Introduction
This text makes some critical observations on the text “The current crisis and the tasks of communists” from the November 2019 AGM of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.
The Breath and Light website was created as a personal contribution to discussion in the Communist Left. So far the texts on it have mainly been critiques of the positions of the ICC, prompted by the confusions and contradictions apparent in the resolutions of its last congress.
The Communist Workers’ Organisation, the British affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, is an important part of the Communist Left as it exists today and those identifying with this political current have a duty to comment and encourage debate on the life of its organisations, if only from “behind a typewriter”…
(The following has been edited in response to comments from the CWO.)
Decadence or a "structural crisis"?
The CWO's perspectives text begins with a re-statement of capitalism’s uniquely dynamic nature as a mode of production to make the point that this has created the material basis for a communist society.
Of course it is this dynamism that also contains the seeds of its doom: the only motive of capitalist production is the unlimited expansion of surplus value but in the drive to expand itself capital confronts the inbuilt limits of its own social relations , eventually reaching the point where these become a definitive fetter on the further development of the productive forces.
The CWO text defends the position that capitalism today is in “terminal decline”, posing the historic alternative of socialism or barbarism. But while there are references to capitalism’s “inbuilt tendency to crisis/temporary paralysis”, there is no explicit statement that capitalism has entered its phase of decay or decadence; instead it talks about "structural crises of accumulation" which in the epoch of imperialism result in world wars as the means of destroying sufficient capital to restore profitability. This appears to be the position now defended by the Internationalist Communist Tendency but it is not clear whether this is essentially a defence of the position that capitalism is a decadent mode of production today based on an analysis of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall or expresses a disagreement with this position.
Decadence has obviously been a subject of some debate in the Communist Left in recent years and we cannot go into it further here except to note that the CWO/ICT’s position appears to have implications for its analysis as set out in the text.
The economic crisis
In the CWO’s description, we are now in the third structural crisis of accumulation which began in the 1970s when the post-war boom ended and has now lasted 50 years. Not unreasonably this prompts the question: why, if capitalism has been facing a crisis of profitability since the early 1970s, has there not already been a world war in order to restore profitability, as there was in 1914 and 1939, especially if you believe, as the CWO does, that the proletarian struggle is not an obstacle to the bourgeoisie going to war?
The CWO has previously identified various reasons for this, including the effects of the Russian bloc’s collapse in devaluing capital and opening up fresh regions for capital export and fresh workers to exploit, along with developments like ‘financialisation’ and speculation, all of which have helped to postpone the need for a third world war without, however, being able to create a situation in which a new cycle of accumulation is possible. The text does not address this question directly but refers to the fact that the crisis has been “prolonged by the combined efforts of the leading capitalist states to avoid an international slump which would propel the world towards a third world war”. So it is now apparently the avoidance of a global economic crisis that is the key factor?
If the CWO is emphasising the ability of the bourgeoisie to use state capitalist measures to manage the deepening crisis of its system for over 40 years, this is surely correct, but it does seem to beg the question of what would happen if the bourgeoisie is unable to avert a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Writing today, in the midst of a global pandemic which is threatening to precipitate possibly the worst economic crisis in capitalism’s history this is not a hypothetical question and it is disappointing that the CWO’s text does not offer more argumentation for this latest explanation of why we have not yet seen a world war to restore profitability. And if the bourgeoisie is able to continue to avoid a world slump, at what point would the CWO conclude it is necessary to revise its position?
The tendency towards war and imperialist rivalries
This brings us on to the CWO’s analysis of inter-imperialist antagonisms. The text contains a clear description of the tendency towards war in the current international situation, with confrontations between all the major imperialist powers in strategic areas like the crossroads of Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, and the CWO rightly warns that the growing economic tensions between the US and China contain the threat of a future world war.
As we have already seen, the CWO defends the position that the economic function of wars in decadence is to destroy sufficient quantities of capital in order to restore profitability and this leads it to try to identify the economic rationale in all of today’s imperialist conflicts. For the CWO: “In a financialised world the main game in town for each state is to divert revenue, from whatever source, and by whatever means, towards their own jurisdiction” and it is this which results in increasing imperialist competition at all levels: industrial, commercial, monetary, and strategic.
But while it is important for Marxists to identify the economic factors in today’s imperialist conflicts this is surely too narrow a view of imperialist competition, especially in this phase of capitalism's "terminal decline"? The bourgeoisie is driven by strategic and geo-political objectives as well as narrow financial ones (“divert[ing] revenue, from whatever source, and by whatever means, towards their own jurisdiction...”). If we take the example of the Russian intervention in Syria, this is undoubtedly to protect its lucrative arms contracts, infrastructure and energy investments in the country but more importantly to secure its vital naval base in the Middle East and above all to avoid losing out to its imperialist rivals and re-establish itself as a world power. Similarly the CWO text describes the struggle of the relatively declining USA against China’s attempt to establish itself as the world’s leading imperialist power, in which the US makes full use of the domination of the dollar worldwide as an economic weapon in order to pursue its primary aim: to prevent China dominating the Eurasian land mass and threatening US global supremacy.
We certainly need to avoid giving the impression that every imperialist conflict today simply expresses “chaos”; the two-bloc system may have collapsed but there are still imperialist alliances, albeit shifting, unstable ones, and there are still important economic motives involved, but the greater picture today is surely one of a growing irrationality of inter-imperialist antagonisms from any narrow financial point of view; a tendency the CWO itself identifies when it vividly describes the carnage in Syria today, where "the massive presence of all the major culprits in this carnage continually shifts like a kaleidoscope … new alliances have been formed and old ones dissolved, in a series of episodes that have brought the ruin of an entire country with two million dead".
The class struggle
The CWO's text examines the condition of the working class today. It also reviews the history of the economic crisis. But it does not analyse the evolution of the class struggle or changes in balance of class forces, which is presumably related to its position that we are still in a period of counter-revolution after the defeat of the 1917-21 revolutionary wave.
This was not always the CWO's view of course. In the 1970s it recognised the post-’68 upsurge of struggles as the beginning of the development of the objective conditions for revolution (CWO text for the First International Conference in 1977) and greeted its high point in the 1980 Polish mass strike as “the biggest class battles of the last ten years” (CWO/Battaglia leaflet at the time). Now in its perspectives text it describes these same struggles simply as “around two decades of working class defensive struggles, which in the UK were largely conducted sector by sector”.
It’s perfectly true that this international wave of struggles was unable to develop into a consciously anti-capitalist movement and was eventually defeated by a counter-offensive of the capitalist class in the 1980s, as part of a strategy based on the “de-industrialisation and globalisation of production” that the CWO correctly recognised at the time and which “dismembered the traditional industrial working class”. But to now dismiss these struggles is to ignore the fact that this counter-offensive was necessary precisely because of the threat they posed to capitalist class rule and to apparently conclude that the situation facing the working class in the early 21st century is essentially no different to the 1930s – “Midnight in the Century” – surely empties the term counter-revolution of any real meaning? It also implies that for any future workers’ struggles to end it would have to be, in effect, revolutionary from the start and how realistic is that based on the lessons of history?
The implications of capitalism's "terminal decline"
The starting point for the CWO’s perspectives as we have seen is the recognition of capitalism’s unique dynamism, which eventually seals its doom as a mode of production. But the dialectical development of society, the working out of capitalism’s contradictions, of course continues and in fact accelerates the longer it survives. There appears to be a recognition of this by the CWO, at least at the level of the economic crisis, “which has now lasted so long that it is a manifestation of terminal decline”.
But there is no consideration in the CWO’s text of the manifestations of this “terminal decline” at the level of the political or ideological superstructure of capitalist society; there is no analysis, for example, of the phenomenon of right-wing populism today or the growth of nationalist ideology; not even, in November 2019, a mention of Brexit!
And yet the need for a broader and deeper analysis should lead logically from a recognition of the prolongation of this crisis, which is inevitably accelerating the decay of capitalist society at all levels, not just the economic, to the extent that this decay increasingly becomes a determinant of the situation the working class faces today; as Marxists we always need to keep in mind that “It is not the case that the economic situation is the cause, alone active, and everything else only a passive effect. Rather there is a reciprocal interaction with a fundamental economic necessity which in the last instance always asserts itself” (Engels to Starkenburg).
What perspectives?
Given that the CWO text presumably has the aim of orienting the organisation in the coming period, what perspectives does it put forward?
To summarise, “the capitalist crisis, which has now lasted so long that it is a manifestation of terminal decline, is not going away and further resistance is more, rather than less likely”. Socialism or barbarism are still the historic alternatives which will be decided by the outcome of the class war and history is beginning to accelerate “faster than we once thought possible”. There is a growing threat of war; on the other hand, there are signs of workers’ struggles today - Chile, France, Mexico and Iran are mentioned – and spontaneous protests are proliferating across the planet which, while not proletarian in either content or composition, do involve workers. We can also expect more ‘cross-class’ protests like the gilets jaunes which have no clear class content; are these the harbingers of a conscious class movement to come? “This we cannot say”. Given the conditions the CWO has described, what is the prospect or otherwise of a class-wide movement developing? “This we cannot predict”. So what is the CWO’s overall assessment of the current situation? “It could go in either direction”.
Yes, it could. The situation today is extremely difficult and it is honest of the CWO to admit it is not able to make any predictions. But there is surely still a need to try to draw out the implications of its own analyses which as we have seen refer to:
· the uniquely dynamic nature of capitalism and the acceleration of history “faster than we once thought possible”
· the prolongation of the capitalist crisis “which has now lasted so long that it is a manifestation of terminal decline”
· the “enormous difficulties” faced by the working class in rediscovering its forms of struggle.
In this context perhaps the most glaring omission of the CWO text is any consideration of the implications for the working class struggle of capitalism’s continuing and accelerated destruction of the natural environment; the effects of deforestation, overdevelopment (especially in East Asia), industrialisation of agriculture , air pollution, etc., all of which of course are factors in the emergence of the current global pandemic which to say the least poses huge problems for the ability of the working class to struggle against capitalism while at the same time highlighting the threat of allowing it to survive indefinitely.
In a more recent article on the coronavirus and economic crises the CWO does indeed highlight “the multifaceted break between the capitalist productive form and the world of nature” which in the present period is demonstrating its devastating destructiveness: “the search for maximum profit, made more difficult in recent times by the increasing difficulty of valorising capital … has also ended up heavily affecting the relationship between society and nature. The increasing imbalance is having disruptive effects at all levels”; these effects including pollution, deforestation, intensive farming and pandemics.
The point to make here is surely that the more the crisis of this decayed system is characterised by a “terminal decline”, the more difficult it will be for the working class to intervene; a point apparently recognised by the CWO when it emphasises that “the difficulties we face are enormous. Not least is the situation of today’s generation of workers who will have to re-discover the forms of struggle organisations created by workers in the past”. But it doesn’t appear to take this insight to its logical conclusion to examine the implications for the class struggle in the coming period.
Hopefully these are questions the CWO will take up in the coming period through debate and theoretical elaboration.
The tasks of communists?
Which brings us to the tasks of communists in the coming period.
The CWO perspectives text is called “The current crisis and the tasks of communists”. What are these tasks? The only one specified is “strengthening the organisation as a more solid nucleus of a future international”.
The CWO is fond of quoting the remark by Onorato Damen, a leader of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista), that the communist organisation cannot be built just ‘behind a typewriter’. The full quote is "To put forward revolutionary demands on the ground, however small, in the current insecure and feeble conditions of workers' struggle, to engage in an active political militancy not just restricted to a typewriter and theorising which is an individual activity that is always debatable in intention as well as results."
At best this is an affirmation of the need for intervention in workers’ struggles even in conditions unfavourable to a revolutionary organisation, at worst it is surely a denigration of the vital work of theoretical clarification by revolutionaries in a time of retreat; quite why the act of writing or debate should intrinsically be an “individual activity” which can have only “debatable” intentions or results is entirely unclear and points not only to outdated polemics but underlying activist prejudices.
Its repetition today by the CWO and its parent organisation is apparently to support their prioritisation of forming “nuclei of revolutionaries” instead of “fractions or discussion circles". But whatever we call them - nuclei, fractions, circles, groups - the fact is that in today's difficult conditions, in which revolutionaries necessarily find themselves in a tiny minority of the working class, it is surely even more important to recognise the need for the widest possible discussion and even deeper theoretical elaboration?
Mark Hayes
May 2020