and inventions of parasitic groups such as the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste, Internationalist Perspectives, and others. These were groups who had arisen from splits within the ICC; and although there were other reasons behind the splits, it was noticeable that in the theoretical revisions these groups embarked upon in order to establish their political distance from the ICC, the theory of decadence was one of the first to be ditched - openly in the case of the GCI which adopted a semi-Bordigist method, and more insidiously with Internationalist Perspective, who first began to dilute and confuse the notion of decadence with learned expositions about the transition from the formal to the real domination of capital, and then turned on the heritage of the communist left by accusing its theory of decadence of being essentially mechanistic and "productionist". In the mid-90s, the "Paris Social Circle", also made up of elements who had left the ICC and fallen into parasitism, went in exactly the same direction. Its protagonists had begun by calling into question the ICC's conception of decomposition; it didn't take them very long to conclude that the real theoretical issue wasn't decomposition but decadence. And the latest addition to the parasitic pantheon - the "Internal Fraction of the ICC" - appears to be hurrying along the same road, since it is already openly scornful of the concept of decomposition.

These parasitic groups function as the direct conduit of the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns into the proletarian milieu. The success of these campaigns can be judged precisely by the number of former communists who have fallen for the propaganda about the bright new prospects for capitalism's growth. But lest it should be thought that the ICC alone has suffered from the pressure of the dominant ideology in this area, consider the case of the IBRP, which has almost uncritically integrated the notion of globalisation into its theoretical framework, while simultaneously downgrading the importance of decadence. In a text published on the IBRP website 'Reflections on the crises in the ICC', there is a similar logic to that of some of the ex-ICC 'thinkers': not only is decomposition a false idea, the concept of decadence doesn't explain that much either: "Let's go back to the founding concept of decadence. Let's stress that it only has a meaning if you are referring to the general state of society; it has no meaning when you are referring to the mode of production's capacity to survive. In other words, we can only talk about decadence if you understand by that a presumed growing inability of capitalism to proceed from one cycle of accumulation to another. We can also consider as a phenomenon of 'decadence' the shortening of the ascending phases of accumulation, but the experience of the last cycle shows that this brevity of the ascending phase doesn't necessarily mean the acceleration of the complete cycle of accumulation/crisis/war/new accumulation. What role then does the concept of decadence play at the level of the militant critique of political economy, i.e. of the profound analysis of the phenomena and dynamics of capitalism in the period we are living through? None. To the point where the word itself never appears in the three volumes which compose Capital".

This passage is somewhat buried in a text which hasn't appeared in any of the IBRP's journals, but it is the clearest expression yet of a definite tendency in the IBRP's thinking over the last few years. We have come a long way indeed from the times when the comrades of the CWO argued that the concept of decadence was the cornerstone of their political positions. We shall have occasion to return to this passage and its implications.

The Russian milieu and the concept of capitalist decadence

Given that the more 'established' groups of the communist left in the west have been subjected to such extreme pressures, it is hardly surprising that the concept of decadence should cause so many difficulties for the groups of the newly-emerging milieu in Russia, where the tradition of the communist left has been almost completely obliterated by the direct presence of the Stalinist counter-revolution.

The ICC has already published a good deal of its correspondence with the individuals and groups in this milieu, and a large part of it has been devoted to the question of decadence. Thus, in IR 101 we published an article 'Proletarian Revolution: the agenda of history since the beginning of the 20th century'. This was our answer to correspondence from comrade S in Moldovia, a member of the Revolutionary Proletarian Collectivist Group, which has now merged with another group to form the Communist Marxist Leninist Party. The principles of the RPCG, which we understand have been adopted by the new group, do define capitalism as a decadent system, but appear to date the onset of this decadence very late in the 20th century, since they argue that communism has not been a material possibility since the global development of microprocessors. Similarly, while their principles argue for the "negation of slogan 'right of nations to self-determination', which lost any progressive character in modern epoch of decline and decadence of capitalist society" and the "recognition of the imperialist character of all 'inter-national' conflicts in the modern epoch of the decadence of capitalism", it remains unclear at what point national conflicts lost their progressive character [1]; and even today it appears possible for the proletariat to support certain national movements: "support for movements of petty bourgeois and semi-proletarian classes of oppressed nations, movements which appear under slogans of 'national liberation', only to the degree that such movements are uncontrolled by the exploiting classes and objectively undermine all (including their own national) exploiters' statehood".

Such arguments seem to demonstrate the difficulty of the Russian groups in breaking with Lenin's argument that supporting national liberation movements is a way of opposing your own national bourgeoisie (above all when that national bourgeoisie has a long history of oppressing other national groupings, as in the case of the Tsarist empire). These "Leninist" sentiments are even echoed by the comrades of the Southern Bureau of the Marxist Labour Party, who loudly profess their non-Leninism but who don't hesitate to side with Lenin on this key question: "You have doubtless remarked how little Leninist we are. Nonetheless, we think that Lenin's position was the best on this question. Each nation (attention! Nation not nationality or national or ethnic group. etc?) has a complete right to self-determination within the framework of its ethnico-historic territory, to the point of separation and creation of an independent state" This passage is cited in our article 'The vital role of the left fractions in the marxist tradition' in IR 104, which also responds to many of the MLP's arguments. Similarly, these comrades seem unable to go beyond certain of Lenin's formulations which define the Russian revolution as a dual revolution, part socialist and part bourgeois democratic. They expound this view in a long text translated into English 'The marxist anatomy of October'. The ICC has written a reply to this contribution (see our website?). Our response leans heavily on the arguments of Bilan, which stress that since capitalism must be analysed as a global and historic system, the conditions for the proletarian revolution must necessarily arise internationally in the same period of history, so that it makes no sense to talk about the proletarian revolution being on the agenda in some countries while some hybrid or even bourgeois revolutions are on the agenda in others.

More recently we have published in World Revolution 254 the platform of another new group, the International Communist Union, based in Kirov. In our comments which welcome the appearance of this group, we noted that the ICU's platform appears to be ambiguous, at best, on the problem of decadence and of national struggles, and their reply to our comments have confirmed this assessment. Since we have not replied publicly to this letter, we will begin that task here by presenting the ICU's arguments to the best of our ability. Because of problems of language, it is not always easy for us to follow the argumentation of the ICU comrades. But based on their letter of 20.2.02, we think that they make six key points in reply to our comments:

• The theory of decadence denies that there has been any development in 20th century capitalism, which plainly is not the case;
• Capitalism has always lived by violence and destruction, so the world wars of the 20th century do not prove that the system is decadent;
• In our comments in WR 254 we said that the ICU was inconsistent in denying the decadence of capitalism while at the same time insisting in their platform that all factions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary. The comrades reply that even though all bourgeois factions are indeed reactionary, this does not mean that the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution have also become reactionary: "Therefore, for example the Russian bourgeoisie was not capable of leading the bourgeois revolution and so was reactionary in 1917, though the bourgeois democratic transformations of the Russian revolution certainly were progressive". Today, the ICU argue, the bourgeoisie cannot carry through any bourgeois transformations without world war, hence it is senseless to support any bourgeois faction; but this does not mean that there are no longer any bourgeois democratic tasks; it is simply that the proletariat alone is capable of realising them.
• The "Chinese revolution" provides concrete proof of the possibility of successful and progressive bourgeois revolutions in the 20th century?
• This period of progressive national bourgeois revolutions came to an end only with the globalisation of capitalism towards the end of the 20th century;
• Nonetheless the proletariat can still succeed in transforming movements for national independence into struggles for the socialist revolution.

We want to reply to these arguments in depth, and so will return to them in a subsequent article. It will, however, be apparent that whatever differences there may be between the various groups of the Russian milieu, the arguments they put forward are very similar. We thus think that the reply to the ICU should be seen as contribution to the whole of this milieu, as well as to the international debates about the perspectives for world capitalism.

CDW

1. In the article we published in International Review 104, we cite the following passage from comrade S, which appears to confirm that for his group, capitalist decadence, and thus the end of any progressive function for national movements, begins at the end of the 20th century: "Concerning your pamphlet Nation or Class. We agree with your conclusions, but don't agree with part of the motivation and historical analysis. We agree that today, at the end of the 20th century, the slogan the right of nations to self-determination has lost any revolutionary character. It is a bourgeois-democratic slogan. When the epoch of bourgeois revolutions is closed this slogan too is closed for proletarian revolutionaries. But we think that the epoch of bourgeois revolutions closed at the end of the 20th century not at its beginning. In 1915 Lenin was generally correct against Luxemburg, in 1952 Bordiga was generally correct on this question against Damen, but today the situation is reversed. And we consider your position to be completely mistaken that different non-proletarian revolutionary movements of the third world, that had not an iota of socialism but were objectively revolutionary movements, were only tools of Moscow as you wrote about Vietnam for example, rather than objectively progressive bourgeois movements".

The marxist anatomy of October 1917 and the present situation[1]

The text which we are publishing below is the complete version of a text from the Marxist Labour Party in Russia, excerpts of which have been published in the print edition of the International Review. Our reply can be read here [94].ICC

The marxist anatomy of October, "Marxist Labour Party" (Russia)

After decades of Soviet power, we have been accustomed to call the great October a socialist revolution. But much of those things to which we have become accustomed have now disappeared. What is the fate, under such circumstances of the "titles" of the October revolution?

Classical scientific Marxism asserts that the first act of the social revolution of the proletariat will be the take over by the proletarian class itself of the political power in the society. According to Marx, capitalism is separated from communism by a period of revolutionary transformation. This period cannot be anything other than a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Consequently, if we see no such class dictatorship, then of course it is inappropriate to speak of overcoming capitalist relations. Moreover, the strongly entrenched appellations and official signboards signify nothing. They may be simple errors (whether well or ill intended). Marx was himself convinced that neither epochs nor persons can be judged on the basis of how regard themselves. Each of us is already sufficiently convinced: membership in a party which calls itself communist does not signify communist conviction, as a nostalgia for the Red Flag over administrative buildings in no way testifies to the yearning for a new social relationship between people.

The power of the workers - peasant soviets or the power of the workers' factory committees?

Russia, as is well known, is a country "with an unpredictable past" That's possibly why there is no single opinion now, when the proletarian dictatorship perished in Russia, or whether it existed at all. In our view, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia did exist. But, firstly, it was not the dictatorship of the proletariat in "the pure aspect", that is, not a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat involving a single class, but a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat", that is a union of the workers in the minority and of the poor peasants in the majority. Secondly, the span of its life was limited to a few months.

The case was like this: On the 13th (26th) January 1918, the 3rd Russian congress of Soviets of peasant deputies merged with the 3rd congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Towards March the merger extended to the localities. In this way, the proletariat, whose political dominion should have guaranteed the socialist transformation, and under pressure of the Bolsheviks, shared power with the peasantry.

The Russian peasantry itself in 1917 was not, as is well known, socially homogenous. A significant part of it, 'kulaks' [rich land-owning peasants-exploiters, partly or even completely outside the still remaining village community, comparable to English yeomanry, - translator's comment] and "middlers"[medium peasantry, those who seldom or never hired themselves out elsewhere for keeping their own farm afloat, - the so-called ' thrifty managers' not exploiting other community villagers - translator's comment] more and more were oriented in their economies towards the demands of the market. The 'middlers', in this way, became petty bourgeois, and the kulaks often engaged in an outright contractual economy, hiring labour - the 'batraks' - and exploiting them, that is, they were already the village bourgeoisie. The institution of the traditional peasant community in most localities was formally preserved, but it was more beneficial not to the middlers, and less so to the kulaks - "the blood suckers", the commune benefited the mass of the poor peasants, which constituted over 60% of the peasantry as a whole. The laws of capitalist development however, transformed many of the poor peasants into semi-proletarians. There were also in the village real proletarians - rural labourers who did not join the community and hired out to the landlords and kulaks along with the poor peasants.

Thus itself the merger of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies with the general peasant Soviets indicated the abandonment of "the pure dictatorship of the proletariat". However, the "purity", even to this extent was very much conditional. The Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies consisted not only of workers. The soldiers were fundamentally - up to 60% - former peasants: poor and middle peasants dressed in overcoats and armed by the Tsarist government. Factory workers among the soldiers constituted less than 10%.

The general arming of the people, and not solely of the advanced class, the proletariat, the merging of the two types of Soviets, and even the two-party coalition of the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs ('Socialist Revolutionaries') factually indicate the transition to the so-called "old Bolshevik formula" - the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. But this form of power was a step back, compared to what arose after the overthrow by the October revolution. At that time, as is known, power passed over to the 2nd congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, that is, in fact the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat" was introduced, although Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, also spoke of "the workers' and peasants' revolution" (PSS, vol. 35, p.2) and "the transition of local power to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' deputies" (op. cit., p. 11).

So the first experiment of establishing "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat" was limited to the period of October 1917 to January/February 1918, and in addition a steady retreat occurred from the positions achieved by the working class in October to November. After that time, which is called "the triumphal procession of Soviet Power" by soviet historians, not only the merger of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets with the Peasant Soviets occurred. An even more important circumstance was the fact that instead of strengthening and developing the system of authentic workers' organizations - the factory committees, the Bolsheviks, on the contrary, contributed to its dissolution. But just the factory committees were able to become the authentic basis of Soviet power, if we understand it in the perspective of real socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, exactly the Soviets of Factory Committees ought to have ruled over the country. Instead of this in January/February 1918 at the first Russian congress of trade unions and the 6th conference of the Factory Committees of Petrograd, a decision was accepted on the initiative of the Bolsheviks on the merger of the Factory Committees and the Unions. The unions themselves were put under the control of the party-state apparatus which had been formed. Membership in the unions was obligatory for all workers, not only in the enterprises, but also in the institutions. The working class, however, opposed such state policy and the Soviet Authorities only managed to eliminate the autonomous factory committees in the beginning of 1919.

The merger of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets with the Peasant Soviets, and the factory committees with the trade unions under statification were not the only things that washed away the proletarian constituent of the Soviet structure. Thus, in the course of the Civil war the Bolsheviks rejected their prior ideas held before October to create Soviets of agricultural labour, independent of the Peasant Soviets - these would have been organs of rural proletarian power. Soviet farms were created on the lands of the former estate holders, but Soviets of agricultural labourers, were not. But then again in March of 1919 trade unions of agricultural labourers were organized.

These and many other facts tell us that the Great October was in fact not a socialist revolution, as the Bolsheviks suggested, but merely the second, culminating stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, one of the fundamental goals of which was the settlement of the land question in favour of the Peasantry. Despite all of the activity of the working class and the proletarian political revolution in the capitals, the socialist revolution in October 1917 in capitalistically backward Russia never occurred. Karl Marx foresaw the possibility of such a situation in 1847. He wrote: "Therefore, if the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will be merely a short-lived one, will be merely an auxiliary moment in the bourgeois revolution itself, as was the case in 1794 (In France, ed), until in the course of history, in its "movement", the material conditions are again created, which necessitate the elimination of bourgeois means of production?" (K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, 2nd Russian ed., v. 4, pp. 298-299). At that, "a revolution with political soul, in conformity with the limited and bifid nature of this soul, organizes a dominating stratum in the society at the expense of the society itself", - he warned, for "socialism cannot be realized without a revolution. It is in need of this political act since it is in need of abolition and destruction of the past. But where its organizing activity begins, where its end-in-itself, its soul comes forward, there socialism throws off its political envelope (op. cit. v. 1, p. 447-448 [written in July 1844]). It goes without saying that the Bolsheviks did not have "throwing politics off" in mind either under Lenin or after him.

However, V. I. Lenin himself declared in 1920: "The basic conditions complicating and slowing the struggle of the proletariat, which was victorious over the bourgeois, against the big peasantry in Russia, come in the main to the fact that the Russian revolution after the overthrow of 25 October 1917 passed through a 'general democratic' stage, that is, in its basis, through the bourgeois-democratic one - the struggle of the whole peasantry against the landholders; then - to the fact of cultural and numerical feebleness of the urban proletariat; and finally - to the fact of enormous distances and extremely bad ways of communication" (V. I. Lenin, Complete Collected Works, Russian edition, v. 41, p.176). In 1921 after the victory of the Reds in the Civil War and the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), the leader of the Bolsheviks, who suggested: "we have taken the bourgeois-democratic revolution to it's conclusion, as no one else has", none the less suffered a slip of the tongue and said: "We completely intend to drive ahead firmly and steadfastly, to the socialist revolution, knowing that it is not separated by a Chinese wall from the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and knowing that only the struggle will decide, to what extent we will succeed (in the final analysis) in moving forward, what part of our vast high goals we will complete, which part of our victory we will consolidate. We shall see what we shall see" (op. cit. v. 44, p. 144-145).

Not until the summer of 1918, after severing the coalition with the left SRs, did the Bolsheviks decide "to carry the proletarian revolution into the countryside". With the aim of assisting in the installation "of the food dictatorship" and the organization of surplus appropriation, "committees of the poor" were established on a widespread basis, which included the rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, as well as the small owners. With this the Bolsheviks hoped to achieve the neutrality of the middle peasantry as regards deploying the class struggle in the countryside.

Such was the second (and last) attempt to establish "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat". But development again set off on a descending line. In that time, when the activity of the Factory Committees was curtailed, and the real power moved from the Soviets to their executive committees and revolutionary committees, as well as committees of the RKP(b) (Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)), at various levels, in the village the attempt was made to act simultaneously through the Peasant Soviets and the poor committees. The poor committees, however, irritated the middlers. The policy of neutralization of the middle peasantry, especially in view of their constant growth, seemed at risk. The movement of the middle peasantry to the side of the Whites in the Civil War would be equivalent to defeat for the Bolsheviks. All of this became so obvious, that on 8 November 1918 Lenin, speaking at a conference of delegates of the poor committees of the central provinces, publicly declared: "The Central Committee of our party developed a plan for the transformation of the poor committees, which is being sent for approval to the sixth congress of Soviets. We resolved that the poor committees and the Soviets in the countryside should not exist in separation. Otherwise, there will be squabbles and unnecessary discussion. We are merging the poor committees with the Soviets, and we are doing this so that the poor committees will become Soviets." (Lenin, op. cit., v. 37, pp. 180-181). The last promise was not kept. The policy of "neutralization of the middle peasantry" was followed by "the stable alliance with it", and then by the New Economic Policy, with its return to market relations.

In this way, towards the beginning of 1919, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet Russia, even in its undeveloped "democratic" aspect, suffered defeat. The factory committees and poor committees were abolished, the socialist perspective of the October revolution within the country was finally lost. After 6 months, the proletarian revolution in Europe also suffered defeat. The country in essence turned back to the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. However it was a short-lived existence, as the real power was no longer in the deputies of the Worker-Peasant Soviets, but in their executive committees and the committees of the RKP(b). The Soviets were more and more separated from the workers' collectives, and in the Soviet apparatus bureaucratic tendencies began to grow. The Bolsheviks, with absolute sincerity, called on the masses, and on themselves, to fight these tendencies. This process went so far that Lenin, speaking at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern on November 13th, 1922, was obliged to confirm: "We adopted the old State apparatus, and this was our misfortune. The state apparatus quite frequently works against us. The fact is that in 1917, after we took power, the state apparatus sabotaged us. We were then very afraid and asked: "Please, return to us." They returned, and this was our misfortune. We have now a great mass of employees, but we do not have sufficiently educated forces, in order to really have them under our control. In fact it very often happens that here, at the top, where we have state power, the apparatus functions in a fashion, while below they wilfully manage themselves, and manage themselves in such a way that they often work against our measures. Above we have, I don't know how many, but I believe in any case, just some thousands, at a maximum some tens of thousands of our own. But below, hundreds of thousands of old officials, whom we received from the Tsar and the old bourgeois society, who work sometimes deliberately, sometimes unwittingly against us" (Lenin, op. cit., v. 45, p. 290).

The introduction of the NEP in 1921 in turn was the logical end of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry: the petty bourgeois peasantry accomplished their market goals, the industrial proletariat at that time completely lost their organizational autonomy (especially after the introduction of one man management in the factories by the Bolsheviks), and besides it was already "thanks to the war and the desperate impoverishment and ruin, déclassé, that is, they lost their connection to their class." (V. I. Lenin, op. cit., v. 44, p.161). The NEP itself indicated, in the words of Lenin, "a movement to the restoration of capitalism to a significant degree" (op. cit., pp. 158-160). "If capitalism is restored, then the proletariat as a class is restored, engaged in the production of commodities", Lenin wrote (op. cit., p. 161). In addition, he declared that "to the extent that great industry was ruined, to that extent the factories stopped and the proletariat disappeared. It was sometimes accounted for, but it was not bound to economic roots." The leader of the Bolsheviks all the same oriented his comrades-in-arms to the position that "the proletarian state power is able, leaning on the peasantry, to hold the capitalists in check and to direct capitalism in the state's course, creating a capitalism subject to the state, and serving it" (op. cit., p.161). Here is clearly visible the specifics of Leninism, which demanded, starting with the April Theses, "not only considerations of class, but also of institutions" (op. cit. p. 31, p.123).

Thus, if there is any sense to call Soviet Russia "a workers' state", it's true only for the few months of its existence, and even then it is conditional! After all this, is it at all surprising that the development of the USSR ended with the restoration of classic bourgeois relations with private property, the new Russian" bourgeoisie, harsh exploitation and massive poverty?

What has been said is not at all an indictment of the Bolsheviks. They did what they had to do, under conditions of a backward peasant country -- conditions which were aggravated by the defeat of the social revolution in the West. But without this revolution even the Bolsheviks under Lenin did not think of the construction of socialism in Russia. Although even their most immediate goal - a socialist society free of commodity relations - was not accessible, the Bolsheviks achieved, in the end, a great deal. For 70 Soviet years Russia (USSR) experienced a significant leap in productive power. But why call this socialism? Industrialization, supplanting small production (in the city, and especially, in the countryside) with large commodity production, improvement of the cultural level of the masses, all these are processes of the development of bourgeois society. We do not call France socialist just because many factories have been built in the country and the "socialist party" governs! On the contrary, socialism implies, presupposes the strongly developed industrial society, as well as the power of the class of workers. That such a society was only in process of creation in Russia - USSR, excluding the working class from power, indicates how far the country was from socialism.

The russian marxists in the role of social-Jacobins

The changes in the system of Soviets, of course, were not accidental, nor were they the exclusive consequence of some error. The fact that the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat was not implemented in Russia, but rather a "democratic" dictatorship, which suffered defeat, was determined by the very nature of the October Revolution. But the character of a revolution, as it turns out, can be dual.

In 1910 the leader of the Bolsheviks V. I. Lenin spoke about the understanding of "the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution": "If we take it in the broad sense we understand by it the solution of objective historical goals of the bourgeois revolution, the "completion" of it, that is the elimination of the very basis that permits the birth of the bourgeois revolution, the completion of the entire cycle of bourgeois revolutions. In this sense, for instance, the bourgeois democratic revolution in France was completed only in 1871, but begun in 1789.

If we use the word in its narrow sense, it means a separate revolution, one of the bourgeois revolutions, one of the "waves", if you will, which beats the old regime, but does not finish it off, does not eliminate the basis for subsequent bourgeois revolutions. In this sense, the revolution of 1789 in France was "completed", we may say, in 1794, but in no way did it eliminate thereby the basis of the revolutions of the years 1830, 1848." (V .I. Lenin, PSS, v.19, pp. 246-247).

It was the overt bourgeois-democratic character of the transformation becoming unavoidable that made the leader of the Bolsheviks to put the question about a "broad" or "narrow" revolution. Would the Russian revolution be able to brush off all relics of feudalism, to complete the program of the "broad" revolution, to become the finishing "wave", or will other waves follow this one? Lenin constantly asked himself the question: "Was our fate a revolution of the 1789 type or the type of 1848 or the type of 1871?" (PSS, v. 9., p380; v.47, p.223, p.226) He often compared the revolutionary events in Russia with the French revolution of 1848, with the revolution of 1870 and the Paris Commune of 1871, as well as with the Great French revolution. He did this in 1917 too. His general leitmotiv was always the same: "Our cause... is to push the bourgeois revolution as far as possible." (PSS, v.9, p. 381) "...We are obligated", Lenin wrote, "to do our duty as leaders of the democratic, the "broad democratic" movement to the end, to the Russian 1871, to the complete turning of the peasantry to the side of "the Party of Order"... We will demand all in the sense of "democratic pressure": if we succeed we will receive everything, if we fail - a part." (PSS, v. 47, pp. 224-225).

In September of 1917 V. I. Lenin indicated that the revolution of 1848 "was most like our current one" (PSS, v. 34 p.124). With that he stressed one more aspect of the duality of the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary process, which characterized France and Russia. Here is what Engels wrote in 1891 and 1895: "thanks to the economic and political development of France from 1789, there developed in Paris in the last 15 years such a situation, whereby every revolution that broke out could not help but assume a proletarian character, namely: having paid for the victory with their own blood, the proletariat advanced its own demands. These demands? in the end were reduced to the destruction of the class contradictions between the capitalists and the workers. How this is to occur, this, it is true, they didn't know" (K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, 2nd Russian Ed., v. 22, p.190.) The discussion however was also about "the realization of the most authentic interests of the great majority", which "must soon become sufficiently clear to them in the course of their practical reality, as a result of the convincingly obvious nature of this reality." (Marx, Engels, op. cit. v. 22, p.535). And here, by the way, Engels writes as if to warn future generations of revolutionary Marxists of one serious error, which they and Marx made in those years: "...towards spring of 1850 the development of the bourgeois republic, which arose from the "social" revolution of 1848, led to the situation were the actual rule was concentrated in the hands of the great bourgeois, with additional monarchist inclinations, with all other classes, the peasantry and the petty bourgeois, of the other hand, grouping themselves around the proletariat, so that with the joint victory and after it the deciding factor should haven't been them, but the proletariat, made wiser by experience. Was it impossible under these circumstances to entirely count on the revolution of the minority being transformed into the revolution of the majority?

History has shown that we, and all people thinking like us, were wrong. It has clearly shown that the state of economic development of the European continent at that time was not so mature, as to be able to eliminate the capitalist means of production. It proved this by the economic revolution which by 1848 had seized the entire continent, and which for the first time established heavy industry in France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and recently, in Russia. Germany it changed outright into a first class industrial country, and all this on the capitalist basis, which thus in 1848 still possessed great capacity to expand." (ibid).

After the October Revolution, in April of 1918, Lenin wrote: "If we take the scale of the Western European revolutions, we stand close to the level achieved in 1793 and in 1871. We can be proud of legal rights which have been raised to that level, and in one relation doubtless went further, specifically: we decreed and introduced in all of Russia the highest type of state, the Soviet power. But we cannot be satisfied with what we have in any case achieved, since we have only begun the transition to socialism. We have not yet realized the deciding factor in this regard." (PSS, v. 36, p.175). The deciding factor for the Marxist is "the transition from the simplest goals of the subsequent expropriation of the capitalists to the much more complex and difficult task of the creation of conditions, under which the bourgeoisie can neither exist, nor be recreated." (Ibid). "It's clear, that this goal is immeasurably higher and that without its resolution socialism does not yet exist", stressed the leader of the Bolsheviks.

We should note that, in the opinion of the Bolsheviks, the Paris Commune featured in turn, not only a proletarian, but also a petty bourgeois, and partly even a nationalist character. (see the 7th Russian conference of the RSDRP(b), April 1917. Protocol, Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1958, p.15; V. I. Lenin, PSS, v.7, p. 270; v.8, pp. 486, 487, 490; v. 9, p. 329, v.20, pp. 218, 219; v. 26 p. 325).

The socialist potential of the first experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the world was evaluated paradoxically too. Thus in 1905 the future leader of the October revolution wrote about the Paris Commune: "...in history under the name of the Paris Commune such a workers government is known, which did not know how and could not differentiate the elements of the democratic and socialist revolution, which mixed the goals of the struggle for the republic with the goals of the struggle for socialism...and so on. In a word... this was such a government as ours should not be." (PSS, v. 11, p.70). In 1913 he remarked: "The Paris Commune (1871) finishes this development of bourgeois relations; the republic is only obliged to the heroism of the proletariat for its consolidation, that is that form of governmental organization in which class relations are presented in their plainest form." (PSS, v. 23, p.2). But in April of 1917 he clarified to Kamenev, who held the old Bolshevik position, that "The Commune, unfortunately, was too slow in the introduction of socialism." (PSS, v.31, p.142).

But in relation to programmatic goals V. I. Lenin was strict and consistent. In 1905 he wrote in his concluding part to the report of A. V. Lunacharsky "The Paris Commune and the Goals of the Democratic Dictatorship": "This reference teaches us, first of all, that the participation of the representatives of the socialist proletariat together with the petty bourgeoisie in the revolutionary government is entirely permissible, and under certain circumstances, outright obligatory. This reference shows us, further, that the real goals which the Commune had to achieve, were first of all the realization of the democratic, not the socialist, dictatorship, the introduction of our "minimum program." Finally, this information reminds us, as we draw the lessons for ourselves from the Paris Commune, we must not imitate its errors. However, its practically successful steps mark the true path. We should not adopt the word "Commune" from the great fighters of 1871, nor blindly repeat every one of their slogans, but we should clearly select the programmatic and practical slogans that correspond to the situation in Russia, which are formulated in the words: the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." (PSS, v. 11, p. 132). In March of 1918 Lenin developed this thought at the 7th emergency congress of the PKP(b): "Now we must write the new program of the Soviet power in the place of the old, not at all distracted from the use of bourgeois parliamentarianism. To think that we cannot be pushed back, is utopianism.

One cannot historically deny that Russia created a Soviet republic. We say that with each push backward, we do not refuse to use bourgeois parliamentarianism. If hostile class forces drive us back on the old position, we will move to that which has been gained by experience, to the Soviet power, to the soviet type of state, the state of the type of the Paris Commune. This we must express in our program. Instead of the minimum program, we will introduce the program of Soviet power." (PSS. v. 26, p.54).

Despite the fact that the Soviet power was declared the "highest type of state, the direct continuation of the Paris Commune" (see V. I. Lenin, PSS, v. 36, p.110), the Bolsheviks were compelled in practice to retreat even from the principles of the Commune, for instance, agreeing to higher pay for bourgeois specialists and others (see op. cit., p. 179, 279).

Therefore, concerning the analogy of the Revolutionary process in France and Russia, Engels seems more correct, writing in 1885 in a letter to Vera Zassulich, the Russia "is nearing her 1789". "In a country, where the situation is so strained, where to such an extent the revolutionary elements have accumulated, where the economic situation of the enormous mass of the people becomes more intolerable from day to day, where all degrees of social development starting from the primitive community and ending with the present heavy industry and financial tops, where all these contradictions are violently restrained by a despotism which has no equal, a despotism which is more and more unbearable for the young who embody reason and the dignity of the nation - such a country should begin its 1789, and thereafter should not be low to follow with 1793", he stressed (K. Marx, F. Engels, Works, 2nd Russian ed., v. 36, p. 260, 263.)

An in fact, it was just in the events of the great French revolution that the Bolsheviks most often looked for the answers to Russian problems. When they came to power they even adopted the lexicon of the French revolutionaries of those times, for instance, the words: "commissar", "revolutionary tribunal", "enemy of the people", "food detachments". They sang the Marseillaise. All of this was because the Bolsheviks understood: Russia had to go through the purgatory of the radical bourgeois democratic revolution. This means they had to be as resolute and bold as were in their time the Jacobins in France. They, like the Jacobins, avenged themselves in the most radical way against absolutism and the relics of feudalism.

It's true, the Russian revolution went yet further - it completely avenged itself on the pre-Revolutionary bourgeois class. But this is by no means equivalent to the elimination of bourgeois relations, to the realization of an anti-commodity socialist revolution in the economy?

As to the socialist aspirations of the Bolsheviks, Engels foresaw such a possibility in the same letter to Vera Zassulich. "People who boasted about having made a revolution, were always convinced on another day that they did not know what they had done - the revolution they had made was not like the one they wanted to make. This is what Hegel called the irony of history, the irony which few historical personalities have avoided." (Marx and Engels, op. cit., v. 36, p.263). However, V. I. Lenin himself wrote in 1906 about the struggle for the socialist revolution in Russia, isolated and trapped in backwardness. "This struggle would be almost hopeless for the Russian proletariat alone, and its defeat would be just as unavoidable, as the defeat of the French proletariat in 1871, if the European socialist proletariat did not come to the aid of the Russian proletariat." (Lenin, PSS, v. 12, p.157). The matter is, of course, about "the socialist revolution in Europe" - "The European workers will show up 'how to do this', and then together with them we will make the socialist revolution." (ibid).

What is the Soviet Power?

V. I. Lenin frequently called the October Revolution "the workers' and peasants' revolution", and he was undoubtedly correct in this. However the Great October, as already noted, was not a socialist revolution, it was the apogee of bourgeois-democratic pressure - the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry with a short-term transition to "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat." The anti-feudal transformation carried out by the Bolsheviks was not only in the workers interest, but also that of the broad peasant masses.

The October revolution itself, the victory of the Reds in the civil war, the suppression of numerous uprisings and mutinies were impossible without the support for the revolution by the common people - the basic mass of the toilers. What was the class composition of these toilers? From almost 140 million workers at the moment of the Revolution about 110 million were made up of the peasantry. Approximately 65% of the peasantry where poor peasants, the middle peasants were 20%, the kulaks were almost 15%. The urban petit bourgeois made up 8% of the population of the country. Proletarians were about 15 Million, just over 10% of the population, of whom industrial workers were only 3.5 million. (see 'Great October Socialist Revolution, Encyclopaedia', Moscow, "Soviet Encyclopaedia", 1977, pp. 276, 497). Therefore, it is not surprising that the revolution expressed a tone not so much proletarian, as that of the semi-proletarian and petty bourgeois masses. The leading role of the Proletarian Party did not save the situation. For this there is a completely Marxist explanation: the base determines the "superstructure", even such a "superstructure" as the RKP(b). Here is what V. I. Lenin himself wrote in 1917: "Russia is seething today. Millions and tens of millions? politically beaten by the awful whip of Tsarism and hard labour for the landowners and the factory owners, woke up and reached out for politics. But who are these millions and tens of millions? The greater part are small business owners, petit bourgeois, people who stand between the capitalists and the wage workers. Russia is the most petit bourgeois country of all European countries.

The gigantic petit bourgeois wave overwhelmed all, it suppressed the conscious proletariat not only by its numbers, but in ideas, i.e., it infected and held very broad circles in petit bourgeois views of politics." (PSS, v. 31, p.156).

The moving force of the October revolution was the workers and peasantry dressed in soldiers' uniforms and the proletariat held the hegemony under the leadership of the Bolshevik party. It seemed to the "New Bolsheviks" that with this act the socialist revolution itself began in Russia. However, later events demonstrated that the escalation of the political revolution of the proletariat beyond the boundaries of the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary process (that is, "the revolution in the narrow sense"), did not occur. The attempts as the elimination of money, introduction of production on a communist basis, direct distribution of products, rule by direct order, these and other measures of "war communism" were said to be not worthwhile. The Bolsheviks did not succeed in the exchange of products between the city and the country. The petty bourgeois elements demanded markets, the law of value demanded mercantile relationships. These demands could only be quelled together with the petty bourgeois environment. But this environment made up the fundamental mass of the armed populace, the revolutionary army.

Turning next to V. I. Lenin, we should again note, that he had fewer illusions concerning the character of the October revolution than did other "new Bolsheviks." In the end of 1920 a discussion flared in the RKP(b) about the role and goals of the "reservoir of state power", the trade unions, in Soviet Russia. Once the workers have the state, from whom are the unions to protect the proletariat? Not from our own dear state? To this the leader of the Bolsheviks sensibly remarked: "Comrade Trotsky speaks of 'a workers' state'. Excuse me, this is an abstraction?It's not just workers, that's the thing. Here lies one of the fundamental errors of Comrade Trotsky. Our state is in fact not a workers', but a worker-peasant state. That's the first thing. And hence a great deal follows." "Our state is a workers' state", Lenin added, "with bureaucratic deformities." (PSS, v.42, pp. 207-208.) It's true that the leader of the Bolsheviks sought the way out of this in the following dialectic: "Our present state is such, that the universally organized proletariat has to defend itself, but we must use these workers' organisations for their defence from our state, and for the defence of our state by them. And this and other defence is actualized by the peculiar interlacing of our state measures and our agreement, our 'joint undertaking' with our trade unions...", Lenin explained, "The understanding of this 'joint undertaking' includes the necessity of knowing how to utilize measures of state power for defence of the material and spiritual interests of the universally united proletariat from state power" (op. cit. p. 209).

With the transition to the NEP, however, the Bolsheviks had to abandon this scheme as well. First of all, because of compulsory enrolment of all workers as members of the trade unions, and of the subsumption of the unions in the party, but principally from "every direct interference of the unions in the management of enterprises (see Lenin, PSS, v. 44, pp. 344-346). Complete power was finally concentrated "in the hands of factory management, regularly composed on the basis of a single manager", the trade unions were assigned a part of participating in the work of the economic and state organs - this role became "not direct, but by members promoted by the unions and confirmed by the party and the Soviet power to higher state institutions, by members of the economic collegiate, members of factory management (where collegial arrangements are permitted), administrators, their assistants, etc" and also "promotion and preparation of administrators from the workers and toiling masses in general", "the steadfast increase of discipline of labour and the cultural forms of struggle for it and the increase in productivity" with the help of the disciplinary courts, etc.(op. cit., p. 347). At the same time V. I. Lenin recognized, that "from all that is laid out above, results a series of contradictions among the different goals of the trade unions", but he explained them as "contradictions of the situation of the trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat" (!) and indicated that they were not accidental and were unavoidable over the course of several decades. To the extent "the indicated contradictions would provoke conflicts, disagreements, friction, etc. a higher instance, reliably authoritative is needed to immediately resolve them. Such instance is the Party and the international association of the Communist Parties of all countries, the Comintern." (ibid., p. 350). In the course of subsequent decades of Soviet power, the position of the trade unions in the county has in fact changed little. After the curtailment of the NEP the Stalinists again turned to the policy of universal membership in the trade unions, but the "authoritative instance" turned out in fact to be authoritarian, and bypassed the Comintern.

Although around the time of the introduction of the NEP V. I. Lenin had internally realized the non-proletarian nature of the Soviet power, his slogan, as we know, was: "to push the bourgeois revolution as far as possible." To push, in the hope of a quickly forthcoming social revolution of the European proletariat ('La Sociale', that is an authentically socialist revolution). This revolution would compensate for Russian backwardness, Lenin thought.

Simultaneously with the famous "Letter to the Congress" of 1922, the Bolshevik leader alerted his colleagues: "Our party relies [leans] on two classes, and because of this its instability and inevitable collapse are possible, if between these two classes consent can not be established" (PSS, v.45, p.344) "If we do not close our eyes to the reality, we must recognize that at the present time the proletarian policy of the party is determined not by its social composition, but by the immense wholehearted authority of that thinnest stratum, which we may call the "party Old Guard". Not a great internal struggle would be sufficient inside this stratum, and if its authority is not undermined, this stratum will be weakened in any case to the extent that the decision will not depend on it any longer", he wrote a little earlier (Ibid, p. 20).

For all of these reasons the leader of the Bolsheviks refused to publicly admit the non-proletarian nature of the society that arose out of the October revolution, and he even threatened any who publicly expressed these views with execution (see PSS, v. 45, pp. 89-90). This is that very Ulyanov-Lenin, who had himself written in 1905: "The complete revolution is the seizure of power by the proletariat and the poor peasantry. But these classes, when they come to power, cannot fail to seek the socialist revolution. Consequently, the seizure of power, which is from the first a step in the democratic revolution, will be led by the force of events, against the will, (and sometimes against the conscience) of the participants to the socialist revolution. And here the collapse is inevitable. But once the collapse of the experiment in socialist revolution is inevitable, then we, (as Marx in 1871, who foresaw the inevitable collapse in Paris) should advise the proletariat not to rise up, to wait, to organize, to step back in order to better leap forward" (PSS, v.9, p.382).

The Marxist prognoses of Lenin the theoretician (in distinction from his non-Marxist aspirations as a social Jacobin politician and practitioner) were fully justified. The RKP(b) experienced a bitter intra-party struggle and elimination of a significant portion of the old guard. As history has shown, the completion of the entire cycle of bourgeois-democratic transformation in Russia took approximately as long as in France. There it was 1789-1871, and with us 1905-1991. In addition, the similarity is surprising, down to the details. Lenin himself reminds us of Robespierre. He, like Robespierre in his time, repeatedly fought against the Left, for instance at the 10th Congress of the RKP(b) the "Workers' Opposition" was suppressed, which attempted to carry out one of the key positions of the new party program, that "the trade unions must come to factual concentration in their hands of the management of the entire economy, as a unified whole" (see V. I. Lenin, PSS, v. 38, p. 435).

The "Russian Robespierre" did not fall to the guillotine, but it is known that his wife N. K. Krupskaya suggested that Lenin could have been counted among the repressed in the years of the Stalin purges. After the death of the leader of the revolution, power in Soviet Russia, as in France in 1794, passed to a Thermidorian "Directorate" - to the more right(-wing) "NEPist communists", in the service of whom there were several former Mensheviks of pro-market inclination. The polemic which broke out around Trotsky's assessment of the Great October, testifies that the majority of the "new Thermidorians" in essence held "old Bolshevik" views?

When the NEP was replaced at the end of the 1920s, there arrived a Russian Soviet bureaucracy headed by I. V. Stalin, who embodied many features of Napoleon I and even to an extent of Napoleon II. The specific Russian Bonapartism (which has led many astray, up to the present day) consisted in the Soviet "Napoleon" bringing a limit to the development of the revolution, introducing a regime of "State Socialism" to the USSR. 'State Socialism' had been planned already in the 19th century by the saint-simonists, Rodbertus and others; it was a model of a society which Engels mercilessly criticized in the last years of his life. However, the fundamental characteristics of Bonapartism, described by Marx in the work 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx/Engels Works, v. 8 p. 115-217), can be seen in its special, Soviet variant. Here we have the cult of personality based on the "traditional faith of the people", and the "immense inner revolution" on its being discredited (op. cit. v.16, p. 376). Here is "the executive power and its immense bureaucratic and military organization", in which "every mutual interest is immediately torn from society, opposed to it as the high, general interest, torn from the sphere of the initiative of members of the society, and made an object of governmental activity, starting from the bridges, school buildings and communal property of any sort of village commune and ending with the rail roads, national property and state universities." The Russian revolution, like the Great French revolution "had to develop farther that which the absolute monarchy had started - centralization, but together with that it extended the capacity, attributes and number of the accomplices of government power" (ibid., v. 8, p.207). Stalin, like Napoleon, "completed this state machine" (ibid), and like Napoleon, he laid the basis of a new court-legal system, introduced a new administrative-territorial division, etc.

Under Stalin the industrialization of the country was instituted, as in the 19th century in France Napoleon III completed the industrial revolution. Stalin's leadership, as Bonaparte's rested on the peasantry, but in distinction from the latter, not on the parcelled peasant - the small owners (although in the middle 20s Stalin himself fluctuated), but on the peasants who possessed little, with strong communal relics, which even under NEP had constituted the majority of the village population. This explains the final success of collectivization of agriculture, which permitted the temporary preservation of the peasantry's special class status.

In connection with this one can recall the place in the letter of F. Engels to K. Kautsky of 15 February 1884: "Someone should take the trouble to expose state socialism, which is spreading like a plague; one can take its model in Java, where it flourishes in practice ? on a state basis the Dutch organized production based on the communism of the ancient rural community, thus guaranteeing the people a completely comfortable existence (as they understood it). This resulted in the people being held at the stage of primitive limitation, but the benefit to the Dutch state coffers is 70 million marks annually (now, probably more). The case is interesting in the highest degree and one can easily draw practical lessons from it. Among others, this is proof that the primitive communism in Java, as in India and Russia forms at the present time a splendid, very broad basis for exploitation and despotism (until it is shaken up by the elements of modern communism). In the conditions of modern society, it is a glaring anachronism, which either must be eliminated or developed further..." (Marx/Engels Works, v. 36, pp. 96-97).

Of course, in the Soviet Union there was another "case" of "state socialism", spread not by colonizers in a backward country with predominantly primitive natural economy, but by the VKP(b) (All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)) with the goal of the rapid and massive proletarianization of the peasantry with the least resistance. At the same time the practice of Soviet "state socialism" confirmed that the institution of community, even having been transformed into collective farms, would remain the basis of [external] exploitation and despotism.

Collectivisation permitted the Bolsheviks to carry out as well the cultural revolution in the countryside necessary for industrialization. The further development of the old Russian community into a progressive agricultural commune proved impossible because of, first, its semi-decayed state, and, second, the absence of adjacent non-commodity socialism (modern European post-capitalist communism); therefore precisely the collectivisation enabled the gradual but final disappearance of the community and the pumping of more than 30 million workers from the village to the town.

The resemblance of the processes of the bourgeois transformation of France and Russia continued right up to Yeltsin's time. Boris Nikolayevich repeated almost every step of Louis Bonaparte. At first he too was selected president, then he broke up and shot the parliament, and he gave the country a new authoritarian constitution, all this using the recurrent Napoleonic-Stalinist ideas of a strong and unlimited government headed by a resolute personality. Under Yeltsin, as under Napoleon III, power was closely intertwined with the criminal world. Boris Nikolayevich, as opposed to Louis Bonaparte, did not become emperor, but he conducted a pro-imperial policy, and with the same result: if Napoleon III embarrassed himself in Mexico, then Yeltsin did in Chechnya.

The ultimate characterization given by Marx to the French revolution of 1848, considering the results of Louis Bonaparte's coming to power, is completely appropriate to apply to August Revolution of 1991: "However every slightly observant person, even if he has not followed the French events step by step, should have a presentiment that this revolution has in prospect an unheard of disgrace. It would be enough to listen to the complacent triumphant yapping of Mssrs democrats, who have congratulated themselves on the (expected) abundant results..." (Marx/Engels, Works, v.8, p.120).

However, there are enough real differences in the histories of France and Russia. Stalin conducted a social imperialist policy in relation to certain small peoples and neighbouring states, extending and strengthening the Soviet Union, but he was not defeated, as was Napoleon, but on the contrary he defeated the Nazi aggressor in the world war. In France after the collapse of Napoleon I the European reaction temporarily restored the monarchy, but this has not yet happened in Russia. It's not necessary to emphasize again that the basic difference was, finally, in the elimination by the radical Russian revolution both of the nobility in total, and the old bourgeois class, while in France the matter was restricted to the extirpation and expulsion of the landed aristocracy.

The main thing however seems to be that in the 20th century in Russia that thing occurred, against which Marx and Engels warned the European revolutionaries: "In France the proletarians will come to power not alone, but along with the peasants and the petty bourgeois, and will be obliged to carry out not their own measures, but those of the other classes." (Marx/Engels, Works, vol. 8, page. 585). "...on one beautiful morning our party, due to the helplessness and limpness of the other parties will come to power, in order to finally carry out all of those things which immediately address not our own interests, but the general revolutionary and specific petty bourgeois interests; in this case, pressured by the proletarian masses, constrained by our own party struggle with printed declarations and plans, which to a well known extent will be misconstrued and rashly pushed forward, we will be obliged to conduct communist experiments and run races, knowing full well how untimely they are. In addition we will lose our heads, we must hope only in the physical sense - the reaction will set in, and before the world will be in a position to give a historical assessment of similar events, we will be considered, monsters to be cursed, or fools, which is worse. It's hard to imagine another perspective" (ibid., v. 28, pp. 490-491). Sad to say, Lenin did not at all like this, and when they brought him similar expressions of the classics, he contemptuously called them "Punch's citations" (PSS, v. 9, p.409).

"State Socialism" as a Catching-up Capitalism

As far back as in 1849, Karl Marx, clarifying the bases of the capitalist formation, noted: "The existence of the class that owns nothing, except its capacity for labour, is a necessary prerequisite of capital? Capital presupposes wage labour, but wage labour presupposes capital. They mutually cause each other, they mutually generate each other" (K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, 2nd Russian Ed., v. 6, pp. 443-444). Today, from the height of a new, post-Soviet epoch it is definitively clear that on the whole in the Union of Soviet "Socialist" Republics, under specific historical conditions, there occurred economic processes of the same sort. Having put the economy of the country during the NEP on a self-supporting, cost-accounting capitalist basis and thereby having anew restored, with the help of private capitalists, the working proletariat, the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Stalin then definitively abolished the class of private owners which was hindering them. Hereafter the restored wage labour was called upon to generate state capital under the signboard of "socialism".

In 1891 the German Social Democrats, influenced by F. Engels, inserted the following thesis into the Erfurt Programme of their party: "The Social-democratic party has nothing in common with the so-called state socialism, i.e. the system of statification with the fiscal ends in view which puts the State on the place of private entrepreneur and hereunder unites in one hands the power of economic exploitation and political oppressing of workers." (see K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, v. 22, p. 623). Neither the programme of the Russian Social-democratic Labour Party which was common to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, nor the programme of the Russian Communist party (Bolsheviks) contained a similar thesis, and the Russian Marxists almost did not take up this question at all (neither have done, alas, the Marxists-Leninists up to our days). Meanwhile the society created by efforts of the Russian Bolsheviks and their epigones proved to be exactly the practical embodiment of this well-known non-Marxist model of pseudo-socialism, but in reality - of state-capitalist monopolism. The Soviet Union never was either a socialist state, as the Stalinists maintain, or the degenerated workers' state, as the majority of Trotskyites believes. As a result of nationalization a state monopoly on means of production and exchange came into existence in the country, which is far from being equal to the socialization of property. As Karl Marx foresaw, "such abolition of private property is by no means a true mastering of it", for such sort of "communism" "community is only the community of labour and equality of wages paid by the communal capital, by commune as a common capitalist. Both sides of the interrelation are lifted on the stage of the imagined community: labour - as the destination of everyone, and capital - as the recognized community and strength of the whole society" (see K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, v. 42, p. 114; written in April 1844).

In the USSR the class structure of society was preserved, including the industrial working class, state-farm semi-proletariat and constantly reducing neo-communitarian collective-farm peasantry. Under the circumstances the role of the bourgeoisie was played by the politically dominating class of party-state bureaucracy ("nomenklatura"), which performed, according to Engels, "public official function of total aggregate entrepreneur" (Marx and Engels, op. cit., v. 20, p. 185). There were preserved the exchange of commodities between the state-owned sector of production and the collective-farm & co-operative one, the retail trade and other attributes of commodity-money economy. Whereas V. I. Lenin himself said: "We set ourselves as an object the equality as the abolition of classes. Then it is necessary to do away with the class difference between workers and peasants too. This is precisely our object. Society, which has preserved the class difference between workers and peasants, is neither communist, nor socialist society" (see V. I. Lenin, PSS, v. 38, p. 353). "The object is to create socialism, to do away with the division of society into classes, to make all society members toilers, to take away the ground of any exploitation of man by man" (op. cit., p. 385)". As a result of the NEP the country is to "come to the correct socialist exchange of products between the industry and agriculture", he believed (see V. I. Lenin, PSS, v. 44, p. 8), only then "it is possible to consider that the foundation of the socialist economy has been laid" (op. cit., p. 502), moreover "the transition from the money to the non-money exchange of products is unquestionable. That this transition may be successfully completed, it is necessary that the exchange of products should be realized (not the exchange of commodities)" (see op. cit., v. 52, p. 22).

The purpose of state socialism, as F. Engels pointed out, is "to transform the possibly greater number of proletarians into officials and retirees dependent on the state and to organize alongside with the disciplined army of soldiers and officials the same army of workers". "Compulsory elections under the supervision of an authority nominated by the state, instead of factory taskmasters - a fine socialism", he was indignant (K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, v. 35, p. 140). All this was in the USSR. During all seven decades of existence of this state the character of labour of workers in it remained hired - the administration hired workmen and was possessed of real power, and not the the reverse. Surplus product was estranged by the state apparatus and by it it was redistributed. In its turn, this stimulated [encouraged] the constant growth of those vast non-productive strata of population which Karl Marx called "'ideological' orders" and "the class of servants" (see K. Marx, F. Engels. Selected Works in 9 volumes. V.7. - Moscow: Politizdat, 1987, pp.414-415 [it's in the First Book of "Capital", Ch. XIII - "Machines and Large-scale Industry" - translator's note].) Only in contrast to England of 1861 "a perfect result of the capitalist exploitation of machines" was here the upkeep of almost all the 'servants' at the expense of the state. Taking into account this state of society, the "Social Status" column of Soviet questionary forms provided for only three categories of citizens: workers, collective farmers and "servants", the latter covering both the bourgeoisie-substituting "nomenklatura" and all the servants subordinate to it, including the so-called 'intelligentsia'.

Whereas Marx warned: "None of the forms of hired labour, though one of them can eliminate defects of another, is able to eliminate the defects of itself the system of hired labour" (see op. cit., v. 46, p. 62). If hired labour constantly reproduces capital, then some time or other those will appear who want to own this capital "as is customary" - on the rights of private property.

The monopoly-state mode of production that became firmly established in the course of realization of the model of "state socialism" and was based on wage labour in industry, services sector and large segment of agriculture - that peculiar state capitalism, which, according to V. I. Lenin, "no Marx and no Marxists could foresee" - proved in fact to be the road of backward, half-Asiatic, Russia to the modern capitalism. But then again, it was exactly K. Marx who had noted the existence of "the state mode of production in former epochs of Russian history" (see K. Marx, F. Engels. Selected Works in 9 volumes. V.8. - Moscow: Politizdat, 1987, p.109 [it's in the so-called Second Book of "Capital" - "The process of circulation of capital", Ch. IV - "Three figures of the process of circular movement" - translator's note]), so such a recurrence of traditionalism in the country was not something unexpected for the truly Marxist science.

The Party-managerial "nomenklatura" has carried out the objectively progressive task of organizing large-scale industry and integrating it with the collective-farm & co-operative sector into a single national-economic complex; thus there were overcome the economic orders, which the multinational country had inherited from feudalism and even pre-feudal modes of production. At the same time itself the "nomenklatura", as it has been said above, temporarily rallied into a dominating class, which, as F. Engels noted, had taken place more than once in the Asiatic history when "exercise of some public official function was in the basis of political domination" (see K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, v. 20, p. 185-186 [it's in Engels's "Anti-Dühring", Ch. "Theory of Violence. End" - translator's note])

However during the years of "socialist construction" a huge managerial system with its all-penetrating bureaucratic planning was created, and it was efficient only under two main circumstances: with not very substantial nomenclature and assortment of industrial products and with substantial volumes of cheap, with half-serfdom relapses, labour of collective farmers and of half-slave labour of millions confined in corrective-labor camps, which allowed instead of army of unemployed to restrain the increase of cost of labour power and understate its real price on the monopoly labour market. As these two factors were disappearing the administrative-command system was more and more skidding with each new five-year plan and by the mid-1980s it has stopped out and out. It was in the so-called "perestroika", i.e. in transition to the model of "market socialism" after the example of China, that the Party-State elite first attempted to find a way out of the impasse thus arisen, but it became immediately clear that in this process the most of the "nomenklatura" did not want to waive their privileges and their habitual half-parasitic way of life in general, which would be inevitable. Then there spread a struggle, in the course of which the "perestroikaites" raised the standard of "democracy and glasnost (openness) " - to be sure, the one of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois openness - and tried to win round all those who were discontented with the system inclusive of the most exploited part of the working class, thus having roused them to political activity. At the same time the part of the vehicle of market reforms was assigned to the socially active bourgeois intelligentsia, which earlier had been diligently serving the needs of the class of bourgeois bureaucracy.

It was in the course of the perestroika struggle that the most mature part of the "nomenklatura" had fully realized by the beginning of the 1990s the final trend of development of its class-exploiting interest and, by the use of bourgeois liberal democrats, it set to privatize everything that had been created in the USSR under its leadership. Thus in Russia there was completed the epoch of the bourgeois democratic revolution in its broad sense - the one which had been begun by the Revolution of 1905 and was finished by the August political revolution of 1991. And, paraphrasing Engels, one can say that the political domination of the class of bourgeois bureaucracy, i.e. of the "nomenklatura", lasted as long as "it performed this very public official function of total [aggregate] entrepreneur" (ibid). The transitional state mode of production based on wage labour was succeeded by a standard market-monopolistic capitalism; despite the hopes of Stalinists, the law of value gained its next convincing victory in the sphere of commodity economy, thus having proved the groundlessness of any commodity-money "models" of non-Marxist socialism - both state and market ones.

Post-Soviet Russia

With this change of modes of production within the frame of commodity economy the former single exploiting class of bourgeois bureaucracy has made room for a usual spectrum of bourgeois strata and classes proper to the developed capitalism: financial oligarchy, bureaucratic bourgeoisie, trade [commercial] and industrial bourgeoisie. The class of the state-maintained servants has begun to decompose too. One part of it has reinforced the ranks of new exploiters, another one constitutes the basis of a vast stratum of the urban petty bourgeoisie which has been among the first to emerge, the third one is sinking into the proletariat or approaching [to] it from the point of view of its living conditions. There is a steady process of class delimitation in the country-side: the specific class of the collective-farm peasantry is quickly disappearing, classes of new agricultural workers, private farmers, big landowners are emerging. The legalization of the private ownership of land at the same time as of other means of agricultural production catalyzes this process.

The present political system of Russia - for all its obvious crisis-riddenness - is very advantageous for the whole bourgeoisie at large, seeing as all without exception large parties and associations - from the far right nazis to the allegedly left pseudo-communists - reflect in the end the economic and political interests of the rival groups of the dominating class, i.e. of the state-owned and private capital.

In 1990s the state power of Russia is in hands of the bloc of non-productive strata of the bourgeoisie - of the top bureaucracy and financial oligarchy supported by those traders who are engaged in export of raw materials and import of consumer goods. This bloc has full control over the sphere of money circulation in the country exploiting it in its purely speculative interests. The part of surplus value which remains at the disposal of the productive bourgeoisie is hardly enough for the maintenance of reproduction and its own insatiable consumption, so the proletariat - the producer of surplus value and the source of the whole of profit - is even deprived of wages funds. Thus the "patriotically spirited home commodity producers" - bourgeois ones - have invented a new kind of extorting absolute surplus value besides the extension of the working day and intensification of labour: introducing a system of voluntary servility of exploiting workers they reduce the necessary labour time to a minimum, but bring the surplus labour time to a maximum.

The whole activity of the ruling comprador bloc bears an openly parasitic and antinational character. That's why the factions of the bourgeoisie opposing it try to rally themselves and to lead under the chauvinistic slogans the possibly greater part of indigent and poor strata and classes (in robbery of which they have participated and are still participating). To promote this are called various combinations of 'state-patriotic' coalitions aiming for forming a bourgeois bloc of "patriot-professionals" from the former nomenklatura-CPSU politicians, regional elites, officials of middle and lower sections, industrialists and traders in the area of home industry, representatives of restricted small and middle business etc. In addition, the weakness of true communist internationalist forces result in the fact that the right-wing reactionaries more and more devour the political space to the left of the centre. Thus, not only "Red and White" alliances like 'the Communist Party of Russian Federation - People's Patriotic Forces of Russia' are created by their efforts, but also even "Red and Brown" ones as it has been in the case of the neo-CPSU "Trudovaya Rossiya" ["Labour Russia" headed by Victor Anpilov -translator's comment] and the fascist-like "National Bolshevist Party" [headed by Eduard Limonov - translator's comment]. No wonder that ultimately the great-powerism, Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism, defence of the "Orthodox spirituality» and any other Black-Hundredism of this sort become the common ideological platform of such-like associations and not Marxism-Leninism!

After having ousted the compradors from power the "people's patriotic forces" will try, in a protectionist manner, to create an effective market economy by means of rehabilitation of domestic industry and substantial strengthening of regulating role of the bourgeois state. Sure, the capitalist character of such economy would be then camouflaged as it now takes place in Byelorussia, and the agitators with red fillets would persistently call the completely impoverished toilers to unity with businessmen "in the name of rebirth of the Motherland". The most suitable thing for the national bourgeoisie in such a situation would be a tough political regime in the form of personal or, which is better, party dictatorship of right-wing trend. And it is quite able to come into being, and in any packing: White, "Red", Black, Brown, but most likely - in a mixed one. One can well understand that the extreme variant here is Nazism.

To our mind, the tasks of the proletariat and Marxist intellectuals in this situation are the development of an uncompromising class struggle against all the factions of the bourgeoisie - from the compradors to the national-patriots and their political attenders of any party colours; creation of genuine class workers' trade unions and rallying of the proletarian vanguard into a strong influential Marxist Labour party with a view to accomplish the genuine, international, worldwide socialist revolution and thus to abolish the whole system of commodity-money economy, class-exploiting structure of society and, consequently, any relations of social domination and subjection, the institution of the State.

At the same time the first step on this path may be the undivided power of that part of the proletariat which has been organized by the large-scale production and enlightened in Marxism, the power which it would establish in the course of radical social revolution, i.e. the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. Only the socialist working class - the producer of the absolute majority of wealth [material values] in the present epoch - has the right to arming in order to avoid attempts of counterrevolution and restoration of old orders from anyone's side.

While the working class is in need of the state of this sort, the power in it must belong to it undividedly and directly - such is one of the main lessons of the defeat of Leninism.

[Translated from Russian by Mark Harris (the IWW, USA) and Dmitriy Fomin (the MLP, Russia) in 2001]

Footnote

The previous article in this series focussed on the debate on ‘proletarian culture’ in the early years of the Russian revolution. Our article also served as an introduction to an extract from Trotsky’s book Literature and Revolution, which in our view presents the clearest framework for approaching this debate and outlining the policies of a proletarian political power towards the sphere of art and culture.

The following extracts, which are accompanied by our own comments, are taken from the final chapter of the same book, where Trotsky outlines his vision of art and culture in the developed communist society of the future. Having rejected the notion of ‘proletarian culture’ in previous chapters, Trotsky permits himself a glimpse of the truly human culture of classless society; it is a glimpse which takes us far beyond the particular question of art to the prospect of a transfigured humanity.

Ours is by no means the first attempt to present this final chapter and draw out its significance. In his monumental biography of Trotsky, Deutscher quotes large segments of it and concludes: “His vision of the classless society had, of course, been implicit in all marxist thought influenced as it was by French Utopian socialism. But no marxist writer before or after Trotsky has viewed the great prospect with so realistic an eye and so flaming an imagination” (p 197, ‘Not by politics alone’, The Prophet Unarmed, OUP edition).

More recently, Richard Stites, in his far ranging survey of the social-experimental currents that accompanied the early days of the Russian revolution, again draws a connection between Trotsky’s vision and the utopian tradition. Summing up the chapter in a single dense paragraph, Stites refers to it as “The mini-utopia or capsule project of a world under communism” which, he says, Trotsky describes “in a tone of controlled lyricism”. For Stites, this was “an extraordinary endorsement of the experimental utopianism that characterised the 1920s”; Revolutionary Dreams, Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, OUP, 1989, p 168). But here we must take care: as Stites explains in his introduction, the author of this work tends to counter-pose the utopian trend to the marxist one, so that in a sense he is endorsing Trotsky’s approach in so far as it is utopian rather than marxist. For more conventional bourgeois thought, however, marxism is utopianism – but only in the most negative sense, signifying that its vision of the future is nothing but pie in the sky. But for now, we are going to let Trotsky speak, and we can consider whether or not his work deserves to be described as utopian at the conclusion of this article.

Art in the revolution, and art in communist society

The chapter begins by reiterating the essential argument of the chapter on proletarian culture: that the aim of the proletarian revolution is not to create a brand new ‘proletarian culture’ but to synthesise the best of all past cultural achievements into a genuinely human culture. Trotsky’s distinction between revolutionary art and socialist art reflects this precision:

“Revolutionary art, which inevitably reflects all the contradictions of a revolutionary social system, should not be confused with socialist art for which no basis has as yet been made. On the other hand, one must not forget that socialist art will grow out of the art of this transition period.

In insisting on such a distinction, we are not at all guided by a pedantic consideration of an abstract programme. Not for nothing did Engels speak of the socialist revolution as a leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The revolution itself is not as yet the kingdom of freedom. On the contrary, it is developing the features of ‘necessity’ to the greatest degree. Socialism will abolish class antagonisms, as well as classes, but the revolution carries the class struggle to its highest tension. During the period of revolution, only that literature which promotes the consolidation of the workers in their struggle against the exploiters is necessary and progressive. Revolutionary literature cannot but be imbued with a spirit of social hatred, which is a creative historic factor in an epoch of proletarian dictatorship. Under socialism, solidarity will be the basis of society. Literature and art will be tuned to a different key. All the emotions which we revolutionists, at the present time, feel apprehensive of naming—so much have they been worn thin by hypocrites and vulgarians—such as disinterested friendship, love for one's neighbour, sympathy, will be the mighty ringing chords of socialist poetry”.

Along with Rosa Luxemburg we may question Trotsky’s affirmation of “social hatred”, even in the period of the proletarian dictatorship. This notion is connected to the concept of the Red Terror, which Trotsky also defended, but which the Spartakusbund explicitly rejected in its programme (1).

But there is no doubt at all that “solidarity will be the basis of society” in the socialist future. This leads Trotsky to consider the argument that such an “excess of solidarity” would be inimical to artistic creation:

"However, does not an excess of solidarity, as the Nietzscheans fear, threaten to degenerate man into a sentimental, passive, herd animal? Not at all. The powerful force of competition, which in bourgeois society has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a socialist society, but, to use the language of psychoanalysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form. There will be the struggle for one's opinion, for one's project, for one's taste. In the measure in which political struggles will be eliminated—and in a society where there will be no classes, there will be no such struggles—the liberated passions will be channeled into technique, into construction, which also includes art. Art then will become more general, will mature, will become tempered, and will become the most perfect method of the progressive building of life in every field. It will not be merely ‘pretty’ without relation to anything else. All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theatres, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into ‘parties’ over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will exist too), over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theatre, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports. Such parties will not be poisoned by the greed of class or caste. All will be equally interested in the success of the whole. The struggle will have a purely ideological character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of ‘competition’ in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate. And as all problems in a socialist society—the problems of life which formerly were solved spontaneously and automatically, and the problems of art which were in the custody of special priestly castes— will become the property of all people; one can say with certainty that collective interests and passions and individual competition will have the widest scope and the most unlimited opportunity. Art, therefore, will not suffer the lack of any such explosions of collective, nervous energy, and of such collective psychic impulses which make for the creation of new artistic tendencies and for changes in style. It will be the æsthetic schools around which ‘parties’ will collect, that is, associations of temperaments, of tastes and of moods. In a struggle so disinterested and tense, which will take place in a culture whose foundations are steadily rising, the human personality, with its invaluable basic trait of continual discontent, will grow and become polished at all its points. In truth, we have no reason to fear that there will be a decline of individuality or an impoverishment of art in a socialist society”.

Trotsky then goes on to consider what style or school of art would be most appropriate to a revolutionary period. To some extent these considerations have a more local and temporary significance, in that they refer to schools of art which have long since disappeared, such as symbolism and futurism. In addition, as capitalism has sunk further and further into decadence, as commercialism, egotism and atomisation have plumbed new depths, artistic movements and schools as such have more or less disappeared. Indeed, by the 1930s,Trotsky’s manifesto of the projected International Federation of Revolutionary Artists and Writers, written in conjunction with Andre Breton and Diego Rivera, had already anticipated this tendency: “the artistic schools of the last decades, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, have superceded each other without any of them coming to fruition…It is impossible to find a way out of this impasse by artistic means alone. This is a crisis of the entire civilization…If contemporary society does not succeed in reconstructing itself, art will inevitably perish as Greek art perished under the ruins of slave civilization”. Of course it is very probable that a future revolutionary social upheaval will give a new impetus to more collective movements of artists who identify with the revolution, and who will no doubt draw inspiration from the schools of the past without slavishly imitating them. Let us just say that while Trotsky opted for the term “realism” to define the art of the revolutionary period, he did not therefore reject the positive contributions of particular schools even when –as in the case of symbolism for example – their concerns had been far removed from the social issues of the day and even tended towards a flight from reality (2):

“The new artist will need all the methods and processes evolved in the past, as well as a few supplementary ones, in order to grasp the new life. And this is not going to be artistic eclecticism, because the unity of art is created by an active world‑attitude and active life‑attitude”.

This is consistent with Trotsky’s more general view on culture which we examined in the last article, and which was opposed to the pseudo-leftism which wanted to jettison everything inherited from the past.

Trotsky applied the same method to the problem of fundamental literary forms such as tragedy and comedy. Against those who saw no place for tragedy or comedy in the art of the future, Trotsky provides us with a method for examining the manner in which particular cultural productions are connected to the more general historical evolution of social formations. Ancient Greek tragedy had expressed the impersonal domination of the gods over man, which in turn reflected man’s relative helplessness before nature in the archaic modes of production; Shakespearean tragedy, on the other hand, which was deeply connected to the birth pangs of bourgeois society, represented a step forward because it focussed on more individual human emotions:

“Having broken up human relations into atoms, bourgeois society, during the period of its rise, had a great aim for itself. Personal emancipation was its name. Out of it grew the dramas of Shakespeare and Goethe's Faust. Man placed himself in the centre of the universe, and therefore in the centre of art also. This theme sufficed for centuries. In reality, all modern literature has been nothing but an enlargement of this theme.

But to the degree in which the internal bankruptcy of bourgeois society was revealed as a result of its unbearable contradictions, the original purpose, the emancipation and qualification of the individual faded away and was relegated more and more into the sphere of a new mythology, without soul or spirit”.

Trotsky then shows that the conditions which give rise to tragedy are not limited to the past, but will continue to exist far into the future, because man (as Marx put it) is by definition a suffering being, confronted with the perpetual conflict between his limitless strivings and the objective universe that confronts him:

“However the conflict between what is personal and what is beyond the personal, can take place, not only in the sphere of religion, but in the sphere of a human passion that is larger than the individual. The super‑personal element is, above all, the social element. So long as man will not have mastered his social organization, the latter will hang over him as his fate. Whether at the same time society casts a religious shadow or not, is a secondary matter and depends upon the degree of man's helplessness. Babeuf's struggle for communism, in a society which was not yet ready for it, was a struggle of a classic hero with his fate. Babeuf's destiny had all the characteristics of true tragedy, just as the fate of the Gracchi had whose name Babeuf used. Tragedy based on detached personal passions is too flat for our days. Why? Because we live in a period of social passions. The tragedy of our period lies in the conflict between the individual and the collectivity, or in the conflict between two hostile collectivities in the same individual.

Our age is an age of great aims. This is what stamps it. But the grandeur of these aims lies in man's effort to free himself from mystic and from every other intellectual vagueness and in his effort to reconstruct society and himself in accord with his own plan. This, of course, is much bigger than the child's play of the ancients which was becoming to their childish age, or the mediæval ravings of monks, or the arrogance of individualism which tears personality away from the collectivity, and then, draining it to the very bottom, pushes it off into the abyss of pessimism, or sets it on all fours before the remounted bull Apis.

Tragedy is a high expression of literature because it implies the heroic tenacity of strivings, of limitless aims, of conflicts and sufferings…. One cannot tell whether revolutionary art will succeed in producing ‘high’ revolutionary tragedy. But socialist art will revive tragedy. Without God, of course. The new art will be atheist. It will also revive comedy, because the new man of the future will want to laugh. It will give new life to the novel. It will grant all rights to lyrics, because the new man will love in a better and stronger way than did the old people, and he will think about the problems of birth and death.

The new art will revive all the old forms which arose in the course of the development of the creative spirit. The disintegration and decline of these forms are not absolute, that is, they do not mean that these forms are absolutely incompatible with the spirit of the new age. All that is necessary is for the poet of the new epoch to re‑think in a new way the thoughts of mankind, and to re‑feel its feelings”.

What is striking about the approach Trotsky adopts in this section is how closely it conforms to the way that Marx poses very similar question in the Grundrisse – the draft for Capital, which was not published until 1939, and which in all probability Trotsky himself had never read. Like Trotsky, Marx is concerned with the dialectic between changes in forms of artistic expression, connected to the material evolution of the productive forces, and the underlying human content of these forms. The passage is so thought-provoking that it is well worth quoting in full:

“In the case of the arts, it is well known that certain periods of their flowering are out of all proportion to the general development of society, hence also to the material foundation, the skeletal structure as it were, of its organisation. For example, the Greeks compared to the moderns or also Shakespeare. It is even recognised that certain forms of art, e.g. the epic, can no longer be produced in their world epoch-making, classical stature as soon as the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at an undeveloped stage of artistic development. If this is the case with the relation between different kinds of art within the realm of the arts, it is already less puzzling that it is the case in the relation of the entire realm to the general development of society. The difficulty consists only in the general formulation of these contradictions. As soon as they have been specified, they are already clarified.

Let us take e.g. the relation of Greek art and then of Shakespeare to the present time. It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation. Is the view of nature and social relations on which Greek imagination and hence Greek mythology is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? What chance has Vulcan against Roberts and Co., Jupiter against the lightening rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them. What becomes of Fama alongside Printing House Square? Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i.e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an unconsciously artistic way by the popular imagination. This is its material. Not any mythology whatever, i.e. not an arbitrarily chosen unconsciously artistic reworking of nature (here meaning everything objective, hence including society). Egyptian mythology could never have been the foundation or the womb of Greek art. But in any case, a mythology. Hence, in no way a social development which excludes all mythological, all mythologizing relations to nature; which therefore demands of the artist an imagination not dependent on mythology.

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and an unattainable model.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naivete, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art is not for us in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society in which it grew. It is its result, rather, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with the fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, and could alone arise, can never return” (Introduction, p 111, Penguin edition).

In both these passages, there is a clearly shared starting point: to understand any particular artistic form, it must be located in its general historical context, and thus in the context of the evolution of man’s productive forces. It is this which enables us to understand the profound alterations which art has undergone in different historical epochs. But just as Trotsky also understands that the tragic dimension will never be entirely absent from art because it will never be entirely absent from the human condition, so Marx observes that the real theoretical challenge lies less in recognising that artistic forms are bound up with the forms of social development than in understanding why the creative achievement’s of man’s “childhood” can still resonate across the ages to present and future humanity. In other words, without reverting back to the “dumb genus” of Feuerbach, or the idealised mankind of bourgeois moralists, how can the study of art help us to discover the truly fundamental characteristics of human life activity, and thus of the human species as such?

The unification of art and industry

Trotsky now turns to the practical relationship between art, industry and construction in the revolutionary period. He focuses in particular on the field of architecture, the meeting point between art and construction. Of course, at this level poverty-stricken Russia was still mainly limited to repairing ruined buildings and pavements. But despite its extremely modest resources, revolutionary Russia had sought to develop a new synthesis of art and practical building; this was especially the case with the constructivist school around Tatlin, who is perhaps best remembered for designing the monument to the Third International. But Trotsky appeared dissatisfied with these experiments and stressed that no real reconstruction could take place until the fundamental economic problems had been resolved (and this could not of course be accomplished in Russia alone). He thus appears to commit himself more to examining the possibilities for the generalised fusion of art and construction in the communist future, once the fundamental political, military and economic problems of the revolution had been resolved. For Trotsky, this was a project that would not involve a minority of specialists, but would be a collective effort:

“There is no doubt that, in the future—and the farther we go, the more true it will be—such monumental tasks as the planning of city gardens, of model houses, of railroads, and of ports, will interest vitally not only engineering architects, participators in competitions, but the large popular masses as well. The imperceptible, ant‑like piling up of quarters and streets, brick by brick, from generation to generation, will give way to titanic constructions of city‑villages, with map and compass in hand. Around this compass will be formed true peoples' parties, the parties of the future for special technology and construction, which will agitate passionately, hold meetings and vote. In this struggle, architecture will again be filled with the spirit of mass feelings and moods, only on a much higher plane, and mankind will educate itself plastically, it will become accustomed to look at the world as submissive clay for sculpting the most perfect forms of life. The wall between art and industry will come down. The great style of the future will be formative, not ornamental. Here the Futurists are right. But it would be wrong to look at this as a liquidating of art, as a voluntary giving way to technique…

Does this mean that industry will absorb art, or that art will lift industry up to itself on Olympus? This question can be answered either way, depending on whether the problem is approached from the side of industry, or from the side of art. But in the object attained, there is no difference between either answer. Both answers signify a gigantic expansion of the scope and artistic quality of industry, and we understand here, under industry, the entire field without excepting the industrial activity of man; mechanical and electrified agriculture will also become part of industry”.

Here Trotsky offers us a concretisation of the original vision of Marx in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: man, when freed from alienated labour, will build a world “ in accordance with the laws of beauty”(4)

The landscapes of the future

Trotsky now begins to move towards the crescendo of his vision, permitting himself a very graphic depiction of the cities and landscapes of the future:

“The wall will fall not only between art and industry, but simultaneously between art and nature also. This is not meant in the Sense of Jean Jacques Rousseau, that art will come nearer to a state of nature, but that nature will become more ‘artificial’. The present distribution of mountains and rivers, of fields, of meadows, of steppes, of forests, and of seashores, cannot be considered final. Man has already made changes in the map of nature that are not few nor insignificant. But they are mere pupils' practice in comparison with what is coming. Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and artistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re‑registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in nature. In the end, he will have rebuilt the earth, if not in his own image, at least according to his own taste. We have not the slightest fear that this taste will be bad.

The jealous, scowling Kliuev declares, in his quarrel with Mayakovsky, that ‘it does not behove a maker of songs to bother about cranes’, and that it is ‘only in the furnace of the heart, and in no other furnace, that the purple gold of life is melted.’ Ivanov‑Razumnik, a populist, who was once a left Social‑Revolutionist‑—and this tells the whole story—also took a hand in this quarrel. Ivanov-Razumnik declares that the poetry of the hammer and the machine, in whose name Mayakovsky speaks, is a transient episode, but that the poetry of ‘God‑made Earth’ is ‘the eternal poetry of the world’. Earth and the machine are here contrasted as the eternal and temporary sources of poetry, and of course the eminent idealist, the tasteless and cautious semi‑mystic Razumnik, prefers the eternal to the transient. But, in truth, this dualism of earth and machine is false; one can contrast a backward peasant field with a flour mill, either on a plantation, or in a socialist society. The poetry of the earth is not eternal, but changeable, and man began to sing articulate songs only after he had placed between himself and the earth implements and instruments which were the first simple machines. There would have been no Koltzov without a scythe, a plough or a sickle. Does that mean that the earth with a scythe has the advantage of eternity over the earth with an electric plough? The new man, who is only now beginning to plan and to realize himself, will not contrast a barn‑floor for grouse and a dragnet for sturgeons with a crane and a steam‑hammer, as does Kliuev and Razumnik after him. Through the machine, man in socialist society will command nature in its entirety, with its grouse and its sturgeons. He will point out places for mountains and for passes. He will change the course of the rivers, and he will lay down rules for the oceans. The idealist simpletons may say that this will be a bore, but that is why they are simpletons. Of course this does not mean that the entire globe will be marked off into boxes, that the forests will be turned into parks and gardens. Most likely, thickets and forests and grouse and tigers will remain, but only where man commands them to remain. And man will do it so well that the tiger won't even notice the machine, or feel the change, but will live as he lived in primeval times. The machine is not in opposition to the earth. The machine is the instrument of modern man in every field of life. The present‑day city is transient. But it will not be dissolved back again into the old village. On the contrary, the village will rise in fundamentals to the plane of the city. Here lies the principal task. The city is transient, but it points to the future, and indicates the road. The present village is entirely of the past”.

In this passage there is a prescient rebuttal of the modern day primitivists who blame ‘technology’ for all the ills of social life and seek to return to an Arcadian dream of simplicity before the snake of technology entered the garden: as we have shown elsewhere (see for example our article on ecology in IR 64), this actually means a regression to a pre-human past and thus the elimination of mankind. Trotsky has no doubt that it is the city that points the way forward. But not in its present form: since he recognises that the present-day city is a transient phenomenon, we can be sure that he is fully in line with Marx and Engel’s notion of a new synthesis between town and country. And this notion has nothing in common with the devastating urbanisation of the globe which capitalism is currently inflicting on humanity; thus Trotsky envisages the deliberate preservation of the wilderness as part of an overall plan for the management of planet. Today the degradation of environment, not least the threat posed by the destruction of the great forests, has emphasised more than in Trotsky’s day how vitally necessary such a preservation will be. Today we face the very real danger that there will be no tigers and no forests for man to protect; and the proletarian power of the future will undoubtedly have to take rapid and draconian measures to bring this ecological holocaust to an end. But there is still no question that the communist regeneration of nature will be carried out on the basis of all the most important and sustainable advances in science and technology.

The liberation of daily life

Trotsky now turns to the organisation of daily life in communism:

“The personal dreams of a few enthusiasts today for making life more dramatic and for educating man himself rhythmically, find a proper and real place in this outlook. Having rationalized his economic system, that is, having saturated it with consciousness and planfulness, man will not leave a trace of the present stagnant and worm‑eaten domestic life. The care for food and education, which lies like a millstone on the present‑day family, will be removed, and will become the subject of social initiative and of an endless collective creativeness. Woman will at last free herself from her semi‑servile condition. Side by side with technique, education, in the broad sense of the psycho‑physical moulding of new generations, will take its place as the crown of social thinking. Powerful ‘parties’ will form themselves around pedagogic systems. Experiments in social education and an emulation of different methods will take place to a degree which has not been dreamed of before. Communist life will not be formed blindly, like coral islands, but will be built consciously, will be tested by thought, will be directed and corrected. Life will cease to be elemental, and for this reason stagnant. Man, who will learn how to move rivers and mountains, how to build peoples' palaces on the peaks of Mont Blanc and at the bottom of the Atlantic, will not only be able to add to his own life richness, brilliancy and intensity, but also a dynamic quality of the highest degree. The shell of life will hardly have time to form before it will burst open again under the pressure of new technical and cultural inventions and achievements. Life in the future will not be monotonous”.

The awakening of the unconscious

And in the closing passage of the book, Trotsky’s vision reaches its climactic point, as he turns from the mountain-tops to the depths of the human psyche:

"More than that. Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semiconscious and then the subconscious processes in his own organism, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, reproduction, and, within necessary limits, he will try to subordinate them to the control of reason and will. Even purely physiologic life will become subject to collective experiments. The human species, the coagulated Homo Sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho‑physical training. This is entirely in accord with evolution. Man first drove the dark elements out of industry and ideology, by displacing barbarian routine by scientific technique, and religion by science. Afterwards he drove the unconscious out of politics, by overthrowing monarchy and class with democracy and rationalist parliamentarianism and then with the clear and open Soviet dictatorship. The blind elements have settled most heavily in economic relations, but man is driving them out from there also, by means of the socialist organization of economic life. This makes it possible to reconstruct fundamentally the traditional family life. Finally, the nature of man himself is hidden in the deepest and darkest corner of the unconscious, of the elemental, of the sub‑soil. Is it not self‑evident that the greatest efforts of investigative thought and of creative initiative will be in that direction? The human race will not have ceased to crawl on all fours before God, kings and capital, in order later to submit humbly before the dark laws of heredity and a blind sexual selection! Emancipated man will want to attain a greater equilibrium in the work of his organs and a more proportional developing and wearing out of his tissues, in order to reduce the fear of death to a rational reaction of the organism towards danger. There can be no doubt that man's extreme anatomical and physiological disharmony, that is, the extreme disproportion in the growth and wearing out of organs and tissues, give the life instinct the form of a pinched, morbid and hysterical fear of death, which darkens reason and which feeds the stupid and humiliating fantasies about life after death.

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

It is difficult to predict the extent of self‑government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho‑physical self‑education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts — literature, drama, painting, music and architecture - will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self‑education of communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise”.

In our view, examining the implications of this final passage requires, at the very least, an article to itself. In particular: since it revolves around the notion of exploring (and indeed awakening) the unconscious levels of mind, it raises the problem of the relationship between marxism and psychoanalysis, which Trotsky himself addressed in other writings. But to conclude the present article, we must return to the question posed at its beginning: can Trotsky’s portrait of life in the communist future be defined as a form of utopianism, and thus outside the realm of real material possibility?

Here we can only refer to Bordiga’s remark that what distinguishes marxism from utopianism is not the fact that the latter enjoys describing the society of the future while the former does not, but that, unlike the utopians, marxism, by identifying, and identifying with, the proletariat as an implicitly communist class, has uncovered the real movement that can lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the installation of communism. Having thus overcome all abstract schemas based on mere ideals and wishes, marxism is thus well within its rights to examine the entirely of human history to develop its understanding of the real capacities of the species. When Trotsky talks about the average individual under communism reaching the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx, this judgment is based on the recognition that these exceptional individuals were themselves the product of wider social forces, and can therefore be used as milestones that point the way to the future, indications of what human beings could be like once the very material shackles of class privilege and economic scarcity have been left behind.

Trotsky wrote Literature and Revolution in 1924, in the days when the coils of the Stalinist counter-revolution were tightening around him. His vision is thus all the more moving as a testimony to his deep confidence in the communist perspective of the working class. In these days of capitalist decomposition, when the very notion of communism is more than ever being derided not only as a utopia but also as a dangerous delusion, Trotsky’s portrait of mankind’s possible future remains a defiant source of inspiration for a new generation of revolutionary militants.

CDW

NOTES

1. “The proletarian revolution requires no terror for the realisation of its aims: it looks upon manslaughter with hatred and aversion. It has no need for such means because the struggle it conducts is not against individuals but against institutions”. Needless to say that the Spartacists’ rejection of terror did not mean that they were opposed to revolutionary class violence, which is not the same thing.

2. When he used the term realism, Trotsky was talking about something wider than a particular school of art which had enjoyed its hey-day during 19th century. He meant “a realistic monism, in the sense of a philosophy of life, and not a "realism" in the sense of the traditional arsenal of literary schools”. It would also have been interesting to know Trotsky’s views following his later confrontation with the surrealist movement, with whom he shared some important points of agreement. We will return to this in the next article.

3. Neither, we can add in retrospect, does Trotsky’s definition of realism have anything in common with the one-dimensional banality of “Socialist Realism” as elaborated by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Contrary to all the best traditions of Bolshevism which had presided over a considerable flowering of artistic endeavour in the early years of the revolution, Socialist Realism demanded that art should be no more than a vehicle of political propaganda, and reactionary propaganda at that, since it used as a glamorisation of the Stalinist terror and the construction of a barracks regime of state capitalism. It was certainly no accident that in form and content Socialist Realism is virtually indistinguishable from Nazi kitsch. As Trotsky and Breton put it in the manifesto of the International Federation: ”The style of official Soviet painting is being described as ‘socialist realism’ – the label could have been invented only by a bureaucrat at the head of an Arts Department…One cannot without revulsion and horror read the poems and novels or view the pictures and sculptures, in which officials armed with pen, brush and chisel, and surveyed by officials, armed with revolvers, glorify the ‘great leaders of genius’ in whom there is not a spark either of genius or greatness. The art of the Stalin epoch will remain the most striking expression of the deepest decline of proletarian revolution”.

4. See the article in this series dealing with the 1844 Manuscripts and the vision of communism contained in them, in International Review n°70 and 71.