Since the 1980s there has been a period of downturn in struggle, but also an extended period of crisis which has not generated a broad or significant working class response in the heartlands of capital. Does this mean that the concepts of the decline of capitalism and war or revolution and socialism or barbarism are wrong? Does it mean that there needs to be new ways of organising, new activities for revolutionaries? Does it rule out the possibility of a better society? For me the answer must be no! A look at history of the last century confirms their validity. The Russian revolution and the revolutionary wave are key events, crisis of the 30s and the horror of WW2, the emergence of new political thought and class struggle in the late 60s, the evident inability of capitalism in recent years to provide for a improving standard of living for its people, indeed its ability to do only the opposite is proof enough for me that the left communist analysis of capitalism is valid.

So let’s not forget that capitalism has always been in trouble. Even when it could act as a progressive system and expand production and the class system nationally and internationally at the same time as improving living standards, as developing support services such as health and education for its population, as developing new sciences and technologies, it was at the same time destroying old cultures, killing hundreds of thousands in the process, making men women and children work for long hours in brutal working conditions, providing little or no protection from illness accidents and cyclical economic crisis. This is so because it was always an exploitative system, a class society exercising violence, ideological and economic control to achieve its goals.

Marx’s view of historical materialism lays a fundamental framework for viewing crisis in that societies have progressive periods and period of decline, called by the ICC ascendancy and decadence.

This framework applies to capitalism as an exploitative class based society. However it does not mean, as I’ve just suggested, that in one period everything is improving and in the period of decline there is only hardship. There have also been significant technical and social changes over the past 100 years. Education and health systems extend, communication, manufacturing and transport technologies have changed beyond all recognition, consumer goods dominate home markets.

Does this mean all change is progressive? Absolutely not - the reforms of the last century reflecting the needs of capitalism trying to maintain itself. Capitalism today needs reformism to keep ideological control of workers and to hold back prevent class action.

I start here because I want to get away from the idea that we should only describe the past century as a continuous process of deterioration in the economy and social conditions as society comes ever closer to revolution. 

Clearly the main point of today’s discussion is the state of class struggle currently So I hope my introduction now will just set a framework and a background to the discussion of today’s situation on the basis of looking at how crises have developed in 20th and 21st centuries. I hope in doing this to stress some useful ideas and to have a go at a few notions that I think are unhelpful and outdated. You’ll be grateful to hear then that I am not going to do this by looking a crisis in terms of economics but from a political point of view.

This current period of low class struggle does question some of the ideas that were developed post WW2 and before. This is a difficult and unexpected period which poses many new problems for analysis of crisis. It’s easy to see that by looking at the lively discussions on the ICC website and how they have generated many problematic issues. Some of the issues remain pose real questions for an understanding of crisis,eg. the size of pre-capitalist markets, role of debt, markets or production as primary issue, and I’d add population growth since 1950s as well as suggestions that we can ignore theory, ignore past events because they were too long ago, make things happen now, find better ways to organise, speak to new militants or searchers (as they seem to have become known).

I see nothing in the current period that questions the idea that capitalism is in terminal decline.

But I do think it means some revisiting of the theories of how we understand crisis and decadence. This extended period of crisis accompanied by a lack of struggle should give us more information with which to improve the analysis of the course of decadence.

I do get the feeling at times that for us old farts it’s too easy to drift back to our youth and pretend things haven’t changed. But since ‘68, 45 years have elapsed and 1917 was 50 years before that. The young comrades of today cannot envisage the struggles of the 60s and 70s any better than the comrades of that period could envisage events in 1917. The period since WW2 have been very long and we’ve only seen one wave of class struggle in that time.

How does this elongated period affect an analysis of the current situation.? This is I think a core question for today.

I want therefore to give an overview of crises from a political point of view

When WW1 started, Luxemburg, Lenin, etc. spoke of the period of imperialism, the period of revolution and appear to have thought of it as the end of capitalism. They saw this as a short term prospect and as a period of continuous class struggle.

In 30s and 40s, revolutionaries struggled to understand the decline of that revolutionary wave and to see it in context of political changes that were taking place in society.

In the 40s and 50s comrades had to develop an understanding of defeat of the class and identified war and revolution as opposing class responses to crisis.

In the 60s and 70s, the comrades coming out of GCF and later Solidarity, Workers’ Voice etc. had to develop an understanding of the emergence of new struggles against capitalism as it returned to open crisis out of a period of growth. Everybody at that stage however again saw the collapse of capitalism and emergence of revolutionary period as imminent if not immediate.

Since the 1980s comrades have struggled to maintain their existence in the context of a lack of class struggle and it is this context that poses the questions today.

This is why an understanding of crisis is important to us all and I would argue that the most important task of revolutionaries is this discussion of the current situation. So despite some of the arguments in the ICC webpages, the discussion of what Luxemburg, Bukharin and Mattick said about crises, of what Lenin said about organisation, of what went on in 1917, of Marxist ideas from the past, of science and evolution, of subterranean consciousness, of anarchism and of environment, etc., etc. are essential contributions (of more or less significance) to this ultimate task. These issues facilitate the discussion of today’s situation. Because this is a skill that one day must enable future comrades to analyse the heat of a revolutionary situation and make decisions about whether it is time to call on the class to wait, to retreat and to attack. So please don’t denigrate economic theory or the events of the Russian revolution etc. as old hat and not worth your time.

We would in truth not be having this discussion if there was open class struggle in Europe. Why there isn’t, is a problem but it’s also the opportunity to review and improve understanding of the past and of today.

For me the period of say 1914 to 1924 is really significant. It proves to me beyond all doubt that a working class revolution can happen and if it can happen once it can happen again. But it was almost 100 years ago and perhaps it is all too easy to look back and say this was only a highpoint in struggle and things were easy for comrades.

Comrades had difficulties then too.Capitalism was at its highpoint politically and economically. Yes crises existed, but the economy was not in that bad a shape prior to WW1, national bourgeoisies saw only the example of the UK in terms of what they could achieve for themselves. The working class suffered awful working and living conditions, streets were dirty unhealthy places where homeless adults and kids scrabbled to survive, little education or health systems were available, society was only just finding out how to provide sewers and power supplies. Transport to work was not available, sick pay, holiday pay was non-existent.

Common was still the belief was that women and workers had no understanding of society and politics, and were born to their station in life. The divide between probably rich and poor was far greater than now. Nationalism was strong because few people outside the army know what foreigners were really like. The Church, particularly Catholicism still had a strong hold on people’s behaviour.

Revolutionaries had no computers and no internet to communicate, letter post was still a novelty, just as was the motor car, telephones, duplicators, typewriters. Leafleting must have been hard going! Comrades were still organised on a national basis (Russian SDLP members were émigrés abroad, rather than members of UK, Austrian German SDLP). National meetings however must have taken days to get to. The norm must have been to organise through local indeed very local meetings. Communication within organisation no matter how structured or well organised must have been so slow and problematic. What is called now centralisation was scarcely possible then. Worse still, revolutionaries had to contend in every meeting with the reality that they were members of SD or the LP alongside all the reformist and liberal tendencies and they all needed to be brought together. How do you discuss and organise anything when in the rooms are the equivalents of modern day Tony Blairs or Tony Cliffs or Vanessa Redgraves?? Horrible idea

What’s my point?Adverse conditions are not new! The revolutionary wave was enormous and worldwide the evidence is there to see.

We have not yet experienced that again but from the 60s to the 80s we did see the emergence of a wave of worldwide class struggle. Reactions at that time were similar in some ways to Marxists at the end of WW1, ie.that the period of revolution is here, class conflict is growing and the end is nigh. But it did not come and still has not.

Economic crisis has intensified and attacks on working class living standards continue. Capitalism tries to control the working class and society in general in ever more desperate - and maybe obvious - ways as it extends its structures and mechanisms globally and intensifies them locally.

This period can easily be understood by our schema recognising waves of struggle. It does raise questions about some formulations however.

1. Decadence of Capitalism

Well, only to the extent that decadence is clearly not just a permanent nonstop crisis or a continuous revolutionary wave. It’s not either a simple cycle of war-revolution-crisis-war-reconstruction, crisis-war- revolution or even crisis- class struggle-war, reconstruction crisis. The course of events up to the 1950s is not necessarily the model for the events from 1980s onwards. Hence it may be more appropriate to consider decadence as a separate element to crisis theory. Clearly the theory of saturated markets and need for pre-capitalist markets is no longer a satisfactory explanation for ongoing crises and TROPF [tendency for the rate of profit to fall] theory actually implies falls and rises in the rate of profit in both periods.

Previous assumptions that decadence means permanent crisis and permanent class struggle appear now obsolete. Decadence may put revolution on the historical agenda but it does not give guarantees and it may mean intensified crisis for capitalism but it does not eliminate capitalism’s dynamic strong capacity to adapt and grow.

It is now also much harder to say that reforms are not possible than it was in the 30s or 40s. because clearly there have been economic, technical and social changes in the last 100 years., I know that reform implies improvements for the working class not just changes but it seems more accurate now to emphasise that it is reformism that is not possible. Capitalism is fighting to keep control of its system and reforms/changes are used because the ruling class needs them for its own purposes even if that is keeping the working class in its place.

2 War OR revolution

As capitalism persists, localised conflicts emerge and destroy areas of the globe. Lebanon, N Ireland, Afghanistan, Ruanda, Palestine, Somalia and latterly Syria have all been turned into models of barbarism. Maybe not yet permanently but not easy to reverse out of either. These local wars in peripheral countries have not however developed into global wars between major powers in the way conflicts in Poland and Serbia have done in the past. However this does that mean it is impossible. The start of the WW2is not the model for what is happening now, just as the revolution emerging from WW1 isn’t either. All it should suggest is that greater clarity does not come automatically from a tendency to make more predictions!!!!!

3 Formulaic theories of the current period

The ideas that theYears of Truth in the1980s have determined the remainder of history, that crisis leads directly to class struggle, are inappropriate.

Significant deepening of economic crisis has not led to significantworking class action in Europe or America. Were the Years of Truth decisive and the class beaten then? There is nothing now to suggest such a negative outcome. WW3 has not happened and the ruling class still fear the emergence of working class struggle and organises to confront the working class in this crisis. Rather the Years of Truth had a more significant impact on the organisation of the ruling class.

I have struggled to understand the concept of Decomposition as it seems like a justification of the Years of Truth idea. However the rather excellent description of ideological and social decomposition that appeared in 1R151, provides a valid overview of capitalism throughout decadence but holds nothing specific about the current period since 1990.

4 Socialism or Barbarism – and Decomposition

We discuss later what is socialism and how to get there but what is barbarism? We throw this formula around very lightly but I suspect everybody means different things by it.Fair enough, but ongoing decadence ought to inform a discussion here. I don’t believe Marx meant the apocalypse a la Mad Max or Defiance or whatever - even if you can’t exclude that notion. Ongoing developments in capitalist decadence imply surely a slow decline into incessant economic social and military conflicts, warlordism, a loss of centralised social control, loss of capitalist law and order. There’s strong section in IR151 mentioned above that seems more appropriate here.

5 Europe is where it’s at?

In fact, just as low tech manufacturing has been exported to developing countries in Asia where labour and resources are cheap, so has class struggle. The mass factories and production lines which dominated in Europe at the start of the 20th century are now in Asian countries, which just like Russia at that time, are weak and underdeveloped capitalist economies. Levels of class struggle and the intensity of struggles have been high in China India Bangladesh, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and recently Turkey and Brazil. Clearly what happens in Europe, America and Japan will be critical in the long term but in the short term I do wonder if eurocentrism is too dominant in today’s thinking and that more value should be given to struggles in what used to be called the Third World.

How do crises in decadence affect underdeveloped and even developing countries? Is this different to the impact on what used to be called the 1st world?

Link
 

The first part of this presentation by the comrade Link ably reminded us that the proletariat has always experienced real difficulties and convulsions in all epochs of its existence.

We should recall the origins of these difficulties: they lie in the fact that the modern proletariat is the first revolutionary class which is also at the same time the exploited class of society. Because of this, it cannot draw upon any economic power in the process of conquering political power. In fact, it’s the very opposite: in direct contrast to what happened in past revolutions, the seizure of political power by the proletariat necessarily precedes the period of transition during which the domination of the old relations of production is destroyed and gives way to new social relations. We’ll talk more of this Period of Transition later. We should not neglect to dissect the current ‘theory’ of “communisation” when we do so.

So, for the working class, the producer class, its struggle against its conditions of exploitation (which is a revolutionary struggle at root) relies solely on its collective nature, its capacity to organise, and its consciousness of what this organisation has to achieve. We’re talking of aglobal, internationalclass living under what, in future times (we hope) will come to be seen as the wholly ‘unnatural’ situation of nation states, of divisions of humanity into different classes, of power, authority and decision-making in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, with the production of our material (and spiritual) needs subject to irrational forces. How stupid was that? future generations may ask. How stupid is that, we say today!

In short, the working class as a whole has always had great difficulty in building up a permanent base for its struggles and understanding the goal of its struggles, as Link points out and, in the last 100 years in particular, as the state has been obliged to swallow more and more of civil society, the workers’ struggles have seen their permanent mass organisations – Social Democratic Parties and trade unions - integrated into the survival apparatus of capitalism.

The class struggle involves two major classes

This is precisely why, even if we can at times see an underlying continuity, a sub-sea or subterranean maturation at work, workers struggles necessarily appear to us as waves, ebbing and flowing, often becalmed, sometimes random, apparently unconnected, and certainly not sequential with one wave inevitably and always following on at a higher level than the other. Marx spoke of the jagged course of workers’ struggles which appear to throw their opponent to the ground only to recoil, withdraw. And we must use judgement; have criteria, when we seek to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different moments of the class struggle. Much depends not only on the confidence of the class and the strength of its class identity, but also on the terrain over which these waves must break.

How do we compare, for example (and to illustrate this in an admittedly superficial way with specific struggles), how can we weigh the current (June 2013) spontaneous movement in Brazil which has pushed back the bourgeoisie, forced it to temporarily withdraw its attack of a public transport fare rise, with the strikes in France in 2010 against the state’s pension reform, which failed to force the ruling class to withdraw its attacks? Apart from any weaknesses on the workers’ part, didn’t the workers in France lack the element of surprise, of setting the time and the place for the struggle? Weren’t the trade unions and the state in massive collusion to head off this important moment of social unrest? Shouldn’t we also assess not just the failure of the French workers in 2010 but also understand the massive strength of the movement to progress as far and for as long as it did given the obstacles it faced?

Thus we must suggest a nuance to the previous presentation: the class struggle involves, at root, two major classes. To say the class struggle of the past period has been at a low ebb – the ICC talks of it not being up to the level required to push back the bourgeoisie - is perhaps to underplay the fact that the opposing class, the bourgeoisie, has been operating at top speed, has been struggling at an extremely high level, if you like, in order to maintain its dominance, and sod the consequences for the rest of society.

We recall from the 1970s the difficulties within the proletarian milieu – within the ICC itself – to grasp the fact that the bourgeoisie even had a consciousness, a view on how it should deal with its class enemy; a resistance to the fact that the ruling class manipulated its ‘democratic elections’, lined up its ideological troops of left and right to combat the workers struggles. [edit: or the fact that the state infiltrated small proletarian organisations!] The fact that it didn’t inevitably get the line upit desired, or that the encroaching economic crisis reduced its room for manoeuvre shouldn’t disguise this fact. Undoubtedly the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 had a profound, pre-eminent effect of smothering the combativity and consciousness of the working class, effectively curtailing the struggles which had begun in May 68 and once more ridiculing a crucial perspective –communism, the world of abundance in which each lived each according to his/her needs, each according to his/her ability.

However even before then, the ruling class had begun a counter-offensive against the working class which had taken its toll. Classically this offensive took the form of a right wing party in government, attacking workers living standards and enacting anti-proletarian laws with a left wing of social democracy and unions in opposition to sabotage workers’ response and to compound their feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

A Period of Historic Defeat?

So when we today assess the difficulties encountered and displayed by recent workers’ movements, we should recall the distance they’ve travelled from the period of 1990 to 2005 and recognise the terrain that’s ranged against them.

And let’s also put these difficulties into a further historical context: the previous presentation takes us through the decades of the past 100 years or so – an absolutely necessary journey. When it gets to the 1940s, it talks of revolutionaries trying to understand thedefeatof the previous revolutionary wave. In short, they were then, and we are here, talking of a counter-revolution, a political and physical decimation of the proletariat. And by stressing the political as well as the physical defeat, we remind ourselves that there was no absence of large scale struggles world-wide in the 1930s: it’s just that these tended more and more to be marshalled by and behind one faction of the bourgeoisie against another: behind united fronts, sacred unions, New Deals, fascist totalitarianism, Stalinist Soviet nationalism – and against rival bourgeois factions. The proletariat was in this period dragged off its class terrain. The harsh ‘lessons’ of Spain remain to be widely reappropriated. The second world war, followed by the Cold War, was the result.

Is it the same today when we discuss the difficulties of the struggle? Evidently not. The illusions - and the word is used advisedly - sown by the dominant class, from which the everyday ideas of society emanate, in an abstract ‘democracy’; the calls to ‘vote wisely’, the diminishing but still evident reliance on trades unions to organise the struggle, all of which we see today, represent not a fundamental march behind the needs of capital but the lack of awareness of the proletariat of its own identity, strength and potential. It’s not at all the same thing as a period of historic defeat.

It’s the (political) economy...

The first part of the presentation affirmed that it’s not just a question of expecting the crisis to deepen still further in order to see a proletarian reaction, particularly in Europe and America. In fact we can see that a sudden deepening of the crisis can, in the first instance, paralyse a proletarian response just as much as a drip-feed of attacks spread out through time can induce a kind of soporific effect on the struggle. For instance, in Great Britain, “...the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years....This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued...”The IFS says:‘The falls in nominal wages that workers have experienced during this recession are unprecedented, and seem to provide at least a partial explanation for why unemployment has risen less ...To the extent that it is better for individuals to stay in work, albeit with lower wages, than to become unemployed’...”The Guardian, June 12, 2013. So fear is a factor paralysing the struggle.

Yet this partial passivity does not prevent the attacks escalating: on the contrary. And while we necessarily refuse and refute a reductionist ‘crisis deepens/workers struggle increases’ narrative, the fact is that the heart of Western Europe has so far been spared the kind of attacks witnessed in Greece, Portugal, Ireland or even the youth unemployment levels of Spain. This cannot last. The worst is ahead of us. All of us – China, India, the US, Japan, South America, all of Europe... The crisis is progressively reducing the bourgeoisie’s capacity to push the worst of its effects onto the ‘peripheral nations’.

What level of crisis engenders a generalised response? We cannot say. As we’ve argued above, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. But if you do want to ponder what level of deterioration it took in the past to push the working class into revolutionary action, consider that it required 3 years of absolute hell, mayhem and mass murder at the front combined with increasing deprivation at home to give rise to the first revolutionary wave in 1917... Mankind doesn’t jettison a tool until it has absolutely proved its worthlessness, says Marx. How much proof do you need? That’s the question...

The situation is not static: The economic crisis today is indisputably deeper than four or five years ago. All the job cuts, wage reductions, all the zero hour contracts and reduction in subsistence payments to the aged and the jobless, and the long-term sick (in short, the unravelling ‘social safety net’, the dismantling ‘welfare state’ where it existed in the first place); the almost zero interest rates and all the bail-outs have solved absolutely nothing. The problem underlying the crisis of 2007-2008 wasdebt- a debt originating almost 70 years ago immediately after WW2 when capitalist production did not re-ignite according to ‘market laws’ but required, over a period of 20 years, the world’s richest nation, the USA, to turn itself into the world’s most indebted nation, in order to bankroll world recovery.

Yet today, to try to escape this historically-determined debt-mess:“Japan, for example, has recently thrown the kitchen sink at its persisting economic problems in a desperate $1.2 trillion gamble that it's bet on itself against all-comers. So far Britain and the United States has "invested" around $7 trillion in Quantitative Easing the vast majority of which is not going into production but into paying off debts and further speculation. In a previous IR[International Review, ICC theoretical journal]the figure of $8 is used just to generate one dollar of "real" production.” (Baboon, post 12, ICC Day of Discussion thread, cited above). In short, the answer to the debt crisis has so far been ... more debt!

The difference between 2007/2008 and 2013 is not any ‘recovery’ in the economic crisis: on the contrary. It’s in the temporary and fragile ‘recovery’ of the bourgeoisie’spoliticalgrasp of the situation, the ruling class’s ephemeral ability to present the illusion that it is in control of the situation, has re-established mastery over the world. It is all smoke and mirrors, sorcery, black magic of the first order. No-one says it doesn’t work ... for a while. What all this ‘sacrifice’ and fictional cash has bought the bourgeoisie is a little ‘time’.

Let’s recall Lenin’s simple truism:a revolutionary situation arises when the rulers can no longer rule as before, and the ruled can no longer be governed as before.In 2007/2008, a crack appeared in the bourgeoisie’s matrix, in its version of reality: the queues outside the banks started to form; people, ‘ordinary’ people, talked about ‘the economy’ ‘the crisis’, its implications for the future, for them and their children, for the old generation, for the next generation – a social space was opened ... and quickly closed.It was re-openedin Tunisia, in Greece, in Egypt the US and, above all in Spain, with the ‘public assemblies’ and open meetings of the Indignados movement. All this will happen again. And again. In different places, with different forms, sparked by different issues, as with fare rises in Brazil, or threats to public spaces in Istanbul - superficial sparks which ignite profound underlying issues. This much we can say is “inevitable” as night follows day.

Moreover, these struggles, as in May 68, will not ‘merely’ focus on ‘economic’ questions: already, the struggles in China and Bangladesh call into question inhuman working conditions; in Turkey and China (not to mention the recent flooding of central Europe), the question of the environment and its destruction is central; in India, the position of women following abhorrent rape cases is a cause of mass mobilisation... these are not ‘secondary’ or ‘non-class’ issues: they are central to our survival as a species. They are issues to which only the working class has the key, even if the vast majority of society is pressing on the door...

The social revolts of the last few years – from ‘food riots’ and reactions to increasingly brutal state repression - show that the vast majority of this world seek, require, are striving for, a liberation from capital’s crises, wars, and degradation of every fundamental of human existence. Clean air and water. Unadulterated food.Access to the latest medical and technological advances.An abolition of sexual and other forms of slavery. All this has been made possible by the development of the productive forces, even under the disfiguring cloak of capital’s profit drive.

Instead, the majority of humanity faces war and austerity. It witnesses what happens in Libya, in Syria, when a social movement against this or that regime is co-opted in to a fight for this or that ruling faction. This is the ‘alternative’: the decomposition of bourgeois society which threatens the “ruin of the contending classes”, which offers barbarism as a counterpoint to the possibility and necessity of a social future.

The question is: will the revolutionary class, the proletariat, the class which holds the future in its hands, emerge from this mess as an increasingly distinct, organised and conscious social force to give form and theory to the strivings of the immense majority? Can it distinguish itself from them, in order to impose its vision, its intrinsic, collective organisations of discussion and decision-making which prefigure the future transitional organisations of humanity? Can it equip itself with the mechanisms that, in previous times, it employed to fight against capital and its wars and austerity – the factory committees, the workers’ councils, the councils of the unemployed? Because these are the stakes.

Why is it so hard to struggle? Perhaps an outdated question these days. Why is it so hard to struggle effectively? What are the methods and the goals of the struggle?

These are the practical problems posed now.

“We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: ‘Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle.’ We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that ithas toacquire, even if it does not want to.” (Marx,Letter from theDeutsch-FranzösischeJahrbücherto Ruge [7]’, 1843)

The key feature running throughout the discussion related to an analysis of the current wave of struggles across the world rather than just the lack of struggles in the UK or Europe

One aspect was the objective of struggles. In the recent wave of struggles, the main concerns are partial issues or consumption struggles rather than economic factory-based struggles. This reflects the limitations of economic struggles, the transfer of manufacturing and jobs to low wage countries, and a recognition that pensions, prices, benefits, rents although more concerned with consumption than production can be seen as much closer to the living conditions of the broad working class. Even issues related to environmentalism, freedoms, feminism, housing are coming to the fore. Used to be called partial struggles but are maybe coming to the fore as capitalism imposes more austerity on us all. A question posed at present is what is the potential for development in these struggles?

It was also noted that the term ‘partial struggles’ relates to struggles in the Middle East, southern Europe/Mediterranean countries and lately Brazil whereas struggles in China and the far east have been more factory based and there is still passivity in rest of Europe and America. Also related here is the impact of globalisation during the past decades. The structure of capitalism has changed significantly with smaller concentration of workers in heartlands of capitalism and massive scales of production shifted to low wage countries. This product of globalisation has itself an impact on struggle and how class consciousness develops in that it again supports the ideological attack that class struggle is not worth it.

The issue of the impact of the collapse of USSR in 1989 was raised with some discussion on how much it has changed the nature of the current wave of struggle, and lack of struggle in Europe, through the idea that communism does not work. It was however pointed out that there has been a massive increase in workers in China and India and this won’t affect them. Youth involvement was also identified as a key feature and often youth appear be taking a lead in the demonstrations. Youth unemployment is an important issue here

The proletarian movement may not be in control, may be a minority tendency in these struggles but is nevertheless a clear and significant presence.

Internationalism was noted as a sign of the strength of such struggles and a feature of the content. But it was also stressed that we need to make an international analysis of the struggles first and foremost. Capitalism is now a world market The international context sets the framework in which struggles are appearing rather than the national features.

Another theme running through the discussion was the idea of class identity and the development of class consciousness. Whilst not the focus of discussion these topics were seen as significant to an understanding of the evolution of struggle and the context they created for future struggles. Differences were also drawn between the experience of the class in the far east and in Europe, impacting on the ideologies that the bourgeoisie can use to attack struggles eg in China less experience of TUs. The same lack of experience of Trade Unions and wages struggles was evident in Europe in 60s and 70s. It was pointed out that the spark for revolutionary struggle can however be apparently trivial events such as in 1905.

Link

In The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV Marx writes:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

So, for Marx, the DotP (ie "Dictatorship of the proletariat" - an abbreviation used throughout here) is a 'political transition period' which corresponds to a transition in ‘society’, which I take it here means the economy.

In a letter to J Weydemeyer in 1852, Marx writes:

“... And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them... What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classesis only bound up withparticular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to thedictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to theabolition of all classesand to aclassless society.”

Marx then saw his contribution as being to elucidate the transformation from capitalist society to communist society as being conditional on the proletariat establishing its revolutionary dictatorship.

Subsequent events – particularly the Paris Commune and the Revolution in Russia - have allowed some attempts to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat to made and this in turn has provoked some debate about the forms the DotP might take, and the problems it may face. This is however still very much a work in progress; obviously, no ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ has ever been established which has acted as the ‘bridge’ from capitalist society to communist society; the attempts at proletarian power that have been made have, fairly rapidly, been recuperated back into capitalism, if indeed it can be argued that they ever left it.

State Capitalism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

If we think of the DotP as being a period of transition, then it stands to reason that at its beginning, the economic form that prevails is capitalism. It cannot be otherwise; if the proletariat is re-organising society (and as a fundamental part of that re-organisation, the economy) the re-organisation must begin in capitalism and be a process of capitalism being transformed into something else. If anything else were possible, the DotP would not be necessary – if it were possible for capitalism to spontaneously transform itself into new forms, especially at a local level, then socialist society doesn’t have to be global and doesn’t have to be established by the working class. But these things are not possible; capitalism must be abolished by the working class, and it must be abolished globally. Until it has done so, the proletarian dictatorship still retains the capitalist mode of production - because socialism cannot exist in one country, there is no alternative to an increasing attenuated capitalism. As the world revolution spreads, and more of the economy comes under the proletariat’s control, measures can be taken that anticipate ‘socialism’ but if socialist society is in itself classless and propertyless and stateless then it cannot exist, anywhere, untilallproperty is in the hands of the proletariat, everyone has been integrated into production (thus ending ‘classes’), and production itself has been restructured to fulfil real human needs not profit – or the need to go towards fighting the bourgeoisie.

But as socialism in one country is not possible, the DotP can only be a period of political transition corresponding to an economic transition if the world revolution succeeds. If there is no possibility of the transition to socialism - because of the defeat of the world revolution - then what becomes of the DotP? It's a political form that doesn't correspond to any kind of material reality, a 'political transition period' that doesn't correspond with an economic transition period. All that the dictatorship can do, isolated in one revolutionary territory, is seek to organise capitalism (not transform it) in order to defend any 'gains' of the revolution, though of course, as we have seen in the 20th century, it is at the same time dying on its feet as it is deprived of any material basis other than the continued existence of capitalism. A revolutionary political form cannot survive in a non-revolutionary period, because the basis of the revolutionary political form is the suppression of capitalism; and by the early 1920s the revolution was in retreat and the capitalist powers once more on the attack. The existing conditions did not allow the revolution to extend and thus what came out of the defeat of the revolution was a 'deformed' version of the DotP, which had not begun the transition to socialist society because it had been prevented from doing so, by the failure of the world revolution.

So, what is the concrete difference between the dictatorship of the proletariat and an economy run by a state-capitalist class? Both entail control over the economy; but the crucial factor is the direction of the revolution. In a period of revolutionary advance the proletarian power will be taking over functions of control of society. If the revolution is in retreat the likelihood is that the functions of the state will begin to separate themselves from control by the working class. Even in time of revolutionary advance this may happen, but we have few examples to draw on. In Russia, in the years immediately following the revolution, we see a process of the Bolshevik Party substituting itself for the working class. The Bolsheviks in 1917 were not a new class of state-capitalist bureaucrats; on the contrary, they were at that point the best representatives of the international proletariat, but as the world revolution faltered and the Bolsheviks more and more saw themselves as guardians of the new ‘soviet republic’ in Russia, they identified with and fused themselves with the state. It seems that the fundamental process of the state-capitalist class coming into being was that of the deprivation of the working class of political power, the disintegration of worker's democracy, which happened in the late teens and early ‘20s. I would argue that this disintegration of proletarian power is not in fact a consequence of the Bolsheviks coming to power, but a cause. I would see the checking of the revolution at the borders of the Russian state as being the cause of this failure.

As Rosa said in 1918,

“Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle.” (Russian Revolution, Ch 8)

State and semi-state

Lenin used the expression ‘semi-state’ to describe the DotP in State and Revolution (Ch. 1 Pt. 4):

“According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither away", but is “abolished” by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state”.

This semi-state, in the conception of the ICC, is a power that is not identical with the workers’ councils.

“while the new state is not identical to those that preceded it in history, it still retains characteristics that constitute an obstacle to the development of the revolution; which is why, as Engels had already pointed out and as Lenin had made clear in State and Revolution,the proletariat must on the very day of the revolution begin the process of eliminating the new state.

After taking power, the main obstacle that the soviets would run into in Russia was the newly emerged state, which “despite the appearance of its greater material power[...]was a thousand times more vulnerable to the enemy than other working class organs. Indeed, the state owes its greater physical power to objective factors which correspond perfectly with the interests of the exploiting classes but can have no association with the revolutionary role of the proletariat”; “The terrible threat of a return to capitalism will come mainly in the state sector. This, all the more so as capitalism is found here in its impersonal, so to speak, ethereal form.Statification can help to conceal a long-term process opposed to socialism.”(ICC, “What are the workers' councils? (Part 5) 1917-1921: The soviets and the question of the state”)

However, I'm a little confused by the way the ICC poses the problem, I must admit. My assumption is that the militia, the factories, distribution networks - everything will be under the control of the workers' councils. This is the ‘proletarian state’ (in so far as there can be such a thing).

Are the worker's councils, workplace or neighbourhood committees and general assemblies, and the organs of armed coercion, together the 'semi-state'? If the means of decision making, operating production/distribution/consumption of goods and services, and the means of exercising coercive force against other classes and strata are merged, is it counter-revolutionary?

From the recent exchanges on this question between the ICC and OpOp:

[the position of the ICC exhibits] “an accommodation to a vision influenced by anarchism that identifies the Commune-State with the bureaucratic (bourgeois) state”. [This puts] “the proletariat outside of the post-revolutionary state while actually creating a dichotomy that, itself, is the germ of a new caste reproducing itself in the administrative body separated organically from the workers’ councils”.

I certainly wouldn’t go so far as OpOp here, if the ICC is wrong, there is no basis for the new ‘caste’ and there is no problem to solve; on the other hand if the ICC is right then the working class needs to be aware of ‘its own’ state turning into a conservative force, of escaping its control.

Can this happen as the revolution is advancing? We have so little knowledge it is difficult to speculate. Only one revolution in recent history has come close to success, and that nearness to success was short-lived. It is possible that even in times of advance, the ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ may be in danger of escaping from the control of the working class –with different parts of the administrative machinery becoming alternative centres of power. But, in times of revolutionary retreat it seems inevitable that the state will act as a conservative force.

The state exists while there are different groups in society with opposed interests. Once classes have been abolished through the abolition of property, then there is no social basis for a state. Even before this, the fact that the state is under the control (if not identical with) the proletariat means that it is unlike any previously existing state, the state of a majority of the population. The state in a sense 'withers' at the same time as the condition of being a worker is generalised. When all are workers, no-one is 'working class'(ie, a separate category of workers in society); when all administer the state, the state ceases to be an entity separate from the population. Incidentally, this may be the first time in history that the term ‘democracy’ would be appropriate, when ‘all the people of earth’ are involved in ‘ruling’.

Administration of society - that is, in the revolutionary period, state functions of organisation of production and monopoly of violence - is the task of the workers' councils (the organs of the working class organised at the point of production). Do these 'state functions' actually imply a 'state'? In a sense yes - if it looks like a state and acts like a state it's functionally a state. But it is a (pre-para-semi-)state (of a different type), because it is the state of a majority, for the first time in history. But whatever its type the state itself is not identical to the working class; it may be under its control but the two aren't the same thing.

But when the revolution is actually 'complete'? When all the territories are under the control of the working class and all property is collectivised and the entire productive and distributive apparatus is under the control of the working class, when all other classes have been integrated into production? There is no 'state' then, just a classless communal society. But to get there... what other option is there but for the working class to administer a 'state' that controls a part only of the world economy? Until the 'parts' are unified into socialised production, these parts must necessarily I think be capitalist. The 'withering away' comes precisely because those capitalist parts are wedded together to produce a socialised whole. The three things - taking over the whole economy, generalising the condition of the working class by integrating the other classes into production, and the withering away of the state - are the same phenomenon seen from different angles.

This is the task of the dictatorship of the proletariat – the abolition of property and integration of the whole of humanity into the productive process, the complete re-organisation of society to facilitate production for need not profit, and the consequent abolition of itself as a class. In this process it seems likely that it will need to be vigilant that the structures it sets up to help in this process do not escape its control and become a conservative or indeed retrograde force.

Slothjabber

Slothjabber’s presentation brought up many important questions and contributions from participants such as:

• If the proletariat controls the state, are they exploiting themselves? Adam Smith says the state exists to protect the wealth and property from others. Do capitalists still exist? S argued that in a sense the workers will be exploiting themselves... The law of value, wage-labour, production for exchange continue to exist in the transition period.

• How important is the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’?, given that historically the word ‘dictatorship’ has been defined differently to how it is currently conceived.

• The presentation seems to be talking in terms of‘stages’ managed by the class (or their representatives!). I think of it as a process (as opposed to distinct ‘stages’). If the revolution is to spread, it has to be an attack on the economy. Of course, it is a political struggle too. But both at the same time. By chipping away at the economy, by undermining the wage economy and wage labour, we can begin a process. So the idea of a fixed transition: first political, then economic, rather than a continual process, is inaccurate.

• There is not an administrative solution to the Period of Transition. It is a matter of class consciousness. The soviets existed for years, though they were empty of content. All will depend on the capacity of the proletariat to retain control over its own activity. The problem for us is that even when the bourgeoisie is overthrown, the proletariat will still be faced a majority of other non-exploiting classes. How does the proletariat relate to them? In a hospital: we'll still need the consultants after the revolution. There must be some form of compromise with the needs of these elements. The state is an instrument of class rule, yes, but also an instrument of all society. If the workers create that state, how do they retain their purity from other classes in society? By the barrel of a gun? Or by mediation? And if the latter, then the state is not the most revolutionary part of society.

• A large part of the proletariat are engaged in work which will be obsolete in communist society such as retail workers whose jobs exist on the premise of there existing a class who seek to make a profit by selling the products of our labour. Naturally communist society is not based on buying and selling for profit so these jobs, although proletarian, become obsolete to society. How can workers engaged in this sector of the economy be integrated into communist society?

• We can't build a new society in the shell of the old, but we can build class consciousness through struggle: occupations, strikes, insurrections etc... A long period of struggle can lead to the proletariat creating its own institutions of governance such as workers’ councils. But if councils are just workplace-based, what about lots of people who don't fit into this but have been in struggle?

• We should also consider the impact of the revolution upon popular culture, it is not just a matter of socialising the means of production but socialising life itself, eliminating social alienation and developing feelings of solidarity. The workers’ revolution will entail an overthrowing not just of contemporary politics and economy but will also bring about a moral revolution of sorts.

• There exists a difference of opinion between the SPGB and the ICC on the Period of Transition. The SPGB believe that the PoT will not be as prolonged or chaotic as others think, the context of Marx believing that there will be a prolonged PoT was that capitalism had not yet fully developed worldwide, thus some temporary measures were needed to produce a modern economy which could cater to everybody’s needs. The SPGB argue that because we now have the productive capabilities to cater to everybody’s needs and the democratic institutions to achieve power it will be possible to have a swift, peaceful transition to communist society.