Capitalist catastrophe and revolutionary theory

Traducido por Balance y Avante

 

 

Throughout these lines, we aim to outline the general framework that underpins our conception of the revolutionary process, which is already emerging from the contradictions of capitalism. The foundations of this conception lie, of course, in the principles of historical materialism, but we want to focus on what is developed in an important text from the Italian left of 1951, «Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine,» a text in which the framework of the inversion of praxis is developed, something we have referred to in some of our contributions. To this end, we will also make use of numerous texts from our comrades at n+1, who have been the best at developing the theoretical and practical implications of this framework.

Gradualist Visions of the Revolution

The perspective that generally exists regarding the revolution is diametrically opposed to the one we will defend here. We can summarize it as follows: it is a conception that stems from a cultural and voluntarist view, according to which revolutions, movements, struggles, and parties are made possible through human intelligence and willpower. From this develops a vision that places great importance on the immediate activism of militants, who create the conditions that make the revolution possible through the establishment of new institutions born from activism. From this conception arises the idea that one must be intelligent enough to adapt alliances, fronts, tactics, and programs to the variations of contingent situations.

These kinds of theories are presented across a broad spectrum of currents that, despite their differences, share a voluntarist approach to the idea of revolution. It is a notion of radical social change that occurs thanks to minorities who manage to draw and educate the masses towards the seizure of power. The tactics applied may vary, but Stalinists, Trotskyists, and anarchists, beyond their undeniable theoretical and strategic differences, share this underlying voluntarist framework.

For this type of vision, the countercultural capacity of their political apparatuses to intervene in existing reality to create an alternative hegemony to capitalism is central. It is a struggle of subjectivity against subjectivity, of will against will, of power versus social counterpower. Strategies and tactics may change, but they are fundamentally based on this type of perception, which we place within the reflux of the Third International.

Maoists may advocate for creating a revolutionary people’s war in the countryside, Gramscians for building cultural hegemony or councils from the will of their organization, Trotskyists for entering traditional left mass parties, and many of these leftist currents may support participating in unions because they believe in maintaining contact with the working class. What almost all these conceptions have in common is the idea that the revolution will result from applying a determined will to what already exists, to the working class as it is. And we must not forget that in times of social peace, the proletariat is a class for capital.

These types of conceptions have a gradualist view of revolutionary change. The idea is to have enough momentum and determination to create the conditions that make the revolution possible. This revolution will be the result of the gradual growth, moment by moment, of the strength of the organized revolutionaries. For many of these conceptions, such as Trotskyism, the objective conditions for the revolution always exist; it is only necessary to have the will and the correct method to create the missing instrument, the party. However, as noted in «Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine«:

“Therefore, the so-called analysis which alleges that all the conditions for the revolution are in place but a revolutionary leadership is lacking is meaningless. It is correct to say that an organ of leadership is indispensable, but its arising depends on the general conditions of struggle themselves, and never on the cleverness or bravery of a leader or vanguard.”

These analyses always separate objective and subjective conditions. They fail to understand that the situation is not revolutionary precisely because the party, as the expression of the proletariat’s communist aims, does not exist. It makes no sense for us, as revolutionaries and communists, to keep banging our heads against the wall of capital. It is not our mere will that will change the circumstances. On the contrary, leftism adapts to and is homologated by the existing environment, revealing its true essence and function: being the left wing of capital.

Various tactics of historical opportunism within the workers’ movement are found in this gradualist vision: from activism that aims to build old and new social movements, to parliamentarism that seeks to use the political platform to spread revolutionary ideas among the proletarian masses, or to «class, revolutionary, and/or anti-capitalist» unionism that seeks to root itself in the immediate and wage struggles of the proletariat and ultimately ends up becoming a corporate defender of capital’s categories.

There is no will that can, by itself and primarily, construct the proletariat’s struggle for the communist revolution. Leftism reveals its true essence by integrating the logic of capital and the corporate apparatuses of the State into the minorities that it influences and hegemonizes.

So, how can we reverse and invert the praxis of capitalism’s counterrevolutionary course?

History Advances in Leaps

The evolutionary scheme described above is typical of a bourgeois view of social change. Individuals and their determination are the alpha and omega, the indisputable protagonists of social change. They can organize collectively, but it will be their sacrifice or creativity that constitutes the decisive element where everything is at stake.

Our scheme, following the developments of Marx and Engels, is dialectical. History advances in leaps, through a continuous accumulation of contradictions that, when surpassing a certain threshold, radically transforms the situation and phase. It involves a transformation from quantity into a new quality.

We already know with Marx in his famous Introduction to the Contribution of 1859:

“The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”

First of all, and in contrast to the voluntarism described earlier, it is the production (and reproduction) of material life that conditions people’s will and consciousness and not the other way around, as the gradualist scheme suggests. Marx had anticipated more than ten years earlier, in The German Ideology, that consciousness is the consciousness of the ruling class. With his theory of commodity fetishism, he would only explain the basis of this thesis more clearly. Leftists who attempt to invert the materialist scheme become functional appendages to the material and ideological logic of capital. How can the social environment be modified? That is, in fact, the important question. Not through will, but, as Marx says in the above quote, upon reaching a certain phase of development of the material productive forces of society, they come into conflict with the capitalist social relations and with their own political and ideological expressions and, in this way, an era of social revolution opens up.

That is, not every time and every era allows for a revolutionary transformation of capitalism. The curve of capitalist society does not find tangents at all points that can break its dynamics, but only at certain moments of catastrophic crises that change the phase and historical trajectory. Thus, in contrast to a continuous and evolutionary perspective of capitalism, Marx offers a catastrophic view of the system’s evolution, a perspective marked by the development of intermittent and interrupted equilibriums due to increasingly intense and convulsive crisis dynamics. Our revolutionary and communist perspective privileges discontinuity over continuity, the abrupt rupture of reality over linear evolution. Essentially, as Bordiga extensively developed during the 1950s and 60s, this contradiction between productive forces and social relations of production expresses a clash between two modes of production: one that increasingly loses social energy, capitalism, and another that advances in dissolving the old, communism.

As Marx advanced in many fragments of his semi-elaborated works, the dynamic of competition among the many capitals is consubstantial to the capitalist development itself. This dynamic tends to replace living labor with dead labor to increase the productivity of particular capitals and favor their private competition. What is rational from the point of view of the individual capitalist tends to cause a catastrophe for the development of capitalism as a whole by initially accentuating the decline in the rate of profit and, over time, an increasingly marked expulsion of living labor. We are already in this phase of capitalist development anticipated by Marx in the Grundrisse:

“The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth”

We are now entering a historical phase of capitalism, which Marx referred to as «senile capitalism.» This phase is characterized by the replacement of living labor with dead labor through the widespread automation of goods and services production. As a result, the extraction of surplus value—central to capitalist wealth—becomes increasingly parasitic and unsustainable. Human wealth can no longer be measured in terms of the value form tied to market exchange. Instead, we are moving into an era marked by the collapse of production based on exchange value, as Marx predicted, leading to crises of overaccumulation of capital. The vast expansion of fictitious capital temporarily masks this decline, but it only postpones the inevitable, intensifying the severity of future crises. In essence, capitalism is delaying its own demise, but at the cost of more severe disruptions down the line. As Marx suggests, we are witnessing a conflict between different modes of production: capitalism is losing its foundation—socially necessary labor time—while free time emerges as the new measure and source of human wealth. This signals the advent of a new historical epoch, where the material conditions for communism are increasingly taking shape, triggering global and convulsive crises for the capitalist mode of production.

Capitalism will not collapse on its own merely due to the inevitable contradictions within its system. Relying on such a fatalistic perspective is akin to gradualism, as both approaches assume an evolutionary path for capitalist development. However, as Marx famously stated in the Communist Manifesto, the proletariat is the historical force destined to overthrow capitalism. In other words, while capitalism is a decaying system that continues to generate social unrest and increasingly severe crises, it will not end without active intervention. Only a communist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can ultimately resolve the contradictions inherent in capitalism and bring the system to its final conclusion.

Capitalism will not die a natural death, nor will it be peacefully or rationally replaced by communism. It won’t simply vanish to make way for a more archaic mode of production. Instead, the impersonal dynamics of capital—its automatic, self-perpetuating movement—will continue to reproduce itself in increasingly convulsive and catastrophic ways. Only a global communist revolution can bring about the end of capitalism.

An increasingly polarized world

We are living in a pivotal period, marked by the historical exhaustion of the counterrevolution that ended the revolutionary wave of the proletariat between 1917 and 1923. Stalinism, which served as the red flag wielded by capital to crush the working class physically, politically, and ideologically, began to erode in the 1970s and ultimately suffered a decisive blow between 1989 and 1991 with the collapse of the so-called «real socialist» capitalist states. We understand that revolution and counterrevolution are inherently linked, and any new rise of the proletariat will inevitably face both old and new forms of counterrevolution, as capital adapts its strategies to counter the advancing revolution. However, the near disappearance of the major anti-communist mass parties that once subjugated the global working class to capital is significant. The nominal defeat of «communism» actually represents a positive development for the new era, facilitating greater clarity for the proletariat in its struggle.

We find ourselves in a pivota period marked by the emergence of increasingly intense social polarization, a development that mirrors the declining vitality of capitalism as a social system. As the comrades of n+1 say:

“For some time now, we have been observing the ionization of social molecules across various continents, revealing a clear connection between the widespread precariousness, poverty, and «meaningless existence» endured by millions, and the growing social unrest. The Yellow Vests movement, for instance, began as a protest against rising fuel prices, but the demonstrations have persisted even after the tax was revoked.”

The comrades refer to various movements that, even before COVID, illustrated this trend toward social polarization—not just the Yellow Vests, but also the protests in Hong Kong and Chile. We can identify a series of movements, beginning at least as far back as 2011, that reflect this growing polarization across the globe.

“This recent wave of struggles, which began a few months ago, is far more extensive than the one that started in 2011 with the Arab Spring, later spreading to Spain and the USA. The history of capitalism, driven by the forward momentum of its inevitable evolution, brings certain phenomena to maturity, often beyond the conscious awareness of individuals. The revolutionary party, a political entity aligned with this «real movement,» derives its mission from the future social order, embodying a potential that is ahead of its time.”

We will revisit the concept of the party as a potential anticipation and prefiguration of communism. For now, our focus is on the relationship between the trajectory of capitalist development—marked by the exhaustion of its historical time, as we’ve previously discussed—and the initial responses of the global proletariat to a life that is meaningless. It’s clear that we are still far from witnessing revolutionary situations or revolutions. The era of counterrevolution continues to dominate our lives. We remain distant from the theoretical and programmatic clarity needed to effectively fight for communism, a society without of commodities and social classes. However, we assert that we are entering a historical phase that will inevitably create the forks in the road necessary for this to become possible. We are moving towards increasingly catastrophic future scenarios, entering an epoch that is rapidly eroding the stagnant and lifeless conditions of the past:

“Putting aside pedantic «distinctions,» we can ask ourselves about the objective state of society today. Clearly, the answer is that we are in the worst possible situation. A significant portion of the working class, instead of being directly oppressed by the bourgeoisie, is controlled by parties that serve bourgeois interests and prevent any revolutionary class movement. This creates a stagnant and lifeless situation, making it impossible to predict when we might see the «polarization» or «ionization» of social forces that would precede a major class conflict.”

The severe crisis of senile capitalism, the escalating effects of climate change, the dynamics of imperialist wars, and a world seemingly losing its direction—all these forces serve as fuel for the emerging struggles of the global proletariat. While the world bourgeoisie focuses only on the immediate moment, it is crucial for us to grasp the broader dialectic of the historical process, to see the unfolding narrative rather than just the snapshot in time that captivates contemporary analysts. These movements reflect a growing tendency toward the polarization and ionization of social forces, steadily building strength and experience for the explosive class conflicts that lie ahead.

As communists, we analyze current events from the perspective of the future, viewing them as manifestations of a real movement that seeks to negate and transcend the existing order. This movement can be seen as the anti-form of communism, a rejection of all capitalist categories that draws strength from the previous stage to push forward and go beyond. The new generations of proletarians will increasingly find themselves in motion, responding explosively to growing misery and the lack of a future in a world on the brink of collapse. These generations, asking ever more questions, will rediscover the answers already provided by the historical movement of the proletariat, beginning with the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

What does the current social polarization signify? It indicates a tendency for social groups to align themselves around two opposing poles: one representing social conservation, and the other embodying the anti-form of communism. This growing class antagonism is preceded by a period of structural instability within capitalism, which is increasingly unable to resolve its own contradictions. In this charged environment, the social atmosphere becomes electrified and ionized, with tensions rising and the air becoming an insulator, leading to a heightened polarization between the classes.

“Polarization occurs when the elements within a «field» or «system» align themselves according to specific orientations around two opposing poles. This metaphor is used to describe the typical revolutionary crisis, where the forces of conservation and change are positioned at opposite extremes. In such moments, the state of social forces resembles the conditions just before an electric shock: the air between the two poles becomes ionized, creating a state of catastrophic instability that alters its properties. As a result, the insulating air transforms into a conductor, leading to a violent electrical discharge.”

The onset of social polarization, observed globally in recent years and more recently in Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, and Iran, tends to foster forms of social self-organization among the struggling proletariat. The occupation of public squares, the creation of collective dynamics, and the establishment of territorial assemblies are recurring features in these recent movements. This pattern is not coincidental; it follows a deep-rooted causality that reflects the growing need for collective action and organization in response to the increasing polarization and instability.

“Our current describes the «polarization» or «ionization» of social molecules as an unpredictable dynamic for the bourgeoisie, stemming from a deep-seated material shock within society—a profound discontent that goes beyond any specific trigger. The synchronized and self-organized demonstrations that arise suggest the existence of an underlying law compelling millions to mobilize spontaneously, without the need for formal organizations or leaders. While the ruling class may resort to harsh repression, they risk it acting as a catalyst rather than a deterrent, potentially igniting further unrest.”

It is crucial to understand how we connect the process of polarization and social ionization of social molecules to the schema of the inversion of praxis:

“Geopolitical experts may place their faith in divine intervention to guide us out of chaos, but we believe that it is through processes of social self-organization that the old equilibrium is disrupted, propelling humanity forward. Once a certain threshold is reached, a «polarization» or «ionization» of social molecules occurs, setting the stage for the explosion of major class antagonisms. However, when we speak of self-organization, we do not mean it in the anarchist sense, nor do we refer merely to strikes or wage-related struggles. Instead, we refer to the Marxist concept of the inversion of praxis, as outlined in «Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine» (1951). While the actions of individuals or small groups may cancel each other out, mass movements create a synergy of stimuli and reactions, laying the groundwork for the formation of organizational structures capable of shaping history. The revolutionary process is not random but self-organizing, an autopoietic phenomenon that prepares itself over time (Maturana and Varela).”

The inversion of the praxis

The final quotation is crucial for deepening our reflection and continuing the critique of gradualist and evolutionary views on class struggle. Social polarization processes form organically. These are movements that, in the current phase of capitalist development, may arise from various immediate demands—such as the increase in subway fares in Chile or the rise in fuel prices in the case of the yellow vests—but they tend to quickly expand, generalize, and self-organize. These self-organization processes disrupt the previous equilibrium of capitalism, often surpassing established political and trade union structures, and giving rise to new intermediary bodies through which the insurgent proletariat expresses itself. This marks a break from the previous historical period and challenges the peaceful reproduction of capitalism’s social fabric.

As we can observe, the genuine struggles of the proletariat are not the result of the conspiratorial will of a few individuals. Such notions exist only in the mythology shared by both bourgeois and leftist ideologies. The crisis and the historical exhaustion of capital tend to disrupt the previous equilibrium through mass movements, which operate very differently from isolated individuals in times of social peace. During periods of social peace, structures and practices align with the prevailing conditions. The dominance of political and trade union logic, the emphasis on electoral struggles, and the corporatism of unions foster an environment where individualism, careerism, and the inclination of each person to pursue their immediate desires prevail. However, large-scale mass movements have a tendency to unite social individuals around vectors of social polarization. This dynamic has been evident in the recent movements that have occupied public squares.

These new intermediate mass organizations represent a crucial arena for connecting revolutionary minorities with the broader class in motion. This connection is central to our critique of gradualist, voluntarist, and culturalist perspectives. Such perspectives tend to view social peace in isolation, disconnected from the broader, dynamic global process. As a result, they often limit the revolutionary minorities’ scope of action to what currently exists, aligning themselves with the world of capital and ultimately conforming to it. The only way to reject this capitalist world is through an anti-form —the real movement that opposes the capitalist order and embodies the communist future emerging from the clash between modes of production.

We are fully aware of the significant limitations within the current wave of protests and struggles: the interclassism that characterizes many of these movements, the democratic and civic aspirations present in some cases, and the confusion surrounding clear objectives and goals. This is hardly surprising. It is not possible to move instantly from decades of counterrevolutionary conditions to revolutionary situations. The proletariat must patiently build its class organ, the party, which is not the creation of a minority detached from the class, but the most advanced product of the very process of social polarization. The communist party emerges from the real movement itself. It is this objective movement that shapes and drives the development, whether it manifests as class combativeness or the emergence of the party.

And here we delve deeply into the schema of the inversion of praxis:

Will and consciousness can never precede action. Initially, one fights without fully understanding the reasons behind the struggle. The instincts and impulses of the proletariat always come first. The ongoing processes of social polarization tend to energize the social environment and trigger collective action by the working class. This action creates new intermediate organizations of struggle, such as the occupation of squares, streets, traffic circles, and factories. These organizations, in turn, activate the determination and will of the proletariat, expanding and self-organizing the struggle.

Despite this, the conservative influence of capital often remains dominant in such situations, with revolutionary influence being almost absent due to the weakness of revolutionary minorities. Yet, the material and economic pressures of capitalism’s crisis tend to ignite impulses that drive more and more proletarians to seek theoretical and conscious clarity. This is where the participation of revolutionary minorities in the processes and intermediate bodies created by the proletariat in its struggle becomes essential. By engaging in these spaces, the impulses that lead to the formation of the communist party are strengthened. This party is both a product of the proletariat’s struggle and, thanks to that struggle, becomes a crucial factor in the class struggle, challenging the conservative and reformist influences of capital.

As we can see, there is a profound dialectical unity between the class and the party. The party is not merely a tool wielded by a group of individuals to intervene in the class struggle and create new conditions through tactical maneuvers. Instead, the party, in its formal and material sense, emerges as a result of social polarization and the class struggle. This is why it is crucial to abandon the illusion of activism that claims to create social movements, parties, and revolutions from nothing. The class presupposes the party, and the party cannot develop without the class movement. There is a relationship of dialectical interdependence between the two. To assert that the class produces the party through its movement, and that the proletariat only truly becomes a class when it generates its party, is simply another way of understanding that the party is a product of the class struggle. From this point, it increasingly becomes a powerful factor within that struggle.

The development of the proletariat as a class for itself—where it no longer serves as a class for capital—requires its own self-movement, a process that cannot be imposed by external forces. This self-movement initiates a trajectory where the impulses converging towards the party become crucial. These impulses reflect the proletariat’s historical program, which seeks to negate the capitalist world and the existence of social classes. This bottom-up movement also involves a reciprocal process, where the relationship between the proletariat and revolutionary minorities operates in both directions. These revolutionary minorities intervene within the class struggle to aid in programmatic clarification, whether theoretically or through direct action.

The key is to recognize that there is a unified process—in the dialectical development of the class struggle—between the class and the party. The party serves as a vital organ of the proletariat, catalyzing the development of its historical program, but it is an integral part of the broader class body. The party cannot exist without the proletariat’s movement. Therefore, it is absurd to declare a formal party without the proletariat’s movement to become a class for itself.

Similarly, it is misguided to prioritize the form of the communist program over its content, or to oppose it violently against the proletariat. The party ceases to be a true party if it lacks connections with the class in motion, and the proletariat cannot fully realize itself as a class, in a historical sense, without expressing itself through its specific organ, the party:

“The dialectical relationship is rooted in the idea that while the revolutionary party acts as a conscious and voluntary agent in shaping events, it is also a product of those very events and the conflict between the old forms of production and the emerging productive forces. This dual role of the party—as both an active participant and a result of the broader social struggle—would collapse if its material ties to the social environment were severed. The party’s effectiveness depends on its connection to the foundational, material, and physical struggle of the class. Without this grounding in the real conditions of the class struggle, the party’s theoretical and active function would be undermined.”

As we previously mentioned, and as noted by the comrades from n+1, the class needs the party to effectively challenge both itself and the capitalist society. For the class to fight for its perspective, it requires a historical doctrine and a clear goal to strive towards. Therefore, merely having an organization and a theoretical program is insufficient. There must be a connection between the party and a situation of social polarization. The historical communist program must be brought to life and become tangible through its association with the rebellious proletariat during periods when the intense social tensions compel them to act.

In reality, there is no distinction between before and after in the dialectical relationship between class and party. It is not necessary to wait for a moment of pure revolution to begin acting as revolutionary minorities within the struggles and organizations where the proletariat’s activity and will are expressed. This dialectical relationship involves a constant, reciprocal movement. Our involvement in current struggles that drive social polarization helps strengthen our role in future struggles, positioning us to become a significant factor in upcoming revolutionary moments.

Communists cannot instantly become this influential factor; we must start from struggles that are often weak due to a lack of a clear perspective. However, the present struggles, which are moving towards self-organization and the creation of new forms of struggle, provide opportunities for our intervention. By organizing increasingly significant minorities around our historical program, we contribute to the class’s development. The dynamic interplay between the proletariat’s impulses towards the party and the party’s role as an active factor is continuously active during these struggles.

Our seemingly small efforts today lay the groundwork for the major shifts of tomorrow. In this way, we can describe revolutions as having a fractal structure, where present struggles on a smaller scale are preparing for the larger social antagonisms of the future.

What we find crucial is the critique of the notion that one can become an active force in transforming history at any given moment, whether through involvement in intermediate bodies subject to capitalist logic—such as trade unions or electoral apparatuses—or by attempting to create new organizations through the efforts of organized minorities. Such endeavors are ultimately futile, akin to the labors of Sisyphus; the stone will perpetually roll back down. Instead, the focus should be on harnessing the energy of the millions of proletarians who will increasingly mobilize and form organizational structures to intervene more assertively in history.

These struggles will reveal that the means they employ already embody the ends of communism. In these moments, a counter-society will emerge that seeks not merely to reform but to reject the entirety of capitalist society. It is this energy—representing the antiform of capitalism—that must be directed, rather than conforming to existing states, parties, and unions that align with capitalist interests. The goal is to support the future that negates the past, rather than being dragged by a past that oppresses and stifles the vitality and passion of the present.