PCInt: The Perspective of Communism

Translation from the League of Internationalist Communists

 

Working text of the former Scandinavian section of the International Communist Party

Postal address: 61 DK-2880 BAGSV/ERD – DENMARK.

“[N]ot a single one of the French and English insurrections has had the same theoretical and conscious character as the Silesian weavers’ rebellion.… The Silesian rebellion starts where the French and English workers’ finish, namely with an understanding of the nature of the proletariat. This superiority stamps the whole episode.… It must be granted that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat just as the English proletariat is its economist and the French its politician.” (Karl Marx, Critical Notes to an article: “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian”, 1844).

After the revolts (Lyons, Manchester), which ultimately foresaw the future entry of the proletariat on the political scene as a historical class, with the revolt of the Silesian weavers we had the first more precise proletarian action in terms of theoretical contribution. From it emerged the direction of future class struggles.

The work of the Babeuvists (Conspiracy of Equals) is at the same time explained, confirmed and overcome. The utopians, who fail to distinguish the mission of the proletarian class and who see only bourgeois economic categories, now belong to pre-Marxism and the prehistory of the proletariat. Finally, it is the negation of Hegelian dialectics: while bourgeois ideology had to go hand in hand with the apology of the Prussian monarchical state, the theory of the proletariat, historical-dialectical materialism, shows the relation between ideas and practice; at the same time, bourgeois materialism is overcome.[1] In fact, at the same time as the “progressive” theoreticians grant this materialism eternal validity and radicality, they separate proletarian politics and the communist future of humanity from science.

We shall not deal here with the attempts of Proudhonism to revive the utopians Fourier and Owen by retaining an economic and pacifist vision which had nothing to do with the work of modern capitalism: destruction of previous relations of production, generalisation and extension of the mode of production itself. Moreover, this survival of the utopians could only achieve a “miserable” result, since it was overtaken by the movement of the proletariat itself.

To the nascent proletarian movement, the Poverty of Philosophy (1846), the constitution of the League of Communists (1847) and the programme of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847-1848) provided a basis which at the same time expressed the theoretical and practical link with the revolutionary present of the movement itself. This does not mean that the ideas produced by the superseded forms lost their influence on sectors of the class within Europe, as we shall see below.

The emergence of the class and its first struggles (1844-1850) determined the condition for the outlook of the proletariat[2] to be clearly formulated and its first organisations to be born. The proletarian movement appears in the course of a process whose unitary and univocal character prefigures the unification of the historical and formal expressions of the movement which the future communist revolution will reveal.

It is not our intention here to begin a description of the perspective contained in the “permanent revolution” of the  Address of the Central Committee to the League of Communists (1850) which already embraced a vision ranging from internationalism to the concrete tactics of this period (1848-50), i.e., a perspective of double revolution.[3] Here we simply want to outline the general lines of communist action during the rise and fall of the revolution; during the revolution and during the counter-revolution.

• In 1850, the proletariat suffered its first defeat as a politically organised offensive class. The counter-revolution had won.
• Communist politics, which can only be revolutionary, could no longer contain any formal class organisation [after the defeat of the 1848-1850 wave] capable of sustaining and realising the proletarian programme; but the historical line between the 1848 movement and the victories of the future revolution was now clearly drawn, and was as obvious as its momentary defeat.
• The task of communists, their “action”, was therefore the preparation for the implementation of this historical line, i.e., the preparation of the future revolutionary movement. Between the triumph of the counter-revolution (1851-52) and the rise before 1871, the work of Marx and Engels consisted in struggling to keep to the revolutionary programme, which was not to be influenced by the forms of the previous revolution nor by its defeat, and not to be subsumed into the “realpolitik” of the counter-revolutionary reality.

“I have tried to dispel the misunderstanding arising out of the impression that by ‘party’ I meant a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense.” (Marx to Freiligrath, letter of 29.02.1860).

Marx and Engels allowed the League of Communists to dissolve itself. They then engaged in “theoretical” work which manifested itself in particular in the definition of the foundations of Marxist economic theory. For Marx and Engels, the “party-class” relation is thus a product of the real movement, and one can clearly see their disdain for empty formalism in the following lines, where at the same time they show the impersonal character of their work:

“I told them straight out that we owed our position as representatives of the proletarian party to nobody but ourselves; this, however, had been endorsed by the exclusive and universal hatred accorded us by every faction and party of the old world.” (Marx to Engels, letter of 18/05/1859).

During the first phase of the revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie (up to 1848-50), all workers’ organisations were banned and violently opposed (except in England). Under the slogan of “individual freedom”, the young bourgeoisie, which was not yet unified and not yet definitively organised into nations, saw a danger in the tendency of the proletarians towards unification. From the mid-1860s onwards, the future of the bourgeoisie clearly began to take shape. The centralised state power of capital was still far from imperialist totalitarianism (corporatist democracy, fascism, etc.), but the absolute necessity of the state was expressed in Napoleon III’s France (and later in Bismarck’s Germany), even if the rivalries within the bourgeoisie (especially between industry and finance) were not overcome.

Thus, during the “reformist” period of capitalism we have the following dualism: on the one hand, inconclusion on the political level, but, on the other hand, the beginning of the realisation of the future political and economic unity of capital.

• This means for the proletariat that its organisation as an economic category of capitalism, as variable capital, coincides with the interests of the progressive bourgeoisie, the industrial bourgeoisie. Therefore, if we take a deterministic perspective, it was necessary for the further development of capital. By strengthening industry, this organisation was at the same time a threat to finance and to the big, landed bourgeoisie which still had a decisive influence on state power, not to speak of the “underdeveloped” countries where the bourgeoisie was still weak and had sought a compromise with feudalism, as in Germany for example.
• On the other hand, the future of the state, its unitary strengthening, was clearly expressed in the anti-proletarian position adopted immediately in the face of the danger of the proletarian revolution (Paris Commune, 1871) by both the French and Prussian bourgeoisie.

The period preceding the Commune bears the mark both of this dualism and of the emergence of the proletarian movement, which necessarily had to express both the immaturity of the capitalism of the time and the historical class mission of the movement itself. This is the basis of the statutes of the First International, which Marx wrote up as follows:

“With your resignation the old International is entirely wound up and at an end. And that is well. It belonged to the period of the Second Empire, during which the oppression reigning throughout Europe entailed unity and abstention from all internal polemics upon the workers’ movement, then just reawakening. It was the moment when the common, cosmopolitan interests of the proletariat could be put in the foreground […] I was exceedingly pleased at the American workers’ congress, which took place at the same time in Baltimore. The watchword there was organisation for the struggle against capital, and, remarkably enough, most of the demands I had put up for Geneva were put up there, too, by the correct instinct of the workers“. (Marx to Kugelmann, letter of 9.10.1866).

Engels, drawing conclusions from this period, wrote to Sorge (17.09.1874):

“With your departure, the old International has definitively ceased to exist. And that is just as well, for the International belonged to the epoch of the Second Empire when the oppression reigning throughout Europe prescribed to the workers’ movement, which had just been reborn, unity and abstention from all internal polemics. It was a time when the general cosmopolitan interests of the proletariat could come to the fore […] In 1864 the theoretical character of the movement was still very confused everywhere in Europe, that is, among the masses […] The first great success was bound to explode this naive conjunction of all fractions. This success was the Commune, which was without any doubt the child of the International intellectually, although the International did not lift a finger to produce it, and for which the International — thus far with full justification — was held responsible […] For ten years the International dominated one side of European history — the side on which the future lies — and can look back upon its work with pride. But in its old form it has outlived itself. In order to produce a new International after the fashion of the old one — an alliance of all the proletarian parties in every country — a general suppression of the workers’ movement like that which predominated from 1849-64 would be necessary. But for this the proletarian world has become too big, too extensive. I think that the next International — after Marx’s writings have had some years of influence — will be directly Communist and will openly proclaim our principles.”

The First International constituted the real movement of the proletariat and expressed its culmination with the Commune. The dialectical relationship between formal organisation and the revolutionary seizure of power is contained in Engels’ letter above. In a letter to Kugelmann (12/04/1871), Marx said of the Commune that it was “the most glorious feat of our party since the Parisian insurrection of June 1848“, which clearly shows the absolute unity and continuity in his conception of class action and class organisation; and already the Manifesto had stated that “this organisation of the proletariat into a class, and therefore into a political party, is undermined at every moment by the competition unleashed among workers themselves. But it always advances and triumphs, in spite of everything, ever stronger, firmer and more vigorous.

The Paris Commune was defeated, and this defeat was confirmed in Spain in 1873. Once the revolution was defeated, the dislocation of its organisation could be foreseen in the short term:

“The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men’s Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875)

Once again, the revolution was followed by a counter-revolutionary period, with the corollary of the demise of the organisation of this revolution.

Engels had written that the next International should become communist, since “the working class of 1874, after the dissolution of the International, was very different from that of 1864 at the time of its foundation” (Engels, “Introduction to the German edition” of the Manifesto, 1890). Likewise, in the letter to Kugelmann (17/04/1871), Marx said:

“[T]he demoralization of the working class against the capitalist class and its state has entered upon a new phase with the struggle in Paris. Whatever the immediate results may be, a new point of departure of world-historic importance has been gained.”

The working class has developed, but its old party-international must be dissolved: the progress of the class is situated at the historical level and in a perspective based on the coming revolution and its communist movement. Consequently, Marx concludes that in 1871 the period during which the party of the proletariat could support one bourgeoisie (progressive for the proletariat at that time) at war against another ends within Europe.

The First International had taken into account areas whose immaturity presupposed the existence of categories of workers (in fact, close to the trades) in pre-Marxist positions. This fact was clearly confirmed by the role played by Proudhonism during the Commune, which was the last representative of the historical-economic past. Marx did not allow these retrograde currents to influence the general lines and did everything possible so that the revolutionary objective could penetrate and direct this young, necessarily heterogeneous organism. Thus, it was established that “the economic movement and the political action of the class in struggle are indissolubly united” (International Workingmen’s Association, 1871). At the time when this principle was affirmed, the industrial bourgeoisie seemed not yet to have understood the usefulness for it of the trade union organisation of workers: the result was that workers’ economic struggles often have a violent character, which creates a myth around the organisations born in this period. This fact was of great importance in the following decades, when trade unions and trade union “struggles” became peaceful and were often even supported by bourgeois categories. This does not mean that such confrontations, even in the post-Commune period, did not have a political character (e.g., the struggle for the 8-hour day, which takes place while the state is supported by reactionary layers). However, we must not forget that all this only applies to countries where capital had destroyed or was in the process of destroying the old relations of production: we cannot therefore include Russia, for example, in these considerations.

The statutes given by Marx to the First International thus corresponded, in their essential lines, to the political tendency and possibilities of the most advanced proletarians (English, French). Thus, the history of the First International shows a continuous clash between these advanced positions (supported by Marx and Engels in the General Council) and all the opportunist currents (Proudhonism, Bakuninism, Lassallianism) which, at the level of programme, belong to the early childhood of the proletariat and which live off the defeat of the revolution and the development of the counter-revolution and the triumph of the bourgeoisie which followed. Thus, the Bakuninists made progress in the Latin countries (Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, southern France) and constituted an obstacle to the Spanish revolt because of their localist autonomism (see Engels, The Bakuninists in Action, 1873). In the meantime, the Lasallians gained some influence during the constitution of the German Social Democracy (Eisenach, 1869, see Engels’ letter to Bebel, 20.06.1873).

Their reformist programme triumphed at the Gotha Congress in 1875, where the Eisenach party merged with the real Lasallian party, all this despite Engels’ warnings in the letter to Bebel and despite Marx’s destructive criticism of the Gotha programme. The later Erfurt programme, the final version of which was formulated by Kautsky, shows only an attenuation and not a radical change of the Lasallian line of German social democracy:

“[I]t soon became clear — the proof of this came into our possession — that Lassalle had in fact betrayed the party. He had entered into a formal contract with Bismarck (with no guarantees of any kind in his hands, of course). At the end of September 1864, he was to go to Hamburg and there (together with the crazy Schramm and the Prussian police spy Marr) ‘force’ Bismarck to incorporate Schleswig-Holstein, i.e., to proclaim such in the name of the ‘workers’, etc., in return for which Bismarck promised universal suffrage and a few spurious socialist measures.” (Letter from Marx to Kugelmann, 23 February 1865).

Here we come face to face with classical opportunism: chauvinism, reformism, fetishism of legality, corruption, manipulation, belief in the “neutrality” of the state to advance the cause of the workers. Lassallianism already represented (in 1864!) the very same social democracy whose political “function” Bordiga describes in The Function of Social Democracy in Italy (1921). It arises from the fact that social democracy expresses the general tendency of capitalism, independently of possible dissensions between bourgeois categories. What Lassalle and Bismarck tried to achieve was successfully carried out by Ebert and Maercker in 1919: they are united with each other by the straight line of counter-revolution.

After 1848, Marx wrote that in France, “where the proletariat had been defeated by the bourgeoisie and hence attacking the existing government and attacking the bourgeoisie were one and the same thing “, it was a matter of “a victorious assault on the existing governments” (Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, Marx, 1852). After 1871, this perspective became valid for the whole of Europe: that is why the First International, which did not have to undertake any task with a view to a peaceful “compromise”, was dissolved. For the same reason, Engels said that the next International would be communist, since the next revolution would have to be communist. But the Second International, which was formed after Marx’s death, was very far from a Communist International.

We can say that Engels suffered the constitution of the Second International (1889) to his regret. In order to prevent the “possibilists” (neo-anarchists) and the British Social-Democratic Federation from dominating the new International, Engels was in favour of the German Gotha party joining the new organisation. He wrote to Sorge (06.08.1889):

“Besides, the Congress must be of little importance. Naturally, I shall not go; I cannot immerse myself continually in agitation. But now these people want to play congresses again; so, they had better not be led by Brousse and Hyndman. There was still time to put an end to their plan.”

This position is very ambiguous, and the same ambiguity appears in most of the positions taken by Engels during the crises that erupted in German social democracy in the 1890s.[4] Not to mention that Bebel’s group not only provided misinformation but went so far as to manipulate Engels’ texts for use in internal party conflicts. Engels undoubtedly supported opportunist forces in this period. He was so absorbed by the infinitely more important theoretical work (the publication of Marx’s economic works, for example) that he came to adopt non-revolutionary positions. See, for example, his attitude towards the opposition “Die Jungen” (1891-1892), which, although it did not succeed in giving a deep theoretical perspective to its anti-parliamentarism, constituted in any case a healthy and revolutionary reaction against the parliamentarism of the Gotha party. The same can be said of Engels’ attitude towards the Danish left-wing opposition (Gerson Trier), which manifested a historically well-founded distrust of bourgeois, liberal and agrarian opposition parties.

“The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing”. (Marx to Engels, 18/02/1865)

After the defeat of the Paris Commune, the working class was defeated, the counter-revolution triumphed. The Second International corresponded to the counter-revolutionary conditions, to capitalist development. History put national unification and the organisation of capital on the agenda. Trade unions were born and strengthened, and this development was quickly supported by the progressive bourgeoisie and its radical parties—the organisation of variable capital was a necessary condition for the future development of national capitalist accumulation. In this period of peaceful “reformism”, for the first time in the capitalist era, a clear planning of the labour force was realised, at least at its starting point. This period created the basis of the trade unionist theory, corresponding to the objective situation, a modern version of Proudhonism. The concept of the “working class” responded to the reality of capitalist economy and politics; it was an economic, pacifist, gradualist, democratic and reformist conception. Workers were to organise themselves as consumers (hence the cooperatives) and as producers (hence the trade unions) and finally as voters (hence the parliamentary and municipal groups). All this represented the great “workers’ movement” which lived and prospered in the midst of the counter-revolution by “winning advantages” and “wresting concessions” in the labour market or in parliament. In the early 1890s it was still said that when the majority of workers were organised, a revolution could be made, but this was quickly replaced by “socialisation”: the normal conclusion of this fundamentally evolutionary view. This theory developed most clearly in De Leon’s Socialist Labour Party of America (SLP), which explained trade unionism (the means to socialism) as the appropriation of the means of production of the capitalist economy by workers. The proletariat, the revolutionary class, had in fact disappeared from the perspective, and so, only capitalist categories remained.

This theory of the eternal existence of the “workers’ movement” could only lead to purely formalistic conceptions, which recognised, in the organisation, the cause and not the effect (Kautsky).[5] Practical action then necessarily had to become reformist and therefore opportunist. We saw this when the real movement began to take shape again with the general strike in Belgium in 1902 and with the Russian revolution of 1905. At that moment, the sections of the Second International proved to be obstacles in the way of the proletariat. The counter-revolutionary role of Belgian Social Democracy (Vandervelde) during the spontaneous workers’ action was highlighted by Franz Mehring and Rosa Luxemburg. In Russia, it was Trotsky’s small internationalist group that led the real revolutionary movement, the vanguard of which was in the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky writes:

“From the moment it was instituted until the moment of its loss, the Soviet remained under the powerful pressure of the revolutionary element, which, without losing itself in vain considerations, overflowed the work of the political intelligentsia.”

On political leadership, he adds:

“ By placing many disconnected organizations under its control, the Soviet united the revolution around itself.” (Extracts from 1905)

It was not by chance that the group formed around Trotsky who, already before 1905, demonstrated an anti-formalist conception on the question of organisation, for example in the Report of the Siberian Delegation (1903) or in Our Political Tasks (1904), played a leading role during the struggles of 1905. This does not mean that this group had formulated a complete perspective. On the contrary, it was the Bolsheviks (Lenin) who, despite their Kautskyism, adopted most clearly the perspective of the double revolution and who drew most clearly the lines of the economic programme of this revolution.

The counter-revolutionary role of the Social-Democratic party was again confirmed in Belgium during the great strikes of 1913. Undoubtedly, the blatant chauvinism manifested by Social-Democracy in almost all European countries at the beginning of the first imperialist war came as a great surprise. It was, however, the natural result of the policy of the whole Second International, the child of Lassallanism. In fact, the betrayal of 1914 only repeated those of 1902 and 1905, and when, at the end of the war, Social-Democracy took over the reins of the capitalist state (Ebert, Vandervelde, etc.) it only carried out the Gotha programme.

However, the open reformism of the 1890s and the sabotage of the struggles of the beginning of the century by the Second International had generated an opposition which first criticised Bernstein and then Kautsky. However, R. Luxemburg, A. Pannekoek and L. Trotsky failed to understand the historical role of the Second International. They simply criticised the theories which showed the expression of this role. Fighting against Bissolati’s chauvinism during the Libyan campaign in 1912, the Italian left (A. Bordiga) adopted an oppositional position in the same direction, although, like the Bolsheviks, it did not come to adopt a general critical position against the Second International from its origins until 1914. It was only with the Zimmerwald Left (1915-1916), with the Bolsheviks and the Bremerlinke, plus some Swedish, Norwegian and Swiss groups, not counting the Berlin “Lichtstrahlen” group (whose existence was short-lived), we witnessed the beginning of the settling of scores with the Second International, absolutely necessary for the existence of a new revolutionary movement.[6] The essential point of this reaction was revolutionary defeatism: “to transform the imperialist war into a civil war“. Both the Italian Left and the Dutch tribunists were in this position.[7]  Meanwhile, the Spartacists did not seem to want to go that far, especially when it came to drawing the natural conclusion, i.e., the break with the Second International and the constitution of a new International (see the parallel criticisms of Lenin and Knief  towards R. Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet.)+[8]

In 1916 the first strikes broke out in Germany, and in February 1917 the double revolution began in Russia. The theory of the party, understood as a formal organisation which is permanent whether the revolution is present or absent, a theory which we have seen was formulated by Kautsky, appears once again as an idealist conception of the party-class relation in the real movement of the proletariat. Thus, in April and then in October 1917, Lenin, who had taken up Kaustky’s theory in his “What Is To Be Done?“, arguing that theory had to be imported into the class through the Party, had to fight, on the contrary, against the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, which was then the Bolshevik Party following a Menshevik policy (see Trotsky’s description of the policy of the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Noghin-Losowski group in 1917 in his “Lessons of October“). The real revolutionary movement takes place beyond the above forms; it includes the group formed around Lenin, the inter-district group around Trotsky, the left factions of the Petrograd and Kronstadt soviets and the Petrograd factory committees. This does not mean that the writings of Lenin and Trotsky (and even those of the future traitors Plekhanov, Axelrod and Parvus) played no role in the work of theoretical development and preparation on the historical line of the party.

In Germany, the revolutionary movement could not, in the first period of the revolution (1918-1919), separate itself from the Social Democracy and the centrist USPD (Independents) party, which held the leadership of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. The Spartacists remained in the USPD until December 1918, while the Bremerlinke (Bremen Left) and other revolutionary tendencies formed the ISD (later called the IKD, or International Communists of Germany). Only in the first days of 1919 was it possible to form the KPD(S) (Communist Party of Germany – Spartacus League) with the merger of the Spartacists and the IKD. The defeats of January and March 1919 and the subsequent defeats in Bavaria and Hungary marked the exhaustion of the revolution in Europe in its first period. The lesson was clear: social democracy was the counter-revolutionary party par excellence; the trade unions, which during the war managed and organised the capitalist economy by enlisting workers for the front or the factories, were integrated into state power. Parliamentarism represented the democratic impasse which allowed centrism to carry out its sabotage work centred on the resumption of the pre-Bernstein practice of the Second International. Communist currents throughout Europe learned the lesson, and the fruits of this experience were manifested in the German-Dutch left and the Italian left. However, the latter was unable to draw the anti-union lesson, because the economic organisations in Italy had not taken an active part in the organisation of the war, as for example in Germany (see our Draft Theses on the Trade Union Question).[9] It should also be added that similar currents emerged in Austria, Hungary, England, the United States, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark and later Bulgaria.

The Third International was founded in March 1919. The European revolution was still in progress and the Russian left showed a clear tendency to rely on the European communists (see the Amsterdam bureau, and the newspaper Kommunismus in Vienna) and follow their experiences.[10] Consequently, the Third International, during the first year of its existence, took sides in favour of the split from the American AFL, and in general terms presented the trade unions with the following alternative: either for the Third International and the revolution, or for the counter-revolution and its yellow international of Amsterdam.[11] The communist parties had to separate from the political parties or expel the centrists and social democrats. But parallel to the defeat in the West, problems began to arise for the Russian revolution itself. The communist movement in Europe was then put under “pressure”—it had to convince the centrist and social-democratic masses and make them understand the communist position. To do this, communists did work not only within the revolutionary movement, but also (and then especially) in the counter-revolutionary movement: in parliaments, town halls, trade unions, co-operatives; and even, because of the particular weakness of the communist movement, within the Labour Party, the English section of the Second International. Political splits within the parties did not even materialise; on the contrary, a policy in favour of centrism was inaugurated, which would lead to the unification of certain communist parties with currents or parties of the centre left (Germany, Italy, Belgium).[12] The tactics of entryism into the trade unions were not clearly defined—i.e., was it an attempt at conquest or simply propaganda? On the other hand, simultaneously, the presence in these counter-revolutionary organisations essentially perpetuated the practice of the Second International. The result was that the Second-Internationalist groups were strengthened not only by the “tactics” employed, but also by new attempts at fusion, which quickly led to the counter-revolutionary slogans of the “united front” and the “workers’ government” with the participation of the traitor, centrist and social-democratic parties.

They quickly forgot that they had sided with capital. With the united front, the workers’ movement found unity, “unfortunately divided between various currents” or even “guided by the opportunists”. Social democracy was no longer seen as the party of capital, but simply as “the right wing of the workers’ movement” and it was necessary to explain to its members that the “leaders” or the “bureaucracy” were traitors and corrupt; but the movement itself remained a “class movement”, “a workers’ movement”. There was a return to the trade unionist and second-internationalist conception, never abandoned in reality, which affirmed the existence of a neutral workers’ movement, which could be conquered or led, beyond the revolution/counter-revolution relation, either by the communists or the reformists. This was clearly manifested in the slogan of “conquest of the majority of the masses”, and in the definition of the trade union as a “transmission belt” between party and class. The resumption of the practice of the Second International (and later of its policy) led to the condemnation of the revolutionary anti-parliamentarism which had been lucidly formulated by the Italian left at the Second Congress of the Communist International. The theses of the Italian left not only met with total incomprehension but were also identified with the criticisms of anarchism! And the European revolution had been so misunderstood! As for the new expressions of the revolutionary movement, in the first place, the German Unionen, which came into being at that time, when the most militant sections of the class left the integrated trade unions.[13] The Third International did not understand their significance at all (see our working text The German Left and the Trade Union Question in the Third International; or they were made equivalent to the soviets, without recognising their profoundly anti-union character (see the shop stewards or shop stewards committees in England).[14] In short, we can say that the revolution in Western Europe never managed to have an influence on the Third International that would have been a balancing factor, and which could have prevented the International from adopting a practice which constituted an obstacle to the revolution in the West (Germany 1919-1921, Germany, Bulgaria and Estonia in 1923, England in 1926).

This situation stemmed not only from the weakness of the Western revolution, from the second-internationalist origin of the revolutionary groups, which had not completely broken with the past, from the strong influence of centrism produced by the general situation, but also from the weight of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia. While the Russian Revolution was initially a powerful example of a battle, it became a problem at the end of the Civil War. The Russian workers successfully carried out the double revolution, which aimed, in particular, at the development of a capitalist economy. If the European revolution had not taken place, this could only have been explained by a weakening of the Russian proletariat and a strengthening of capitalist forces. Some failed to understand this problem in depth (Trotsky) and proposed that workers should be organised into an “army of producers”; others (Lenin) thought that an economic equilibrium was possible with the NEP, without realising that the vital question was that of strengthening the proletarian organisations (soviets, factory committees, red trade unions) and consequently the class offensive and its political expression, the party. Only a few minor currents, such as the Workers’ Opposition and the Democratic Centralists, understood the question, although they often regarded it as a purely economic question, opposing for example the “collective management” of the factory to the “leadership of an individual” (see A. Kollontai, The Workers’ Opposition).

Thus, the Kronstadt revolt, which was the expression of this grave situation, was not understood in its broadest sense. The Bolshevik leadership immediately dared to claim that it was the work of a Menshevik provocateur. However, the strikes which took place in Petrograd at the same time showed clearly that this was a proletarian reaction to their impotence. This certainly could not be solved by removing all importance and influence from the economic organs and the soviets in favour of a party which, precisely, could only dominate the old tsarist bureaucratic apparatus (i.e., the state administration of the capitalist economy) if it benefited from the support and constant offensive of the proletariat. The proletariat cannot remain passive or take a wait-and-see position (it must be said that Lenin believed that this could last for 25 years!) The dictatorship of the proletariat is either the manifestation of proletarian anti-capitalist aggressiveness, or it stands for nothing. It was an easy operation for Stalinism to destroy the Bolshevik party: by isolating it from the Russian and European movement, the latter could not avoid subordinating itself to its state tasks, thus nourishing its executioners within it (besides, it had not completely purged its Menshevik faction, Zinoviev-Kamenev-Losowsky, etc.).[15]

The practice adopted in Russia and Western Europe was thus the expression of a revolutionary movement that had failed to accumulate sufficient strength in the years of 1917-19 to face the even more difficult period of 1920-26, which required a sufficiently clear policy to be able to make a complete break with the past and the directives attached to it. The Third International did not pose the question of strengthening the aggressiveness of the proletarian movement regardless of its form or extent. It started from the erroneous point of view that the proletariat always exists as a class (and therefore as a revolutionary force) and that the essential task is therefore to win this class to the positions of the communist party.

By maintaining that proletarian organisation lives permanently in organisations such as trade unions and cooperatives, the Third Internationalist movement showed that it belonged to the phase of capitalist development during which these organisations appeared and were theorised (trade unionism, labourism, reformism). The dominant role of the Third International within the revolutionary movement showed, therefore, that the proletariat had not yet freed itself from the forms and ideas of the period of its infancy. This is tantamount to saying that the Third International still reflected a phase of weak development in the history of capitalism (the “reformist” period). That is why it became an obstacle, as Proudhonism had been during the Commune, which was a reflection of the pre-Marxist period, of the period of utopianism, of the time when the class did not yet exist as a capitalist unit.

We have not spoken so far of syndicalism and councilist economism which, like trade unionism, only consider the proletariat as an economic class understood according to the criteria of capitalism: profession, category, factory, industry. In this period, the revolution brought to the real proletarian leaderships a clarity of action which made it possible to distinguish Sorelian trade unionism (CNT in Spain, USI in Italy, FAUD(S) in Germany, SAC in Sweden) from revolutionary movements which, despite their lack of programmatic clarity, are without doubt the product of a revolutionary communist process (IWW in the United States, Shop Stewards in England, AAUD and FAU(G) in Germany, FS in Denmark), both historically and formally. It is more difficult to judge councilist economism, first of all because it exerts a strong influence on the International itself, and even on the PCd’l at the beginning (see Draft Theses [on the trade union question, NdT]); it often constitutes a simple point of support, the product of a reaction against trade unionism (see Gorter and Pannekoek’s conception of the Betriebsrätein 1920) for movements following the path of communism (the KAPD, the Pankhurst party, the journal Kommunismus).[16]  In other cases, the “factory council” form is a simple substitute for the trade union form in a neo-trade unionist conception, which in practice places the right-wing tendencies that develop it on the side of the counter-revolution. For example, Ordinovism supports Zinoviev’s centrism (and the Gramsci group takes over the leadership of the PCd’I). The AAUE (O. Rühle) showed its defeatism during the struggles of 1921, and part of this current practised entryism in the direction of social democracy (later, we find a similar phenomenon with the Roten Kämpfer group).[17]

The lessons of this revolutionary movement lived on in some groups. However, none of them could claim to have succeeded in freeing themselves completely from their past; none of them were able to recognise that the counter-revolution was completely dominant, nor to establish links with the future revolution.

The KAPD split. The Berlin tendency managed to continue to do some work, which was only valid in its negative aspect (see its critique of the KPD and the Third International, but the analysis of the Russian revolution no longer allowed the thesis of the double revolution to be accredited and, on the other hand, the catastrophism linked to the theory of the “mortal crisis” was unable to foresee the role of a new imperialist war for capital). The Essen tendency, after a brief and voluntarist attempt to create a new international, ended up by practising entryism into social democracy and then into the anti-fascism of the Roten Kämpfer.

The Dutch GIK [Group of International Communists, NdT], and later the late left opposition in Germany (from 1926) around K. Korsch, presented a critical work which attempted an in-depth communist analysis of “Leninism”, of a philosophical and economic kind, and which tried to carry out a scientific view of the course of imperialism. But his analysis of the content of socialism remained his weak point. Korsch managed to exert his influence on the American group which published Council Correspondence and later Living Marxism, with P. Mattick.

The Italian left (which worked abroad with the journals Prometeo and Bilan) retained a great deal of programmatic autonomy. This can be seen in its two responses to Korsch’s group (1926) and to the journal Contre le Courant (1928) (see our Working Paper II). However, its dependence on the Third International was great and it did not dare to break completely with the Left Opposition of the International (Trotsky). On the other hand, it is clear that many criticisms of the various reactions to Stalinism persisted on the Italian left. These criticisms were based on the healthy anti-democratic position of the left, which prevented it not only from falling into the kind of anti-authoritarian and anti-totalitarian criticism so typical of Trotskyism and a number of councilist tendencies, but also from refusing to support the various marginal left groups in anti-fascism, a trap into which practically all the left groups fell (this applies to Trotskyism, the POUM, the ILP, etc., but also to the GIK which joined Sneevliet’s group in an anti-fascist league).

The Russian left was destroyed by the Stalinist counter-revolution. This was the case with the Sapronov-Smirnov group (“democratic centralism”) and the “Workers’ Group” which held positions parallel to the former and which exercised, through Miasnikov, a brief influence on the German and French currents inspired by the German Left. Trotsky’s opposition, which in 1924 had achieved good results (see Victor Serge’s autobiography), was completely liquidated by the alliance with Zinoviev-Kamenev.[18] Trotskyism came to constitute the continuation of third-internationalist opportunism. In terms of economic analysis, it paved the way not only for later opportunist nonsense about the “degenerated workers’ state”, but also for Stalinist theories justifying forced industrialisation.

Unlike Trotskyism, the right-wing opposition (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) understood the need for proletarian aggressiveness, hence the slogan “Kulaks, get rich!”, which expressed not a policy of support for the capitalist state, but a policy of support for the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois agricultural strata, which present a less dangerous enemy for the proletariat. But this group was already enthralled to Stalinism, which it had supported in the struggle against the revolutionary oppositions, including by cosigning the anti-Marxist theorisation of “socialism in one country.”[19]

The destruction of the communist currents of the October Revolution was further proof that imperialism triumphed everywhere. In Germany it took the form of Nazi corporatism and in the USA, it took the form of Rooseveltian corporatism. The “workers’ front” and the CIO show the reflection of the complete capitalist organisation of the working class, according to the essential element of the capitalist economy, i.e., industry.[20] The trade union dream of the Second International was thus realised… by imperialism. A parallel phenomenon took place in France with the CGT-CGTU trade union unification under the auspices of the Popular Front. This was a confirmation of the trend which had already manifested itself in the weak zones of capital during the 1920s (Portugal, Italy, the Balkans), the first manifestation of which had been the entry of social democracy into the capitalist state administration and the integration of the trade unions. The process of concentration carried out by social democracy/Stalinism/fascism was the prelude to the Second World War, which was to complete the tasks of the first war, interrupted by the revolution, and confirm the complete victory of imperialism over the proletariat.

The Second World War also marked a final victory over the left-wing oppositions of the past. The groups which did not fall into anti-fascism, and which did not expect a revolutionary wave after the war, devoted themselves to the search for solutions and guarantees to prevent the proletariat from suffering such gigantic defeats again. But this was an erroneous and non-deterministic way of posing the problem of revolution/counter-revolution, and these groupings resulted in an idealistic formalism: the guarantee was found in the workers’ councils (Pannekoek, The Workers’ Councils, 1946), or even in the communist party (for example, a part of the Italian left grouped around O. Damen, one of the founders of the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy). Other groups (e.g., in Holland) moved towards an opposite solution, but just as vain and idealistic. They certainly knew that “the revolution is not a question of forms of organisation“, but they launched into metaphysical speculations about “their role and their task”. We can say that they represented sectarianism proper, which did not know how to go beyond the accidental, personal and geographical limits whose overcoming would have allowed them to join the historical movement of the proletariat.

The rest of the Italian left (Bordiga and Vercesi) cut this Gordian knot deterministically. For them, there is “the thread of time” which links the struggles of past epochs, i.e., the past of the proletariat, with the future revolution of the class, and the work of communists must always be in function of this perspective. It is this historical programme which the Stalinist counter-revolution destroyed, and which must now be restored. It is necessary to redefine what is meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism and communism. On this basis, we must show that Russia is not socialist. It must be shown that anti-fascist democracy continued the work of fascism without breaking its work of economic concentration. It must be shown that imperialism still has a catastrophe in store for us despite the respite granted by the Second Imperialist World War, with the division of the international market which it provoked between the bellicose dominant United States and ‘pacifist’ Russia. (Note that recently this division into two blocs is beginning to break down, with the rise to the forefront of the capitalist powers of Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, China). The historical line of the party passes through this work, implying the formation of an organisation to centralise it. That is why the Italian left took up “organic centralism” as a principle of internal organization—a formula whose homogeneous and anti-democratic character had already been demonstrated by Bordiga in his critique of Leninist “democratic centralism”, an indirect critique that we find in his article The Democratic Principle (1922). This organic character was to prevent the dangers of factionalism and formalism, and with it, communist work was differentiated from that of many superficially anti-Stalinist groups, because it was the basis of the organisation. This allowed the International Communist Party to split in 1951-52, from the Internationalist Communist Party founded by Damen’s group. During the whole period of work on theoretical reconstruction, the Italian left defended all the works of Lenin and the work of the Third International up to the political united front. Presenting itself as a continuation of the Third International as it existed in its early years did not hinder the work of restoring the general lines of Marxism. But once these were drawn, while the work should have turned towards the future revolution, all the theories on which the practice of the Third International was based became an obstacle. The Italian left had rightly argued that the organs of the proletariat are closely linked to the revolutionary process and are not given a priori:

“Therefore, the so-called analysis, which alleges that all the conditions for the revolution are in place but a revolutionary leadership, is therefore 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“. (Bordiga, The Inversion of Praxis, 1951).

In this text and in many others, it is repeated that the formal party will come into being when the communist programme has become a real factor of struggle. But we have not considered the party-class relation as a process of dialectical development through which the revolutionary organisation ends up confirming what Marx calls “the essence and being of the proletariat”, that is, being the real expression of it. As for the spontaneity-programme relation, Bordiga stuck to his 1921 vision, Party and Class: “the class party […] is alone able to awaken the revolutionary spirit of the class “; this conception is closer to that which Pannekoek had developed the previous year than to that of Zinoviev in his Moscow Theses, although the Italian left had always claimed the opposite).[21] But when it became necessary to specify the content of the question, the Italian left returned to the Kautskyite triangle, which placed the trade unions and the class under the leadership of the centralised party. This was a resumption in practice of trade unionist formalism. The first struggles put the small International Communist Party to the test. Was it the possibility to start linking itself to the present proletarian action and thus to the future revolution? Or should it remain fixed at the top of this imaginary pyramid? The first movement (Belgium, 1960-61) confirmed the anti-union lesson of the German revolution, a lesson which the Italian left and the Third International had always rejected.

It was clear that the real movement had to immediately overcome all the theories of the past and thus the advocates of the economic-trade unionist vision of revolutionary development. In 1968-70 there was new evidence: the proletarian offensive (France, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, etc.) no longer knew purely trade union strikes. The wave of struggles was immediately confronted by the trade unions: representatives of the state among the workers. This offensive was therefore political, despite the local limits of the struggles of the late 1960s. But the International Communist Party saw this only as an expression of impotence due to the counter-revolution and the lack of political and trade union leadership. In this way, the International Communist Party stuck to the vision of the Third International and became an obstacle to communist work.

To avoid misunderstandings, let us remember that counter-revolution still reigns. But the task of communists is revolutionary. The present theoretical character of the work, of the research in the library or the monologue in the factory, must not make us forget that this task is essentially practical. Anonymous theoretical work will be a reality in the revolutionary workers’ movement of the proletariat, carried out by itself. Thus, communist “practice” will absorb all forces, since “theoretical” questions and real problems will be one and the same thing. The certainty of the coming of the revolution must therefore guide the current work of programmatic precision, so that this work does not fall into academicism and metaphysics and is always linked to the first proletarian actions which alone can establish the link between the past revolution and the future revolution in this still arid present. But proletarian action is not separate from programmatic work, and when it manifests its tendency to attack the trade unions integrated into the state, it confirms and reinforces the content of the programme which says that the revolution will destroy the state, which in turn becomes the relation of production, “das ideale Gesamtkapital” (Engels). Thus, it is not the action itself, still weak today, which alone gives perspective, but it is the whole historical line which immediately allows for foresight. But neither does perspective have a life of its own. Its existence is given by the deterministic necessity of communism, masterfully described by Marx in The Holy Family (see note 2). This necessity lives in proletarian action when the first organs of assault, precursors of the future movement, are born. This is the product of struggles, and therefore of the negation of all formalisms and a prioris of those who believe that the future revolution will be a carbon copy of those of the past. Capitalist reality has abolished the division between politics and economics, between programme and offensive. The programme is a whole. There are no longer minimum demands and a maximum objective. Our work is the expression of this. We must already write on our banners: destruction of wage labour. The only revolutionary perspective can be: elimination of the division of labour; the classless society: communism.

Former Scandinavian Section of Programma Communista – Copenhagen, 8 March 1972

Notes

[1] See Marx’s critique of Feuerbach in Theses on Feuerbach (1845), and Pannekoek’s critique of Lenin in Lenin as Philosopher (1938).

[2] See Marx and Engels in The Holy Family (1844): ” 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 proletarians 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. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today, which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labor. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of knowing what the proletariat is and what it must historically do in accordance with its being it will historically be compelled to do“.

[3] For our position on the double revolution (as well as on the debates on the decadence of capitalism and the permanent revolution) see On the decadence of capitalism, the permanent revolution and the double revolution.

[4] The same ambiguity continued to manifest itself in the way the Second International is considered: cf. Bordiga, Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the general situation is historically unfavourable (1965): “In 1889 the International was reconstituted, after the death of Marx, but under the control of Engels, whose indications are, however, not applied”.

[5] This formalism was in complete opposition to the conception developed by Engels in the last pages of Contribution to the History of the League of Communists: “Today, the German proletariat no longer needs any official organisation, neither public nor secret; the simple and natural cohesion given by the consciousness of class interest is enough to move the whole German empire”. And further: “the simple feeling of solidarity, born of the consciousness of the identity of their class situation, to create and maintain united among the workers of all countries and languages a single and unique party: the great party of the proletariat.”

[6] Internationalist organisation of the World War I period whose most prominent leader was Paul Frölich [NdT].

[7] He refers to the current led by Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter among other colleagues [NdT].

[8] One of the leaders of the Bremen Left together with Frölich, influenced by the Dutch Tribunites [NdT].

[9] Document produced by the Scandinavian comrades of the PCInt in 1971, this document, together with their report on the German Revolution, would provoke their break with Programma Comunista, together with other comrades from the French sections of Programme [NdT].

[10] The Amsterdam bureau was an office of the Communist International for the countries of Western Europe and Kommunismus the journal of the Vienna bureau in charge of the countries of south-eastern Europe. Both were dominated by left communist positions and were soon dissolved by the Communist International.

[11] This refers to the International Federation of Trade Unions which was based in Amsterdam. It was the trade union version of the Second International and operated from 1901 to 1945.

[12] That is to say, with the centrist currents of counter-revolutionary social democracy (the German USPD, Serrati’s PSI in Italy…).

[13] On the experience of the German Unions see, as a source of historical information, the book by Jean Barrot and Denis Authier, The Communist Left in Germany 1918 – 1921.

[14] A 1972 document which takes up the report they prepared for the whole PCInt and which is one of the bases for their separation from Programma in 1971.

[15] On the other hand, Russian foreign policy interests were continuous. In 1919-21, these interests played a major role in the policy concerning national movements. Thus, in Turkey, Persia and Egypt, proletarian tendencies were sacrificed in order to obtain alliances against the Entente. Even pan-Islamism was declared “progressive”. Thus, the tactic followed in China six years later was announced. With Rapallo and the opening towards the Branting government, the same tactic began to be applied in Europe.

[16] These are the works councils. The Works Councils Act, in force in Germany from 1920 to 1934, obliged companies with twenty or more workers to elect their works councils.

[17] Clandestine group of former KAPD members who had gone over to the German SPD, numbering about 400 and named after their newspaper Der Roten Kämpfer, ‘Marxist Workers’ Newspaper’ [NdT].

[18] On Trotsky and Trotskyism see our text Trotsky and Trotskyism [NdT].

[19] In fact it is Bukharin who gave the arguments for Stalin’s theory. On Bukharin see our work Nikolai Bukharin: from internationalism to socialism in one country.

[20] The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was born in 1938 from the impulse of Roosevelt and his New Deal policy and as a great rival to the American Federation of Labor [NdT].

[21] He refers to the text Development of the World Revolution and the Tactics of Communism published in Vienna in 1920 [NdT].