For Communism “We Have a World to Win”

An Introduction to the Politics of the

An Introduction to the Politics
Internationalist Communist of the
Tendency
Internationalist Communist Tendency
 An Introduction to the Politics of the
Internationalist Communist Tendency
Contents

Foreword 1

1 Capitalism: The Basic Contradictions of the System 4

Imperialism
State Capitalism
The Crisis
The Communist Perspective

2 The Proletariat’s Class Struggle 12

The Economic Struggle of the Working Class
Class Consciousness
The Organisation of Revolutionaries

3 The Struggle for Class Autonomy 17

Nationalism and the Myth of “National Liberation”
The Opression of Women
Racism
Fascism
The Cul-de-sac of Anti-Fascism - Against all United Fronts and People’s Fronts

4 False Friends 26
The Unions
Social Democracy
Stalinism
Heirs of the Counter-revolution: the Left of Capital

5 The Tasks of Revolutionaries 34

The Need for a Revolutionary Break
Against Representation For Delegation
Workers’ Democracy Instead of Party Dictatorship
The International Dimension
Beyond the State, Nation and Capital...

 1

For Communism
An Introduction to the Politics of
the Internationalist Communist Tendency

T
Foreword oday the international working class is faced
with one of the greatest upheavals in its history.
By restructuring entire branches of industry,
implementing technological innovation and depressing
wages, capitalists everywhere are trying to maintain their
competitiveness on an increasingly globalised and vicious
world market. At the same time the bourgeoisie has
utilised the collapse of Stalinism in order to strengthen its
ideological campaign against the working class: they are
using all means to try and discredit the idea of communism
and to inject the message that there is no sense in the
class fighting and defending itself. Yet the credibility of
capitalist propaganda is in direct contrast to the reality of
the lives of the majority of humanity: twenty percent of the
population of the so-called advanced capitalist countries
lives in poverty and need caused by unemployment. The
system’s capacity for destruction cannot be ignored.

A growing portion of the world population suffers from

malnutrition and hunger, while global agriculture produces
enough food to feed a population 50% bigger than today’s.
At the same time, capitalist production for profit more and
more wrecks the ecological resources of the planet.

None of this is by accident. It is the direct result of the

manner in which the capitalist system reproduces itself.
Almost 150 years ago, Karl Marx wrote that capitalism
“comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from
every pore, with blood and gore”. Child labour, slavery
and slums, this all enabled the owners of capital to bring in
unheard of profits. But the horrors of early industrialisation
are nothing in comparison with the genocide, wars and
famines that capitalism imposes on the world today. The
struggle for communism has, as a pre-condition, a profound
and far-reaching understanding of the mode of operation
of today’s capitalism.
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Our politics are not merely a product of our own

reflections. The ideas we defend, are based on the
historical experience which the international working
class has amassed over the last one and a half centuries of
the struggle against capitalist exploitation.

We stand in the tradition of the revolutionary currents of

the workers’ movement, begun by the Communist League
around Karl Marx, down to the Third International, which
was founded in the wake of the October Revolution. It
continued with the minorities of the Communist Left,
which fought both against the degeneration of the
revolution inside Russia and inside the Third International
in the ‘20s. We have always resolutely rejected Stalinist
and Trotskyist currents as the product of the state-
capitalist counter-revolution in Russia, and have politically
combated them. For this reason, too, for us the collapse
of the Stalinist regimes represents no loss for the working
class.

The immediate origins of our tendency go back to the

international conferences which the Internationalist
Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) of Italy called
between 1977 and 1980. In these conferences, the
Communist Workers’ Organisation (CWO) convinced itself
of the coherence of the methods and positions which the
Italian comrades had developed since their foundation in
1943, and began to examine their own positions. In 1983
the two organisations founded the International Bureau
for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) on the basis of a shared
platform. Thereafter, groups from other countries joined
the Bureau and the IBRP became the Internationalist
Communist Tendency (ICT). Today it coordinates the
international efforts of the organisations constituting it.

The ICT is for the revolutionary party, but it does not

pretend to be the party or even the sole nucleus of a future
party. To claim something like this would necessitate the
senseless assumption that a revolutionary party could
come into being through the will of a few people. In
order to create the pre-conditions for the overthrow
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of the international capitalist system, the proletariat

must take up once more the mass struggle for its own
interests. We want to be prepared for this. Hence, the
ICT’s groups attempt to encourage the development of a
solid kernel, a potential constituent part of a centralised
and international proletarian world party.

For those who wish to help humanity out of its present

cul de sac, there is no other alternative. For one thing
is certain: all that capitalism has to offer is a future with
a sharpened crisis, more environmental destruction, yet
more human misery and yet more wars.

Socialism or barbarism. There is no third way!

For correspondence write to:

CWO, BM CWO
London
WC1N 3XX
email: [email protected]

Or visit our website:

http://www.leftcom.org

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1 C apitalist society, like the slave and feudal societies

which preceded it, is a class society in which the
dominant class lives off the work carried out by the
Capitalism: subject class. Humanity has lived in class societies for an
the Basic extremely short period of its history and such societies
Contradictions are not in any sense an expression of human nature. The
of the System ICT considers capitalism to be the final class society and
that the next step for humanity is the overthrow of class
society itself and its replacement by a classless society
based on cooperation and production for need.

In previous class societies the subject class was obliged to

give up that surplus it had produced and the exploitation
of slaves, serfs and other subjects was obvious. Within
capitalist society this process is disguised. The working
class appears to be free and to freely sell its labour to
the bourgeois class in a market contract. In fact, as Marx
showed, the working class sells its ability to work, or its
labour power, to the bourgeois class. This labour power,
when set to work with machinery and raw materials
produces a greater value than that required to reproduce
it. This is the fundamental mechanism through which
surplus labour is extracted from the working class by the
capitalist class. Under capitalist production relations the
working class receives back, in the form of wages, only a
part of the value that its work creates. The remaining part
is appropriated by the capitalists and they use this as they
see fit. It is this appropriated surplus labour, or surplus
value, and this alone, which provides the entire bourgeois
class with its source of profit. This process operates on a
global scale and profits are divided amongst the entire
global bourgeois class. There is a tendency for profits to
be equalised and distributed in proportion to the amount
of capital each section of the bourgeois class holds,
irrespective of whether the capital in question directly
exploits workers producing surplus value or not.

For capitalism to operate the working class has to be

deprived of ownership of the means of production. It has
to become a propertyless class possessing only its ability
to labour, and to have no alternative but to sell this to the
bourgeois class. This separation results from the central
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contradiction of capitalism. On the one hand production

is social, on the other hand control of the means and
conditions of production, and the commodities produced
are in the hands of the bourgeois class alone. This control
is used not to satisfy social needs but to generate profits
and accumulate capital.

The objective of capitalist production is to produce

profits. The capitalist system will only satisfy human
needs if it is profitable for it to do so. It is not interested
in producing products which are useful, but commodities
which can be sold for a profit.

The profit which each capitalist receives tends to

approximate to a global average which is dependent on
the global amount of surplus value extorted from the
global working class. This average rate of profit tends
to fall as the value of the capital employed and the
productivity of workers increases. The capitalists are thus
permanently compelled to revolutionise the means of
production in order to gain a temporary advantage on
their competitors and so appropriate a larger portion
of the global surplus value available. Capitalists have to
invest part of their surplus value in new constant capital
(e.g., machines, buildings, raw materials, etc.), in order
to exploit wage labour in a more unrestrained manner.
While some workers are fired, the exploitation, or
“productivity” of the others is increased. This allows an
individual capitalist concern to raise its profit rate above
the average. The average profit rate is determined by
the ratio of surplus value to the entirety of the invested
capital. The growth of constant capital at the expense of
variable capital (human labour power) leads to a higher
organic composition of capital (i.e., the ratio of constant
capital to variable capital). Because surplus value can only
be created by living labour, this curtails the capitalists’
rate of profit. This does not mean that the actual mass
of profit automatically decreases, but that capitalism as a
whole experiences a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
Capitalists attempt to counteract this in various ways. The
most usual of these are:
• by increasing the productivity of workers through
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more efficient plant and control of the labour process,

• by extending working hours,
• by decreasing wages
• by lowering the value of capital equipment used in
production.

This process leads to a competitive struggle between the

capitalists, which in the end brings about periodic crises of
the capitalist system. When the weaker (and, in general,
smaller) capitalists establish that they are bringing home
insufficient surplus value to endow their investments with
new capital, they either go to the wall or they are taken
over by stronger rivals. In the 19th century, this happened
at regular, roughly ten-year, intervals. The crisis led to a
devaluation of capital, and so to a reduction in the organic
composition of capital, which enabled the surviving
capital to resume and expand the accumulation process.
Capitalist production became ever more concentrated
and centralised. The search for cheap raw materials and
investments in less developed areas (i.e., places with a
lower organic composition of capital) compensated for
the fall in the rate of profit. In addition, this extended the
world market and made the capitalist mode of production
more international — until, on the threshold of the 20th
century, a world economy had emerged.

Imperialism
T owards the end of the 19th century, capitalist
competition took on new forms. Production was
increasingly dominated by giant capitalist monopolies
and the great concerns of finance capital. This growing
concentration and centralisation of capital, which, through
the class struggle, caused social problems and the need
to defend the national capital, led, from the late 19th
century onwards, to a tendency towards increasing state
regulation of the capitalist economy. (Customs barriers
increased enormously in the last two decades of the 19th
century.) Capitalist competition moved from the level of
the individual firm to that between nations. To the degree
that it was drawn into the regulation of the national
economy, the state placed increasing weight on military
force to open up sources of raw materials and markets.
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Capitalism moved into the epoch of imperialism.

Imperialism is a stage which is reached by capitalism

when the organic composition is so high that the
access to cheap raw materials as well as the export of
capital to countries with a lower organic composition
of capital is essential to prop up the rate of profit in the
capitalist centres. Consequently, imperialism is not just
a simple policy which the capitalists can change at their
convenience.

Originally, imperialism was characterised by the erection

of tariff barriers and the striving for colonies, a “place
in the Sun”. Lenin was firmly convinced that colonies
formed an essential component part of the imperialist
system. He took it as a starting point that a process of
decolonisation would drive the revolution onwards and
accelerate it. However, the end of colonialism in Africa
and Asia after the Second World War did not have this
effect. In the place of the old colonial powers, not only
did new superpowers like the USA and the USSR enter the
field of play, but also a new form of imperialism, which
some describe as neo-colonialism. The mechanisms
the dominant capitalist countries use to ensure their
domination are varied. The bourgeoisie of the peripheral
countries are forced in every case to play along with
the existing imperialist trading and financial order. The
capitalists in the periphery may not have the same access
to the same mass of capital as their stronger rivals, but
they are just as driven to maximise their profits. Like
the rest of the world bourgeoisie, they exploit their
“own” proletariat — and also the world proletariat
(through capital invested in Western government debt,
or deposited in foreign bank accounts).

The inevitable outcome of imperialism is war, i.e.,

the continuation of economic competition by military
means. An economic crisis of the 19th century type no
longer devalues enough capital to set a new cycle of
accumulation in motion.  Only the massive destruction
and devaluation of a global war can accomplish this.
The real and objective task of a world war in our epoch
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lies in this. Of course, the capitalists do not consciously

decide to have a war for this purpose.  But, aside from the
various political or strategic justifications, it is imperialist
competition itself which brings about war again and again.
As a consequence capitalism is now caught in a vicious
circle of crisis, war and reconstruction. The fact that wars
have become an essential part of the system shows that
capitalism long ago played out its progressive role in
history.

State Capitalism
C apitalism entered a new phase with the catastrophe
of the First World War in 1914. The continual
centralisation and concentration of capital now threatened
important sectors of some national economies. With this,
the state was forced to not only intervene externally
(imperialism), but also internally, in order to head off the
worst social and economic effects of the system. This state
capitalism, like imperialism, ran through various stages.
The state now began to play a role in the accumulation of
capital which was still unthinkable during the competitive
struggle of 19th century capitalism. To the extent,
however, that the tendential fall of the rate of profit more
and more threatened the “commanding heights“ of the
national economy, state intervention became centrally
significant.

This tendency towards state capitalism was particularly

exemplified by the failure of the Russian Revolution of
1917. The October Revolution promised a new society, in
which the working class would take its fate into its own
hands. Because of the isolation of the Russian Revolution in
a single country, in which in addition the working class was
a minority, these hopes were not fulfilled. Private property
in the means of production was indeed done away with to
the greatest degree, but this was not to socialise it, but
to transform it into state property. Capitalist categories
like wage labour, money and exploitation persisted. A
new ruling class, which recruited itself primarily from
the careerists of the bureaucratised Communist Party,
subjected the proletariat to a brutal exploitation. The myth
that the USSR was “socialist” and that statification equals
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socialism was one of the many illusions of this epoch.

Only the Communist Left reached the understanding
that the USSR was a particular form of state capitalism.
The idea that the state could moderate all the crimes of
capitalism also led to broad state intervention in the West
after 1945.

This was the age of the so-called “Welfare State“, which
was even sometimes celebrated as the “solution of the
social question” by the propagandists of the ruling class.
Even if in this phase of capitalism, far-reaching concessions
could be made to the working class, the “Welfare State”
was never a charity, but its entire essence was that of a
repressive instrument for control and suppression. By
nationalising beleaguered key industries, the leading
capitalist powers sought to ensure their survival.
However, when the system’s crisis of accumulation re-
surfaced in the early ‘70s, it was as a crisis of the state.

The Crisis
A t the beginning of the ‘70s the accumulation cycle
set in motion by the Second World War’s massive
annihilation of constant capital came to an end. The
crisis showed itself in the decoupling of the dollar from
its value expressed in gold in 1971. To counteract the fall
in the rate of profit, capital relied on the restructuring
of the productive process (e.g. the introduction of
micro-electronics) and a massive increase in the rate of
exploitation.

In the wake of this restructuring, core sectors of the

industrial working class in the metropoles were heavily
fragmented. Factories were shut and production shifted
to low-wage areas in Asia and Latin America. The
flow of Western and Japanese capital to these areas
strengthened. As a consequence, the factory declined
as the location of proletarian experience and the starting
point for resistance, at least in the West.

Class composition thoroughly changed. More and more

people now work in the service sector. Although most
produce no surplus value directly, these people are just
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as exploited as other workers, and are hence part of the

working class. The expansion of bogus self-employment
and precarious conditions of employment also makes new
demands on the development of proletarian resistance.

A further phenomenon can be seen in the exorbitant

bloating of the finance sector. This sector appropriates
surplus value produced elsewhere in the global economy.
Here, in a miraculous fashion, money appears to create
new value without entering the process of commodity
production. The fall in the average rate of profit has led to
a situation where surplus value is not being reinvested in
productive capital but is used for speculation. This has led
to massive speculation in such commodities as housing,
foodstuffs, energy and so forth. This speculation and its
eventual collapse are a symptom of the basic problems of
the declining average profitability of capital. It does not
address the causes of the crisis. It bestows considerable
gains on a handful of super-rich but, in the long term, they
lead to growing indebtedness, more speculative bubbles
and increasing instability.

The crisis in the meantime has become the longest since

the Great Depression of 1873-96. Like preceding crises, it
is characterised by mini-booms and even deeper slumps.
It is building the basis for imperialist rivalries, growing
competition and shifting alliances in which everyone seeks
to place the burden on someone else’s shoulders. Up until
now the ruling class has succeeded in preventing both
decisive social uprisings as well as a complete collapse of
the system. Nevertheless, this has been at the cost of a
growing state indebtedness which threatens to blow the
whole system apart. The need for all states to reduce this
indebtedness leads to harsher cuts in subsidies as well as
educational and social spending. Capitalism has failed,
both through expenditure and cuts, to find a way out of
its structural accumulation crisis. The present crisis is
preparatory for a more general catastrophe tomorrow. If
the capitalist system is able to continue unchecked, then
humanity will once again be plunged into a world war and
thus into barbarism. Communism for this reason is not
just a nice idea, but a real necessity for humanity.
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The Communist
Perspective T he apologists of the ruling class raise their hands
over the horrors of monopoly capitalism, but always
declare that there is no alternative. They admit that
capitalism is not the best social system but then say it
is the only possible one. Marxist revolutionaries, who
support their analyses by looking at the entire history
of human development and the experiences of the class
struggle, are able to expose these lies. Humanity can be
spared the horrors and misery of this rotten social system
— but only if it is overthrown and replaced by a society
without exploitation based on the satisfaction of human
needs.

Such a society can only be created by an international

revolution of the working class. We continue to call this
social alternative Communism — despite all the vilification
of it by its open enemies and the manifold distortions
and false interpretations of those who have worked their
mischief under this label. Socialism or communism (for
Marx these concepts were synonyms) is not a condition
or programme which can be put into practice by a party
or state decree, but a social movement for the conscious
overcoming of the capital relation, the doing away of the
state, commodity production and the law of value.

Whereas previous revolutions have merely replaced

one form of exploitation by another, the communist
revolution will be the first to do away with every kind of
exploitation and repression. As the sole creator of social
wealth, the working class can only free itself by doing
away with all classes.

Communism will destroy the capitalist state and end

national borders. It will overcome money, wage-labour
and commodity production. Communism means
doing away with the power of control of the means of
production by a special class. For this reason, communism
is synonymous with the liberation of the working class
from all forms of exploitation. This liberation can only be
the work of the working class itself.

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2 A lthough the economic contradictions of the capitalist

system bring one economic crisis after another, the
system will not collapse “automatically”. The overthrow of
The the system can only be carried out by the one class which
Proletariat’s is globally exploited — the working class. By the “working
Class Struggle class” we do not mean the abstract figure with horny hands
and blue overalls so passionately loved by the dinosaurs
of the old workers’ movement and industrial sociologists.
For us, all those who are dependent on a wage, have no
power over the means of production and are forced to
perform alienated labour, belong to the working class. This
class is an indispensible element of the capitalist mode of
production. But, simultaneously, this collective producing
class, which is forbidden access to the fruits of its labour, is
also the “grave-digger of capitalist society”.

The capitalists understand this very well and never tire

of denying the contradiction between wage-labour and
capital, and, consequently, the class struggle. In capitalist
booms, we are told by all sorts of paid charlatans (the
Bernsteins, Burnhams and Marcuses) that the working
class no longer exists, because improved living standards
have “embourgeoisified” the workers. When capitalism
finds itself in a crisis, we are told (by Gorz, Hobsbawm,
etc. ...) that the working class no longer exists, because the
newest technologies have made it obsolete. In times of
relative class peace, such theories are in great demand, but
then they are always refuted by a new wave of struggle.

The Economic
Struggle of the
Working Class
A s the crisis continues, the bourgeoisie is more and
more forced to attack the working class. More
and more people are fired because of “rationalisation”.
Unemployment is rampant. Fewer and fewer workers
find jobs, and those who have work are being put under
pressure by harder work, longer working days and wage
cuts.

The working class may at first retreat in the face of these

capitalist attacks, but the character of capitalist production
forces it in the end to defend itself against capitalist
exploitation. This struggle can only be successful if the
working class achieves the necessary unity and solidarity to
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drive back the attacks. The significance of such successes

should neither be overestimated nor underestimated.
They are important and necessary so that the working
class rediscovers both its common interests as well as its
collective power as a class. But, with this alone things are
not over. Every success wrung by the class in the economic
struggle is important but is, however, of temporary
duration. The real defence of workers’ interests demands
that they proceed against the system of exploitation as a
whole.

Class
Consciousness C risis-ridden capitalism is threatening humanity with
further misery and the danger of a global war. But it
won’t collapse by itself, nor can it be essentially altered
gradually. The overthrow of this system, the liberation
of the working class through the conscious worldwide
abolition of the wage labour-capital relation is the
basic condition for the eradication of exploitation and
repression.

The bourgeoisie was able to develop capitalist relations

of production under feudalism, by struggling for the
defence of free trade and against feudal restrictions (guild
laws and mercantile monopolies, etc.), so that every step
in the economic development of the bourgeoisie “was
accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that
class.”[Marx]

In contrast to the bourgeoisie the proletariat is an exploited

class of collective producers. It has no system of property
to defend. The communist mode of production cannot
develop within the capitalist system. It first requires the
political overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the conscious
and active struggle of the working class. Only when the
working class has deprived the bourgeoisie of power, can
it take on the task of the economic reshaping of society.

Everything else would simply be reformism. Nevertheless,

this throws up a series of problems. If, as Marx declares,
“the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas” [The German Ideology], how can the working class
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then become aware of the need to overcome capitalism?

In view of their control over the apparatus of repression

and their ideological domination, it appears as if bourgeois
rule is almost unbeatable. So long as the capitalists more
or less manage the crisis and can keep workers’ struggles
isolated and on the terrain of the bourgeoisie, their rule is
relatively secure. But the class struggle never ceases, even
if in certain historical phases it is played out at a very low
level. From time to time it openly breaks out, and, under
certain circumstances it even reaches the magnitude
of uprisings like the Paris June Days of 1848, the Paris
Commune of 1871, the mass strikes and revolutions in the
Europe of 1904-5 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

But revolts by themselves are not enough to overthrow

capitalist rule. If the working class is not already politically
prepared and has no programme of its own at its disposal,
the various forces of the bourgeoisie will step in and
put their stamp on events with pseudo-radical rhetoric.
History has shown often enough that even the workers
participating can forget the lessons of their own experience
of struggle if they do not have an organised political
expression. The economic struggle of the working class
indeed poses the problem of exploitation again and again,
but this does not give us an answer to the question of how
exploitation can be overcome. It is true that the proletariat
is in a position to become aware of the totality of capitalist
exploitation, because of its role in the mode of production
and its organisational capacity. In view of the dominance
of bourgeois ideology, the process by which the proletariat
becomes conscious is nevertheless not a linear one.

In capitalist class society, the level of consciousness of

the working class, because of its division into branches,
groups of occupations, nations and genders, is necessarily
fragmented. There is no single or evenly formed
consciousness in the class. The circumstances in which
various segments of the class and individual workers
develop class consciousness in different degrees and at
different times, allows only the logical conclusion that
class consciousness can only be consolidated and further
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developed within an organisational framework. Only

through the political organisation of those workers who
recognise the character of capitalism as a transient society
of exploitation that is not permanent can the ruling ideas,
which are still the ideas of the ruling class, be challenged
and overcome. By politically generalising the elements of
consciousness which emerge in the daily struggles against
exploitation, a political organisation can contribute to
communist theory becoming a “material force”, and put
an end to the bourgeois state and exploitation. Given
the domination of bourgeois ideology such a conscious
political struggle will not simply spontaneously develop in
the daily struggles of the class.

The
Organisation of
Revolutionaries
I n order to successfully carry out the struggle for
socialism, it is necessary to incorporate the most
conscious parts of the class into a revolutionary party.
The revolutionary class party can neither be an aloof
circle of intellectuals nor a populist mass organisation. It
is the organisational expression of the conscious Marxist
minority of the class. Its task consists in the evaluation
and generalisation of experiences in struggle and in the
defence and further development of the revolutionary
programme. For this reason it is an indispensible political
instrument giving a political orientation and perspectives
to the struggles of the class. The organisation of the
communists is fundamentally different to bourgeois
parties and formations. Instead of the uncritical obedience
of yes-men (or women) and passive agreement, it
demands from its militants a clear understanding of the
communist programme as well as the active dissemination
and defence of revolutionary positions inside the working
class. Even though the party must play an organisational
role in the revolutionary process, its task is essentially
politically defined. If, for example, the conditions for
the revolution develop (for which the embedding of
the party in the class is a basic pre-condition), its task
comprises of carrying out the corresponding preparations
for revolution. Nevertheless, it should never attempt an
insurrection alone and/or in the place of the working class
(and should not even try to do so). We reject the notion
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that a revolutionary party can be a substitute for the class

in taking over power. The communist revolution can only
be the work of the immense majority of the working class.

The organs of “workers’ democracy” will be the councils

and mass assemblies, which will be based on the election
and recallability of delegates. Nevertheless, these organs,
in the absence of a political programme which aims at the
final overcoming of class society, cannot develop into true
organs of workers’ power. Such a programme does not fall
from the sky, but emerges from the conscious efforts of the
part of the working class which has drawn the lessons of
past struggles and has come together on an international
level in a revolutionary world party.

A revolutionary world party is, however, not an instrument

of domination, but, on the contrary, a means for the
political clarification and generalisation of the communist
programme. This is a central lesson that the communist
left drew from the failure of the Russian Revolution:

“There is no way for the working class to be free or a new

social order to come about, unless it springs from the
class struggle itself. At no time and for no reason should
the proletariat surrender its role in the struggle. It should
not delegate its historical mission to others, or transfer its
power to others — not even to its own political party.”
[Political Platform of the Partito Comunista
Internazionalista, 1952].

It is unlikely that the world revolution will triumph

everywhere at the same time. The task of the party is
not the administration of some proletarian outpost, but,
on the contrary, the ceaseless work of spreading the
international revolution. As the struggle for socialism must
necessarily be conducted internationally, the party must
have an international structure and presence and be well-
anchored in the class. The working class has no fatherland,
and the same is true for the organisation of communists.

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3 T he bourgeoisie has a great interest in using differences

in the working class to divide it. Workers, who stand
in a competitive relation to each other and at loggerheads
The with themselves, do not defend themselves against
Struggle for oppression. A divided working class is a welcome object
Class Autonomy of exploitation, and, in the final analysis, is cannon fodder
for the wars of the imperialist age.

The ruling class is also able to rely on various ideologies

and a whole network of traditional relations of
domination. These forms of oppression already existed
in previous class societies, but under capitalism have
taken on a modified shape corresponding to the interests
of the system. Framing and maintaining the divisions
within the working class into local and foreign, men and
women, hetero- and homosexual, etc., is central to the
security of the ruling class. The stirring up of prejudice
and bigotry has always been an important ideological
weapon of the bourgeoisie. It is all the more important
for communists to resolutely stand up against all forms of
oppression and the manifold ideological mystifications of
class domination.

Nationalism
and the Myth
of “National
I n war and peace the bourgeoisie tries to make the
workers identify with “their” country. For generations
we have been told that “our jobs” are in danger and we
Liberation” will lose them if we don’t work even harder. Exactly the
same message is rammed down the throats of workers
everywhere.

In time of war they also call for us to be slaughtered,

and/or to massacre our class brothers and sisters, for
the “good of the country”. The idea of the nation is a
decisive prop for bourgeois domination. It disguises the
class character of the system and makes it appear as if the
existing order is the expression of the common interest of
the “people”. Nationalism always means the submission
of the proletariat to its “own” bourgeoisie. In the age of
imperialism, in which the rule of capital grips the entire
globe, the concept of specific “national possibilities
of development” and “unfulfilled democratic tasks” is
For Communism
18

absurd and is in every sense reactionary.

The internationalist communist left has never supported

so-called “national liberation struggles”. It is often asserted
that these struggles are against repression and therefore
are anti-imperialist. It is true that in many countries there
are oppressed minorities. But these minorities can gain
nothing by identifying with their own ruling class or parts
of the bourgeoisie. Demanding that the working class
participates in a national movement means leading them
into capitalism’s abattoir. These struggles are equally not
“anti-imperialist”. Nationalist movements are dependent
on finding sponsors and supporters in the imperialist
power structure merely in order to be able to develop
military fire-power. Even a newly “liberated state“, after a
successful “struggle for independence”, will not be able to
withdraw from the network of imperialist relations which
make up the world economy.

No state today can develop independently and outside

the demands of capitalist competition on the world
market. We answer those who endlessly argue that Marx
supported certain independence struggles or that Lenin
championed the right of nations to self-determination by
saying that such mechanical “Marxism“ has nothing to do
with Marxism. Marx wrote at a time when capitalism was
in its infancy, creating a working class, new technologies
and machines. Against this background, Marx and Engels
supported those national movements which they believed
would speed up the triumph over feudal and pre-capitalist
structures. In that ascendant phase of capitalism there
was still room for manoeuvre for the formation of
independent capitalist states and, with that, for the further
development of the working class, the future grave-digger
of capitalism.

But in the epoch of imperialism the room for manoeuvre

for “national independence” is squeezed within narrow
boundaries. It was Rosa Luxemburg, not Lenin, who
better understood this fact (despite her erroneous
analysis of imperialism’s roots). The further development
of capitalism since the early years of the 20th century
For Communism
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has confirmed the correctness of Luxemburg’s position

on the national question. Lenin expected that the
political struggle of the colonial countries would shake
the imperialist powers to their foundations. But in the
wake of the decolonisation after the Second World War
these hopes were unfulfilled. Decolonisation altered
little in the economic power structure. In many cases
the independence of the old colonies was the result of
an inter-imperialist power struggle as the USA prevailed
against the old colonial powers.

The bourgeoisie of the peripheral countries may

sometimes find themselves in a weaker position in the
imperialist pecking order. They may rely on all sorts of
“anti-imperialist” rhetoric and social demagogy. But
all of this does not alter the fact they are an integral
component part of the global capitalist domination over
the working class. For this reason so-called “national
liberation movements” represent the interests of
bourgeois fractions and currents and act as part of an
inter-imperialist line-up against the working class. All
theories and slogans of “national liberation” or of the
“right of peoples to self-determination” are aimed
at encouraging nationalist fault lines in the class and
subjecting the proletariat to bourgeois control.

Today, anti-imperialism means proceeding against the

system as a whole. The exploited and oppressed can
only struggle for their liberation on the basis of class
autonomy. As internationalists we therefore recognise no
solidarity with “peoples”, “states” or “nations”, but only
with real and specific human beings and their struggles
and social confrontations. Our aim is the struggle of the
workers of all countries as this is the sole perspective for
the overthrow of all oppression and discrimination.

The Oppression
of Women E xploitation, housework, discrimination and sexual
violence — that is the daily reality for millions of
proletarian women worldwide. The oppression of women
has its roots in the division of society into property
owning and propertyless classes. It represents a special
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20

relation of oppression which weakens the working class

as a whole.

Women represent over half the world population, but

perform the majority of society’s work. Today, as always,
the burdens of the work of reproduction (raising children,
house work) are primarily carried by women. Even when
the work of women is paid, the payment on average is
considerably lower than it is for men. Women are always
the first to feel the harshest attacks of capitalism in the
form of wars, hunger, programmes of cuts and waves of
redundancies. The bourgeoisie may talk a lot about equality
laws and “sexual liberation”, but, in reality, women are
deprived of basic rights today as much as ever. They are
deprived of the right of decision by laws on abortion, and
even denied the right of self-determination over their own
bodies. This is coupled with the propagation of a sexual
morality which reduces women to their role as mothers
and raises the bourgeois nuclear family to a social model.

On the other hand, women’s bodies and sexuality

are treated at all levels of the “cultural industry” as a
commodity for profit, whether this is in the more or less
socially accepted forms in advertising or in the clearer forms
like pornography and prostitution. All this contributes to
the oppression of women eating into everyday bourgeois
consciousness as a supposed normality and its daily
reproduction on all levels of social life.

In the period after the Second World War women did

experience far-reaching improvements, but these were
only short-lived victories which were primarily down to
the economic boom and the requirements of capitalism.
All of this was subject to the return of the crisis as the
worsening position of women on the labour market and
the various ideological campaigns for a return to family
values show.

It is true that capitalism has laid the basis for the liberation
of women, by enabling their entry onto the labour market
and participation in social life, but, nevertheless, women’s
oppression cannot be overcome within capitalist relations.
For Communism
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Today, as in the past, the roots of women’s oppression

lie in the family, the last bastion of bourgeois property
relations. The development of capitalism has, without
doubt, weakened the institution of the family. Also, at
least, and in the leading capitalist states, the most blatant
excesses of patriarchal oppression can be curbed by legal
regulation like the right to divorce and the criminalising
of violence and rape within marriage. Nevertheless,
capitalism is not in a position to go beyond the family as
the fundamental unit of socialisation. The emancipation
of women can only be realised in a society in which the
tasks of raising children, housework, and the care of the
sick and elderly are part of a collective social activity.
The emancipation of women is directly connected with
the creation of a socialist society and the liberation of
the working class as a whole. Nevertheless, the struggle
against sexist discrimination cannot be postponed
until day X after the revolution. It is a basic task of
revolutionaries to work unsparingly against reactionary
conceptions about, and models of behaviour for, women.
We oppose the glorification of bourgeois marriage
and family, the nucleus of patriarchal oppression and
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientations which
do not conform to the ruling bourgeois sexual morality.

In contrast to bourgeois feminists we don’t think that

sexism can be moderated or even overcome by rules
for individual behaviour or even quotas imposed by the
state apparatus. By ignoring the division of society into
classes, feminism disguises the contradiction of interests
between bourgeois and proletarian women and thus
reveals itself as a reactionary cul-de-sac. The struggle
against the oppression of women is for us no “affair
purely for women”, but, on the contrary, equally a means
and a pre-condition for the production of class unity.
The revolutionary organisation must take all requisite
steps to ensure the full participation of as many women
as possible in the communist movement. There is no
socialism without the liberation of women, no liberation
of women without socialism.

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22

Racism
R acism, the oppression and discrimination against
people on the basis of characteristics ascribed to
them, is one of the most repulsive manifestations of
bourgeois society. It is no relic of the past or even a natural
human phenomenon, but an ideology of oppression with
a specific history and a particular social function. Racism
evolved in the wake of colonialism and the development
of the capitalist economic system. Differing from other
ideologies of exclusion, the devaluation of other people
was now linked with characteristics and features which
were declared to be unalterable.

Racism has taken on the most varied forms and facets

in its history. All the same, it has continually fulfilled
the same function for our rulers, that of ideologically
justifying exploitation and oppression. Racism is
therefore not just a moral obscenity, but, on the contrary,
an essential organisational principle of capitalist society.
The maintenance of the structure of the capitalist
economy demands that workers regard other workers as
competitors for employment, accommodation, entry to
educational institutions, etc. This is an important trapdoor
for nationalist and racist ideas, whose effects Karl Marx
was already observing in the 19th century:

“Every industrial and commercial centre in England now

possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps,
English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary
English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who
lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker
he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and
consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats
and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their
domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and
national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude
towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites”
to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The
Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money.
He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the
stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified

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 23

by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by

all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This
antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English
working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by
which the capitalist class maintains its power.”

Racism in this way undermines the only way to

successfully resist the daily impositions of the system
— class solidarity. In spite of the internationalisation
of capitalism, the bourgeoisie exercises its rule in
the form of national states. In opposition to this, the
proletariat is an international class, a class of migrants.
Every split weakens its struggle and tightens the screws
of exploitation. For this reason, it is an urgent task for
communists to struggle without compromise against
racist ideas.

Our resistance against racism has nothing to do with

the patronising reform projects of the so-called multi-
culturalist propagandists, who peddle all sorts of
culturalist recipes and, in the framework of their own
positive racism, only accept those “cultural differences”
which they consider that the local public can digest.
The division in the working class cannot be overcome
by the “foreign” minority conforming to the prevailing
“dominant culture”. We reject every positive evaluation
of “integration” or “assimilation”. These kind of concepts
are always based on the bourgeois prejudice of the higher
worth of some sort of “national culture” and language.

To overcome racist divisions, a conscious minority

politics for the most oppressed sectors of the class is
necessary. Action without compromise against all racist
shenanigans, discrimination, exceptional laws and
administrative practices is an essential basic condition
for the production of class unity. The working class has
neither countries nor national cultures to defend. The
only way out of the treadmill of exploitation consists in
the overcoming of the capitalist system, which gives birth
to racism and reproduces it on a daily basis.

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24

Fascism
F ascism was one answer of the bourgeoisie to the
strengthening of the class movement after the First
World War. Historically, fascism unfolded as a movement
of radicalised petit bourgeois, who felt their existence
to be threatened to the same degree by the crisis of
capitalism as by the class struggles of the proletariat. By
its militant behaviour and a bizarre propaganda mixture
of aggressive nationalism, anti-semitism and social
demagogy, fascism, however, achieved mass influence
even outside these circles. But it was its terror against
the organisations of the workers’ movement rather than
its reactionary eclectic programme which moved parts
of the bourgeoisie to harness fascist movements to their
own purposes.

For a crisis-ridden capitalism, fascism proved itself to be an

option for rule everywhere where the class’s revolutionary
struggles had threatened the foundations of the system
and a revival of the economy made a corporatist and
centralist organisation of society necessary. By nipping
the struggle of the working class in the bud, by smashing
every attempt at opposition and by subjecting every area
of society to state control, fascism proved itself to be a
particularly authoritarian form of capital’s dictatorship.

The bestial crimes of fascism showed once again what

inhuman brutality capitalism is capable of in the imperialist
cycle of crisis and war. For this reason, it is no accident
that some paid moralists of the bourgeoisie happily try
to represent fascism as an anti-bourgeois revolt or as
the most extreme form of bourgeois society. In the light
of the almost incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust,
such arguments may appear plausible at first sight.
Nevertheless, they remain mystifications with which the
symbiotic relationship between fascism and democracy
is to be hidden. Without doubt, the fascists escalated
racism to its highest extreme. But neither racism, nor
anti-semitism and nationalism are exclusively fascist
inventions, but, on the contrary, are essential elements of
capitalist society. Neither do the fascists stand outside, nor
do they stand against the ruling capitalist relationships.
Rather, they pick up the resentments and ideologies that
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 25

our rulers spread on a daily basis, in order to intensify

them in their own way. For this reason, communists
combat fascism like every other form of bourgeois rule.

The Cul-de-sac
of Anti-Fascism
— Against all
F or the working class, it is absolutely necessary to
resist the emergence of fascists and their attacks.
Even so, such a struggle can only have perspectives for
United Fronts success if it rests on a clear class basis. Resistance to
and People’s fascism must be part of the comprehensive anti-capitalist
Fronts struggle to vanquish all forms of bourgeois rule. We
reject all participation in the various anti-fascist leagues
and campaigns for the “defence of democracy”. These
represent reactionary cul-de-sacs which aim at yoking
the working class to the cart of “democratic”, but still
bourgeois, states. The whole logic of anti-fascism is
to resist fascism by defending the democratic state as
the lesser evil. The conception of wanting to defend
democracy comes down to accepting, promoting and,
in the end, succumbing to the myth of the state as a
class-neutral entity. It means strengthening the state,
subjecting oneself to its power and robbing oneself of
every possibility of self-activity. In the end, this means
nothing more than chaining the proletariat to the state
and delivering it defenceless to repression.

Consequently, anti-fascism always fails where it claims

to be effective — preventing the transformation of
democracy into a dictatorship, through the broadest
possible alliance of all do-gooders. All attempts to dress
up the state as revolutionary end, either in the scandal
of the state presenting itself as the best anti-fascist, or
in a catastrophe, if, in the name of “anti-fascist unity“,
the revolution is given up. As an ideology glorifying
the state, and a practical route to the renunciation of
revolution, anti-fascism is just as much directed against
the proletariat as is fascism. Those who wish to settle
with fascism, must fight anti-fascism, and vice-versa. The
alternative which stands before humanity in the light of
capitalism’s power for destructive development, is not
“democracy or Fascism”, but “socialism or barbarism”.

For Communism
26

4 F alse friends are sometimes the worst enemies. In

order to maintain its rule, capitalism supports itself
on a series of organisations and currents which profess to
False Friends wish to improve the position of the working class, but, in
reality, work to direct all resistance into cul-de-sacs and
thus make it harmless. In order to successfully carry out
a struggle for its interests, the proletariat must become
aware of its historical tasks and give all these forces a clear
rejection.

The Unions “Trade unions work well as centres of resistance against

the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an
injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from
limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effect
of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to
change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever
for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say
the ultimate abolition of the wages system”, Marx wrote
in 1865. Today we can only declare the absolute failure of
the unions to even defend the most basic interests of the
workers. Their transformation from “centres of resistance
against the encroachments of capital” to state-supporting
bureaucratic apparatuses is irreversible.

Taken by themselves, unions were never revolutionary.

They emerged as workers in specific branches of the
economy united to fight for better conditions. For this
reason they were initially combated by the bourgeois state
with all the means at its disposal and sometimes even
banned. After much sacrifice and thanks to the solidarity
of the working class they were finally recognised as legal
organisations.

Increasingly, a tendency for the unions to subordinate

themselves to the logic of capitalism permeated these
organisations. With the development of imperialism, they
became an integral component part of bourgeois rule.
Their elixir of life consisted and consists still in negotiating
the conditions of the sale of the labour power commodity
to the bosses. This only makes sense on the basis of the
political acceptance of the wages system and within the
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framework of the capitalist national economy.

As early as the First World War, the unions, in agreement

with the Social Democratic leadership, supported
imperialist war. They proclaimed the “Burgfrieden“
[civil peace] with the ruling class and collaborated in
the implementation of anti-strike laws. To the same
degree, the militarisation of labour, the intensification of
work, the lengthening of the working day and wage cuts
found their willing support. Since then, the unions have
continually acted as the defenders of the ruling order.

From their position as the supposed representatives of

the working class, they are in able to sell “restructuring”
(i.e., redundancies), “realistic” wage agreements (which
usually contain wage cuts), etc., as being in the interest
of “economic sense”. It is always the unions which scream
the loudest for protectionism and import controls, in order
to “save jobs”. The unions have a manifold repertoire of
methods to domesticate and control workers’ struggles
and to lead them into dead-ends. By isolating and selling-
out strikes, dividing workers into groups by industry and
occupation, preventing and sabotaging effective forms of
struggle, they try to make sure that the rule of capital is
not seriously challenged.

Anyone on the “left” who continually explains the union’s

actions by the treachery of the current leadership, which
should be replaced by a different one in order to improve
the unions, marks themselves out by a thought-process
which is as naive as it is idealist. This kind of thinking
reduces all problems to the question of the right people
in strategic positions and which all too often turns out to
be a desire for posts and state support, hedged around
with “Leninist” clauses. The unions cannot be reformed,
“reconquered” or be transformed into instruments of
liberation! The problem is not simply one of this or that
“leadership”, it is the organisational form of the unions
itself, based on representative politics, that stands
opposed to a perspective of workers’ emancipation.

Unions betray nothing and no-one, least of all themselves.

For Communism
28

If they sabotage struggles, take us for a ride and, in this

way, make themselves indispensible to capital as factors
for negotiation and order, they are only acting consistently
and logically in agreement with their original concerns,
wishing to negotiate the business conditions of the sale
of the labour power commodity with the capitalists “on
the same level”. This does not mean that we simply call
for leaving the unions or for membership cards to be torn
up, which would be just the same as many of the illusions
of participation encouraged in the unions. The old quarrel
about whether private legal costs, insurance or union
membership offers the best protection from sacking
and the whims of the employer is a debate about bogus
solutions. As long as workers confront the boss alone and
isolated and hope to receive protection from “above” in
this desperate situation, things usually end badly.

We do not call for the construction of new and better

unions, which, sooner or later, will end in exactly the same
politics of representation as the old ones. Permanent
economic organisations of the working class must enter
into negotiations with the capitalists, and thus, sooner
or later, accept the rules of the game of the system of
exploitation. At best this kind of “syndicalist experiment”
would merely repeat the history of the last two hundred
years in double quick time. The main issue is to understand
that the unions’ framework for action, legalistic and
fixated on the state, is a strait-jacket, which continually
subordinates resistance and combativity to bourgeois
economy, bourgeois right and bourgeois law.

In order to be able to carry out its struggle for its long-

term goals, the working class must go beyond the union
framework. Strikes, not unions, are today’s “schools
of socialism”. This is particularly true when they bring
together workers from different branches and are led by
strike committees of elected and recallable delegates who
are responsible to full assemblies of the workers. The sole
alternative to the unions consists of the self-organisation
of the struggle — autonomy from below. The task of
revolutionaries consists of struggling for the communist
perspective everywhere that the working class is to be
For Communism
 29

met (including in union meetings). In the present phase

of capitalism, even defensive struggles against job losses
and wage cuts rapidly come up against the limits of the
system. Not putting the “question of the system”, and/
or excluding the question of the power of control of the
means of production, means answering it in the sense
of the unions and accepting worsening conditions and
sacrifice. Communists must actively take part in struggles
which have the potential to go beyond the limitations
of the mainly economic struggles and take all necessary
steps to organise the workers around the revolutionary
programme.

Social
Democracy T he Second International was founded in 1889 at a time
when its biggest section, German Social Democracy
was still struggling against Bismarck’s anti-Socialist Laws.
In reality, it functioned more as a federation of national
social democratic parties which adopted the only non-
binding resolutions. All its parties were based on a
reformist minimal programme and a formal maximum
programme which abstractly declared itself for socialism,
behind which it was able to hide its reformist daily
practice.

It is true that the social democratic parties developed

into mass organisations, but this was at the price of their
progressive integration into the bourgeois order. Belief
in parliamentarism necessarily led to accommodation
with, and finally submission to, bourgeois public order.
The bureaucracy, which emerged insidiously, placed
maintaining the organisation, and its finances, above its
socialist principles which were increasingly reduced in
importance except in the party’s sermonising.

Reformism led necessarily to loyalty to the imperialist

national state which the reformists wanted to take over.
In 1914 against all their previous anti-war resolutions,
the social-democratic parties largely supported the war
aims of their respective bourgeoisies. In the light of
the Second International’s previously adopted anti-war
resolutions, this was an open betrayal of all principles.
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Fundamentally, support for imperialist war was only the

logical consequence of the practice followed up until that
point. The Burgfrieden sealed with the bourgeoisie in
August 1914 was, in the final analysis, also an indicator
of how far social democracy had become an elementary
constituent part of the bourgeois order. From then on, the
social democratic parties evolved into major supporters of
capitalism.

Between 1918 and 1923, Social Democracy played a

leading role in smashing the revolutionary workers’
uprisings, and in the murder of thousands of communists
(including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht). Today,
social democracy acts as the advocate of a reformism
without real reforms. By continuing to sow illusions in
parliament, selling cuts as either a regretful necessity or
just a lesser evil, it attempts to chain the working class
to the state. In periods of strong class struggle it plays a
central role in the defence of capitalism by claiming to
be a workers’ party. In times of class peace it spreads the
illusion that the workers have a choice in elections. Social
democracy is an important ideological prop for capitalism
and cannot be won back to the camp of the working class.

Stalinism
T he Russian Revolution was already long defeated
before Stalin became the undisputed leader of the
USSR in 1928. The degeneration of the Russian October
Revolution resulted from the defeat of the worldwide class
movement and the consequent weakness in defending
the hard-fought stirrings of workers’ power against the
Stalinist counter-revolution. Stalinism did not represent
the logical result of the Bolshevik revolution but, on the
contrary, it was a total break with all its hopes and efforts.
Instead of freedom for the working class, Stalin (and/or
the developing capitalist class, whose representative he
was) developed a party dictatorship of unprecedented
cruelty.

Instead of communism, a particularly brutal variant of

state capitalism developed. While the basis for capitalist
society, commodity production and wage-labour, was
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 31

preserved, all-embracing state control and forced

labour were lyingly painted as “socialist achievements”.
Proletarians remained wage-labourers with no power
of disposal over the means of production which were
concentrated in the hands of the state. Stalinism was
able to triumph in Russia because it was a question of
an especially retrograde country. In a certain sense, he
anticipated certain elements of the “mixed economy”
which emerged in the West after the Second World War.
Here, too, it was claimed that the nationalised industries
were the “peoples’ property”. Primarily, however, it was
an exceptional capitalist formation which evolved in a
unique context.

It became a model for a series of countries such as

Cuba or China, as well as various nationalist movements
which inflicted severe defeats on the proletariat. As
a form of rule and as a political current, Stalinism
acted on the basis of a nationalist and state capitalist
programme: subjection of the proletariat to the state,
terror, renunciaton of revolution and the mass murder of
communists. It’s totally reactionary character revealed
itself in the cultivation of nationalism and anti-semitism,
in the propagation of a sexual morality hostile to women
and the glorification of wage-labour. It was not a
somehow degenerated “socialist experiment” but, on the
contrary, the grave-digger of the revolution, an especially
perfidious variant of anti-communism.

Heirs of “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a

the Counter- nightmare on the brains of the living”. Today, there are
revolution: the a bewildering number of groups and organisations calling
Left of Capital themselves “socialist” or “communist”. For the majority
of them it is sometimes a question of unintentionally
comical attempts to re-invent social democracy or to
reanimate Stalinism. But the confusion and damage
that these groups cause in the “name of Marxism” is
considerable. Most of these groups construct their
programmes by equating socialism with the state
ownership of the means of production. At the end of
the day, this is a reactionary position which cannot be
For Communism
32

equated with revolutionary Marxism, and which Friedrich

Engels had already denounced:

“The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially

capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalists, the
ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive
forces it takes over, the more it becomes the real collective
body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The
workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist
relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an
extreme.”

There has never been a socialist revolution in China,

Vietnam, Cuba or North Korean. In these countries a
social upheaval which was the work of the working class
has never happened, nor has a proletariat organised
in councils ever had the possibility of making political
or economic decisions there. For this reason we draw
a clear dividing line between us and those who wish to
ascribe to these regimes of exploitation a “progressive”,
“anti-capitalist” or even “socialist” character. Maoism,
like Guevarism represents an anti-communist current
directed against the working class, which relies on the
same ideological premises as Stalinism (the people’s front
concept, the stages theory, the glorification of the state,
nationalism, etc.).

The various Trotskyist currents like to use the prestige

of the opposition to Stalin led by Leon Trotsky to make
themselves look good. But, apart from the fact that
Trotsky’s struggle developed fairly late, he was always
hamstrung by the fact that he confused state capitalism
with socialism and regarded the communist party as
the exclusive arena for political confrontation. Trotsky
interpreted the guidelines decided by the first four
congresses of the Comintern as the basis for revolutionary
politics. Consistent with this, he accepted the fatal
notion that social democracy was a proletarian current,
with which one could seal agreements and leagues (so-
called united fronts). The reactionary consequences of
this way of seeing things revealed itself in 1935 when he
instructed his followers to enter the social democratic
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 33

parties. This was the basis of so-called entryism, that is,

the collaboration of Trotskyists with social democracy,
the force that had supported the imperialist war and
bloodily defeated the proletariat’s uprisings. In the
“Transitional Programme” of the “Fourth International”,
which was written by Trotsky in 1938 his deeply idealist
method found its most striking expression. Essentially,
the so-called Transitional Programme was nothing more
or less than a return to social democracy’s concept of
the minimal programme. It expressed especially clearly
the deeply rooted belief of Trotskyists that they could
draw out a revolutionary consciousness through a series
of reformist demands. Briefly, that is a politics which
rests on manipulation and denies the working class the
capacity to arrive at communist consciousness through
its own struggles. On top of this, Trotsky and his followers
continued all the confusion of the early Comintern on
the question of imperialism and so-called “national
self-determination”. This ended in leading them to take
sides in various local imperialist conflicts (the Spanish
Civil War, Abyssinia, the Sino-Japanese War), and finally
to participate in the imperialist Second World War as a
defender of democracy and the “socialist fatherland”.
Trotskyism today represents nothing more or less than a
state capitalist current, which must be decisively criticised
and combated by internationalist revolutionaries.

Although the various Trotskyist, Stalinist and Maoist

currents have their differences, they are all part of what
we call the capitalist left. They all stand for alliances with
the forces of the bourgeoisie, support of nationalism
and the more or less critical defence of Stalinism. All of
their concepts, programmes and tactics have broken the
back of proletarian struggles more than once. It is not
therefore a question of  carrying on with the same old
stuff in the name of “left unity”, but, on the contrary, of a
clear political break, in order to have a clear vision of the
perspective of class struggle across borders.

For Communism
34

5 T oday communists face great difficulties and challenges.

The domination of bourgeois ideology has led to a
marked separation between the working class and its
The Tasks of revolutionary minorities. Although the working class
Revolutionaries is more international and larger than ever before and
although the globalisation of production provides the
basis for unification, today the class is more fragmented
and disorientated than ever before in its history. At the
same time, we face a mighty international enemy with the
greatest reserves of wealth and power. And the bourgeoisie
has learnt from its history too. It knows every trick to divide
the working class and so to maintain its rotten system. But
it cannot solve the objective contradictions of capitalism.
The growing barbarism of capitalism in its imperialist
epoch represents the material basis for its final overthrow
by the working class. The task of revolutionaries is to keep
the interests of the working class as a whole in view, by
supporting its struggles, by criticising its limitations and
by trying to strengthen wage-labourers’ trust in, and
consciousness of, their own strength.

Revolutionary politics develops when revolutionaries

are in a position to learn from the struggles of the
class, to generalise experiences of struggle and to carry
consciousness and perspectives to the movement.
Whenever they can, revolutionaries must take practical
initiatives in this regard. But, as long as capitalism exists,
victories in economic and political struggles can only
be temporary. The emancipation of the working class
demands a political struggle for power. Communists must
mercilessly unmask and combat all bourgeois organisations
which strive to shift class struggle to ground which is
secure for the capitalists. This demands, as has already
been explained, an organisational framework. According
to our understanding, this can only be an international and
internationalist revolutionary organisation. International,
because capitalism can only be combated and overcome
on a global level; Internationalist, because the rejection of
all nationalist ideology is the basis for the production of
class unity; revolutionary, because it is only in the radical
break with capitalism that there lies the perspective for
living a life not just in humane conditions, but simply as a
For Communism
 35

human being.

The Need for a

Revolutionary
Break
N one of humanity’s global problems like hunger,
destruction of the environment and the growing
danger of war can be tackled within the framework of the
capitalist profit system, let alone solved. The working class
cannot fundamentally change its social situation, so long
as the bourgeoisie commands political power through
an intact state apparatus. All attempts by the workers’
movement to develop the structures of production resting
on common property through the formation of retail co-
operatives or self-managed concerns have continually
been shipwrecked on the political and economic realities
of capitalism. While the up-and-coming bourgeoisie
could make treaties and temporary alliances with the
feudal classes, the proletariat can only free itself through
intransigent class struggle. In distinction to the rising
bourgeoisie, the proletariat must first conquer political
and economic power before it can seriously change
anything in its social position. Capitalism can neither be
gradually improved, progressively and essentially altered,
or managed humanely.

Against
Representation
For Delegation
A ll reformist attempts to tame capitalism through
compromises with our rulers have proved themselves
to be disastrous dead-ends. There is no parliamentary
road to socialism! Parliament long ago lost the role given
to it by the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century,
that of being the central organ of arbitration between
classes. While the real decisions are taken in closed
committees of the state apparatus, parliamentarism
today has the primary ideological function for our rulers
of cloaking the deeds of the government in “democratic”
clothes. Parliamentarism, in addition, has a structural
function to integrate us into capitalist life. Every
parliamentary orientation leads sooner or later to the
desire to co-manage the things necessary for capitalism
in conformity with “public opinion”. As a classical variant
of representation, parliamentarism stands in the way of
the single feasible way to alter society, the self-activity of
For Communism
36

the working class. It is just the same with the operation

of small armed groups in the form of terrorism or
guerrilla warfare. Individual terror reflects the voluntarist
mentality of the radicalised petit bourgeoisie. It is in most
cases a product of the machinations of bourgeois secret
services and a favourite field of play for inter-imperialist
confrontation. Isolated actions by terrorist groups are
completely unsuitable to challenge bourgeois rule. They
place the proletariat in the role of a passive onlooker and
impart the illusion that “others” can act in the place of the
working class in achieving change. The account that the
international working class has to settle with capitalism is
too comprehensive to hand over to a few of this system’s
functionaries and characters. The struggle for liberation
cannot be delegated to self-nominated elites or ever so
well-meaning vanguards. The overthrow of this system
requires the solidly united self-activity of the masses. As
an expression of self-emancipation of the working class,
communism rejects the idea of a state which supposedly
has the right to rule over us and to suppress us.

Workers’
Democracy
Instead of Party
T he experience of the Paris Commune long ago
showed that the working class cannot take over the
structures of the bourgeois state apparatus and use
Dictatorship it for its own purposes. The bourgeois state is not an
institution hovering above classes, but is, on the contrary
an organ of repression and control for the maintenance
and defence of the rule of capital. It must be smashed
in a revolutionary way and replaced by the organs of
proletarian self-organisation. The historically discovered
form and driving force of this revolutionary transformation
process towards communism is the councils. The councils
are no abstract invention of socialist theoreticians,
but, on the contrary, are thrown up again and again by
the struggles and uprisings of the working class. It is no
accident that our rulers’ propaganda machine either keeps
quiet about the history of the councils or distorts it. The
inspirational examples of the councils show how millions
of people can take their lives in their own hands and run
them themselves. In contrast to bourgeois democracy,
which rests on representation and passivity, the councils
For Communism
 37

base themselves on working class self-activity. The

principle is the electability and recallability of delegates
at any time, the duty of office-holders to account for
themselves and control from below. The historical
experience has, however, also shown that even the most
complete council democracy by itself is no guarantee for
the development of socialism. Exactly as communists
must give an orientation towards the smashing of the
bourgeois state before the proletarian conquest of
power, at the time of the transition period they must
struggle for suitable measures to prepare the end of
capitalist commodity production on a world scale. The
organisation of revolutionaries must do justice to their
political responsibility towards the class. Its task consists
of “combin[ing] and generalis[ing] the spontaneous
movements of the working class, but not to dictate or
impose any doctrinaire system whatsoever” [Instructions
for delegates of the provisional General Council (1866)].
They should not fear to struggle, even as a minority, for
the communist programme inside and — when necessary
— outside the councils. On the other hand, they should
not act in the place of the class, usurp the councils or
merge with the structures of the proletarian semi-
state. Neither the revolutionary party nor the councils
taken by themselves represent a guarantee against
counter-revolution. The only guarantee of victory lies
in the initiative and living class consciousness of the
international proletariat.

The
International
Dimension
T he overthrow of capitalism cannot be completed
overnight. But, as soon as the working class
overthrows the ruling class in a country or territory, the
period of transition towards communism begins. The
proletariat must use the political power it has conquered
and smash the bourgeois state apparatus, disempower
the bourgeoisie and introduce the first steps towards the
socialisation of the means of production. This demands
the establishment of a revolutionary regime on the
basis of workers’ councils. As an international system,
however, capitalism can only be fought and overcome on
an international level. Socialism cannot be constructed in
For Communism
38

a single country or territory. A so-called “workers’ state” or

the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is, in the first instance,
a political category. Nevertheless, a “workers’ state” will
take measures for the improvement of the conditions of
life of the working class (reduction in the working-day,
free access to the health and education system, etc.) and
try to direct production for the needs of society. But these
measures are, in any case, milestones for a socialist future.
As long as the capitalists have the crisis in hand to some
extent and can keep workers’ struggles on a bourgeois
terrain and isolated, their rule is relatively secure. As long
as capitalist commodity production in the rest of the world
continues to exist, the diktat of the law of value holds.
Just as an isolated strike or factory occupation can only
be maintained for a limited time, a “workers’ state” in a
hostile environment cannot survive for long. Either world
capitalism will destroy the revolutionary experiment by
military means, or it will place it under enormous economic
pressure, or both. This would have the consequence that
a proletarian regime (as in the case of Bolshevik Russia)
would be forced to compete with the bourgeois states
under capitalist conditions. This would sooner or later lead
to a competitive struggle over the accumulation of capital
and block any socialist perspective. The highest priority
of a proletarian regime and of a communist world party
therefore lies in the extension and consolidation of the
revolution internationally. Only when capitalism has been
defeated across the world will it be possible to undertake
real steps towards socialism.

Beyond the
State, Nation
and Capital...
T he establishment of a society which puts an end to
the exploitation of people by people is a long and
difficult process, which demands the solution of a series
of extremely complex problems. One great challenge
will be to meet the dramatic consequences of capitalist
exploitation of both people and the environment.
Capitalism has nevertheless also brought about an
unprecedented level of social wealth and technological
innovation. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the
take-over of production by the producers will open up
great possibilities of development. The entire potential
For Communism
 39

of science, research and technology would be able to

be used for the benefit of humanity. It would no longer
serve short-sighted profit motives, but, on the contrary,
would solve real problems. Production and distribution
would be oriented towards the needs of people,
society’s work would be more fairly divided and could
be decisively reduced. Art, culture and science could
freely develop and would no longer be the privilege of
certain social classes. On the basis of material security,
freedom and social equality, for the first time in the
history of humanity the formation of real individuality
would be possible. As classes and class contradictions
are overcome the structures of the proletarian semi-
state would become superfluous and wither away.
“The government of persons” can be “replaced by the
administration of things”. But a socialist society can only
be spoken of when commodity production, classes and
states have disappeared on a world level. Only then can
the association of the free and equal become a reality
and “the free development of each the condition for the
free development of all”.

For Communism
40

Our Pamphlets

The Platform of the Internationalist Communist Tendency 70p

(formerly the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party)
Revised English version (including postage in UK)

Class Consciousness and Revolutionary Organisation £4
The issue of “consciousness” is one of the most important for the working class and for revolutionaries. Our approach
is unashamedly historical and attempts to draw out the real experience of the working class in its struggles of the last
two centuries. 56pp

Trotsky, Trotskyism, Trotskyists £3

How Trotsky, who made such an enormous contribution to revolutionary practice, ended up giving his name to a
movement which returned to the counter-revolutionary errors of Social Democracy.

Stalin and Stalinism £1

The lie that the former USSR was “really existing socialism” remains a potent weapon against the working class. This
pamphlet not only examines the origins of the regime that emerged from the defeat of the October Revolution but
also explains the motivations of Stalinism.

Holocaust and Hiroshima 50p

Examines how the nature of imperialist warfare comes to inflict mass murder on the world through an examination of
these seminal events.

Capitalism and the Environment (by Mauro Stefanini) £1

Translated from Prometeo these articles were written some time ago but show that our late comrade was ahead of
his time in analysing the unsustainability of capitalist production.

Spain 1934-39: From Working Class Struggle to Imperialist War £3

Reprint of key CWO articles long out of print and translations of contemporary documents from the Italian Left in
exile. New introduction.

Platform of the Committee of Intesa 1925 (new edition) £3

The start of the Italian Left’s fight against Stalinism as Fascism increased its grip.

South Africa’s New Turmoil £2

An analysis of class relations in the period after the fall of apartheid thrown into relief by the strike wave which
followed the Marikana massacres.

For Communism
 The Internationalist Communist Tendency

Britain
The Communist Workers’ Organisation which produces Revolutionary
Perspectives (a six monthly magazine) and Aurora (an agitational paper)
BM CWO, London WC1N 3XX

Italy
Il Partito Comunista Internazionalista
which produces Battaglia Comunista (a monthly paper) and Prometeo (a
quarterly theoretical journal)
CP 1753, 20101, Milano, Italy

Canada
Groupe Internationaliste Ouvrier / Internationalist Workers’ Group
which produces L’Internationalisme
R.S. C.P. 173, Succ.C, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2L 4K1

USA
Our comrades produce Internationalist Notes
Write to: [email protected]

Germany
Gruppe Internationaler Socialistinnen
which produces Socialismus oder Barbarei
GIS, c/o Rotes Antiquariat, Rungestrasse 20, 10179 Berlin, Germany

France
Bilan&Perspectives
ABC-LIV, 118-130 Av. J. Jaures, 75171 Paris Cedex 19

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