Decadence of capitalism

The decadence of capitalism: introduction to the Russian edition

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We are publishing here the introduction to the Russian edition of the ICC's pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism, which has recently appeared thanks to the efforts of comrades in the newly emerging proletarian milieu in Russia. Our introduction focuses on the specific contribution of the workers' movement in Russia to our understanding of capitalism's decline. This is particularly apt because we have found that the concept or definition of capitalist decadence has been a major issue in our discussions with the various groups and individuals who make up the Russian milieu.

Preface to the Russian edition of The Decadence of Capitalism

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The publication of the ICC's pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism is testimony to the re-emergence of revolutionary elements in a country where a once-great proletarian political tradition was buried under the terrible weight of the Stalinist counter-revolution. The ICC is well aware that without this rebirth, the translation of our pamphlet into Russian would not have been possible; we offer it therefore as a contribution to the clarification of communist positions in the debates now going on both within the Russian milieu itself, and between this milieu and the international expressions of authentic communism.

2 - The theory of decadence at the heart of historical materialism, part ii

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In the previous issue of the International Review (n°118), we recalled at length, and with the support of passages from their major writings, how Marx and Engels defined the notions of the ascendance and decadence of a mode of production. We saw that the notion of decadence lies at the very heart of historical materialism in the analysis of the succession of different modes of production. In a forthcoming article, we will also demonstrate that this concept was central to the political programmes of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, and of the marxist left that emerged from them, in which the groups of the Communist Left today have their origins.

1 - The theory of decadence lies at the heart of historical materialism, part i

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We are beginning a new series devoted to the theory of decadence. For some time now, various criticisms of this concept have been piling up. To a large extent they have been the work of academic or parasitic grouplets. Others, however, express real incomprehension inside the revolutionary milieu, or come from searching elements who are posing genuine questions about the evolution of capitalism on a historic scale. We have already replied to the bulk of these criticisms. Today, however, we are seeing a change in their nature. They are no longer questions, misunderstandings or doubts; they no longer simply put certain aspects into question. Rather, we are seeing a total rejection, a type of criticism which amounts to an excommunication from marxism.

Theses on decomposition

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The terrorist attacks which killed more than 6,000 people in the United States on 11th September, like the new war which has followed them, are a new and tragic illustration of the barbarism into which capitalism is plunging. As we explain in the article in this Review, “New York and the world over: capitalism spreads death”, this barbarity is an expression of the fact that capitalism, which entered its period of decadence with the outbreak of World War I, has for more than a decade suffered a further aggravation of this decadence whose main characteristic is the decomposition of society. Our organisation has highlighted this new phase of capitalism’s decadence since the end of the 1980s (see our first article on the question, “The decomposition of capitalism”, in International Review n°57, 2nd quarter 1989). In 1990, just after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, we made our analysis more systematic in the “Theses” published in International Review n°62. This is the document that we are reprinting here. We believe that it is more current than ever. In particular, it provides a framework for understanding the growing use of terrorism in inter-state conflicts around the world, and the rise of despair, nihilism, and religious obscurantism so strikingly illustrated by the attacks on the World Trade Center. It also deals with the fact that the different expressions of decomposition today are an important obstacle to the development of working class consciousness. We can see this today, in the way that the bourgeoisie, especially in the US but in other countries as well, is using the emotion and the fear provoked by the attacks in New York to muzzle the working class in the name of “national unity”.

The idea of the historic course in the revolutionary movement

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Since the report on the class struggle to the last Congress, there have been no immediate shifts in the overall situation facing the class. The proletariat has demonstrated, through various struggles, that its combativity remains intact and that its discontent is growing (eg transport workers in New York, 'general strike' in Norway, struggles in numerous sectors in France, postal workers in Britain, movements in peripheral countries like Brazil, China, etc). But the situation continues to be much more clearly defined by the difficulties facing the class - difficulties imposed by the conditions of decomposing capitalism but continually reinforced by the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns about the 'end of the working class', the 'new economy', 'globalisation', and even 'anti-capitalism'. Within the proletarian political milieu, meanwhile, there remain fundamental disagreements about the balance of class forces, with certain groups using the ICC's 'idealist' view of the historic course as a reason for not participating in any joint initiative against the war in Kosovo. This is certainly one reason to focus this report not so much on the struggles of the recent period, but on trying to deepen our understanding of the concept of the historic course as it has developed in the workers' movement: if we are to answer these criticisms effectively, we must obviously go to the historical root of the misunderstandings that infect the proletarian milieu. Another reason is that one of the weaknesses in our own analyses of recent struggles has been a tendency towards immediatism, a tendency to concentrate on particular struggles as 'proof' of our position on the course, or on the difficulties of the struggle as a possible basis for calling our conceptions into question. What follows is very far from an exhaustive survey; it's main aim is to assist the organisation to acquaint itself more closely with the general method through which marxism has approached this question.

Correspondence on Crisis Theories and Decadence, Part 2: Our reply

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Bukharin, Raya Dunayeskavya and other critics of Rosa Luxemburg cited by the comrade, say that she was wrong to look for external reasons for the crisis of capitalism.  However, the world market and the pre-capitalist economies are not external to the system: they are the environment for its development and confrontations...

Correspondence on Crisis Theories and Decadence, Part 1: Our reply

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The economic convulsions and avalanche of job losses that are sweeping over workers throughout the world and principally in the most industrialised countries are casting a clear shadow of doubt over the endless propaganda about the “good health” and “bright future” of this social system and generating a justified concern about the future.

Crises and cycles in the economy of dying capitalism, part 1

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This article is the first part of a study published in the review Bilan in 1934, by the Left Fraction of the Italian Communist Party. The study’s aim was to “better penetrate the meaning of the crises which have periodically shaken the whole capitalist apparatus, and in conclusion to try to characterise and define as precisely as possible the era of definitive decadence which capitalism fills with the bloody upheavals of its death-agony”.

Reply to the IBRP, Part 2: Theories of Capitalism's Historic Crisis

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The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) has replied in International Communist Review no.13 to our polemical article “The IBRP’s Conception of decadence in capitalism” which appeared in our International Review no.79. In International Review no.82 we published the first part of this article, which demonstrated the negative implications of the IBRP’s conception of imperialist war as a means for the devaluation of capital and the renewal of the cycles of accumulation. In this second part we are going to analyse the economic theory that sustains this conception: the theory of the tendential fall in the rate of profit.

Rejecting the notion of Decadence, Part 3

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The future world Communist Party, the new International, will be built on political positions, which will supersede the mistakes, inadequacies, or unresolved questions of the old party, the Communist International. This is why it is vital that the organisations that claim their origins in the Communist Left continue to debate together. We consider that the decadence of capitalism is fundamental among these positions.

Rejecting the notion of Decadence, Part 1

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In numbers 90, 91, and 92 of the review Programme Communiste, published by the International Communist Party (which also publishes the papers Il Comunista in Italian and Le Proletaire in French) , there is a long study on ‘Imperialist war in the bourgeois cycle and in marxist analysis’, which conveys this organisation’s conception of this vitally important issue for the workers’ movement. The fundamental political positions that these articles affirm constitute a clear defence of proletarian principles faced with all the lies spread around by the various agents of the ruling class. However, some of the theoretical developments upon which these principles are based, and the predictions that follow from them, are not always equal to the statements of principle and run the risk of weakening rather than reinforcing them.

Part 8: The 'real domination' of capitalism and the real confusions of the proletarian milieu

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There’s a brand new fashion in the proletarian milieu, a smart little theory which its trend setting designers present as a long-lost secret of marxism, permitting them to explain the historical evolution of capitalist society without - and here’s the beauty of it – having to drag in that commonplace, old-hat theory of decadence which the ICC in particular has been going on about for so long.

Part 7: The Convulsions of Ideology

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The ‘ideological crisis’, the ‘crisis of values’ which journalists and sociologists have been talking about for decades is, contrary to what they say, not a ‘painful adaptation to capitalist technological progress’. It is rather the expres­sion of the halt in any real historical progress by capitalism. It’s the decomposition of the dominant ideology which accompanies the deca­dence of the economic system. All the convulsions which capitalist ideologi­cal forms have gone through over the past three quarters of a century in fact constitute not a permanent rejuvenation of capitalism but an expression of its senility, demonstrating the necessity and possibility of the communist revolution.

War, militarism and imperialist blocs in the decadence of capitalism, Part 2

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In the first part of this article we pointed out the utterly irrational character of war in the period of the decadence of capitalism. Whereas last century, despite the destruction and massacre they brought about, wars consti­tuted a means for taking capitalist production forward by facilitating the conquest of the world market and stimulating the development of the productive forces of society as a whole, wars in the 20th century are simply the most ex­treme expression of the barbarism into which capitalism's decadence plunges social life. 

Part 6: Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism

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In two previous articles, we demonstrated that all modes of production are regulated by an ascendant and a decadent cycle (International Review no. 55), and that today we are living in the heart of capitalism’s decadence (International Review no. 54). The present article aims to give a better description of the elements that have made it possible for capitalism to survive throughout its decadence, and in particular to provide a basis for understanding the rates of growth in the period following 1945 (the highest in capitalism’s history). Above all, we will demonstrate that this momentary upsurge is the product of a doped growth, which is nothing other than the desperate struggle of a system in its death-throes. The means that have been used to achieve it (massive debts, state intervention, growing military production, unproductive expenditure, etc) are wearing out, opening the way to an unprecedented crisis.

Part 5: Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism

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In the fifth article in this series (see International Review Nos. 48, 49, 50 and 54), we are returning to the critique or rejection of the notion of decadence by a series of groups in the proletarian political milieu (the Internationalist Communist Party (Programma, Bordigist) or ICP, the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (GCI), A Contre Courant (a recent split from the GCI), Communisme ou Civilisation (CoC), and in part the External Fraction of the ICC (EFICC) . We will demonstrate that these critiques in reality hide a rejection of the marxist conception of historical evolution which is the foundation of the necessity of communism, and so weaken the necessary historical dimension in the proletariat’s coming to consciousness, or else in cases like the GCI end up presenting the revolution as the old utopia of the anarchists.

Part 4: Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism

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We are continuing here the series of articles begun in International Review Nos. 48, 49, 50, which aimed to defend the analysis of the decadence of capitalism against the criticisms levelled at it by groups of the revolutionary milieu, and by the GCI in particular. In this article, we aim to develop different aspects of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, and to answer the arguments that reject it.

Part 3: The class nature of the social democracy

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Understanding the decadence of capitalism also means understanding the specific forms of proletarian struggle in our own epoch, and how they differ from those of other historical periods. The continuity that ties together the proletariat’s political organisations emerges from the comprehension of these differences.

Part 1: The rise and decadence of capitalism

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The increasingly apocalyptic character of social life all over the planet is neither a natural inevitability nor the product of so-called ‘human folly’, nor is it a characteristic of capitalism since its beginnings. It is an expression of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production which, having been from the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century a powerful factor in economic and social development, has transformed itself – by becoming locked up in its own contradictions – into a more and more powerful barrier to the continuation of this development.

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