There have been a number of TV programmes and newspaper articles over the last month commemorating the British miners' strike of 1984/85 that began precisely 20 years ago in March. They all, either directly or indirectly, pay lip-service to the great courage and endurance of the miners in their battle to defend their jobs and living standards. Nonetheless, they in effect write the strike off as politically nave faced with a ruthless right wing government, economically pointless once the coal industry had been exposed to the laws of the capitalist market, and undemocratic, insofar as it is perceived to have rejected the ballot box and resorted to physical violence in trying to stop the movements of coal. The logical conclusion they draw from this is that the defeat of the miners' strike effectively signalled the death knell for the class struggle in Britain and by implication, beyond Britain too. 'Anti-globalisation' guru George Monbiot made this explicit recently in one of his big Guardian articles, saying that the last 20 years have seen the "collapse of the proletariat as a political force". The historical context

At the start of 1984 we noted the development of a third international wave of workers' struggles following those of 1968-74 and 1978-81: "Since mid-1983, the tendency towards the recovery in proletarian struggles, whose perspectives we had already announced after two years of confusion and paralysis following the partial defeat of the world proletariat in Poland, has come to the surface: in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Great Britain, France, the US, in Sweden, Spain, Italy, etc strikes have broken out against draconian austerity measures imposed by the bourgeoisie and affect all the countries at the heart of the industrial world where humanity's historic destiny will be decided." ('Resurgence of the class struggle', International Review 37).

The 5th Congress of the ICC at the end of 1983 had adopted a document entitled 'Theses on the Present Upsurge in the Class Struggle'. It identified:

• a tendency towards a broad simultaneity of struggles nationally and internationally;
• a tendency towards spontaneous struggles, with the capacity for initially bypassing the unions;
• a growth in confidence in the proletariat's capacity to defend itself against the attacks.

Against this the bourgeoisie was entering into this battle fully prepared: "In the 1980s, the 'years of truth', the bourgeoisie can no longer delay its economic attacks on the working class. This attack is not improvised, but has been prepared over several years now by the ruling class at the international level" (International Review 38, 3rd qtr, 1984). The iron fist of capitalist repression was made ready and willing. But more important than this was the deployment of the democratic machinery of the state. There was a clear political strategy for confronting the class with the 'left in opposition', whereby the left fractions were removed from the government teams so that they could pose as opponents of the austerity measures. This was complemented with the deployment of rank and file unionism, using radical rhetoric against the union leaderships' 'betrayals' in order to keep the struggle contained within the union framework. The initial phase of the miners' strike and the state's response.

The British miners' strike was a powerful expression and confirmation of this analysis of the third wave of struggles. The initial rapid dynamic started with the walk-outs in the Yorkshire coalfields challenging the union framework: "Yorkshire miners picketed out, not by force of violence, but by force of argument and discussion, the South Wales miners who had earlier voted against a strike. The miners also sent delegations to other workers in the rail, power and steel industries. In the first weeks of the strike there was a clear tendency towards workers' self-organisation and extension. This initial movement of the workers, building on the lessons of the wildcats of the previous years, acting on their own account, massively directed outwards and against union directives, this movement, even with its own confusions and weaknesses as well as the divisions imposed by the unions, was nevertheless one of the most important lessons of the whole strike" ('1984/85: The NUM led the miners to defeat', WR 173).

The British state had however made extensive plans to be able to cope with the situation: "a special committee was set up by the Tory government; a national police force, drawn up on the basis of anti-strike plans made up by the previous Labour government, was formed to co-ordinate the repression; new, blanket laws were enacted and, much more important for containing the strike, government deals were struck with the steel, power and dock and railway unions, in order to keep 'their' workers under control (and) Arthur Scargill, who two years earlier had needed a police escort to protect him from angry miners, was polished up and presented as the radical head of the NUM.

The strike was made official (by the NUM) in order to control it better at the local level within the union grip of corporatism. This put forward the ideology of fighting in a single industry, of presenting the miners as a 'special case', of 'defending the NUM' or the 'Plan for Coal'. This was the struggle of 'Coal Not Dole'. This corporatism became the ideological cosh that opened up the workers' heads to the police truncheons." (ibid).

The unions had utilised a split that had opened up between the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire coalfields to fixate the miners on closing down the Notts coalfields. It sent miners to black coal at the ports and it mobilised them into the blockade of the Orgreave Coal Depot where pitched battles with police became a daily ritual. This was all to the detriment of trying to spread the struggles to other sectors of the working class.

The attempt to extend the struggle

The best opportunity to spread the strike beyond the corporatist framework came right at the beginning, before the union imposed its stranglehold on events: "Early on in the strike, pickets went to the power stations, train drivers refused to cross picket lines and seamen blacked coal shipments. Many of the workers' initiatives went beyond or against union instructions. With all workers confronting the threat of the dole, there is already the potential steadily developing for a generalised struggle, and this is what the unions have been so anxious to avoid all along." ('Miners' strike: workers take the initiative', WR 70).

The union did subsequently recover control, "But even so, as the strike went through the summer, miners were still fighting and their example was attracting support from other workers, the unemployed and (this was what caused the bourgeoisie to eliminate the possibility of sending in the troops against the miners) a small but significant number of soldiers on leave. In July and August the potential for extension was again shown by strikes of 25,000 dock workers responding to the same attacks suffered by the miners. This was a clear expression of what active solidarity means: not 'defend the NUM' or 'defend British Coal Ltd', but defend ourselves, defend our class interests" (ibid, WR 173).

Of course the unions did eventually succeed in isolating the miners; drawing out the strike far beyond the time when it could have extended to other workers was a key aspect of this. This, however, shouldn't lead to the conclusion that this was the inevitable outcome. The capitalist market andthe decline of coal

One of the distinguishing marks of the 1980s was the way in which a lot of previous state subsidies were withdrawn and 'market forces' allowed to come more into play. This enabled the state to drastically improve productivity by increasing the rates of exploitation and throwing thousands of workers on the dole. This has had dire consequences for those individuals cast into long-term unemployment and for the working class communities to which they belong. A number of the TV programmes and press articles about the strike have graphically illustrated the sense of hopelessness and despair which pervades some of these communities. The end of the miners' strike was not the end of the class struggle

The material 'result' of the miners' strike was the decimation of the coal industry and the virtual disappearance of a sector of the working class which had always been a key figure in the major class battles of 20th century Britain (1911, 1921, 1926, 1972, 1974, 1984-5....). This was without doubt a defeat for the working class, and ever since the bourgeoisie has seized on this defeat to argue that workers' struggles are a waste of time, or indeed that the class struggle itself is a quaint relic of the past.

But there can be no such thing as a capitalism which doesn't have a working class to exploit, and even if the contours of the working class may change, it will always be forced to defend itself from this exploitation. The proof of this is that the end of the miners' strike did not mean the end of the class struggle. To begin with, this whole argument is based on a ridiculously narrow and nationalist vision: the class struggle is by its nature an international struggle and despite the defeat of the miners in Britain there were a number of highly significant class movements in the rest of Europe in the next few years (general strike in Denmark in the summer of 1985, French railway workers in 1986, Italian education workers in 1987, French healthworkers in 1988, etc). Furthermore, the defeat of the miners did not paralyse the struggle in Britain itself: the printers and BT workers both waged important struggles in 1986, and, while the printers got trapped in the dead end of the long drawn-out strike, the BT workers showed clear signs of wanting to avoid this trap. In 1989 there was a new push towards simultaneous struggles, with strikes among transport, health and council workers and new expressions of active solidarity.

What really paralysed the whole international wave of struggles was an event of international, indeed historical importance: the collapse of the eastern imperialist bloc and the massive ideological offensive against class consciousness embodied in the campaigns around the 'death of communism'. This was indeed the beginning a very profound reflux in the class struggle whose effects have still not been fully overcome.

But a reflux in class struggle is not the same as a final defeat, and in the past year we have noted definite signs of a revival in struggles internationally (the massive movement in France last Spring against the attack on pensions, the resurgence of spontaneous movements such as those of airport workers and postal workers in Britain, transport workers in Italy, and so on).

These strikes may seem to be a modest and indeed inadequate response to a system which is threatening to drag the whole of humanity to its doom. But they are part of a historical chain which connects backwards not only to the miners' strike of 1984-5, not only to the international waves of struggles launched by the general strike in France in 1968, but also to those heroic moments in history when the working class emerged as the candidate for taking human society in a radically new direction - France 1848 and 1871, Russia 1917, Germany 1918...

This chain connects forward as well, to the massive struggles which the deepening crisis of capitalism will certainly engender all over the planet; and like all the defeats suffered by the working class, the 1984-5 miners' strike still provides a wealth of lessons for the struggles ahead. In the international leaflet we produced in March 1985, we outlined the most important of these lessons, and in particular, the necessity for active solidarity throughout the working class:

"Faced with this Holy Alliance of exploiters and starvation-mongers, workers' solidarity is more indispensable than ever. But today real solidarity does not mean collecting money to help strikers 'hold out'. The length of a struggle is not its real strength. Faced with long strikes, the bourgeoisie knows how to organise itself. It has just proved this.

Real solidarity, the real strength of the workers, is the extension of the struggle. This alone can push back the bourgeoisie. This alone can threaten the stability of its political and economic power. Only the extension of the struggle can prevent the bourgeoisie defeating the workers in pockets, one sector after another. Only the extension of the struggle can prevent the bourgeoisie from unleashing its repression, as we saw in Poland in August 1980. Faced with the capitalist state, physical courage is not enough. The combat has to be as broad and as extensive as possible. This is why the bourgeoisie was so scared when the dockers entered the struggle in the summer of 1984, in solidarity with their comrade miners.

Each time the workers enter into struggle there is no alternative but to extend the movement, to seek the active solidarity of workers in other factories, towns and regions. And to do this they will have to confront not only their declared enemies - bosses, cops, governments. They will also have to expose the traps laid by those who claim to be their friends: the unions and the parties of the left...

In the hands of the unions, behind union slogans, the struggle can only be led to defeat.

Only by organising themselves into general assemblies, into strike committees, elected and recallable by these assemblies, can the workers extend their struggles and win...

It is by drawing all the lessons of the miners' strike and going forward in this direction that the workers of the whole world will transform the defeat of today into the promise of the victory of tomorrow."

The defeat of the miners does not prove the pointlessness of the class struggle. It is true that faced with a system in terminal decay, even the most powerful class movement can only win a temporary respite from capital's relentless attack on living standards. In the end, the working class will have no alternative but to mount a political offensive for the revolutionary overthrow of world capitalism. This is what we mean by the "victory of tomorrow". But the revolution does not fall from the sky: it can only be prepared by the struggles of today, with all their inevitable defeats and bitter disappointments.

Duffy, 27/03/04.

With the business of wearing the veil (hijab) in school, and all the debates, demonstrations and protests around whether pupils should be able to display visible signs of belonging to a religion, the French bourgeoisie has set in motion a campaign aimed at attacking the consciousness of the working class. From the right to the left and the extreme left, each of them has their own verse for or against, more or less for and more or less against, etc. The media, politicians, associations, organisations of Muslims, Jews or Christians, all participate in what they are calling a "great citizens' debate on secularity". In fact, contrary to the so-called cacophony that reigns in "French society" on this subject, all are going in the same direction: that of creating a maximum of confusion in the heads of the workers, the better to chain them to the bourgeois state and make them accept their lot.

Through this false debate the bourgeoisie aims to divert attention away from the weakness of the capitalist system, the growth of misery, the series of attacks that it is about concoct, and the means to get them through. The bourgeoisie thus exhorts the workers to participate as atomised individuals in the debate. They are invited to reflect as "citizens", in communion with the petty-bourgeoisie, or the bourgeoisie which exploits them. Everyone is equal in the debate! The worker is thus separated from his class and permeable to the whole of the dominant ideology.

But the business of the veil also presents another occasion to develop splits within the population and above all within the proletariat. It is significant that feelings have run high in this debate and this has only exacerbated racism, sexism and community divisions in their most petty aspects. It's a question of getting the workers to compete with one another, not only regarding their nationality, but also their beliefs. It creates a deep feeling of division within the working class through the false opposition between French and immigrant workers, the latter being by definition potentially "Islamist". And within the latter, bourgeois propaganda designates on one side the "bad" immigrants who demonstrate for the unconditional wearing of the veil, and on the other the "good" immigrants who submit to the law of the "secular republic". They transform real workers' solidarity, which goes beyond nationalities and beliefs, into a solidarity of those who "believe" in the bourgeois state as the ultimate judge of peace and social cohesion. Because behind all the debate on the defence of secular society, what's really at stake is whether we should defend the secular bourgeois state. Let's quote the daily Liberation of January 29 2004 that really shows the meaning of the campaign: "In our secular tradition, the state is the protector of free choice for everyone through freedom of conscience, its expression or non-expression. It must intervene when it is threatened." So, in the circumstances, the state is the single, authentic guarantee of individual freedom, it alone opposes the growth of the oppression of individuals that the revival of religion brings with it. This is really one of the objectives of this "debate" - to create a smokescreen about why this revival is taking place and thus prevent the working class from becoming conscious that it is the very decomposition of this capitalist system that is at the root of it (1).

As Marx said 150 years ago: "Religious anguish is, on one hand, the expression of real distress and, on the other, a protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of social conditions from which the spirit is excluded. It is the opium of the people." (2) To the cult of religion, the bourgeoisie would oppose the cult of the secular state, the acme of liberation for those oppressed by religion. But it's certainly not by having confidence in the state and its cops that young girls subjected to the diktats of the Islamists can escape oppression. Besides, in no way is it in the designs of the government to abolish cults but, on the contrary, to strengthen them: it is thus under the aegis of the "secular" republican state that, in the name of "liberty" and "respect", cults, mosques and synagogues flourish. Here is the unequivocal evidence that the ends of the democratic state are not opposed to those of religion but that they are complementary, the one with the other.

Ideological oppression, the crushing of thought and consciousness, are the blessed bread with which they all nourish their flocks. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie, as much as it was a progressive class, tried hard to maintain the church as a force differentiated from the bourgeois state because it represented a hindrance to the development of the productive forces. This culminated in laws on the separation of the church and state. The bourgeoisie, however, always maintained religion as an ideological force. And at the same time, already in this epoch, revolutionaries attacked the illusion that the anti-clericalism that flourished in the French republican bourgeoisie represented in itself a force for liberation. Rosa Luxemburg considered it as a mystifying element of bourgeois ideology. In an article published in January 1902 she affirmed that: "The socialists are precisely obliged to combat the church, an anti-republican and reactionary power, not to participate in bourgeois anti-clericalism but in order to get rid of it. The incessant guerrilla war conducted against the priesthood for dozens of years is, for the French bourgeois republicans, one of the most efficient means of turning away the attention of the labouring classes from social questions (�)" And she added: "Bourgeois anti-clericalism ends up in consolidating the power of the church, in the same way that bourgeois anti-militarism, as the Dreyfuss affair showed, only attacks phenomena natural to militarism, the corruption of the General Staff, and has only succeeded in refining and strengthening this very institution."(3).

With the decadence of capitalism and the entry of this system into its phase of decomposition, these illusions about anti-clericalism and the defence of the secular state are used above all as an ideological arm of the capitalist state to set workers at each others' throats.

Faced with the decay that infects the planet, it's not a question of embracing the cause of religion or that of the "secular" state. It's necessary to reaffirm that, faced with this false alternative, only the proletarian revolution will be able to finish with all these mystification's, whether "secular" or "religious". All of them are the product of capitalist oppression.

AM, 20/2/04.

Notes

Two hundred dead and more than 1500 hundred wounded, four trains destroyed, human bodies so horribly torn apart that they could only be recognised by their DNA - this is the terrifying balance sheet of the terrorist attack on the so-called 'Train of Death' which violently shook the morning of 11 March in Madrid.

As with the attack on the Twin Towers of 11 September 2001, this is an act of war. And once again, the victims are essentially among the defenceless civilian population, especially the workers: those who, like on every other day, like everywhere else, crowd into suburban trains in order to get to work; children of workers who, like on every other day, like everywhere else, take the same trains to get to high school or university. The simple fact that you live in the residential quarters on the city outskirts and have to take public transport to get to work makes you an easy victim of terror, and makes it possible for this terror to take on such huge and macabre proportions.

Like September 11, March 11 is an important date in the history of terrorist massacres. Not only is this the biggest massacre suffered by the Spanish population since the civil war of 1936-39, it's also the biggest terrorist attack in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

The bourgeoisie of diverse nations is now shedding torrents of crocodile tears over the victims. It has proclaimed three days of national mourning in Spain; it is inundating the media with special news broadcasts, it declares minutes of silence, it calls demonstrations against terrorism. For our part, as we did after September 11, we deny the hypocritical bourgeoisie and its pliant media any right to cry over the murdered workers, because "The ruling capitalist class is already responsible for too many massacres: the awful slaughter of World War I; World War II, more terrible still, when for the first time the civilian population was the main target. Let us remember what the bourgeoisie has shown itself capable of: the bombing of London, Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the millions of dead in the concentration camps and the gulags.

"Let us remember the hell visited on the civilian population and the routed Iraqi army during the Gulf War in 1991, and its hundreds of thousands of dead. Let us remember the daily bloodletting that is still going on in Chechnya, with the complicity of the Western democratic states. Let us remember the complicity of the Belgian, French, and US states in the Algerian civil war and the horrible pogroms in Rwanda.

"And let us remember that the Afghan population, today living in terror of America's cruise missiles, has suffered twenty years of uninterrupted warfare...These are just some examples among many of capitalism's filthy work, in the throes of an endless economic crisis and its own irremediable decadence. A capitalism at bay." ('In New York and all over the world, capitalism sows death [5]', International Review 107).

Far from attenuating, this barbarism has grown worse; this horrible list has since been supplemented by the second Gulf war, the incessant slaughter in the Middle East, the recent killings in Haiti, the terrorist bombings in Bali, Casablanca, Moscow. And now we have to add the attack on Atocha station in Madrid to the list.

The attacks of March 11 are not an attack on 'civilization', but an expression of the real nature of this 'civilisation' of the bourgeoisie: a system of exploitation which oozes poverty, war and destruction from all its pores. A system that has no other perspective to offer humanity than barbarism and annihilation. Terrorism is not a bastard child of capitalism, it is its legitimate child, in the same way as imperialist war; and the more capitalism sinks into the final phase of its decline, the phase of decomposition, the more terrorism is destined to become more savage and irrational.

Terrorism: a weapon of war between bourgeois factions

One of the characteristics of the decadence of capitalism is that imperialist war has become the system's permanent way of life, with the consequence that "these petty bourgeois classes have completely lost their independence and only function as a mass of manoeuvre and support in the confrontations between different factions of the ruling classes both within and outside national frontiers" ('Terror, terrorism and class violence', International Review 14, 1978). From the 1960s up to now, the evolution of terrorism fully confirms this characteristic as an instrument used by the various factions of the national bourgeoisie, or by each imperialism, in their struggle against internal rivals or competitors on the imperialist arena. Terrorism is indeed a favourite child of capitalism, carefully nourished with human blood by its backers. Terrorism and imperialist conflicts have become synonymous. During the 60s and 70s, the bourgeoisie didn't hesitate for a moment to use the 'selective' assassination of political leaders in order to settle its internal arguments. Let's recall the bomb that blew Carrero Blanco sky high (Blanco was a prime minister under the Franco regime). This action - the high point of ETA terrorism - was used by the bourgeoisie to accelerate a change of regime in Spain. The bourgeoisie has also not recoiled from using terrorism to destabilise the Middle East, as was the case with the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 or Israel's Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. When it comes to defending its interests against rival national factions or competing imperialisms, the bourgeoisie has no scruples about provoking blind slaughter among the civil population. To give but one example, there is the bombing of Bologna station in Italy in 1980, which left 80 dead. For a long time this was attributed to the Red Brigades, but in fact it was carried out by the Italian secret services and the Gladio network installed by the USA in Europe to counter the influence of Russian imperialism. Throughout this whole period, terrorism was above all used in the context of the imperialist conflict between the two superpowers.

A pure product of the decomposition of capitalism

The tendency towards generalized chaos has determined imperialist conflicts since the end of the 80s, the period in which capitalism has entered its phase of decomposition ([1]). The framework constituted by the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs set up at the end of the Second World War gave way to the reign of every man for himself ([2]). In this context terrorism has more and more become a weapon of the competing powers. On the one hand their official war machines have increasingly used terrorist methods, aiming less and less at military targets and more and more at the civilian population, as in the wars in the Gulf. At the same time, the horrible chain of attacks by 'unofficial' terrorist groups against a defenceless population was inaugurated by the bombs in Paris in September 1987 and reached a kind of paroxysm with the two planes filed with civilians which crashed into the Twin Towers and left almost 3,000 dead; but it continued with the bombs in Bali, Casablanca, Moscow and now Madrid. It would be a complete illusion to think that this barbarism is going to stop. As long s the working class, the only social force which can offer an alternative perspective to capitalist barbarism, does not finish once and for all with this inhuman system of exploitation, humanity will continue to live under the permanent threat of new and increasingly violent outrages, new and increasingly destructive wars.

As the decomposition of this system advances, the more it will spawn irrational and irresponsible factions, feeding the terrorist groups, the warlords and the local gangsters who are able to acquire increasingly destructive weapons but also more and more backers to profit from their crimes. After the fall of the Two Towers we wrote: "It is impossible to say with certainty today whether Osama Bin Laden really is responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers, as the US state accuses him of being. But if the Bin Laden theory does turn out to be true, then this is really a case of a petty warlord escaping from the control of his former masters" (IR 107). This is a typical expression of the generalisation of barbarism: quite apart from knowing which imperialist power or faction of the bourgeoisie benefits from this or that terrorist action, the latter tend more and more to escape the plans laid out by those who initially conceived them.

Who profits from this new crime?

As with the apprentice sorcerer, the 'creature' tends to become uncontrollable. As we write this article, we lack really concrete elements, and given that it is not possible to have much confidence in the bourgeois media, we propose to apply our framework of analysis and our historic experience and pose the question as follows: who profits from the crime?

As we saw earlier, terrorism and imperialist confrontations are today blood brothers. The attack on the Two Towers amply profited US imperialism, which was able to compel its former allies, now its main rivals, like France and Germany, to give it full support for its military campaign aimed at the occupation of Afghanistan.

The emotion provoked by September 11 also allowed the Bush administration to get the majority of the American population to accept the second Gulf war in 2003. This is why it's quite legitimate to ask whether the incredible 'lack of foresight' of the American secret services before September 11 was not the result of an actual will to 'let things happen' ([3]). As far as March 11 is concerned, it's clear that they in no way benefit the US, quite the opposite in fact. Aznar was a firm supporter of US policy (he was part of the 'Azores Trio' - Spain, US and the UK - the members of the UN Security Council who met up to call for the second Gulf war); but Zapatero, who succeeded him after his victory of the PSOE at the elections of 14 March, which owed much to the Atocha bombings, has already announced that he will withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. This is a slap in the face for the American administration and a definite victory for the French-German tandem that now leads the opposition to American diplomacy.

Having said this, this failure of American policy in no way represents a victory for the working class, as some would have us believe. Between 1982 and 1996, when it was at the head of the government, the PSOE proved itself to be a zealous defender of capitalism. Its return will not put an end to the bourgeoisie's attack on the proletariat. Similarly, the diplomatic success of Chirac and Schroeder is a success for two other loyal defenders of capitalism, which will bring absolutely nothing to the working class.

But worse still: the events we have just seen have made it possible for the bourgeoisie as a whole to score a major ideological victory, because it has strengthened the lie that the antidote to terrorism is 'democracy', that elections are an effective way of ending the anti-working class or warlike policies of the bourgeoisie, that pacifist demonstrations are a real barricade in the way of war.

Thus, the working class has not only suffered a physical attack with all the dead and wounded of March 11, it has also suffered a political attack of the first order. Once again, the crime has profited the bourgeoisie.

This is why, faced with terrorist barbarism, an expression of imperialist war and capitalist exploitation, there is only one answer...

To put an end to capitalism!

With dozens of bodies still not identified, with dozens of immigrant families (29 of the dead and 200 wounded are immigrants), who don't dare look for their parents in the hospitals or the morgues for fear of being deported, the bourgeoisie is creating huge obstacles to the working class reflecting on the causes and consequences of this attack. From the first moments after the explosions, even before the state's emergency services arrived on the scene, it was the victims themselves, the workers and children of the working class traveling in the 'trains of death', or those waiting at the station, or living in the neighbourhoods of Santa Eugenia or El Pozo, who set about helping the wounded, or finding shrouds for the dead. They were entirely animated by a feeling of solidarity. This feeling of solidarity was also expressed by thousands more who gave their blood or offered to help at the hospitals, but also by the firemen, the social workers and health workers who voluntarily worked overtime despite the dramatic lack of resources resulting from state-imposed cuts in civil protection and health and safety.

Revolutionaries, and the whole world proletariat, must proclaim loud and clear their solidarity with the victims. Only the development of the solidarity implicit in the struggle of the working class can create the basis for a society in which such abominable crimes can be abolished once and for all. The indignation of the working class towards this atrocity, its natural solidarity towards the victims, has however been manipulated by capital towards defending the latter's interests. In response to the carnage, the bourgeoisie called on the workers of Spain to demonstrate "against terrorism and for the Constitution"; it called on it to close ranks as Spanish citizens to the cry of "Spain united will never be defeated"; it appealed for a massive vote on Sunday 14th so that "such acts of savagery will never be repeated".

The doses of patriotism injected both by the right (Aznar declared that "they died because they were Spanish") and by the left ("if Spain had not taken part in the war in the Gulf, these attacks would not have happened") are aimed only at convincing workers that the nation's interests are their interests. This is a lie, a shameful and cynical lie! A lie which also aims at swelling the ranks of pacifism which, as we have always shown in our press, has never stopped wars but always serves to derail the real struggle against the real cause of war - capitalism.

Capitalism has no future to offer humanity except its destruction through increasingly murderous wars, increasingly barbaric terrorist attacks, growing poverty and famine. The slogan raised by the Communist International at the beginning of the 20th century perfectly summed up the perspective facing society when capitalism entered its period of decadence and it remains as valid as ever: "the epoch of wars and revolutions" whose only outcome can be "socialism or barbarism".

Capitalism has to die if humanity is to live, and only one social class can serve as its gravedigger: the proletariat. If the world working class does not succeed in affirming its class independence, if it doesn't fight first for the defence of its specific interests, and then for the destruction of this decaying society, humanity will be overwhelmed by the proliferation of conflicts between bourgeois states and gangs, which will not hesitate to use all the most unspeakable means at their disposal.

ICC, 19/3/04.

Notes

• 1. See the "Theses on Decomposition" from International Review 62.
• 2. See the "Resolution of the 15th ICC Congress on the International Situation" from International Review 113.
• 3. See our article 'Pearl Harbor 1941, Twin Towers 2001, the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie [6]' from International Review 108.

Since the beginning of the year the population and working class of Haiti have been prey to murderous conflicts between the armed bands of President Aristide, the 'Chimeras', and the rival opposition clans with a drug trafficker, former police commissioner, Guy Philippe, at their head. Having conquered the towns in the north of the island, the armed opposition attacked the capital Port-au-Prince. After several days of bloody rioting and pillaging the American and French governments, who support the Haitian opposition, were eager to send several thousand soldiers, with the blessing of the UN, into this part of the Caribbean in order to chase the Aristide clan out of power and to re-establish 'democratic order and civil' peace and to 'protect the population'.

All these justifications are nothing but lies! Haiti is a prime example of bourgeois cynicism. Like Africa, Haiti is ravaged by famine and epidemics: 70% of the population is unemployed, 85% of the population lives on less than 70 pence (1 Euro) a day. The average life expectancy in 2002 was less than 50 years as opposed to about 70 in the other South American and Caribbean countries. 40% of the population have no access to the most basic care and the rates of infection with HIV and TB are the highest in Latin America. Infant mortality is twice as high and half the children under 5 go hungry. The situation is worsened by the western powers who have promised credit and aid which has never been paid. "After the legislative elections contested in 21 May 2000, the United States, the European Union and the international financial organisations have frozen the aid promised to Haiti. This veritable embargo overtook the most vulnerable population on the whole continent, the people which is the poorest, whose economy, environment, and social tissue is the most fragile" (Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2003). To this sombre picture of crushing pauperisation is added the riots and confrontations between pro- and anti-Aristide forces which have left hundreds of dead. These victims have been added to the long list of extortion and massacres committed by preceding regimes, supported by the western democracies, from the bloodthirsty Duvalier, father and son, and their 'Tontons Macoutes' militia, to the generals and military governors who have succeeded each other since the island became independent in 1804. Haiti is sinking into ever more chaos and disorder. It is in the hands of armed gangs and their political representatives who organise all sorts of trafficking: drugs, arms and the organisation of human traffic in illegal migration. Given this level of barbarism, which dramatically illustrates how capitalism is mired in decomposition, it is legitimate to ask what interest the great powers could have in intervening militarily in Haiti. Contrary to what the leftists say, the great powers are not intervening in Haiti to keep the enterprises and banks going. This is secondary as the economy and the state in this part of Santo Domingo are in a state of collapse. We are no longer in the 19th Century, when the European powers fought over the riches of the Caribbean. We are no longer in the 20th Century when the division of the world into military blocs necessitated the absolute control of this region by the American bloc faced with the Soviet bloc and its influence in Cuba. Today it is not the control of Haiti in itself which justifies the intervention of the great powers, but the fact that the United States wants to maintain its grip on the Caribbean to control the growing tide of refugees arriving on the coast in Florida; at the same time it is trying to maintain its influence in this zone, which it regards as its back yard, faced with the European powers, especially France, which, in the Bicentenary year of the independence of Haiti (a former French colony) has been trying to contest the US in this zone. Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc, Uncle Sam has, in the defence of its leadership, been challenged by its old allies from the Western bloc. Already in 1994, it was the opposition from France, Germany and Russia to UN sanctions against Iraq after the first Gulf War which, among other things, pushed Bill Clinton to make a demonstration of force in Haiti. He sent 20,000 soldiers to 'restore democracy' in Haiti and the United States reinstalled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the very leader they would chase from power a few years later.

Today the priest of the slumdwellers, Aristide, is implicated in the lucrative drug trade and has proved himself as corrupt as other figures in the Haitian bourgeoisie. He has been sacked by his American and French godfathers. Despite the protests from South Africa, from the Community of the Caribbean and from some Democrats in America, who are clamouring for an international inquiry into the undemocratic eviction suffered by their 'pet', the United States has continued to remind one and all that it calls the shots. One more time, military intervention does not have the objective of restoring 'civil peace'. And despite Bush and Chirac's mutual congratulations for their excellent co-operation in Haiti, the only point on which these gangsters agree is that it was necessary to intervene militarily. For the rest, it is competition that dominates and every man for himself is the only policy in operation, even if that generates even more chaos and massacres for the civilian population. Each will attempt to put its own men in government. For the moment it seems that the United States has seized the advantage in this imperialist rivalry: "In ringing the bell for the end of the party for Guy Philippe, who they had supported, the United States imposed itself as the sole masters of the game in Haiti. They have removed Aristide, made his armed opponents surrender, put their own men in the key sectors of the administration. And, in addition, they have excluded France from the final outcome of the crisis in which Paris had, until then, played a role of the first importance" (Liberation 5 March).

The military intervention in Haiti demonstrates once more the worsening of military tensions between the great powers and the irrational character of these policing operations from the economic point of view. The dispute between the White House and the Elysee Palace over the 'spoils' of Haiti is within the framework defended by the ICC on this increasingly irrational aspect of the tensions and wars in capitalism. "War is no longer undertaken to further economic goals, or even for organised strategic objectives, but as short term, localised and fragmented attempts to survive at each other's expense" ('Resolution on the international situation' International Review 102). The semblance of government that the American bourgeoisie is trying to set up cannot resist the fratricidal wars of the different Haitian clans for long, and we are entitled to ask whether Haiti is not to become another mess for Uncle Sam, all the more since the maneuvres of France and the other competing powers will only make it worse. This is how capitalism lives. Under the pretext of democracy and humanitarianism, in reality it exacerbates the imperialist contradictions, feeds chaos and plunges the population and the proletariat into total destitution.

Donald, 20/3/04

In the first part of this series we looked at the development of the SPGB from its origins as part of the tendency within the SDF that struggled against the reformism and opportunism of the latter. We showed that in its first years the SPGB was confronted with important questions arising from the development of capitalism, such as the role of the unions and the relationship between the struggle for reforms and the struggle for the revolution. In this second part we look at the vastly more demanding challenges that faced the whole workers' movement in the second decade of the 20th century. A period in which it became clear through the ravages of the First World War that capitalism has entered a new historical period, the period of its decadence, and in which the proletariat launched a wave of struggles, beginning in Russia in 1917, that for the first time threatened the class rule of the bourgeoisie.

The First World war

The SPGB portray themselves as the implacable opponents of war. They say that "the party had no hesitation in declaring total opposition when the first world war came in 1914" (Socialist Principles Explained, 1975, p7) and that "the only political organisation to 'unequivocally' oppose the war was the Socialist Party" (Socialist Standard, no.1110, Feb 1997, p14). In fact the SPGB's opposition in both theory and practice never rose to the historical challenge posed by the new period in capitalism's life.

Barltrop in The Monument states that "There was little about European politics in the Socialist Standard up to 1914" (p.51). There were some general articles denouncing capitalist 'peace' (April 1911 and July 1912), one in November 1912 analysing the background to the Balkan war and another in March 1914 on armaments. The issue for September 1914, the first after the outbreak of the war, printed a statement by the Executive Committee on the war that correctly denounced it as a capitalist war and then proclaimed that the party "seizes the opportunity of reaffirming the socialist position", which it did in very general terms, before concluding by "placing on record its abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class, and declaring that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood, enters its emphatic protest against the brutal and bloody butchery of our brothers of this and other lands...we extend to our fellow workers the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism". In a more detailed article, 'The war and you', it portrayed the war as one for trade and markets: "Behind the covering screen of cant about British honour and German perfidy is the consciousness, frequently voiced, that it is a question, not of German perfidy but of German trade; not of British honour, but of wider markets for the disposal of British surplus products" (p.4). This was the orthodox position of the workers' movement at the time. For example, the Stuttgart congress of the Second International held in 1907 in its Resolution on War and Militarism declared "As a rule, wars between capitalist states are the outcome of their competition on the world market, for each state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones" (quoted in Lenin's Struggle for a Revolutionary International, Pathfinder Press, 1986, p.33-4).

The SPGB was allowed to continue publishing throughout the war (although it was prevented from sending copies abroad and some libraries refused to take it) and carried articles reiterating their opposition to the war, exposing the propaganda of the bourgeoisie and denouncing the betrayal of those organisations of the working class that supported the war. However they remained at a general level and never expressed the historic significance of the development nor analysed the progress of the war and the strategy of the ruling class in any detail. This failure to analyse the historic significance of the war, in particular, contrasts strongly with the approach taken by the left of the workers movement. Lenin and Luxemburg had both developed analyses that expressed an understanding of the historical evolution of the capitalist system. This understanding was expressed in an early statement by the Bolsheviks: "The growth of armaments, the extreme intensification of the struggle for markets in the latest - the imperialist - stage of capitalist development in the advanced countries, and the dynastic interests of the more backward East-European monarchies were inevitably bound to bring about this war, and have done so" (The war and Russian Social-Democracy in Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p.27). Luxemburg also placed the war in the phase of imperialism: "the last phase in the life, and the highest point in the expansion of the world hegemony of capital" ('Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy' in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p.330). A similar understanding was also expressed by Gorter: "Times have changed. Capitalism is so developed that it can continue its further development only by massacring the proletariat of every country. A world capital is born, which is turning against the world proletariat. World imperialism threatens the working class of the whole world" (quoted in The Dutch and German Communist Left, p110, published by the ICC, 2001).

The publication of the Socialist Standard quite rapidly became the SPGB's only tool of intervention. In January 1915 it voluntarily stopped holding public meetings after a number had been broken up and some of its militants injured, although it continued to discreetly hold its annual meetings. Despite a few reports about industrial action there is no evidence to suggest that the SPGB played any part in the strikes that broke out during the war. Nor is there any evidence that pamphlets were produced during the war and there is only one reference to the production of a leaflet. In October 1914 the Socialist Standard advised the working class "to stay at home and think" and to join the SPGB. The principle opposition conducted by the SPGB was the individual refusal of its members to join the army. While some chose to disappear, the majority sought to be accepted as conscientious objectors, some even leaving protected jobs in order to do so. While the courage shown by individual militants cannot be doubted, it amounted to no more than that shown by people who objected on religious grounds and only served to further reduce the number of militants free to continue political work. The task for revolutionaries in such a situation is not to make gestures, however great the personal sacrifice, but to struggle to defend the interests of the working class.

In sharp contrast to the SPGB the Bolsheviks did not see the war as a time to reduce activity or to accept the dictates of the bourgeoisie, but as a time to increase the struggle: "The conversion of the present imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan it has been dictated by all the conditions of an imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries. However difficult that transformation may seem at any given moment, socialists will never relinquish systematic, persistent and undeviating preparatory work in this direction now that war has become a fact" (Lenin, op. cit. p.34). The Bolsheviks called for illegal organisation and propaganda within the army, participated in workers' struggles and maintained the publication and distribution of its papers despite the efforts of the Tsarist repression. In Britain the approach of the SLP also contrasts with that of the SPGB. The SPGB has made much of the fact that the SLP 'wavered' at the outbreak of the war as proof of their superiority. It is true that at a meeting of the SLP after the declaration of war, one faction supported national defence in the event of invasion but, according to one of its militants, this position was rapidly reversed (Tom Bell, Pioneering Days, p102). Its attitude, while not free of errors, in particular the call for class-conscious workers to sign up in order to get training in the use of weapons, was to try and use the war to develop the class struggle. It continued to hold public meetings and to publish The Socialist even when its presses were attacked. Its militants, many of whom went on the run in order to be able to continue their work, played a central role in the strikes on the Clyde, working with militants from other organisations, such as John Maclean, who continued to defend a proletarian position on the war.

The revolutionary wave

As a result of its failure to understand the qualitative change in the life of capitalism expressed by the First World War, the SPGB was unable to recognise, understand or participate in the revolutionary response of the proletariat. As with its understanding of the war the SPGB remained trapped in the framework of the Second International in its approach to the revolutionary wave that began in Russia. Its consistent identification of the revolution in Russia as bourgeois is based on the orthodox view of social democracy that the bourgeois revolution must be completed before a proletarian one is possible. In April 1917, in possibly its first reference to the Russian Revolution, the SPGB stated "Far from heralding the dawn of freedom in Russia, it is simply the completion of the emancipation of the capitalist class in Russia which started in the 'emancipation' of the serfs some seventy years ago - in order that they might become factory slaves. The revolution's greatest importance from the working-class view-point is that it brings the workers face to face with their final exploiters". The same argument was repeated in the following months. In an article 'Russia and ourselves' they cite the election of Kerensky as evidence that "the Russian capitalist class still hold the field" (Socialist Standard, July 1917), failing to see the class struggle taking place, and conclude by calling for the working class to educate itself, effectively giving up the real struggle going on: "Only through class-conscious organisation on political lines can the Russian proletariat emerge from their long-endured bondage. In this they resemble the workers of all other countries, and to the work of education necessary to achieve such organisation I commend all Russian Socialists" (ibid). The concessions to bourgeois democratic ideology implicit in this argument were made much more explicit in a later article entitled 'The Revolution in Russia - Where it Fails': "Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage-slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?

"Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is 'No'. What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists" (quoted in Perrin (1), The Socialist Party of Great Britain, p.60).

Underpinning this analysis is a view of the revolution in Russia as a purely national phenomenon. If such an error was understandable at the time, given both the limited information available and the weight of the view of the necessity for every nation to complete the bourgeois stage before beginning the proletarian one, this is not the case today. However, Perrin's recent history of the SPGB does precisely this, failing completely to acknowledge Lenin's repeated insistence that the working class could not hold power in Russia unless the proletariat of the other major capitalist countries, and Germany above all others, also seized power. The ability to see the worldwide nature of the proletarian revolution was the corollary of understanding that capitalism had encompassed the globe. It was the position reached in various ways and with various degrees of clarity by the greatest of revolutionaries, by the likes of Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg. It was this that allowed Luxemburg to conclude her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution with the famous words: "In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to 'bolshevism'" (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p.395).

Conclusion

In failing to grasp the changes in capitalism, specifically its entry into its period of decadence, and the consequent changes in the class struggle, with the proletarian revolution becoming a material possibility for the first time in history, the SPGB was unable to rise to the challenge of the period and so could not be part of the proletariat's forces. However, nor did it betray the working class and become part of the bourgeoisie. As a result it came to occupy a position between the two great classes and has remained there ever since.

North, 25/03/04.

Note

• Perrin has asked us to point out that his book is not a publication of the SPGB. For our part we note that Perrin is a member of the SPGB and his book was sold through the Socialist Standard.

In the first two parts of this article (see World Revolution 271 and 272) we established, first of all, that communism isn’t simply an old dream of humanity or the mere product of human will, but that the necessity and possibility of communism were based directly on the material conditions developed by capitalism; secondly, that against all the prejudices about ‘human nature’ making it impossible for humanity to live in such a society, communism really is the kind of society that is most able to allow each individual to flourish to the full. We still have to deal with another question against the possibility of communism: ‘OK, communism is necessary and materially possible. Yes, men and women could live in such a society. But today humanity is so alienated under capitalist society that it will never have the strength to undertake a transformation as gigantic as the communist revolution.’ We’ll try to answer this now.

Is communism inevitable?

Before dealing directly with the question of the concrete possibility of the transition from capitalism to communism, we have to be clear about the idea that communism is certain and inevitable.

A revolutionary like Bordiga could once write: “The communist revolution is as certain as if it had already happened.” This really is a distorted view of marxism. While it can draw out certain laws about the development of societies, marxism resolutely rejects any idea of a kind of human destiny, written in advance in the great book of nature. Just as the evolution of the species doesn’t involve any finality, i.e. it’s not a movement of progressive approximation towards some kind of perfect model, so the evolution of human societies isn’t moving towards a model established in advance. Such a vision belongs to idealism: it was the philosopher Hegel, for example, who considered that each form of society was a progressive step towards the realisation of an ‘Absolute Ideal’ hovering above men and history. Similarly, the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin thought that man is evolving towards a ‘Point Omega’ which has been fixed for all time. While the study of history can enable us to grasp the general laws of social evolution in relation to the development of the productive forces, it also tells us that history is full of examples of societies which have hardly evolved at all; societies which, far from giving rise to more progressive forms of social development, have either stagnated for thousands of years, like the Asiatic societies, or have simply decayed on their feet, like ancient Greek society. As a general rule, the mere fact that a whole society has entered into decadence in no way means that it contains within itself the basis for a higher social form; it can just as easily collapse into barbarism and lose most of the cultural acquisitions and productive techniques which had determined and accompanied its former development.

It’s a very particular kind of society, capitalism, which developed on the ruins of the feudal society of western Europe, and which has created on a world-scale (being the most dynamic form of society that has ever existed) the material conditions for communism. But capitalism, like many other societies, is not immune from the danger of total decay and decomposition, of annihilating all the advances it has made and dragging humanity several centuries or several thousand years backwards. In practical terms, it’s not hard to see that this system has created the means for the self-destruction of all human society, precisely because it has extended its domination across the whole planet and has reached such a level of technical mastery. As we’ve already seen, the conditions which make communism possible and necessary are also the conditions which threaten humanity with irreversible decline or total destruction.

Revolutionaries are not charlatans; they don’t go about announcing the inevitable advent of a golden age which we have only to wait for quietly. Their role isn’t to preach sermons of consolation to humanity in distress. But while they can have no certainty about the inevitable coming of communism (it’s precisely because they’re not certain that they dedicate their lives to the struggle to make what is possible become a reality), they must insist on the real possibility of such a society - not only on the level of material possibilities or of the theoretical capacity of human beings to live in such a society, but also as regards the capacity of humanity to make this decisive leap from capitalism to communism, to make the communist revolution.

The subject of the communist revolution

Because of the failure of past revolutions, whether they were crushed like those in Germany and Hungary in 1919, or whether they degenerated as in Russia, the average bourgeois draws the conclusion that the revolution is impossible. He has a grim warning for all who want to embark on such ventures: “Woe betide you if you try to revolt! And if you ever do, look what happened in Russia!” It’s quite understandable that the bourgeoisie should think like this: it’s in line with its interests as a privileged, exploiting class. And this doesn’t mean that the bourgeoisie itself isn’t alienated. On the contrary, as Marx and Engels wrote:

“The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The latter feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence.” (Marx, The Holy Family).

But, however ferocious their exploitation, however inhuman their living conditions over the past fifty years, workers have been impressed by such arguments, to the point of virtually giving up any hope of emancipating themselves. This despair has allowed all sorts of theories to blossom, notably those of Professor Marcuse[1] [11], according to which the working class is no longer a revolutionary class, is integrated into the system, so that the only hope for the revolution lies with the marginal strata, those who are excluded from present-day society like ‘the young’, ‘blacks’, ‘women’, ‘students’ or the peoples of the Third World. Others arrived at the idea that the revolution would be the work of a ‘universal class’ regrouping nearly everyone in society.

What actually lies behind all these theories about the ‘integration’ of the working class is a petty-bourgeois disdain for the class (hence the success of these theories in the milieu of the intellectual and student petty bourgeoisie). For the bourgeois and petty bourgeois that follow in his footsteps, the workers are nothing but poor sods that lack the will or intelligence to make anything of their lives. They spend the whole of their lives being brutalised: instead of breaking out of their conditions they fritter away all their leisure-time in the pub or stuck in front of the TV, the only thing that arouses their interest being the Cup Final or the latest scandal. And, when they do demand something, it’s just a measly wage rise so that they can be even more alienated by the ‘consumer society’.

After the patent failure or recuperation of the marginal movements that were supposed to overturn the established order, it’s understandable that those who held such theories should now be giving up any perspective of changing society. The most astute of them are now becoming ‘new philosophers’ or officials of the social democratic parties; the less well provided for are drifting into scepticism, demoralisation, drugs or suicide. Once one has understood that it won’t come from ‘all men of good will’ (as the Christians believe), or from the universal class (as Invariance [2] [12] believes), or from the much-vaunted marginal strata, or from the peasants of the Third World as Maoism and Guevarism claim, then one can see that the only hope for the regeneration of society lies with the working class. And it’s because they have a static vision of the working class, seeing it as a mere collection of individual workers, that the sceptics of today don’t think that the working class is capable of making the revolution.

As early as 1845, Marx and Engels replied to these kinds of objections:

“It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, may imagine for the moment to be the aim. It is a question of what the proletariat actually is and what it will be compelled to do historically as the result of this being” (The Holy Family).

If you consider that the working class will never be anything but a sum of what its members are today, then no, the revolution will never be possible. But such a viewpoint makes an abstraction of two fundamental aspects of reality:

·         The whole is always more than the sum of its parts;

·         Reality is movement. The elements of nature are not immutable and the elements of human societies even less so. That’s why one must avoid taking a photograph of the present situation and thinking that this is an eternal reality. On the contrary one must grasp what exactly is this “historic being” of the proletariat which pushes it towards communism.

Exploited class and revolutionary class

Marx and Engels tried to answer this question in The Holy Family:

“When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletariat as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need - the practical expression of necessity - is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself.” (The Holy Family).

However this answer is still insufficient. This description of capitalist society can also be applied to all class societies; this description of the working class can be applied to all exploited classes. This passage explains why, like all other exploited classes, the proletariat is compelled to revolt, but it doesn’t say why this revolt can and must lead to revolution i.e. the overthrow of one kind of society and its replacement by another: in short, why the working class is a revolutionary class.

As sceptics of all kinds are prone to point out, it’s not enough for a class to be exploited for it to be revolutionary. And in fact, in the past, the opposite has been the case. In their day, the nobility fighting against slave society and the bourgeoisie fighting against feudalism were revolutionary classes. This didn’t make them exploited: on the contrary, they were both exploiting classes. On the other hand, the revolts of the exploited classes in these societies - slaves and serfs - never resulted in a revolution. A revolutionary class is a class whose domination over society is in accordance with the establishment and extension of the new relations of production made necessary by the development of the productive forces, to the detriment of the old, obsolescent relations of production.

Because both slave society and feudal society could only give rise to another exploitative society - due to the level of the development of the productive forces In those periods - the revolution could only be led:

·         by an exploiting class;

·         by a class which wasn’t specific to the declining society, while those classes who were couldn’t be revolutionary, either because they were exploited or because they had privileges to defend.

In contrast, since capitalism has developed the conditions which make the elimination of all exploitation both possible and necessary, the revolution against it can only be made:

·         by an exploited class;

·         by a class which is specific to capitalist society.

The proletariat is the only class in present day society which meets these two criteria; it’s the only revolutionary class in present-day society. Thus we can now respond to the central objection which this article set out to deal with. Yes, the proletariat is an alienated class, subjected to the whole weight of the ruling bourgeois ideology; but because it produces the bulk of social wealth and is thus more and more shouldering the burdens of the capitalist crisis, it’s going to be compelled to revolt. And in contrast to the revolts of previous exploited classes, the revolt of the proletariat isn’t a desperate one: it contains within itself the possibility of revolution and communism.

The objection can be raised that there have been attempts at a proletarian revolution but that they have all failed. But just as the fact that the plague decimated society for centuries didn’t mean that humanity would have to suffer this scourge for ever, so the failure of past revolutions shouldn’t lead us to the conclusion that the revolution is impossible. The main thing which held back the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was the fact that the proletariat’s consciousness lagged behind its material existence: although its old conditions of struggle had become obsolete once capitalism had passed from its zenith to its decadent phase, the class didn’t become aware of this in time. It thus went through a terrible counter-revolution which silenced it for decades.

Once again, we don’t pretend that victory is certain. But even if there is only a chance in a thousand that we’re going to win, the stakes involved in today’s struggles are so momentous that, far from demoralising us, this should galvanize the energies of all those who sincerely aspire to a different kind of society. Far from despising, ignoring or underestimating the present struggle of the working class, we must understand the decisive importance of these battles. Because the proletariat is both an exploited class and a revolutionary class, its struggles against the effects of exploitation prepare the way for the abolition of exploitation; its struggles against the effects of the crisis prepare the way for the destruction of a society in mortal crisis; and the unity and consciousness forged during these struggles are the point of departure for the unity and consciousness which will enable the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and create a communist society.  FM